Kentucky Conference: 2007
Table of Contents
Our Journey
Address—Don Rule
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Our God, our Father, we ask for grace to put into practice.
Not just read a map.
Not even be able to tell the others the instructions of it.
Let it go.
Walk with thee, Lord Jesus. Start worthy.
The preeminent place now and forever reversals.
Three, 37137 versus 1:00 and 5:00.
OK. And why are you right on the big?
Our God and Father, we ask you for thy blessing on this time together.
The Lord Jesus might have the preeminent, the very first supreme place in our hearts, our lives. We ask our God and Father to bless Thy word to our present need as thou does see it. And so we ask in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. Amen.
Planning to come down here. One of the important things, for me at least in a trip like this, was to have a map.
I try never to leave home without one if I'm going somewhere.
And so I had a map which I used to identify for me where I was going for, where I was starting from.
And how to get there the route to take and along the way I checked the map.
To see what progress had been made and how much distance there was still to go.
Every one of us in this room is on a spiritual trip.
And we have started on it.
We have reached some places along the way.
None of us have reached all of them.
And we hopefully consult.
And get direction that we need for each step along that way. This afternoon we're going to look at God's map and instructions for seven selected steps along the way or locations that we go to in our journey. The first one begins for all of us in Egypt, and we're going to start in Exodus chapter 12.
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Exodus chapter 12.
And verse one. And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year to you. Speak under the congregation, all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the 10th day of this month shall they shall take to them every man a lamb.
And verse 6 And you shall keep it until the 14th day of the same month. And the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.
Verse 12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the first born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and against all the gods of Egypt will I execute judgment. I am the Lord.
And the blood shall be unto you, for a token upon the houses where ye are. And when I see the blood, I will Passover you.
All of us begin our journey in Egypt, and for purposes of illustration, I'm gonna suggest that some of us are born Egyptians. Some of us are born Israelites. In this sense, some of us were born in worldly families, families of this world having no family relationship or connection with God. Some of us were born in Christian homes. And in that way, from the time we were born, we were in a household that had an outward at least, and hopefully inward.
Relationship with God, but at the same time, as we begin in that relation, that place, we recognize that we're not right with God. And so there's a need for us because God is holy and God judges and we recognize at some point in our life that we were sinners and that we needed.
A savior.
From that judgment, and so the first of the seven places, if you will, is this place in Egypt where there is the Passover lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ, who goes to the cross to die for us.
To save us from God's judgment. When I see the blood, the Lord says I will pass over you. And so our journey begins, and I hope all of us have begun the journey and reality.
And the first place where it has to begin, it can't begin anywhere else is.
To come to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ and have the.
Price Star Passover sacrificed for us for the salvation of our souls, and when that's done, we're then safe for eternity.
In the first few places we won't spend too much time, so let's go on to the second location.
That we will journey to, if you will, in our lives, and that's found in the 14th chapter.
Of Exodus.
Exodus chapter 14 and verse one. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they turn and encamp before 5th hire. Hire off between Migdol and the sea over against bail Zephan before it. You shall encamp by the sea.
And.
Uh, verse 13 And Moses said unto the people, Fear you not, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show you to you today. For the Egyptians whom you have seen today, you shall see them no more again forever. For the Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.
And the Israelites crossed the Red Sea.
And verse 30. Verse 29. And the children of Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea, and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left. Thus the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians. And Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the seashore. And Israel saw that great work which the Lord did upon the Egyptians. And the people feared the Lord, and believed the Lord and his servant Moses.
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Then sang Moses the song, and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord.
Here we find the second location on the map, if you will, that we journey to.
We leave Egypt.
Safe from the judgment of God for our sins to start a journey we know that as we start out that the.
The end point that we are going to.
Is Canaan.
But we need to take a route, and we have directions for it. The Word of God gives us those directions. And here we find that the 2nd place that it's not that we're going to go to, at least this afternoon, is the Red Sea.
And at the Red Sea, it's a picture to us of all that the Lord Jesus Christ is for us through his death. It's where we enjoy his work for us, where we learn certain things that we didn't know as we started the journey. Perhaps we learned that we have been justified, that is, that we are righteous before God and in his eyes now.
And perpetually that we'll always be, from now on, righteous before the eye of God. There is much most of us, and maybe all of us, when we first start the journey, a period of real joy.
Real thankfulness.
And it's like in the first joy of salvation, it could never be otherwise.
And so we we start out and we sing the wonders of God. We feel the burden of sin that has been lifted from us. We recognize at least a little bit that we have enemies and that the Lord Jesus has delivered us from them.
And we?
We rest, we enjoy.
All of us, I hope I don't know but have gotten that far in the journey. And one of the things that the burden on my heart this afternoon is that you have and I have a conscious sense in our souls of where we are on that journey.
And if you have been sheltered by the blood of the Lord Jesus, you know it.
If you have gone to the Red Sea and you have visited it, you know it.
It's a place of peace.
God saw the blood.
In my case and was satisfied, but in my personal journey there was a considerable period of time before I was satisfied, before I was free of doubt as to the reality or the certainty of my own salvation.
But if you will, when I got to the Red Sea and I looked not at myself and my measure of faith, but if the Lord Jesus and his work, God gives peace in that.
And joy. And so we reached that point in our lives. We reached that point and we have peace and we have a joy that results from it. It's a good start. It's a necessary start.
And in fact, from God's perspective, everything is finished there in the work of the cross, but in our own.
Spiritual trip, we learn it gradually, we don't see it all at once. And so God gives it to us in this form so that we can grow, so that we can learn, so that we can understand and develop in the our spiritual life.
I want to stop for the young people here this afternoon and challenge you.
Have you left home with the map?
Do you consult it?
Some here have come here for the first time, and I would dare to use the word if they were the driver, it would be a foolish thing for them to try to make the trip without a guide, without provision by way of a map. And I want to say it's a foolish thing to take this journey without the map and without consulting it.
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It started out all right for me to come here. I've been here multiple times. I might have said, well, I don't really need something. But you know, I hardly, I was an hour, maybe an hour and a half from home and came to a place called Gardiner, Illinois. And I got off 57 and I started down the country roads as I tend to do. And I get down a country Rd. not very many miles and I see a sign and it says close.
And so I had to detour.
I'm thankful that I carry 2 maps at least as relates to Illinois, so my Rand McNally Rd. Atlas wasn't sufficient detail. And so I got out my County Road map of the state that shows every gravel road and every well drink digging road and everything and I consulted it.
And it was necessary. And so it is with the Word of God, our road map, our directions. Sometimes we we get on detours as to our personal histories and we need to go back and search more diligently, more deeply and more detail to get the right directions. In my own case, I looked at the map a little bit too hastily because I was still driving and I had it in my hand. I would have been better if I stopped.
And I found myself down a road and I said, oh, oh, it doesn't look right. And I stopped and I got the map out and I studied it and I had to turn around and go backwards. And in our personal lives, in our journey, it's sometimes that way too. We go down the wrong road and we have to stop and get the map out and we have to study it. And we have to say, oh, and you know, there's no shortcuts on God's Hwy. We had to go back.
And retrace our steps.
And get back on the road where we had gotten off of it and keep on going. And it's going to be true in all of our Christian lives, our journeys. Let's go to a third place now. That's found in the 19th chapter of Exodus.
Exodus chapter 19 and verse one.
In the third month, when the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai.
And, uh, they were departed from Rapidum and were come to the desert of Sinai and pitched in the wilderness, and there Israel camp before the mount.
Moses goes up into the presence of the Lord in verse seven. And Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and laid before their faces all these words which the Lord commanded him. And all the people answered together and said, All that the Lord has spoken we will do.
And Moses returned the words of the Lord of the people unto the Lord.
We leave.
That place of rest and joy.
And shortly after, they briefly stopped in a place called Elam for further refreshment and enjoyment. And it's often true. But now?
They're three months into the journey and they come to a place that we called Sinai.
They're in the desert now.
And when we leave the Red Sea, we enter into the desert places, the wilderness of our trip. You can't avoid it. That's where you're going to go. That's where we all go. And so they go there.
And we're just going to look at a couple of very significant places.
One of them is Sinai.
And there's a principle in what the people say that is tremendously important for us in our in our lives. We stopped there. I dare say every one of us has gone there without any exceptions in this room. We've been to this place, if we're this far in the journey, and that is.
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Were saved through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
He has delivered us from the enemy of our souls.
And its consequences. And we're we're aware of it, we enjoy it, and now we're going to walk with God in our lives.
And we have this same feeling in us because it's true of every human heart, it says.
I can do it.
Tell me God what you want.
And I'll do it.
It's it's the principal that.
I'm gonna live right, and because I live right, God's gonna bless me and be favorable to me.
It's the root of law.
Actually, before we get to Sinai, they traveled a little bit, and as they traveled, they murmured.
But God was gracious to them.
And they murmured some more. They said you brought us out here and there's no food.
They they had to learn to depend on God.
There wasn't anything that they in themselves were able to do to supply food for where they were. They had to say, as it were, Lord, give us today Our Daily Bread.
