Address—R. Thonney
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On to sit upon thy father's throne, thy path of shame and suffering, ore thy heart shall grieve and mourn no more.
February had the privilege of being down at the Oaxaca conference. Got to know a brother down there who?
Name is Joaquin, he's from the Assembly and Hamilton back.
Is the man that is really into the word.
And one day I found him at the conference and he says I couldn't eat anything. Today I said, what's wrong? He says my false teeth are rubbing a piece, a part of the exposed bones and it hurts too much to eat. I can't eat. But let me tell you, he every time I met him, he was into the word and he was asking one question, another. After the conference, we went to that little meeting in Hamilton back and.
During at the beginning of a meeting down there, they sing several hymns. They don't just sing 1 hymn and he gave out this hymn.
It was such a joy, brethren, just the witness, the ecstasy in the heart of that brother as he sang these words. Lord, we rejoice that thou art gone to sit upon thy Father's throne.
And we, if we really enjoy, really love the Lord, we too are going to rejoice at this. Brethren, let's sing this hymn #216.
Lord, we rejoice that thou art gone.
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Let's pray.
Lord Jesus. It is verse in Matthews Gospel chapter 24.
Matthew, Chapter 24.
Just one verse, verse 45.
Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his Lord hath made ruler over his household to give them?
Meat in due season. That word meat is the word we use generally. Food. Give them food in due season.
And go over to First Peter chapter 5.
And verse.
One and two, the elders which are among you, I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed. Verse two, feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly, not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind.
Neither has been Lords over God's heritage, but being in samples to the flock. Can you just read that far for the time being?
The.
Brother made a comment to me some time ago that impressed me. He said to me in the way of a question. He said, what was it that made Ruth come back from the land of Moab to Israel?
It was the news that the Lord had blessed His people in giving them bread. What was it was his second question to me. What was it that made the prodigal son?
Come back from the far country to his father's house, he said, How many servants of my father have bread enough and despair, and I perish with hunger. You know what impresses me, dear brother and sister in the Lord Jesus, is the hunger for good solid food from the word of God when I meet up with believers.
Sometimes amongst those who are gathered to the Lord's name, as we do professively.
And sometimes others I find that people are hungry.
And that's what they are attracted to. Where is their food? And I think it should be a real exercise for our hearts that in our public meetings there should be food for those that are present. Food. You know, we were speaking yesterday a little bit about the glory of the Lord Jesus and, you know, the Lord Jesus.
Is the food for his people he is presented.
As in three different places in the Scriptures, I refer to the Old Testament where you have the picture book of the Bible. You find God's people, the Israelites in Egypt, which was a figure of this world where Pharaoh had authority.
And in that context, the food for God's people was.
The Passover lamb. That's what God provided for his people there.
And it is beautiful to think about that, and I think it's so important.
Really we are in a certain sense still in this world, and in that sense what is going to strengthen us so that this world does not attract us? It's eating of the food that God has provided. We had that food this morning in the breaking of bread, meaning where the Lord Jesus is our Passover lamb.
You know, if we go to the book of Exodus chapter 12.
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The children of Israel were instructed.
To take a lamb on the 10th day of the month, and to keep it to the 14th day of the month for four days, it had to be observed, because God was observing the whole human race for 4000 years. And at the end of those 4000 years there was a man called John the Baptist. And one day he sees Jesus coming towards him, and he says, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
But that lamb had to be slain. It had to be slaughtered.
And the time came when they cut the throat of that lamb and they caught the blood.
And they put it on the doorposts and the upper little of the houses where they were to eat that on the outside for the eye of God to see.
Only the blood of the Lamb will save from God's judgment that will fall on this world.
But after they had done that, they went inside the houses and there they feasted on that roast lamb. And the scriptures are very clear how it was to be eaten, not sodden with water. It couldn't be boiled. It had to be directly put into the fire. And when the Lord Jesus was going to the cross, where when he was hanging on that cross, he was going to suffer.
The wrath of God upon our sins.
They offered him vinegar mingled with gall. That was a kind of.
