Denver Conference: 2018
Table of Contents
Hebrews 12:1-4
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Today, and as we know, the book itself was addressed mainly to Jewish believers, some of whom, perhaps, although outwardly believers, were not real, but they were going through a very difficult time. And the chapter takes that into account, but ends in real triumph with a comparison between.
The.
One mountain, Mount Sinai, had spoke of the law, and then of course, Mount Zion, the heaven that speaks of our portion.
Would that be all right?
Stop.
Is there a brother that could read it for us?
Hebrews, chapter 12.
Wherefore seen, we also are compassed about with so great a crowd of witnesses. Let it lay aside every weight and the sin which that so easily bazetta, and let us run with patience the rate that is set before us.
Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of faith, who for the joy that was set before him endure of the cross, despising the shame, and it sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself.
Lest he be wearied and faint in your mind.
You have not yet resisted unto blood thriving against him.
And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you its children. My son despised not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor fate, when thou art refuge of him.
For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth, and scourges every son whom he received.
If he endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons. For what son is he whom the Father chasteneth not?
But if he be without chastisement, wherefore all are partakers, then our ambassadors and not sons. Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh with correct, which corrected us, and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits and lives? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure.
But he for our prophet, that we might be partakers of His Holiness.
Now no chase means for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous.
Nevertheless, afterwards it yielded the peaceable fruit of righteousness.
Unto them which are exercised thereby.
Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet, like that which is lame be turned out of the way. But let it rather be healed.
Follow peace with all men, and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord, looking diligently, lest any man fail of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness bringing up trouble you, and therefore thereby many be depiled.
Lest there be any fornicator or profane person, as he saw, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessings.
He was rejected, for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.
For a year not come unto the mount that might be touched and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness and darkness, darkness and Tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words, which voice they that heard and treated, that, that the word should not be spoken unto them anymore.
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Or they could not endure that which was commanded. And if so much as a beast touched the mountain, it must be stoned, or thus thrust through with the dark.
And so terrible was the site that Moses said I exceedingly fear and quake.
Thy ye are common to Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living Gods, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the General Assembly and Church of the first born which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.
And to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant.
And to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that available.
See that you've refused not him that speaketh. For if they escaped, who refused him that spake on earth much more Shall we not? Shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven?
Whose voice then shook the earth, but now he hath promised, saying.
Yet once more I will shake not the earth only, but also heaven.
And this word yet once more signifies the removing of those things that are shaken.
As of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.
Wherefore we receive we receiving a Kingdom which cannot be moved.
Let us have grace whereby whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear, for our God is a consuming fire.
Just to get the perspective here.
We know that the book of Hebrews was written.
Probably by the Apostle Paul, although he doesn't identify himself, but it has all the marks of his footprint in the epistle and it was written to bring those deer Jewish believers.
Into the full blessing and light of the purposes of God for them, because it was very hard for them to lay aside what they had been going on with in Judaism for.
1500 years.
And in Chapter 11 we have the cloud of witnesses referred to here in verse one, all of those giants of faith in the Old Testament who are enumerated as being examples of how it was necessary to live like sight. Without faith, it is impossible to please Him.
But now we come to the practical side of things, because those dear Jewish believers were enduring a lot of persecution, it seems. And because of that, some of them were getting a little bit discouraged, a little bit cast down. Some of them were wondering if it was worth it all, and was this really what they've been called to do? After all, they were accustomed to thinking of God's blessing in temporal things and.
That if they were obedient, they would enjoy the good life down here, long life, prosperity and all the rest of it. And here, instead of all that, they were getting the very opposite of it.
And so.
This chapter brings out to them. On the one hand, no, don't expect it to be an easy path down here. Don't expect everything to go smoothly. It may come all the way. As it says in verse 4. You may have to resist. That is, resisting in the sense of not giving up right to the point where you'll be martyred for your faith.
But on the other hand, what is ahead? Oh, the glory is ahead. And what resource do we have now, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith?
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So it's a very blessed chapter, a very real encouragement to our souls. And although most of us here are not undergoing what we would call active persecution in the sense that many of our brethren are, yet at the same time Satan has his ways of wearing out the people of God by bringing troubles and difficulties upon them of one kind or another to the point where instead of it becoming a race, we.
To use a common word, we start to plot.
We're just plodding along sometimes in a pathway of faith.
And this chapter would encourage us not to do that. Just as that him we some would have the same.
Note of encouragement and praise in it.
The book of Hebrews, the profession is assumed to be real, that the author makes allowance that there could well be among those that had identified themselves with the Lord Jesus as Messiah. From among the Jews there may well have been unreality.
So there was a concern that as they saw their brethren suffering persecution, that they would say, no, this can't be right. This could not have been the Messiah. So the whole book, it's a very logical treatise, this book as it lays out through into the 11Th chapter. And then we get the practical side of things halfway through the 11Th chapter, 12 to the 13th chapter. But there are some verses in the book of Hebrews, including this chapter, that caused a good deal of consternation and concern for individuals. But if you just keep in mind.
So the author makes allowance for the fact it might be those amongst them that identified with this, uh, movement, I put it that way, that were not real. And so he had a concern for them. Would they press on? See a Jew, a faithful Jew before the cross do have to be saved. He had, he was certainly born again, but he did not have eternal life. He did not possess the spirit of life. So he also had to come into salvation. And that's never easy.
New book like natural book, there's some pain involved and uh, there was a struggle going on, I think in the constant salt of some of those that were. And you might say, well, how does that, how can I apply that to this present day? Well, I think too, especially in, uh, amongst Christian families, there are those that have grown up that come along to the assembly. They've identified outwardly with the Christian profession.
But maybe there hasn't been that expression of reality. And as they look at things around them and hear the voice of this world and what Satan is saying to them, they're going to let go. They're going to give up, say no, this can't be right.
N.
That, I think, is the burden of many in this room. No doubt that those that have grown up under the sound of.
The teaching of the word of God that they press on and they don't give up.
That one can lose their salvation. But if there hasn't been that work and they're hot, then like that seed that, uh, either the South of the air pluck away or the tongue with the. So this book, I think is very applicable to us in this present day. And then also, as Phyllis pointed out, the general encouragement of those that are real, we can get discouraged.
And look at things around us and we might say, well, what is it worth? Is it worth it all?
They would love to do nothing more than to ruin our Christian testimony.
MMM.
And sad to say, as we well know, Satan has been all too successful in dragging Christianity down to the level of a worldly religion and importing much of Judaism into Christianity in order to make it more palatable.
In that way, and as a result, without wanting to be critical, we see so much of the Christian profession today composed of those who pay lip service to it but who aren't real. And the world makes a mockery of all of that.
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And So what is enjoined on us here?
And we get it in the first verse. Let us run with patience the race that is set before us.
It's not a 100 yard dash, it's a marathon, isn't it? It's a race that entails real patience, real endurance. And to do that we need to lay aside the two things that are mentioned here. First of all, every weight, and then the sin that does so easily beset us.
It might seem simple on the surface, but sometimes it can be very difficult to lay aside both of those things.
Many things in this life that end up being weights to us. Yes, we have to earn a living. Yes, we have to make our way in this world, and there are certain responsibilities that we have which we cannot. Sure, otherwise we are an equally bad testimony in the other direction. But there are an awful lot of things that are weights that we can well afford to lay aside.
And then the sin that does so easily beset us.
A besetting sin is the one that I find very hard to let go of.
We all have them, don't we? What is a temptation to me may not be a temptation to you.
But we all have those things that keep on coming back at us.
Over and over and over again.
This first verse is referring back to obviously Chapter 11 and all those witnesses that we had before us, and it's similar to what we would see if we turn to Romans chapter 15, verse 4. Whatsoever things were written before time were written for our learning that we proved patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.
And so we have the full liberty, and these scriptures would encourage us to look back at those ones in times past. Look back at the story of Abraham when he told to give up.
That which was most precious to his heart.
We we little little appreciate how how deep that trial was to Abraham because we see him carrying through it and and amazing faith overcoming. We have that full liberty to turn to the account of Joseph and see him in temptation there when all is against him. We have that full liberty as the as the children of Israel are in the wilderness, that wilderness pathway that we've been thinking about and considering. We have full liberty to reflect on the gods.
That preserve them and on and on and on, whether it be, uh, whether it be Jeremiah or whether you look at Daniel or all these different ones.
Wherefore, seeing, we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, each one of them giving testimony to the fact that the path of faith is worthwhile.
End the testimony that they that they bore, and the witness to us is that it's worthwhile.
To lay aside that weight it's worthwhile to to put away from our fat sin that would hinder us. It's worthwhile. It may not look like it at the time and as we look through those different accounts we may we we scratch our heads sometimes is how the Lord preserves different ones through those trials. Just for example, Joseph was 13 years. I believe in in his life everything went wrong.
13 years, that's a long time. And yet as we look at his life, he's part of that witness.
To to lay aside that way, to lay aside that sin, and to run with that endurance.
The path that set before us.
Yes, in the book of Hebrews points out to us that.
We have so much more than they have.
Abraham, compared to what we know, knew very little. He didn't know all the purposes of God. He didn't know everything that was going to happen. Yes, God made promises to him, but he didn't know what we know. He didn't have the nearness to the Lord that we know. He didn't know for sure that his sins were forgiven and all those things. He had faith. But oh, how much more do we have in the dispensation of grace?
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And so we need Grace to run that race.
But it's a race that needs to be run, and God will give us the strength for it.
I don't want to make an unfair comment.
But we have all seen people out jogging.
And we see some who are running along there nice and easily and with real vigor. And we see others there that I say it very kindly, but the jobs fiercely is as fast as a decent walk. Yes, it's a jog in in name, but that's about it. And there's just very little energy there. Well, I appreciate the fact that they're trying to get some exercise because sometimes it's.
People that are older or people that are a little overweight and they're doing the best they can.
But the Lord wants us to have an abundant entrance, doesn't it? And in these last days, Satan works largely by discouragement, I feel. And that's why it says in the chapter our brother referred to.
Through patience and the Darby uses the word encouragement of the scriptures. Yes, there's patience, we need patience, but it's also to be.
Done in a way that we are encouraged.
Keep on going and go, not as if, well I guess if I have to, but rather with the goal set before us and with joy in our hearts. Why? Because of the second verse looking unto Jesus.
If you'll permit me, I'd like to read a, uh, a poem that was shared at, at camp this year that really kind of stopped me. And I think it, it's unreasonable to, uh, our chapter. I'll try to read it quickly. Uh, it's called the young Christian. I'm sure many are familiar with it. I cannot give it up the little world. I know the innocent delights of youth.
The things I cherish. So it is true.
I love my Lord, I long to do His will, but oh, I may enjoy the world and be a Christian still. I love the hour of prayer. I love the hymns of praise. I love the blessed word which tells of God's redeeming grace. But I am human still, and while I dwell on earth, God surely will not Wretch the hours I spend in harmless myth. Those things belong to You and are its natural rights. My drafts, my pastimes, and my friends.
Mary and the Bright My father's heart is kind. He will not count it. I'll that in that my small corner of the world should please and hold me still. And yet outside the camp was there my Savior died.
It was the world that passed him forth and saw him crucified. And can I take part with those who nailed him to the tree, And where his name is never praised, Is that the place for me? Nay, world I turn away, Though thou may seem fair and good, That friendly outstretched hand of mine is stained with Jesus blood. If in thy least device I stoop to take apart all unaware thy influence steals.
Presence from my heart, I miss my Savior's smile, When ere I walk thy ways, thy laughter drowns the spirits voice and chokes the the springs of praise. Whenever I turned aside to join these for an hour, the face of Christ was grows blurred and dimmed, and prayer has lost its power. Farewell henceforth my place is with the Lamb who died.
My Sovereign, well, I have thy love, What can I want beside thyself? Bless, Lord, art thou my free and loving choice? In whom though now I see thee not be leaving, I rejoice. Shame on me that I thought another joy than this, or dreams that are dreamed. A heart at rest with me to crave for earth, earthly bliss. Those vain and worthless things, I put them all aside.
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His goodness fills my longing soul, and I am satisfied. Lord Jesus, let me dwell outside the camp with Thee, since Thou art there, and there alone is peace and home for me, Thy dear reproach to bear.
I'll change count my highest gain till thou return. Rejected 1 To take thy power and reign.
And that is exactly the problem, isn't it? Because Satan has done a good job of persuading believers that you can have Christianity and have the world too. You don't have to change your ways. You don't have to leave the world alone.
Not realizing that that worldliness, as the poem points out, uh, prevents the Spirit of God from ministering Christ to my soul. And as it said, there chokes the voice of praise.
End.
I can speak for myself, and maybe others can too. We have.
Seen that happen at times in our own lives and realize the truth of it.
I would only say that to balance that, let us remember that the scripture never teaches that we are dead to nature.
Dead to the world, dead to sin, yes, but not dead to nature.
And so.
For young people to have some good exercise and have some fun together, that's perfectly OK. And as you said, Steve, it's a cat that you heard that poem read. Calves are nice things to have.
There are real encouragement along the way, of course. If I can only live on a steady diet of a camp, then something's wrong. But, uh, at the same time, we're not dead to nature, and so the Lord would have us to enjoy times of refreshment like that, but not with the world.
He mentions here the sins. That doesn't mean that easily upset us, and I wouldn't want to confine it to anyone particular thing that there might be something different for you than for me, but I do.
I think that one thing that Satan has been very clever in is causing us to doubt what God has done. And that really was the the first condition, wasn't it in the garden there he said, is it Even so that God has said so he, he throws in their hearts unbelief in God and what God has given to them. So he says, is it Even so that God says, thou shall not eat of every tree in the garden?
And I believe that the seeds of what Peyton did there in each of our hearts unbelief in God's goodness for us. And Paul could say, and I think it's nice to have as a text in our hearts when he's on that voyage and there's lots of trouble, he receives the word from the Lord and he says, I believe God.
That's part of the verse that I, I think that I've enjoyed that from my own heart. Just carry that with us as we go through this world. I believe God.
David wants to do everything to counter that in our life.
An old brother some will remember whom I'm talking about, used to remind us that all our failure, whether as sinners or as Saints, ultimately stems from our unbelief of the goodness that is in the heart of God.
And if you think about that, it's true, isn't it?
And the goodness of God.
Sent the Lord Jesus down into this world to exemplify the pathway of faith as no other one did.
Someone raised the question once.
At the end of the previous chapter, Chapter 11, why are there so many examples given of those who were victorious in faith and yet when it talks in the middle of verse 35 about others?
Who, as it says, were tortured, not accepting deliverance. Verse 36 had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings and so on.
Verse 37 Stone saw tempted. Verse 38 Wandered in deserts and in mountains, and in Dems and caves of the earth.
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He said why are no examples given, no names given?
And the answer is not original with me, but I thought it was excellent. The answer was it is because the Spirit of God did not want to take away in any way from the glory that is due to the one who exemplified that pathway of suffering.
More than eighty other.
Some time ago. Quite a few years ago now.
I mildly reproached a brother in India for something that he did. I knew him well.
And his answer back to me was.
Brother, someday you will understand.
The stress and strain that I was under at that time, you don't understand what I was going through.
And that was his excuse for disobeying the word of God.
I hope I gave him the right answer when I wrote back because I really cared for what he was going through. I said, brother, you are probably right that I don't understand, but there is one that does, who went to every kind of suffering in the pathway of faith that a sinless man could go through, and he's the one that the scripture calls us to look to in that race of endurance.
Wonderful, isn't it?
Faith in the Saints has has been tried.
Your faith, my faith, is proved and tested and tried and it's a good thing. And God.
Delights to do that for our spiritual growth.
Faith always latches on to God, and God never disappoints.
The man Christ Jesus, however.
The author and finisher of faith.
Came to a point.
For he cried to God, a perfect man, and the heavens were like brass.
He went back and prayed a second time. Oh my Father, if it be possible.
But this cup passed for me.
Then discerning that it was his father's will.
Depressive.
And from the cross, my God, my God.
I think in the new translation it says he answered not.
The answer came later. You and I are the answer. Resurrection.
Down throughout all eternities.
But what a thing for a man, a man's face to go through.
Cry to God the hour of deepest need. I am so trouble.
Went through that dark, dark hour, bowed his head upon his breast.
And so he is the author and finisher of faith. He's the one who has run the complete course not to jump ahead.
And did it like that wasn't will ever be called upon to do?
And so we adore him for that.
One thing that characterized those in the 11Th chapter is what we find in the 39th verse, all these having obtained a good report through faith and received not the promise.
N.
Paul when he encourages Timothy and his second epizzle, he says when the arena edited from the way it appears that King James to the snow.
But in Second Timothy, 2 eighths says Remember Jesus Christ, the seed of David.
Raised from the dead according to my gospel.
You know, at the cross at that point, everything looks as if it was lost, everything was hopeless. And for those that had no faith that looked upon him as he hung there, there was some that marked some that shook their heads. It was who was his pretendant. It comes in North and then he was raised from the dead. The answer is in founded resurrection. And so for us too, we don't look forward to.
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Our reward here and now. It doesn't mean to say that the life of a Christian should be one of misery.
Brought out in this chapter, but we're not looking for.
A present reward in this world. And that may seem, I trust, self-evident to everyone here, but it's not the gospel that's being preached to crystalline today. So we look forward to another day that there's a bright. And that's what the author of this epistle was doing. He's lifting their heads up to look heavenly, to better things, to eternal things. There's something ahead.
That makes all this worthwhile. And keep in mind that the Lord Jesus here is more than an example. He's not just an appendix to the 11Th chapter, another example that we should follow. And again, Christ is presented that way in certain circles. He's a good example for us to follow. He's far more than an example. He's an example for sure, but He's our object. And that, you know, if you have a leader in front of you, you follow your leader. And it's really the thought of the leader.
And finisher of our faith.
Gone before and we look for look to him now as our object.
We can walk with the world and we can enjoy the pleasures of sin per season, but we're going to walk that way. We are not going to enjoy fellowship.
Without the Father and with his Son. And you know what? The apostle John said these things.
Have I written unto you that your joy may be full now? Isn't that what we really want? Fullness of joy?
Well, he speaks of it in his first epistle where he says our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. So we got the choice. Do we want to walk with the world?
We won't enjoy fellowship with the Father himself. It's not to say that we lose our salvation.
But fullness of joy is to walk to communion companionship with the Father and with the Son, and it involves persecution, it involves the reproach of this world.
Lord, he suffered like no other persecution.
Tells us here we are to consider him Mr. Darby says consider well him, think about him and what he endured the contradiction of sinners against himself, lest he be weary and faint in homogeneous. You got to just keep our vision on Christ. We have to be looking up and realizing that he suffered and why would.
Our pathway be any diff if we're going to follow him and I wonder if I could just take time to look over to John's Gospel chapter 15 and see what the Lord Jesus himself said about this matter.
In John 15 and verse.
181518 The Lord Jesus said, if the world hates you, he knows that it hated me before and.
You were of the world, the world would love your son, but because you're not of the world that I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hated you. Remember the word that I said unto you, the servant is not greater than his Lord saves persecuted me. They will also persecute you If they have kept mind saying they will keep George also and so on. Probably the time is easy all of this portion, but notice what the Lord Jesus says in the next chapter.
In John chapter 16.
He says in verse 32.
Behold, the hour comes is now come, that ye shall be scattered every day to His own, and shall be his own. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. These things I have spoken unto you, that in me you might have peace.
And this is what I was thinking of particular in the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer.
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I have overcome the world.
So what is this matter of tear being a good tear?
I I just heard of a couple that moved to a community in the state of Iowa, and the name of this place is What Cheer, What Cheer? And the one brother who was talking about it just did that.
With that, what's your question?
Or could it be thought of in a positive way? What sheer Now here's a Christian couple having moved to this community, and they can bring cheer to this place.
And we can bring cheers to this world. And what's your it brings to the heart of Christ when we're willing to stand up and speak for him and live for him. And it's going to bring cheer to our own hearts as well. So let's just keep looking up and the Lord will never disappoint your need. Now, I don't want to be facetious, but I was talking to a man at Home Depot.
This is some years ago over in Fredericton, NB and he turned out to be a Christian and so he enjoyed fellowship talking about the Lord and.
This came time to part ways.
And they say, well, let's keep looking up. And he said to me, well, what do you see when you look down?
Say, well, what I'm seeing is the floor.
No. Well, you might see the floor, but you're also seeing double defeat, and I never forgot that. So let's not be defeated. Keep our eyes on Jesus.
What we have here, this joy, I believe, is a joy that you and I in one sense can have two, because this is practically for you and for me as an example.
The Lord Jesus is mentioned as being set at the Father's right hand, I believe four times in the book of Hebrews.
And this is the last one. And here everything that is said is an example for us. And so we don't have the atoning sufferings of the Lord brought in here.
We could not, of course, follow him in that, but we have everything that surrounded those atoning suffering.
The cross, the shame, and everything that went along with that pathway of faith.
And yet, what was the joy that was set before Him? Some have said, well, it's the joy of having us with Him there in glory. Well, I believe that that's included. But I would suggest that the thought goes deeper than that. What was the joy that was set before Him? It was the joy, I suggest, of doing the Father's will and the joy of being able to go back to the Father.
And say, as he says in the 17th chapter of John, I have glorified thee on the earth. I have finished the work which thou gave us me to do.
Which one of us is going to be able to say that?
I don't believe any of us can. There was only one who could say that.
The great apostle Paul.
Perhaps and very likely, the greatest servant the Lord ever had has to say I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. He's been a faithful man, but he doesn't say I have finished the work.
I don't believe any of us will finish the work the Lord gives us to do.
But God never sets before us an example of any less magnitude than his beloved Son.
Christ is the example for us, and so this is an example for us. And on the one hand we look back and see that One who is the author and finisher of faith and who in a way that no other man ever could or did.
00:45:14
He exemplify that pathway here in this very world where you and I are.
But then.
The joy of being there with the father and to be able to be seated there on the father's throat and to be able to say.
I have glorified thee on the earth. I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do.
That ought to be our object in running that rich John's gospel. He is divinely qualified to pronounce on the quality of his work.
Not only did he do those things.
Acceptably in bringing glory to God, even with respect to sin.
But he's capable of divinely pronouncing what he did. Think of it. You meet people all the time, at least I do, and say, how are you? It's a courtesy. And some people say couldn't be better. Or they say they just give you these superlatives. And I feel a little bit like a slug myself, you know, And how are you doing? Well, you know, and I feel I say, wow, you once in a while, I'll comment and I'll say, well, you really must be quite a person too. And you can't even be better.
Umm, let's put put all of that like talk aside. The Lord was qualified here to pronounce on his work.
Finish the work, nothing left out.
Glorify you on the earth and what joy shared with his father when he arrives home, set a crown of pure gold upon his head.
Ground thorns.
Thrown aside.
In this passage in Hebrews.
'Cause she remarked Bill.
There is no pattern for us in atonement. That's alone.
He went into that place alone. He was the only one qualified to step into a place like that, but as one who had something laid upon him, as David said, when he went out to visit his brethren and they challenged his, his motive for coming, he says, has it not been laid upon him?
And it was laid upon the Lord Jesus as man, and he went through.
Through thick and thin, as we would say, the great contradiction of sinners against himself. Misunderstood and reproached and defied on every half.
Finishes the work.
He has that joy of bringing glory and delight to His Father. He delighted himself. He shall see of the fruit of the travail of his soul that He shall be satisfied. What a beautiful thing. But for you and I, we have our portion to walk in His steps, and He's our example is one who had an object before Him, who covered the shame, a small thing who had reward and glory before Him.
And so he set his face like a Flint. And that's the example I believe he has for us here. That's the race we had here. The race.
That Paul implies in Philippians.
I pressed for the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus is a different kind of a race or a different aspect. I think in that Paul's desire, energized by the Spirit of God, was to become more like Christ morally here in this life. He pressed for that. He knew at the end he would be, but during this life that's what he pressed for. And so he says there be followers of me, period. In other places. He said be followers of me as also I am of Christ, because there it was.
Denying oneself and laying down one's life and looking for the benefit and blessing of another, We follow Christ the time.
But in Philippians 3 words seeking to be conformed to the image of Christ and pressing for that and that kind of a race. Paul is an example for us, not the Lord Jesus. He he was himself complete. He never ran that kind of a race to be something that he wasn't because he was always altogether that which he said he was the delight of his Father. All the fullness of God had dwelling bodily in him.
He just takes your breath away to think.
Who God sent into this world and that he should be a man here in this world. So he never ran to be something that he wasn't.
00:50:07
In that sense, we have called. We have others.
You were saying that?
John, that side.
Unbelief is what gets us into trouble. Unbelief in the goodness of God.
The apostle says, Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.
But exhort one another daily while it is called today, lest any of you be pardoned for the deceitfulness of sin.
But you know faces that which shall.
Brings heaven down to earth. It brings the future into the present.
And it's a wonderful thing, what we can enjoy by faith.
And that's why here today we have our Bibles and we're sitting on chairs and sitting in a not an elaborate church building.
But the fact is, we are here because we have the Word of God, and that's where faith begins. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. So what a wonderful privilege to be able to enjoy what God has for us.
Revealed to us through His Word by the power of the Holy Spirit.
And may this evil heart unto thee not characterize any of us. I speak to myself as much as anybody. Let's take God at His word that brings peace, joy into our souls. Now we speak of Abraham. He didn't have what we have today. He didn't have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. He didn't have.
The Word of God as we have it here in our laps today.
And yet it tells us that Abraham, he was the friend of God, and he was fully persuaded that what God had promised, he was able also to perform.
Now, does that characterize my attitude, my thinking?
It want to here we are on this side of the cross with so much more than what Abraham had.
Maybe just.
Like the little girl said.
In simple faith, he said, God said it.
And I believe it. And that settles.
I heard somebody interposed the last two lines. God said it. That settles it, I believe.
I think it's hard for us to enter into the Lord's joy here. That's mentioned in the second verse and I it reminded me of what we have at the end of John 14. In that chapter he tells his disciples that he was going to go away, but that he would not leave them comfortless. He would send the Holy Spirit. But it says in verse 28 of the 14th chapter of John.
You have heard how I said unto you, I go away.
And come again unto you, if ye love, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father. For my Father's greater than ours is that expression. If he left me, you would rejoice.
Because I said I'd gone to my father. It was so hard for them to enter into this joy. But just think about here. He had been on this earth for perhaps quarter to 33 years, and he was anticipating going back to his father after he had completed the work the perfection of the father had given him to do. And yet it was so.
Like them, and like us too, to think about their portion. They were going to miss him. They were going to, umm, feel lonely without him, and so on. All of those emotions that welled up in their hearts. But think of his joy that he had before him enter into the presence of his father, having completed that word. And he longed for them to be able to rejoice with them. You might say so. We can't, can't we? We?
00:55:07
We have much more than they had at this point, but the the coming of the Holy Spirit and the the completed scriptures before us. But we can, I hope, in some measure we can each enter into His choice.
This one more encouragement about the the race that we have here.
It says.
In order to lay aside every weight and the sin and let us run. And so, you know, each time we have a, a sin in our life, there may be a, a, the first step away from a good finish might say. And that can get discouraging perhaps. But just I see this as an encouragement to run anyway. You know, these races that are, that are held in the world around us.
Any disqualification and you're done.
Get back in the race, but that's not the race that we have here and it's important how we finish, isn't it?
So we see these ones that have gone on before us that have finished well and here we have this encouragement that.
Yeah, we mess up and we get off of that right path that would take us, you know, to the best finish line.
But we can still run and get back on the path and that's what the Lord wants for us is to finish. Well, I just said that it's low encouragement because I know that sometimes you're looking I'm so far off the path to be impossible to get back on without a lot of pain and and hassle.
But that's the path of joy, isn't it? Even when we get that far off the path, it's.
The Lord wants us to get back on it and to finish well.
So we get that later in the chapter. Don't be Andy with the Lord's chasing hand on us and.
I still remember a remark that a brother made one of our old writers in the 1800s and he, he made this remark. He said if God sees any desire in your heart to go after Christ, he will work it in you.
And that's very encouraging. And yet at the same time we perhaps.
Shrink back a little bit from the chasing hand of the Lord. But as you say, he delights to bring us back onto the path. He delights to restore us. Sometimes through some mishap or some little difficulty on the race, someone falls down. And as you say, normally in the Olympics, if you fall down in a race, that's that's it. But in America and you can fall down and get up again and still go.