And the Lord provided it in spite of their complaining about it, in spite of having believed God briefly before as the matter of salvation. Now, when it comes to daily life, they go back to their old way of thinking and feeling.
And.
They don't see.
Is it worth that they're going to earn the money to buy the food, to put it on their table? But but, but God has to somehow do it. And he he does show them. He gives them his grace and he shows it to them and he shows him his great power. But the human heart says, tell me what to do. I'll do it.
And man in spirit puts himself, even though he isn't morally. We aren't today under the law. Man puts himself under the law to God.
And in our journey, we have to go into the wilderness to practically experience the failure of self so that we appreciate and depend upon the grace of God, which is what really will carry us all the way.
Some of us spend years.
In our lives.
Some of us learn it a little bit.
And we forget it and we experience it again, because, you know.
We come under the chastening of the Lord for it.
When they laughed, the Lord was gracious and merciful and showed His grace to them. But when they said to the Lord, all that you tell us we're going to do after that, for the same murmuring came the chastening hand of the Lord.
And we experienced that, we experienced the chastening hand of the Lord in our experience in the journey, because we insist that our natural capacity, our natural character sufficient and we don't depend on the grace of God to sustain us.
And so we have this conflict between law and grace.
We're going to refer as we go along in the time we have to New Testament epistles.
Because some of the New Testament epistles take us and their their situated exactly where these places are in the Old Testament. And in this particular case, the book of Galatians is right where you are in your journey. When there's a conflict between law and grace, it takes you right to Sinai, as it were. As the people in Galatia said, yes, we crossed the Red Sea.
And Galatians takes it up right there at Sinai and gives us God's mind concerning it.
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But if we don't believe it, then we go into the wilderness, be it weeks or months or years, and we wander. We wander.
And we come under God's chasing hands to learn that lesson.
Well, we don't have time to spend much time at these places, so let's go from here to.
Umm, Numbers Chapter 11.
Verse 33 of chapter 10, Numbers 10 and they departed from the mount, so we're leaving Sinai now of the Lord. 3 days journey in the ark of the covenant of the Lord went before them in the three days to search out a resting place for them.
And the cloud of the Lord was upon them that day when they went out of the camp, and it came to pass. When the ark set forward, Moses said, Rise up.
Lord, And let thine enemies be scattered, and let them that hate thee flee before thee. And uh, so they journey. And verse 36 And when it rested, he said, Return, O Lord, unto the many thousands of Israel. Verse Chapter 11 And when the people complained to displeased the Lord, and the Lord heard it, and his anger was kindled in, the fire of the Lord, burnt among them, and consumed them that were in the uttermost parts of the camp. And the people cried unto Moses. And when Moses prayed unto the Lord, the fire was quenched.
And he called the name of that place to to bury a Because the fire of the Lord burned among them, and the mixed multitude that were among them fell a lusting. And the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely, and the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic. But now our soul is dried away. There's nothing at all beside this manna before our eyes.
They come to this place in their journey.
And they lost.
For Egypt.
I lost Egypt.
Says in Psalm 106 they lost it exceedingly.
We have Innisfresh.
And it lust, it lusts for Egypt.
And said to me one time.
Sees. For a long time I was on the outside looking in.
And now, he said. I'm on the inside looking out.
We find throughout this journey that the heart of the people, over and over and over again, lusted for Egypt.
The flesh lusts.
It's never satisfied. It always wants what Egypt has and presents. Egypt is a whole system of things set up to satisfy the flesh and the heart goes perpetually back to it. If it's not delivered from it, they weren't delivered from it.
At this point in their history.
Where are you in your history?
Where are you on the map?
Are you outside of Egypt now?
Place that you've been taught is not for you. It's not Canaan, it's not where you're going, but it's there nonetheless. And it calls the heart. The heart says I want Egypt.
I want those friends, those things friends have. I want to go to those places that satisfy the lusts of my heart. It burns. It was a place of burning too. Because, you know, before we leave Egypt.
To some extent, we can enjoy those lusts without our consciences bothering us because because we don't have life with God.
And because our our consciences are perhaps not enlightened to the last, but then when God says by the law and when we enter into the desert and we learn by our road map.
It says no, and when you tell the flesh no, it says that's what I want.
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And so here they were in this place in their journey and.
Brethren, is that where you are? Is that where I am?
An experience of my life.
Let's go on.
To, uh, Deuteronomy chapter one.
Deuteronomy chapter one and verse one. These are words which Moses fake unto all Israel on this side Jordan in the wilderness, in the plane over against the Red Sea.
And uh.
Then over in chapter 8.
Verse 2.
And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God LED thee these 40 years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, and to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldst keep his commandments or no. And He humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did our fathers know.
Verse five And also consider in thine heart, that is, man chasteneth his son, so the Lord chasteneth them.
So the Lord chasing the.
Verse seven. For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land.
Chapter 9.
Verse three Understand therefore this day, that the Lord thy God is he that goeth over before thee as a consuming fire. Verse four Speak not in thine heart after that the Lord thy God hath cast them out from before they saying, For my righteousness, Lord hath brought me in to possess this land.
Verse 5 Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, just go in to possess their land.
Back up for just one moment to make a brief comment. The book of Romans is that book which takes us.
From Egypt.
To Sinai.
And.
On to where you have lost.
It's a wilderness book. It's a book you need to go to and study carefully if that's where you are in your spiritual experience in life. To learn that the flesh profits nothing, that the flesh and the spirit are contrary. 1 to another, to go back and see the deliverance of the Lord, the man said in Romans, who shall deliver me? And to go back and understand the Red Sea.
And it's work of deliverance for your soul.
Now here we have them, just about in this 5th place, just about ready to enter the land.
And I just want to comment these people, it doesn't, it tells us in numbers 33, they went to over 40 different places in state.
Our lives are like that. The Lord alone knows what's necessary in this experience of each one of us. And we know we're in the wilderness, but we're not even sure where we are for times. And yet we don't understand why we can't make progress. We seem to stay at the same place in our life. And the Lord took the children of Israel. They didn't understand until they looked back later, but at the time they didn't understand and they went over 40 places.
In 40 years, and maybe we spend 40 years of our lives and we go to different places and we never, and I want to say this carefully, brethren, but some of us may be taken in death or raptured without ever getting out of the wilderness in our personal experience.
You know, you can know the doctrine, but unless you experience it with the Lord and it's living reality, you don't know it as it is in God and the Lord Jesus. I have been to Niagara Falls and I can by personal experience, I know what it's like and I can tell you all about it and you can't I you, you can have my report of it. You can be encouraged enough to want to go there.
But you don't know what it's like unless you've been there. And in our spiritual lives, there are things that are not comprehended, not understood correctly or properly unless you've been there.
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And perhaps some of us live in the wilderness.
And we don't go on.
We don't see and consequently we're losing out.
Tremendous joy to God.
And to our own souls.
Why are you in the wilderness? Why do we go in the wilderness? To humble thee, To prove thee, to see what's in my heart.
They needed the wilderness experience to learn their own hearts because they didn't comprehend. And in fact, as we read here in the 9th chapter, he reminds them again just before they're ready to cross the Jordan River. He says no, don't. Don't say you did it.
Your righteousness did it.
A problem of grace and love. It says no.
You didn't do it, I did it. And in the wilderness we learned the heart of God and we learned our own hearts. We're humbled. We're proven.
And if we try it on our own, it proves our failure.
Let's turn quickly to Ephesians. I mean, I'm sorry to uh.
Joshua, chapter four, I think it is.
MMM.
Joshua.
Chapter 3 Joshua rose early in the morning and removed from **** him, and came to Jordan, he and all the children of Israel, and they lodged there before they passed over.
They passed through the Jordan River. The Ark of the Covenant goes in the middle of the river. Verse 11 Behold the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth passed over before you into the Jordan.
And uh, verse four and chapter 4 verse one, it came to pass when all the people were clean passed over the Jordan. The Lord said spoken to Joshua chapter 5.
And verse three. And Joshua made him sharp knives, and circumcised the children of Israel at the hill of the foreskins.
And verse 5, now all the people that came out were circumcised, but all the people that were born in the wilderness, by the way, as they came forth from Egypt, then they had not circumcised.
And, umm.
Verse nine. And the Lord said unto Joshua, This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off of you.
The Jordan River presents to us in our.
Doctrinally and also in experience, our death with Christ.
We learned there all that the death of Christ truly means to our souls. It's the same work that we have at the Red Sea and and we have in the Passover. But God brings it to us in a sense of.
I have died with Christ. My old man stays in the wilderness. I take up a new life in the land and I'm a new man.
It's the truth that you have in Colossians and Colossians chapter 2. It speaks of Christ, our circumcision, and then it speaks of us being baptized with Christ. And we learned there that we have truly.
Separated from Egypt.
The lusts of Egypt no longer control the person in the land.
Are you there?
Is this where you are on the map?
Just where I am on the map.
Chapter 3 of Colossians.
He says put to death.
Therefore, your members which are upon earth.
There is a practical guilty, there is a judging of that flesh.
