Address—P. Wilson
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Detroit, MI October 14, 1962 Address by Paul Wilson.
1400 Lord, our hearts are waiting, the archangels, heaven sent cry, which wakes the Saints now sleeping, until thee brings them die, when we with them ascending, shall meet thee in the air to gaze upon thy glory, and all thy likeness bare #140.
Lord our hearts our way.
2500.
00:05:47
I can't believe.
It.
Thought this afternoon.
Is to read the 12Th chapter of Hebrews.
I like to make a comment or two concerning the Epistle to the Hebrews.
That the Epistle to the Hebrews is the epistle of our wilderness journey.
Our wilderness experience.
I've known some brothers.
Who seemed to like to speak only of the Epistle to the Ephesians.
Where we get our heavenly calling, that is, that our life is hid with Christ in God.
Where we are seen in him up there.
I was quoting from Colossians, however, But our life is Satan up there. He's there. He's our life.
And we're down here, seated in him, up there before it got him.
Precious truth in the Epistle to the Ephesians.
The highest note I suppose, that we have in any of the epistles.
But in the Epistle to the Hebrews we were in the wilderness, and we find instruction for the wilderness journey.
And we need it, I think, if one Christian were to be occupied only with the Epistle to the Ephesians.
He would like much for his wilderness journey, for his feet day by day.
Now here we come to the 12Th chapter.
Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses.
Let us lay aside every weight and the sin or sin which dost so easily beset us.
And let us run with patience the race that is set before us.
Looking under Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.
Over the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame.
And is set down on the right hand of the throne of God.
For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself.
Lest ye be wearied and faint in your mind.
Ye have not yet resisted under blood.
Striving against sin, and ye have forgotten the exhortation.
Which speaketh unto you, is unto children, my son, Despise not thou the chastening of the Lord.
Nor faint when thou art rebuked of him, For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth.
And scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons. For what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?
But if ye be without chastisement, where of all our partakers, then are ye ******** and not sons?
00:10:05
Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh, which corrected us, and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the father of spirits, and live, for they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure, but he for our prophet, that we might be partakers of His Holiness.
Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous nevertheless afterward it yielded the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.
Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down the feeble knees.
And make straight paths for your feet. Bless that which is lame be turned out of the way, but let it rather be healed.
Follow peace with all men, and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.
Looking diligently, lest any man fail the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up, trouble you, and thereby many be defiled.
Lest there be any fornicator or profane person as he saw.
Over 1 morsel of meat sold his birthright.
Where you know how that afterwards when he would have inherited a blessing.
He was rejected, for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.
For ye are not come unto the mount, that might be touched, that burned with fire, nor unto blackness and darkness, and Tempest, and sound of a trumpet, And the voice of words which spake which voice they that heard entreated, that the word should not be spoken to them anymore.
For they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much as a beast touched the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with the dart. And so terrible was the sight that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake.
But ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God.
The heavenly Jerusalem to an innumerable company of angels.
The General Assembly and Church of the First Born.
Which are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.
And of Jesus, the mediator of the new Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel.
See that you refuse, not him that speaketh, for if they escape, not who refused him that spake on earth.
How much more, much more, shall not we escape if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven?
Whose voice then shook the earth, But now he hath promised saying yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.
And this word, yet once more signifies the removing of those things that are shaken.
As the things that are made.
That those things which cannot be shaken may remain.
Wherefore we receiving a Kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear, for our God is a consuming fire.
We've just read the 12Th chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
The first expression, wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses.
Takes us back to the previous chapter.
Now, in the previous chapter, we have a long list of those who lived and died in faith. They didn't receive the promises. They had promises, but they didn't receive the fulfillment of them.
They went on.
Day by day.
Looking forward to something that didn't come in their day.
Now if we would go back to the Epistle to the Hebrews, I mean to the 11Th chapter of this epistle.
00:15:06
We would find 2 Characteristics of faith.
The patience of faith and the energy of faith.
Now you and I may be called to exercise faith in our wilderness pathway.
Either in patience or in energy.
One may be needed and then the other are both together.
You go down the chapter and you find patience, patience, patience. Abraham went out, not knowing whither he went.
And then you go on.
And come down all the way to Moses when he came to years before you get the energy of faith.
Moses refusing.
Moses choosing Moses making the right choice. Oh, I'm glad Moses made the right choice.