Drink they offered to the malefactors to dull the pain of crucifixion. And He, when he had tasted it, would not drink it. He was the lamb that was going to be put directly into the fire. And as we were thinking this morning about how he was crucified outside the city of Jerusalem. You know, the physical sufferings of Christ are very real. Sometimes I believe we kind of neglect that side because they were not the most intense sufferings.
Not by a long ways were they the most intense, but there were real sufferings.
Think of hanging on nails through your hands and feet hour after hour. Think of the mocking, the jeering, the reproach that broke his heart. But then, as he hung on that cross on top of all the rest, in three hours of darkness, God laid on Jesus the iniquity of us all. And that storm.
Of judgment broke on him in all its fury.
For three solid hours you don't hear anything from that cross, that middle cross. Silence until the end, he cries. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
You know, we need to stand there. We need to feed on the roast lamb. And if you do, I guarantee you, you're not going to go out the door and embrace the world. It is the food that will strengthen you so that you know that your place is not here in this world.
It had to be eaten. His head with his legs and the pertinence thereof. That's the insides.
You know, sometimes we know things in our heads and we don't have them in our legs. We don't walk in what we know. But what the Lord Jesus, that was never the case. He was always perfectly consistent and all those inner feelings, that was what they were to feed on. They were to feast on. There was something else they were to feast on. That was unleavened bread leavened in Scripture speaks of.
Evil and the bread had to be prepared without leaven. You know how that comes out if you don't put.
Yeast in bread comes out pretty hard and I sometimes hear.
Young people, sometimes older ones too, that's too hard to be separate from this world. You got to have a little bit of it.
You know, if you think it's too hard to be separate, to live without the leaven.
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I want to ask you to eat another portion of roast lamb and then you won't find it hard to eat of the unleavened bread.
Oh, how important it is to feed on the roast lamb. Dear brethren, we do that collectively.
On Lord's days when we come to remember the Lord Jesus. But we need to do it daily.
But the second food that was provided for the God's people.
When they left Egypt and went out into the desert, God gave them bread from heaven.
To eat. You know, the desert was a different place. There they didn't have the temptations of Egypt, but the enemy they encountered in the desert was the flesh. And that's what we find too. And so that we can be strong against those fleshly desires, those fleshly impulses that we all have.
What is the food that will make us strong?
It's the manna from heaven. God reigned bread from heaven.
Talks about it in the book of the Psalms as angels food.
I love to think of how the angels when the Lord Jesus was born into Bethlehem.
How they came to watch him, they had never seen their creator.
Before that moment there was their Creator, and had man received him royally like he deserved? No, He'd relegated that poor mother out into the stable where the cows and sheep are. Go out there and there the Lord of glory came into this world. How the angels must have marveled. It was angels food.
It's our food too, brethren, and it says about the manner that it was small.
And round and it's Christ in his humiliation. We have the manna in the Gospels.
You read through the Gospels, you see how the Lord Jesus down here in this world never had a place to lay his head, never had a home of his own, never had any earthly possessions. We don't have any record that even had any money in his pocket.
When he said that one time, show me the money, whose image and superscription does it have?
Somebody else had to get it out and show it to him. He didn't have it. He was lost amongst men. If you want to have strength to come back, those fleshly desires, eat of Christ the manna, the bread of God sent down from heaven.
But there's one more place where the children of Israel went, and that was Canaan.
And Canaan for us is heavenly places. It's not heaven.
When we get there at the end of our lives, it's heaven at the present time because there is conflict in Canaan, there was constant warfare in Canaan, and so it's heaven. And in the heavenly places the enemy is Satan.
Is the angelic host those hosts of wickedness it speaks about in Ephesians chapter 6?
And they are there to keep you from enjoying what God has given you in Christ.
The vast array of spiritual blessing that belongs to the believer in the Lord Jesus.
Satan knows he can't take that away from you as a believer in the Lord Jesus, but he knows he can take away the enjoyment of those things, and that's the battle.
And to be strong there, there's another food. It's called, I think it's a fifth chapter of Joshua.