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That is, has no place in the land.
It's learned taste of the bitterness of it in the wilderness, but when the soul truly gets into the land of Canaan, the reproach of Egypt is.
Just rolled away. It's gone.
It's no longer controlling, practically speaking, power. We don't have time to go into it, but I'll just that's what I'm saying, not be understood. We're taking these things as they are in scripture as a journey. But in actual reality, we are in Egypt, we are in the wilderness, we are in the land simultaneously and we experience different aspects of them in our lives. We we, we get a little bit here, a little bit there and we see some of that in the picture given in the word, but.
It's easier to follow it sequentially, and it's often our true experience in that way as well.
They're in the lab.
They recognized the true meaning of the death of the.
Lord Jesus is delivering power from all that.
Was in Egypt. Egypt becomes a dead thing.
To them as far as desires.
I wanna say when they start out and scripture always puts it this way, they always put the hope before a soul.
In Colossians, which just takes you to the edge of the land and crossing through the Jordan, that's its viewpoint. It says, brethren, you're me to be partakers of the inheritance of the Saints in life. That is you're there, you're you're meat, you're ready. And the hope is the Lord Jesus himself is the preeminent one before the soul.
It's Philippians takes the same. You go to Philippians chapter 3 and you have the same point on the map.
In Philippians chapter 3.
Paul says where are the circumcision?
That is, doctrinally, we're at Guildhall.
Brethren.
We worship God by the Spirit. We have no confidence in the flesh. Let's kill golf.
But you know, when it comes to actual personal experience from that point in chapter 3 on for much of the rest of the way, it's I it's as if the apostle Paul is saying to his brethren doctrinally were there.
But practically by experience, I can only speak for myself. And he says I don't count myself to have apprehended. I haven't searched out the whole land. I haven't put my foot on every spot, but at least I'm there And I I've left everything else behind and I'm going to I'm going to with get to know the Lord Jesus.
And a greater, fuller way as a heavenly man.
At this time to briefly talk about the 7th spot and that's Canaan itself.
The book of Ephesians.
Is really the only New Testament book that takes us much into Canaan.
It doesn't start exactly in Egypt. It starts with a man of the councils and purposes of God for us, and it starts with us as debt.
In Colossians we were alive and then we died, and as we went through the Jordan in Romans were looked at as alive. You don't have the resurrection in Romans at all, but in Ephesians you have us start out as dead.
And when Christ is raised from the dead, quickened, we are quickened with him to enter into, if you will, Canaan.
And then in in our Canaan, because it's not the rapture, it's not the end and rest in its present place. We have a land before us.
Of conflict in the 5th, the 6th chapter, we wrestle not against fresh and bought. It's not things down here on earth, but it is. It's the heavenly things. We're our the Lord is the second man out of heaven.
It brings before us the Church. The Church is a heavenly body in union with Christ in the glory and the churches associated with him there.
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Why do we have so many problems and?
Act living out practically the truth of the Church.
Because in our experiences, we're not in Canaan and you can't carry out the heavenly truth unless you're there.
It's not a matter of doctrine. You can look at the map all you want, but unless you go to the place, you don't know what the place really is. You've got to go there.
And to properly carry out the responsibilities of a heavenly people, you've got to be in Canaan, otherwise you're going to try to carry it out in the wilderness or we're still in the world.
And it doesn't work.
It leads to failure, dishonor to the heavenly man and your our association with him.
But.
It's wonderful, brethren.
I don't have these remarks to discourage, but.
Just to say, look at your map.
Do you know where you are?
On it.
Wherever you are on the map, look to the Lord to help you take the next step.
If you're in a place in the wilderness, there's going to be a reason for it. The Lord will give you grace to see that reason. You might not know where you're going to go the next time. It may be somewhere else in the wilderness, but it'll be progress.
And if by the grace of God, you cross the Jordan in the practice of your soul and get into Canaan.
Be like Caleb and Joshua. They brought back a report of the land.
They encouraged their brethren. They had seen the land like the Apostle Paul. He saw the land in its final state in glory, and it totally spoiled him for the earth.
As Paul in the end of the Philippians 3IN that chapter it was I this, I that by his own experience. And then he said, Where unto ye we have obtained? He brings his brethren back in. He said, where? Until we have obtained. Let us walk by the same rule wherever we have. Whatever progress has been made in our souls, let's walk in it. But let's want more. Let's put our eye on the Lord Jesus, the true perfect hope. And can I put it this way?
He's in the land.
Go to him.
Enjoy his company there.
And live with in the conquering of the land.
Ephesians 4
Reading
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The sweetest town that ever reached our ears and constantly started congestion around it raised the new dark beers #10.
Raytheon.
Nsnoise.
It's not trying to do something ourselves there, God has done it. But in the 4th chapter we are supposed to keep the unity of the Spirit and so on. You think that'll fit, Don? I think the Lord put in your heart, so we should take it out.
The force of revision.
Seasons Chapter 4I Therefore the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye want worthy of the vocation, wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, even as ye are called, in one hope of your calling.
One Lord, 1 faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all. But unto every one of us have given grace, according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, when He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. Now that he ascended, what is it but that He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended.
Far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.
And he gave us some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the perfect perfecting of the Saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. May we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the sight of men and cunning craftiness.
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Whereby they lie and wait to deceive, but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things, which is the head. Even Christ, from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supply is according to the effectual working and the measure of every part, make us increase of the body on the edifying of itself and love. This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles, Gentiles walk in the vanity of their minds.
Having the understanding American being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that has been themed because of the blindness of their heart, who being past feeling have given themselves over until lasciviousness to work all uncleanness with greediness. But ye have not so learned Christ, if so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus, that you put off concerning the former conversation of the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lust, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind.
And that you put on the Newman, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and send that Let not the sun go down upon your wrath, neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole steal no more, but rather rather let him labor working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.
Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth but that which is good for the use of edifying.
That it may minister grace unto the hearers, and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, we put away from you with all malice, and be kind one to another, tender hearted for bearing one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.
That last verse was when my mother quoted to me when I was just a boy, five or six years of old.
Be ye kind.
One to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. What we have any patience is the highest church truth as you said, and we get so much of that in the first chapter. Her brother was praying about our understanding, being enlightened, and if you just look at the 1St chapter, that whole prayer.
From the 16th verse on is terrific. It's what the purposes and counsels of God.
R they are then, no matter what we are they these are the purposes of councils of God. Well in the.
18th verse of the first chapter.
It asked this, the eyes of your understanding, being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling.
And what the richest?
On His great glory and His.
Yes, 555501 out here.
The inheritance of the Saints in life. All these things are given to us from God. Now in the 4th chapter we're asked to walk according to these things.
In the first verse of the 4th chapter.
I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the Book calling for with your call.
Peter talks about the calling.
The God of all grace has called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus.
First Corinthians 19 says God is faithful by whom you recalled unto the fellowship of his dear Son. Now that's where we are called and put by the Lord. Now it's a walk and carried it out. Enjoy it.
Well, you have to look at the red sheet blood to see Christ does everything. Huh?
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I wonder if we could ask the question why was the Ephesians Saints given the highest truth? Is there a reason for that?
What do you think about what God says about the Old Testament? All these things happen to them. For us upon whom the ends of the ages are come, the opinion's got it for us. I think we're we're carried out now.
That's just an answer, I don't know whether it is right or not.
Why just Mike, just suggest that when the gospel went into Ephesus that it went right into the devil's stronghold and in that city was, uh, holds one of the seven wonders of the world in wicked worship and, and, uh, just to show the power of God that he can invade the devil's stronghold and there to give them such a rich deposit of truth would it be to sustain them against all that title.
Evil and wickedness.
MMM.
Well, I don't want to derail us from our chapter, but I just, uh.
Have enjoyed and was given to the Ephesians Saints.
Few more comments on the setting of the chapter.
Let me get a setting of the chapter. It often helps us to see the details more clearly. We're going back to chapter one for a moment and verse three. It says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. It begins with the blessing of God and immediately connects us with heavenly places.
And tells us the purposes of God with respect to us, and His purposes with respect to the whole earth, that He is going to, in that first chapter, bring everything under the headship of Christ, and under His control and authority in heaven and on earth. But then we have in the first chapter brought out the work of redemption, because without it we could have no part.
And what God is doing, we have to have, we have to be redeemed. We have to have what God can, will do for us. And so in the end of the first chapter, he brings the first of two prayers given to us that emphasizes what the work of God is for us in accomplishing His own purposes and one of His purposes with respect to us.
Is to form a body, the church, as a bride for his Son who will be associated with him in the heavenly places. And so she is immediately here seeing in her proper place, which is with her head in the heavens. She's a heavenly people. She's a heavenly body and association with a heavenly man. How does she get, practically speaking, brought into that place in the second chapter?
The individuals that are going to form and are found to be dead.
The head himself in the first chapter is seen as after accomplishing redemption. It speaks of him as dead as well, and quickened. That is, quicken means brought again, brought up from the dead. It doesn't. It's not the same as new birth, but it means brought up from the dead. And so the Lord Jesus the Head is quickened from his place on earth in accomplishing redemption and takes his place.
