Hebrews 12:5-17

Hebrews 12:5‑17
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231.
231.
Weird Al grunts in the world.
A lot of Earth's lovely hearings out of Canada.
To his swearing to take the rest of the matter for your heart.
He learned the Lord.
We love to be our bride, rest and troll. No one will see us straight into her full of prayer of the first day.
Bringing forth.
Where it's everything from the Lord.
Repeat the last four lines of this hymn. The last four.
Years.
To heaven here, make your island peace.
More I feel in heaven. May be there's never been, oh, I don't know.
Great, refuse to give me.
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Three to few verses.
He just chapter 12.
Verse 2/3.
Jesus, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, the fighting the same.
And sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest he be wearied and faint in your mind.
First, John.
Chapter 3.
1St 2:00.
Beloved now are we the sons of God, and that does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
Every man that has his hope in himself purifies himself even as he is pure. What to the Lord?
Our grace is gone, loving Father.
Is such a precious chapter before us here in Hebrews 12?
Tremendously practical.
And yet to open it we have the object before us, as I saw in the Lord Jesus.
It has involved the cross in the shame was his.
We have to worry that he has now in heaven.
We've read that we look for the glory and we'll come here to this earth, and we've read what a practical thing this is for us to be simply occupied with Thy Son, the Lord Jesus, and with that beauty and perfection that is His.
Think of the lovely life that he walked here on this earth.
We see such instruction for our own lives from it.
And, uh, you see him seated on high in the glory.
In Glory.
We see from that such hope and such peace in our hearts.
We have joy.
Because He is there, because we know that He desires to spend eternity with us, we look forward to that day. We know that these things will have a practical effect on us.
So we just asked for the help.
To these meetings that each one of us would have our hearts continually drawn to Thy Son, the Lord Jesus.
And, uh, that each one of us would, uh, be going closer to him, and our lives and our walks would be changed, not simply because of a bunch of rules, but because we're occupied with the One who loves ducks and gave himself for us. And his name is Christ. Amen.
We didn't get very far in Hebrews 12.
But so we start with verse 5. Is that about right or did we get further than that?
Maybe to get the connection, we could start with verse five and uh, uh, we'll have to move along with those. We have only this reading meeting and then another one is if we're going to get through the chapter.
Hebrews 12, verse 5.
And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children. My son despised not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou rebuke of Him.
For whom the love Lord loveth, he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
If he endured chastening, God dealeth with you as with Son.
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For what son is he whom the Father chasteneth not?
But if he be without chastisement, whereof all our partakers, then are ye ******** and not sons.
Furthermore, we have fathers of our flesh, which corrected us, and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much more rather be in subjection unto the Father of Spirit, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure, but he for a prophet, that we might be partakers of His Holiness.
Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous nevertheless, after it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.
Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet, like that which is lame be turned out of the way.
But let it rather be healed. Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord, looking diligently, lest any man's fail of the grace of God.
That tiny roof of bitterness springing up trouble you.
And thereby many be the fire, lest there be any fornicator or profane person as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.
For ye know how the afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected.
For he found no place of repentance, so he thought it carefully with tears.
For a year not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness and darkness, and Tempest, and the sound of a trumpet in the voice of words, which voice say that heard and treated, that the word should not be spoken to them anymore.
For they could not endure that which was commanded.
And if so much as a beast touched the mountain, it shall be stoned or thrust through with the dark. And so terrible was the sight that Moses said, I exceedingly fears and quake.
But ye are common to Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels.
Through the General Assembly and Church of the First Born, which are written in heaven.
And to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect. And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, And to the blooded sprinkling.
That speaketh better things than that.
See that you refuse, not him, Then speaketh.
For if they escaped not who refused him that stake on earth, much more shall not we escape.
If we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven.
Whose voice then shook the earth, but now she hath promised Sade. Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.
And this word yet once more signifies the removing of those things that are shaken.
As the things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.
Therefore we receiving a Kingdom which cannot be moved.
Let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptedly with reverence and godly fears, for our God is a consuming fire.
We mentioned a little about.
Chastisement this morning, but I believe it's brought in here because.
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In the first part of the chapter we have.
Perhaps the persecution from the world brought before us, and that of course is not necessarily the chastisement of God, rather the opposite, that it is the resistance.
V.
Uh, antagonism of a world without God and that does not want Christ.
But I believe the Spirit of God brings in chastisement here, because sometimes God uses those things in order to teach us something so that there is a mixture.
In Peter we get. Well, let's turn to it for a moment.