And the believer can do that with the Lord's health. And so that is, I believe, what we get in part of the chapter here where we're encouraged to be a help to the hands that hang down and to out of the feeble knees and so on, because that kind of thing happens. Maybe we look at someone and say, well, it was his own fault. Why? Why did he stray from the path?
But if I make that kind of a comment, I don't realize what's in my own heart do I can be the one to do that next. And.
So while we perhaps have to be faithful, yet at the same time we need to realize that we can all miss the path, we can all fall. But there is a way back.
I think the key to.
Enjoy peace in our circumstances is to recognize that the Lord Jesus loves us with a perfect loss. Perfect love casts out fear and this is true of the Father too. You know there's little home because absolutely tender absolutely true understanding all things understanding you.
Intimately, infinitely loving, Intimately dear.
Near this is God our Father.
What have we to fear?
The Lord loves, He chases.
Skirts every sun whom we receive. Scourging seems like a very harsh treatment, but we find here is because he loves us.
And I think in any circumstance that we may find ourselves, let's not.
Take our eyes off the Ortiz. Let's remember that he loves us with an unchanging love. He has our best interests at heart. He wants to bring us back on the track. He wants us to be happy. And you know the hymn writer, He said that though I forget him and wander away, still he.
01:00:21
Loves me wherever I stray back to His dear loving arms. When I remember that Jesus loves me, that love never changes.
We began the meeting singing a hymn and there's a line.
In that couple of lines, and that him that come before me, as we have these verses before us, and heavenly light makes all things bright.
True, and we have that exemplified so very clearly in the life of the Apostle Paul.
The one who would believe wrote these words. Looking unto Jesus, He saw light. He saw light from heaven.
And he met the Lord Jesus Christ.
In that light, and it changed his life, it changed everything about him, and it could change our lives too. Looking unto Jesus, these are not idle words.
The powerful words, it's the one thing that can change our life. Heavenly lights makes all things bright.
But it does something else, and we have that Paul saw this light from heaven that fell about him, and he rose from the earth. His eyes were open, he saw no man. He lost sight of the things down here, he himself said.
I could see not for the glory of that light. So the things of this earth as the hymn writer grows strangely dim and the life is glory and grace, the wonderful thing, heavenly life that we have given to us in these few verses that are like absolutely life changing if we apply them to our lives.
So we saved 208.
Are you?
Oh God bless.
You forever.
No. Are you still uncovered tomorrow?
Happier orders.
Are thought not giving us a sunshine square grid whatever I want my heart.
01:05:57
Entertainment, but one loudly disturbed Hello Burger, Hello Granny and drinks.
Tolerance and the Slide of Culture
Address—Bill Prost
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 sing together part of hymn #25?
#25 And we'll sing the last four verses beginning at verse 4.
Eternal ages shall declare the riches of thy grace to those who with thy Son shall share.
The Sons eternal place #25 beginning at verse 4.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah.
What did you call her? Getting away with her?
Through all the joy of God.
In the heart of giving snowmobiles no more.
Umm, let's look to the Lord, our loving God and our Father, we look up to thee this afternoon.
We thank Thee for the truth of this hymn, that although we are absent as yet from that place which we can confidently call home.
Yet we rest in hope, treading the desert path.
And twice over we have referred our God and Father to Thy Holiness.
And we pray that Thou will keep us in that pathway until Thou dost call us home through Thy beloved Son.
Our Lord Jesus Christ.
But now we ask for help as we open Thy word together, praying that thou speak to each one of us through it, for we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
I don't know how many others paid real attention to the letter from this assembly that went out inviting us to the meetings, but I couldn't help but notice in their first paragraph.
A reference to the moral slide that is very prominent among us. I say us in reference to the lands in which we Live Today.
00:05:07
They mentioned how that public opinion varies and the tolerance to evil.
Increases in the world that is around us.
It got me thinking a little bit about that word tolerance, and I'd like to speak somewhat of it this afternoon because I believe we get as we know everything that we need for life and godliness in Christ and through His precious word.
We hear a lot about tolerance today.
But sometimes it becomes almost a paradox, doesn't it? Because sometimes people are very tolerant of things that affect God's honor and glory, and yet on the other hand, perhaps increasingly intolerant of that which seems to affect.
Their being and their welfare.
How do we handle all that? How do we handle the tolerance in the world?
I had a conversation with a believer some time ago about something that I felt I could not tolerate.
And his answer was, well, I have learned grace over a number of years.
Hmm. How do we handle that? Our grace and holiness in contradiction to one another?
Again, let's look into the Word of God. I don't think we need to define tolerance. I think we all know what it means. It's an attitude, maybe not of acceptance, but of permissiveness and going along with something that may be contrary to what we believe or what we have been led to believe.
It's a.
An attitude of going along with that which is not exactly the same as what we are or what we would see.
And we all understand that in the world today.
But I would suggest, and although these words are not in Scripture in exactly the way I'm going to say them right at the outset, I would suggest that at least for the believer, and probably in a general way, there are two aspects of tolerance that we need to understand.
First of all, there is the tolerance of what we might call respect.
What is the tolerance of respect?
It is a tolerance that recognizes that although everyone doesn't do things exactly the way I do.
That different nationalities, different cultures, different races.
And even different people within the sphere of my own nationality and acquaintance.
Do things differently, have different outlooks on life, see things in a little different way than I do, and rather than recognizing that they are necessarily wrong and I am right?
I respect what we might call an equality of differences where I say, yes, diversity is something that exists both in the world and in the Church of God and.
God can use that.
But then there is also the tolerance of what we might call judgment.
Where perhaps I go along, at least for the moment, with something that I do not agree with.
Why? Because I have formed an opinion in my own mind that I do not like it.
No, because I have formed a judgment about it that hopefully for the believer.
Is based on the absolutes that we find in the Word of God.
Those two forms of tolerance are very important, and I believe at various times and in various ways in our lives, we all ought to exercise both of those types of tolerance.
Let's talk a little bit, first of all, about the tolerance of respect.
Turn for a verse to Acts chapter 17.
Well known verse.
Paul speaking to the intellectuals of that day in the city of Athens, the center of culture and learning of that day. And what does he say?
00:10:13
Oh, I knew I might do that. But anyway, I guess it's only water.
Never mind, let's go on Acts chapter 17.
And verse.
Uh, 28.
For in Him we live and move and have our being.
As certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
For as much then as we're the offspring of God, that's the phrase I wanted.
As certain also of your own poets have said, Or rather we ought not to think that the God that is likened to gold or silver or stone, graving by art and man's device, and then going back up in the chapter a little.
Verse.
25 Middle of the verse he needeth. Thank you John, much appreciated.
Verse 25. Middle of the verse. He needeth not anything, seeing He giveth to all life and breath, and all things, and hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth.
And hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitations.
Here we see plainly in Scripture what is practiced largely at least in the Western world today.
The tolerance of respect to other races, nationalities and cultures.
God is calling His church today out of every race and culture and Kingdom and tribe.
And what happens when we come together? We are, in the words of Scripture, all one in Christ Jesus.
Remember quite a few years ago now, this was in Romania talking to a dear brother in Christ not gathered to the Lord's name, and he was telling me about how there had been real blessing among the so-called Gypsies in Romania.
And he said, yes, a lot of them are getting saved and we've even started a gypsy church.
Hmm, I said. Pardon me, but where do we read of such a thing as a gypsy church in scripture?
Well, they're so different from all of us. They're different culture and different language. And, you know, they have to have their own church.
That's not the way we find it in the Word of God.
Yes, God has made men different in this world, and we recognize that and we recognize different characteristics of different races. But it's very interesting to notice that when the early apostles and others preach the gospel, they did not attempt to change the local culture and the local practices.
Unless. Unless they conflicted with God's claims.
And then the Word of God judges every culture.
I have been in some countries of the world today where they have defended certain practices in Christianity, saying that that's our culture and that's the way we do things.
More about that when we get to the tolerance of judgment.
But there's another tolerance of respect that hits closer to home. Let's turn to Philippians Chapter 2.
And we're having to go over this a bit quickly because the address is only 45 minutes long, but we'll do our best.
Sorry.
Yes, Philippians chapter 2 and verse 3.
Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory, but in lowliness of mind. Let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own.
00:15:05
Things it says here, but in the Darby it reads qualities. Look, not every man on his own qualities, but every man also on the qualities of others.
Oh, how necessary that is. God has taken a widely differing group of people. In fact, as I look around the group here this afternoon, I can scarcely think of any of you that I would know if I were not a believer.
I don't think there are any of you in this room, with maybe one or two exceptions that I would know.
If I weren't a believer.
I probably know Wally because he's my first cousin, but I might not even know him because my parents might not even have met each other if they weren't believers.
What a difference being among the people of God is. But oh, how often these differences cause difficulties, don't they? And we know what we're talking about.
How difficult? Sorry, Tim, are you trying to make a point? No. OK.
Do you want me to help or?
Do you want me to put a little more punch to it?
All right. Uh, the fact is that many times among believers, there are real difficulties there among the people of God. Why?
Because we have different personalities, different outlooks, different ways of doing things and so on, and I have been in foreign countries where these things became even more marked.
And yet, when you think about it for a moment.
Often times it's nothing really all that vital, is it? It's just a different way of doing things.
God has given us an object that supersedes all of that, and how wonderful that is the tolerance of respect.
May we all embrace that very, very fully. And you might say, well, Bill, you hardly need to say that, but we do need to say it, don't we? I can still remember, and this is probably well close to 50 years ago now. In fact, it yeah, it's 45 years ago anyway.
And at that time, and I guess it doesn't hurt to say so.
My wife and I were moving for a couple of years to the Assembly in Cuyahoga Falls, OH, where we were for two years while I took some postgraduate training in Cleveland, OH and.
I got into a conversation with my late father-in-law, Albert Hayhoe.
And he talked about how it was going to be an adjustment to go to a new assembly with brothers and sisters who, for the most part, I had not met before and whom I did not really know.
And he made a remark that I have never forgotten.
He said, you know, most of the time in my experience, when dear brethren have a falling out, he said they put a scriptural construction on it as if it's the principles of the word of God.
But he said underlying at all the real problem is that they just plain and simply do not like one another.
Ouch.
I have to say that 45 years later, his statement is true from my experience.
What is the answer? I'll just tell one story. This comes from the mouth of our late brother Eric Smith, whom some here are old enough to remember. And he told of how being in his home in Bolivia, down there in South America, and.
Forgive the racial reference. I'm only repeating what he said. And we all have racial characteristics. But he said this dear brother came into my home, a dear brother in Christ, but he was a fiery Spaniard.
All right.
Maybe some of us that have. I've got English blood and German blood in me and both have their characteristics that we could run down to, so don't anyone take that the wrong way, but this man said in so many words in Spanish referring to another brother within the sphere of his acquaintance. I just can't stand that brother.
00:20:23
Whatever he did, I don't know to rub him the wrong way.
But something was radically wrong.
Well, those of us that remember Eric Smith know how.
His demeanor and his way of answering often had a calming influence on.
People who were fired up over something.
And he quietly, quietly said to that, brother, brother, I just would like you to go home, and I would like you to look at that dear brother through the eyes of Christ.
So all he said, he didn't give him a long lecture about things. He just said, You look at that brother through the eyes of Christ.
Solve the problem. It solves the problem.
Oh, the brother began to look for Christ, and that other brother that he could not stand.
And brought them together.
The tolerance of respect. Recognizing the differences.
But recognizing too that there is an object before us, and that I cannot look at any other brother or sister in Christ without seeing a quality that is better than what I have.
That is true. I can look at every other brother and sister in Christ and say there is a quality there that I wish I had more of.
It may be hard sometimes. Remember reading about a Scotsman who was very disturbed about his next door neighbor, a woman who I guess was the most irascible woman and caused him a lot of grief and so on. But she was a believer.
And he went to the local preacher. Both of them went to the same church at Gaston, complained about her and.
Oh, the preacher said she's.
One of the Lord's dear children, he said, All glorious within.
Well, the man said. I wish somebody would turn her inside out then.
He had a hard time seeing that quality that he was looking for.
I don't say that to make jokes, but the point is if we look, we will see it. Let's go on.
The tolerance of judgment.
Well, that becomes a little perhaps more more difficult.
A little more difficult.
Are we entitled to judge?
I believe we are.
I believe we are. Let's turn over to 1St Corinthians chapter 2 for a verse. We don't need a lot of verses to make the point here, and this one will do. First Corinthians chapter 2.
Verse 14.
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him.
Neither can He know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth or discerneth all things, yet He himself is judged or discerned. It could read of no man.
For who hath known the mind of the Lord, and who hath been his counselor?
But we have the mind of Christ.
I say to you and me that there are absolutes in this world because we live in a moral universe created by a moral God.
Our brethren, in writing their letter of invitation, quoted a number of verses. They quoted that verse from Malachi 3. I am the Lord, I change not.
They quoted that verse from one Peter one about the word of God that liveth and abideth forever.
Those moral absolutes do not change, and I might mention that the moral absolutes of God, the moral ways of God, do not change from 1 dispensation to the next.
00:25:06
Yes, God. For example, can we use the word tolerated plural marriages in the Old Testament? But was it the mind of God? Did God change his mind when Christianity came on the scene?
No, when the Lord Jesus was questioned by the scribes and Pharisees, he said.
Because of the hardness of your hearts, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives. But from the beginning it was.
Not so.
And so there are moral absolutes and they are being set aside, and it is very important for you and me.
To be able to exercise righteous judgment.
And the judge judgment can only come from the Word of God.
What is the problem in this world today? Why do I say that to a group of believers?
Where we're addressing you as believers anyway, because that.
Attitude of tolerance to what is morally wrong.
Is in danger of creeping in among believers. And you and I live in a world where there has been a precipitous moral slide even in the last five or ten years that most of us, at least in my generation, never thought we'd live to see. And yet here it is today. It's on top of us, and we have to live and move in that scene.
And all this going on in nations that were founded at one time and still do in one sense embrace the principles of the Word of God. And yet there is a tolerance toward that which is very serious.
The tolerance of judgment.
However, I want to emphasize that that does not mean that I exercise that tolerance of judgment based on my own thoughts. It must be based on the Word of God.
And our brethren quoted those verses at the beginning of their invitation, because the Word of God is being set aside today, as if somehow it was irrelevant. And I have to say that I have heard, dear believers.
When the word of God was presented to them as governing a certain situation in our lives, set it aside by saying well yes, that's true, but and then proceed to rationalize around it because supposedly.
My situation is different.
My situation falls outside the pale of the principles of God's Word.
To quote another older brother that some of us can remember, Clifford H Brown, I can remember him well saying to us as young people remember, we are never wiser.
Then Scripture. Never wiser than scripture, but sometimes we think we are. And I won't go into detail about it, but.
The tolerance of judgment ought to be a very real thing in your mind and mind.
But if I form a judgment of on something.
There are two dangers, 2 dangers, one I have already mentioned.
That of lowering God's standard.
Let's turn over to the Psalms for a verse. Solemn. I think it's Psalm 93.
A rather important verse which is just as relevant as it was when it was written in the Old Testament, Psalm 93.
And verse 5.
Thy testimonies are very sure. Holiness, become a thine house, O Lord, forever.
And then Ephesians chapter 5.
I'm sorry, Chapter 4. Ephesians chapter 4.
00:30:03
And verse 26.
Be angry and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.
Now you can take that scripture two ways, you can say, and I believe it's a wise, wise way of looking at it.
Yes, righteous anger is dangerous and don't take it to bed with you.
Don't go to bed with an unkind thought or an angry thought toward anyone in the world, no matter how you are treated.
But equally true, and this is again a Psalm back in the 7th Psalm. I think it is. It tells us.
God is angry with the wicked every day and letting the sun go down upon your wrath.
Is lower in God's standard by becoming so accustomed to a tide of evil in this world that I lose my sense of what is right and what is wrong.
That is one danger, but the other danger, which is so rampant in the Christian world today, is to look around at the tide of evil that is engulfing this world and say.
I have to fix it. I have to get out there and do something about it. America is going downhill because we're in the United States and we have people in Canada saying that about Canada, too. We have to put this country back on track.
Admirable thoughts, no doubt.
But may I say, dear brethren, that that is beneath your heavenly colleague. The Lord has made it clear that vengeance is mine. I will repace, saith the Lord, And he has made it clear that today is the day of his grace.
And in that respect, we say that God exercises the tolerance of judgment today.
Does God see what's going on in this world? Indeed he does. Is he oblivious to it? Does he lower his standard? Absolutely not.
But it is a principle, as we know with God, that He allows evil to come to its full.
Before he judges it.
Long before Israel entered into the land of Canaan, he purposed that they should go there.
But he said at one point the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.
The iniquity of those inhabitants of Canaan had to reach a zenith before the Lord would.
Step in with Israel and deal with them, and the Lord is allowing the evil in this world to increase.
We wonder sometimes how it can get any worse.
And yet it is.
But it is not our job to go in there and straighten it out.
What is our responsibility?
Oh, to call souls out of it by the grace of God.
Oh, what a privilege that is. And so I say, and I say it again because we've issued this warning before, but it's needed. so-called Reconstructionism or Covenant theology is sweeping North America today in Christian circles.
Why is that?
It's very respectable. It gives the Christian a place in this world, something he can do to straighten it out.
Get this world ready for God's Kingdom. Do something about the mess that the world is in.
It looks right on the surface.
But it's absolutely out of character.
With the dispensation that you and I are living in.
And if you and I want to be effective in this world, the tolerance of judgment is best exercised in this world by bringing in this precious book.
What does an ambassador do? He represents another country.
And he represents it by giving his countries position on something.
Right now, Canada and the United States are having a very difficult time over a new NAFTA agreement, North American Free Trade Agreement.
And neither side seems to want to budget.
The deadline was Friday to have that agreement hammered out and they couldn't reach it. They had to postpone it till next week.
00:35:08
But they're doing their best to try and come to a meeting of the minds, but each one has the position of their government.
You and I cannot afford to budget, if I could say it reverently, on our government's position.
But when we give it that way, as coming from the Word of God, it carries weight and power.
The world throws out 1000 different opinions.
All because men have different ideas about things that emanate from their own thinking and their own minds, their own backgrounds, and all the rest of it.
What a wonderful thing it is if a believer can speak with the sublime, solemn authority of the Word of God, the tolerance of judgment, but at the same time.
The Clarion tones of what God's Word says.
God is tolerant today, but.
Is there intolerance that has to be brought into the picture?
Yes there is, Yes there is. We've already read that verse. Holiness becometh thine house, O Lord, forever.
What we may tolerate out in the world as believers should not be tolerated either in the local assembly or in the Christian home.
May our standards always be according to this precious book.
Yes.
It's not easy sometimes to be intolerant.
Because then we are accused of being ungracious.
How do we bring that together?
I've never forgotten William Kelly's comment on that very point.
He said if you ever get to a very sticky point in Scripture.
Where it's hard to find the answer, simply bring Christ in and the answer will be clear.
And it is clear, isn't it?
No one was more gracious than the Blessed Master as he walked this earth.
No man was more approachable, No man was more, shall we say, relevant to the wickedness around him. The publicans and sinners gladly heard him.
I just read this morning in the 7th of Luke about the woman who anointed his feet.
And the Pharisee looked down on her, because he said this man, if he were of God, would know that she is a Sinner.
Yes, she was a Sinner.
But she admitted it.
What the Pharisee didn't realize was that his heart was no better.
Yes, but on the other hand, did the Lord Jesus ever mince matters when it came to the reality of sin? No, he did not.
Did he ever compromise? No, he did not.
For example, he would go.
For a meal in a Pharisee's home. But do we ever find him in a Sadducee's home? No, we don't. Why not? They held and taught bad doctrine. The Pharisees had wrong ways. That was bad enough and the Lord condemned it. But bad doctrine was far worse. And the Lord never graced the threshold of a Sadducees home. The Lord Jesus was faithful.
And yet gracious at the same time.
Can you and I do that? Can we exercise, on the one hand, the tolerance of respect toward that?
Which is diverse in this world and diverse in the Church of God, and yet at the same time exercise the tolerance of judgment.
And at the same time, the intolerance within the sphere of the House of God, within the sphere of our own lives, exercise that intolerance to that.
Why? Because it bothers me. That's not the point. If I bring myself into the picture, I am lowering the standard to what I think and the way I look at things. It must be according to.
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God's standard and for His honor and glory.
Her time is nearly gone. But let me look at one last verse. We want to end on a note, a right note. Turn to second Peter.
Second, Peter is a very solemn epistle.
It brings before us the government of God, largely in the world, and the awful end that is going to be for those who reject the gospel of the grace of God.
Very, very solemn book.
But what does Peter say at the end in the 18th verse, second Peter 3 and verse 18?
But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
To him the glory, both now and ever. Amen.
Why does he say that? He has been telling them several times over.
To beware lest they fall.
To beware lest they give up being LED away by the air of the wicked, he says.
Verse 14. Seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent, that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot and blame.
And unblameable and blamable and blameless, and so on and back further in the chapter, he says.
Verse 11. Seeing that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be?
In all holy conversation and godliness, why does he end on the note of grace?
All because, as we've often said before, grace is the strongest force.
To keep you and me in the pathway of faithfulness and holiness to the Lord.
A sense of grace. Why is it that way? Because a sense of grace in my soul as it deepens, makes me realize on the one hand.
That my old sinful self is at least as bad and may be worse.
Than everybody else's and that I am capable of doing everything that I see either out there.
Or among fellow believers, I am capable of it and the only reason that I am not doing it.
It's not because I am keeping myself, but because of the grace of God and the keeping power of Christ.
Secondly, a sense, a deepening sense of the grace of God makes me realize.
More and more, the price that was paid for my redemption and how much my blessed Savior suffered in order that I might not merely be saved from an eternity in hell, but that I might be brought into such blessing. As one brother used to say, every Christian blessing is a mountain peak beyond which even God Himself could not go.
A sense of grace in my soul.
And that sense of grace will keep me.
Will it keep me from sin? Yes, it will.
But it will have another effect too. It will make my heart tender.
Not only to an outside world that is on the way to destruction. It will keep my heart tender to a fellow believer who has failed.
It will make me realize that but for the grace of God, I could at least have done that, and probably much worse.
And it will make my heart tender, so that in my heart, yes, I will have no sympathy with the sin. I will have no lowering of God's standard.
No lessening of that judgment that I make of evil in the sight of God.
But at the same time, there will be the recognition that the grace of God not only saves, not only keeps, but also restores. We had that before us this morning, but it doesn't hurt to mention it again. God's restoring grace is a wonderful thing, and God delights to do it.
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Let's pray.
Our loving God and our Father, we have talked about something.
In very brief terms.
We have talked about.
Thy unchanging standards.
And we have talked.
About how that thou dost go on with this poor world.
On the one hand, until the iniquity is full, and on the other hand until thy house is full.
We bless Thee for that. We pray that Thou wilt give us grace to exercise.
Tolerance.
Of respect, tolerance of judgment, and intolerance of that which would stain the name and glory of Thy beloved Son, which would bring disgrace upon thee, our God and Father, and what is due to thee.
We commend Thy word to thee and ask all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Hebrews 12:5-17
Reading
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231.
231.
Weird Al grunts in the world.
A lot of Earth's lovely hearings out of Canada.
To his swearing to take the rest of the matter for your heart.
He learned the Lord.
We love to be our bride, rest and troll. No one will see us straight into her full of prayer of the first day.
Bringing forth.
Where it's everything from the Lord.
Repeat the last four lines of this hymn. The last four.
Years.
To heaven here, make your island peace.
More I feel in heaven. May be there's never been, oh, I don't know.
Great, refuse to give me.
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Three to few verses.
He just chapter 12.
Verse 2/3.
Jesus, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, the fighting the same.
And sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest he be wearied and faint in your mind.
First, John.
Chapter 3.
1St 2:00.
Beloved now are we the sons of God, and that does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
Every man that has his hope in himself purifies himself even as he is pure. What to the Lord?
Our grace is gone, loving Father.
Is such a precious chapter before us here in Hebrews 12?
Tremendously practical.
And yet to open it we have the object before us, as I saw in the Lord Jesus.
It has involved the cross in the shame was his.
We have to worry that he has now in heaven.
We've read that we look for the glory and we'll come here to this earth, and we've read what a practical thing this is for us to be simply occupied with Thy Son, the Lord Jesus, and with that beauty and perfection that is His.
Think of the lovely life that he walked here on this earth.
We see such instruction for our own lives from it.
And, uh, you see him seated on high in the glory.
In Glory.
We see from that such hope and such peace in our hearts.
We have joy.
Because He is there, because we know that He desires to spend eternity with us, we look forward to that day. We know that these things will have a practical effect on us.
So we just asked for the help.
To these meetings that each one of us would have our hearts continually drawn to Thy Son, the Lord Jesus.
And, uh, that each one of us would, uh, be going closer to him, and our lives and our walks would be changed, not simply because of a bunch of rules, but because we're occupied with the One who loves ducks and gave himself for us. And his name is Christ. Amen.
We didn't get very far in Hebrews 12.
But so we start with verse 5. Is that about right or did we get further than that?
Maybe to get the connection, we could start with verse five and uh, uh, we'll have to move along with those. We have only this reading meeting and then another one is if we're going to get through the chapter.
Hebrews 12, verse 5.
And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children. My son despised not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou rebuke of Him.
For whom the love Lord loveth, he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
If he endured chastening, God dealeth with you as with Son.
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For what son is he whom the Father chasteneth not?
But if he be without chastisement, whereof all our partakers, then are ye ******** and not sons.
Furthermore, we have fathers of our flesh, which corrected us, and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much more rather be in subjection unto the Father of Spirit, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure, but he for a prophet, that we might be partakers of His Holiness.
Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous nevertheless, after it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.
Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet, like that which is lame be turned out of the way.
But let it rather be healed. Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord, looking diligently, lest any man's fail of the grace of God.
That tiny roof of bitterness springing up trouble you.
And thereby many be the fire, lest there be any fornicator or profane person as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.
For ye know how the afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected.
For he found no place of repentance, so he thought it carefully with tears.
For a year not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness and darkness, and Tempest, and the sound of a trumpet in the voice of words, which voice say that heard and treated, that the word should not be spoken to them anymore.
For they could not endure that which was commanded.
And if so much as a beast touched the mountain, it shall be stoned or thrust through with the dark. And so terrible was the sight that Moses said, I exceedingly fears and quake.
But ye are common to Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels.
Through the General Assembly and Church of the First Born, which are written in heaven.
And to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect. And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, And to the blooded sprinkling.
That speaketh better things than that.
See that you refuse, not him, Then speaketh.
For if they escaped not who refused him that stake on earth, much more shall not we escape.
If we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven.
Whose voice then shook the earth, but now she hath promised Sade. Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.
And this word yet once more signifies the removing of those things that are shaken.
As the things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.
Therefore we receiving a Kingdom which cannot be moved.
Let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptedly with reverence and godly fears, for our God is a consuming fire.
We mentioned a little about.
Chastisement this morning, but I believe it's brought in here because.
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In the first part of the chapter we have.
Perhaps the persecution from the world brought before us, and that of course is not necessarily the chastisement of God, rather the opposite, that it is the resistance.
V.
Uh, antagonism of a world without God and that does not want Christ.
But I believe the Spirit of God brings in chastisement here, because sometimes God uses those things in order to teach us something so that there is a mixture.
In Peter we get. Well, let's turn to it for a moment.
First Peter chapter one.
It says in verse 6.
Referring to.
The power of God and all that is ours in Christ, wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season.
If need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations. But then in the seventh verse it says that the trial of your faith being much more precious than a golden parachute. And so on.
Very often in the ways of God with us, there is a mixture in any difficult circumstance, there being the trial of our faith as these dear Jewish believers were going through. But also the Lord may use it because there is a need to be in our lives. And so even though it comes from an outside world and even though it may come from a source, that has nothing to do with the Lord.
We have to recognize God's hand in it, and an example of that, of course, is in Job, where Satan deliberately and willfully went after Job in order to try and make him overreact in the wrong way and curse God and fail. But then the Lord uses the trial to bring something to Job's attention that Satan knew nothing about. And so I suggest we get that here in this chapter as well.
About the government of God, wherein the principle we read in Galatians, God is not mocked as a man, so, so shall he also reap.
Is a general principle that applies to the unbeliever as well as to the believer.
And some, I've heard some brethren say that for believers, it's not really the government of God, it's the government of the Father.
Because we're children in the family and it's not just God dealing with us as men or women, it's our Father dealing with us based and in the context of a relationship as his children.
