Address—Bruce Conrad
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Good afternoon everybody. Let's begin with singing part of hymn #208.
208 verses 1-2 and four.
The brother could start that to a tune that.
Everybody's used to here.
We turn to start with two proverbs, chapter 30.
I.
I'd like to read just three verses here. That may seem a little bit unusual.
That's really what is the outline of what is before me. Proverbs chapter 30 and verse 18. There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yay, for which I know not the way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea.
In the way of a man with a maid, such is the way of an adulterous woman. She eateth and wipeth her mouth, and saith.
I have done no wickedness.
But I'd like to speak a little bit about these four wonderful things because I I think I see in them an outline.
Of the most precious things that our human minds will ever take in.
So I lookout around, I see a lot of young people and you've probably been trained in in various things in your life. Some of you have learned very complicated natural things and engineering or calculus or other languages, et cetera.
But your mind, you know, was really formed chiefly for these wonderful things that have been commuted to us, communicated to us by God.
And so, so it is. We have this privilege to know the things which have been freely given to us of God. This is the chief purpose for the what we call the hardware of our minds and the tenor of our hearts, the way He made them to take in these precious things and have our lives, however long we're here, governed by them.
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In First Corinthians we read as the apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians, and he's putting before them their responsibility as builders. He says, here are the things that I want you to build with gold and silver and precious stones.
And then it goes on to say wood and hay and stubble.
And this is really a brief outline or an array of that which has been put into our hands to know and to understand The gold would speak of just like this eagle. In this verse we read the supremacy of the great God our Father and His Son, who has been manifested now in this world, Jesus Christ our Lord.
The silver speaks of redemption and the Gospel.
Sometimes I have thought lately that in the Gospel of the grace of God we kind of look at it as kind of like entry level Christianity. I don't think we should do that.
And those of us here that are a little older, for decades and decades we've been pondering and studying, I'm not ashamed to use that word, studying the scriptures to understand more of these precious things which concern the gospel of the grace of God. When we're in a large assembly and there's much less of them than there used to be. I think a person can get the wrong impression if we just give it to the 16 year old or there's nothing against you guys.
Or the 17 year old or the 18 year old. And you guys are the ones that present the gospel. But when it comes to addresses or the reading meeting, it's the older brothers.
The gospel, yes, it's wonderful that it can be understood by a child of three. I know personally children.
At the.
At the age of three or four, who have accepted Christ as Savior, and so do you.
But the gospel is something that is is so vast, so deep, and so ponderous that it's a joy to spend our entire life considering it more and more, and its depths and riches, the riches of the grace of God.
The way of an eagle in the air, All of these things serpent upon a rock, the ship in the midst of the sea, the way of a man with a maid, and especially the 1St 3.
They don't leave any trail. It's like, how does that work? Where do they decide to go? These are wonderful things. When we think of an ego, we think of some of, of a creature in in our house, in our where we live. The eagles come out as soon as the sun gets hot enough and the thermals go up. And if you're outside and you look up, you'll see them just hovering way, way up. You know, it's most like an eagle because of the height at which it it.
Around it seems so effortless and.
The way of an eagle in the air is we start with is goes back to or out to eternity. Eternal things have no beginning and we read in the scripture from the very first verse in the beginning God.
And then it goes on to say, created the heavens and the earth. The heavens come first. We read in Proverbs chapter 8 that before there was any any creative construction or building done, that there was a Father and there was a Son, and they were in, in mutual delight and joy and happiness, the fruit of eternal love.
And if you just think of it, sometimes I do.
I just try to imagine what would it have been like if there is just God and nothing else, just the that eagle character of things, just Him. Because there was a time before the worlds were made. There was a time before this whole universe was spoken by His word. And there was God the Father and there was God the Son. And they had as a brother brought out this morning, they had an eternal purpose.
And they carried it out through councils.
And now we're in the midst of those councils in those ways and that purpose unfolding. God, who stretched out the north over the empty place and hangeth the earth upon nothing. How do you hang something on nothing? How does even natural life, how is it even understandable to us, even natural life as brilliant as men all over this world have become?
To invent computers and all of these fascinating things.
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So that you can pick up a little device and talk halfway around the world. Yet still the essence of even natural life is a mystery to man, let alone spiritual things. But there was God and there was divine love reciprocal between the Father and the Son. And he said, let us make man in our image.
And let them have dominion. And so in Proverbs 8 we read.
That in the midst of this relationship of love and glory there was a divine affection which said my delights are with the sons of men before there was even one. You say I can't understand. I've heard the brothers say that I was chosen in Christ. If I'm a believer, I was chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.