First Peter chapter one.
It says in verse 6.
Referring to.
The power of God and all that is ours in Christ, wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season.
If need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations. But then in the seventh verse it says that the trial of your faith being much more precious than a golden parachute. And so on.
Very often in the ways of God with us, there is a mixture in any difficult circumstance, there being the trial of our faith as these dear Jewish believers were going through. But also the Lord may use it because there is a need to be in our lives. And so even though it comes from an outside world and even though it may come from a source, that has nothing to do with the Lord.
We have to recognize God's hand in it, and an example of that, of course, is in Job, where Satan deliberately and willfully went after Job in order to try and make him overreact in the wrong way and curse God and fail. But then the Lord uses the trial to bring something to Job's attention that Satan knew nothing about. And so I suggest we get that here in this chapter as well.
About the government of God, wherein the principle we read in Galatians, God is not mocked as a man, so, so shall he also reap.
Is a general principle that applies to the unbeliever as well as to the believer.
And some, I've heard some brethren say that for believers, it's not really the government of God, it's the government of the Father.
Because we're children in the family and it's not just God dealing with us as men or women, it's our Father dealing with us based and in the context of a relationship as his children.
So even an unconverted man, if he lives his life uprightly, umm, he's going to receive in a certain way the fruit of that in this life.
And there is that line of things, but beyond that for you and me.
As being brought into God's family and having our Father who is all knowing, all loving.
Never sleeps, always attentive, always engaged and committed in every way to every one of us.
We have been the right to take our circumstances, as I think while he was saying this morning from the Lord and to realize no matter what it is and it's easier to sit here and say this than to.
Accept it when it happens. This thing is for me. And so it's such a comfort and such a help that in the school of God.
Where I was first saved and gathered, the older brothers used to talk about the school of God all the time. We're in his school and it's a privilege to be in under his instruction tutelage, which is really what chasing is. It's a family privilege so we can have that confidence in him that he knows what he's doing. As we just read in Peter, if there's a need speak, he'll bring in the suited circumstance.
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That we might get the benefit of the education for us in our life now.
I think we'll see and.
Joseph's brother in what had long played Dormant.
The 22 years before they had sold their brother into slavery and had buried it, perhaps in their Memory, in their mind. And then a series of events happened.
And they recall what they did.
And then there's entrapment, if you will. Their money is returned in their sacks. And it, it just struck me recently, so I've heard it before, but in Genesis 42.
They said.
In verse 28.
Uh, the first one, I don't know who it was but one of the brethren opened his his sack to get his *** problem during the end of.
Or 28 of Genesis 42 And he said unto his brother, My money is restored, Lord is even in my sack. And your heart failed them. And they were afraid, saying one to another.
What is this that God has done to us?
I think that was his time and work for begun and their souls.
Because they didn't say what bad luck. We ran into this grumpy guy there and he just was treating us so bad or attributed to some other, uh, natural cause. But they recognize that the hand of God was working in their lives and ultimately that led to great blessings. They had to start there.
It's a very important beginning.
Philosophy chastening in a very negative light, but the word itself is actually translated elsewhere as instruction in Second Timothy 316. All scriptures give inspiration to God as prophet or the doctrine recruit the corrections for instruction and righteousness, and it's translated in Ephesians as nurture. And ye father's provoke not your child, children's rest or bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord deliberately means instruction to a child.
So it's much broader word than what we typically perceive chastening as meaning.
So I I just think that.
So yeah, as it was, I began my my thought. This is not a negative thing. This is a positive thing that a father instructs his child. And it can involve reproof. It can involve.
Sketching and so forth. But you know the the response in our hearts can be twofold. We can one, we can despise it, or the other, we can paint under it. And where to do neither? Let me add 1/3.
We can be exercised by it. Thank you. Later on in the chapter, we'll get to that.
And then we get the after yield, the feasible fruit of righteousness.
And I, I'd probably give you the age I repeat myself, but I so appreciate it as I've gotten older, this this whole much older brother than me. Like with the testimony in Detroit, Maine was in his home years ago and he used to say he was suffering from leukemia and he lived with constant fever. And yet he was a cheerful, happy, beloved, stable St. of God. We loved him dearly, but he used to.
Refer to that verse all the time and I must have remembered it because he said he used to say I'm not looking for the undertaker, I'm looking for the upper taker. And he used to say, you know, it is exercise and he says, but he says I'm looking for the after yield. And perhaps brother, I thought it was going to be when he got home to heaven with the Lord, but I think he was getting some of the after yield in his life then because he was getting the blessing of being exercised.