So even an unconverted man, if he lives his life uprightly, umm, he's going to receive in a certain way the fruit of that in this life.
And there is that line of things, but beyond that for you and me.
As being brought into God's family and having our Father who is all knowing, all loving.
Never sleeps, always attentive, always engaged and committed in every way to every one of us.
We have been the right to take our circumstances, as I think while he was saying this morning from the Lord and to realize no matter what it is and it's easier to sit here and say this than to.
Accept it when it happens. This thing is for me. And so it's such a comfort and such a help that in the school of God.
Where I was first saved and gathered, the older brothers used to talk about the school of God all the time. We're in his school and it's a privilege to be in under his instruction tutelage, which is really what chasing is. It's a family privilege so we can have that confidence in him that he knows what he's doing. As we just read in Peter, if there's a need speak, he'll bring in the suited circumstance.
00:20:25
That we might get the benefit of the education for us in our life now.
I think we'll see and.
Joseph's brother in what had long played Dormant.
The 22 years before they had sold their brother into slavery and had buried it, perhaps in their Memory, in their mind. And then a series of events happened.
And they recall what they did.
And then there's entrapment, if you will. Their money is returned in their sacks. And it, it just struck me recently, so I've heard it before, but in Genesis 42.
They said.
In verse 28.
Uh, the first one, I don't know who it was but one of the brethren opened his his sack to get his *** problem during the end of.
Or 28 of Genesis 42 And he said unto his brother, My money is restored, Lord is even in my sack. And your heart failed them. And they were afraid, saying one to another.
What is this that God has done to us?
I think that was his time and work for begun and their souls.
Because they didn't say what bad luck. We ran into this grumpy guy there and he just was treating us so bad or attributed to some other, uh, natural cause. But they recognize that the hand of God was working in their lives and ultimately that led to great blessings. They had to start there.
It's a very important beginning.
Philosophy chastening in a very negative light, but the word itself is actually translated elsewhere as instruction in Second Timothy 316. All scriptures give inspiration to God as prophet or the doctrine recruit the corrections for instruction and righteousness, and it's translated in Ephesians as nurture. And ye father's provoke not your child, children's rest or bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord deliberately means instruction to a child.
So it's much broader word than what we typically perceive chastening as meaning.
So I I just think that.
So yeah, as it was, I began my my thought. This is not a negative thing. This is a positive thing that a father instructs his child. And it can involve reproof. It can involve.
Sketching and so forth. But you know the the response in our hearts can be twofold. We can one, we can despise it, or the other, we can paint under it. And where to do neither? Let me add 1/3.
We can be exercised by it. Thank you. Later on in the chapter, we'll get to that.
And then we get the after yield, the feasible fruit of righteousness.
And I, I'd probably give you the age I repeat myself, but I so appreciate it as I've gotten older, this this whole much older brother than me. Like with the testimony in Detroit, Maine was in his home years ago and he used to say he was suffering from leukemia and he lived with constant fever. And yet he was a cheerful, happy, beloved, stable St. of God. We loved him dearly, but he used to.
Refer to that verse all the time and I must have remembered it because he said he used to say I'm not looking for the undertaker, I'm looking for the upper taker. And he used to say, you know, it is exercise and he says, but he says I'm looking for the after yield. And perhaps brother, I thought it was going to be when he got home to heaven with the Lord, but I think he was getting some of the after yield in his life then because he was getting the blessing of being exercised.
And what I love about that verse is not to jump ahead totally in our chapter, is that sometimes things come up in our lives or in the lives of others that we love or in the assembly.
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And we're before the Lord about it and we're exercised about it, but we can't really say that we can put our finger on why the Lord allowed.
Some of these things the Lord is just going to keep until that day.
And we have to leave that with him. But if we are exercised about it, even if we don't know, so to speak, the answer, we get the blessing because we're exercising.
The point of Job's trial was not to point him to himself, and that's all his friends were doing was pointing him back to his selfie. The point of judge trials was to tone him up to the odds that he answered. And you know, that's the point of trials. So often we try to put our finger on what is it that the Lord is speaking to me about in my life. And I don't deny that there are instances where we do need to think in that way.
But the principal point of chasing in our lives is to turn us to look upwards, not within. Not within. God will address that which is within in His time. But we're not going to find the answer by looking within. You'll only find an answer by looking up.
And I believe that's why it emphasizes and I don't think it hurts to go ahead.
In verse 11, exercise thereby.
There are those, and I suppose some of us more than some of us have seen this, where every kind of a trial or a difficulty or obstruction or whatever it is in their lives, they refer to the fact, or at least the fact in their own mind. Satan is doing his best to try and spoil my ministry, spoil my testimony, spoil my work for the Lord. This is an attack of Satan.
And it has to be resisted.
Well, that's not being exercised thereby. That's saying in so many words, I know that I'm all right and everything's fine. So Satan's trying to hinder the work of the Lord.
Satan may be behind it, but the Lord may be having a word to say to me that I'm not prepared to hear because my whole mindset and outlook on the problem is predicated on the fact that I'm doing a work for the Lord, and anything to hinder that is obviously a work of Satan.
And so the exercise thereby means having my heart totally open before the Lord. And I fully agree with Bruce that sometimes we can always get an immediate answer, and sometimes we don't get a total answer. But what we do get is peace about it. And that's the important thing, to be able to have peace about it.
And in that sense, if we turn back to First Corinthians.
10.
There's a verse there that I believe we can apply in that same way.
1St Corinthians 10 and verse 13 Well known verse.
There hath no temptation taken you, but such as is common to man.
But God is faithful.
Who will not suffer you? On the one hand, we could say to be tempted above that ye are able.
But on the other hand it says but will with the temptation or testing.
Also make a way to escape and the Darby reeds make the issue also.
That ye may be able to bear it.
Now we could take that in several different ways, but I believe it can have the thought that.
If we get before the Lord a vote of particular trial, He will not only make it clear to us in some cases what He is seeking to teach us, but even if.
We don't get that totally clear. He will make it very clear that His hand is in it, that He is with us in it, and that maybe it is simply an opportunity to glorify the Lord in something that otherwise I wouldn't be able to glorify Him in. That is when the natural man and a believer not walking with the Lord goes through a trial.
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The reaction is very much as we get in that verse that Bruce referred to, either despising the chastening that's becoming hardened to it, saying well, all right, bring on your worst, I can take it, or fainting under it and just being totally crushed by it. And that's the reaction of the natural man, either one or the other, but for the believer.
What a difference the believer recognizes that it is from the Lord.
And.
I quoted this before, but the language is so good that it bears repeating.
And some will recognize the source of it. It's not original with me. It's from our written ministry going through trials and difficulties with the Lord.
Takes all of the will out of our emotions and affections.
But without destroying those emotions and affections themselves.
I don't know how it could have been put any better. Let me repeat that. Going through a trial and the difficulty with the Lord takes all of the will out of my emotions and affections, but without destroying those emotions and affections themselves.
It doesn't mean that I don't cry, it doesn't mean that I don't feel it. It doesn't mean that I have put such a hard shell around myself that I despise it. But nor does it mean that I fall down, fainting, utterly crushed and safe. I can't take this anymore.
I go through it with the Lord.
My will is taken out of the picture, and to me, when the Lord makes the issue also, it has the thought that my will is taken out of the whole thing. I recognize the Lord's hand in it.
And I say, Lord, I know this is for my good, whatever lesson I need to learn, or whether it's not a lesson to be learned, but rather simply an opportunity to glorify the Lord.
Speech in verse 10.
How that they barely.
That is our Father's after the flesh for a few days, teaching us after their own pleasure.
And imagine my Bible says it seemed good for me to death. Well, the fact is that.
As fathers after the flesh, we don't always.
Do it just right. As far as the chasing of our children, we have their interests at heart, but at the same time, maybe we have something of our own interest heart too. And but it tells us here the Lord, he for our prophet, he chases us that we might be partakers of his holy.
And it speaks later on in verse 14 it says follow peace with all men and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. Well isn't it true that if I'm going on in sin, in self will.
There isn't that practical holiness and I can't enjoy.
Fellowship with the Lord in those circumstances.
And so the Lord, he desires that we might have his company and that he might have our company.
You know, in the garden.
The Lord God, he went walking in the garden in the cool of the day. What for? Well, he wanted to enjoy friendship, fellowship with Adam because he had created. But where were they? They're hiding behind the trees. Where art thou, Adam? And so it was a sad circumstance, but you know, the Lord made.
Provision for Adam and Eve that.
And he's made provision for us as well, that we who are sinners might be cleansed, deemed sanctified.
Brought near all because of what the Lord Jesus did at the cross and tell them so positionally we are full, we are holy and without blame before God in love because of what the Lord Jesus Christ is done. We give him all the credit. But you know there's that practical side and you know when.
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Difficulty comes into my life if it's sickness or.
Uh, what, What? Whatever it might be, somebody said something that, uh.
Maybe seems expensive to me.
And yes, indeed, uh, there's that self searching. One finds out that perhaps there is something in one's life that the Lord wants to address.
Yeah, you know, it was, uh, David, I believe I just noticed that Psalm 139 and verse 23, he said, search me, O God, and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts and see if there'd be any wicked ways in me and lead me in the way everlasting. Well, at least David, she wanted to be on the very best terms that he could with one who.
Is all powerful.
Omniscient, all knowing, omnipotent, How powerful and omnipresent everywhere so.
I believe that, uh, chasing is that which the Lord allows that we might search.
Ourselves as to whether there's something that perhaps is hindering our enjoyment of the Lord.
That we might judge it.
Appropriate.
And where there is that judgment.
And exercise too, about why this difficulty is taking place in my life.
Tells us it yields the peace proof of righteousness.
But it's for our profit in verse 10. But I noticed the word hour is italicized and Mrs. Harvey doesn't put it. He just says it is for proper. And I just wonder if it's not only for our prophet but for his profit as well.
That there's chase me and one has the desired effect. It will bring praise and glory.
To the Board.
So it seems this passage is not so much.
Instruction and exposition about chastening, though he reminds us of it. But our response to chastening?
Different responses to it. So as you jump down to verse 12.
After the the the appropriate response in verse 11, verse 12 Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down in the feeble knees and make straight paths for your feet.
Don't get down, don't just veer off and ignore it. Don't go into the woe is me as one of the brothers described, you know, quit you like men. And the apostle writes to the Corinthians, I think it was to the Corinthians.
Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus so he wants us to, you know.
Let's get up, lift up the hands which hang down the feeble knees thought you know, we tend to be as as Nick was saying, introspective in the wrong way sometimes wants us to shake us out of that and say what I'm doing is good. It's for your blessing. May not understand it right now. Someday you will. Meanwhile, lift up the hands which hang down. Press ahead in your pathway.
Besides that, there's others that are watching.
There's others that are younger than you in the faith. There's others that are weaker than you in faith.
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Manager gets the manager of the year and there so, you know, try to hide how impressed they are with themselves. I like to watch, you know, when it's the other way around because sometimes things can go really, really wrong. And those same guys too. And then, you know, I always try to look those guys up and give them a word of, of encouragement. But, you know, people watch the world watches us when when we have circumstances like that in our family.
Or in our business or professional or personal life and they want to see.
How we behave, is he different or is he like everybody else? Everybody's things go well, everybody's how are you? I'm excellent. How are you when you have untoward circumstances. So it's very important, uh, to have a long term view.
And, uh, be able to put one foot in front of another, lift up the hands which hang down and, uh, make straight pass for our feet. Plus that which is lame, right? That which is lame turned out of the way.
Just one note on what I said earlier. I don't want to take away the thought of self judgment and talking about is not occupy self himself. I think it was Mr. Dobby that said that we should be occupied himself just long enough to jump, right?
Hmm hmm, sounds good.
I wonder if we can apply the lifting up the hands to.
Thought a prayer.
Was all that the Timothy of the Sympathy chapter two? I think it is. Uh, I would have been praying everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting.
Certainly. Uh, that's one way to be encouraged, isn't it? To lift up our hands in prayer?
Fill in verse 15 looking diligently, lest any man.
Or fall from the grace of God.
Lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you and there by many.
So falling of the great failing of the grace of God is not just.
A brother.
Being, uh, sinning or having a fall manifested.
It's deeper than that.
It's really losing the sense in our souls that God is for us. I think we read in Romans 8 that grand principle of grace that God is for me and all that he is.
And so I, you know, it's not just experiences that God brings before us.
He brings before us instruction as what what Nick said is uh.
Deserves studying later. That word chastening is really instruction. And Paul writes to Timothy about the word of God being for our instruction. And then in Hebrews 12 we read about the circumstances of life are for our instruction. And if we just go through circumstances, how do we process them?
What? What context do we put them in?
Well, maybe I'm, you know, do I have a Jewish mindset and I say, well, you know, my cattle aren't as as prolific as my neighbor's cattle cattle, or I don't have as many children or my crops aren't growing as well. So there must be something wrong with what we need Context. And so it's not just going through experience, it's going through experience and processing the experiences of life through the word of God.
And he's the one who provides context for us.
And so one of those contexts is we've already had before us that my circumstances as a believer are ordered of the Lord for my prophet or for prophet for all of our prophet.
And that's something I've learned. I've been instructed by in the scriptures about that.
And so I process my circumstances and I say, wow, the Lord has shown me some hearty things here. This is humbling. And so I, I, I, I exercised about it and I walked softly before the Lord. That's how I process it. But if I, if I'm not instructed properly in my relationship with the Lord and what he is doing in our lives as believers, I'm going to process it in an incorrect way.
00:45:24
And when people get away from.
Processing the experiences of life in a spiritual way is formed by the precepts and the principles in the Word of God, then the waves of life that come.
Create bitterness.
Disappointment. Chronic disappointment.
And it becomes bitterness, and bitterness is one of the worst roots that can take hold in the human heart.
This these two principles that will be set before us are found three times in the book of Hebrews.
In chapter 2, verses 2:00 and 3:00.
We have long grape rock picora.
And then chatter.
Can have it again he would just buy Moses law died without mercy under two or three witnesses of how much sore punishment supposedly shall he be thought worthy. It was brought another foot, the Son of God, and that counted the blood of the covenant where he was sanctified and holy day, and that done death fight under the spirit of grace.
And then again in our chapter.
You're not come unto the mountains might be touched.
And see that you refuse not while, but ye are come unto the mouth of silent, unto the resilience of. I just wonder if there could be any comment made as to that. I think you have done that.
Just now, Bruce.
We're not to despair of grace.
And also what is rather important in these comments is that no man liveth to himself and no man died to himself.
Even though we are exhorted to react to chastisement in the right way. Even though we are exhorted, uh, not as it says in uh.
Uh uh, the 1St 5 Not to despise the chasing of the Lord or faint under it.
The Lord knew that there would be those who would do that, and we are always going to find those who, as it says in verse 13.
Our lane and are easily turned out of the way. We are going to find those.
Who?
Are going to be defiled by that root of bitterness springing up. And as Bruce is aptly pointed out, that root of bitterness.
Is ultimately the fruit, the bad fruit, of finding fault with what the Lord has allowed in my life? And we have seen it, haven't we, where dear believers who had real potential for the Lord have allowed bitterness to overtake them? Usually, of course, they don't blame the Lord for it. Sometimes they do. But sometimes they blame their brethren, circumstances, and all kinds of things.
Which may have come in and, uh, then of course.
I'm occupied with myself, the feeling sorry for myself, the poor knee syndrome and so on. We can't allow ourselves, if I could say it, that luxury can. We can't allow ourselves the luxury of feeling sorry for ourselves. Yes, very often I have brought it upon myself, but if the Lord has allowed it, it is ultimately for my prophet and the way I react to it is not merely going to affect my life.
That may well affect others as well, and a very, very solemn thing it is when a root of bitterness springs up and defiles many. And how many problems and difficulties among the people of God have had their roots in that kind of faith?
Just make a comment to that we might be partakers of His Holiness.
End of verse 14 it says, or four verse 14 says, follow peace with all men and holiness, without which no man shall see the boy. There is a teaching that has been promoted called Lordship Salvation. John MacArthur is a promoter of it that makes our works an important ingredient in our salvation.
00:50:21
Works are reflective. It's the fruit of that which is in. It's not an ingredient of that salvation. And here the holiness spoken of is that practical exhibition of that holiness. Holiness in our lives. We do not pursue holiness to get it.
We are holy because of the nature that we have within us. And very often it's not displayed practically in our lives. And the Lord may allow things in our lives. He does allow things in our lives so that it might be practically expressed, but.
I think it's this is one of those portions of Scripture in in the book of Hebrews that are and then the ones that Tony read too. It was chapter 10 and saw that.
Frequently misunderstood and misapplied in Christendom. This is talking about how practical warfare, not about gaining holiness before God.
And what has always, at least to my own soul, been so penetrating and so instructive is that this root of bitterness is connected with verse 16, where it says, lest there be any fornicator. Would we equate that sin of immorality and put it in the same category as a root of bitterness?
Both of them can be very devastating, can they? And I believe the Lord mentions that here and then he says or profane person as he saw, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.
And it says for you know that after how that afterward when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected. Why? Because he wanted the blessing, but he didn't want the Lord that provided the blessing.
He sought the blessing carefully, with tears. He wanted it badly.
But do you have any care for the Lord in the Lord's things? No, there was no care for the promises of God or anything like that. And so the Lord links some very serious sins together here. I believe us to, I believe to show us the gravity of them and how that there can even be.
Now, Esau was not a believer, I don't, I don't think. We can't, of course, start to be dogmatic about certain individuals if the Scripture isn't. But at the same time, Esau had no care for the Lord's things and went his own way. But sometimes the Lord gives us an exhortation based on the experience of an unbeliever, but as a warning to us who are believers.
And we as believers can want all the blessings of Christianity and want to enjoy them, and yet not be prepared for that walk with the Lord which is so essential to their enjoyment.
And I suggest, Nick, that when it says without which no man shall see the Lord with that communion that is primarily in fourth you there. Would you agree with that?
In verse 13 in the in the last phrase there, but let it rather be healed was spoken of of umm, someone observing the reaction, the upper circumstances. Umm, they can be thrown into bitterness. They can have all these bad things that that come up. But there's the other side too. It says let that which lane be turned out of the way. Don't let it rather be healed.
On the observation of a a proper response.
To to the circumstances can be healing for that which is plain.
And we just say, Bruce, that's why it says looking diligently lest any man failed the grace of God.
We all need to look diligently and try and heal that, shouldn't we, rather than allowing it to proceed and do all the evil work that can come of it.
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Am I my brother's keeper?
Yes, Sir, yes you are. I am. And I'm not to be looking diligently so I can find some flaw, some fly in the ointment. I'm looking out for my brethren. And this is something not just brothers and not just public ministry. This is mostly probably a private personal ministry between brother and brother and sister and sister and and so on. Because we can pers, we can read each other sometimes better than we can read ourselves.
N.
We can be of help to our brother and I appreciate that. Let it rather be healed. It's just such a wholesome.
Optimism, if I could use that word in the in the word of God, Umm.
Without being my, you know.
It's realistic but optimistic and I appreciate what I think it was Andy mentioned earlier this morning.
Umm, I was thinking of that verse when he made his comments. There is forgiveness with thee, but thou may us be feared, and there's always a fresh start. Our Jesus footsteps ever show the path for every child.
And some of us get into horrific situations, shameful, ridiculous situations we get ourselves into by our carelessness, But the word of God, principles of God can meet us right there and show us the path. I love that. I love that. And so we ought to have that sense. I remember in a brother's meeting years, and I've lived in a number of assemblies so I can cover my tracks, but I remember in a brothers meeting, somebody said, oh, I have no confidence in that brother.
You know, talking about maybe helping someone or some situation that needed to be, uh, you know, assessed. No confidence in that.
And then afterwards, the brother said to me in the parking lot, does he have confidence in himself?
Umm, you know who, but but when you you know, I just pondered that. And as you see in Scripture, I think the Apostle Paul wrote, I think it was to the Thessalonians, he said, I have great confidence in you in the Lord. Someone will have to correct me later, but I don't want to misquote it. But what a beautiful balance to have realistic spiritual confidence in the Lord that he's able and desirous.
That no matter what kind of a train wreck sometimes we can get into, if there is a path, we're still going to be under the government of God, so to speak. God is our Father, but still there's a way back to me in the enjoyment of Christ and to be fruitful again. Let's never take that hope away from our brother. And if it was meant to be taken away, the Lord would take it away.
James Rice, take away the life still here, still breathing, still opportunity to be recovered, to be healed, and to warm happily.
Call.
#36 in the appendix #36 in the Appendix.
And why? I'm done. I'm crying about falls to the blue radiation. Go ahead and hear me. How are you doing? I'm tired.
To hear you so long, come shortly and pray.
The Work of God for Us and With Us
Address—Bruce Conrad
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Good afternoon. Let's start our meeting this afternoon with the first hymn in the book, hymn #1.
Thinking particularly of that second, the words in the second stanza. Faith two that trusts the blood through grace. From that same love we gain.
As sweetly as it suits our case, the gift had been in vain. Have it upon my heart this afternoon to speak about the work of God.
God's work.
And uh, hopefully at first the take up.
His great work through his son on Calvary's cross, the work of Atonement, and then to follow on his present work with you and me.
And so if someone could start him #1 please.
As the Lord's help blessing.
Lord Jesus, we thank Thee for our great love to us shown out.
On Calvary's cross we'll now disallow thyself to be taken by the wicked hands, to be crucified and slain. Shed thy precious blood.
We thank thee that we can rejoice.
In what thou hast done.
That victor's cry. It is finished.
And we love to look up by faith through the open heavens, and to see thee there, seated upon thy Father's throne.
Ground already with glory and honour.
Soon to come and take thy rightful place in this world.
But in the meantime, we are humbled as we think of what thou art doing now that was called out of Jew and Gentile, a people for thy name, and we find ourselves part of that wonderful company, Lord Jesus.
To be members of Thy body through faith in thyself and in Thy finished work, we thank the blessed Savior. And now, as we open Thy word for a few minutes, we look to Thee that Thou art helped to organize.
The thoughts of the speaker that we might have before us from Thy precious word, that which would be for our help and encouragement, we ask it, Lord Jesus, and thy worthy and precious name, Amen.
Well, I sense that our brother Bill had the.
Thought that he'd better get right after it and we're so programmed to one hour that, uh, that uh.
We can, uh, misjudge our time. And I'm one of the worst offenders.
Uh, not to worry though, I would know when standards in this room I always try to finish on time.
00:05:01
Umm.
But no, I was, I was my first experience as ministering the word of God. It wasn't. There wasn't any clocks really. So.
We went on for a while until we all got tired and we had a sense it was done. So, so I had to be, uh, rehabilitated, uh, as I got a little older and keep it to 60 minutes. And now you guys are raising the bar. We're gonna do 45 here and that should be fine. It should be fine because the subject, part of the subject I had in my heart was I was gonna go through Hebrews 12.
And so we've already gone through Hebrews 12, so there should be no problem here.
Getting through so we'll see how the Lord directs, but just to start with the Scripture in Psalm 8 just I'm not going to take up Psalm 8, but just.
As a point of.
Overarching Consideration. Psalm 8.
Let's just start with verse three, when I consider thy heavens the work of thy fingers.
The moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man, that thou art mindful of him, and the Son of Man that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels.
And crowned him with glory and honor.
This question What is man comes up is quoted in different places in the scripture, as many of you know.
I like to think of it here. What is man? As if the psalmist is asking the question rhetorically, I'll tell you what man is. Man is the one in whom the entire Council of God is going to be centered for all eternity, the man Christ Jesus.
I've appreciated a brother pointed out to me, you know, we often talk about the councils and purposes of God and her brother pointed out to me, it's not councils when it comes to God, it's council. It's singular. So being the kind of person I am, I got out my old fashioned Strong's Concordance and I worked down through every verse and, and he's right, I could not find any place that referred to God.
Councils in the plural.
All his eggs, so to speak, are in one basket, therein that man Christ Jesus, who was with him throughout all eternity, as a son with Father daily his delight.
And as you and I.
Know in our whole eternity now is tied with the fact that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding that we might know Him, that we might be in Him, that we might possess eternal life which we possess even now.
But it says here, when I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon, and thy stars, which thou hast ordained.
The heavens.
The work of his fingers. Not even his whole hand. The work of his fingers.
The work of atonement we know will be memorialized, it seems to me like throughout eternity, with his hands graven on his hands.
And so when we think of the work of God, we think of the work that is already accomplished.
And the Word of God calls that the gospel concerning his Son.
And in business, sometimes they say, well, you should have a like an elevator speech. So if you're in an elevator and there's a potential quiet there, you should be able to tell them between the lobby and such and such a floor, everything that your business is about.
God is way better at that than men are. And he starts in the book of Romans and he says the gospel concerning his Son, it's all about him.
And, you know, there's an aspect of the gospel which I came to appreciate pretty early in my Christian life because there was a steady stream of.
Of brothers from the gathering in Montreal and Ottawa that used to flow down through Maine where I lived, out into the tent work to the gospel work. And they would come through our little tiny meeting there and we got a lot of really good teaching and we got a lot of good gospel teaching.
They came into our meeting and then they didn't preach the gospel so much as they taught it. And I think that's something, uh, brothers that we need to rekindle today. Don't, if you're picked to take up the gospel, don't feel that you have to preach the gospel as if you were preaching to a bunch of lost people out on the street when it's your dad and your mom and your uncle and your sister and, and brethren that have known you since you were a baby.
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But it's so edifying and so profitable.
We could never exhaust even to take up the various aspects of the truth of the gospel of the grace of God. It was prophesied of by the prophets down through the ages, but now it's been manifest in these last days for you and me. The gospel concerns his Son and just to not take too long if we turn.
First Peter chapter 3 in one verse.
We have several aspects of the Gospel.
Of the work of God that He accomplished through His Son.
On Calvary's cross.
1St through first Peter 3 and verse 18. For Christ also hath once suffered for sins.
The just were the unjust.
To bring us to God.
A truth that I so enjoy and which I find such comfort.
End.
Rehearsing in my own mind is the first aspect of this verse.
Christ also hath once suffered for sins.
There's a word in the New Testament in our English Bible called propitiation.
So a well known verse is first John 22 and he is the propitiation for our sins.
Not for ours only, but for the whole world.
This is the first.
Beautiful, important foundational aspect of the gospel is that we are not even involved yet, except for the contribution of all of our sins in Genesis 22, we read.
That Abraham.
Prepared and took.
Wood fire.
The knife left the servant behind.
That's it, they went, both of them together.
Nobody else.
Father and son.
So in Calvary's cross, it's not the Father and the Son during those hours of darkness, the man Christ Jesus.
Offering himself.
As a sacrifice for sin and to put away the outrage, the stench of sin before a holy God.
It wasn't just 30 years or 33 years of anticipation leading up to that.
And I suppose you and I could say it wasn't even thousands of years of anticipation.
But God had that work in view.
He had that purpose in view, that not only would his Son be exalted, but He would be exalted in these many sons. He would have brought home the glory, and there was no other way.
You and I could step one inch closer to that glory than by the work of His Son.
Propitiation is the side of the cross that has to do with God.
With what has been an offense.
And an outrage to God in a world that he made.
And if no other Sinner or no other person was blessed by that.
What a great work still.
That he took away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
The Lamb of God taketh away the sin of the world.
Holy.
Holy.
Holy say.
Done there.
Little wonder.
Little wonder that the sun was veiled. Little wonder.
When what took place at Calvary's cross?
When deep called into deep, and all the waves and billows rolled over the only sinless man.
I've been in the construction business all my life, since I was a teenager.
00:15:03
In the good old days were really the bad old days because people weren't treated very well and it was very dangerous.
And we were very.
To what could happen?
And as a young man, I thought I could dance along steel.
Dance up in the air.
We shoveled snow off the beams.
Ridiculous.
There's many men that are not afraid to work at heights.
There are certain uh, ethnic groups that are famous for working steel and working at heights.
There must be blessed with great balance and very little fear.
And it's not hard for us to find people that want to work up in heights.
But in the old days we used to have.
Sometimes where we had to send someone down on the ground.
Into a drilled shaft. Into a deep foundation.
I'll try maybe if I bring this closer.
Please speak about it. I can't turn the microphone up anyway, OK?
There are deep foundations that are drilled deep in the earth. We still do this today.
And there's an institute called the Deep Foundations Institute.
Which meets around the world, of which I think I may still be our company's representative, I can't remember.
But these foundations?