The old horn of the land, it's the food that came from that land. Because Jesus is the heavenly man. He came into this world, but he's gone back into heaven as a real living man. And to enjoy that like we were yesterday in the readings on Colossians, chapter one, on the glories of the person of our Lord Jesus, to feast on that, That's our Savior, that's the one we are.
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Intimately united to that's the one who's head of all principality and power. Let that sink into your soul.
Dear brother and sister in the Lord Jesus, it will make you strong in the spiritual warfare that each one of us is going to encounter in this world. You cannot avoid it. It's impossible to avoid it. So we need food.
And the faithful and wise servant, brethren, is the one who can give food in season, who discerns what the need is at the at the proper time, and who can give it according to that need. We need discernment.
We need food for God's people. You know we live in times of trouble. I don't care if you look around at the world we're talking about, or amongst God's people at large, or those with whom we associate. There's trouble everywhere. That's what impresses me when I travel into South America, too. Don't get away from it. You can try to run away from trouble. Let me tell you, you're not going to run away from it. You're going to need it somewhere else.
But trouble is not good food.
And may the Lord help us not to focus on trouble. There's going to be trouble, and we have to face it with the light of the Word of God. But let's feed on what God has given us to make us strong, I fear, when we are so occupied with problems.
Sometimes I see brethren so terribly troubled, it seems like they got the problems right up in front of their eyes and they can't see anything else.
Sometimes I say back off, back off.
Start looking in a different direction. There is help somewhere. There is help in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. We need to know what it means to feed on Him, the old corn of the land for the conflict at hand. You know what I mean, young people, about feeding on the Lord Jesus. I'm sure you do, but I just want to press it home a little bit more. It's not merely.
Reading the scriptures.
It's meditating on him. It's like when you take a bite of food in your meal, you don't just swallow it straight down to your stomach. You hold it in your mouth for a while. This is good food. You're savoring it, you are enjoying it. And when you got it well chewed, at least that's what they say is the best way to eat your food. Chew it well, then you pass it on down to your stomach.
And that's going to do you good. In the same way, when we read these things, it's not just merely reading them and then just taking off. It's stopping and thinking about it, comparing one scripture with another, meditating on it.
And in that way, you're going to find yourself being strengthened. Oh, how important that is to give God's people strength. Induce our food in due season.
I'd like to speak now on something that was mentioned yesterday in the readings. We had the truth presented in our chapter, Colossians, chapter one of the body of Christ, and that the Lord Jesus is presented as head of the body, the Church. That is one aspect of the church.
When I say aspect, I mean one way of looking at the truth of the church. There is another aspect that we have in scripture was mentioned yesterday, the aspect of the church as the House of God. I'd like to go over rather to Ephesians chapter 4 where we have this truth as well.
A brother on the first day. Read the first few verses of this chapter.
But you'll notice if you look at it carefully, the 1St 3 verses of chapter 4 are exhortation.
From verse four to six through 16.
We have part of the doctrine of the Epistle. Again, it is not exhortation, it is telling us.
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Things that we need to be taught, and it starts in verse four. There is one body and one spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling. So there you have the truth of the one body. And I love to think of the simplicity in which Scripture speaks of it. There is one body. Actually there is. There's an italics. So you could just say one body. It's a reality.
Is that what you see around you?
I'm afraid the testimony to that truth is in shambles.
In shambles. Somebody would ask, where are these people that call themselves Christians here in the city of Walla Walla? Why they would get well, there's some over here and there's some over there and there's some over there. Well, how come so many?
They would never guess by looking at it outwardly that there was one body.
But the truth remains, there is one body, and as God looks down into this world, He sees one body and faith.
Goes simply by the word of God. There is one body. Now in connection with the truth of the body of Christ, we have those who are the gifts to the church. It's not so much that the individual has a gift.
But it is that the individual is a gift to the church.
And so we have mentioned in verse 11 he gave some.
Apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers. Five are mentioned there.
Fossils and prophets, if you go back to the second chapter, are mentioned as being the foundation of the church. The foundation was laid in the time the apostles were here. They gave us the scriptures.
