Sing Talk—Keith Sacksteder
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Before I talk on what a few words I had, I wanted to say something regarding the singing in this room.
A few years ago I had.
Took a business trip up to Toronto area.
And I I didn't know if I would have the opportunity was over.
Over a weekend, as my line of business requires that I work installing it was installed and install the phone system and we have to do the cutovers on a Friday night and then you have to allow for time to see if it works properly. So I knew I was going to be there over the weekend, but I didn't know if I'd have opportunity to remember the Lord.
There's a number of assemblies up there.
But at the last moment, kind of late on Saturday night, it it became obvious enough that, yeah, I was gonna have some time on the Lord's Day, a bit of free time, which I really was happy because it tends to be long hours. So I was in a little town called Mississauga. Some of you may know the town South and West, I believe, of Toronto proper.
And so I I had.
I I had not gotten directions to the place, had not prepared.
But I had a picture.
And it was of the assembly from a local brother Vern and Rhoda Clark had been up there visiting and they had taken a picture. And in the background of the picture there was a sign that named the building. So I was able to, with the help of my wife, find where that building was and able to find that room. And we were up there. It's a small assembly.
Probably 15/15/20 people and they were augmented by a few families. So there was probably 20 to 25 people there and we sing a song.
And I, I we sang this song many times, but this line caught me.
Well I'll, I'll read the first verse. It's #14 in our little clock him book. Hark 10,000 voices crying Lamb of God with one accord.
1000 thousand Saints replying wake at once the echoing cord again.
20 people were in that room.
And those numbers struck my heart.
It was the voice of 10,000 thousand Saints that morning.
I'm not one.
Would be a kind of a funny statement. I'm not one given to emotion. I tend to bottle it up.
But if you take the time in this room to listen to the singing.
And just to close your eyes.
For a moment.
That's beautiful.
It's foretaste, I think, of Laurie.
Again, the emotional side of things, because because of sin.
We need to.
Keep it in check a little bit.
But to have songs about the Lord?
Beautiful. And I would suggest when you're in this room and we're singing, close your eyes for a moment. Just listen to 10,000 voices.
Praising the name of the Lord.
So.
Anyone tell me what this is?
We'll make it a little bit general, but what is this?
Ben, it's well close. It's a, it's a cord, it's a communications court in this case, Jonathan loaned it to me. It's a microphone cord. But I, I'm in the business again of doing phone systems. So I'm going to say roughly, I don't know, 18 inches of this.
18 inches of this? What is 18 inches of this cord? I'm not asking expecting an answer. There might be some that no.
00:05:02
I think 1 probably knows exactly the answer because I talked to him. 18 inches roughly of this cord is this is copper copper cord. This is 1 nanosecond, 1 nanosecond roughly.
Speed of light one and 86,000 miles of a second, 186,000 mph I'm sorry.
Make sure we get that right.
A copper transmission because of attenuation and crosstalk and whatnot, roughly. I'm sorry, Jonathan.
We'll just might be making this number up a little bit. Forgive me.
122,000 miles per second.
So roughly 18 inches is a millionth of a second. Again, I'm in the business of phones communications and we tie phone systems together for the company that I work for and.
The.
The.
Capacity of those carriers of voice.
Is vital and we'll talk about a few characteristics of that copper wire. But before we do, I did want to read one verse.
Where we've been reading this is what brought it to mind in Second Corinthians that 4th chapter.
The sixth verse. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the Excellency of the power may be of God, not of us.
So there's a few things.
About this cable.
This is kind of the old world. I've been in the business long enough to.
A little bit old school, this is copper fiber might be more germane to the topic if I kind of flip back and forth between the two for those of you that may know some of you probably.
It's second nature to you almost, but there are things that can limit or inhibit the signal going across this piece of copper. I wanted to talk about just a few of them. And actually instead of the copper, I'm going to talk about the fiber.
And just a few things so that fiber you can take a piece of fiber.
When you can.
Coil it up and you can shine a flashlight in it. You could take the end in this room and have the other end in that room and you could coil it up and you could wrap it around things and what not and you could shine a light into that one end of the fiber and look on the other end. Do it with a flashlight, not with anything else. You can damage your eyes, but you can see the flashlight coming out the other end.
Amazing.
Technology.
I enjoyed that Steve talked about electricity and energy this morning and talked about how you couldn't see it and I almost jumped up and said some things. But he is right, you can't see energy. Some of us have felt it.
We know the effects of it. Every one of us knows the effects of it. There's a switch that will do these lights one way or the other, correct? So we enjoy the benefits of it.