Moses could cast off all of Egypt's honor, its pleasure, its wealth. Just put it all aside.
And cast in his lot with a company of slaves. Why? Because he saw that that company of slaves were God's people.
Took faith to do that.
To cast, to leave the throne, to leave the royal family and all its advantages.
And go and cast your lot in with the company of slaves you know, if we hadn't had.
Moses Life of faith.
The energy of faith that carried him forward, he would never have been on the Transfiguration mount with the Lord of Glory.
No. You probably would be able to go to the British Museum today and find his mummy.
Probably made a pretty good mummy along with some of the other Pharaohs we put in the British Museum, but instead he shared a place on the Transfiguration mount with the Lord of Glory in that preview of the coming Kingdom.
Well, you go down the whole 11Th chapter in its faith in one way or another. May I make this comment too about the word faith?
The first part of the first verse of the 11Th chapter of Hebrews says faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Better translation there is Faith is the conviction.
Of things hoped for know the substantiating. Of things hoped for the conviction of things not seen.
Faith enables you to lay hold of what you don't see. That's the meaning of it. Faith is the substantiating of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Some people speak of this first chapter, the first verse of the 11Th of Hebrews, as though it were a definition of faith.
It is. It's what faith does.
The better definition are the best definition of faith than I know of.
Is he that hath received his testimony has set to his seal that God is true, He says, I believe God, and I believe what God says. He accepts that Abraham believed God.
The Apostle Paul said, Sirs, I believe God.
That's faith. Every man has faith in something.
They pick up the morning paper and they read about places and people they've never seen.
And they accept it without question on the word of men.
But they pick up the Bible and read if they do, and they question it. But they were, the real thing is they're questioning the word of God.
Mr. Garvey made this remark concerning Catholicism, which pretends to tell you what the word means. He says It's really infidelity, for instance.
If I come into the room and I say I just saw an accident down the street and a man was killed.
00:20:05
And you say, well, I have no reason to doubt your veracity.
Are the worthiness of your report, but I will wait till I hear it from somebody else.
Before I accept it.
Well, if somebody else comes along and tells you and then you believe it, you're believing on their testimony and not mine.
You reject my word as untrustworthy. So when God gives us His word and I say.
I'll only believe it if the Church confirms it. If the Church explains it and gives it to me, then I'll believe it.
I am not believing it because God gave it and in substance it is infidelity.
But now faith in the Epistle to the Romans is that principle.
On which we are saved. Faith believes. God believes my lost condition.
Faith believes God's remedy. I accept his salvation that meets my need. Faith is the principle on which we're saved. In the Epistle to the Romans, in the Epistle to the Hebrews.
Faith is the principle upon which I live.
In this world, it's the living, practical reality of how I take God and His Word.
To direct my path day by day. Faith is the substantiating of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
For by if the elders obtained a good report, and you go down the chapter, and there were many of them, they obtained a good report through faith. We come to the first verse of the 12Th chapter, which we've already read, where we're seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, that means only that we've had this long list of those that lived and died in faith in the 11Th chapter.
They've been given to encourage us to go on in the path of faith. Here they are lined up.
Some people have tried to explain it, that they are in heaven watching us now.
There's nothing to that. There isn't. There's no truth in that.
But here we have them in the 11Th chapter as those that preceded us in the path of faith.
Now they should be an encouragement to us to go on in their steps, that is in the path of faith down here day by day.
Now let us lay aside.
We're to go on in that path of faith that these Old Testament Saints have.
And remember, this was written to converted Hebrews.
Converted Hebrews were constantly in danger of turning back.
To Judaism. And that was apostasy. It was to give up Christ.
And go back to shadows. Suppose you're waiting for a man to come.
And you see a shadow coming down the street, and you're quite elated to see a shadow.
You know he's coming, but after he comes, who wants to go out and look for a shadow?
You have it. Well, in the New Testament we have the substance of the things of which the Old Testament was the shadow. And for a converted Jew to give up the substance for a shadow was to give up Christ for all, for ceremonies that preceded.
Let us lay aside every weight.
Hebrews 12 We just read the whole chapter.
Speaking now the first verse, let us lay aside every weight.
And sin. I believe that these should be left out there.
If you put it in.
The sin referred to in Hebrews would be unbelief.
Let us lay aside every week.
And sin which does so easily beset us. Do you know there are things that easily beset us down there, things that are hindrances to us in the path of faith. Now he said, there are two things. One or one are weights, the other sins, sin.