It's hard to find someone. Sometimes you have to go down and someone has to verify that something didn't happen.
Or that the reinforcing steel or the, or the rock walls or the soil walls or whatever are still in place is very hard to get somebody to go down into those steps and me myself.
I do not think I have any phobias.
But I could have an I. I would have a nightmare if I thought of going down into one of those shafts, no matter how many safety apparatus they put on me or above me.
But the Lord Jesus went down to the very bottom.
And he did that for God.
And just like in type in the book of Daniel.
There's a conflict. The king loved Daniel and didn't want. The last thing he wanted to do was to throw Daniel in a den of lions.
But the law, the Medes and Persians says.
He must die. He must be thrown into the law, into the with the Medes and Persians, into the den of lions.
Try to speak louder.
And so you know the story, and the king has spent a sleepless night.
And then he comes, and they take the stone away.
What suspense I think of that when that king, oh, Daniel. And then the voice comes up from the deep. O king, live forever. What delight, what delight that that king, he hasted to take him out of that den.
Righteousness was satisfied. He was thrown into the den of the lions.
And now he could bring him out.
A picture, really, of course.
Of a certain aspect of the work of Christ.
Righteousness now has been satisfied, God's holiness maintained.
And that deep foundation has been laid.
And it's a foundation so deep, so powerful, that it can carry anything that the purpose of God.
Would put on that foundation.
And I love to think of that aspect of the work of Christ.
That he died for God. That he had God before him.
And I love to think of it as the foundation that you and I can go out to the vilest Sinner.
Homeless man, whatever Sinner you can think of in your mind and you can say you know what?
God loves you.
I know that God loves you, I know that from this book, and I know that Christ died for you.
And on the basis of what he did, I can extend to you an invitation.
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That if you put your trust in him.
If you lay hold of him.
You can be saved from all your sins. You can be forgiven from all your sins.
And you can have blessings that it would take me the rest of the day to unfold to you, and you can have them immediately.
Based upon that holy work on Calvary's cross.
He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the whole world.
The stench of an unbeliever, sins that goes off into a lost eternity will not forever be odious, obnoxious to God, because the Lamb of God will have taken away the sin of the world.
Wonderful.
But we also know in the work of Christ in atonement is one work.
And the scriptures, sort of.
Kind of pulled back little parts of it so that we can understand is the way it seems to me.
It's one work, we need to remember that.
But so now what?
What a great work he has accomplished on Calvary's cross. God has not only satisfied.
He's glorified. If you fix something that was broke and you restore it to the person just the way it was, they will perhaps be satisfied.
But as the type in the Old Testament, when someone takes something away, they are to add the 5th part.
And the Lord Jesus has added the 5th part in that He has brought glory to God.
Think of it even on the occasion of sin entering the world.
So God is glorified now.
As we were saying in the reading meeting, I think it was this morning, I have finished the work gave us me to do. I have glorified thee on the earth.
The construction business, we don't let. Generally we don't let.
The people building the work attest to its quality. We have other people do that for obvious reasons.
Because I, my whole career, especially when I was younger, did. Did you do this? Did you do this? Did you do this? Just like with your kids, right. Did you do this? Did you know whatever it might be? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you find out, of course, often that it's not that way.
But you send someone independent who is qualified objective to assess the quality of what was done.
As we were saying this morning, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was qualified to pronounce on the quality, the completeness, and the character of the of His own work that He accomplished here in this world.
And so, as we read in first Peter 3.
He suffered for sins.
The just for the.
To bring us to God.
And sometimes we hear from, from younger ones or it's a mistake to say it. And I, I have told the occasion once where I was in a gospel meeting in a home and the young brother stood up and he said God loves you, Christ died for you on Calvary's cross. He bore your sins. And he went on for 45 minutes. And I'm sitting there, you know, this isn't right. And, uh.
And sure enough, there was a man next to me in the in the chair who was listening. He had invited neighbors and folks in and I said, So what do you think? And he said, I don't see what the problem is. And I'm like, you don't see what the problem is. He said, we, he told me God loved me and Christ died for me and he bore my sins. I don't see that I have to do anything or that there's any problem.
Because he failed to distinguish between the propitiation as we read, as we, as I quoted in first John, that aspect which was for God.
And the blessing that flows out to you and me when we accept Him as our substitute.
So as you know, in Leviticus 16, there's that picture of the two goats, the one aspect, as we've spoken about Christ dying for God.
And the other aspect were the sins of the people are confessed on the head of that goat. He's taken by the hand of a fit man out into the wilderness.
A picture of our sins taken away when we put our trust in Him.
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And so only the believer can say he bore my sins in his own body on the tree.
And when I put my trust in Christ in that man and that person.
Who did that work? All the value of what he did flows to me.
Because you would be shocked.
At how little some of us knew about the truth of the gospel when we got saved and we were saved and we knew we were.
And we knew it was forever.
But if someone gave me a quiz like you would give it to the children tomorrow morning, maybe about the blood of Christ and the death of Christ, I'd have been guessing. If it were multiple choice, I would have been guessing.
But when we believe on him, and if you check this out at some time as you go through the New Testament, how many times the Spirit of God enjoins us to put our trust in a person, in the man Christ Jesus far I I don't know the percentage.
Many more times than it tells us to put our trust in his work.
And again I say, when you put your trust in Him, all the value of what He did flows out in blessing to you and me.
He knows what he did and God knows the value of what he has accomplished. All flows to me.
So that's an aspect of the work of God.
That we call or the scripture calls atonement.
The foundation where God can be just in justifying the Sinner.
Where righteousness and peace have now kissed one another, and mercy and truth.
Are met together.
At the cross. And so how do you and I, we kind of jumped ahead. How do you and I, how do we, as it says at the end of that verse, the just for the unjust that it might bring us to God.
How do I get brought to God? How am I reconciled to God?
So you've probably heard speaking to souls, as I've heard speaking to souls, and they tell them about the work of Christ and they say, well, let's see, I agree with that. God did his part and you have to do your part.
Your part is the rather unseemly part.
Of all those sins, and my sins heaped upon his head.
And so how is it that I get the blessing?
And it's at a pretty young age. We learned that it's through faith.
It's through faith.
And so how does that faith come? Where does that faith come from?
And so if we were to turn to Ephesians two, we read, By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, lest any man should boast.
And so I was there in in.
Anguish deciding in a little house in Palmyra, ME.
Am I going to do this? Am I going to accept Christ?
And probably sweat on my head and.
And then I did.
So hurray for me, right?
And then I got saved. And then in a few weeks the Lord sent a brother.
Down took me under his wing and he taught me and he said, you know, brother, you didn't find the Lord, he found you.
And I learned the truth that that we've been enjoying and teaching for decades.
As the illustrators is often used like in this meeting room.
That on the outside of the meeting room, there's a there's an invitation that says whosoever will may come.
Then it says come.
And whoever preaches the gospel tonight is going to forget and ignore some of what I will probably say in the next 5 minutes.
And press upon souls their responsibility.
Because man is responsible. You're responsible for what you've done in your life. You're responsible for everything in your life. You're also responsible to obey the gospel.
Because it's the command of God. God has commanded that all men should repent and believe.
00:30:00
And so I, I thought it was something I did. And then I, there's a brother taught me. I got it, It says just then you come inside the meeting room.
And you look back over the same door that said come, and it says chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.
And I say wow.
And I've been saying that in my soul.
Ever since.
And, you know, sometimes people say.
What's fair? It's not fair.
He chose that one. He didn't choose that one.
That's not fair.
I see you're right, the gospel is not fair.
What's fair about the only sinless man bearing my sins on the cross of Calvary? We are so far beyond fair. I don't even want to talk about fair anymore. There's nothing fair in the gospel. It's beyond fair.
But the gap between my inability to understand why he would choose me and the fact that he did.
Results in worship and Thanksgiving in my soul.
When the woman When the Lord met the woman at the well of Sikar, he expressed to her.
That that's what the Father was seeking was worshippers.
Now, I know I'm going to move on here, but I know that a lot of young brothers lately are troubled with the truth of election.
And it has come up.
In general meetings, and it astonishes me to be frank.
Because to me, it's a foundational truth that I was taught in my first months as a believer.
Because without it, nothing really in the New Testament really fits, and with it everything fits together that we understand. And if we understood more, we see more of how it all fit together.
Let me just read for the sake of time 2 verses Second Thessalonians.
2nd Thessalonians 2.
Verse 13.
Written to some fairly young believers, verse 13. We are bound to give thanks all the way to God for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit.
And belief of the truth.
Whereunto he called you by our gospel to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So much in those two verses.
If you struggle with allowing God to be God.
And to do what he thinks is wise and just.
Then may I just suggest to you that you try to put it in context?
And the way to put it in context, I feel, is this, that God has made a bonafide.
Offer to all, He has made provision for all. His heart of love is such that God so loved the world that he gave the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish.
And God desires that all men will be saved to come to a knowledge of the truth and to back up that desire. In His heart of love He has made provision.
For all to be on that deep, deep foundation laid by Christ on Calvary's cross.
That offer has gone out.
To all.
Falsehood.
And so did some accept and some not know.
The parable is plain that all began to make excuse.
This excuse, that excuse, the other excuse, and no man of his own volition, of his own will, would accept that offer.
And so God could have shut the whole thing down South to speak.
I displayed my love in the sending of my son. I made an offer to all. I made provision for all. All things are ready and none would come.
00:35:00
God could have shut the whole thing down in righteousness.
Folded it all up like a garment.
But you know the context. That is the context in which he says, you know what, we're not going to stop there.
I'm going to compel some of them to come in and I can do that.
I can do that.
And so he compelled, He compels you to come in.
And you may have thought that it was a decision you made, just like I did. I felt it was a decision I made, and I did.
Make that decision. But I learned.
That it was the Father that drew me. That God chose me.
Before the foundation of the world. That he worked in my soul. That the Spirit of God worked in me.
To say, in my dark soul, let there be light, and there was light.
And so the action of the Spirit of God in your life and in mind, if you are a believer.
Was to give you life when you were just plain dead.
That's the quickening or life giving power that God exercises. That's a second or a further work of God. There's the work of Calvary's cross and as we sang in that first hymn.
Faith to which trust? Let me quote it.
Faith to the trust, the blood through grace. From that same love we gain as sweetly as it suits our case. The gift had been in vain.
And so he has not only done that great work on Calvary's cross through the work of his son, but he's done a work in your soul.
Through the Spirit of God.
To give you life, he said. Let there be light in your soul.
And that life, in different ones, it works in different ways. And the Lord Jesus spoke about this to Nicodemus and you can read about it all through the Scriptures. And once you see it, it's everywhere.
It's everywhere that God hath chosen you to salvation, and then it says through sanctification of the Spirit.
It's the work of the Spirit of God in you to give you life. And guess what that life has? It has faith.
It's the gift of God.
And faith latches hold to the testimony that God gives. That's what faith does.
It believes God, not just in God, it believes God.
Unto believe for the truth.
And so this is the wonderful work of God in a soul.
In addition to what he has done outside of us, he has done a work in US.
To call the darkness. To call into the darkness and say, let there be light.
You know you can say these things are mystical and hard to understand.
Well, maybe. Maybe they are spiritual, but how do you understand biological life?
Do you understand natural life, Biological life? Who understands that? Get the greatest scientists in the world and put them in this room. They don't understand it. They understand what it does.
They understand aspects of it, but they don't understand where it came from, how it initiates.
Natural life is a mystery, and it's part of the testimony of God and creation to man.
And so is spiritual life.
And so now we have this life.
And now we are not only quickened or born again, but when we believe the gospel of our salvation, as it says in Ephesians chapter one.
We're sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.
And the Spirit of God indwells us now.
And gives us confidence and gives us an ability.
To go forward in that life that He has created, a life that is one with Christ.
And so that's why the normal position for the normal attitude of a Christian is not to say, like we used to say to some of some of Christie's relatives, you know, we'd labor with him in the gospel and.
For hours the next day before you're about to catch a boat back to the mainland, you say So if you died tonight, where would you go? Would you go to heaven with the Lord Jesus? I hope so. And you just.
00:40:02
You're you're a little disappointed.
Because there hasn't been that last part of that verse in 2nd Thessalonians 2 unto belief of the truth. But let's turn briefly to Philippians chapter one.
Philippians One, verse 6.
We talked about the.
Optimism or confidence?
Philippians one being confident of this very thing. Verse six. That he which hath begun a good work in you.
We're performing until the day of Jesus Christ.
Turn over to the second chapter. I think it is.
Philippians second chapter verse 13. It is God which worketh in you.
Both to will and to do of His good pleasure. So now we have another aspect of the work of God.
He's going to work outside of you and me, the father and the son.
The Man Christ Jesus.
Accomplish the work of atonement on Calvary's cross before any of us were born, and then he doesn't work in your soul whether you're three years old or four years old or 50 years old.
To quicken you, to give you life, and with that life you've you've attached by faith to the person of Christ.
The Spirit of God has sealed that work in your soul.
And now you are connected to Christ for all eternity.
And so at that point, obviously we could all just say, OK, isn't that enough?
No, it's not enough.
It's not enough for him.
And so when I was first saved, and maybe it was this way for you, you thought, well, I remember thinking, as we sometimes say a little bit irreverently, just stick a fork in me, I'm done. I can remember that feeling like it was yesterday. My whole life is now a success.
Just stick a fork in me, I'm saved, I'm going to heaven, I'm going to be with Christ, and like Christ, there's nothing left. And what a thing to discover through my brethren's teaching, through the Lord. That is just the beginning of my life. It's just the beginning of a life as we had before us in Hebrews 12.
Which I had thought to step to but I don't have time now anyway.
But in Hebrews 12 we see that God refers to.
His active work that goes on with you and me today and tomorrow, and as long as he sees Fit to do it because he has an interest in US morally.
He could have just taken us out of here 1 by 1 when we got saved.
We could be waiting in that other room. We could. We would be unclothed. We would be, as we would be us without a body, waiting for that great day. He could have done that.
But no, he's left us here. You really sent us here, and he has a purpose for us here if we read in Romans 8.
A sweeping.
Summary.
Of God's work, Romans 8.
In verse 28 to pick up the context, we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
For whom he did foreknow.
He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that he might be the first born among many brethren.
Moreover, whom he did predestinate them he also called, and whom he called them he also justified, and whom he justified.
Them he also glorified.
You've been chosen.
You've been chosen for a destiny that he chose.
That destiny is to be with him, to be like him, to be conformed to the image of his son.
When the time came, he called you and me.
He justified us.
He hasn't yet glorified us in the eternal present. If we speak of it, it's as good as done. But we're still here. When the Lord Jesus comes, we will be taken to be with Him. We will be glorified.
The last piece.
A result of the work of Christ in you and me. And so, as we go through our day by day, let's just finish with a verse at the end of Hebrews. Hebrews 13.
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As we go through our day or our week or our year, if the Lord tarries, as we look back through our life, If we walk with the Lord for many years.
I would encourage you to look in the context of the fact that yes, there's been a finished work on Calvary's cross, but there's an ongoing work and Christ is is serving us now on high as an intercessor, as our great high priest, as our advocate, as the captain of our salvation and the father of spirits like a Potter is working you and me through the circumstances of life. We have the privilege of of instruction as Nick.
We have the exhortation to get into and understand and grow by the knowledge of God's Word.
So that we can put into proper context the experiences of life and we can grow. He wants us, as we've had before us already in these meetings, to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And just in closing, in Hebrews 13.
Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep.
Through the blood of the Everlasting Covenant make you perfect in every good work to do His will.
Working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
We are his workmanship.
You and I are the work of God. God is he created the world and I guess he stopped creating, but in the new creation he's still creating every day. We are his workmanship created unto good works that God has put for our deigned that we should walk in them. So to me it is encouraging, heart warming, humbling to think that he.
Would stay with us all the way through and be so invested.
In our spiritual growth, it matters.
That we might be well pleasing in his sight when the Lord comes.
Body, spirit, soul, everything like Him. In the meantime, the work of the Spirit of God and your soul and mind is to become more transformed and more like Him now.
That we might be here for His glory. We have maybe just a little little time. May we all be exercised. That our life may count for Him and bring Him glory. That His work in you and me would be fruitful.
Let's just pray.
Our God and our Father, we give thee thanks for thy great love to us.
We thank Thee for the sending of Thy Son. We thank Thee for reaching out to us when we had no thought towards Thee in bringing us to Him. We thank Thee, Lord Jesus, for living for us now on high.
And we thank Thee that Thou hast pledged to never leave us nor forsake us. We thank Thee, our God, for thine interest in us, for our spiritual growth, and how Thou dost order our circumstances, and for the privilege of instruction in this life. We pray would we exercise, Lord Jesus, as we had before us to follow peace with all and holiness without which none of us can see Thee in a practical sense. Help us, Lord Jesus, to have our eye upon Thee.
We thank Thee for thy great love to us. We thank Thee for the treasure we have in Thy precious word. Where would we be without it? We thank Thee for it. Help us to have a a zeal and a desire, Lord Jesus, to dig into these precious things and to make them good.
In our lives we ask our blessing, Lord Jesus and I, worthy and precious name, Amen.
Five Phrases
Gospel—Wally Dear
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Good evening.
I'd like to welcome each and everyone to our gospel meeting tonight. We have wonderful news to proclaim.
Many have heard it many times.
But I find that as I give out the gospel, the news seems to become even more wonderful. Time after time. It only gets better, and I hope that you find it to be the case tonight. The gospel of God concerning His Son Jesus Christ like to begin tonight by singing.
Number four well known hymn. Christ is the Savior of sinners.
Christ is the Savior for me. Perhaps we could stand and sing #4.
Christ is.
By.
Today.
We're all staying in the room and flying away.
Right. Brilliant.
And by my Bloodstone breathing.
Let's say therefore we.
Today.
You are standing there is like great Shirley is like for my grandson.
Just as I was increasingly speaking from judgment to free.
Now there is no time that day again. This is the savior for.
For me love with thou loud that sunshine changing life with all my things so free.
How shall I tell after his praise? And this is the danger for me.
Look to the Lord for His help tonight in prayer.
Our Godfather, we thank thee tonight that we have opportunity to hold forth the Word of life.
We thank thee, our God, that thou art still inviting lost sinners to come to the Savior. And we thank you for each one in our company tonight who have responded to the invitation and have come to Jesus and have found in him one who not only saves but satisfies the longing soul. But tonight we're particularly concerned about any.
Who may be rejecting?
The invitation.
Who go on in their stubborn way and say no to Jesus.
We earnestly pray tonight that by Thy Holy Spirit and the power of Thy living Word, Thou will speak.
00:05:03
To such tonight that they might close in with thine offer of salvation before it's forever too late. Because we know that time is short and eternity is long.
And we do pray for each one outside of Christ that they might come under the shelter.
Of the precious blood of Christ.
Well, they have opportunity, so we ask this as we seek thy help here tonight.
Help us to make the message simple and clear.
And we pray for Thy word going forth, not only here in Englewood, but worldwide.
We thank thee for thy word.
Word of thy grace, Word of thy power, the word of life.
The word of salvation.
We ask all and give thanks from the precious name of the Lord Jesus, Amen.
Tonight we've been singing.
About salvation. You can't have salvation without the Savior. We've been thinking about the Savior.
And how wonderful.
That.
We can sing now. I can say I am pardoned, happy and justified. Free, maybe.
You are not able to sing from your heart.
I am happy, I am justified, I am free. Is there someone here tonight still in their sins? Your sins are separating you from a holy God.
Now I'm going to ask you a question.
Where will you be 100 years from tonight?
Where will you be?
Does this question strike terror into your soul?
It used to.
Do that to me, I would think about the future, I would think about eternity. And I knew that if I was to depart this world, I'd be lost.
Without a second chance for salvation.
And that's very scary.
And if there's somebody here tonight that's putting off this all important matter of salvation, we would desire that you would be.
Awakened in your soul.
To your eternal destiny now. None of us know how long our time is.
In fact, my son Bryant, he was telling me that just.
I believe it was last week.
One of the senior members in the company a work over.
Manager. Superintendent.
He was in Europe on vacation.
And he went to sleep.
And he never woke up.
He had a heart attack.
He wasn't expecting that. His wife wasn't expecting that now.
Here it comes back.
Prostate.
Instead of.
Vertical.
Is an eternity.
And there's many more in the same situation.
You know Scripture says, boast not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.
And to trifle with your eternal soul.
Is the utmost folly.
That I can conceive.
Because I want to tell you something.
If you depart this life without Christ.
Without the Savior, without salvation, you will be in a lost eternity.
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With no recourse to salvation. You had the opportunity, but you passed it up.
Here tonight we want to impress upon you the importance of NOWA simple word spells now and God says, behold now.
Is the accepted time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth.
Before the evil days come, when you say, well, I don't have any pleasure in these days.
You know, people, young people too, are getting so wrapped up with what's happening in the world around that.
They forget that which is important, even forgetting about their Creator, their God. I trust there's nobody like that in this hall here tonight. The Lord says come now and let us reason together.
Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like Crimson, they shall be as wool. Come now, don't wait. Tomorrow may be too late. Well, tonight I was thinking about the subject of salvation.
And of course, this includes the Savior, the Savior and salvation. And you know, we're seeing a little song with the boys and girls.
It goes something like this, the Bible's greatest message, salvation, which God planned. I'll tell you in the five phrases on the fingers of one hand. I have sinned, but God loves me, and in love Christ died for me. And if I but receive him, I know that I am saved. God's message of salvation is.
Simple.
Why? Because he wants all to be saved.
The men, the women, the boys and the girls.
The little ones that are only three years old, you know, we sing a little song. A little child of seven or even three or four can enter into heaven through Christ the open door for when the heart believeth on Christ the Son of God to send the soul receiveth salvation through his blood. So if you're 3 if you're.
You're.
Well, the song says little child is 7, three or four. I had a little girl say.
Before we sang the song, she put up her hand. She said, well, what about somebody that's five years old?
Can't they be saved? Oh yeah, sure. See it's like 34567 all the way up to.
Over 100 years old, I don't know, a hundred, 15180. I think I saw somebody actually lived to about 115 or 18 recently. That sounds like a long time, but in the light of eternity, it's just a little short time, very short time.
So this little sun.
It says.
On the first finger, well, that's a thumb. Well, I guess you could call it a finger, can you?
Anyway, I have sinned.
And that's where we need to begin, dear ones.
To be willing to acknowledge.
I am a Sinner.
That really mean it, You know Pharaoh, he said I have sinned. Saul, first king of Israel, he said I have sinned. Judas said I have sinned.
But you know what?
What they said wasn't worth a straw. I'll tell you why your heart wasn't right.
There was no repentance towards God.
And that's what God looks for. He looks for repentance.
Repentance. And what is it? Repentance, I believe, is a willingness to take sides with God against myself, to acknowledge that God is right and I am wrong. There's a lot of people in the world tonight.
That they go their own way.
They think their own thoughts.
And when you bring before them the word of God.
They tell you to buzz off.
They're not interested. They got a better way, but Scripture says there's a way that seems right.
00:15:05
Onto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death now as I look around this hall here tonight.
I like to think.
That there isn't one person sitting on a seat here tonight.
That is resisting.
The Word of God with respect to our condition as sinners, because God makes it so very plain in His Word what our condition is. Let me turn to one portion. It's found in Psalm 14, and this is repeated elsewhere in the Scripture, but it's so plain, simple words that a child can understand.
What's being said here?
In Psalm 14.
Let's just read this.
It says in verse 2.
The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men.
To see if there were.
Any.
That did understand and seek God.
So God's looking down.
On the children of men, and it doesn't matter what age.
We are all children of men.
He's looking at each and every individual in the world. Now, today, I believe there's 7 billion people in the world.
God looks down, He sees it tells us that all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.
The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.
But what does it tell us here when the Lord looked down and says in verse 3?
They are all gone aside. They are all together become filthy. There is none that doeth good. No, not one. And Mr. Darby at the little word there, the word even.
Not even one. Isn't that amazing? There wasn't one person on the face of this planet.
That God could find delight in because all had sinned.
This is the word of God.
The wisest man that ever lived, I believe, apart from the Lord Jesus himself. His name was Solomon.
He said there's not a just man.
In all the earth that does good and sins not. That's the wisdom of Solomon.
He turned over to Isaiah chapter one. It speaks there about how.
The head is sick.
In the hardest faint, and from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head, there are wounds and bruises and putrefying sores that have not been mollified.
The whole.
Individual.
Sick, infected. It's sin, and sin is awful in the sight of God.
Because God is a thrice holy God, He is of two pure eyes than to behold evil, and He cannot look on iniquity. Not even one sin is going to be allowed in His happy home in heaven. You know, one sin spoiled the Garden of Eden, and it was a very nice place.
God formed Adam out of the dust of the ground.
And then he made a helpmeet for Adam.
From his side he took a rib and he formed a woman. Now we got the man and the woman, and they're in this beautiful garden.
Flowers blooming, no doubt. Trees loaded with fruit, Plenty to eat.
And God says to Adam and Eve, you can eat of any tree in this garden, except for one tree.
00:20:04
Just one tree.
And that's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Now, I'm not telling you something new here tonight, but you know, we need to reflect.
On what God appreciates.
And we find that in the garden.
There was another individual.
Satan.
The devil, the deceiver, the serpent, there he is. He approaches the heath, and he questions what God has said.
And God said, when you eat it, that fruit, you're going to surely die. And Satan says to Eve, you shall not.
Surely die so just the opposite.
In fact, he told Eve that.
To eat of this fruit would make a person a God. Well, you know Eve, she listened to the serpent.
And she took of the fruit and she ate the fruit.
In that scene, that's acting in independence of God.
And right in the middle of the word sin is a big eye.
And right at the start of the word independent is a big I.
I can think of another word that has a big eye in it is the word pride. Pride. And that's what sin is itself will doing my own thing because that's what I want to do, regardless of whether it's offensive to God.
Well, you know that sin.
How awful it was and referred to as the flaw.
And what a fall. And we find that sin comes in and God is separated from.
His creature that he had made and.
In fact, I believe the garden was spoiled.
Because of that scene.
You know we have a.
A balloon. I see it at the house.
And it's a very nice balloon.
And it's the number one, that's what it's.
Shape of A1.
Big silver balloon, it's very nice to look at.
And bring it down to the ground. It just goes right back up to the ceiling.
Is quite a sight.
To see but.
What would it take to spoil that balloon?
What would it take?
Well, I'm thinking about something that has a very tiny point on it.
And we call it a pin.
If I was to take a pin and just touch that balloon.
It may not pop.
But probably 10 minutes later, it's gonna look pretty.
Crummy, laying there on the floor, deflated. Just a little pinprick spoils a very nice Object. And you know it only took one sin to spoil God's fair creation. And you know it tells us that by one man's sin or disobedience, sin came into the world.
And death by sin. And so death is passed upon all men, because all have sinned and come short.
Of the glorious God.
I think it was Mr. Darby, he said something to this effect, that one sin in the sight of the holy God is worse than 10,000 sins put together.
Would be in your sight or mine. And then I think he went so far as to say all the sins congregated into one sin. All the sins of the world congregated into one sin.
00:25:01
Once insight of God would be worse than all those sins.
See, we don't see things from God's perspective and.
We need to look at the Word of God because if we're going to think our own thoughts, we're going to get into big trouble. We need to go to the Scripture to see what is truth. We had it spoken of today as absolutes.
And that's what you find in the scriptures. You find facts. You can trust this book.
And thank God for that. It's impossible for God to lie.
It tells us that more than once.
Now there's other places where we could find out that all have sinned. You turn over to the New Testament.
And it tells us in Romans 323 there is no difference, for all is sin.
And come short of the glory of God. So that's.
What we need to acknowledge.
My phone rings. Hello.
Wally, can you tell me how to get to your house?
Oh, John.
Where are you, John? John wants to know how to get to my house.
John says.
I don't have a clue.
What am I going to say to John?
John needs to know where he's at before I can be of assistance to him, and I believe that's so important today we find.
That people don't realize how bad they really are.
And as a popular preacher.
And I'm not going to mention his name because.
I heard him say this, but he might have changed his message because just recently I heard maybe he's telling it the way it is. But you know, he said when asked, well, why don't you preach about sin? Why don't you tell people?
The fact that they're sinners, well, he says, people are already so beat up on.
Dad, I'd really rather try to make him feel good.
Well, I wanna tell you something, dear ones.
Pardon me for saying this. Or maybe I shouldn't ask for pardon.
