Gospel—Lorne Perry
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It's, uh, 7:00, so we'll begin this meeting and umm, uh.
Pleased to welcome anyone here who has come in responding to invitations that were distributed in, uh, this town in Laurenville. And, uh, you are entirely welcome. And I, uh, trust that with uh, God's help, we can, uh, convey something to you of the love of God and the answer to every man's personal needs.
And I'd like to start with him that's in this, in our hemisphere, right in the middle #25.
And it uh.
It is him that was.
Appropriate to my topic tonight, but also.
Several brothers in the prayer session that we had before we came to this.
7:00.
Several brothers mentioned that the time available for the gospel message to be presented and received is short.
So this hymn highlights that fact.
Beginning with the first line, life at best is very brief and the chorus Be in time, be in time.
So let's sing #25 somebody started, please.
All you'll be in time.
Everything along the way.
And and and all your way, you know, I know today and you're crying.
00:05:22
Well, I think you can probably tell from the enthusiastic singing here of this hymn that the majority of people in this room already know Jesus as their personal savior, the one who gives them the assurance that they're going to be in heaven one day soon.
What we want to address the message particularly to anybody who is outside of that category and still does not know Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.
So before we begin with that.
Story in Daniel the book of Daniel chapter 5 and the.
The man that it concentrates on is a man named Belshazzar, who's a king.
At the time he was a Co Regent of his father. They were, that is, they were joint kings because the father wanted to leave the city of Babylon in his in his son's hands while he went off, while the father went off to fight approaching enemies.
This is found in Daniel chapter 5, and we'll just read a few of the verses there to begin.
Daniel 5.
And verse one.
Belshazzar the king made a great feast to 1000 of his Lords, and drank wine before the 1000. Belshazzar, whilst he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem, that the king and his Princess, his wives and his concubines might drink therein. Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the House of God, which was at Jerusalem.
And the king and his Princess, his wives and his concubines, drank in them. They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold and silver and brass, of iron, of wood, of stone. In the same hour came forth the fingers of a man's hand and rope over against the Candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the King's palace. And the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the King's countenance was changed.
And his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed and his knees smoked one against another.
This was the most striking and unusual occurrence as described here. How could you have a disembodied hand, or part thereof?
Right upon the wall, some words.
Not to be easily explained.
And.
Uh, these were, uh, as I mentioned earlier about the approaching enemy, these were troubled times. There had been wars and, uh, and many of the people of Jerusalem were captured and taken back to Babylon by the grandfather of, uh, called his father here in Nebuchadnezzar. But it's a grandfather. That was a term that was interchangeable in those days. And, uh.
So Daniel the prophet lived in these times and was part of the those who were captured and taken to Babylon, and he he became.
The chief of the of the the those who steered the king gave him his answers to tough questions, and they were they used various means, those men's astrologers sooth Sayers and.
And various other kinds of foretellers of events. But Daniel was the one who had the year of God because he was a man of God and he had worshipped God from his youth.
And.
So he was in the midst of that, that community, that city, and though he was a captive, he had a position of quite some importance.
00:10:09
Well, this man, Belshazzar, the focus of this story is was a proud man.
Ignorant of God's claims upon him.
And the way people live, first of all, we live in troubled times.
You don't have to go far in the television news before you get the stories of the troubles that this world is causing itself.
And talk about pride. Man is today characterized by pride in his own accomplishments.
Cried in his education. Cried in his achievement. Pride in his accomplishments.
Pride in his looks, pride in his, in his.
What he's lived through.
All kinds of things that man is proud of and, uh, and just, uh, revels in well.
The thing is that people today just as in just as Bell Shatter was.
Are, by and large ignorant of God's claims upon.
We are people who are part of the God's creation. I believe that science tries to discredit that, but to keep coming up against great stumbling blocks.
They can't. They can't seem to get past the fact that before there was anything, what was there?
You ask the question whatever they explained to you, you ask the question and before that.
And then they tell you some more, and then you say and before that.
And you rack far enough and they stop.
They can't go any further. They don't know. They just have to say, well, we just don't know.
And, uh, what we're finding out.
If you read the some of the scientific discoveries and findings and uh, and studies that go on all over this world, curiosity seeking scientists, probing and probing.