Let us lay aside. Notice how easily he puts it. It isn't as though it was some Herculean task, something that we had to really bend all effort to, he says. Let us just lay it aside.
00:25:04
As though it were easy, you just don't be encumbered with Just put it this guy.
Let us lay aside every week what you and I, each one of us, know.
Water waste to us. What would be a weight to one in pressing on in the path of faith would not be to another.
It's often been said that if a man wanted to run a race and win the race.
A bag of gold would be a weight. If he were bent on winning the race, he'd castaway the bag of gold.
Because he couldn't win the race and carry the gold with him, so he just laid aside and go on and win.
Let us lay aside every week and the devil has plenty of weight, something to encumber us, to slow us down in the race. You and I, fellow Christian, are in a race.
We're not just saved to be passive.
We're not just saved to get in the boat and rest on our oars and float downstream, but that's the only way you can float is down.
Know where to be actively engaged. Let us press on. There's a race.
Apostle Paul says in the Epistle to the Philippians this one thing I do.
And he says I down to the goal. I press he has the goal before it. Well, that's what we need. We're in a race, we're in a may I say it, we're in an obstacle race. We have many obstacles, hindrances, things to impede our progress.
I'm sure that anyone of us that have reached any maturity in the Christian pathway can look back.
And say, well, in such and such years I was impeded in my Pilgrim pathway by allowance of this or allowance of that, Things that crowded in on us, that hindered us from making advance in the race of the Pilgrim pathway. So he says, let us lay aside every weight.
And sin.
Well.
May we say this, that what may be a wait today?
May become sin tomorrow.
That is, I may become more heavily engrossed with it to the point that it becomes a sin.
But whether it be waits or sins, anything that prevents me from pressing on to the goal, and that's Christ in glory.
I should just put it aside.
Well, you say it isn't as easy as that. With the Lord's help, I believe it is.
With the Lord's help.
If there's something in your life or in my life, it is a hindrance to my progress.
May we have grace to seek the help from the Lord, to just lay it aside as an incumbent, as a hindrance.
And let us run.
That takes energy, doesn't it?
Let us run.
Can you and I run?
It's the energy of faith that takes one for let us run. Now let me say something else. It isn't natural energy that we run with. Let us run with endurance. It's an endurance race.
All the devil has so many obstacles and difficulties and problems that they try to hinder us in the path of faith. So, oh why press on? Why not give up?
I talked to a brother one night.
I picked him up to take him to meeting and he says I have such a terrible headache.
I don't know if I can take anything in, I said. Well, why didn't you stay home? The Lord doesn't expect you to go of your headaches that bad.
Well, he says. I'll tell you why I didn't stay home, he says. If I gave in and stayed home tonight, next week, it would be easy to stay home when I didn't have a headache.
He says I just won't give in on it. Well, now, I'm not advocating that because there are times, and the Lord knows it, when physical conditions hinder us, but there is such a thing as allowing things to come in that hinders from running the race.
By getting into the way of not coming to the Bible readings, not coming to the prayer meetings.
I'm not making progress in the race. I have allowed something to come in. Well, you say, what else can I do? My job is so terrible I can't get around to it.
00:30:09
Well, I believe we should seek the Lord's help to make some adjustment of it in some way that we can make his things.
First, let us run with endurance.
Not their fleshly energy, but endurance that we get from the Lord himself to carry us through.
Run with endurance, the race that is set before us.
Well, I've gone to cities.
Where I had maps to tell me how to go and I have read the maps most carefully and still miss the road.
It's a whole lot easier to have somebody with you. It's a whole lot easier to follow someone now, he says. I want to have your eye on one that's ahead of you.
Want you to keep your eye on the one that's already been in the race.
Looking steadfastly on Jesus. It should be keeping your eyes steadfastly on Jesus.
The beginner and completer of faith leave out the word ours in italics, it doesn't belong.
He is not the leader and completer of our faith, but he is the leader or the beginner and completer of faith itself, the whole path of faith. He began and ended it in perfection.
Every other one. All those listed in the 11 of Hebrews now remember.
Only their faces mentioned there, not their favors.
In fact, I don't think the failures of the Old Testament Saints are recorded in the New, but with one exception, and that is Elijah made intercession against Israel and that is recorded in the news. There was a such serious consequence He made intercession against Israel.
We should never make intercession against our brethren before so.