Yes, he did, and he put this earth in place. Why?
So that he might display his own glory, so that he might have a platform for you and for me to be brought into that fellowship with him and be a participant in that eternal relationship of love and glory. And so the heavens came first, and the eagle, you might say, has landed in a certain sense. And you're familiar with how the four gospels are divided up in our minds. And so we look at.
Matthew and with some of us have just spent two years going through the the book of Matthew and what a delight it has been. There's the lion, the the king, the greatest among beasts. No one lion turns not aside for any. And in Mark we have a picture of the ox, the servant, and in Luke the man.
That's Son of a man and presented in gospel Luke and then John we have.
That eagle side of things. And so from the very beginning of that gospel we have.
The Word in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God. The Word was with God. The same was in the beginning with God.
And Christian scholars that understand the Greek language, they marvel how could.
How could someone say so much in literally so few words?
It is just a fascinating 123 verses to open up John's Gospel. And you've probably learned in your studies of John's Gospel that it speaks of love and light and life. But there is another thing that John Gospel speaks about in a word, that is that that is in John's gospel more than any other, and that is sent.
Sent he the Son of God, who existed for all eternity.
Is the scent one of God if we turn to John chapter 8?
Can't tarry too long on these aspects of things with John chapter 8.
John 8 and 42.
Jesus saying to them, If God were your Father, you would love me. For I proceeded forth and came from God. Neither came out of my eye of myself, but he sent me.
He has told them already up to this point in John's gospel that he came from heaven. When you meet somebody. We met some people just at lunch here. The question we always ask each other, where are you from? Where do you live? Where are you from?
And when men encountered the Lord Jesus without knowing where are you from, says I'm from heaven. There was never a man that came from heaven before the sun came down into this world and took manhood to himself and never stopped being who he was, as he added to himself manhood that he never had before.
His manhood had a beginning, his person as son.
Has no beginning because he's an eternal. He's the eternal 1. And so he adds to them himself that manhood, and he's sent into this world just like an eagle descends down, and he walks among men, and he displays everything.
That is in the mind and heart of God that God wished to display to man.
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And sometimes if we say, if I just say shiny red apple, and you know the English language you're picturing in your mind right now, a shiny red apple, because that's what words are capable of doing. And the Son himself has given that name or that title of the word because he communicates all that God is. And God's desire was to do that.
And so we have him as the word, and furthermore we read later on that in him.
As a man down here dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. In the verse I read, verse 42, it has these two different sides of things, because the Father sent the Son, and He is the sent one of the Father, but He also volunteered of his own will to come into this world and take manhood to himself.
To accomplish the great work of redemption.
Because as we know.
And as we'll get to in a second here.
The next one is a serpent upon a rock.
Yes, he was preceded, he says first I proceeded forth and came from God.
In the well known passage in Philippians 2.
It was not robbery, not not something outside of his school.
To come down into this world and take the servants form, even though he was God. Sometimes in the workplace somebody will go and do something and and you'll hear about something done and you say well, why did? Well, I don't know why he did that. It's really not proper to him in his scope of work. He got kind of out over his skis or something like we say, but for the Son of God because he is God.
He was proper to him, it was in his scope.
To come down and to take manhood to himself. And so he says, I proceeded forth and came from God. A similar passage in John 17.
John 17 in verse.
Verse 8.
The Lord Jesus speaking to his Father.
I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me, and they have received them.
And have known surely, that I came out from thee, and they have believed that Thou did send me.
And so we see here the two sides and the harmony of the father wishing to fill his house with children. And so he sends his son in whom he could fully rely. And the son says, I want to stand before my father in a coming day, and I want to be surrounded by children in whom my father can take delight.
And so as the fruit of Calvary's work.
He can say, and he will in that day, behold, I and the children which God hath given me, Beautiful harmony between the Father and the Son, and flip over, please. Now to John 19.
That One who came forth from heaven, who came forth from his Father, who at the same time the Son of Man, which is in the bosom of the Father, He came, but in a sense never left.
Such is part of the mystery of his person. He comes into this world and we all know that rather than receiving, you might say, the most majestic welcome that man could ever, ever possibly give, we know that he could say they hated me without a cause. And for my love, they are my adversaries.
And he proceeded forth through this world, presenting himself.
As the one who fulfilled every promise as we had before us in the reading, promise after promise after promise that was made, prophecy after prophecy. Check that box. Check that box, check that box over and over again.
In John 19, Pilate, who was, as we say euphemistically, was between a rock and a hard place, trying to accommodate Jewish envy, Jewish hatred.