Above the earth, into the atmosphere and beyond into the into the heavens.
Uh, all over the earth, into the earth, digging deep and unearthing all kinds of things and going into the oceans to great depths and finding that beyond the area where it's possible in the ocean for life to, to live as we know it. What do they find? They find life and they can't explain it.
How does life survive there? There's no light, there's no photosynthesis like the green leaves we have. There's, uh, it's, uh.
It's absolutely, uh, incredible pressure of water at miles and miles deep.
But their life?
And life that they can't even identify, never seen before. They keep finding things.
Well, God is, and God is the creator of it all.
And somebody remarked that umm.
They were diving, scuba diving, not all that deep but still on reef, and saw the marvelous beauty and the color of the of the fish that swarmed around in school by the millions.
And, uh, realized that until scuba tanks and diving equipment were invented.
The only person who knew anything about those fished out colorful fish down there was God.
It's remarkable how much of creation we don't know anything to speak of about.
Well, this story.
Takes us into the banquet hall of Belshazzar and he's whooping it up. He's having a grand time with his friends.
00:15:04
Thousands of people.
That's a lot more than were served at this conference.
But they were having a wonderful feast with ample to drink.
And they were using. He decided that he would mock God.
He would call up from the Treasury those golden and silver vessels that have been brought from Jerusalem years before by his grandfather.
And they would have them to drink out of.
These were vessels that were from the temple.
They'd been used in the worship of God.
And God still had, having instructed his people to make them in the first place.
He had an affection for them and saw what Belshazzar did.
As a provocation.
It was kind of the last straw, all the other things I mentioned, the ignoring of God and his claim, the pride and the and the way they were living.
God saw all that.
But this was kind of the last, you might say, the last straw.
And so he acted. God acted.
And, umm.
We'll read down a bit farther. I won't read the whole story, but we'll go down to where Daniel, when all these astrologers and soothsayers and so on and counselors to the king, couldn't figure out what the writing on the wall said.
They finally sent for Daniel. Somebody has, uh, says his mother. But it was, I believe, another generation. Anyway, uh.
She remembered Daniel because of Nebuchadnezzar's time and how Daniel was rewarded for his for finding for interpreting dreams in those days.
And uh, made into a, uh, in a high capacity in the country and uh.
So the king sent for Daniel, and he came, and he was offered riches and A and a third place in the Kingdom, if he just simply.
Interpret these words that were on the wall so the king could get some sleep that night. Well, Daniel said, well, your gifts, be yourself because I don't need them. And but I will interpret the writing. So we'll get down to verse 20. Umm.
Four verse 24.
Of Chapter 5 of Daniel.
Then was the part part of the hand sent from him, and this writing was written, sent from God. And this is the writing that was written many, many Tiktok ufarsa. This is the interpretation of the thing.
Meaning, God hath numbered thy Kingdom, and finished it. Tickle thou art weighed in the balances, and found wanting.
Murphy.
Berries, thy Kingdom is.
Is divided and given to the Medes and the Persians.
The key thing I want to draw attention to here is the one that deals with.
What God? That God has numbered thy Kingdom and finished it. Thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting.
Well, you can see that on the table here. I have a set of balances, amateur, not very precise, but still balances. And I think it'll do what we want to do.
I remember when scales of this type. I'm old enough to remember this. We're still in use in grocery stores.
My uncle had a grocery store in a small town and it was scales not unlike this that were used to weigh out things. Sugar arrived at 100 LB sack. And if you wanted to get into, if you wanted to 5 lbs or 2 1/2 Kilos, 2 1/4 kilos, you, uh, you have to ladle it out into the bag and balance it on the scale with a weight And uh, and when you had the weight right, you sealed up the bag and there and charged the appropriate price.
00:20:17
And that was the way merchandise was handled in those days, a lot of it.
Well, uh, my brother and I, when we were little, we used to go to my uncle's store and he would, uh, sometimes to get us out of his hair, he'd set us up working on the balances to pre pack sacks of sugar in the right quantity. I think a little bit got into our mouth. It was very good. And uh, and we would, uh, we would put a sack on one side and, and a, a, a brass weight on the other side.
And then put sugar in until we evened it up. Well, we'll suppose that this is I'm letting some coins here work as as if they were sugar, and I'm putting a weight on this side and.