And what I love about that verse is not to jump ahead totally in our chapter, is that sometimes things come up in our lives or in the lives of others that we love or in the assembly.
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And we're before the Lord about it and we're exercised about it, but we can't really say that we can put our finger on why the Lord allowed.
Some of these things the Lord is just going to keep until that day.
And we have to leave that with him. But if we are exercised about it, even if we don't know, so to speak, the answer, we get the blessing because we're exercising.
The point of Job's trial was not to point him to himself, and that's all his friends were doing was pointing him back to his selfie. The point of judge trials was to tone him up to the odds that he answered. And you know, that's the point of trials. So often we try to put our finger on what is it that the Lord is speaking to me about in my life. And I don't deny that there are instances where we do need to think in that way.
But the principal point of chasing in our lives is to turn us to look upwards, not within. Not within. God will address that which is within in His time. But we're not going to find the answer by looking within. You'll only find an answer by looking up.
And I believe that's why it emphasizes and I don't think it hurts to go ahead.
In verse 11, exercise thereby.
There are those, and I suppose some of us more than some of us have seen this, where every kind of a trial or a difficulty or obstruction or whatever it is in their lives, they refer to the fact, or at least the fact in their own mind. Satan is doing his best to try and spoil my ministry, spoil my testimony, spoil my work for the Lord. This is an attack of Satan.
And it has to be resisted.
Well, that's not being exercised thereby. That's saying in so many words, I know that I'm all right and everything's fine. So Satan's trying to hinder the work of the Lord.
Satan may be behind it, but the Lord may be having a word to say to me that I'm not prepared to hear because my whole mindset and outlook on the problem is predicated on the fact that I'm doing a work for the Lord, and anything to hinder that is obviously a work of Satan.
And so the exercise thereby means having my heart totally open before the Lord. And I fully agree with Bruce that sometimes we can always get an immediate answer, and sometimes we don't get a total answer. But what we do get is peace about it. And that's the important thing, to be able to have peace about it.
And in that sense, if we turn back to First Corinthians.
10.
There's a verse there that I believe we can apply in that same way.
1St Corinthians 10 and verse 13 Well known verse.
There hath no temptation taken you, but such as is common to man.
But God is faithful.
Who will not suffer you? On the one hand, we could say to be tempted above that ye are able.
But on the other hand it says but will with the temptation or testing.
Also make a way to escape and the Darby reeds make the issue also.
That ye may be able to bear it.
Now we could take that in several different ways, but I believe it can have the thought that.
If we get before the Lord a vote of particular trial, He will not only make it clear to us in some cases what He is seeking to teach us, but even if.
We don't get that totally clear. He will make it very clear that His hand is in it, that He is with us in it, and that maybe it is simply an opportunity to glorify the Lord in something that otherwise I wouldn't be able to glorify Him in. That is when the natural man and a believer not walking with the Lord goes through a trial.
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The reaction is very much as we get in that verse that Bruce referred to, either despising the chastening that's becoming hardened to it, saying well, all right, bring on your worst, I can take it, or fainting under it and just being totally crushed by it. And that's the reaction of the natural man, either one or the other, but for the believer.
What a difference the believer recognizes that it is from the Lord.
And.
I quoted this before, but the language is so good that it bears repeating.
And some will recognize the source of it. It's not original with me. It's from our written ministry going through trials and difficulties with the Lord.
Takes all of the will out of our emotions and affections.
But without destroying those emotions and affections themselves.
I don't know how it could have been put any better. Let me repeat that. Going through a trial and the difficulty with the Lord takes all of the will out of my emotions and affections, but without destroying those emotions and affections themselves.
It doesn't mean that I don't cry, it doesn't mean that I don't feel it. It doesn't mean that I have put such a hard shell around myself that I despise it. But nor does it mean that I fall down, fainting, utterly crushed and safe. I can't take this anymore.
I go through it with the Lord.
My will is taken out of the picture, and to me, when the Lord makes the issue also, it has the thought that my will is taken out of the whole thing. I recognize the Lord's hand in it.
And I say, Lord, I know this is for my good, whatever lesson I need to learn, or whether it's not a lesson to be learned, but rather simply an opportunity to glorify the Lord.
Speech in verse 10.
How that they barely.
That is our Father's after the flesh for a few days, teaching us after their own pleasure.
And imagine my Bible says it seemed good for me to death. Well, the fact is that.
As fathers after the flesh, we don't always.