But I'd like to beat up on you tonight that you might realize your need of salvation because you're so bad. So bad. That was the case with me.
So bad. The wonderful thing is.
That God loves.
You and me.
And that's the second finger. I have sinned, but God loves me now. He hates my.
See. But he loves me. He loves the Sinner.
There was a bootlegger. He was rolling this big huge barrel full of gin down the road.
And he rolled it right back, a group of people that were standing there and you know, one of these individuals was a believer and he ran after him, he said.
Sir, I'd like to tell you about the Savior.
And this man, this bootlegger said.
I don't think he'd be interested in me.
And this other Christian man, he said to him.
Sir, God loves you, but he hates your business. That's what he said.
There once tonight, I want to tell you something.
On the strength of God's Word, so many scriptures we could turn to.
I got a paper here.
This is what we're passing out today.
See this paper right here.
It's a beautiful invitation.
Just what it says. Coming here again, the heartwarming story of God's love in sending his Son into this world to die for sinners. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Could you think of a better verse than to put on a gospel invitation?
00:30:07
25 words.
The first part of the verse.
Is about God, second part is about you and me.
The first part.
Tells us that God loved and love is a noun.
But it's also a verb.
And God manifests his love by sending his Son.
Into the world.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. God loves. God gives. Now the second part of the verse.
Whosoever believeth in him.
Should not perish, but have everlasting life. Now that's you and me.
Do you see your name in that word? Whosoever you ought to, whosoever takes in.
The 7 billion people that live in this world today. Whosoever the hymn writer put it. Whosoever though meant for everybody, mostly meant for me. I like that because God wants to make this a very personal issue.
You know we don't go into heaven.
Clasping.
Our elbows and going in as it drove.
I don't think of it that way. We go in one by one.
You know, it tells us in Matthew Chapter 7 that there is the White gate.
And there's the Broadway.
And many are going in that gate, but then there's a straight gate in a narrow way.
And tells us there's a few that are going in there, but you know, you got to go in through that gate one at a time. Who is the gate? It's Jesus, the Lord Jesus said I am the door.
How simple can you get? I am the door and then he says I am the way now.
You want to go to heaven?
You want to have eternal life?
You want to have a happy forever, You got to go through the door, come to the door and go through it.
That means come to Jesus and put your faith in Him, and He is the door.
And he is the way you know Judas got so close to the door.
Judas Iscariot, It's been said that he.
Kissed the door, but he then entered in. How sad. And there are many in the world today in the same category. They are close.
But they have never.
Put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. I talked to man on Friday. I asked him. I said he was a professional.
In the medical field. And I said to him.
Were you raised in a Christian home?
He says I was raised in a church going home.
So he could see the difference between.
A Christian and a churchgoer.
Now what I'm trying to say is this Many people are going to church on a regular basis, but they're not saved because they have never acknowledged their sin. They have never repented.
And they have never accepted God's.
Offers salvation through his Son the Lord Jesus Christ. Now let's see this finger here #3.
In love, Christ died for me. Think of it there once tonight, the love of Christ, that he would be willing to go to the cross. And our brother was Speaking of it here this afternoon. He touched his heart to touch my heart to think of what the Lord Jesus was willing to do on your behalf in mine.
That we might enjoy his companionship for eternity.
You know, in order to have you and me, the Lord Jesus, he sold everything.
00:35:01
Everything he gave it, it tells us the Son of God loved me and he gave himself for me now.
What do we have to pay in order to enjoy Christ?
Zero.
He offers himself to you and to me as a free gift.
He paid the price, the supreme price, with his own precious blood at the cross of Calvary. We sang in this hymn.
Shedding his blood for my ransom, it just brought to mind.
South of Palmyra.
South of Pittsfield, ME.
We're picking up children and I saw a monument.
And he stopped and had a look at it.
And it was about a soldier and his name was Corporal Good Blood. His name was Good Blood. And you know, on that monument it told how this.
Brave man.
Defended a position.
Against overwhelming odds.
Long enough that his buddies could retreat to a safe place.
And when the battle was over, they came. And they found.
Corporal Goodblatt.
Laying on the ground.
Covered in blood.
Here's a man.
He paid the supreme price. He made the utmost sacrifice for his buddies because he loved them.
And he shed his blood.
In order that they might.
Live not there once tonight.
It tells us that Christ suffered as we had today, the jacks for the unjust, in order to bring us to God.
And it tells us in Romans, I'll just turn over to this. I I see your time is almost gone, but Romans chapter 5, Romans 5.
Well, let's read from verse 5.
Let's read from the, uh, the second line of the verse.
Romans 5 four, I'm sorry, 55 second line.
The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost.
Which is given unto us. For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet perventure for a good man. Some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Not when we were good, not when we were righteous, not when we were showing some attention.
Or loyalty to God, but when we were sinners.
God's love.
Rested upon us because that's His nature. And you know God sent his Son.
And the Lord Jesus came into this world in order to display the heart of the Father to you and to me.
The Lord Jesus could say he that believeth on me believeth not on me, but on him that sent me.
He that seeth me seeth him that sent me. So the Son was the perfect expression of the Father, the Lord Jesus could say.
Over in John chapter 14.
When one of his disciples said, Show us the Father.
The Lord Jesus said, have I been so long time with you, you not knowing me?
See that she is me. See if the father.
You know, it's wonderful to realize that God manifests himself in this world, in the person of His Son.
****.
He was a perfect expression of the Father. No man has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son that dwells in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.
00:40:00
So God recommends his love toward us, dear ones, and Christ died for us. He shed his blood. Verse 9. Much more than being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath.
Through Him. For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more.
Being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life, and not only so, but we also joy.
In God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received.
The Atonement.
So God presents to you tonight salvation through His Son.
And he is not only a complete savior, he is an exclusive savior. No savior beside him. Acts 412. Neither is there salvation in any other. There's none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. This is the name of Jesus.
God has highly exalted His Son.
And.
God's desire is that you and I, we would honor Him too.
Tells us that God beloved the Son, He's committed all things into his hands.
He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, but he that believeth not the Son shall not see life.
But the wrath of God abides on him.
It's, I believe, the worst sin that can be committed, and there's many sins.
The worst is to reject.
The Son of God, God's own dear Son.
God the Father does not appreciate that.
That's why at the end of that verse it says the wrath of God abides on him.
The Lord Jesus in this world so perfectly fulfilled.
The will of his father.
He could say, I do always those things that please the Father. He glorified God here in this world. In His thoughts, His words, his deeds, all was in perfect harmony with the Father. And God evaluates you and me based on our attitude towards His Son Jesus Christ. I ask you here tonight.
What think he of?
Christ, your eternal destiny hinges on how you answer that question.
Now #4.
If I but receive him.
Receiving Christ, we had reference to that today. What does that mean? Well, we don't have time, but if we were to turn to John chapter one, verse 12.
It says as many as received him to them gave he the power or the privilege.
For the right to become the sons of God, even to those that believe on his name.
Now to receive the Lord Jesus simply means to welcome Him.
You know he invites you to come to him. He says come unto me. He wants to receive you. But the question is, do you want to receive Him?
Now if you reject the Lord Jesus.
You will.
Die in your sins.
Or.
Shall I say it this way?
If Jesus would come tonight.
And give the shout and you're left here sitting on one of these chairs.
Well, everybody else disappears in a split second and you're still sitting on the chair.
Why are you there sitting on your chair? Because you haven't accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior. You haven't put your faith, your confidence in the Lord Jesus. You haven't received Him.
You haven't believed on him.
And you're left behind. You know, I used to think about that and it struck terror into my soul to think that I might be left behind. But now I look forward to the Lord's coming. And I noticed in the last chapter of the Bible, the Lord says, surely I come quickly. But the response is Even so come, Lord Jesus, it isn't come quickly, Lord Jesus. I don't think we should be praying, Dad. I don't think so because.
When he comes, the door of mercy is shut.
00:45:04
And no more opportunity to be saved. And God's desire is that all should be saved. That's why it keeps the door open.
For you to come in if you're still in your sins, I think every day that we are left here, it only magnifies the grace of God.
Who desires that all should come to repentance now the last finger. I know that I am saved. We could turn over to 1St John 5. Not going to turn there.
I just ran out of time.
But it says.
These things have I written unto you, that believe on the name of the Son of God, that you may know.
That you have eternal life.
That you may know that you have eternal life.
There was a night If you don't know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have eternal life, you can't be truly happy. You can't have peace in your soul. God's desire is that you would know it and enjoy it.
So here tonight, if you're still in your sins, you have opportunity to be saved. The message of the Gospel is so very simple.
But be willing to take sides with God against yourself. It's a happy path.
And don't forget the little 5 phrases.
I have sinned, but God loves me and in love Christ died for me, and if I but receive him, I know that I am saved. The Lord Jesus on the cross gave himself, suffered for our sins, took the punishment, and then his blood was shed. He was put into the tomb, but he rose again the third day and today Jesus lives.
And he's coming again.
Are you looking forward to his coming?
Perhaps tonight, maybe we could just sing in closing one verse of this number. Uh, 8 #8 shall we gather at His coming?
#8 the first verse in course.
I'll be honest.
See what I don't say?
If you come on during the last season for glory and glory of God.
They were in this breaking cloud and it's gone in airplanes by the training and government.
50th anniversary of 911 back in.
1968 I believe it was, they set a lot of number 911, emergency number. It was referred to as the lifeline to public safety.
And here, 50 years later, it's being used every day, many times during the day.
And night the lifeline to public safety. Now for you and me, I'd like to think that our lifeline to eternal safety is not 911, it's 10/13.
Romans 10/13 Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord.
Shall be saved.
Here tonight as we pray, if you're on your seat in your sins, simply call upon the name of the Lord. Ask Him to save you, to wash your sins away.
And you will go out of this hall.
Cleansed.
Redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, washed whiter than snow.
And what a wonderful feeling that is to be washed and to be at peace with the holy God and know that I'm part of his family, He's my father. And to know too, that when Jesus comes.
00:50:03
For if I die, I will go to be with him on high. Let's pray.
Father, we just thank You for opportunity this night to present the way of salvation. We know it originated in Thy heart of love even before the world began.
As we often sing, all the love that true salvation's plan, all the grace that brought it down.
To men, O the mighty gulf that God disbanded, Calvary, we thank Thee, Lord Jesus, that at the cross Thou wouldst in love lay down thy life to save the lives of us. And we just rejoice tonight in the riches of Thy grace and Thy kindness to us. But we earnestly pray for any in this company and around us, perhaps at work.
Or at school, those who come in contact with without a clue.
As to their eternal destiny, we do pray very specially that Thou will give us the courage to live for Thee and to speak a word when thou just give opportunity, that many more might close in with thine offer of salvation while there is still time. So we ask and give thanks.
For all Thy kindness, our Father, and Thy love and the privilege of being together during these two days, we just thank you so very much the precious and worthy name of the Lord Jesus, Amen.
God Loves You
Children—Andy Buchanan
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I'm gonna have I have something up here. We're gonna use a lot today and today I'm gonna you can get them at the store, but they're not called this. But today we're gonna call them encourage mints and.
I'm going to share this with anybody that wants to come on up here and, and we're gonna do some things today and we're gonna use encouragements. And in fact, if you don't mind, I'm gonna have one too because, well, just because I get nervous too. So I'm gonna have an encouragement and if anybody else wants to come up.
In fact, you know, I'm just glad you guys could come so.
You know, I had a, a professor in, in school, they like to give out candy during class and, and they said that, you know, it helps. Oh, you're welcome. He, he, they said that, umm, it helps, uh, focus, you get a little bit of sugar and helps you listen so.
Sounds like a good idea to me. All right, so let's start with some singing. Does anybody have a song I'd like to like to sing this morning?
If you don't use the same sheets at home, the children's songs are on the back. But you know what, All the songs in here are really good. So, and if there's another song that you like to sing that's maybe not in this book, you know, just tell us what it is and we'll see if we can work it out. They may have a song they want to sing.
Let's see.
You know the song, I was thinking maybe we could sing it twice today. Maybe. How about if we started off with Wide, Wide as the ocean at just just the chorus? That helps us to stretch a little bit and, uh, like to talk about that a little bit anyway, so let's sing wide. Wide is the ocean. I think we all know it.
Uh, bringing sales meeting?
Inquirer. Oh, that's good. OK.
Any other song? What would you like to sing this morning?
It's wonderful to sing about the Lord Jesus and His love. He loves us very much.
And I have more encouragements if you need them.
29 Thank you.
A ruler wanted to give us by an hour into our sins no way out of each other and burned the standard daytime Sir, It works through the unplanned.
Give mom beautiful, one of my goddesses.
Is it gonna be a good one? I don't know. I'm feeling more hard and I get it. Feuding by anything more than I can't get it by. Barely. Never sleep. Carry on to the sea. To hear my heart healing all of my life again.
He should come down there and I can't give some words. So, so lonely under five years of the Lord and blessed not this mercy to you being married.
Before when I get.
All the night careless.
00:05:18
35600 godren. I barely barely hang out until the security. You're irritable.
From the mouth again.
OK, who else has a song?
Oh, OK, 4343.
One and yeah, it's not a darker too. It's high and I'll die on waste. I never hear you. But no, I'm only blind. And yet I decide I stood. I am on the end by a great side of you.
That's a really nice song and I'm I'm glad we could sing that this morning. I'm on the inside. On which side are you? It's a good question.
OK, who has another one? You know what? Oh, good. All right, Number six.
Shine.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Go ahead and play my life again the most.
In the night, in the night, in the world, water shall rain.
Appreciate him and my father.
'S grilling of the grave.
Yard.
I, I I I don't think.
You're over there for a long time, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. It's raining, right?
Umm.
I can.
Because my life where one swell rain.
And every night will alone be much pride in his Lord alone.
00:10:15
Well, I'm glad we sang that song too, but there are three words in that song that we sang several times that we're going to talk about in a little bit. So that's that's good. We'll get there. But the three words.
God is love. Just a few letters.
This short words and they're wonderful words. I'm glad we can sing that song. OK, who else has a a song we'd like to sing today?
Who else? And if you don't see the one you're looking for in the sheet, we can OK.
#39.
What a friendly happened to me?
All our sins and great sickness.
Who are not pray for us relationship and breathe.
And bring his name to God. Impressive. Oh my. Excuse me up and for your family.
Oh God, please do it now, again, every day.
Every day to God in prayer.
I really thought of them.
His son's Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. And it's crossed. Well, I think it's what I never had to do fully so I can have a better opinion. This is.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now the blood, everything's right and everything.
And we find yourself friends. So Faye falls for the Lord of the railroads on the road to Cherry and everyone he didn't hear.
My son's daughter every week.
Taking to the Lord in prayer.
And there's a lot of water in prayer.
Do you like Francis by tortillas?
Of water and bread.
And bread with him's eyes, till they can change the rhythm of the beast.
Thou wilt find the stone.
OK.
You know what, some of you kids came in after I explained what these mints are. I'm calling them encouragements because, uh, sometimes it takes a little extra courage to sit in the front row or to say something, maybe say your verse or answer a question at a conference. And so I, I just want everybody to, uh, feel welcome up here in the front row. And so I'm gonna share these minutes. I see this young lady just came in. Would you like?
You can have a minute.
OK, who else has a song? We can still sing another song or two here.
I think I see a hand up in the very back there.
Does Emily have a song she likes to sing?
47.
00:15:27
Umm, he will have No, he's going to have another bike jumps on the water hill. See, you know, all the same one called the prized one. Give us and give him a lot of the stars of one morning in his frying from the Dorking.
There's no shining his giving me pride and can't start hidden from.
OK.
Able to stop right there for a minute.
You know what I think what we wanna do next is just to ask the Lord Jesus to help us today. We need lots of help, and he loves to help us. And so we're just gonna ask, we're just gonna stop singing for a minute and we're gonna ask Lord Jesus if he would help us with the Sunday school, the children's meeting this morning.
Dealer Jesus, thank you so much for your great love. How much you love each one that's sitting here this morning. We just thank you for that, Lord Jesus. And so we bow before you and ask for help with this meeting. We pray that.
Each one of us might hear and take in more of your love and we just pray for a message from yourself, Lord Jesus.
We pray too for help for the kids as a, perhaps a verse if they want to. And so we just ask for help with that too. And, uh, just thank you for this little time together and thank you for your by, for the word, for, for the Bible that tells of your love. And so we pray this in your name, Lord Jesus, Amen.
Now I see there are several kids here today that are from this meeting and I see a couple kids here from where I go to meeting. I happen to meet my girls and either I see some other kids. I'm not sure exactly where you go to meeting. And but the reason why I say that is I can almost guarantee that I'm gonna do something that's different than what you're used to. And I hope you'll just bear with me as we have.
A little time here together. This is the children's meeting though, so this is a time for you and so.
We wanna give you an opportunity, if you'd like to, to say a verse now.
I've got these encouragements here, and if you'll be willing to SH to share a verse, especially if you're willing to share in the microphone so everybody can see it, I'm glad to give out some more of these mints. Does anybody want to go first? Anybody have a verse they'd really like to share with everybody? Any volunteers?
I don't bite.
Anybody. Oh good, we gotta volunteer down here so we can get it.
OK.
John, 1513.
That the Sunday school paper verse.
Just out of the word greater, greater love has no man than this, than a man lay down his life for his friends. That's fantastic. Thank you very much. And and you know what? Since you have the courage to go 1St and Speaking of microphone, take a couple there. OK. All right. Does anybody else have a verse that you'd like to share? Oh, good. OK.
Jan 1513.
Greater love has no men in this that remain. Lay down his life for his friends.
00:20:04
That is excellent. Thank you very much. Does anybody else have wanna say a verse? No pressure here. It's just if you want to I see some hands down here, we'll go down this side.
John, 13 Fort.
Is it the Sunday school paper verse this week? Greater love that one. OK, Greater love. Greater love.
Hi, Snowman.
Then this.
Sign in.
Lay down his life for his friends. Oh, that's good. Thank you. There you go. Now did I see another hand down here? OK. Greater love.
Has.
Any no man.
Zendesk.
Then that man.
Laid down his life.
For his friends. Very good, thank you. Anybody else? Do we have any other takers?
Everybody shy.
OK, greater love has no better this than badly doubt his wife for his friends draw thir 5030 good thank you.
Anybody else?
OK.
I wanna read part of a verse that was I believe the first verse read in this conference. There was a prayer meeting Friday night and I didn't even have this particular verse on my heart to talk about today.
But when we read this verse, I thought, wow, that's it. That's exactly.
That's what I'm thinking of. It happens to be in the book of Psalms chapter 27.
And I'm just going to read part of verse four and I may be just skip some parts in here, but but that's all right. This is Psalm 27 four. It says one thing have I desired of the Lord?
That will I seek after.
To behold the beauty of the Lord.
To behold the beauty of the Lord. By the way, you guys all did a good job on your memory versus this morning.
I'm glad.
And I look around the room and I see boys and girls that probably.
Learn Bible verses at home too, not just for the conference and.
I don't know, but I I think that maybe at your house your mommy and daddy read the Bible to you.
And you talk about Jesus at your house probably isn't that wonderful? And I'm so glad for that.
But today I wanna just focus on those 3 little words that we talked about while we were singing God is love. Oh, I love that. It's so wonderful. You know, I was thinking about that. How many people like birthday presents? By the way? Anybody ever had a birthday present that they liked? They're kind of happy to get a birthday present.
I have.
I love that it's fun to get a birthday present, isn't it?
But if I could have something today, that would be even better than the best birthday present I've ever had.
You know what it would be?
I want each one of you while you're sitting in your seat right here to really.
Think about the really God loves me. He loves you while you're sitting right there in your seat. It's so wonderful If I could have just something to be better in a birthday present is that when you wake up in the morning, you'd say, oh, so glad that God loves me. And before you go to bed at night, you think, oh, that was maybe it was a hard day.
00:25:03
Maybe I had some hard things happen. That's OK, because God loves me. Each one of you can say that as you're sitting in your seat. It's so wonderful.
It's so wonderful and we have lots of verses in the Bible that tell us that.
And I'm so glad that we learn our verses and we go to Sunday school and mom and dad, they read the Bible for us. And I just want to make sure that each one of us understands and just takes it in. It's good for me. God loves you and you and you and you and you.
And this you and you right on down the road, each one as you're sitting here, you can just.
Thank God.
Loves me, and it's so wonderful to be able to think about it for myself and to just realize that he's a person. The Lord Jesus is a man.
You know, we go our lives and you know, we think, oh, I wish that I could have been one of those children that sat on the Lord Jesus lap. Has anybody ever man that would have been pretty neat to be able to sit on his on his knee. We read about that happening in the Bible and he put his his hands on some kids on their heads. Wouldn't wouldn't that be wonderful when and but we can't do that today, but he's a real man.
And we can talk to him today and we can listen to what he has to say to us.
So that's what we wanna talk about today. We wanna talk about how that God loves us, each one of us. He loves me and he loves you while you're sitting right there. And that's that's what we wanna talk about now.
I'm going to do a little experiment here and I'm wondering if there are.
I prefer this to be girls that would do this. Are there 2 girls that would be willing to volunteer for an experiment? I need somebody that's good at math and uh, something is good at sitting still.
And so I'm wondering if there's two girls that'd be willing to volunteer and I see one hand down here, is anybody else, any other girls be willing to just help me out here just for a few minutes?
Good. Now you're Courtney. Right now, Courtney, are you good at math? Are you good at sitting still?
Good at sitting still, all right? And Ellie's good at math. So what I need Courtney for you to do is just, I want you to come sit right here.
Alright, and and remember they'll be encouragements for this, so we'll we'll do that. So Ellie, what I need you to do, I want you to come up here.
Just real quick here.
Uh, I'm just gonna talk, but if you would just, umm, count her hair while we're doing this, OK, That's your job. I want you to just see how many hair she has.
And so here we have a verse I would like to to read. It's in Luke's Gospel, chapter 12.
By the way, girls, I know it's impossible, so you can sit down. It's all right.
But it's a, it's a real lesson. I want us to really think about that. Courtney, you have a lot of beautiful hair, but there's a lot of it. And I think I could probably let Ellie do that all day long and she'd have a hard time coming up with the right answer.
All right, Luke's Gospel, chapter 12.
We'll start reading. Actually, I'm going to read 2 verses here, and we're going to start with verse 6.
Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings? 2 farthings is just just a really small amount of money, really cheap.
Aren't two sparrows cheap? And not one of them is forgotten before God? So God doesn't he. He doesn't forget even a tiny little bird. We've had some tiny little birds at our house that fell out of a nest and Ellie had fun trying to trying to help them out.
But God didn't forget about those little birds when they fell out. But anyway, it says.
But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Your hairs are all numbered now. That's different than counting them.
00:30:09
He says your hairs are numbered.
Now sometimes we go to a store and we buy a, buy a product and it comes, it says on it some assembly required. And so we open, we get a home and we open up the box and we really hope it's got good directions and it'll say part number one attaches to part number two or something like this, right? Part number 17 plugs into part #43.
And so we come up with a product at the end of the day, hopefully.
That's numbering. Each one of those parts has its own number. Can you imagine that God has a number for each one of your hairs on your head?
I don't know which number I'm hold. I'm holding several right here. I don't know which number they are. God knows which numbers those are.
It's interesting, isn't it, that he has a number for each hair on our heads?
Now I was thinking about that.
You know, sometimes.
We is it. Has anybody ever had somebody just oh, I just can't. I want to get something that I there's something in mind and.
And you just can't stop thinking about it. You're really interested in something. I'll tell you an example. At our house, there was a young lady who was really interested in a puppy. And that meant that if there was an opportunity, why we'd look up, well, what kind of what breed of dog should we get? Or I wonder if this kind can handle the heat in Arizona.
Or I wonder if this kind is good with?
Kids.
So we're doing research and we'll look on the Internet and we'll see, try to find some information.
But that didn't lead to a puppy right away. But that's all you can think about is that thing that you want. And so you're researching it and you're checking it out. Has anybody ever, anybody else done that? I've done that. I'll raise my hand. Anybody else done that? No, nobody in the front row will admit to it. That's all right. I've done that. And you just think, oh, I, you know, that would be really cool if I could get that thing. And, and so I'd like to learn about it.
And try to learn as much about it before you get it, so that when you get it, you you're familiar with how it works and.
And whatever that thing is, you can make it, make it work, right, Right. You just, you just enjoy it. You just think you're really going to like it.
Of course, the problem is here in this world, things after we get them, they aren't as interesting. But that's not the point today. What are we talking about? God numbered your hair because he loves you and he wants to know about you, about me. And so he said, I'm gonna, I I'm so interested. I can't wait.
I can't wait for you.
To get to heaven, to be with me in heaven. I can't wait.
I know every single thing about you and I love you.
You know, sometimes I think, oh.
If somebody knew every single thing about me, they wouldn't love me very much.
But that's not how God is. God is love and He knows every single thing. He knows what you did last night and what you dreamed about. And he knows what you did last week, what you learned in school, what you were thinking about the last time you went to Sunday school. What did you learn about? When was the last time that you thought about the Lord Jesus? You know some of those things he writes down when we think about the Lord Jesus. Imagine this.
He writes it down in a book. Isn't that neat?
He loves us so much that he keeps track of that. He wants to know about what we're thinking about. He wants to know everything about you. And so he numbers our hairs.
You know, I was thinking about that a little bit though.
Sometimes we just.
We can know a lot about something. I don't really appreciate it or so.
How many of you just raise your hand up here in the front? How many of you know the difference between a square and a circle?
00:35:04
Now.
I'm going to ask you a question. Do you just like man, I can't wait till I find out the next thing about a square or a circle.
Does that keep you up at night thinking about squares and circles?
No comment? All right, How about somebody else? Does anybody else just love squares and circles and can't wait to learn the difference and appreciate them?
You know about squares and circles, don't you? Do you really think. Do you spend much time thinking about it? Do you? Well, I think. OK, that's good answer. All right. Who else? Anybody else? I saw you put your hand up. Do you spend a lot of time thinking about squares? Yeah, I have to admit I don't really either. I think I can tell the difference between them usually and. And. And really, that's enough for me now. I. Yes, you'll learn about them later on in school and there's some important.
Things and so on. But but you can know all about squares and circles and I think there are probably some people that study those squares and those circles.
For a long time and they learn lots of math about it, and they enjoy drawing special math problems.
Find the area of a circle or circumference or or this kind of thing. And that's important. We have to know how to do that, but.
We don't really. At the end of the day, we don't really care that much about squares and circles.
So I think it's fair to say, at least in a simple way, that we can know a lot about squares and circles, and it really doesn't. We really don't care, right?
Oh my, God knows a lot about you and He really, really cares. Oh, that's what I want to share over and over today. We're just going to keep saying it. God loves you and He loves me. He really cares and He really knows every little thing about you, and He loves you and He wants you to be in heaven.
You know, I'm going to read a little bit of a a verse in Song of Solomon.
You know what, this is a verse and then we can read it a lot of different ways, but for today we're going to read it that this is the Lord Jesus and He's talking to you. We're in chapter 2, Song of Solomon chapter 2 and verse 14.
And the first thing he says is, Oh my dove. He calls us a dove. Now, doves we think of as being.
Nice birds with their loving and so we can think of that Lord Jesus calls us a dove in the cleft of the rock and the secret places of the stairs. Now this is the part I'm thinking about right here. This is the Lord Jesus talking to you and to me this morning. He says, let me see thy.
Countenance. Oh, that's a big word.
We'll talk about what that means.
Countenance, do you mind if I just read this a little different? I'm gonna, I'm gonna paraphrase what this is saying. This is the Lord Jesus talking to you this morning, he says.
Let me see your face.
Let me hear your voice.
For sweet is your voice and your face is comely nice looking.
He wants to see our face, He wants to hear our voice because he loves us.
Oh, I wanna lose my notes.
OK.
Isn't that amazing?
Now I look here this morning and everybody's got their nice clothes on today and we.
Recently bathed and hairs nice and combed. Everybody looks real nice today.
But you know what? That verse is also there in the Bible after we've been playing outside and.
Maybe we get in a fight.
Get a few scratches, get some bruises. Maybe we haven't been talking very nice to our.
00:40:04
Friends.
Family, whomever.
It still says that the Lord Jesus still wants to see our face and to hear our voice.
Isn't that neat?
Why, why, Why does he want to hear my voice? Why does he want to see my face?
Because he loves me. Because he loves you.
Well, we just have a few minutes left. I want to do another experiment here.