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And his own sense in his own conscience that this was an innocent man and he's trying to find a compromise because people in those positions have made their living on political compromise. And he tries to do that and just try to wade, you know, as they say, well, let's make it win, win, or let's just try to compromise us. And God would not allow it.
And so in frustration, as I take it in the beginning of John 19.
Pilate having examined him and being astounded by what he heard.
In verse 4, Pilate therefore went forth again, and saith unto them, Behold, I bring him forth to you, that ye may know that I find no fault in him.
And just like we read of the Father and the Son, Pilate says I'm bringing him forth. Pilate didn't bring him forth. The Lord Jesus came forth in the next verse. Then came Jesus forth wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe.
And pilots saith unto them, Behold the man.
This is the man from heaven.
This is the man that some have said.
Almost as if he had to introduce him because he was almost.
Unrecognizable.
From the abuses.
Of the different facets of man's society.
And Jesus comes forth.
And the serpent is now on the rock.
We're not told. Sometimes people say, well, the rock is the world. It's just a big. We've seen pictures now from outer space of the Earth. People say, well, it's a big rock.
To us, it is a big rock.
And how the serpent came to be on it from the very beginning. We are not told. We have bits and pieces and and hints throughout the word of God as to how it came to pass that God who created the world to be inhabited.
How did it come into a state where it was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep? We're not told, but we we can surmise that a rebellion of some sort took place.
When the Lord Jesus began his public ministry.
He was led of the Spirit out of the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil.
And the devil tried all those things which work on fallen man.
The lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, one after another. And he's clever enough to quote Scripture as well.
And the Lord Jesus, just as a dependent man, he just says it is written and he responds with the word of God and it says there, I think it's in Luke 4.
It says the devil departed from him for a season. For a season.
Until the Lord Jesus in that sense bound the strongman, and he began to spoil his house.
And he brings the dead back to life, And he makes the lame walk, and he makes the dumb speak and sing, and he makes the blind see.
And he removes all of those infirmities that that pressed upon him. Think of it every day, hundreds, when he was out in public pressing upon him.
And then in, when it came time for him to be delivered up, and he had set his face as a Flint to go to Jerusalem, he could say to those who took him in the Garden of Gethsemane, this is your hour and the power of darkness. The way I see it, the devil now has come back, that serpent upon a rock.
He's come back, and so we see a perfect man in the Garden of Gethsemane.
In the garden where Adam and Eve were placed, everything was set up.
To perfection for His blessing, for his preservation. And he failed in the face of all that. And the blessed Savior in the garden where he was, his own disciples fall asleep.
The Jew, the high priest who should have interceded for him, is busy putting together a posse of men to come take him.
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The Gentile power that God authorized when?
The seat of Jehovah's government was taken from Israel and given to the Gentile, that same Roman power.
Would mockingly wash his hands of him.
But beyond all that, the awfulness to the holy man Christ Jesus, of being made sin on Calvary's cross was weighing before him in his soul.
And he separated by a distance from even his closest disciples, and he cries to his father. Oh, my father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, but not as I will, but as thou wilt. The perfection in a man who.
Who's Who references everything in his life and thought and motive.
According to God is seen in perfection, and that in the face of that which made his soul shrink in horror of being made sin. And so, as the Spirit of God describes it, his sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling to the ground, and then in agony.
He prayed three times.
It's been said that that was the place.
We're Satan through everything he had at the Blessed Savior was in the Garden of Gethsemane.
To turn him back and who knows what what was put before his mind.
As to reasons or rationale why he should not go forward but to the Lord Jesus, the perfect man, he discerns despite the abhorrence in his soul of going into that place where he would be made sin. When he discerns that it's a cup that is his from his Father, he proceeded on.
The everlasting Gospel from the very beginning of the pages of God's Word.
There is a promise made that Adam and Eve are allowed to hear. It's not a promise to man. It was not a promise to Adam or to Eve. It was a statement made that the seed of the woman.
The one through whom sin came into the world.
The seed of the woman would crush the serpents head. And on Calvary's cross the Lord Jesus accomplished that which has defeated sin and death and Satan, and when he having borne the wrath of God against sin, not of Satan, but of God.
When he was made sin on Calvary's cross.
He made a loud cry.
Taleo, one word in Greek. If you look it up, one word means finished, done.
He'd accomplished that work, which throughout all eternity.
The vast mind of godfather and son and the Spirit of God look forward to that day and the accomplishment of that work on Calvary's cross. Little wonder could he cry with a loud voice. Finished, and he bowed his head and gave up. The ghost went down into death.
As one who was not subject to it, but capable of it as a man, he went down into death. And we know the wonderful story.