And especially the scriptures that they wrote down in the New Testament is the foundation work. How important when we build any building that we build on the foundation when we act individually or collectively, if you want you what you do to be solid.
Build on the foundation. If you don't know what the foundation is, you need to start reading.
The Scriptures, the apostles and the New Testament prophets. In other words, there were those who perhaps were not apostles like Luke. I don't know that we ever have that he was an apostle, but he certainly wrote a book that is very helpful for us in the book of Acts as to assembly matters. So whoever we have solid.
Foundation.
To build on, I like to think in Second Timothy where things are in such disarray and disorder.
Paul says to Timothy, the foundation of God stands firm. You know, in the Old Testament when there was ruin amongst the people of God, they were carried away captive. First the 10 tribes, then the two tribes, and the temple was destroyed and even the foundations were broken up so that when they came back they had to relay the foundations in the New Testament.
There is a house.
As well, there's the house testimony, the House of God, it's called in First Timothy. And there's the foundation that even though the ruin may be great in the world around us, in the religious world, the foundation of God stands firm. Let me tell you, that's a tremendous consolation to my soul. I've got something in here that stands down through the rubble of our own thinking.
To get down to real solid scripture. But I found in my own experience, young people and older ones too, that it holds, it is firm, it cannot be moved. Oh, what a consolation for the times that we live in. So the apostles and prophets were the foundation work. We don't have them in person today. We have them in their writings. And then it goes on to speak of evangelists.
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And some pastors and teachers, evangelists are those who preach the gospel.
No one encourage that we get into gospel work more, brethren.
We really need to. I really believe it would be healthy in our assemblies if we would just get into the gospel more.
Look in any way that you can, you know, there's a real blessing in just getting a stack of gospel calendars at the year end and going through the part of the city that's poor and go door to door and just leave my calendar. They usually will accept it. Sometimes they'll put it on their wall.
And it'll hang there all year around testimony of the word of God in their homes. Get involved in gospel work. Lord has opened a door for us in Lawrenceville to a prison, a new prison that they built there.
I must say Doug is another one that goes in there, four of us cleared because it's a high security prison. But every time we go, we get a 2 hour slot, 3 * a month and it is a tremendous blessing to us who go.
To be with those men, they usually come out about 50 at a shot and we have a chance to speak the gospel. And sometimes there are those who are believers and we can speak something of the truth of God to feed them as well.
They really appreciate it and there's so many opportunities around. I just say make some time to be involved in gospel work. That's the work of the evangelist. Timothy was told to do the work of an evangelist. I don't believe we have anywhere in Scripture that Timothy was an evangelist, but he was told to do the work of an evangelist. You might say I'm not an evangelist, but do the work of an evangelist, like has been mentioned these days.
Everyone of us should be occupied in holding forth the precious news of salvation by faith in the Lord Jesus.
And we have pastors and teachers, pastors not in the official sense that we have in the religious world. I think we're well aware of this. But I just like to say that a pastor, we do have pastors. And a pastor is someone who may not ever speak publicly, but he takes care of God's sheep.
Down in South of Bolivia, there's a little meeting down in, I think it's in the Tarija area and brethren were sitting in there one day.
Ready to start their meeting and sitting around in the circle and this missionary, I don't know what mission came along and walked in and he looks around the circle and says, where's the pastor?
And after a little bit, one of the brothers said, well this brother is a pastor, this brother, this brother, this brother, this brother, 5 pastors. You must be rich to pay 5 pastors.
No, Sir.
They're just farmers that work in the earth, but they take care of God's people too. That's the sense of pastors. You young people. Don't go waiting for somebody else to go to visit somebody. If the Lord lays it on your heart to visit somebody you've seen getting cold in their soul or needing some encouragement, go do it yourself. Something you need to be exercised about.
Gifts are something that are developed with the use the Lord help us each one to be exercised in this. Don't think that this has to be a special person that goes to do it. Do it. If God has laid it on your heart, do it.
The other is teachers. The church is not, does not teach. The church is taught by gifts that Christ has given.