They've got them pretty well, right. It's not exactly right, but close. And uh, I can take, if I can say, well, there's, it's a little too heavy. OK, take out a couple of nickels. Whoop, I've taken out too much, put in a couple.
Couple more and there she goes. And that's the way you level it up.
Well, you know this, uh, the weight on this side that I was using is a block of wood.
We'll take that as.
God's standard.
God has the standard.
Any measures US against it like Belshazzar?
You, Belshazzar, were weighed in the balance and found wanting. You came up short. You didn't make the test. You didn't measure up to the weight. Well, suppose we have the balance.
Like this?
How many sins do you think it would take?
How many sins do you think it would take to tip the scale?
That's where the expression comes from, tipping the scale.
Boom, down as she goes one.
How many sins in your life?
A lot of people say they like to think, you know?
A lot of people think.
Well, I'll acknowledge, yeah, there's sins in my life, things I've done that are not proud of, things I wish I hadn't done, things that well, certainly God wouldn't approve of.
But I'll tell you what.
If I just take.
God's standard.
And I put my good things that I've done on the other side.
It'll balance up.
No, the Bible says that all have sinned.
And come short of the glory of God, It can't put enough good stuff on this side to have any effect on the weight on the other side.
This is that's God's side and you can't do anything about that.
Your side is packed with sin.
And you can't put enough on that side of good.
To balance anything to have any effect at all unacceptable to God, God says in God says that in Isaiah 64 that all our righteousness, even the good things we've done, are as filthy rags.
What's the value there? Not a bit, not a bit 0.
So what's the answer?
Well, how are we going to get rid of those sins when God's standard is.
So perfect.
And.
And we need something to balance the scales. Well, the answer is The answer is found in God's way of balancing the scales. Very neat.
00:25:05
What he does?
What he does is he removes all the sins. How? How could he do that when not one sin can exist in heaven? God is of two holy eyes and to behold evil can't be there, Incompatible. Can't be any sin in God's presence, can't exist there, can't get there.
But God takes the sins away.
How can you do that?
Well.
The truth is that it says in First Corinthians chapter 15 and verse three Christ died for our sins. Let's I'm going to turn to it because it's a very important verse section of the Scripture.
1St Corinthians 15.
And verse 3.
The end of the verse, the last part of the verse, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.
This is very important for several reasons.
First of all, Christ died, and we know that the story of the death of the Lord Jesus of the cross, he suffered terribly.
Not for anything he had done.
He was perfect.
But He suffered because He was carrying your sins and mine. Anybody who will receive in the Savior can be covered by His precious blood shed at Calvary's cross.
Says also in the Bible that the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us, cleans us from all sin. It's the blood that washes away the sins.
That we have upon ourselves.
Let Jesus take them off.
And then there can be a place that is God is satisfied with. Why?
Not because of anything we've done.
But because of what Jesus Christ did, we come under the shelter of his work at Calvary to the blessing of our to the benefit of our souls.
Now I mentioned that the when we're going through this hymn at the beginning that it we're there's an urgency to this message.
I can't say. I can't say that we'll get to 8:00.
Tonight before the Lord Jesus comes and it's the end of gospel preaching, when Jesus comes to the clouds and calls everybody who knows him, the Savior, to be with him, lead this world, then there'd be no more opportunity to receive the gospel, and nor will it be the people around to preach it.
So there's time now.
In the verse that is of course very important in that regard is Second Corinthians 6:00 and 2:00.
And it's the verse upon which this hymn we were singing is based.
First Second Corinthians six and two. For he saith, I have heard thee in the time accepted and the day, and in the day of salvation have a Socrates Behold, now is the accepted time. Behold, now is the day of salvation.
God doesn't offer you or promise you opportunities tomorrow to receive Jesus as Savior.
He says now is the time.
Now is the day of salvation.
Well.
We can.
We can look at other ways in the Bible, other places where there were measurements give us I've I've enjoyed looking for them various points through the Scriptures and.
00:30:06
They make an interesting little study which we'll spend a few minutes on, and they're all related to what we a general topic tonight.
About just before we get to that.
I just wanna say what sort of close the chapter on, uh, Daniel the historian Daniel.