That God, it's it's as if God looks and says.
What's my response to this?
Was it kindness that raised the Lord Jesus from the dead?
It was righteousness. It was righteousness.
It was love that sent him forth, it was righteousness that raised him up for a moment all the rest of the dead, and in addition to that, gave him the highest place in heaven.
If we could just use our human minds, we would say it would have been unrighteous for God not to have rewarded the man Christ Jesus with the highest place in heaven.
Because he was worthy of it, because of what he endured and what he did for God's glory on Calvary's cross, He could say, I have glorified thee on the earth. I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And God responded back and says, you know I'm going to glorify Him and I'm going to do it right away.
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And he glorified him, and he is there as a glorified man.
Seated upon the right hand of the Majesty on high.
We see not yet all things put under him.
Brothers were talking today about.
Covenant theology and things like that, it's hard to escape it, but these things, and I ask you, would you like to be responsible for the world as it is today? Do you want to be the boss?
Would you like to be in charge of what's going on around the world today? In spite of the brilliance of computers and and space travel and all these other unfathomable things, man has not progressed 1 little iota morally in this world.
It's really people don't even talk about that.
It would be reasonable to expect that technological and intellectual growth would have brought moral growth along too. But no, it has not progressed 1 little iota. And yet the majority of Christian teachers and theologians have adopted this inane idea that Christ is reigning now.
In the hearts of his people.
And it's an insult.
To the name of Christ, to say that he was responsible for the present character of things in this world. It's part of the mystery of God.
That there is such patience and forbearance on God's part to allow this world to stagger on the way it has. Why? Because He has a work he's doing. He's gathering out of people for his name.
And if he comes in and intercedes in this world, he's going to do it in a way that's worthy of himself.
And the prophets speak of that in Old Testament and knew that when he comes, he's going to come in power and glory, and men will see what Christ's Kingdom is really like.
But even though we see not yet all things put under him, we see Jesus crowned with glory and honor.
The next one in Proverbs 30.
Is the way of a ship on the sea.
And this is where you and I in a commune, because you and I are on a journey now and we're not on a on a journey where our where we can just wear fancy shoes and walk on fancy pavement.
We're going as some so many of the hymn riders, the Scottish and English hymn writers across Moore and Fen through Tangled brake. I know young people were more in thin as not everyday English words, but they're very poignant to me from with with with partially that background. You can't hardly even walk across a more infant. It's swampy ground.
With tangled up bushes, no farmer would want to have it.
Or develop it. No builder would want to build something on it. It's.
It's a tangled mess, but that's the way our Pilgrim life is. We're at sea in a certain sense, you and I.
It's striking, as the brothers have taught us from our earliest days, that we are as fit for heaven the moment we were saved as we were ever be. Because when you put your trust in Christ, you received as a present possession the forgiveness of sins. You have that now.
You're not going to get anymore forgiveness if the Lord comes in 2 minutes than you have right now. You have it all. You have the forgiveness of sins, and more than that, you've been justified.
When I was a teenager, I'd be a little older than a teenager, I think the American president Richard Nixon resigned from his presidency in disgrace.
And I think it was Albert Hajo made the comment that he had seen a picture of Richard Nixon in his last year sitting in a wheelchair with a very unhappy, sad face. And Albert made the point, he said.
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That illustrates the difference between forgiveness and justification.
Because he had been pardoned, he was not going to be tried. He was not going to go to jail. He was pardoned. He resigned his office, but he wasn't justified. What a painful thing for him to realize that the whole society throughout the whole world looked upon him only as a forgiven crook.
I wish I could think of a different word and I want to be disrespectful.
But that was illustrates and you have not only forgiveness, but you're justified. And God looks upon you as being in the possession of a life to which sin has never been attached, nor ever can be.
You're justified from all things and you have justification of life, and God looks upon you as being righteous in Christ. And more than that, He could have forgiven you and me, and He could have justified us.
And I say, OK, I love Mark, I'm going to justify Mark. But that doesn't mean I want to have Mark in my company, doesn't mean I want to have him over to my house.
Doesn't mean I wanna commune with him, but he's reconciled us to himself because he does want our company. Why did he make the world philosophers?
I suppose have wrestled with that for for ages and ages. Why did he make the world this earth? He made the world to display his own glory.
In his son and in you. And he wants your fellowship and he's going to have it.
In Psalm 107, which begins the last book of the Psalms says they that go down in the ship in to the sea and ships. They see his wonders in the deep. And if you've been on a ship when the water is rough, it makes a coward out of me. I married into a fishing family, but I'm a coward in the sea.