Where he came from, which is his own natural place, which is which is heaven. So then the Church is found, for the individuals that are going to form it are found dead on earth.
In their trespasses and sins, but in God's ways and purposes, and were they are quickened with Christ, they're taken out of that place of death and brought up into born together into a body.
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And brought in association with himself. And how the Jew and the Gentile are brought together into that blessing is seen in the third chapter. But then, and this is where the 4th chapter where we start comes in.
Our position is in heaven.
But in fact, in reality, right now we're on earth, we're not in heaven.
And so just like the Lord Jesus, a man who had a heavenly life and birth, or not birth a heavenly life, came down to earth and had to live on earth among men and in sin where sin was.
As in a far country really from his own natural home, so we the Church in this epistle is taken up there in heavenly places, with himself, as it were, like he came down to earth.
So we find ourselves here on Earth.
And yet have a heavenly life and an association with a heavenly man as part of his body, his pride, and he gives us instructions for how to live with each other.
While still here and how the body itself, even while on earth, can develop and grow in practice and in spiritual development. And that's why in the end of the third chapter, the prayer is.
Not the work of God for them, but it develops the work of God in them. That is that it might be practically realized in their soul. And we have that in the 4th chapter. One comment before stopping, because on to the fifth chapter. And as the Lord Jesus, the man out of heaven was light and love in this world, so we as now belonging to heaven and having our natural home and life there.
And our interests and our hopes there while on earth we become the light of the world.
And we are here to display the love of God to all men, and that becomes our responsibility in the world where we walk as we await our hope.
So there's a call, just sorry, it's in the first chapter. It's called a calling here it says location, but it's calling. That's Our Calling. So how can we walk worthy of this heavenly calling?
He shows us, he gives us practical instructions for how to do it. Yeah, this carrying out this instruction, this third verse.
It demands.
Obedience from us, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit.
In the bond of peace.
He's a brother, begins this book. Look at the second verse of this book. It's peace.
Grace to be to you in peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Now look at the 2nd to last verse. It says nearly the same thing.
That is Ephesians 6 and verse 22 Says peace, peace of the brethren. That's us here.
Angelo yes, that's necessary too. And hey, who wants this? God's evolved and.
The Lord Jesus Christ, they desire that for us to go on in this so that we might demonstrate, might fulfill what we're called to.
Could someone give us?
A word on the difference between loneliness and maintenance.
Holiness is the person that takes the low place and meekness is.
Accepting it humbly in the heart when somebody else puts you there.
Paul was an example of what he preached in this in this epistle. In our first verse he starts out I therefore the prisoner of the Lord.
00:20:02
He humbly accepted the the consequences of rejection of His ministry of heavenly things. He was made a prisoner for us, and he writes from prison in Rome and he.
Is an example, not just in the preaching of the ministry that the Lord gave to him. That's how we got it through Paul. He was the one who was caught up to the 3rd heaven.
God specially revealed these things, and really only through him. Many of these things, uh.
But not only was he, uh, a good doctrine or a good teacher, but he was a good example. Uh, he can, he was, he doesn't say a prisoner of Nero or a Caesar, but he's a prisoner of the Lord. He took it from the Lord, his imprisonment, uh, to become an example, uh, of what he taught.
If we get a hold of these things.
We will not enter into carnal conflicts.
The wars of this world, the politics of this world, all of those things are earthly mindedness. And many, many, many Christians nowadays are engaged in these things. That's not Christianity at all.
Then Christianity lists us above earth and sets us in heaven, and our brethren are all over the world. Some are brethren that belong to countries that are in conflict with the country that we live in.
But we're not here to set things right.
That's going to be done by the Lord himself.
And he will do that. And he's the only one that can do it. We can't do it.
It's what what what what do these verses mean to us? So they take us out of this world. This world is a place that.
Satan is the God and priests of.
It were true to him and live accordingly as he lived when he was here. He didn't get involved in these perfectly things.
He said my Kingdom is not of this world. If my Kingdom were of this world and with my service fight that I should not be delivered.
To them.
You must hear the second thing you want to.
He's going to come back and he's going to set things right. But we're talking about the different dispensation. We don't understand dispensational truth. You'll not understand what I'm saying.
Having formed one body.
Was necessary for them to understand how to walk together practically as such. And so that's why he says in the end of that we're bearing one another. My fellow believers bearing with me and I with him. I think in the Old Testament you see a little example of it in Caleb and Joshua.
They were really in spirit, heavenly men, but they walked with a company of people who hadn't learned that really in their souls. And so they walked with them for 40 years in a desert. And there's not a word of murmuring. There's not a word of complaining on their part. There's not a saying. You know, we'd all be better off if you would just get the truth and understand it and walk because you should. And we could all go together now in the land.
00:25:05
And the Lord Jesus as a heavenly man who lived on earth with his disciples, they weren't yet in union with him, but in the same spirit as seen in Matthew 11 and 29. We're 28 where he says, for I am meek and lonely in heart. And the Lord Jesus showed the same perfect spirit. He was from heaven. And they hadn't yet learned that truth, but he bore with it.
He showed the compassion of his own heart toward them and in a sense in spirit, he said. He didn't say come up to me, but he said come down to me.
Come down to where I am and.
Through work of God in the soul goes to the bottom, and as it were can stay there. Man always has to ascend to the top and be #1.
Men's drive and whatever, whether it's their company or the world or their country or whatever to be #1 but the Lord Jesus, as it were in the Spirit is saying, come down to where I am.
Make only, and there you're going to find a rest for your soul that you won't find anywhere else. And in the body of Christ the first will be last, the last of the 1St.
1St So we we learn that spirit and we're taught the instruction to show it to one another.
Let me to amplify that read to you from Deuteronomy 20.
And understanding this book.
But the word thy God is with you, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and it shall be when ye are come nigh unto the battle, that the priest shall approach and speak unto the people, and shall say unto them, Hero is feel he approached this day unto battle against your enemies.
That that's your heart and you're not. And do not tremble either. Be terrified because of them. For the Lord your God see that goeth with you to fight for you against your enemies, to save you. Now contrast that with Romans 12, Romans 12.
Here's instruction to be to the Christians.
Recompense to no man's evil for evil.
Provide things honest in the sight of all men if it be possible, as much as we live life in you with us, peaceably with all men.
53rd given dreams for in so doing thou shall keep coals of fire on his head. He not overcome the people who overcome evil that should. You never understand the Bible if you don't see the contrast total contrast between New Testament teaching and Old Testament teaching.
If if a country nowadays has a change in leadership at.
Time of fall was there and Rome, I think it was 0 that was charging is one of the most wicked that has ever lived and.
Was Paul was Paul's ministry ever to the to the tenor of trying to correct that evil and grow? Not a bit. That's not what we're called to. We're not called to correct the evilness in this world, whether it's in the political world or whether it's in the in in in the battles that are being fought. Sad to say, there are many Christians.
00:30:20
That are engaged in these things but that's not what we're called to we're called to to forgive and if I had any hunger feeding.
It was an example of.
Two countries that were fighting each other and before the war started, these two young men went to the same university and they they were taught the same thing and they got to be friends and so on. And then there's two countries got to be a war with another and they both became Christians.
And they were taught to kill the enemy. And there was his friend, his Christian brother that was before him, and it was the same way with him towards the 1St man. How could he do that?
Well, it's too bad that we're looking at the name when Christians are engaged in trying to set the world right, and we can't do it. We simply can't do it. We have the most precious truths in the epistles, but it's entirely different industry that you get in the Old Testament.
When God was fighting for Israel with Israel, but it's not we're not here to fight. We're not here to kill other members of the body of Christ because they're in a different country that we are in our countries are at war with each other. How could Christians who are all members of the same body killed them just totally on contrary to scripture. Now it's a very unhappy thought to think of sending a one of my brothers home the glory ahead of time.
But I was thinking if we could have a little help on endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit.
To turn it around is to ask the question this way, is it possible for us to break the unity of the Spirit? I think there's some confusion on that and we need some help.
The question is, can we break the unity of the spirit or we cannot break it? It's not the energy of the body.
God keeps that.
He keeps that we're going to keep the unity of the Spirit that is go on according to the Spirit who leads in the Lord's last words that we turn to John 14, we see a little bit about that.
John 14.
The Lord was getting ready to go from the disciples, and he talks to them, and in the 14th of John.
And the verses, well, he talks about the comforter. Maybe we should begin reading there.
Start with the 25th verse. These things have eyes spoken unto you, being yet present with you. He was getting ready to go. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance. Whatever I have said unto you now He says, peace. I leave with you not a battle of peace.
00:35:21
My peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth.
Give unto you, Let not your heart be troubled in, let it be afraid. You have heard how I have said unto you, I go away, I come again unto you. If you love me, you would rejoice, because I go to the Father.
For my father is greater than I. And now I have told you before I come, it come to pass, that when it is come to pass, he might believe here after you. I shall not talk much with you.