To teach in his assembly, I think that's important. We do not decide doctrine.
That we are going to practice the Scriptures, have it all laid out for us. Sometimes we don't understand it very well, and that's why we have teachers given by the ascended Christ in glory. I'd like to go over now to the book of first Timothy. This was mentioned yesterday as well, and I think it is helpful to distinguish here. We're going to see a different aspect of the church.
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Let's read first of all, verse 15.
And 60 Now if I tarry long Paul is writing to Timothy.
That thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the House of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth, and without controversy. Great is the mystery of godliness.
God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit scene of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. Verse 15 is especially what I wanted to draw attention to. It speaks of the House of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. In other words, I still remember Brother Eric Smith insisting on this point. The church is not the truth.
The Church is the pillar and ground of the truth as God has presented it to us.
Here it is the support. It is what upholds the truth.
The truth as we had in these meetings, the Lord Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the light and Scripture also says.
Sanctify them by Thy truth. Thy word is truth, and I think it is helpful when we speak of the truth that we make sure that we point souls to the Lord Jesus.
And to his word, there is such a true thing in 3rd John that speaks of the truth that is in you. But if you start looking at me, hopefully there's something of truth that I've absorbed. But you might see some inconsistencies too.
So I do not think that it is wise to point to people we should be displays of the truth, but so often the flesh comes out and rather stumbles souls than rather than help them. So let's point to the Lord Jesus and to the Word of God, because there you have truth in its absolute character.
You don't have to apologize for it there. You're going to talk about truth in me. I'm afraid I'm going to have a lot of apologizing to do for a lot of fallacies that are in my purse. But if you point to Jesus and to the Word of God, you're not going to have to apologize there at all. That's where you have truth in its purity. So the assembly is the pillar and ground of the truth, just to give an illustration.
For the sake of the young, if I go to a Bible school.
And you have to admit, there are some Bible schools around that are very sincerely desiring to propagate the word of God. But if I go there, I go into a classroom to take a certain class and there's the teacher of that class. He's paid to teach, and I'm sitting there pay, I'm paying to listen. It is not proper for me to go correcting what the teacher says.
So here's a Bible school where the truth is upheld. No, it's not. It's the assembly where Scripture says let the prophets speak two or three. Let the others judge. Judge in the sense that you got your Bible out in front of you. Measure what is being said. Is it squaring with the Word of God or is it a little bit off?
And if it is a little bit off, there ought to be room, and there is, especially in a reading of the word, for a brother to bring in another scripture and balance out what has been said, or perhaps correct something that has not been stated rightly.
Like your brother said yesterday in the address, I trust, brethren, we never get to the point where we think that we do not need correction, we need it, and that's the way the truth is maintained and upheld.
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By the assembly, as God presents it to us here in this third chapter.
But I'd like to go and say that in connection with the house we have order. Notice in verse 15 it says that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself. Its behavior, order, discipline is in connection with the truth of the Church as the House of God.
And I think this is important too. And that's why in this chapter you have.
To sometimes called offices or places, you might say one is the Bishop it speaks of in the first verses, which is the same as an elder, and then a little further down verse 8. Deacons, bishops or elders are those who are in charge of things spiritual matters.
Deacons are those who take care of the material matters of the assembly. Those two are important if they're going to give the testimony of the House of God as a House of order important. I do want to say this, that since in Scripture we only have the apostles choosing elders, we do not have official elders today.
Like there was in the beginning of the Church's history, the apostles could appoint them, or an Apostolic delegate like Titus was told to go to Crete and appoint elders.
But it does say here in verse one and I think it is interesting. It never tells Timothy exactly to point elders, but it does say to him if anyone desire the office of a Bishop, he desireth a good work.
In other words, it recognizes the desire to be a help amongst God's people.
And I think we need to recognize that as well. Sometimes you might say, well, they don't fulfill all the list of qualifications here. And that is true. There are not many who can fulfill all that list of qualifications. Still it speaks in.
Acts chapter 20 of those whom the Holy Spirit had set as overseers in the House of God, amongst the flock of God.