And these massive ships, they just go up and up and up and you wonder if it's going to stop this massive. And then it starts to go down and you wonder if it's ever going to stop. And and so it is if you've been at sea, you, you know what we're speaking about here. But there are wonders. And these are the wonders in your life now as a believer. You're on the Heavenly Rd.
We've been reading with some some believers from overseas through the book of Romans and we just got to Romans 5.
And we were so long in Romans 4. I was so happy to finally get to chapter 5, where let me just turn to it quickly.
In Romans 5, therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace, wherein we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
And the brothers were rehearsing that this is a blessing. When we look back into the past, it's a present blessing and it's a future blessing. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. God has it all covered and it's a peak. And then in verse three it says, and not only soul, we glory and tribulations also knowing a tribulation works endurance for patience.
And so it is your portion you have been elected.
To a privileged position to have tribulation in your life.
It's a gift from God. And why does He do it? You say, well, if I'm already ready for heaven the moment He saved me, why didn't He just take me then? Because He has a work that He's doing in you now, a work the fruit of which the glory of which is going to be for His glory throughout all eternity.
And so he's pouring us from vessel to vessel in your life. He's allowed and he allows.
Tribulation. If you bear fruit, he's going to purge you so that you bring forth more fruit, and he's the father of spirits.
And he works with your human spirit by the Holy Spirit, to produce in you gradually, day by day, as we read in Romans, to conform you more and more to the image of His Son, as a brother put it many years ago. Which is harder for the Lord to do, to speak a world into existence.
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I think I'll make another Galaxy.
Bam, he does it.
A Galaxy. He could speak it into existence, but he didn't speak Abraham's life into existence.
And the brother said, which is harder, to make a Galaxy or to produce an Abraham? How did he produce an Abraham? Abraham, the father of faith, as an individual was methodically and patiently like a Baker, like a Craftsman, like whatever figure you want to use, gradually and patiently put through these experiences to produce something in his life that could be produced no other way.
It's beautiful. How did it start? It started with that eagle we read in Acts Chapter 7. The God of glory appeared unto Abram one man, and he says, What did he say?
You're all right, just do a little better now, he says. Get out, get out. That was the message, the same message Ruth heard.
She left, too, into a country that she'd never been before. This is what faith does, and it's very individual.
In our time is about up.
There's a a strange type of heavy construction that I was around in my during my work career called top down construction.
And people in rural places will never experience their have never done it. Because if we're going to build something that starts deep down in the ground in the outskirts of Pella are between anywhere out there, plenty of real estate. Just open it right up. Just bring in the excavation equipment and we blow it right open. We just dig it right open, lay the slopes back and get a huge, massive hole. But you can't do that in the city.
Because there's a skyscraper right next to you here, and there's another one there, and yet you need to go down. And so they invented this, what they call top down construction. And so right on the surface of the ground, they'll build the roof. And then they'll dig through the roof just one story deep, and they'll brace that around. Now you've built the top story, and then you pour a structural concrete slab and you're bracing and down you go and down you go. So you'll build from the top down.
When I read the book of Ephesians, I realize I'm reading top down construction because it starts with God as a brother referred and his purpose in Christ, his eternal purpose. And you know, it's very personal in Ephesians, it's very personal.
Very personal. You don't get anything collective until the end of the first chapter, I think, and into the second it's you and him because that's the way it has to be. When you arrive home, he's going to review your life and that which was done in it for his glory personally. And it doesn't say men with women at the end of Proverbs 30, it says.
A man the way of a man with a woman. And yes, we know collectively, collectively, we are the bride of Christ.
But it's really a personal relationship that God is taking pains to develop in your life.
He didn't have to do that. That's what he wanted to do. He made the world, He made this earth, and his delights were in the habitable part of his earth so that you could have a place where he, as a Potter, could form you into that which could be for his own delight and glory.
And that's what he's doing in your life.
I think we should end there.
If I were going to give out a hymn and I'm not.
I would have given out #29 in the back.
It's very rarely sung.
If someone knows the tune later on, let me know that you do.
I've heard it and sung it, It's very beautiful, but I'm not going to suggest we sing it, but just to read the last verse thus far Thy power hath blessed me, and it still will lead me on or more. And then through tangled brakes, until the night is gone, And with the mourn the everlasting joy.
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Which led me on is mine without alloy.
May the Lord give you a sense of.
The wonderful work she's doing in your hearts, his faintest whispers. Make our hearts rejoice.
And any day now, it's all going to be over and we look back and we'll have that One who made us rejoice presently. We'll have him and be with him for all eternity.