For the Prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me. Ron was talking about the Prince of this world, but the world. But that the world may know that I'd rather the Father, and as the Father gave me command, Even so I do. Then in the 16th chapter he says, Howbeit, when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, and He is come, the Spirit of truth is here, the Lord's going up on high, but the Spirit of truth is here. He's in every heart that believes here.
He's amongst us, at our believers. What's he going to do? This is the greatest comfort I know of, albeit when he the spirit of truth is come, that's a.
Perennial thing. It's a continuous thing. Is come is continuous perpetuity. He is here. The world doesn't know anything about it. They can't do anything about it. We might try to print the Spirit or to grieve the Spirit if we go wrong, but the spirit stays here. What you going to do?
He shall not speak independently of himself. That's the middle of earth, but whatever he shall hear, that shall He speak. He will show you things to come. He shall glorify me, for He shall receive mine himself. Show it unto you. The Spirit of God is here today to show us price. That's what you can see in the Red Sea and Jordan. Bull worth of Christ. The price profit of nothing. The price keeps the rare rare enough and we think we can get.
Do something. What we do in order to get we can't do that. The flesh, probably nothing, but the Spirit is here.
And he can teach us of Christ.
181.
Fullness
Gospel—Bill Brockmeier
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A Savior is willing to save now as ever. His arm is almighty, His love great and free. Number 10.
There is a stage.
In our world.
Of God Laurie's dream.
Nsnoise and.
My replay Sidney Dawn down the one.
And come back to the farmer burdens on the mall.
00:05:44
A God and Father and thank you that there is a stager on my end glory and thank you our God and fathers and every goddess and my son is the savior of the world. We thank you Lord Jesus for and thy love coming down and going to the cross and there to become the sin bearer. Thou that just one for us the unjust that we might be crossing God. We thank thee for the eternal record of that soldier disappear person thy.
And forth with drawing forth blood and water, our daughter and father, to consider the sin and the guilt of this world.
Under which lie by nature the death of the Son of God. And yet our God and Father, to see in that mighty sacrifice the foundation for all of us, our time. And Fernandez, our God and Father, as we have the solemn responsibility tonight to open up Thy precious word, our God, and to speak well, Thy beloved Son, to set forth the truth as to the gospel of Thy grace, our God, we pray that by Thy Spirit now it's work in each heart.
That there will be a turning to the Savior. For unto you therefore, which believe He is precious and are gone for any bit, find themselves in the deep and in hostility towards my beloved Son even this night.
The dogs turn their hearts and draw them, and bow the forth, blessed Son of God. So our God and Father, seek thy health now if you open that precious word, and we ask thy blessing in the word, he May of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Like to.
33 brief references to begin with first in the Prophet Amos, chapter 8.
Amos, Chapter 8.
And verse 11.
Behold, the days comes, saith the Lord God, that I will send the famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north, even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord shall not find it.
Turn back to the prophet Jeremiah chapter 37 for an expression.
Jeremiah, chapter 37.
And verse 17.
Then Zedekiah the king sent and took him out, that is, took Jeremiah out of the prison, and the king asked him secretly.
In his house and said, Is there any word from the Lord?
Jeremiah said there is.
One verse more in Romans chapter 15.
Mm-hmm.
Romans chapter 15 and verse 29.
And I am sure that when I come unto you, I shall come in the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ.
Well, we say that's a curious verse and aimless about a famine of hearing the words of the Lord when this land is filled with Bibles. Last time I was asked to show up for jury duty, I walked in and all the new security systems they have, I walked through and the man was there pointed in my pocket said is that a pack of cigarettes? And I said no Sir, it's a New Testament. He smiled and says I know I'm an idiot. All I could say was keep up the good work brother. You know the word of God is distributed on next to school campuses. It's the motels.
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It's over the Airways. The Word of God is sounded forth very freely and very, very abundantly. And yet I believe we each have to own that there's a very solemn truth in these verses that we've read that despite the fact that we live in a land that's filled with copies of the Word of God, there is a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.
Perhaps you have two or three Bibles to your name, and yet if you're honest before God tonight, you say, yes, there's a famine in my own soul from hearing the words of the Lord. We find here in this day, this judgment that that Amos prophesized. They, they wander from sea to sea. They go from the north to the east. They go to and fro to hear the word of the Lord and they don't find it. They don't find it. What a solemn thing it is.
When the word of the Lord is not here heard intelligence in Luke that if the like that be in the the darkness. How great is that darkness there is that which positions itself in this world today is light. That was his knowledge that was you need to follow but it's nothing but darkness and if that is the light that you are following, which is simply the wisdom of man in the ideas and speculations of man.
If that light is, what you have is darkness, and how great is that darkness?
Highest demand, one time in conversation.
About health. And he said, well, I feel that.
Hell really is in this life and it's what we experience in the hard times of life and and those times that causes problems.
And then death ends at all. But hell really is in this life. And I said, well, is that something that you're saying based on what you've read in the Word of God, or is it just your own idea?
Well, it's just my own idea.
Well, let the light that be in thee be darkness. How great is that darkness? And you know, just as in Jeremiah's day, there were the elders of Israel that had gotten tired of hearing Jeremiah the prophet counting on that same drum over and over again. And they shut him up in the prison house. And there was a king. He really was a weak knee king, but he had a stiff neck. He had a sense that what Jeremiah said was the truth.
And he came to him in secret to get him out of the prison, and said, Is there a word from the Lord?
He had plenty of counselors, but he said, is there a word from the Lord? Jeremiah said the rich, and isn't it wonderful tonight that we can say there is a word from the Lord? There is something that we can rest upon that is not founded in man's mind of speculation and opinion and conjecture.
And testing it is the eternal God that has revealed Himself and revealed his mind to us. In the word of God there is a word from the Lord.
Further, we read in the 15th of Romans there when Paul could write to the assembly their enrollment. He says when he came to them, he purposed to come to them. I love this expression, the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ. We sometimes sing that hymn trembling. We had hope for mercy. Some lone place within the door, but the crowd the throne of the mansion already long before.
Many of us came to know the Lord Jesus as our Savior because we did not want to face eternal doom in the lake of fire, and we fled for refuge, and that met our need, and we were glad to have our need met, but it would have never satisfied the heart of God. His heart is full of blessing indeed. He doesn't want any to go down to the pit. It is not God's desire that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. God has no delight in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked should turn from his wicked way and live.
With all God's heart is not only that you would turn from your wicked way, not only that you would be delivered from eternal doom and judgment, but that you might come to find the fullness of love and blessing he has in his heart for you. So tonight I'd like to go back to the Old Testament and look at a little picture of what to me sets before us the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ.
00:15:07
In the Old Testament, in the language of the new, we find that it's referred to as figures.
For types or shadows.
And you know, you don't necessarily get all the detail in the shadow, but you get the outline of the thing. You know, we we get the details in the new, but we have a beautiful word picture, if I can put it this way, of the heart of God desiring the blessing of man and the wholeness of his heart coming out to man and blessing and to see various responses to the heart of God. We read that it was.
Going to be, as there is today, a famine for hearing the words of the Lord. And that's the context in which we find this story. Second Kings, chapter 6.
During this time Syria was coming against the Israelites, the 10 tribes, and the prophet Elijah was tipping off the king of Israel as to where the king of Syria was. And he was always one step ahead of him. And we find that the king of Syria took things into his own hands and thought he would he go get Elisha himself and Dolphin with all of his armies and surrounded him there.
What a foolish thing to do. But we find instead of him taking Elijah with his armies, Elijah took his armies captive into the city of Samaria. And I just want to pick up the end of that story just to contrast it with what immediately follows.
Second Kings chapter 6 and verse 21. And the king of Israel said unto Elijah, when he saw them, That is the Syrian Army, my father, shall I smite them? Shall I smite them? And he answered, our shall not smite them which thou smite those whom thou hast taken with thy sword and with thy bow set bread and water before them, that they may eat and drink, and go to their master. And he prepared great provision for them. And when they had eaten and drunk, he sent them away.
And they went to their master. So the bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel. I just read this for the point that what we find was in the heart of God is manifested by the man of God, the man of heavenly grace. Elijah, he said, set bread and water before them. It's so much reminded me of the verse that was read in the meeting this afternoon. If thine enemy hunger feed him, If he be thirsty, give him water to drink.
For in so doing thou shalt, He coals a fire upon his head. Oh, how many times we have perhaps sinned in the very presence of God, sinning against light and sinning against love. And we've been reminded not simply of our own corruption or depravity, but we've been reminded of the love of God, how in spite of what we were, He has come out in blessing. And that's the picture we have here. He brings them captive that He might lavish.
Blessing upon them and send them away with great provision. But that is a little insight as to what's in the heart of the man of God.
But now notice the contrast as we come to verse.
24 And it came to vast out for this. I don't know if it was two months or two years. What the time frame was that Ben Hey, dad, king of Syria gathered all his hosts and went up and besieged Samaria. And there was a great famine in Samaria. And behold, they besieged it until an ass's head was sold for Foursquare pieces of silver, and the 4th part of a cab of Doves dung for five pieces of silver. And as the king of Israel was passing by upon the wall, that tried a woman and him saying, Help, my Lord, O king.