So I really do believe that there are those who take care of God's people and we need to measure that. There is moral weight to recognize that and to honor that, but that is not the same.
As a gift, and I'd like to distinguish when we're talking about the body of Christ and the gifts, especially in the book of Ephesians, we are talking about something that is universal. In other words, an evangelist, a pastor, and a teacher is a gift. If it's a gift given by Christ, the ascended head, it's to be used wherever the Lord may send that servant.
In contrast, when we go to the question of the offices here in First Timothy 3, the elders and the deacons, these are presented as local things. A brother who is an elder in one assembly is not an elder in another assembly and does not have the right to go and administratively intervene into another assembly.
That's important. That has caused much problems amongst God's people when there are those who feel that they can go and order things in another assembly, no, they can go as a gift from the church. They should go to be a help. When there is need amongst God's people, they should go and they should be exercised as to how they use their gift. But a gift that teaching will present principles of the Word of God and then it's for those locally.
To apply them according as they may have need.
Do you want to say one other thing in connection with the gifts that we have in Ephesians chapter 4?
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That they are sent out from the Lord Jesus and responsible directly to Him. But they should go in happy fellowship with their local brethren as well. If that's not the case, it can cause real trouble on down the line.
I know there's many young people who perhaps have a desire to serve the Lord. Thank God for that desire. Perhaps God has given you something to use for the blessing of Saints elsewhere. Use it, but use it in harmony in conjunction with your brethren. Be sensitive as to how your brethren feel. Listen to them. We need the interaction of our brethren.
None of us are complete in ourselves. I marvel at how unbalanced I can get at times. I need my brethren to balance me out when I get unbalanced.
You know, sometimes when we're singing, I've got kind of a loud voice maybe. And sometimes I notice when I'm singing, I'm singing away and I'm singing at a different tone level than the rest. And so while I'm singing, try to keep the tune. I need to have my ear tuned to my other brethren too, and they're singing at a different level.
And I keep singing at the level I think it should be. What's going to result? It's going to be discord. Let's be tuned not only to what we're singing, what we think is right, but let's be tuned to our brethren. We need to go on together, brethren. We need to practice practically the truth that we are one body. You say, well, those brethren are not understanding like they ought to.
Maybe they don't, but you still can't go on your own. You've got to go along with your brother. That's the truth of the one body. And I left Illinois to go into South America to live.
The brethren, I went out from Oak Park at that time, it was, it's now Addison, but they gave me the right hand of fellowship. Brethren, I confess when I got into some hard situations, to know that I had my brethren back there praying for me and if I needed help to ask for counsel, they were there for me, meant so much to me. If I knew I'd gone out and they weren't in agreement with my going out, I don't think I could have handled.
The pressure that there was at times. We need each other, brethren, that's the truth.
Of the body of Christ in a practical way.
I want to say something now that I have on my heart, and I do not want to cause any conflict at all, but I want to say this. Perhaps we should read a verse in Second Timothy chapter 2 before we make these comments.
Two Timothy, chapter 2.
In this second Timothy, I think we've mentioned that it's a testimony of the house in times of ruins. In fact, it is not even called the House of God here. It's called a great house. There are vessels of honor, there's vessels to dishonor in this house. This is the what we understand to be the House of Christian profession or the House of Christendom.
And we're part of it, brethren, We are never.
Sometimes we talk about Christendom as something out there. We are part of Christendom.
We need to purge ourselves so that we can be vessels to honor, but we never leave the house. The only way to leave the house would become being an apostate to Christianity. We don't want to do that. We are part of the House of Christmas, but in that house we are to purge ourselves. And then notice it doesn't speak here about offices of the elders and deacons.
But it does say down in verse 24, something I think is so important.
The servant of the Lord must not strive, but the gentle unto all men apartment to teach, patient in meekness, instructing those that oppose themselves.
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If God for adventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth, that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil who are taken captive by him at his will. When everything is sliding around, it is hard sometimes to maintain the composure that a person should as a servant of the Lord. Don't think I'm talking about a certain group here.