The very night, that very night that the hand wrote on the wall.
The, uh, the medium, the meats, it's the enemies overtook the the defense forces and crashed into Babylon and killed King Belshazzar that very night.
And fulfilled.
The Scriptures, the word of God that was written on the wall.
Your Kingdom is divided between 2 Kings, The Persians they were together fighting.
Your Kingdom is divided and finished.
And Belshazzar, who should lose his life, which he did that night.
So Daniel, Daniel had an idea, I'm sure that God was going to carry out that promise and not far off. And there would be no point in Belshazzar rewarding him for discovering the secret.
Belshazzar had gone ahead right after the banquet and umm, from what I might add, it was suddenly a very sober crowd.
Right after that.
Belshazzar did reward Daniel and made him the third ruler of the Kingdom.
Close them in purple robes and so on. Well, Daniel didn't need that. He was the man of God, and he was prepared to do God's will. And he had an eye. He certainly knew what was coming to that Kingdom.
Well, to go on.
Uh, there are measurements given for God's love.
Look at Ephesians chapter 3 and verse.
17.
Ephesians chapter 3.
And verse 17.
This is speaking about folks who have trusted in Jesus as their Savior and have experienced the love of God have accepted these, the Lord Jesus as Savior.
And it says in.
Verse 15. Verse 17. Rather that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend. With All Saints here comes the measurements red and length, and death and height.
And to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.
OK, how big is God's love? The love of Christ?
Can't be measured beyond measurement.
That's the only.
Evidence we have, I don't understand, of measuring the love of God.
It's measured as being without measure. You can't come to the end of it, you can't exhaust it, and you can't put dimensions on it. It's imponderable, it's unlimited, it's price.
The love of God. Wouldn't you like to have the experience of knowing directly the love of God come to Jesus?
And accept the gift that God and His love has offered.
And accept the Lord Jesus as Savior.
There's another measurement given.
And that's measuring.
The exaltation or the stature of Jesus?
Philippians 2:00 and 9:00.
Just a couple of books over.
00:35:04
Philippians 2.
Verse 9.
Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him Jesus, because of his crosswork, that you see in the previous verses, and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Through the glory of God the Father.
Wherefore God hath highly exalted him? How high can we measure it? Do we know how high, how prestigious, how marvelous, how exalted the Person of Christ is? No.
It's beyond It's one of those supporters of God that we can't figure out because our minds are limited.
'Cause it's not.
He has resulted Christ to glory to his own right hand in heaven, and there he waits till he calls all believers to be with himself.
Can we?
Measure this.
Can we measure?
The peace of God.
Philippians 4 verse 7 just a couple of chapters over.
4:00 and 7:00.
And the peace of God, which passes all understanding.
Shall keep your hearts in mind.
There's an unlimited resource passes all understanding. You can take as much of the peace of God for yourself through Jesus, through knowing Jesus as you want.
And you can't exhaust the supply.
It's measureless.
Beyond putting dimensions upon.
Then can we?
Ever measure the sufferings of Christ? Well, there are lots of hints about the scale dimensions of the sufferings of Christ.
But they don't tell us the full story.
Jonah chapter 2. There are many places in the Old Testament. I'm just going to pick one.
Jonah.
And right next to Daniel, where we were.
You know a little further on Joel in Obadiah.
Jonah Jonah Chapter.
Two.
Jonah was a prophet who had a message from God, but he decided I don't have the nerve to go and deliver that message, so we'll go the other way. And he was stopped in his tracks. He was on a boat going in the wrong direction.
And when the storm came up, that threatened the boat, the ship.
And the superstitious people aboard thought that the man of God was probably.
Doing something wrong and if they threw him out of the boat they would probably be OK. Well, Jonah was thrown overboard.
And he came pretty near to drowning.
But as we know from the story, a great fish, a great fish followed him up and he was then put up on dry land a little later.
But in that process.
Of justice approaching drowning. We have the words of Jonah recorded, and it's interesting that how much of A parallel this gives us to some of the feelings and experiences of the Lord Jesus at the cross of Calvary.
Jonah chapter 2 and verse six. I went down. I'll read verse five. The waters compassed me about even to the soul, the depth closely round about.