And he said, If the Lord did not help thee, when shall I help thee? Out of the barn floor or out of the winepress?
And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him today, and will eat my son tomorrow. So he boiled my son, and did eat him. And I said in her, On the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him, and she hath hit her son. And it came to pass that when the king heard the words of the woman, that he rent his clothes, and he passed by upon the wall, and the people looked, and behold, he had sack locked within.
Upon his flesh then he said, God, do so, and more also to me, if the head of Elijah, the son of Shaphan, shall stand on him this day.
But Elisha sat in his house, and the elder sat with him, and the king sent a man from before him. But ere the messenger came to him, he said to the elders.
00:20:05
See how the son of a murderer has sent to take away my head? Look, when the messenger comes, shut the door and hold him fast at the door. It's not the sound of his master's feet behind him. And while he yet talked with them, behold, the messenger came down unto him, and he said, Behold, this evil is of the Lord. What should I wait for the Lord any longer? We'll stop there and get the 7th chapter momentarily.
We find there's a a great family.
And it describes the condition of this world, and perhaps it describes the condition of your soul this afternoon, a famine, a desperate need, you say, well, I feel no need. But if you've never come to own the Lord Jesus as your Savior, you have a desperate need that's going to destroy you eternally.
He the believeth on the Son of everlasting life, and he's a believeth not. The Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abide upon him. Have you believed on the sun? Have you believed on the sun considered the eternal consequences if you do not?
What we had found that what was in the heart of the prophet is when the captives were before him and they're in Samaria, he said great provision and all. I just want to have this again right up front about the heart of God that yearns over this world that wants the blessing of man, that wants your personal blessing.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. In that verse you have the scope of the gospel. It's the world, it is unto all, but it's to whosoever believe. It's only upon all them that believe. The gospel is for you, but it will do you no good unless you believe it, unless you take it and say, that's for me.
To say the Savior died for me. There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.
And.
It is that man to whom you will one day give account, that man that you will one day stand before, because all judgment has been committed unto the Son of Man.
You know, I thought of this that some say, well, God just doesn't understand if I am to be a man that's going to be brought for God to be judged. How can the eternal Almighty God ever sit in judgment on a man? You know, that was jokes complaint. That was Job's complaint if you read the book. And so he's not a man as I am.
But you know, God became a man and the person of the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He does understand. He came into this world.
Some have heard this little reference more than perhaps they care to, but I so enjoy passing on a little story. There was a.
Some years ago, I have a third cousin that lived in New Zealand and he was looking to try to find some relatives and he came with my grandmother and my mother to the house. And I immediately was intrigued by this fine young man and we immediately hit it off. But it seemed like the Lord's things hadn't been hadn't been approached at all. And so he went out to the went out to the kitchen for some cookies and I said that Ian, I said that you know, the Lord Savior and.
He gave me a rather abstract answer and I said, umm, are you an agnostic?
And he said, well, no, I don't know if I say that, he says, but if there is a God, I don't believe we can know him.
And I said, why is that? Because God is eternal and we're simply finite. He said, precisely, You know, I said, oh, that's the wonder of the incarnation, God manifest in the flesh, that God has come down in lowly grace in the person of his Son, born of a virgin into this world, that he might come down to where you and I were, that we might know God is revealed in his Son. How wonderful it is.
But it's that blessed one that you must have to do with the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the means by which all men are blessed. What we find here that there is this this situation of famine. You say, how could it ever have gotten into the situation? If God wants man to be blessed, why is there famine, not famine in Syria, but famine in Samaria among the professing people of God. And so desperate was this family, what were they feeding upon? And asked his head.
00:25:01
And dubstep, all these things are representative, I believe what is the assets had to speak to itself.
Comedy.
It speaks to the wisdom of man and the foolish of man all in one, because Job tells us that so far in the book of Job tells us that vain man would be wise, though man be born like a wild ***** cult a.
A wild *** is called rebellion, and man's wisdom is what foolishness with God. But you know the *** represents falling and foolishness, and that's what these poor souls were feeding on to try to give themselves a little relief from their aching stomachs.
Food from often assets.
I remember.
At work one time.
Tragedy had occurred and it wasn't. But within hours of the tragedy that someone made some very crude joke about the whole thing. And perhaps I did not have the fact I should have had. I just said that. I said that's sick. But what the response was from this Jewish young man, he said, well, he said that's what comedy is, is to make light of tragedies, to try to find some humor in these tragedies, to take away the sting of it.
Yeah, that's the ***** head to try to take away a little bit of the ache and the pain of these starving souls they were feeding on the ***** head.
But they were feeding also on the dove zone. I understand this was literally eaten by an army at one time. It speaks of the corruption of the pure. The dove is that which is pure and dove is that which is defiling. And that's what they were seeking, to feed their souls on the the ***** head in the Dovestone comedy and the corruption of man in order to in some way take away the pain of their starving condition.
Behind this, for many years there was a very large field in Kitty corner too before they put the track of houses in there. But Kitty corner to us there was this house and this man had a umm, a large group of these beautiful white doves and they would go out at at times and fly in unison and then go back. They're really quite beautiful. One worked one day I went to I was heading out the front door to work to get him in the car and I saw one of these white doves.
Lying on the front lawn, torn, bloody and dead. You know, I hit. I saw that. I thought, oh, what a tragedy. How many, How so much like the life of many a young person, This beautiful pure white dove lying dead because there was a cat that was waiting apparently to attack and to kill it. Well, the corruption of the pure, this is what they were feeding on to try to give themselves some relief.
From their desperate need, well, further, it gets worse. They cry to the the king. He was a man of responsibility. They called him for help. But we find that despite his position, he was powerless to help. And when it comes to eternal matters, all men are powerless, can do you no good. There is only one man in that city that could do them any good. And that was the man of God, the life of the son of Shaphath. But at least the king we were giving credit for this, this.
We find that the condition is even worse. The tragedy is even worse because there's their condition was so desperate that these two women, I presume that these were young children and had given one of her children and they ate this child.
What an awful condition.
That they were found in but we find a couple things here. One is it reminds us of two women that once came before King Solomon and likewise in that condition. One had a dead child through her own neglect. She flip-flopped babies with the other woman and they came to Solomon who brought forth the sword and brought forth the wisdom of God that gave the answer for that situation. But you don't have any Solomon in this picture. You just have a godless helpless.
Arrogant king.
That can do no good. But you say, why would the people of God ever enter into this situation? Why would they be where they were?
00:30:05
Turn back, if you would, to do it. Rhode Island 28.
How many times we hear this? If God is a God of love, why is the world and the condition that it is?
If God is the God of love, why it was Israel in this desperate situation?
Deuteronomy chapter 28.
And it says in verse, umm.
If you go back to earlier in the chapter, it speaks that they will not in verse 15.
If thou shalt, it shall come to passes. Thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe, to do all his commandments, and the statutes which I command thee of this day, that all these curses shall come upon thee and overtake thee. Now drop down to verse 49.
The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far from the end of the earth, as swift as eagle flyeth, a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand, a nation of fierce countenance which shall not regard the person of the old, or shall favor to the young. And he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle and the fruit of thy land until thou be destroyed, Which also shall not leave either corn, wine, or oil, or the increase of thy pine or flocks, or thy sheep, until they have destroyed thee. And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates until thy high intense walls come down.
Wherein thou trust us throughout all thy land, and he shall besiege thee and all thy gates.
All thy land which the Lord thy God hath given thee, and thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee in the siege and in the straightness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee. So that the man that is tender among you and very delicate his eyes shall be evil toward his brother and toward the wiseness bosom, and toward the remnant of his children, which he shall leave. So that he will not give to any of them. Of the flesh of his children, whom he shall eat, because he hath nothing left him in the seeds.
And in the straightness wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee and all thy gates.
We could go on in that chapter.
How it elaborates on this condition, The reason that condition came upon them is because they had departed from the Word of God. And that's the reason the world is in the condition that it is in is because of sin and because of departing from the Word of God. That's why Israel was in this desperate situation. Well, how do we reconcile that then with the heart of a God who is loved?
Well, they look in verse 30 at the king.
And they see he's read his clothes, and they see upon him he has sackcloth on. What does that speak to himself?
Speaks of repentance.
But every man walks into vain show.
And perhaps you thought, well, what we need in this situation is a good, healthy dose of religion.
Are we going to need to put on sackcloth and he did upon it, upon his flesh. It may not have been such an hour thing. He rents his clothes to express his powerlessness in the situation and they saw sackcloth. But you know it was a vain thing. It was an absolute vain thing for put on sackcloth because we find his heart was an enmity with a man of God, the man of heavenly grace. Verse 31. He said God do so, and we're also to me as the head of Eliza.
Elisha, the son of sheep, at shall stand on him this day. There was one man in the city of Samaria that could do them any good.
There was only one hole for that city.
The king said I'm gonna take his head off.