You know, recently I was talking to some other children and we talked about how big things are. We ever talk about how big something was to our friends. And so we use our hands a lot, don't we? And so I want us to use our hands.
And.
How many of us how? Show me your hands how big. Using your hands, how big is your heart? Show me how big your heart is.
Anybody have any idea how big your heart is? Any ideas? I saw a little circle here. Is that is that your guess or you're just OK? It's a good guess. How about we gotta not sure, OK?
Well, we have a doctor.
Here, and hopefully I'm not overstepping my bounds to say I believe that our heart is this big.
Is that OK to say that, Mister Frost?
Pretty good. That's close enough. We'll say that's close enough if you ever want to know how big your heart is supposed to be, or about how big it is.
You make a fist and you know that's probably about how big your heart is.
We're going to jump ahead. How big is a whale's heart? Any ideas? Show me with your hands. Show me with your hands. How big is it? We got a fist here. OK. Going to be a lot bigger because it's OK. This is what I was looking for right here.
Those arms out there, that's good.
I think it's something like the size of a car and 1300 lbs is what I remember right? What I remember, but this is what I was looking for this big.
OK.
Why? Why am I looking for that? Well, that's a good question. So. Oh, wait.
Let's see who answered questions. I forgot I'm I'm behind on this, so we'll, we'll do that later. Yeah. Afterwards, if you answer the question, you can get a why are we looking for the arms out like this? Sometimes we use that when you talk about.
Uh, a fish that we caught is that big, or maybe it's this big or maybe it's this big. It's real big. Sometimes we do that.
But I like to ask.
Kids, how big something is and so when you're describing a house or a car, that's all you can do that that's the extent of how you can show with your hands. All you can do is stretch your hands out because it's bigger than that, isn't it? And I think it's kind of like saying it's just super huge, right? It's really, really big and so.
You know what that makes me think of?
That makes me think about the very person who we've been talking about today, the very one who knows how many hairs are on your head, the very one who knows what we've been doing and and what we've been learning in Sunday school. The Lord Jesus Christ had his hands out like that when he was on the cross. And we've been learning yesterday and we've been learning all our lives how much the Lord loves us so that he would.
And die on the cross for you. And I remember somebody telling me, I remember the first time I heard somebody say.
That if that's what it took for the Lord Jesus, if if he had to come back and die again just for you, he'd do it now. I'm so glad to say that that work is all done. We don't have to worry about that doing that again. But that's how much he loves you that he would die on the cross again if that's.
What He had to do, He would do it because He loves you so much and He wants you in heaven with Him. And so as he was there on the cross, his arms were open up like that. And I just think of that verse.
That the Lord Jesus said, he said, come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I'll give you rest. Come to me. I want you. I love you. I want you to come to me today.
And that's why we sang that song at the beginning. We sang why? Why does the ocean just get to stretch your arms out wide? But it talks about God's love for us. And so maybe we can sing that. Well, I guess we're out of time, so we won't sing it again.
00:45:13
But he's pleading with you today. If you haven't come to him, come to him today and just say, Lord Jesus, I'm so glad you love me. Will you please? I, I, I just want you to come into my heart.
But I also want you because I think there's a lot of boys and girls up here that no Lord Jesus as Savior, I just want you to go home realizing how much He loves us, that he's a real man, that He really cares what happens to you. There's gonna be bad things that happen in life, but he really cares about them and about you and what you're going through. You know, there's a verse in the Bible that tells us that he takes our tears and puts them in a bottle.
Kind of an interesting thought, isn't it? Ever been sad enough to cry? I have.
Lord Jesus cares about that too.
And he loves us. OK, well time is up, so let's just thank the Lord Jesus for how much He loves us.
Lord Jesus, we just bow as we think about your tremendous love for us. Thank you for dying on the cross because you love us. Thank you for the Bible that you shared it with us because you love us and you want each one of us to be in heaven with you, and we just thank you for that.
And so we just pray for each boy and each girl in this room, and we just pray that you would help each one of us to hear your love to us today is thank you and your precious name, Lord Jesus, Amen.
God's Work with Jonah
Open—Phil Fournier
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 see #43 is the appendix that.
Your back.
Lost 20% of the benefits and that that that's good.
Like it was a loved one that 1.
Can't breathe and give us the time I and when my God loved him without calling my name so I may pray his name and play firmly and draw on.
Any trust in his time and he didn't even play any of these issues.
Before work be done by grace.
For reaching me and training again.
Father to see how you finished.
OK.
And rattling.
Let's ask the Lord's help.
Blessed God, our Father.
We do thank thee for the blessed privilege that we have this morning to meditate upon my beloved son.
To think about that one who sold all that he had was rich and became poor.
He emptied himself.
And now as we open my ward this afternoon, our God, we do pray thou. It's feed our souls. Tell us more about the Lord Jesus. Give us more of Christ.
We ask this in the precious worthy name of the Lord Jesus. Amen. Amen.
It's just read a verse in John chapter 13. John's Gospel, chapter 13.
OK.
And just verse 8, John 13 and verse eight, Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.
Well, I was thinking about.
The work of God that our brother Bruce talked about yesterday afternoon and one of those works we I think we've been taking up in Hebrews chapter 12 regarding his work in our souls to bring us into fellowship with himself. And I don't, I wanna try and keep this short in order to give opportunity to someone else to have a word.
00:05:07
So what I have on my heart is.
Jonah and Jonah can be taken up. The short book 4 chapters can be taken up in a number of different ways.
But I have enjoyed it in this way, in that in the book of Jonah we find a man who was out of the train of God's thoughts and he resisted it. He didn't want to be in the train of God's thoughts, and yet God in a gentle, tender and loving way.
Way brings Jonah along to see things his way. God wanted to share his thoughts concerning the heathen.
But Jonah, but he didn't have the same opinion and he resisted it. And the way in which God brings him to, to see things clearly is, is so touching. Uh, but before we go to Jonah, let's go to these first. Keynes might be second.
Let's try Second Kings first.
I'll find it and then I'll tell you where it's at. I think I can find it here. Yeah. Second King's 14 new the position on the page, but I don't remember that reference. Second Kings chapter 14 and we get here, I think the only other mention of the prophet Jonah outside of in the book of Jonah. And we we get a little insight, I think into Jonas and to Jonas thinking and what God had used him for prior to sending him to the Gentile city.
The Assyrian city of the Ninevites and.
Verse 23 to get the connection, in the 15th year of Amazon, the son of Joash king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel, began to reign in Samaria, and reign 40 and one years. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord. He departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nevad, who made Israel the sin. Now notice this is so remarkable.
He restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath under the Sea of the Plain.
According to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah.
The son of Amitai the prophet, which was of Gath Heber Heifer. For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter, for there was not any shut up, nor any left, nor any helper for Israel. And the Lord said not that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, but he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash. So this was, as far as we know, the only other message that Jonah had ever carried.
And it was to his own people.
And he carried it gladly. And it was a message of deliverance and a blessing. And they didn't deserve it. They weren't any better than the Ninevites. They were just as idolatrous, just as wicked. And God saw their affliction, and he sent Jonah to them with a message of deliverance. And they were saved by the hand of an idolatrous, idolatrous and wicked king.
And God delivered it because he saw their flesh. So now let's turn to the book of Jonah.
And umm, once again I'm going to try and go through this.
Ezekiel, Daniel. Hosea, Joel Amos.
Jonah.
And we're just gonna, just gonna pick a few verses out of this and, uh, try and read the 4th chapter in its entirety. Umm, but chapter one, first Jonah, chapter one and verse one. Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Amitai, saying arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it for their wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee.
Under charsish from the presence of the Lord and we'll go down to verse.
Nine And he said unto them, That's the Mariners in the in the little boat. I am in Hebrew, and I fear the Lord. That's Jehovah, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea in the dry land. Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and set on him. Why hast thou done this?
For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them.
Verse 17 Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish 3 days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed under the Lord as God out of the fish's Bale belly. Well, just for introductory sake, we find here that he gets a message and we find out in chapter 4 his motivation.
00:10:06
But God said to him, go to the city of Nineveh and cry against it.
And Jonah said in his heart.
I don't wanna go there. Those are wicked enemy people of God. And I know what God got in his mind, and I'm not gonna do it. And we find that this this, this stubbornness that was in the profit. Jonah is so remarkable because what he said to those Mariners.
They recognized this man knows the true God.
And they said, why hast thou done this? When they heard what he done, he fled from the presence of the Lord. He told them that, you know, this isn't repentance on the part of Jonah. He feels bad because he's brought other people into trouble. And so he tells them the story. And his thought, his only thought is death, Throw me into the ocean. That'll take care of the problem. It's me, it's my fault. I know that for my sake, this campus has come upon you. And so they didn't want to, but they did eventually threw them into the water.
And the fish swallowed Jonah and he was in there and I'm gonna say this thing, I can't exactly back it up with, uh, other than what I read here in Scripture. But it looks to me like he held out for three days in the valley of the fish before he prayed. He was determined he was not going to turn to God because he didn't want to do what God had sent him to do. And so he, he 3 days and then he prayed. And you know, it's a marvelous prayer and we, we enjoy Jonah in that.
Like you know, Jonah was thrown into the water in disobedience. The Lord Jesus went to the cross in perfect obedience. Jonah's life was given that the Mariners lives might be saved.
But Jonah didn't die. He was delivered from death. The Lord Jesus went into death. He truly died. He went into that dark place that our brother Bruce was telling us about, that deep, that deep hole in the ground. And in the in the second chapter we get, I believe prophetically, the sufferings of the Lord Jesus In the dark hours of Calvary, I went down to the bottoms of the mountains. The weeds were wrapped about my head.
It's profound language. We think of the sufferings of Christ that we cannot enter into those.
Propitiatory sufferings that he had in the, in the hours of darkness. And so Jonah in a, in a ironic and remarkable way, in his stubbornness and his rebellion becomes a type of the Lord Jesus, though of course a defective one, uh, because of what we've just said, that the Lord Jesus went in perfect obedience, a contrast rather than a comparison. And so Jonah is eventually.
Vomited out on the dry land and he's the Lord says go to Nineveh. He hadn't changed his mind and so Jonah goes.
And he preaches and his message has no word of mercy and nothing about repentance. It's only judgment in the third chapter and the fourth verse. And Jonah began entering the city, a day's journey. And he cried and said, yet 40 days, and none of us shall be overthrown.
What was in that of any mercy, Of any deliverance?
Jonah knew it was there, not the clear gospel that you and I enjoy and what we had last night, but still there was hidden in that a message because if you look down to verse.
9 This is the king that said this, he says, Who can tell if God will turn and repent and turn away his fierce anger that would perish not You know who could tell? Jonah.
He wasn't about to tell him, but he could, he could have, he had seen what God had done for well, rebellious and wicked Israel in their deliverance. And he knew this Gentile nation was no different. God was the same God. And so let's read in chapter 4 this, uh, tragic and yet instructive story, but it displeased Joan exceedingly. And he was very angry. And he prayed unto the Lord and said, I pray the O Lord was not.
This my saying, I didn't say this out loud, This was in his heart when he fled, when I was yet in my country. Therefore I fled before under Tarshish. For I knew that dauer a gracious God, Mer and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness and repentance thee of the evil. Oh, could we see a more beautiful explanation in the Old Testament of the character of God.
You and I know that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.
00:15:04
Jonah didn't know that, but he did know an awful lot about God, enough that he didn't want to go to the city of Nineveh any preaching whatsoever. Because why 40 days? Why not destroy them today or tomorrow?
Oh, he knew what was in the heart of God, but he didn't share it. But you know.
That is the work of God in our hearts today.
To bring us into conformity with the thoughts of God, thoughts of God concerning the loss, the thoughts of God concerning his people, the thoughts of God concerning all things. That's what he's doing. That's his work in US today, and that was his work in Jonah. He's going to take this rebellious profit and make him see things God's way. He knew it, what God was like. And so when the king said, who can tell? Well, Jonah could have told him, but he didn't want to.
Now before we read the rest of this, let's just go to 2nd Kings chapter 5 because I wanna point out something I think is so remarkable.
Because here we find a little girl who had the thoughts of God.
She understood God's heart.
And she didn't have it easy and she wasn't treated well by the heathen.
These are Syrians rather than Assyrians, but the same people, enemies of the people of God. And I think you know what I'm going to read here, but chapter chapter 5, Second Kings 5 and verse two. And the Syrians had gone out by companies and brought away captive out of the land of Israel, a little made and she waited on Naaman's wife, and she said under her mistress would God my Lord, we're with the prophet that is in Samaria.
For he would recover him of his leprosy. This girl shared God's thoughts concerning the heathen.
Why did she say that? How old was she? A little maid? I'd like to think that she was maybe 10 or 11, like the age of maybe Lilly, or rather umm, Ellie, Andy and Jenny's daughter Ellie.
This little girl, she says she's been taken out of her parents home, a slave made to serve the wife of the captain of the guard. These people that are enemies, the people of God. She says, I wish my Lord would go to the prophets in Samaria. He would recover him of his leprosy. She'd never seen that happen before. The Lord tells us in Luke chapter 4, there were many lepers in Israel in the days of Elijah.
Elijah the prophet, and none of them was cleanse. But Naam in the Syrian Nobody had ever seen that happen before, and this little girl knew.
She understood the heart of God and what He would do for a name in the Syrian. Jonah knew that too, but he didn't want to and so he resisted and he sulked and he and he was angry. Verse 3. Back to Jonah chapter 4 and verse 3.
Then said the Lord, do so well to the angry.
So Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth and sat under it in the shadow till he might see what would become of the city. I was hoping God would change his mind if he sulked enough.
That was a very strange attitude that God won't do that. You know, if you and I fuss, he's not gonna change his mind.
But he did something else then.
Verse six. And the Lord God prepared a gourd, and made it come up over the head of Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, and to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smoked a gourd, that it withered. And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared of eminent E wind. And the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, and he fainted, and he wished in himself to die, and said.
It is better for me to die than to live. And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry even unto death. Then said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou hast not labored, neither made a stick grow, which came up in a night, and perished in a night. 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.
00:20:02
You know, it's hardly requires comment.
But I just marvel at the patience of God with this petulant prophet who was so angry that he thought that if he soaked long enough, God would change his mind and destroy the city anyway. Even though he knew what God was like and he knew that he had determined that they had repented and he was going to spare that city from judgment at that time.
And that was not pleasing to Jonah. And so he's so very angry here. And he sits up there on that hillside and looks down at that city and just.
His temper is just boiling and the sun is boiling too. It's hot. And you know, we just went down the street here and looked at some pumpkins and this big giant leaves and big pumpkins growing there. But you know what? They were probably planted some time in the early summer maybe. And so they've had time to grow and get thick like that. This, this gourd was miraculously brought up by God in a day and it grew up there just.
Miraculously, and it was a I, I kind of imagine it like those pumpkin buns, except that it stood up.
And it, it was a shade over Jonah. And you know, when you're around grain trees and like that, it's, it's very comforting, especially out in the desert, there's moisture and, and oxygen and and shade. And so there he is enjoying that and says he was exceeding glad because of the gourd. And then along comes a worm and eats it and the wind blows and it blows over and the sun beats on his head. And now he's, he's angry on the death. And God says to him in that.
Kind and tender way. Doest thou well to be angry? And he answers. Yes, I do. Well, the angry even unto death. He is furious because that gourd has died and he doesn't have its comfort anymore. Oh, brother. And I don't think it's very hard to see what the parallel is. What was it that Jonah had sympathy with, that which ministered to his comforts?
He had pity on the guard because it made him feel better.
And when it was gone, he was and there was that city with 600,000 probably little children, doesn't say that specifically, but they didn't know their right hand from their left, supposedly. We asked the children that would maybe be five years and they start to know the right hand from their left. So children under the age of 5 or 600,000 of them, Jonah didn't think of thought about them. He was happy for God to destroy them.
How about the animals? Animals. Did God care for animals? Yes, and also much cattle.
Those were God's thoughts concerning that city. Jonah didn't share them. The God wanted them to share them. And so he gives them that beautiful little lesson on that hilltop that day. And you know, I was thinking is, uh, Andy was having his daughter try and count, uh, Courtney's hair. You know, your hairs are all numbered and about God's care for us individually. And here we see God is taking this man and you know, it's not a pleasant.
He's grumpy and he's mad. He's out of sorts. And can't you just hear the voice of God speaking to him? Doeth thou well to be angry? Do us thou well to be angry?
And he gives him an answer in the tenderest and kindness of words. You know, who wrote this book? Must have been Jonah. I don't know who else it would have been, could have been somebody else, but I think that's Jonah. And so he pens his own character right there for us to read and to appreciate and enjoy. And so that is my thought on the book of Jonah. It's real story and, and there's other things in there too. They're very wonderful and profound. Uh, but.
The story of God taking a man in the Old Testament and conforming him to his image, we might say He wanted him to think his thoughts concerning the children, concerning the cattle, concerning the city of Nineveh, concerning the heathen, concerning the wicked. God had done that with his own people, Israel, and he was happy for that, but not for the Assyrian. And yet God cared for the Assyrian. He cared for those children, He cared for those cattle, and he.
Jonah to think his thoughts and so I I believe that is what the work of God is is in our souls today. And so Peter says thou shall never wash my feet if I wash thee knot. Thou hast no part with me. You want to have part with the Lord. Do we want to share his thoughts? Do we want to have fellowship with him. Sometimes we're like Jonah and God asked to deal with us in his way. How wonderful though the patience and grace.
00:25:05
And kindness with which he deals with us, And how great our knowledge of God compared to that of Jonah. He knew that God was merciful and gracious, and kind, and repented him of the evil. But we know so much more. We have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God. Surely we have far more reason than.
To be conformed to the thoughts of God.
The Opened, Digged, Pierced Ear
Open—Bill Prost
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.
Well, I hesitate to get up again, but I trust it'll be of the Lord.
I was thinking about that verse in Isaiah 50 that our brother Ernie read for us this morning.
It talked about, Well, let's turn to it.
And then we'll mention it for a moment.
Isaiah 50.
And verse 4.
Well known verse that we have heard before, but very much connected in scripture with a couple of other verses.
The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned that I should know how to speak a word in season.
To him that is weary he wakeneth morning, by morning he wakeneth mine ear to hear, as the learned, the Lord hath opened my ear.
And I was not rebellious, neither turned away back.
This is no doubt, of course, a reference to the Lord Jesus during his earthly pathway.
Every morning his ear was open to hear what the Lord had to say.
And where did that pathway lead?
All verse gives us the answer. I gave my back to the smiters and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. I hid not my face from shame and spitting.
It began with His ministry to Israel in grace, presenting himself as the Messiah.
And as it says there in verse four, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary.
But it ended in rejection.
I want to talk a little for a few moments about the Lord Jesus as an example for us in this.
And we tread on holy ground here because as an example for us, God gives us that which in absolute perfection is beyond that which any of us can reach.
But here was one.
Who every morning when he got up, if we could say it with all reverence. And he was a real man.
With all of the thoughts and feelings, everything that a real man has.
Apart from sin, but every morning when he got up.
It was to listen to the voice of the Father by the Spirit of God.
What would you have me to do today?
I asked myself that question. I ask you that question in the presence of God when you and I get up in the morning. Yes, we have responsibilities and those of us that earn a living.
People sometimes ask me if I've retired, and I'm not sure how to answer that question. But the point is, if we earn a living in the secular sphere, there are certain things that we have to do, certain time frames that we have to be familiar with.
It becomes a routine, and that's right and proper. If we go to school, there's a certain time that we have to be there. There are certain assignments that have to be done, very definitely.
But above and beyond all that.
Am I before the Lord?
As to the fact that if I am a true believer and I trust all here are right down to the children and young people. Am I aware of the fact that God has left me in this world to be.
An ambassador for him and a living witness for him. It does not mean necessarily having something to say all the time, but it means that my life is lived with that ear continually open in order to listen.
But let us remember that that pathway of faith may lead where it let the Lord Jesus.
Here we find that the atoning sufferings are not mentioned, as they are not mentioned in Hebrews 12, the chapter that we have had before us. They will come later in Isaiah 53. But the atoning sufferings are not mentioned here, but rather what He endured at the hands of man. And if you and I are going to be a witness for Christ in this world, even the fact that we live for Him.
00:05:21
We are going to encounter the opposition of this world in one way or another.
It may not be as some of our brethren are experiencing, persecution, imprisonment, suffering even unto death. Yes, it's happening.
But God prepares for whatever He would have us to do.
But remember while reading how that the evangelist in the 1800s, Charles Spurgeon, was walking toward a place where he was to hold a gospel meeting, and a fellow believer who knew him fairly well fell into step with them. And as they walked along, this was somewhere in England, I believe, he suddenly said Spurgeon.
Would you have the grace?
To be burnt at the stake for the name of Christ, as many believers have in the past.
Kind of a tough question to be pitched at you out of the blue, isn't it?
The Spurgeon thought for a moment, and then he said well.
Right now, I don't know that I would.
But he went on to say that's not the kind of grace I need right now.
What I need right now is grace to preach the gospel in 20 minutes.
And that's the kind of grace I'm asking the Lord for.
Beautiful answer. He was looking to the Lord for the grace that was needed for what was before him, and the Lord gives the grace for whatever he says.
But where did this ear come from? Where did this ear come from?
Let's turn back to the 40th Psalm.
And I know this is familiar territory for many here, but I want to make a practical application of it for our hearts.
Psalm 40.
And verse 6.
This verse is repeated, as we know, with a minor variation in Hebrews 10.
But here it is in the Old Testament.
Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire.
Mine ears hast thou opened?
Burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required?
Then said I lo, I come in the volume of the book, it is written of Maine. I delight to do thy will, O my God, ye thy laws within my heart. If you look in the margin, at least in my margin, and I believe it's the same in the Darby translation, that word opened in reference to my ears could be translated, digged.
Digged.
What does that mean?
You know, if you want to put a post in the ground, you first of all have to dig a hole in which to put it.
And we speak with all reverence when the Lord Jesus came into this world.
In one sense, he had never had to have that ear before. It had to be digged.
We won't turn to it, but it's in Hebrews chapter 5 where it says.
Though he were a son, and the indefinite article there should be left out. It should read though he were son.
Yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered. He experienced, if we could say it, for the first time in an eternity.
What it was to be the perfect dependent man to be obedient.
I'm not old enough to remember it, but I understand, and I'm speaking now, perhaps for the moment as a Canadian, that our present Queen, Queen Elizabeth the Second, when she was, uh, in her early teens.
00:10:11
In the early part of the Second World War, she badly wanted to do something for the war effort.
She didn't want to sit there in the palace and enjoy all the comforts to which she was entitled as a Princess.
With her father as the king, she wanted to do something.
And so they arranged for her to work in an auto mechanic shop, and there she went, in a pair of coveralls, crawling under cars, getting her hands dirty with grease and all the rest of it working in engines and so on.
Learning how to do it.
And she learned for the first time to have someone give her orders. Now don't get me wrong, when she was a small girl and when she was growing up, she was no doubt under educators who taught her how to do things. And she was schooled in what was right and proper for a Princess who was growing up. But now she was in what you might call the real world.
And she had to learn what it was like to work in an auto mechanic shop with a foreman over her. And she voluntarily and willingly did it.
And was glad of the experience.
But here, the Lord Jesus, we speak with all reverence.
Allowed his ears to be digged by God the Father.
I say to your heart and mind to our ears sometimes have to be digged.
I don't want to be funny, but my right ear had to be digged.
About a week ago.
I had a very difficult time over in Romania because sometimes my allergens mess up my middle ears.
At least temporarily.
But this time it didn't go away the way it was supposed to. And when I got on the plane, it didn't go away. And when I got home, it didn't go away.
And I finally said to my wife Charlotte, I said this is not allergy.
There's got to be something plugging that right here.
So happening as I do to have an ear syringe at home, I schooled her in how to do it and I got her to syringe out that right ear.
And the gunk she got out of it surprised me. I didn't know it was there.
And back came my hearing. My ear needed to be digged. I wasn't hearing people very well. I was straining to hear.
My left ear wasn't too bad, but my right ear couldn't hear very much if anything.
You know, sometimes morally and spiritually our ears need to be digged, don't we? Because we get them full of gunk and the gunk as the things of this world that comes along, so that we are not hearing the Lord's voice.
I don't need to elaborate on that because I have been guilty of it.
There is a lot of gift among those gathered to the Lord's name, and we are thankful for it.
Would God more of it were used? There's a lot of energy among many gathered to the Lord's name.
Would God more of it were being used? Oh, you say I don't know what to do. Perhaps I don't know where to go.
Rest assured that if you and I want to do that which is for the Lord, if we want to hear the Lord's voice morning by morning, and we want him to dig our ears.
He will do it and show us what he would have us to do.
But there is one more thing that happened to the Lord's ears, and for that we have to turn to Exodus 21.
Exodus 21.
Well known scripture and we won't take time to read the whole account.
We're familiar with it about the Hebrew servant.
Who after he had served six years, was free to go out for by himself, but because his master had given him a wife and he had had children by that wife, the wife and children belong to the master, and he would have to go out on his own. And what happens? Verse 5?
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And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife and my children.
I will not go out free.
Then his master shall bring him unto the judges. He shall also bring him to the door.
Or under the door post.
And his master shall bore his ear through with an all, and he shall serve him forever.
There is no question that in type this refers to the cross.
There was the ear of the Lord Jesus, as it were, bore through within all.
Why? Because he loves first of all his master. And notice the order there.
He doesn't say I love my wife, my children and my master. He says I love my master.
Lord Jesus primarily went to the cross in order to glorify God His Father.
And our brother Bruce brought that out yesterday in connection with propitiation.
Propitiation was Godward, without for the moment bringing you and me into the picture.
I love my Master, my wife and my children, and the Lord Jesus goes all the way to Calvary's cross in order.
What? That he might continue to be with that master, Speaking of God the Father, in order that he might be able to be with that wife, Speaking of the Church?
In order that he may be able to have children Speaking of you and me as individuals.
As the children of God.
And he becomes a servant forever. O the Lord Jesus will be a servant forever as a result of Calvary's cross.
But I want to make an application here and I trust it isn't misunderstood.
If I allow God to dig my ear.
And if I am ready to be?
Wakened morning by morning.
To hear what the Lord will have to say to me.
It may in that sense, as we've already had in Isaiah 50, lead to my ear being bored through with an awl.
It's basically the same thought, but carried one step further.
Recently I read the story of a man in China who eventually managed to escape not all that long ago, within the last 20 or 25 years.
And as he was in that situation in China.
He found that gradually, more and more persecution came his way.
And he said to his wife, you know, one of these days we may have. And he used the term we may have to learn prison theology.
Prison Theology.
Boa's wife said. I don't know whether I'm ready for that yet.
He said I don't know whether I am either, but we may have to learn it. The Lord gave him more time, but eventually the time came when the Lord allowed both of them to be put into prison. Not for a length, a long length of time, couple of months, but enough to give them a severe taste of what it was going to be like. Well, the end of the story was good. Eventually the event, eventually they have managed to escape.
Hong Kong, which at that time was still under British rule and then eventually managed to get over here to the United States.
Many of our dear brethren are finding their ear being bored through within all.
As we have in Hebrews 12, our chapter that we have had before us.
We cannot follow the Lord in His atoning sufferings, no.
But we may be called to follow him.
In the sufferings from the hand of man.
But you and I say it's not come to that in this country yet. No, it hasn't. But it is getting more and more difficult to live a godly life.
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How things will go as time goes on, we do not know.
But it is getting more and more difficult, and we cannot expect righteousness from an unrighteous world. As her brother used to say many years ago, the world that crucified the Lord Jesus will not stop at anything in antagonism to Him.
Let us be prepared for that and yet at the same time to recognize that having the ear board through with an awl can take many forms. It can take many different forms because the testing that you and I may go through may take different forms, but ultimately it will come down to effect. Are you and I prepared to be faithful to the Lord and faithful to His Word?
Under whatever circumstances He brings us into, He will give the grace for it if we look to Him.
And is it so I shall be light, thy son.
#18 in the back is this the grace which deep for me has one?
It looks to raise the tune.
Not the only one seeing it.
And if it's all, I shall be like my son.
Came on me and one of you took it away from.
We did. I'm sorry. I started again to.
And in the cold heart shall be like thy son.
It is great grace for your kid has more.
Whatever.
He called me on the call.
My love, my pride.
And drive above thine soul.
Hebrews 12:18-29
Reading
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172.