Looking steadfastly on Jesus, the one who began and completed the whole path of faith.
Without wavering, without a failure, take Abraham the father of the faithful. He went down into Egypt when a famine came with that phase. No, that was a lapse in the path of faith. And all the time it was in Egypt he lost his 10th and his altar.
And when he came out of Egypt, he brought an Egyptian maid that was to plague his house for years to come.
Abraham the father of the faithful, and when he was down there he denied his wife even.
We once get on the wrong path. There's no telling how far we go, but you go right down the list. There isn't an Old Testament St. of whom you can't say there's failure somewhere.
He was the only one that began and completed the path of faith without intermission, without interruption or failure. But keep your eye on him. He's in the way. He's been in the way before you, not on those.
One listed in the 11Th chapter, but on Jesus, the one who did it perfectly.
Over the joy that was set before him endured.
Where to endure He endured. How did he endure? Why he was looking forward to accomplishing the Father's will and going back to the father's right hand, whoever the joy that endured.
Over the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and he sat down on the right hand of the throne of God.
In other words, keep your eye on one that ran the race in perfection from start to finish and has reached the goal.
Is already there.
Now we have one before us in the race that has attained the goal. Now there are four times in the Epistle to the Hebrews that the Lord is spoken of as having been having been seated at the right hand of God, with little variations. As to the expressions in the first chapter. He seats himself as one having accomplished redemption. Well, he seats himself at the right hand of God as God. Who but God could sit down at God's right hand?
In the 7th chapter.
I think it's a 7th. We won't take time to turn to it.
He's our great High Priest at the right hand of the majesty of the in the heavens. He's there as our High Priest, representing us at the very summit of power.
00:35:09
That's where our High Priest is, at the right hand of the majesty on I.
In the 10th chapter, he is seated on high as the one that has accomplished the work of redemption.
The work is all over. He'll never take up the work of redemption or have to do with sin again. That's over.
At the 10th chapter the priest there was number seat for him in the Tabernacle or in the temple. His his work was never done, but our Lord is seated there with the work all done.
Now the fourth time is right here, and he's seated at God's right hand.
As the one who has a one race, he's attained bull.
Rather, we're not running an uncertain race. The one that was in the pathway before us is already there.
There is but that one in the waist, which is footsteps of marked as his own, and we follow in diligent haste to the place where he's put on his throat.
Put on his crown all we follow in. Diligent hates the pathway of that blessed man that has attained the goal.
For consider him.
I think Mr. Garvey even says it will consider well, consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be worried and faint in your mind, you have some problems.
Do the manager work? Make it hard for you because you're a Christian.
The other pupils at school make it difficult for you.
Reject you from their company and cast you out. Consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself. You've never had anything like he had. You couldn't have what he had as to the way he was rejected and suffered the rejection of men all through his pathway.
Remember in the 11Th of Matthew?
A list that sailed A cursed and Capernaum, as the cities were in most of his mighty works were done.
And he mentioned that they had rejected him, and he pronounces, Woe unto thee, woe unto thee war.
But in the midst of it all, he says. But I thank the old Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because I was hid these things from the wise and prudent Ms. revealed them on debates. Well, that's the one that's before us in the race. Consider him, consider him well, and endured such contradiction of sinners against himself.
Lest ye be wearied and faint in your mind, one thing that the devil uses and uses.
To with great effect on the Saints of God is discouragement.
You remember the children of Israel when they entered the.
When they were about to enter the land, they're just about the end of the journey.
And the people were much discouraged because of the way just at the end of their wilderness journey, they became discouraged.
And then you remember what happened.
Why the serpents bit them?
It all stemmed from discouragement and the devil likes to discourage the Saints of God.
And remember, we are just at the end of the journey and the devil would like to discourage you and me today.
Get you to let your hands hang out, say, oh, what's the use? Now I know we're in the last days and there is such a way of Speaking of the last days as to discourage people and say, well, what's the use? Why try any longer? Just let's go like a dead fish and go with the current brethren. Let's press off. It's at the end of the journey that he tries to discourage the Saints. It was at the end of the wilderness journey that he discouraged Israel.
He couldn't keep them from getting into the land, but he could spoil their abundance and abundant entrance. He could hinder their enjoyment of getting into that land by having discouraged them at the end of the way.
Now he says in the fourth verse, ye have not yet resisted unto blood striving against them.
That one that was in the way before us did.