And man in his desperate need and his enmity towards God, and sees the corruption and the violence in the room that's in this world, and takes the blessed name of the Son of God as a curse.
Blames him for everything.
But is Elijah troubled by all of this? Is he fearful that this king doesn't understand him? Is he troubled that there's going to be problem for him? No, it says. But Elijah sat in his house.
He just stepped back and the Lord in eyes 18 says I will now take my rest. He steps back. He's not intervening in the scene. He's letting things go. He's letting things develop until it reaches the breaking point. Because there is a day when this world will be judged. Because God has a point of the day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he has ordained. For of he hath given assurance to all men, and that he hath raised him from the dead. No God will judge this world and he will judge it by the man Christ Jesus. But it's not that day yet. It's the day of His grace.
00:35:16
And Elijah type of the risen Christ, the men of heavenly grace, he sits in his house, and things continue on as the king in his enmity towards the man of God is coming to take him. But Elijah sizes him up. He calls him a son of a murderer.
I believe the reason for that is I take it this was King Jehoram, whose father was Ahab. Ahab, who through the origin of his wife Jezebel, killed a man named Naboth.
In his own Vineyard Naval, the man that refused to give up the inheritance of his fathers, he killed him, a type of Christ.
Well, Johorum was the son of a murderer. Elijah is not cowed by the position this man occupied, the fact that he was a king of Israel. And God is not coward by any means, preeminence in this world or any man's boast of what his resume reads.
There is no respective persons with God.
No, God does not judge as man judges. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks upon the heart and He sizes this man up. Not as he was politically, not as he was in an hour position, but he characterized him as to what he was morally. He was the son of a murderer. And now the son of a murderer was coming to get Elisha. Turn over for a moment to the 8th chapter of John.
In this chapter.
The Jews are laying claim to Abraham being their father.
Verse 39 They answered and said unto him, that Jesus, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto him unto them, If you are Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham, but now ye seek to kill me.
Just as Johor, I'm a son of a murderer, came to kill Elijah, now you come to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth. Why did they want to kill the blessed Lord Jesus? Because he was a man that had spoken.
To them, the truth. Do you want the truth or do you want to fight against it?
Which I have heard of God.
You do the deeds of your father, then said they to him. We be not born of fornication. What a slur against the virgin birth.
The Lord was reaching their conscience and what did they do? They would start to personally attack him. And what you do in the Word of God touches your conscience. Do you go after the one that brings it before you? That's what they did.
We have one Father, even God. Jesus said to them, If God were your Father, you would love me, for I proceeded forth and came from God. Neither came I of myself that he sent me. Why do you not understand my speech even because you cannot hear my word? Ye are of your Father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speak of the law, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar.
And the father of an.
We'll stop there. You see the moral picture? They wanted to claim Abraham as their father. They wanted to quote genealogy according to the flesh. He said no morally.
You're the son of a murderer, your father the devil.
Well, now we come to the 7th chapter. What a scene we have. You have the king with his entourage coming to kill the man of God, the only hope for that city, the only refuge from eternal doom for that city. But now the word of the man of grace comes. I know we want to make this point very clear. That's all that sinneth, it shall die.
For the wages of sin is death, for it is appointed in the men wants to die, but after this the judgment because there is wrath. Beware, God has set himself forth into God, a holy God that deals with evil. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness.
There is judgment for sin, but what about the man of grace? Well, that's what we come to now in Chapter 7. Then Elijah said, Hear ye the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord, Tomorrow about this time shall a measure of fine flower be sold for a shackle, and two measures of barley for a shackle in the gate of Samaria. Then a Lord, on whose hand the king leaned, answered the man of God, and said, Behold, if the Lord would make windows in heaven, might this thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not eat thereof.
00:40:29
And there were four leprosy men at the entering into the gate, and they said one to another, Why sit we here until we die?
If we say, We will enter into the city, and the famine is in the city, and we shall die there, and if we sit still here, we die also. Now, therefore come, and let us fall unto the host of the Syrians. If they save us alive, we shall live, and if they kill us we shall but die. And they rose up in the twilight to go into the camp of the Syrians. And when they were come to the uttermost part of the camp of Syria, behold, there was no man there. So the Lord had made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of Chariots and the noise of horses.
Even the noise of a great host. And they said One to another, Law, The king of Israel hath fired against us the kings of the Hittites and the kings of the Egyptians, to come upon us. Wherefore they arose and fled in the twilight, and left their tents, and their horses, and their ***** even the camp as it was, and fled for their life. And when these lepers came to the uttermost part of the camp, they went into one tent, and they eat and drink, and carried them silver and gold and raiment, and went and hit it, and came again, and entered into another tent, and carried tents also, and went and hit it.
Then they said one to another, We do not. Well, this day is a day of good fighting, and we hold our peace. If we tarry till the morning light, some mischief will come upon us. Now, therefore come, that we may go and tell the King's household. So they came and called into the Porter of the city, and they told them, saying, We came to the camp of the Syrians. And behold, there was no man there, neither voice of man, but horses tied and ***** tied in the tents, as they were. And he called the porters, and they told it to the King's house within.
And the king arose in the night and said unto his servants, I will now show you what the Syrians have done to us. They know that we'd be hungry. Therefore they've gone out of the camp to hide themselves in the field, saying, When they come out of the city, we shall catch them alive and get into the city. And one of the servants answered and said, Let them take, I pray thee, five of the horses that remain which are left in the city. Behold, they are all they are as all the multi individuals that are left in it. Behold, I say, they are even as all the multitude of the Israelites that are consumed, and let us send and see.
They took therefore 2 Chariot horses, and the king sent after the host of the Syrian, saying, Go and see, and they went after them into Jordan. And lo, all the way was full of garments and vessels, which the Syrians had castaway on their face. And the messengers returned and told the king, And the people went out and spoiled the 10th of the Syrians. So a measure of fine flour was sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, according to the word of the Lord. And the king appointed the Lord, on whose hand he leaned, to have the charge of the gate.
The people trod upon him in the gate, and he died, as the man of God had said, who spake on the king came down to him. And they came to Paris as the man of God had spoken to the king, saying, 2 measures of barley for a shekel, and the measure of fine flour for shekel shall be tomorrow about this time in the gate of Samaria. And that Lord answered the man of God, and said, Now beholdeth the Lord should make windows in heaven, might such a thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shall not eat thereof. And so it fell out to him.
So the people trod upon him in the gate, and he died.
What we find in these women and the people, we find a sense of their desperate need.
We find in the king one that was powerless to meet their needs, and in his weakness he turned an enmity against the man of God. But now we come into the house where Elijah is sitting quietly, and we find that he is going to open up now.
The fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ. He tells them of this great blessing that's going to come to them. We find 4 leprous men that were four leprosy men that was good as dead and they stumble across as they go out to fall into the hands of the Syrian, feeling that some chance of mercy perhaps with them, otherwise we're just going to die.
You know God had stepped in and moved by this great noise and the Syrians were gone and all they had to do is walk in and eat and drink to their hearts content.
And that would have met their need, wouldn't it?
But you know, they came across more.
They came across much more. They found, as it says in verse 8, silver and gold and ramen. Turn for a moment to the book of Ephesians, chapter one.
00:45:14
I'm gonna read 2 verses and I'm gonna read them.
A nonsequential order, Ephesians chapter one and verse 7.
In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace, the.
Richards of his grace and what is it connected with the forgiveness of sins or to find the riches of God's grace that would meet us in our need, our deep need and through the precious blood of Christ would remove all of our sins and we would find the forgiveness of sins. What a blessing it met our need, it would meet our need and it does meet our need. It admits the need as they found that food and water to drink those leprosy and the needle is met.
But go down to verse 6.
Because if in verse seven we have the riches of his grace, in verse six we have the glory of his grace, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accept it in the Beloved.
Oh, how much more the heart of God is. This chapter begins with God coming out and blessing to man. And as we said perhaps before, we would unsatisfied many of us to know that we were saved from eternal hell, that our sins were forgiven to the blood of Christ. Our need would have been met, but God's heart would have been satisfied because the fullness of blessing in His heart, He wants us there in the likeness of His own Son, conformed to the image of His own Son.
And now he's brought us into favor. He's taken us into favor in his own son. In the place of the son before the father is the place of the believer before the father.
All that has nothing to do with being saved from eternal judgment. It's a place that answers to the heart of God, how much He loves a soul, how much he loves you. Not the riches of His grace, but the glory of His grace. They found not only this food to eat, but the silver and gold and raiment. A picture to us of the blessing we have is accepted in the Beloved 1 and so much more, in whom we have redemption.
Through his blood. Well, these lepers come, They say we do not well.
I believe that's one reason there's a gospel we do not well to keep this to ourselves. And that's why in our individual lives as believers, perhaps there's a word spoken to a a classmate, to a work associate, perhaps a little pocket calendar is just dropped off right there. You know, I just say this isn't aside. There's a man I worked with many years, Buddhist. I gave him a give him a calendar and he says Bill, look, he had saved him for the last 04 to five years.