Do it just right. As far as the chasing of our children, we have their interests at heart, but at the same time, maybe we have something of our own interest heart too. And but it tells us here the Lord, he for our prophet, he chases us that we might be partakers of his holy.
And it speaks later on in verse 14 it says follow peace with all men and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. Well isn't it true that if I'm going on in sin, in self will.
There isn't that practical holiness and I can't enjoy.
Fellowship with the Lord in those circumstances.
And so the Lord, he desires that we might have his company and that he might have our company.
You know, in the garden.
The Lord God, he went walking in the garden in the cool of the day. What for? Well, he wanted to enjoy friendship, fellowship with Adam because he had created. But where were they? They're hiding behind the trees. Where art thou, Adam? And so it was a sad circumstance, but you know, the Lord made.
Provision for Adam and Eve that.
And he's made provision for us as well, that we who are sinners might be cleansed, deemed sanctified.
Brought near all because of what the Lord Jesus did at the cross and tell them so positionally we are full, we are holy and without blame before God in love because of what the Lord Jesus Christ is done. We give him all the credit. But you know there's that practical side and you know when.
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Difficulty comes into my life if it's sickness or.
Uh, what, What? Whatever it might be, somebody said something that, uh.
Maybe seems expensive to me.
And yes, indeed, uh, there's that self searching. One finds out that perhaps there is something in one's life that the Lord wants to address.
Yeah, you know, it was, uh, David, I believe I just noticed that Psalm 139 and verse 23, he said, search me, O God, and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts and see if there'd be any wicked ways in me and lead me in the way everlasting. Well, at least David, she wanted to be on the very best terms that he could with one who.
Is all powerful.
Omniscient, all knowing, omnipotent, How powerful and omnipresent everywhere so.
I believe that, uh, chasing is that which the Lord allows that we might search.
Ourselves as to whether there's something that perhaps is hindering our enjoyment of the Lord.
That we might judge it.
Appropriate.
And where there is that judgment.
And exercise too, about why this difficulty is taking place in my life.
Tells us it yields the peace proof of righteousness.
But it's for our profit in verse 10. But I noticed the word hour is italicized and Mrs. Harvey doesn't put it. He just says it is for proper. And I just wonder if it's not only for our prophet but for his profit as well.
That there's chase me and one has the desired effect. It will bring praise and glory.
To the Board.
So it seems this passage is not so much.
Instruction and exposition about chastening, though he reminds us of it. But our response to chastening?
Different responses to it. So as you jump down to verse 12.
After the the the appropriate response in verse 11, verse 12 Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down in the feeble knees and make straight paths for your feet.
Don't get down, don't just veer off and ignore it. Don't go into the woe is me as one of the brothers described, you know, quit you like men. And the apostle writes to the Corinthians, I think it was to the Corinthians.
Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus so he wants us to, you know.
Let's get up, lift up the hands which hang down the feeble knees thought you know, we tend to be as as Nick was saying, introspective in the wrong way sometimes wants us to shake us out of that and say what I'm doing is good. It's for your blessing. May not understand it right now. Someday you will. Meanwhile, lift up the hands which hang down. Press ahead in your pathway.
Besides that, there's others that are watching.
There's others that are younger than you in the faith. There's others that are weaker than you in faith.
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Manager gets the manager of the year and there so, you know, try to hide how impressed they are with themselves. I like to watch, you know, when it's the other way around because sometimes things can go really, really wrong. And those same guys too. And then, you know, I always try to look those guys up and give them a word of, of encouragement. But, you know, people watch the world watches us when when we have circumstances like that in our family.
Or in our business or professional or personal life and they want to see.
How we behave, is he different or is he like everybody else? Everybody's things go well, everybody's how are you? I'm excellent. How are you when you have untoward circumstances. So it's very important, uh, to have a long term view.
And, uh, be able to put one foot in front of another, lift up the hands which hang down and, uh, make straight pass for our feet. Plus that which is lame, right? That which is lame turned out of the way.
Just one note on what I said earlier. I don't want to take away the thought of self judgment and talking about is not occupy self himself. I think it was Mr. Dobby that said that we should be occupied himself just long enough to jump, right?
Hmm hmm, sounds good.
I wonder if we can apply the lifting up the hands to.
Thought a prayer.
Was all that the Timothy of the Sympathy chapter two? I think it is. Uh, I would have been praying everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting.
Certainly. Uh, that's one way to be encouraged, isn't it? To lift up our hands in prayer?
Fill in verse 15 looking diligently, lest any man.
Or fall from the grace of God.
Lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you and there by many.
So falling of the great failing of the grace of God is not just.
A brother.
Being, uh, sinning or having a fall manifested.
It's deeper than that.
It's really losing the sense in our souls that God is for us. I think we read in Romans 8 that grand principle of grace that God is for me and all that he is.
And so I, you know, it's not just experiences that God brings before us.
He brings before us instruction as what what Nick said is uh.
Deserves studying later. That word chastening is really instruction. And Paul writes to Timothy about the word of God being for our instruction. And then in Hebrews 12 we read about the circumstances of life are for our instruction. And if we just go through circumstances, how do we process them?
What? What context do we put them in?
Well, maybe I'm, you know, do I have a Jewish mindset and I say, well, you know, my cattle aren't as as prolific as my neighbor's cattle cattle, or I don't have as many children or my crops aren't growing as well. So there must be something wrong with what we need Context. And so it's not just going through experience, it's going through experience and processing the experiences of life through the word of God.
And he's the one who provides context for us.
And so one of those contexts is we've already had before us that my circumstances as a believer are ordered of the Lord for my prophet or for prophet for all of our prophet.
And that's something I've learned. I've been instructed by in the scriptures about that.
And so I process my circumstances and I say, wow, the Lord has shown me some hearty things here. This is humbling. And so I, I, I, I exercised about it and I walked softly before the Lord. That's how I process it. But if I, if I'm not instructed properly in my relationship with the Lord and what he is doing in our lives as believers, I'm going to process it in an incorrect way.
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And when people get away from.
Processing the experiences of life in a spiritual way is formed by the precepts and the principles in the Word of God, then the waves of life that come.
Create bitterness.
Disappointment. Chronic disappointment.
And it becomes bitterness, and bitterness is one of the worst roots that can take hold in the human heart.
This these two principles that will be set before us are found three times in the book of Hebrews.
In chapter 2, verses 2:00 and 3:00.
We have long grape rock picora.
And then chatter.
Can have it again he would just buy Moses law died without mercy under two or three witnesses of how much sore punishment supposedly shall he be thought worthy. It was brought another foot, the Son of God, and that counted the blood of the covenant where he was sanctified and holy day, and that done death fight under the spirit of grace.
And then again in our chapter.
You're not come unto the mountains might be touched.
And see that you refuse not while, but ye are come unto the mouth of silent, unto the resilience of. I just wonder if there could be any comment made as to that. I think you have done that.
Just now, Bruce.
We're not to despair of grace.
And also what is rather important in these comments is that no man liveth to himself and no man died to himself.
Even though we are exhorted to react to chastisement in the right way. Even though we are exhorted, uh, not as it says in uh.
Uh uh, the 1St 5 Not to despise the chasing of the Lord or faint under it.
The Lord knew that there would be those who would do that, and we are always going to find those who, as it says in verse 13.
Our lane and are easily turned out of the way. We are going to find those.
Who?
Are going to be defiled by that root of bitterness springing up. And as Bruce is aptly pointed out, that root of bitterness.
Is ultimately the fruit, the bad fruit, of finding fault with what the Lord has allowed in my life? And we have seen it, haven't we, where dear believers who had real potential for the Lord have allowed bitterness to overtake them? Usually, of course, they don't blame the Lord for it. Sometimes they do. But sometimes they blame their brethren, circumstances, and all kinds of things.
Which may have come in and, uh, then of course.
I'm occupied with myself, the feeling sorry for myself, the poor knee syndrome and so on. We can't allow ourselves, if I could say it, that luxury can. We can't allow ourselves the luxury of feeling sorry for ourselves. Yes, very often I have brought it upon myself, but if the Lord has allowed it, it is ultimately for my prophet and the way I react to it is not merely going to affect my life.
That may well affect others as well, and a very, very solemn thing it is when a root of bitterness springs up and defiles many. And how many problems and difficulties among the people of God have had their roots in that kind of faith?
Just make a comment to that we might be partakers of His Holiness.
End of verse 14 it says, or four verse 14 says, follow peace with all men and holiness, without which no man shall see the boy. There is a teaching that has been promoted called Lordship Salvation. John MacArthur is a promoter of it that makes our works an important ingredient in our salvation.
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Works are reflective. It's the fruit of that which is in. It's not an ingredient of that salvation. And here the holiness spoken of is that practical exhibition of that holiness. Holiness in our lives. We do not pursue holiness to get it.
We are holy because of the nature that we have within us. And very often it's not displayed practically in our lives. And the Lord may allow things in our lives. He does allow things in our lives so that it might be practically expressed, but.