Teach us more, abide less ways, Thou holy Lamb of God, fixed and rudest in Thy grace as both my blood.
172.
Oh he, he starts more.
By his iron flame.
And I want to kill you. And he's crap.
I'm seeing the lighting praise.
And blah blah blah blah.
God and Father, we thankfully we've been called to eternal glory through Christ Jesus our Lord, and now we are all here before thee to tears without Mass for us to be.
Doors and followers of library with on our needs of thyself. We are dependent. We feel this and we thank you for this privilege. Now to consider.
With all my heart for her personal age, so we asked at what is considered this much power would be a help to us a little while we're left here. We asked in the name and for their glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Would it be OK to continue with the rest of Hebrews 12 Then?
Would verse 18 be about right?
Seafood 12, verse 18.
For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire neuron to blackness, and darkness, and Tempest.
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And the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words which voice say that heard entreated that the word should not be spoken to them anymore.
Or they could not endure that which was commanded.
And there's so much as a beast touched the mountain, it shall be stoned or thrust, thrust through with the dark.
And so terrible was the sight that Moses said I exceedingly fear and quake.
But ye are common to Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels.
Through the General Assembly and Church of the first born, which are written in heaven, And to God the Judge of all, and to the Spirit of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel.
See that you refuse, not him the speaketh.
First they escaped not who refused him that fake on earth much more Shall not we escape if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven?
Whose voice then shook the earth.
But now he has promised, saying yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.
And this word yet once more signifies the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.
Wherefore we, receiving a Kingdom which cannot be removed, be moved. Let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.
For our God is a consuming fire.
Early in an earlier meeting you gave us 3 examples where law and grace are brought together in Hebrews.
Did you give them to us again? I know you mentioned them last night to me and uh, I think it'd be good to bring him out again if you would, umm, the first one that I did in Hebrews chapter 2.
It says forth the word spoken by Angel was set back, and every transgression and disobedience received the just recompense of reward. How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?
Which had at first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him.
God also bearing witness, both with signs and wonders and with divers miracles, etcetera.
And then in.
Stop.
Chapter 10.
28.
He despised Moses law.
Died without mercy under two or three witnesses.
Of how much sore punishment suppose you, shall he be thought worthy, who has trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing, and hath done death by?
For we know him that hath said, vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord, And again the Lord shall judge his people. And then the last one we have read from verse 18 of chapter 12.
And that was the law given in all of its purity, wasn't it? It was not the law, which was later mingled with mercy and forgiveness, but the law and all of its.
Straighten.
And then we have.
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Mount Fiona, the city which he loved.
As exemplifying his rate, but I have a question regarding it.
That is in the 24th verse. And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that seeketh better things than that of Abel.
I wonder why that was not put at the head of the list.
It's much like in Peter.
Umm, can't post it first right now, but.
It it speaks to.
The blood of sprinkling is the last in the line too. Oh, the obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.
But there I think it's because of the work of.
God in our souls.
'Cause us to be obedient and.
With a blood meeting our need.
So I have that question.
Well, I don't have an immediate answer or any maybe someone else does.
The only thing that comes to mind is that of course the blood of Christ is the basis for everything and whether it's heavenly blessing, which is perhaps what is what is the dwelt on more in.
Verses 22 and 23, or whether it's the new covenant that eventually will be proclaimed to Israel, all of it rests on the finished work of Christ and on that precious blood.
But I don't know, maybe someone else has a comment on it.
The blood of the continent is the thing, isn't it? That goes throughout all Scripture, yes.
So here we have two mountains here at the end of the chapter, a mountain that speaks of law and a mountain that speaks of grace.
And here they're contrasted. In the Old Testament, of course, we know that Mount Sinai was the place where the law was given, and attending the giving of that law were all the demonstrations of God's holiness and power.
And I would suggest, at least in a general way, that it is given here to show that if man is going to invoke law, either as a means of being saved or as a rule of life, which is what the Galatians were doing, that man cannot. And I'm glad you brought that over. Man cannot, if we could say it this way, have a law that is diluted by mercy.
He must have it as it originally came from God. And then he faces what we have detailed here in these first few verses. He faces the entire wrath of God against sin, because even one infraction of the law makes me guilty of all.
But then when we come to the mount, Mount Zion, which of course speaks of grace, and the heavenly Jerusalem speaks of heavenly blessing which comes through Christ, then we have everything which is on the basis of grace. And so.
What happened under the law, and Israel agreed to that law, was going to be on the basis of one what man ought to be able to do.
For God. And of course, he was a complete failure.
What we have in grace is on the basis of what Christ has done. And so I believe the writer of Hebrews, again, probably Paul is through the Spirit drawing the sharp contrast here right at the end of his whole dissertation, if you like, on.
V.
Blessings and all that is ours in Christ.
Right at the end of it all, he draws with sharp contrast between what God gave at Mount Sinai and what he has now. For the believer in Christ, you know, is that, is that right or anything?
00:15:01
Do you think it's a coincidence that Exodus 21 That you read this afternoon comes immediately after Exodus 20? I just didn't have enjoyed that contrast that they're giving of the law and all of its condemnation upon man, and then the it's as though the Lord could not wait.
In picture it is set forth the servant. They would say, I love my master, my wife and my children I will not go after.
It's just too remarkable.
I must confess till I had not thought of that, but that's beautiful. Thank you.
They made themselves servants, all that the Lord had spoken when we did.
That was a terrible thing to do. They had enjoyed the grace of God from the coming out of of the land until that moment. And then they said give us a law. We'll we'll be we'll be faithful servants on the Lord knew they would be faithful service, but he is quick to pronounce there will be one that'll be a faithful service and he will fulfill all my love.
The comments on Greg so we understand what it is. Grace has not thought overlooking sin and I think that often there is confusion as to that, that grace is God being kind to man and overlooking what He is by nature. But under law God looked for righteousness in man and found none.
Under grace, God says I will do it all.
And that's why the consequences in Hebrews 10 seem so dramatic.
Because if man refuses the grace of God, if man refuses what God has done through the Lord Jesus Christ, there is no hope for him. He has shut off his only, only hope of salvation. There is nothing after that to refuse the grace of God.
Leaves a person in a hopeless situation. So God in grace doesn't overlook sin. Instead he sent his son to as we had yesterday in the meeting that our brother Bruce gave. I want to repeat that meeting, go back and listen to it again. Settle the question of sin as far as God is concerned. He addresses as far as I am as an individual is concerned when I receive the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior. So never think of grace in the same sense as graciousness.
Grace, may and us lead to gracious behavior should, but the two are not the same and should never be confused.
Grace is not in any way compromise the righteousness of God.
In fact, God can fully display His righteousness in this present dispensation because of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done on the cross. He can be righteous in justifying, declaring the sin of righteousness in, yes, declaring Him to be righteous.
Just one other completely disconnected comment on this portion. It seems a little odd when you first read it says for year not coming to the mountain that might be touched, and then it goes on to say, well, they couldn't touch it. But there are two different thoughts in Judaism. Everything was you can touch it, you could see it, you could hear it. But what the Lord has been showing them in this epistle, if there's something beyond what you can touch and what you can hear and what you can feel, there's something better, something eternal.
Something heavenly. But that mount, actually, they couldn't touch it because if they touched it, they were thrust through.
You could be touched in the in that it was no object for faith. It was real physical. That was in a bird with fire. That was all true. It was a marvelous demonstration of God and His judgment. That wasn't something that we should have sought out after.
For all of this, as we said a moment ago that attended, the giving of the law was intended to display before man the majesty, the glory, and the holiness of God.
And it did have that effect, so that, as it says further down here in verse 21, even Moses, who, if we could say it this way, was on intimate terms with God, it tells us in the Psalms that He made known His acts unto Moses, put His ways under the children of Israel, or His ways unto Moses, but His acts under the children of Israel. Sorry.
00:20:05
And so Moses was on intimate terms with the Lord, But when all of that power and glory.
And all of that majesty were manifested in physical terms. Even Roses has to say I exceedingly fear and quaint. Why? Because Moses too had a sinful heart and he knew it. And that law being given showed man what he was, if we could say it reverently, what he was up against, if he was going to keep the law that God would give. And so when?
That law was given, it stands in its pure form, and man that says I will do something to earn my salvation is brought right back to that pure form of the law which could not be altered, could not be changed.
Now of course we know that man in the flesh can't do one thing to please God, but at the same time, this was something that was going to demonstrate clearly to men what he really was and what he was not capable of.
Just another comment I like and I we all do, so this is not a criticism in any way, but I'd like to establish things from the word of God. So why does science speak of Greeks? Is that just something that we came up with because it fits? The answer is no. If you look in Psalm 78 in verses 6C7 and 68 says. Moreover he refused to Tabernacle Joseph and chose not the tribe of Ephraim, but chose.
Tribe of Judah, the Mount Zion which he loved, His sovereign choice that he picked Mount Zion.
Wasn't anything from man's thought that merited God's favor towards that location. It was God's sovereign choice that he chose that location.
With your saying, Nick, that it was after Israel had signally very thing that that law said the people that failed the priesthood had failed the king that they desired had failed.
All had failed, and then God brings his man on the scene in the person with David, whom we know of course is a type of Christ. And as you say, it was God's choice to pick that place, Mount Zion, as the place of his throne.
There's no record, and I stand corrected on this, that Saul ever sat there and reigned. No, Saul didn't go there. He was elsewhere. But that's where God had placed his kingly throne, put his king on the throne, who of course we know is a type of the Lord Jesus Christ who will one day fill that throne in reality. And so Mount Zion is a type of the sovereign grace of God.
And of course here it says Mount Zion, and under the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.
Israel was used to an earthly Jerusalem, and of course, geographically Mount Zion was part of an earthly Jerusalem, but it speaks of that which is heavenly. And that's what you and I are looking for. That's what these Jewish believers were able to look for. Everything that they had down here was in the process of being destroyed. And later on, not too long after this book was written, we know that the Lord allowed the Roman general of Titus to come in and.
He didn't entirely destroy the city of Jerusalem, but he took captive many of the Jews there, massacred many others.
The temple was destroyed, although Titus didn't want it to be, but the Lord had said it would, and it was destroyed, and everything that Israel had is an earthly center was gone. And later on, among other Roman emperors, that city was so completely destroyed.
That it was actually broken down, as they did in those days. It was plowed right over, as if forget that there ever was a city here. And when it was rebuilt again, it was rebuilt not by Jews, but by Muslims.
And so the Lord allowed all of that to pass away, but in order that those who had come to Christ would realize that their portion was knocked down. Here it was that heavenly Jerusalem.
00:25:07
And then the wisdom of God. He allowed the first thing to play out, as it were.
1St that which is natural, afterward that which is spiritual, which is a different line of things, but the principle is very broad. And so we man says all that the Lord has spoken, we will do. And so off they go with a sad history of trying to earn God's favor by performance. And as you point out, in summary, after failure, after failure, after failure, then God comes in in grace and doesn't restore or.
Patch up or fix the thing that was broken brings something in far more glorious. And 2nd Corinthians 3, the apostle Paul compares the law in its in its majesty, its glory. It had a glory, but there's a glory that excels. And God rejoices, as we read in the first part of Ephesians, in the riches of his grace and in the glorious grace.
It's it's close, it's integral.
With the nature, the heart, and the light of God. Grace. With grace, the wonderful grace of God.
Someone has suggested that the Lord was outside the camp three times. The first one, the law was broken. Moses pitched the tent of beating outside the camp and afar off proved that they were ungodly. The second time in Ezekiel's day, when?
The glory departed. God gave them a system that they could have sacrifices and so on that they could maintain themselves supposedly, but it proved that they were without strength and the glory departed.
In Ezekiel's day, the third time was when they took the Lord of Glory, and they crucified him outside the gate.
Glory and the card is for the first time it proved that they were enemies.
The man's ruling was progressively shown out to be what it is.
Man uses the law today.
An attempt to establish his own righteousness by fulfilling the law.
But he's a miserable failure, and I believe that God gave man opportunity.
To demonstrate or to perform, give him the law, and God as it were, is passive, and he sits back and observes what man can do, if he can do anything. So man is active under the law, God is passing, but the performance is absolutely horrendous. Man under law is a total failure.
There's nothing beautiful about what he does, and God cannot appreciate this kind of a performance. So what does he do? He pulls this.
Screen or the drapes, you might say.
On that particular performance and now he takes the stage.
And he's the one that's F. And we sit back, we're passive. We see what God.
Does for the Sinner, for you and me, through his own dear Son. And what a beautiful performance it is. And we call it grace. It's all grace, so.
And said, you know that grace makes everything of Christ and nothing of man.
And I think it was Luther that said something to the effect that law terrifies.
But great justifies.
And when you look at this mountain that we're.
Reading about here, it is a terrifying scene.
To see.
The fire and the darkness and The Tempest, and the supernatural sound of a trumpet and a voice.
And so on and so forth. It's a terrifying.
Sight.
But when you come to Zion, on the other hand, it's that which is most attractive.
00:30:03
And how wonderful that God, by His grace, brings us into a place of favor, not based on our performance, but on His performance.
It's all of God.
And I suppose, Wally, without remark that you made about grace making everything of Christ and nothing of man. That's why going back under law is so popular, isn't it?
Man likes to be put under law. Man likes to have a line to tow. Now he doesn't want to stiff a line, but he wants to be able to do something. And that's why, sad to say, so much of Christianity has ended up putting itself in one way or another back under law. Because it gives man some place, some glory to man, and ultimately, of course, takes away from the glory that is due to Christ.
And his finished work. And so it's a very, very common thing, very, very easy thing for a man to fall into, isn't it? But God will have all the glory for himself and so put ourselves under law.
Is not the answer.
Uh, I can remember once.
And this is no reflection generally on the country I was in, but I was visiting with a man in a foreign country, a dear believer in Christ, who could not get his mind around the fact that once you were saved, you were never able to be lost again. And we went at it from Scripture one way and another, until finally he was forced to admit, well, yes, what you say is according to Scripture.
But he said that doctrine may work in North America, but it will never work here.
He said. You have no idea how badly people would behave if we didn't keep them a little bit scared and a little bit afraid of consequences, so they have to be a little bit concerned about what will happen to them in order to make them behave as Christians.
Phone What a misunderstanding of grace.
What a misunderstanding, as we've said in earlier meetings, that grace is the strongest force that properly understood to keep us from turning back to sin.
And what does that doctrine do? Ultimately it gives the glory to man that says I've kept myself, whereas this other person over here, he didn't keep himself. He sends and lost his salvation. But I didn't know it all must be of grace. And as Wally has said, this.
Whole bit that we have here on Mount Zion all flows so beautifully and so nicely from the finished work of Christ.
Romans 6 is the direct answer to that. Uh, Roman 61, uh what? What shall we say then? Shall we continue? And sin that grace be may abound, God forbid. And then down in verse 15, what then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace, God forbid.
And then Titus 211 for the grace of God that bringeth salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us and denying ungodliness and worldly lust. We shouldn't have certainly righteousness. Godly in this present world, not all that teaches us that it is great.
Grace is the power for holiness in my life.
And if I try to use that old tool of law, of holding myself to a standard, it will not work. That has been shown out in in the history of when God institutionalized this concept of blessing for performance. I'd like just to make this distinction. When we say law, you know, I think as Christians we think that because we have been brought into the light of Christianity through God's word, since the work of atonement has been accomplished, the Holy Spirit set down.
Somehow we think the law has disappeared. It's still out there, it's still in place. And I see Jews when I'm on the East Coast all the time, and I ache to try and find opportunity to speak with them in their acidic garb and everything else. But there are still people, millions of people still zealous for the law as God institutionalized it with that special elect nation. But when Christians turn to the principle of law in our day, as Bill was referring to.
It's a different thing. I think we may be confused, younger people, when we talk about grace versus law in this chapter yesterday, we're taking up the Mosaic Law and that's what's before us. But the principle of God is towards me in accordance with how I perform is the principle of legality and, and, and applying that to others is legality when I hold up a certain line and I look for an external level of performance.
00:35:27
In order that certain Christian privileges will be enjoyed. And it's a backwards and an unprofitable principle of things. And so that's what we, you and I are, are are tempted to fall back into. And the Galatians really had taken it and Paul has to reprove them severely. And the fruit of it in their life wasn't that they were starting to not shave the corners of their beard and putting ribbons of blue around their garments and all these mosaical.
Requirements, I don't think obviously wasn't there, but it was the principle of law that they were adapting. And what did it result in? Indifference to one another, fighting and devouring one another, not serving one another in love, umm, etcetera, etcetera. Just you can read the, the chapters five and six of Galatians, uh, to some extent are the proof of the legal principle carried out. And again, it's different than Mosaic law, but whether we're Jews or Gentiles, we all have the tendency.
When our hearts grow cold and we lose the sense of the grace of God in our lives, we lose the power to live out that life, as Hill was saying the other day, to be turned inside out so that our wonderful standing in Christ that cannot possibly be improved is lived out practically. And that's holiness in our lives. And grace is the power and, and, and, and tool for that. The law. You can, can never make that happen. It goes the opposite direction.
Sooner or later. So can you tell us, uh, who's, how is the, uh, useful?
As a standard for the behavior of man, the law as God put it out, you know, if you, when you're a kid, I don't know if they do it today, but they, uh, for some reason when I was in school as a kid, they teach you, they, everybody seems to think you need to learn mythology and all these crazy Greek fantasies, you know, and they have all these gods with all these frailties and all these tendencies. And, you know, even as a kid before I was saved, like, what is all this stuff?
But but God doesn't leave men to that. God says, OK, here's my standard, here's the way I want you to behave. I want you to be righteous towards one another. I want you to respect me as your creator and as your God. And I want and he lays out things which are which are accordance with the nature of God. You could say this, that the law always attaches to sin.
Roman's, uh, Romans chapter 3 and verse 19, it says, now we know that what things, whoever the law says that says to them who are under the law, then here's the purpose of why it says these things, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God.
That's all I'm saying. The law, umm, there's nothing wrong with the law, but the problem is that men cannot uphold it. In no way. And so God has acted in grace, and we can be so thankful for that.
Umm, but our brothers have been bringing out are mentioned in our own chapter. We read it in the previous reading meeting. It says, uh, make straight paths for your feet. We don't live a life to go for salvation. The reason why it says to make straight path to your feet here is that less that which is lame be turned out of the way and so on. It could be a testimony. It's not for our salvation. It's to be a testimony. But then there's another thing that's.
Uh, couple verses down it says, uh, without which no man shall see the Lord looking diligently if we.
Really excited the Lord in our walk here. We will fall through grace. It's absolutely certain. And so, umm, occupation with Christ has always been the answer. And, uh.
There's I listen to a meeting last week.
Given by Gordon Hay House and he talked about.
The love of Christ constrained us, he said. That's not.
It doesn't say the love of Christ can constrain us or will constrain us. It says that it does. It's a statement of fact. The love of Christ does constrain us. And he made the application if you have a magnet, you have a bunch of nails.
00:40:12
Sitting on a table over, there is still a fact to say that that magnet attracts nails. But if that magnet is not placed right next to those nails, it's not going to attract them. And so the next part of that burst which says for the love of Christ constrains it. It says for we don't judge for a Christ side full and we're all that dead.
And so if there's going to be any practical expression of Christ in our life, it's going to be because we realize that He died on the cross for us, and our hearts is going to be attracted to that precious One. It gave that loved me and gave Himself to me.
It's not, it's not simply to follow a set of rules, but it's complete faith that loved us and gave himself her up. So the law is that which really convicts at least you want to see, but there's no power in the law to save the plans from seeing. You know, it's been likened to a mirror. Now, if I don't have a mirror, I may not realize my face is dirty. I got smudges.
On my face. But if somebody gives me a mirror, I look into it. Now I see this much.
But there's no power in this mirror to do anything about this much. But that mirror is helping. It's useful, It shows me my problem. And I think that's really.
The ball is that which shows us that we got a problem and we might think that we're pretty good. I believe it was the Apostle Paul. You know, you went down to the commandments and said, well, I sent this one and that one and this one and that one and so on. But he comes to one commandment where it says, thou shalt not covet.
And that just level and he realized that he wasn't as good as he thought.
And you need outside help. And so it's wonderful that the grace of God comes in and meets us, you know, need through Christ and his finished work.
Perfectly fulfilled the need. Thank.
And if a believer allow the old sinful self to work, then I would suggest the law has an application to the believer. It condemns it, doesn't it? Now, of course, he's condemned, perhaps on a higher authority than that. But at the same time, if a believer allows the flexor, the law will condemn him for that, and we recognize that.
Uh, I've mentioned this story before, but it's a true story about a man in the.
Southern states who was a believer but who got away from the Lord and was convicted of stealing chickens and eventually ended up in court as a result of it. And the evidence was clear and there was no question about his guilt. But then the judge, as they sometimes do, said Sergio. Have anything to say to yourself before I pronounce sentence?
And the man stepped up and said, yes, your honor, I would just like you to know that, uh, it wasn't to really I that did it. It was the old man.
Well, it so happens the judge also was a believer who knew exactly what he was referring to and he said, yes Sir, He said I very much agree with you with that and because of that we are going to put the old man in jail.
Well.
The law, its power against a Christian because.
He let the old nature take his course. He let his sinful self run up against that which was not only the law of God, but the law of the state, municipality, whatever you want, where he lived. And the consequences were there. He couldn't let himself off the hook by blaming his old nature for the sin. And so, as Bruce says, the law is very definitely there, but the believer has died to it.
And to live in the good of that position is the is the important thing. And that's what we have here in this chapter. We are coming to Mount Zion to say again what was said about.
2nd Corinthians 5 and 14 It doesn't say the love of Christ should constrain us now, nor does it say here He should come unto Mount Zion and so on. We are come on your mouth, right? And so every exhortation that God gives us.
00:45:09
Is based on the position in which we are already in and what we already possessed. God says, I have brought you to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, to all of these things, and now.
You have the privilege of living up to it.
I think it's clear too, from, uh, what we have in Roman state, that, uh, if we walk in the power of the Spirit, it says that the righteousness of the law will be fulfilled in US.
Yeah, so although as believers we don't strive to keep the law, isn't it comforting to know that God is not going to be consistent with his own nature? And so as we are guided by the Holy Spirit, what's going to happen? We will both be fulfilling the righteousness of the law. I think that's beautiful to see that not that we strive to do that, but just to walk pleasing to the Lord and to allow the Spirit of God to guide us. That will be the result. God is faithful to his own nature.
So in the beginning of the chapter we had and and I want to frame a question here. We had looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of faith.
And the Spirit of God is encouraging us to look at that great example, what he went through, how he had the end in view, and how he achieved that and seated.
On the right hand of the majesty on high, seated on the Father's throne, He could have taken it even further out into the future. But he doesn't. He takes it just stops there. That's where the Lord Jesus is today as a man. He's not on his own throne, He's on his Father's throne.
It seems to me from Scripture, but that's sort of individual here. And I put this out as a question. He seems to be putting before these believers, the Longview saying don't have your Longview beam out Sinai and the law and that kind of thing. Have the Longview be this. And then he lists the series of of companies including angels.
Including the blood of Christ and all these these spheres of God's blessing based on the blood of Christ. I was trying to understand, I put that as a question is that why these two mountains are put before us in this in this book here?
What wasn't the danger of them turning back to what could be seen and so on? And eat cuts it off so that no resource to them.
Yes, and the whole thing is here is the precious blood of Christ, which.
Is really the basis of everything that we have here.
Uh, how could we come? How could God choose Mount Zion and bring David into the picture except by looking ahead to the one who would succeed David and on the basis of his finished work, God can act in sovereign grace. God, couldn't we say it reverently, even act in sovereign grace in the Old Testament, unless down the way there was going to be one who would come and deal with the question of sin.
And so it says here, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.
And the correction to our King James is rather needed here because the term General Assembly refers to the company of angels, not to the church. Have you got the Darby there, Bruce? How does it go? Just so we have it accurately.
Verse 22 and 23. Verse 22. But ye have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem.
And to myriads of angels, the universal gathering and the assembly of the first born who are registered in heaven, and so on. That's it.
And so it's this General Assembly of angels that we are brought to.
We don't want to go through this and dissected too much, but in the Old Testament, angels were viewed very, very highly. And anyone who had had an appearance from an Angel, wow, that was really something. And there's quite a bit said about angels in the book of Hebrews and about how the Lord Jesus has gone beyond angels and superseded them so that now angels have become what? The servants of you and of me.
00:50:04
Are they not ministering spirits? The same book here says.
Sent out on behalf of those and I am not quoting it accurately, or the heirs of salvation and to the Church of the first born, which are written in heaven. And then you might say the highest point. God the Judge of all.
And we might just say, and I don't want to go beyond what scripture says, but what is the end point?
When the Millennium is over and the eternal state comes in, First Corinthians 15 says that God may be All in all, and that is God not as God the Father, but as God in Trinity.
And so in one sense, while the end point is not developed here, I just suggest there's a hint of it here. To God, the Judge of all. But who is the judge, really?
Hasn't God committed all judgment under the sun? Yes, He has. So to me this is God in Trinity. And then we go to the spirits of just man made perfect. That is the Old Testament believers who are there in spirit, but who will get their glorified bodies when the Lord comes and that's referred to.
In the last verse of Chapter 11. And if God hath provided, having provided some better thing for us.
That they without us should not be made perfect.
Those dear Old Testament believers who died in faith will not have their glorified bodies until you and I as part of the Church.
R.
Come home and have our glorified bodies and then of course, the basis of it all, of Jesus, the mediator of the New Covenant.
And I don't want to go on too long, but just an important comment here.
Paul is very if it is Paul, and I believe it is, is very careful in the book of Hebrews when talking about the new covenant never to put the believer in Christ, in covenant relationship with God. Yes, we come into the good of the new covenant because there can only be one basis for blessing the finished work of Christ. But the new covenant is with Israel. Covenant are an earthly faith.
The church is a heavenly people. So this whole talk of covenant theology and all that sort of thing is a mistake right from, as we could say, the get go because it immediately brings the Church of God down to the level of an earthly company and puts them in covenant relationship with God. No such thing for the church. The church is a heavenly company. Their relationship with God is not a covenant one, although the basis for their blessings.
His received basis on which the new covenant and that is finished work with Christ and that's why it is brought in here and it's spoken about multiple times in Hebrews and we don't have time to go into it all.
But the author of Hebrews through the Spirit of God is very, very careful.
To go only so far in remarks about covenants and the first covenant, but never to indicate that the believer today and the Church is in covenant relationship with love.
Very clear from Hebrews 8 verse eight, it says I will make a new covenant, the House of Israel and with the House of Judah very explicit there two houses are presented. Anyway, covenant theologians get around it by making.
The church is right and This is why we then then then confusion just reigns up to that point.
Covenants are not the organizing principle with which to understand God's ways in Scriptures. Christ is. As you've been saying, Put Christ in the equation that all sells out and starts to make sense.
We enjoy all the blessings of the New Covenant, but we're not under it. In fact, you can contrast there the blessings that we enjoy with what we find at the end of Equals 8. The blessings that we enjoy. All the things that we have in Christ goes so far beyond what is described there in the papers day.
And so people get into difficulty in their minds by the simplistic thought that everything in the New Testament is about the church.
Matthew is about to, because Matthew is the first book in the New Testament. So is it all about the church?
00:55:01
But when you read the Old Testament prophecies, you realize that certain things had to happen to bring in and confirm and bring to pass the prophecies that were prophesied and independent upon the work of Christ, work of Christ. The facts of the of of of Christ life and death are in the New Testament and the securing of the blessing of Israel as as as as one of the of the Jews said Jesus.
That that he should die for that nation. Umm it's it's imperative just as as if someone chat what right do you have to be in heaven? Christ died for me and shed his blood. That's why I shall be in heaven.
And another nation next door from Jordan or Syria, what right to those people have to be investing because Christ died and he died for that nation and his death on Calvary's cross confirmed the promises and secures the promises in a future day that took place in in factually in the Gospels. And the confirmation of the old covenant being replaced by the new is taken up doctrinally in the New Testament, even though it doesn't directly apply to our particular blessing. So.
I found that helpful as a young believer to understand and, and it's just makes so much sense that the Spirit of God wouldn't wouldn't just leave everything hanging for the for the Jew who or, or for the new believer who had been a Jew or what about all of these traditions. So the Spirit of God double s back Romans 9 through 11 and other places to take it up carefully and and and and and intelligently to satisfy the conscience of a of a Jewish believer to, to understand.