Someone has said he would rather die than not do the will of the Father.
00:40:02
I often think too, of that awful night in the Garden of Gethsemane.
There Satan was pressing upon him what it would be to be made sin.
What awaited them the next day? And he finally takes, he takes it all from the father's hand, and he says, not my will but thine be done.
He has the victory and he comes out perfectly calm, goes forth to meet the betrayer, and the mob goes forth knowing that he's going right to the cross to accomplish that work, the will of the Father.
And what happened in that garden? He prayed earnestly.
And being in an agony, he prayed more earnestly.
And his sweat was as it were, grade drops of blood falling to the ground. The agony was so intense.
At night.
That the sweat fell down to the ground, but more than that, it was tinged with blood.
Can you imagine such extreme agony that blood would exclude through the poor?
I've heard of people doing it, having that happen to them in a terribly weakened condition.
That they had blood would be exuded through the pores, all but the agony that Christ endured in the Garden of Gethsemane, anticipating what it would be to be made thin.
As you have not yet resisted under blood striving against sin.
Sometimes.
There is very little real courage, real endurance with us in standing out for God in an evil world.
And ye have forgotten, the excitation which speaketh unto you is unto children.
My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him.
Here are two ways that we can.
Treat God's dispensations with us in child training. Chastening is really child training.
Two ways we can treat it that are both wrong.
Thanked or despised?
Now how can we faint? Well, we just get so discouraged when difficulties come. The things that God allows for our training and for our prophet, We get discouraged and we let the hands hang down.
How about despising it? Well, a man says, well, I'll do it. I'll carry it through.
It's nothing but human fortitude. I've seen Saints of God meet the most.
Adverse circumstances, perhaps difficult cases where God was allowing to exercise and they met it in human fortitude.
Now that's despising the chastening of the Lord. If I can just rise above it and throw it off and not seek to be find out what the Lord would teach me in it.
So he says, Ye have forgotten the excitation.
My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou is rebuked of him for whom the Lord loveth he chase them.
Do we ever consider?
When difficulties and trials come across our pathways.
That is because of his love.
They're all evidences of his love.
He says why If God doesn't treat you or treat you that way, you are not a son at all.
Says you've forgotten the exhortation. It says this. And then he says, if he endured chasing God deals with you as with sons, for what son is he whom the Father chaseth not? Would you want to go through this world without any correction?
Some of you, some of us, have seen children that were brought up without any correction.
And what sorry children they turned out to be.
No correction, just do their own will well.
If you plant a tree in your yard.
And the trace leaning one way, you can let that tree alone and let it lean, and it'll lean farther and farther over, a little more and a little more, and after a while you can't even begin to straighten it. It's so old and so set, you couldn't straighten it.
If you're if it's going to be straightened, it's going to have to be straightened while it's young and tender and so our God deals with us, would we want to not have him do it? Would we dare say that God said I'd rather be living alone?
00:45:15
I'd rather not be corrected. I'd rather not be trained. Oh, I hope not. We need these things.
Furthermore, we ninth verse, we have had fathers of our flesh, which corrected us, and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much rather, be in subjection unto the father of spirits, and live we we recognize the authority of our fathers on earth? Shall we not much rather be in subjection to the father of spirits, and live for they verily ask. Now let's correct this rendering here, for they verily corrected us as seem best to them.
Not for their pleasure, but as seem best to them.
They may not have been wise, They may have failed in their methods, they may have been failed in lack of of firmness, they may have failed into being too severe.
But he doesn't make those mistakes.
We submitted to our fathers in the flesh, who corrected us as seemed best to them. There may have been mistakes in what they did.
But he for our Prophet that we might be partakers of His Holiness.
What is God? What is God working out with us down here? Why He is?
Try a seeking tool in all these things bring us to.
Holiness.
Is correcting this thing and the other thing.
Oh, he does it with a wise hand. Our father is all wise.
Our parents were not always wise.
He's all loving.
And he's all powerful.
Well, our parents weren't all powerful. They weren't always all wise.
But.
We gave them reverence, but our fathers all loving, all wise, all powerful.
Now, in his love, he wants to do what's the very best for us.
In his wisdom, he knows what is very best for us, and in his power he is able to do what is very best for us. So we can't. We can't fail to get the blessing.
And the end my deeper takers of his coordinates.
Oh God, we're in the school down here. There's one thing about it. If you go to school down here in the world, you go to this college or this school or the other.