That cable, that cable can be miles long.
Can be very long. There's different types of fiber.
But you can shine a light in them and the light comes out at the other end. Now, there are some things that can inhibit that, and I'll just mention two of them. And then I'm going to read a few verses and talk about those verses for just a few minutes. Again, thinking about the two verses there in the 4th chapter of Second Corinthians that these earthen vessels are used as a conduit, a piece of fiber.
To shine the light of Christ out.
To the world around us. So there is a bend radius on fiber. Fiber is a good example for this. You can you get the fiber cables for those of you that work in any kind of networking or whatnot, you get the fiber and when you put that fiber in to connect it to devices for the signaling to be in use, you are told you cannot bend it.
00:10:16
Beyond a certain point and you'll find that that fiber you can, you can bend it pretty tight.
It's very flexible. It's glass in there.
But it can be bent. But it can be bent too far. What happens to that fiber if you bend it too far?
It fractures the glass and it becomes, in essence, useless.
So it can be fractured.
It can be repaired, but it's useless in its state when it's fractured. Now there's another thing that can happen that's very important with fiber.
When you connect fiber to the device that needs to be connected to.
So a lot of science, a lot higher than me, but that fiber has to be perfectly mated to its receptor on the other side. So you think about two pieces of glass and you try to shine a light through them. What happens if those glasses, those two pieces of glass are cantered just a little bit? The light comes in this way, it gets bent by that other light.
Hits the other one because they're not perfectly lined up. It's going to get blocked. It has to be perfect.
And they have devices that you use to do what they call cleaning fiber. And what it really means is you're sanding down the ends of those fiber ends perfectly flat, not perfectly flat, but close enough to perfect, flat enough so that those two ends, when you put that fiber in into its receptor and you screw it down those two receptors.
Are perfectly flush, perfectly mated.
So that light coming through goes right through and it doesn't inhibit the flow.
And by doing that.
You can call me.
You can e-mail me.
You can text me so on and so forth. We're going to all the tools for the younger ones. It's what Snapchat and I don't know, Facebook and I'm way too old for that stuff. I'm sorry I didn't catch what you said there, but second nature to the kids, all the different applications that are in use that ride on that backbone of fiber, so.
I just thinking about those two and I'm going to read a few verses now.
And this one is for us.
Find my notes.
It's a Colossians.
3rd chapter of Colossians. We'll read just a few verses.
So I was talking with a brother earlier in the week and he related a story to me about when he came into the camp. He was here a little bit before I was, and he was setting up and another brother came in and there was something that the brother was doing that kind of got under.
Brother #1 Skin.
Just a little bit and he related the story to me. He said, well, I tried not to let it bother me, but it kind of bothered me and I asked him about it and and you know the response was given. While I kind of need this to do this for XY and Z reason, I don't want to give out any names or anything. The names don't matter, but so the one brother decided he was going to move to a different area to.
Not cause a fence.
He said it kind of caused offense that he moved out, but so I was thinking about that.
Colossians, chapter 3.
Verse 12 Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another, and forgiving one another.
We'll stop there. I was really thinking about the humbleness.
The humbleness and of mind and meekness and long-suffering, you know, these are it was a very small thing and I'm pretty certain that.
00:15:10
I hope that beyond a momentary offense, it didn't cause any friction.
And probably at a camp like these were able to allow many things to go. And we should. But it is a mind, a state of mind.
That I'm thinking about is to have that mind of humility, humbleness of mind.
To neither give offense nor take offense.
Again, in this setting here it's probably a little bit easier, but it needs to be.
Ingrained. It needs to be practiced and it's going to happen at home. In your home assemblies, it's going to be by those that are closest to you that you might find it's easy to take offense or to give offense those things.
Are little scratches on the glass.
They're the little imperfections that are going to break that signal up. They're going to break that testimony.
And so I just want it to be very practical and hopefully very simple, but that we need to have that mindset of humility to neither take offense nor to give offense. That's really what was on my heart tonight.
It's something that you have to practice in and you may never get to the end of that practice this side of eternity, but it is a necessity for that unity. Let's let's give things.
God and our Father, we're thankful that we can be in this room, in this place this evening, sing these songs. What beautiful songs they are.
Bring the Lord before us.
Much to gain by it. We just pray that our hearts might be so in tune that we're able to let things go where necessary.
Keep our hearts simple, keep them humble.
As Peter says, therefore humble yourselves under the mighty end of God. Make it a practice in our own lives. We do pray this in Jesus worthy and precious name, Amen.