I think it's this is one of those portions of Scripture in in the book of Hebrews that are and then the ones that Tony read too. It was chapter 10 and saw that.
Frequently misunderstood and misapplied in Christendom. This is talking about how practical warfare, not about gaining holiness before God.
And what has always, at least to my own soul, been so penetrating and so instructive is that this root of bitterness is connected with verse 16, where it says, lest there be any fornicator. Would we equate that sin of immorality and put it in the same category as a root of bitterness?
Both of them can be very devastating, can they? And I believe the Lord mentions that here and then he says or profane person as he saw, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.
And it says for you know that after how that afterward when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected. Why? Because he wanted the blessing, but he didn't want the Lord that provided the blessing.
He sought the blessing carefully, with tears. He wanted it badly.
But do you have any care for the Lord in the Lord's things? No, there was no care for the promises of God or anything like that. And so the Lord links some very serious sins together here. I believe us to, I believe to show us the gravity of them and how that there can even be.
Now, Esau was not a believer, I don't, I don't think. We can't, of course, start to be dogmatic about certain individuals if the Scripture isn't. But at the same time, Esau had no care for the Lord's things and went his own way. But sometimes the Lord gives us an exhortation based on the experience of an unbeliever, but as a warning to us who are believers.
And we as believers can want all the blessings of Christianity and want to enjoy them, and yet not be prepared for that walk with the Lord which is so essential to their enjoyment.
And I suggest, Nick, that when it says without which no man shall see the Lord with that communion that is primarily in fourth you there. Would you agree with that?
In verse 13 in the in the last phrase there, but let it rather be healed was spoken of of umm, someone observing the reaction, the upper circumstances. Umm, they can be thrown into bitterness. They can have all these bad things that that come up. But there's the other side too. It says let that which lane be turned out of the way. Don't let it rather be healed.
On the observation of a a proper response.
To to the circumstances can be healing for that which is plain.
And we just say, Bruce, that's why it says looking diligently lest any man failed the grace of God.
We all need to look diligently and try and heal that, shouldn't we, rather than allowing it to proceed and do all the evil work that can come of it.
00:55:03
Am I my brother's keeper?
Yes, Sir, yes you are. I am. And I'm not to be looking diligently so I can find some flaw, some fly in the ointment. I'm looking out for my brethren. And this is something not just brothers and not just public ministry. This is mostly probably a private personal ministry between brother and brother and sister and sister and and so on. Because we can pers, we can read each other sometimes better than we can read ourselves.
N.
We can be of help to our brother and I appreciate that. Let it rather be healed. It's just such a wholesome.
Optimism, if I could use that word in the in the word of God, Umm.
Without being my, you know.
It's realistic but optimistic and I appreciate what I think it was Andy mentioned earlier this morning.
Umm, I was thinking of that verse when he made his comments. There is forgiveness with thee, but thou may us be feared, and there's always a fresh start. Our Jesus footsteps ever show the path for every child.
And some of us get into horrific situations, shameful, ridiculous situations we get ourselves into by our carelessness, But the word of God, principles of God can meet us right there and show us the path. I love that. I love that. And so we ought to have that sense. I remember in a brother's meeting years, and I've lived in a number of assemblies so I can cover my tracks, but I remember in a brothers meeting, somebody said, oh, I have no confidence in that brother.
You know, talking about maybe helping someone or some situation that needed to be, uh, you know, assessed. No confidence in that.
And then afterwards, the brother said to me in the parking lot, does he have confidence in himself?
Umm, you know who, but but when you you know, I just pondered that. And as you see in Scripture, I think the Apostle Paul wrote, I think it was to the Thessalonians, he said, I have great confidence in you in the Lord. Someone will have to correct me later, but I don't want to misquote it. But what a beautiful balance to have realistic spiritual confidence in the Lord that he's able and desirous.
That no matter what kind of a train wreck sometimes we can get into, if there is a path, we're still going to be under the government of God, so to speak. God is our Father, but still there's a way back to me in the enjoyment of Christ and to be fruitful again. Let's never take that hope away from our brother. And if it was meant to be taken away, the Lord would take it away.
James Rice, take away the life still here, still breathing, still opportunity to be recovered, to be healed, and to warm happily.
Call.
#36 in the appendix #36 in the Appendix.
And why? I'm done. I'm crying about falls to the blue radiation. Go ahead and hear me. How are you doing? I'm tired.
To hear you so long, come shortly and pray.