You'll get a degree when you'll finish it, or you'll get a diploma or something.
But you know, in the school of God in which everyone of us are will never get a diploma down here.
Never get a diploma down here.
No. We await the judgment seat of Christ for his appraisal of it all. We are not looking for diplomas here, but he's training us. He's dealing with us that we might be partakers of His Holiness.
Now, no choice, no chasing, for the present seemeth to be joyous.
Agree with.
I heard today a letter from California of different ones that are suffering severe trials.
There's a dear sister there known to some of you here. Salma Kutcher.
In Los Angeles, she pitifully crippled with arthritis.
She was having so much pain in one limb from, she thought, from very close veins.
They put her in the hospital and got a specialist to take care of the situation.
Today I learned that the specialist in examining the limb heard some grating of bones.
He rushed her in to call a bone specialist and rushed her in for an X-ray and found the blade was broken in two places.
Hard, no. Chastening, for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous.
But nevertheless.
After there's an afterward to all of it. It may be an afterward when we be with Christ. Afterward, a deal is a peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them who are exercising now that that's the 3rd way to treat them, that we can treat God's dispensation first, despise or neglect.
00:50:18
Or be exercised by it.
The exercise. That's the way we should treat them. Oh, I don't mean that we should be morose and get down with everything that comes along. I have known Christians that were just so long faced. They were always down under something and wonder what God was doing this or that. For I think we should hold a simple.
Childlike.
Attitude, desiring that we may know the Lord's will in these things.
And if something crosses our path, we can go to him and seek to know why.
Or what he would teach us. Maybe it's not for correction at all. Maybe it's prevented.
You know, Mr. Brown tells us that there are three words that express God's dealings with us as children.
And he uses 3 peas to do it.
Preventive, preparatory and punitive.
He tells me it isn't original with him, but I got it from him.
Preparatory. Well, maybe God brings us through a lot of hard circumstances.
That we may comfort others with the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.
Now that's one of the characteristics of preparatory discipline.
Maybe it's a case where God was going to use one in where he would have to endure hardship.
And privations? Well, maybe he trains them beforehand in allowing privations and hardships.
As they grow up, so that they are accustomed to it, that he may train them for what's coming.
Preparatory, or it may be prevented. You can imagine a young man in high school. He's all taken up with sports. He's on the football team and he's on this and he's on that. Everything that shows.
Natural energy. Well, suppose the Lord says that he's going the wrong direction and is going to carry him into the world. Maybe allows him to break his leg and get put out of it.
He may have always lived to thank God for it.
While he's here.
We have a brother in California.
That as a young boy fell out of a tree.
Broke his back.
You'll always go on crutches.
Always have to go on crutches.
But one time his mother was weeping about his condition and his hardships and suffering.
He says mother.
If you see me getting away from the Lord, weep.
But don't wait for this.
Ah, he lurked.
And he realized that the Lord had allowed it in his dispensations for his good.
Lots of things troubles that are not pleasant.
Now he says 12Th verse, Wherefore lift up the hands and hang down on the feeble knees.
I remember what ah Rule once wrote on this point.
I enjoyed it, he says. In this chapter, we find that we have to run.
We have to run with endurance. But, he says when we come down this far in the chapter, we find that we don't run simply.
We run as a group. We run as a cloud.
We we're not just going to run on our own independently of all the rest.
We have to run together. And so he says. Wherefore lift up the hands that hang down the feeble knees? There are some Saints that we're going to have to carry. As long as they're here or we're here, we're going to have to bear with them and help them and carry it. They're weak, and God allows the flock to have weak ones in it.
If we had our way, we would have a perfect flock now.
Raven ISM tries to accomplish having a perfect flock, and so they cast out everybody that doesn't come up to a certain standard. They've cast out hundreds and hundreds in the last year or two.
00:55:06
Follow this rule and follow it exactly or out you go.
All but the Lord allows some weak ones to be with us.
And it wouldn't be right if we didn't have some respect for weakness, I'm not saying.
That there are not cases of sin that need to be judged. But I'm speaking now what the Lord speaks of.
Wherefore, lift up the hands that hang down. Is there a brother? Discouraged.
Can you encourage?
Do we not have a responsibility toward him?
And the feeble knees.
I think Mr. Garvey renders that faint hearted, I'm not sure, but it gives a better idea of it.