00:40:06
The weeds were wrapped about my head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains. The earth with her bars was about me forever.
And then he goes on to say, Yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, Oh Lord my God.
Well, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Umm, in the field of medicine.
By the people in the field of medicine, it's often described, uh, what happened to him on the cross was that he ultimately drowned.
Brother Mike, preaching from here last night, said that the umm.
There's a sack around the heart, and when the heart is terribly stressed, as it would be as it was indeed in the case of the Lord Jesus dying, anybody dying on the cross, that sack filled with liquid that the cart, the heart can't pump away as it normally would.
Because it's so stressed and eventually that impacts on the lungs and you can't. Your breath gets shorter and shorter and you perish. You die as Jesus did.
Jonah didn't die.
He was put out on dry land.
And he elected them to go and do what he'd been asked to do originally.
Of the Lord Jesus died.
And suffered immensely.
Can any of us?
Uh, imagine.
Do we have any experience close to what those sufferings are as described as?
And there are other many other places we could look at where the the language of people who were suffering in their time.
Is descriptive in parallel to what the Lord Jesus suffered.
Very, very graphic.
Umm, other psalms and other places.
Can't measure. Can't measure beyond measurement.
And to conclude.
God operates on the principle of.
Just balances, which means that the scales.
Are honest.
You start off with even balance.
And uh.
And that's the way.
God handles judgment. It's always on an honest and direct and, uh, unpolluted manner.
Says look at Leviticus chapter 19 where the principles.
For some of the principles are given. Leviticus is a book of rules.
For the children of Israel of the principles are in there, and this is a good.
A good verse. These are good verses for anybody.
Today.
Doing business. Particularly look what it says in verse 35 of Genesis of Leviticus chapter 19.
Just balances.
In the verse 35, it says Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment.
And verse 36 just balances. Just waits that is.
Your standard weight is very carefully calibrated for scales.
Skills have to be inspected wherever they occur and they're all over the place in, in the merchandising field. All, everything you buy practically at a grocery store has the, uh, kilogram weight on it. And those, the, the machines that set that are all very carefully calibrated and have to be checked by government inspectors to make sure that they're just.
That what they say is in the package is actually there.
You'd have to take away the packaging because what you do is you put. If you put your weight on one side and your empty sugar bag on the other side, you have to put an empty bag on this side with the weight in order that you can. You won't be cheating the customer by putting a little less weight because you're figuring the bag in the purchase.
00:45:23
You give away the bag, but you want to give them the honest weight of sugar.
Well.
Umm.
Judgement is often pictured in the court system of the world.
As a lady standing there.
With a set of balances like this in one hand.
And but her eyes blindfolded. And the point of that is that the judgment of the courts is supposed to be unbiased.
The judge is not supposed to have an opinion except by the law.
And so.
The difference is with God is that He sees all and knows all. He knows far more than any judge in any case, especially in our case with respect to our souls. He knows who we are and He knows what we've done. He knows all we've said. You know, we live in an age where there is a tremendous amount of information being generated.
And stored every day, there's a thing that the computer world has called a cloud. Well, I remember asking and of course once, OK, so where is the cloud? And they told me, the instructor told me, well, if you really want to know, it's actually a very, very large computer in California. But it what it is, is a storage device for information. And it's enormous.
And the information is being stored every day and it's being more and more is being found out. More is being recorded all the time. You can make a move apparently in England. Now, whether the camera picking you up and tracking you. Now who looks at those, those images? Nobody, unless there's a need. But when there's a need, they have the images and they go back and track through them and they can plot the moves where a potential terrorist or a bank robber or whatever.
Is what he has done and who he meets.
They don't. They don't know what he said. Can't read that yet, but God can. God knows it all, and you are not exempt from his observation in anything that you ever do or say.
Solid and serious.
The bottom line is.
Is you can only meet God on God's terms.
People try and invent ways to justify their existence and figure that God will overlook this or that and make allowances when God does not.
He's holy and demands holiness.
And you say me Holy well, in Christ God sees us as being cleansed.
And we can come onto his ground, holy ground.
It's remarkable. That is true, and I've lived 70 years knowing that and believing it and finding that it works. And I command this person, Jesus Christ, to you tonight.
Let's close in prayer.
Nsnoise.