I'm looking at a room full of servants of the Lord. Wherever you are called to circulate, even if you have a secular job, you are a servant of the Lord. You should do everything you do hardly as to the Lord and not to men. In fact, brethren, I find that the idea that there is a special class does positive damage to the testimony. The Lord help us. There are those who may be help a gift.
From Christ, and we ought to appreciate that. But there is not a special class, no.
Every single person is to act as a servant of the Lord. I sometimes say to the brethren in South America, many of them are bricklayers, say if you do your job laying bricks for the Lord, you're going to give a tremendous testimony to what kind of a person a Christian is. In fact, if I say I'm a missionary or I'm a preacher, I find that people kind of tune out.
And what I'm saying, they don't listen to me because of the testimony that's been left in Christian circles of those who are so-called missionaries or preachers. I don't like that. I don't like to use that anymore because it is a positive hindrance. And I find a person that has a secular job and is doing it hardly as to the Lord many times has far more testimony than somebody that is going around preaching.
That should search us, but I believe that to be the truth of God. Each one of us is a servant of the Lord, and we should not strive, but be gentle unto all men. And this is what I want to say, dear brethren, God's people need to be LED.
Not driven, I believe Brother Heinz yesterday quoted from Hebrews chapter 13 where it speaks.
And I think it's the Darby translation that says your leaders, God's people, need to be LED.
Not driven.
And sometimes it seems like we tend to drive the Lord's people beyond where their consciences are, and that is dangerous. We need to lead God's people, we need to exercise their consciences with the precious Word of God when there was a need in the Corinth Corinthian assembly of discipline of a person.
Who was involved in fornication? Paul writes, but he does not.
Mandate with the authority that he did have as an apostle. He does not mandate what they were to do.
I should say he does mandate, but he does it in a way that they themselves had to be exercised about and in when there is need of assembly discipline.
The consciences of all in the assembly ought to be reached, so that, as Paul writes in the second epistle, not only the individual.
Is restored in the end, but also that the assembly clears itself.
If the consciences of all are not exercised about that, and there may be varying amounts of exercise, but there is no way that they can clear themselves and that it assemble. So these are important points and I'm not trying to speak directly of any particular situation. I'm Speaking of principles I think are important. May the Lord help us to lead.
God's people.
In whatever way, because we're all servants of the Lord and we have an effect, You young sisters have an effect on your fellow young sisters. Don't think you don't. You do. And it's important that the way we lead one another is in a positive direction. The Lord help us says must be patient.
00:55:27
Apartment to teach must be gentle unto all men. Apartment to teach, patient in meekness, instructing those that oppose themselves. That word meekness. It was mentioned the other day in Ephesians chapter 4 with all lowliness and meekness.
Forbearing one another in love.
Is there anybody that professes to have all loneliness and meekness?
No, brethren, I think we're going to all admit that we all need to learn more.
Of that, where are you going to learn it? The Lord Jesus says, take my yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest into your souls. Lowliness does not give offense. Meekness does not take offense. Sometimes there are those who perhaps are lowly, but they're not meek, they take offense.
You feel a fence towards some brother or sister in this audience. I ask you in the name of the Lord to let go of that offense, to leave it to one side. Bitterness has bitter roots and bears a lot of.
Fruits that are not pleasant. Lord, help us to be as Moses.
Remember, he was the meekest man in the earth in the Old Testament times.
And when Aaron and Miriam, his sister and brother, complained against him, did he take offense at that?
No, not at all.
When Aaron cried to him saying for Miriam, he said, Lord heal her now. There was no malice at all in his heart towards his sister that had spoken so badly about him.
Brother and sister, if there's somebody that has offended you, that has done you in, in one way or another.
Do you know how to get down on your knees and pray for that particular person? That's meekness, and that's what the servant of the Lord needs to have in the days that we are living in. May the Lord help us in these days. It's not easy days that we live in the brethren. We do have a man in high, in the glory, fully able for every situation that arises. His Word has light and the principles of it will guide us.
How important to go by those principles?
Let's just pray.