Those future earthly blessings. So, but just because it's in the New Testament doesn't mean we need to start doing that amalgamation that the covenant theology tries to do. I feel sorry for them. So dear brothers that are twisted in their minds with this kind of thing, you wish to just back up and get more simple. Enjoy the blessing that we have proper to us.
There are very distinct companies named here, and in itself is an answer.
To these things the first adjustment made perfect is distinct from the Church of the first quarter. Good point. So there are various families in heaven. We have that back in Hebrews chapter 3 and in the King James it says upon the whole family in heaven and both his name. The new translation Davis translation says I think every family in the heavens on the earth. They're distinct companies. Very good.
So in the last few minutes, why do we have these serious warnings that at the end of this chapter, after all that we have had and as it were, come to that mountain peak of grace that the Lord has brought us to and Mount Zion and all these things. Why then the serious warnings that are in the last three or four verses here?
Well, I don't know if Bill is this is the answer, but I was just commenting to uh.
Him and Jan about the the fish that's out on the sidewalk out there.
The, there was a man who came into our place of business with, uh, or a repair job on his car and he handed my brother a business card. I'm on it. He had the fish. And so my brother said to him, are you a Christian? Well, that fish is really good for business. And I and I, you know, there were those here in this book who had been brought along.
Or at least there was a danger that they might have been brought along.
With that current of Christianity and associated with it, we find that over and over again through the book that they tasted as a heavenly gift. They've been made partakers of the Holy Spirit and they said, well, they must have been saved. No, they weren't.
But they had the fish on the business card, that is they benefited from Christianity and no real participation. So the word of warning in Hebrews consistently, how shall we escape if we neglect some great starvation, Uh, and it's apostasy that turns away because the blood of Abel, pride for judgment. And that's all that's left with man rejects the blood of Christ. The blood of sprinkling is the blood of Jesus.
That brings forgiveness, pardon the blood of Abel's, the voice of my brother, blood client from the ground. That is the other option. There's no other ground. There's not the fish on the business card. That brings me the benefits of Christianity without having Christ as my Savior at that point.
01:00:18
See that he refused, not in the street.
Well, I think that's excellent, Phil. And I feel that's really what is.
Before us here, because, as you say, there were those dear Jewish people who, having heard about Christianity, accepted it in an over way, and as you say, perhaps felt that it was a much easier lifestyle than being under law with all its restrictions. Peter could say in Acts 15, Why tempt you God, to put upon the necks of the brethren a yoke that neither we nor our fathers were able to bear?
Was a very hard deal to be under the law and well, I guess I'll be a Christian and I'll be free of all that. But how solemn to take that place outwardly without any reality inwardly. The only thing I would add, and I believe it's again.
A principle with God that very often God gives a warning which in its essence refers to unbelievers, but which is intended as a warning to believers too.
And I suggest there's something of that here as well.
Those who refused the voice of him that spake on earth, no doubt referring to Moses.
They, as it says here, they did not escape.
How much more if we refuse the voice of him that speaketh from heaven? Well, of course that was the gospel preached to Israel from a risen Christie glory. Now where they going to refuse it?
How serious, But how serious for a believer?
Who, in the words of verse 27, becomes taken up with things that can and will be shaken and neglect those things that are really going to react?
And so I suggest there's a warning here.
Because the 28th verse is clearly referring to believers.
And how should we serve in reverence and godly fear? Why? Because.
The tendencies in my own heart.
If I allow the old sinful self to act are no better than the old sinful self in an unbeliever, does that commend itself?
Scripture characterizes an act by its tendency and if I as a believer who am really destined to be in heaven with and like Christ.
Continue on a practical path morally.
Then God characterizes that path by the end that but for the grace of God, it would lead to I may get on Hwy. what is it 25 out here and be just heading up, you know, an hour or something or up to to house. But it might say, well, I'm on the road to Fort Collins or I'm on the road to Wyoming. Really I'm just going to get off at his place. But that's some of the language in the New Testament exhortations to us the end of those things Paul says in Romans his death.
What does that mean? As a believer, I'm going to.
Judged in the Lake of fire? No, but that's the that's.
Scripture characterizes an act by its tendency, and that's the tendency of that thing. If I if I am careless and I and I stumble my brother, which the scriptures call the work of God.
Are you going to make the weak brother perish, or is he really going to perish? Oh, he's a brother in Christ. My tendency is to stumble and put him down in that direction. So, and if you just put that in the back of your mind as you read through the New Testament, I think you'll see that principle things is often employed.
By the Spirit of God.
As we serve God acceptably with reverence to godly fears, instead of Esau that he.
Umm was a profane puss. And what does profane mean? Means to treat those things which are divine as if they're common. The word just means common, to treat them as a everyday thing. And as believers, we can do that in our lives too.
And we can treat the chest seismic of the Lord as being we can despise it. We can resent it. You know, the jobs fault in the end was not some secret sin that his friends thought that he had. His ultimate sin was that he justified himself at the expense of God. And so in a trial too, we can we can get angry with God. Why are you allowing this in my life?
01:05:23
This is not appropriate for a believer. It doesn't mean, as you said, that we're going to lose our salvation, but we'll lose sight of the Lord without which, as it says at the end of that verse, and it was brought out yesterday, just very briefly, which fall of peace with old man and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. As I pointed out, there are those that insist that this speaks of eternal things, our salvation. It's not the point here in this chapter. It's certainly true that without holiness we can't see the Lord. But in the beginning of the chapter.
It began with looking unto Jesus, the author and finish of our faith. And in fact earlier in the second chapter Hebrews it says umm, but we see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels and so forth.
Will lose sight of us if we despise the work of God in our in our lives and these these Jewish believers were as we've said, we're suffering persecution and they didn't know how to interpret it They were.
Floundering. Neither the word of encouragement. And they also needed a word of warning.
Connection with my new step brother Bill would be going too far to say that there's uh.
Statement Our God is a consuming fire would apply to believer and unbeliever alike that anything that is not of God is going to be burned up.
Our God is consuming fire.
I don't think so, because we get a similar expression, don't we? In 2nd Corinthians 5? We've got a minute or two and it wouldn't hurt to turn to it. I was going to remark on that, and I'm glad you brought it up.
In 2nd Corinthians 5 we have, I believe, that analogy hinted at because it says there in verse 10.
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, and of course that's for believers, that everyone may receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.
But then what does he say? Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men, Well, you and I will never in that sense know the terror of the Lord. That's what we preach in the gospel meeting. That's what our brother Wally talked about last night. The terror of the Lord is the awfulness of God's judgment. But if I had been brought into God's family, then what a serious thing deliberately to indulge in that.
Which eventually we'll have to feel the consuming fire from God because it was done in self will or in direct disobedience or whatever it might have been. So I don't think it's going too far to make that application at all.
One final comment that I was appreciating in verse 28.
In the midst of all these solemn warnings.
What is once again?
The power to serve God with reverence and God be fear.
Let us have grace.
God always ends if we could save on a positive note, doesn't He? He occupies our hearts with grace. Yes, we do need to be reminded that He's a consuming fire. We do need to be reminded about the seriousness of.
As Phil was bringing up taking an outward position without any inward reality, but.
The bottom line is that God is a God of grace who on the one hand will have all men to be saved and to come under the knowledge of the truth, and who would have you and me as believers to walk with a sense of grace.
That strongest power to keep us going after Christ.
He has made every provision heavenly for our pathway down here.
01:10:06
And we could sing it with him.
Pleasure of changing.
Uh.
One trust standing in the middle of the Friday may be I have a bronze child. Glorious, brilliant. Uh-huh. Uh huh. Uh. Would you give me a minute to tell the rain clamping?
Never end shall I have omitted stinking to him, staying with a man.
All the same time.
And I went to.
A lot of her dad and her while I was there and prayers blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Umm.
Also, perhaps the last two verses of #47.
Verses four and five of #47 we can sing it to the same cue.
Uh, uh, I'm great. It's very nice time.
On the word shall frown.
Through the past work and I'll see you today.
In the heavens Still haven't done the top Most of them.
As well.
Teasers are great.
Leprosy of Sin
Gospel—Josh Costron
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Well, good evening. Welcome to the Gospel meeting.
I'd like to open our gospel meeting tonight by singing hymn #26 on the hymn sheet. Hymn #26 if somebody could raise the tune please.
There is fire by the snow, Catholic crows if I won't carry a client by the tips alone and one of the things I don't have been said until the material of the word material.
The Dream.
No, no, no, no, no.
I'm trying to admire you and I'm dumb at that. Brilliant scene by one. There is life that is more than 40.
Eight in my life theatre S Greek Pennsylvania and smart prayers of the blood thou art coming for a night so.
Oh, I can hear him. Thank you. Please, I haven't got a father. Don't drink steel for him. Blood now can make me one bowl.
We are healed by his triumph in some words, and I have been forwarding.
By one there is life at this moment.
For the.
To our heart and declared.
There is my happiness moment for you.
Uh, taking when? Please join anything from Genevieve thousand points.
Loud, I'd like to speak to you. I'd like to see who's in.
Let's look up and ask for God's help.
00:05:03
Our God and our loving Father, we thank Thee tonight for another opportunity whereby we can proclaim the gospel of Thy grace, the good news of salvation to sinners, and we just would look to Thee for help and Thy blessing upon the Word.
We thank Thee for Thy love, for Thy goodness, Thy mercy and long-suffering to this lost and perishing world, and that thine arms are open towards anyone who would come and receive our Lord Jesus as their own personal Savior. Tonight we just ask Thee for blessing and look to Thee for help, and we do so. In the name of our Lord Jesus, we pray. Amen.
Well, as most of you know, this is obviously a gospel meeting. And gospel, as we are all well aware, means good news.
It's not a whole lot of good news today.
We don't have to go very far or look very far to find out that this world is hurting.
That there's not a whole lot of peace. Men's hearts are failing them for fear, and they're giving up.
They don't know where to turn.
And the problem with man today is that he is looking everywhere and anywhere but in the right direction.
And tonight our desire is to point you, dear friend.
Unto God, and more specifically towards our Lord Jesus Christ.
Because the gospel concerns his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
He is the one that you need, that this world needs.
And it's not a set of rules or obligations, Not a, umm, a religion.
But it's a person, and tonight it's our prayer that before you leave your this room tonight and get up out of that seat, if you don't know, our Lord Jesus is your own personal Savior. It's our desire that you would come to that saving faith in the person and work of himself.
A work that has been done for the glory of God at the cross 2000 years ago, and a work that has been done for you.
If you would only receive him.
And tonight I would like to look at a passage in scripture that we are very well familiar with. And I appreciated the message last night and where our brothers started from. And I would like to do the same. I would like to start.
With respect to where man is today.
Where he is, and I believe that's the proper launchpad, if you will, into the gospel message that we seek to proclaim tonight with the Lord's help.
I'd like to look at a passage in Luke's Gospel, chapter 5.
Luke's Gospel, Chapter 5.
I'd like to start in verse 12.
Luke 5 and verse 12 And it came to pass, when he was in a certain city, behold a man full of leprosy, who, seeing Jesus, fell on his face and besought him, saying Lord.
If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.
And he put forth his hand and touched him, saying, I will be thou clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him.
And he charged him to tell no man, but go and show thyself to the priest.
An offer for thy cleansing, according as Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.
But so much the more went their fame abroad of him, and great multitudes came together to hear.
And to be healed by Him of their infirmities.
And he withdrew himself into the wilderness and prayed. They came to pass on a certain day, as he was teaching, that there were Pharisees and doctors of the law.
Sitting by which were come out of every town of Galilee, in Judea and Jerusalem, and the power of the Lord was present to heal them.
The old man brought in a bed a man which was taken with a palsy.
And they saw it means to bring him in, and to lay him before him.
And when they could not find by what way they might bring him in because of the multitude, they went upon the housetop.
00:10:02
And let him down through the tiling with his couch into the midst before Jesus.
When he saw their faith, he said unto him, Men by sins are forgiven thee.
And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is this which speaketh blasphemies?
Who can forgive sins but God alone?
But when Jesus perceived their thoughts, the answering said unto them, What reason ye in your hearts?
Weather is easier to say thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say rise up and walk.
But that you may know, that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sins.
He said unto the sick of the palsy, I say unto thee, Arise and take up thy couch, and go into thine house.
And immediately he rose up before them, and took up that whereon he lay, and departed to his own house, glorifying God. They were all amazed, and they were, and they glorified God, and were filled with fear, saying.
We have seen strange things today.
Well, as I said.
This gives us a little picture of where man is.
Morally and spiritually in his soul today.
We find here a little picture of sin.
Those of us who are familiar with the Scriptures know that leprosy in the Bible is but a universal type of sin and evil. It's never spoken of in a positive way. It's never presented to us in Scripture as something that is good.
And what is so striking here is that we have a man that was a leper.
Man, that was a leopard.
What's very interesting to me is that how the Spirit of God portrays this.
He doesn't say, well, here's a man who was a leper and he had but a mild case of it, No. Or here's a man who is a leopard who had a moderate case of leprosy. No, but it was a man who was full of leprosy.
He was so full of it.
This is man. It is natural condition before God.
The first was quoted last night that the head is sick.
And the heart is faint, and from the sole of the foot unto the top of the head.
His wounds and bruises and putrefying sores.
This is man in his natural condition before God.
He is not good at all.
Romans 3 gives us a very apartment and distinct picture of what I'm Speaking of tonight. It says that there is none righteous. No, not one.
None righteous.
They are all gone out of the way.
They are all together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good. No, not one.
Not one.
God levels humanity.
And says that man in his best state is altogether vanity.
So light em up.
It's easy to cast stones, if you will, that those who are.
I'm.
The obvious sinners, if I could put it that way, in this world.
Those who have lived a rough lifestyle. Those who are, umm, pretty offensive.
But God says line them up.
Give me your best.
The righteous man, the wealthy, the intellect.
The Philanthropist.
All that man can produce is all vanity, and God says man in his best state is altogether vanity. The Lord Jesus said that out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts.
00:15:04
Adultery's, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness and evil eye, blasphemies, pride, foolishness, all these evil things come from within and they defile a man.
We are full of leprosy.
There is nothing that you and I can do to gain favor or merit with God.
It is not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy.
Mercy that he saves us.
This man.
Was full of leprosy and it says he.
Who seeing Jesus, and that's who we want to point to you point you to tonight, is the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lord Jesus, he says, Look unto me and be saved all the ends of the world.
For I am God, and there is none else.
It has been said that one look to Jesus saves the soul and every after look is the power of Christian living.
That's all you need, dear. 1:00 tonight.
Is a look of faith and repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
This man, he saw the Lord Jesus. He looked in the right direction.
And I said, as I said at the start of this meeting, men and women and boys and girls are looking everywhere but to the Lord for their answers.
They're trying to solve all their problems and they're trying to solve this issue that they have of leprosy, if you if, if you will.
This spiritual condition of wretchedness, and they're trying to remediate it.
And get themselves into a place where?
They are more acceptable to God.
Through various works, various things that they think will gain them some merit with God, it ain't gonna work.
If I could be so blunt, pardon my slang.
This man looked at Jesus and he fell on his knees and he said Lord.
That's the other thing that you need to do tonight, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
It's as easy as that. Our brother said the other night that the gospel is simple.
This is not a hard thing to do.
Is to look to our Lord Jesus.
To accept Him as your personal savior.
And to accept him as your Lord.
This man fell at his feet.
And he said, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.
I have no doubt that this man.
Knew that here was one that could help him.
Here was one that could help him.
Without the Lord Jesus, he was hopeless, and without Christ tonight, this world has no hope.
Has no hope.
The Lord Jesus and he says to the Lord Lord, if thou wilt.
I don't suppose she really knew the heart of God.
Do you know the heart of God tonight?
You know God is not an austere being. Speak reverently, one who is waiting to beat man down.
To trip him up.
To catch him.
In his, in the act, so to speak.
But God is a God of love.
He is a God of light.
And he is a God of love.
And God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
This man questioned the willingness of the Lord Jesus to heal him.
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The Lord did not hesitate one moment, did He?
He put forth his hand.
Touched him saying I will.
Be thou clean, and immediately the leprosy departed from him.
You know what happens just as fast as that.
Is when you put your faith and your trust in our Lord Jesus tonight.
That if you're sitting in your seat in your sins.
That look of faith.
Is enough to save you.
And God will cleanse you from all your sin.
The Lord Jesus wants to heal you tonight spiritually.
He wants to give you eternal life, which is in Himself.
Because you by nature, dear friend, are dead in trespasses and sins.
That's what we are before God.
Dead in trespasses and sins.
Man says let's go see life.
Let's live it up.
But all they're seeing is death.
Corruption.
There is life in a look at the crucified one. There is life at this moment for thee we sung tonight.
And we find here in verse 15 that the multitudes heard his fame of his fame.
And great multitudes came together to hear and to be healed by Him of their infirmities.
You see, the grace of God goes out to all.
Whosoever will.
Whosoever will may come, and the Lord Jesus, the gospel is open to all. The message goes out to everyone. Whosoever will may come.
It says in Revelation, in the Spirit and the Bride, say, Come, and let him that heareth say, Come, and let him that is athirst come, and whosoever will let him take with the water of life freely.
God is extending to you tonight.
Free salvation in the person of His beloved Son. Have you tasted the waters of this world and the broken cisterns of this world? Have you found that they do not satisfy?
It's true.
I've been there.
There's here, there's many here, I'm sure that have been there too.
To realize that the pleasures of sin are by first season and they don't last.
And you're left just as empty as when you started.
Then you go on to the next thing.
You realize that that doesn't satisfy either.
No, in his presence His fullness of joy and pleasure is forevermore.
Our Lord Jesus.
Is the answer.
And he is extending to humanity today the offer of salvation through faith in the person and work of himself.
The multitudes came, they thronged him, They took from our Lord Jesus.
All that could be given.
He healed the sick, he raised the dead, he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with him.
Where did it land our Lord Jesus?
He was taken by wicked hands, crucified and slain.
He was hung between 2 Thieves.
But the Lord Jesus, when he came into this world, knew what he was getting himself into, if I could speak that way.
He was on a mission.
He is God knew exactly.
Where the end of the road?
It's going to land him.
Who's going to land him on a cross?
Between 2 Thieves.
Rejected, despised and rejected of men.
And as bad as that was, he would undertake the work of redemption.
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That not one of us could have done.
It was said that he died for God, and that is true.
And that he died for men. And that is true as well, because God was so.
Outraged when it come when it comes to the question of sin.
That somebody had to answer for those sins.
And if somebody didn't come and answer for those sins that you and I have committed.
Then it would land you and me into a lost eternity with no hope of getting out.
Into a sinner's hell, there to pay for our sins for all of eternity.
In the Lake of Fire.
And God's heart of love.
His foreman.
And he sent his only begotten Son into this world to answer.
Percent and to answer for all the effects of sin in the universe.
There the Lord Jesus in three dark hours.
He paid the penalty in full.
At the end of that work, the Lord Jesus cries. It is finished.
And the veil in the temple that held man back from the presence of God was rent and twain from the top to the bottom.
And now free access is opened, so that sinners might come.
Well, here.
We have the multitudes coming.
Salvation is free.
But it wasn't cheap. It cost God his only begotten, begotten Son.
Where he sent him to the cross, and the Lord Jesus gave up his life freely.
As a sacrifice for sin.
It says here in verse 17 that the Pharisees and the doctors of the law were sitting by.
Which were come out of every town of Galilee, in Judea and Jerusalem, and the power of the Lord was present to heal them.
Interesting, isn't it?
That here sandwiched between a leper and one who is suffering from the palsy.
We have.
The cultured. The intellectuals of the day.
And the religious man?
It's as though it suggests to me that God says they need salvation too.
Again, man in his best state is altogether vanity.
And the power of the Lord.
Was present to heal them too.
Man might OfferUp his best.
But again, it's not good enough.
The Lord Jesus died for all.
He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
How about you tonight?
Have you accepted the Lord Jesus as your personal Savior?
Have you come to know him as your own? Do you have?
An understanding that you have a need.
You know in this same chapter it says that he came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
Why does he say that?
Well, I believe that's because man who doesn't feel his need has no use for the Savior.
But what we want to impress on you tonight is that you are a Sinner.
That you need salvation.
And that Jesus died for you, and that he loves you with an everlasting love.
Yes, the Pharisees and the doctors of the law, those who were the refined.
Of the day.
Were just as bad if not worse we find the Lord Jesus. How he speaks of the Pharisee later in Luke's gospel I can think of and he exposes.
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The folly that was hiding beneath the veil of righteousness that they carried about.
And the religious vanity and the veneer that they put on. And you know, that's one thing that we want to impress upon you tonight.
Is that God sees right down into your very heart.
That you cannot hide from God that all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.
He says, I the Lord, search the hearts, I try the reins. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it? I, the Lord, He says.
He knows it.
You can put on a very nice front.
You can say all the nice things, all the right things, have all the right answers.
You can recite your Sunday school verse. You can put on your Sunday best.
But God sees through it all.
And knows if you belong to him or not.
And so tonight we plead with you and ask you tonight to get real with God.
Pharisees thought they were pretty good.
Lord Jesus said that they were whited sepulchers and within were dead men's bones.
They made the outside of the cup clean.
But inside they were filthy.
God wants you to know this tonight.
He wants us to understand.
That we need him.
And here we find a man in verse 18 who is a palsied man.
Another picture of the center.
1St we had one who is a leper.
Who is full of leprosy? You know leprosy.
I don't believe I mentioned this, but it starts underneath, doesn't it?
It slowly works its way out.
To become manifest in the flesh and eventually starts to eat away at that flesh.
To the point where limbs are lost. Isn't that sin? Doesn't? Isn't that what sin does?
It corrupts, it defiles, it eats away, it breaks people down and leaves them in a hopeless condition when it's done.
That's man.
Inside there's nothing good.
But here's a man with no strength, Romans tells us when we were yet without strength. Christ died for the ungodly.
All right, another picture of Nan and his helpless condition.
You and I have no strength of our own to come.
And to make ourselves fit for God.
But this man here, they brought him in and laid him before the Lord Jesus.
And because of the multitude in verse 19.
His friends.
Lowered him down into the presence of our Lord Jesus.
You know, I'm thankful.
For those who have a care for souls.
There is a number of us a few minutes ago, on our knees, crying to the Lord.
For you, dear friend, tonight if you're in your sins.
That you might be brought into the presence of the Lord Jesus.
Consciously.
I'm reminded of what it says in the book of Acts. I think it's Acts 10 where it says therefore are we all here present before God?
To hear all things that are commanded thee of God.
Have you consciously got yourself into the presence of the Lord tonight?
Do you understand that God?
Is aware of you in your seat tonight.
If you're sin, if you're in your sins tonight, he wants to save you.
He wants to give you the gift of God, which is eternal life through Jesus.
Christ our Lord.
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This man received forgiveness.
The Lord Jesus said, man, thy sins are forgiven thee.
Reminded of that verse that says there is forgiveness with thee.
Neither is there salvation.
In any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved, and forgiveness is alone found in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ tonight.
Think of it, you can have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lord Jesus Christ offers you free salvation, forgiveness of sins.
Reconciliation to himself. Justification.
He offers you himself in heaven.
There is forgiveness with thee.
I'm reminded of a story I just read.
Not that long ago.
Where this poor girl?
Was on her deathbed a young girl.
There her parents stood by her bed.
And they knew their daughter wasn't saved.
And this faithful man of God happened to visit her.
And to paraphrase the story, he kneeled down by her bed, told her the good news of salvation.
She said. Oh.
God wouldn't want anything to do with me.
I'm too bad.
But he said to her, you know.
God is not looking to put His trust in yourself and to find merit in you, but He wants you to put your trust in Him.
In all his merit and what he has done.
And that's the point tonight. You know, sometimes we can look inward and say, I am too bad God does not love me.
What did Paul say? He said I am the chief of sinners, and he could say the Son of God who loved me.
And gave himself for me.
He said that by inspiration.
He called himself the worst.
And I want to tell you tonight.
That God is saving the worst of the worst today.
God's free salvation in His grace goes out to all who will receive it.
And this man?
Who is a palsied man receives his sins as being forgiven on the authority of the Word of God Himself, our Lord Jesus Christ.
And he rises up.
In the very circumstances that he lay in, he wrapped it up.
And if I could say he became master over it, that those things at once confined him.
No longer had his grip upon his life.
That's the transforming power of the Gospel tonight.
It is the power of God and the salvation unto everyone who that believeth.
God's power.
Is such that those who receive His Son as their savior.
Receive eternal life.
Have their sins forgiven and how many people have we seen?
Who lived a terrible life, had their life totally turned around of 180.
Surely, as we read tonight, we have seen, we have seen strange things today.
It's the power of the gospel.
You know the Lord Jesus.
Was questioned here by the Pharisees, the religious man who could say who could forgive sins, but God only.
And they're right.
God himself.
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Was in their presence.
The Lord Jesus is God manifest in the flesh.
By him all things were created, whether they be Thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were made by him.
By him all things consist.
All things were made by him.
Lord Jesus is God Himself.
You know I'm amazed every time I muse over.
The message of the Gospel.
And as we've had it before us at this conference, the work of God.
When you think that God would come into his own creation.
To take upon himself the form of a servant, to be made in the likeness of men.
And to walk amongst his own creature.
And to extend his good hand of grace.
And forgiveness to those who were his enemies.
It overwhelms me.
When we think of the grace of God.
In the love of God.
But you know.
All of that combined the love of God. As great as it is, God is light.
And God is a God of righteousness, and he is a holy God, and he cannot stand sin in his presence.
And as I mentioned earlier, the Lord Jesus had to die.
So that God could offer free salvation to you and to me.
So that we might be able to get to heaven.
God, in all his fury.
Poured out his judgment upon his beloved son.
At the Cross 2000 years ago.
The Lord Jesus took it all.
And he could say it is finished.
God now is so satisfied with that work that his son did, that at the end of three days He raised his Son from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in heavenly places, far above all principalities and powers.
It might and Dominion, and every name that is named not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.
God raised his Son and gave him glory.
Now the Lord Jesus can go out.
And say, come unto me.
Come unto me.
He wants you to come and receive Him as your own personal savior tonight.
We can see here that He alone is the one that can forgive sins.
Only him.
There is none other name under heaven.
Given among men, whereby we must be saved. And God commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because he hath the point of the day in which he will judge the world in righteousness. By that man whom he hath ordained, whereof God hath given assurance, and that he hath raised him from the dead. God commands all men everywhere to repent.
You need to come to the cross, to the foot of the cross tonight and say, Lord Jesus, I am a Sinner, I need to be saved.
As has been mentioned already, you need to take sides with God against yourself to realize that God looks at you and says there is nothing in you that is worth.
Anything.
You are full of leprosy.
But he loves you anyway.
And that love was shown out in the gift of his beloved son at the cross.
And he says, I love you, I gave my son for you.
Come unto me.
Oh dear. 1:00 tonight.
I see that our time is gone.
But before you leave this room, you just would plead with you that if you do not know the Lord Jesus as your own personal Savior.
That you would place your faith and your trust in Him tonight.
To come unto him and to receive the gift of God, which is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord and beyond the way to heaven.
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Because without Christ, you're lost.
You may draw your last breath tonight.
And the question is, where will you spend eternity?
Where will you spend eternity?
That is the most important question that we will answer in this life. What will we do with Christ?
Will you receive him tonight as your own personal savior?
Or are you going to put it off?
Putting it off neglecting it is just as bad as flat out refusing it.
God wants you to be saved tonight, to come to Him. He loves you. The Lord Jesus gave himself for you. He wants you to be saved. Let's just pray, Lord Jesus, we look up tonight and we ask thee that thou bless Thy word. And we pray that if there is anyone here tonight that is lost and in their sins, that they would come to know Thee as their own personal Savior and receive thee as their own Lord.
And receive thee, Lord Jesus, and beyond their way to heaven, that they might have the peace of God, which passeth all.
Understanding and that they might have a settled disposition in their soul that they know they and that they are on their way to heaven. We pray that they would not have peace till they come to know thee is their own personal savior and Lord. Lord Jesus help.
The word bless thy word, and we thank Thee for dying for us, giving us a message of hope.
And giving us a bright future with thyself, for all those who come in faith to thyself.
Knowing that we have a better place to be with and like Thee forever in the coming day, Lord Jesus, we long for that moment, but in the meantime, we again pray that sinners might be saved, Thy word might be blessed, we ask it and thy precious and worthy name, Lord Jesus, Amen.