Not only hands inclined and let down, but the knees are weak. We're faint hearted. We're ready to give up.
You and I have a responsibility to the weak brother.
We're not running single file. We're not soloing. We're not just going alone.
And make straight paths for your feet, Mr. Darby says.
That a Goodman can run over any kind of a course.
He can get over obstacles.
That a lame man would fall.
God allows us to have some of the lame with us too. Make straight paths for your feet, lest the lame be turned out of the way.
Yes, we have to lookout for the lane. I knew a place one time where some trouble came into the meeting and a lot of the lame are turned out of the way.
Then I got a letter from one party there and said well, so and so brother and sister have just come into the meeting and they show real interest and they were here when they were coming to the meetings when all the trouble was on and now they've asked for their place.
And that just goes to prove that only those that wanted to were discouraged or turned aside. I don't believe that. I don't believe that.
It doesn't prove that only those that want it to be turned out of the way were turned out of the way. There are the lane, and I know that there were some of the lame that were turned out of the way.
Make straight paths to your feet, lest that which is lain be turned out of the way. Oh, how what crooked paths we make.
I remember one time I was driving through Oregon with a brother.
Right here and it was up near the Crater Lake area and it was night and the snow was coming down very heavy.
The heavy fall of snow is beautiful, right between a lot of tall Pines, it got heavier and heavier.
Finally.
This brother said, look, there's a track to whether that man just went by us, he says. Look at what a crooked path he made.
He says. I suppose he's looking at our crooked path right now.
It wasn't straight. Which of us can boast that our path has been so strict that others could really follow a straight path, But nevertheless, there is a responsibility to make straight paths for your feet.
Let it rather be healed the lame follow peace with all.
And holiness? Again, there is holiness mentioned. We need holiness. God requires it, without which no man shall see the Lord. Suppose a man would come to set you and say, do you believe in holiness? What would you say?
Wouldn't you say? I certainly do.
Not this spurious kind of holiness that people talk about that they think that they have acquired a certain status and.
Elevated themselves by their own bootstraps to the place where they never sin anymore. That isn't it. But God has called us. The God who has called us is holy, and he says, so be ye holy.
Holiness becomes our God and becomes his house forever.
Follow peace with all men, and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.
Looking diligently doesn't say Just looking, it says. Looking diligently.
Lest any man lack the grace of God.
Not just fail of the grace of God, lest any man lack the grace of God.
01:00:05
Lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you and many be defiled.
I have seen some of the smallest little roots.
Work and work until the whole meeting. The whole assembly was in confusion, looking diligently.
Lest any root of bitterness bringing up trouble and thereby many be defiled, you know some root of bitterness that's springing up.
Well, let's choke it off. Let's do something about it.
Most of these roots of bitterness are just ideas. There are clashes of personalities.
Looking diligently lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble.
And there by many be defiled.
I've seen cases that were nothing in the world but a clash of personality.
Brethren, this is a practical chapter. This is a wilderness chapter. This is a way to walk down here to please God.
And what he's working out in us down here and how we run together and we have a responsibility toward one another.
I don't think there's anything farther from the truth. And to hear somebody say what I do is my own business.
No. I know we often meddle with the other man's business, the other brother's business, when we shouldn't. But what I do does affect others and if we can't, avoid it.
Looking diligently, lest any man lack the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up, trouble you, and thereby many be defiled.
I don't suppose we better go farther with faster time, but.
I would comment one thing just for correction's sake.
Many have thought in that 17th verse that Esau.
Repented and couldn't find any place for repentance. But that's a wrong thought. It's a wrong interpretation of the verse.
He sought the blessing and he couldn't get it. There was number place for that. He had rejected the what God had given. He had spurned his title, his birthright, which amounted to a title to the land of Canaan. He spurned God's gift, and then he wanted to come back and get a blessing, and he couldn't get it. There was no place for it. He was rejected, though he sought the blessing carefully with tears, not a place for repentance.
Well, I think we should stop there.
We sing that verse in 139.
Maybe a standard two in it?
3rd and 4th.
Might read, Might sing 345 and six.
There is but that one in the waist, which is what steps have marked as his own.
And we follow in diligent hate to the seats where He's put on His crown. For the path where our Savior is gone, has LED up to His Father, and gone to the place where He's now on the throne, and his strength shall be ours. On the road stands as 345 and six 139.
I did not know why.
Wind away and now I'm alone.