Still not the Lords as far as I know, but how good to get the word of God into the hands of of all that we can Well we find in in the in closing here these leprous men, the picture of man's lost and ruined condition. These sinners, a type of sinners that come into this blessing, the three full blessing of God, they tell the city and now they come out to partake of the blessing that the man of God said there would be.
The king was as skeptical as they come. He wants to test, he wants to try. He wants to run a survey, so to speak, to see if this thing is good as true. But faith rests on the word of God.
And this man did not believe the word of God. Let's send a couple horses out. Let's see if the report is really true. Why did he do that? Because he didn't believe the word from the man of God. That's at the root of it. He said that sounds like good sense. But the underlying issue was he didn't believe the man of God. And that's why he said, let's send two horses out rather than those that heard the message of these poor leprous men and went together. Oh, unbelief always gets it wrong.
Well, we find that the people go out.
And there was one other man we want to notice, and that was the man in whom the king leaned.
He was a skeptic.
He was the cynic. He was the one that always had the smart remark, the cutting remark.
What's gonna end up with a man like that?
You know, those that were in desperate need, there was provision for the provision for them. Those leprous men, they came and they were the first ones to come into the blessing. But what about this man that scoffed at the man of God? If windows, if God made windows in heaven, could this thing be Well, the word was not only was the word given by the man of God that there would be full provision. The man of God also said, you'll see it with your eyes.
00:50:25
But you're not gonna partake.
And this skeptic, this man that had mocked the man of God, indeed, he saw this rich provision as he stood by the gate, and the crowd just came and trampled it. He did not partake of the bounty. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. We account that the long-suffering of God is salvation, God's heart.
Is full, his heart yearns.
Over the blessing of man. But he does not have unlimited patience. He will not plead with your soul forever. There is a time.
And God knows that time. You don't, and I don't. And God says that's it, that's it, Your time is coming.
Couple weeks ago I.
Alright, so let's take a look at it.
And it is a poem in my father's handwriting. I doubt that he wrote it. He did write some poetry. Maybe he did, I don't know. It's in his own handwriting.
And I would like to read it to you now.
And I would like to read it in the context of this man that stopped at the message of grace from the man of grace, Elisha, heavenly grace, the type of the risen Christ.
That he yearns for your blessing.
But as I say.
It is not forever and I just in that context like to read this little form.
Which must have impressed my father if he copied it from somewhere. It's called heaven or hell.
There is a time we know not when, a point we know not, where that marks the destiny of men to glory or despair. There is a line by us, unseen, that crosses every path, the hidden boundary between God's patience and His wrath. How long may I go on in sin? How long will God for bear? Where does hope end, and where begins the confines?
Of despair an answer from the sky has sent you, who from God depart while it is called today, Repent and harden not your heart, a point of time, a moment's face. The choice you make will tell, Will lend you in your heavenly place, or shut you up in hell.
It all comes down to a moment in time.
If you know not to save your tonight, will you have him or will you brush him by one more time?
Your eternal destiny hangs on this.
One question What then will I do with Jesus, who is called Christ?
We have him or we are rejected.
God bless me to bow before Him and receive Him as your Savior. Even tonight. Let's sing a song in closing.
#21.
Decide for price today.
The sun rises today.
And call the foundation king.
Clear the soul and body. Heart.
00:55:24
Nsnoise.
Sweetness of it too, Thou just give the very best of heaven. Goddess, give the very Son of thy love, the One in whom all thy eternal, the light centered, send him into the world to die for lost and ruined sinners. We thank thee, our God and Father, for the grace of this cause, many of us.
Love Story
Children—John Kaiser
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.
Well, where I stand, but according to my watch, which is more or less.
And who's got a song?
#5 and we don't have to restrict ourselves to the vaccine like we often do.
The hints on the back page of this Kim sheet, as we call it, is are particularly designed for children, but we can also take some of the hymns on the other part of the hymn sheet #5 let's.
Well, therefore.
I developed prepaid.
When she saw the one my things are awake.
Umm, when you come back.
Call one big one.
Nsnoise.
Uh, my Dinder land.
I wonder how many here understand it. I know when I was young.
I sang this song many times and did not understand what I was singing. It says in verse two that his Don the great transactions done. Who here on the front row can tell me what a transaction is?
Anybody can tell me what a transaction is? Yes, an exchange.
Very good, very good. I thought it I would have to illustrate it. Maybe I still will. Is there anybody here on the front row that has a penny?
00:05:07
Anybody here has a penny?
And some checking their pockets. You got a penny.
You got done. Would you be willing to exchange your dime for 1/4?
Find the dime there.
OK, now that's an exchange, that's a transaction, and he came out better on it than I did. That's all right.
That's a transaction. The word transaction made-up of two other words, which means that action across.
Really amazing exchange now.
Jesus took my sin and gave me happiness.
In exchange, is that a good exchange for Jesus to take my sins and give me happiness and joy, salvation. That's a wonderful exchange. And that's what we just sang about. All right, how about another song?
Jesus loves me. OK, that's number 40 on the back and we won't sing all of Jesus loves me. Just sing. We'll sing just the 1St 2 verses and I'll tell you a story about this song #40.
Of the Bible, count me so little I'm seeing him being among them. They are wit, but he's buddy and thronged.
Love me.
Yes, Jake lies cloudy, the Bible tells me.
Now I promise.
Tell a story about this song. This song was written by a lady named Anna Warner. She never married, never had children, but she wrote this song for children.
Anna lived with her sister Susan out East about 150 years ago and they both wrote children's books, which were very popular at the time. And Anna wrote the story about a little boy who was dying and someone came to visit the little boy.
And quoted him 2 verses. I actually quoted him several verses of a poem that these two verses I'm pretty sure of. Jesus loves me. This I know for the Bible tells me so little ones to him belong. They are weak, but he is strong. Jesus loves me. He who died heaven's gate to open wide. He will wash away my sin. Let a little child come in. And that was supposed to be good news.
For that little boy who was dying, you think that was good news?
The good news for a person is dying. Sure it is. Well, that was just a fictional story, but it caught the attention that that that poetry caught the attention of a hymn, umm tune writer named William Bradbury, and he introduced Jesus Loves Me as a hymn to the public.
And people have sung this ever since in many, many languages. It's probably the most popular song in the world, at least among Christians. The most popular song, probably the most popular song among Christians, because it's such a wonderful truth. Jesus loves me.
Let's have one more song. We're a little bit short for time this morning, so one more song and then we'll get on to our verse.
Anybody else have a choice?
Go ahead.
And someone came and told him about the Lord Jesus. And this is a true story. This is a true story #44 Let's sing the whole hymn.
00:10:25
Into us and we're a gypsy white landing. I ain't not alone as I close up the day.
Near the sun, salvation we can return.
Nobody ever has known this little thing.
Coming along again. Tell me about them.
Salvation story Read me nor and all.
I can say I'll come kill them, nobody ever has told me before.
Nobody. I've heard a story around the world.
Tell it again. Tell it again.
Salvation, Salvation.
Till some can say all the children of men.
Nsnoise.
Till nine children of men, nobody ever has told me before.
All right, let's go ahead and ask God's blessings.
Our God and Father, we thank Thee this morning for all my goodness to us, and above all for our Lord Jesus Christ. We thank Thee for thy love. I love for sinners.
We thank Thee for the love that would give the Lord Jesus Christ, thy only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. So we ask this morning.
That each one here might hear the message.
However that is conveyed to each heart, we pray in Jesus name, Amen.
Now we had a memory verse.
At least most of us, I assume, had a memory verse.
And.
Who remembers what that verse is when you learn the verse for this movie?
Anybody know that verse?
Yes, Sir, but can you stand up and say it?
John.
Very good.
00:15:03
We left him within the first one of the first John 4/19.
Somebody. Oh, Paul, Paul, do you want to say the first? You love him because he first loves that.
OK, good. I don't see real well. So I I I appreciate the help I get body spoken if I don't continue around the line here. Anybody else here? All right.
OK, anybody else here?
All right, good.
I remember when I was a when I'm being in Sunday school once and I had worked so hard.
Went in first and then I didn't get my chance to say it. I was disappointed. And we like to hear children say versus this one. If we get these truths in our minds and then in our hearts. This is a wonderful verse. You know, when I was asked to take the Sunday school.
The first thing.
I did. We'll see what verse I might be expected to talk about. And I saw this first. I thought, oh, how wonderful, talk about the love of God. I just couldn't think of anything more wonderful to talk about. I look forward to thinking about it for the next few days. And I have thought about it quite a bit. And I thought of several stories that illustrate the love of God. And I want to tell you one story and I want to illustrate another one.
Let me tell you a story. Why should I ask a little bit of question before I tell a story? Let's ask a question. How many here?
Believe they know what it is to be loved. How many here have someone that loves them?
Right, you have parents that love you. How many here believe their parents love you?
All right, now keep your hands up and unless you and you're not sure about this next question, how many here think their parents love them even when they spank them?
Well, that's good. That's true. Because loving isn't always, doesn't always have to do with feeling. And I want to explain that to you, tell you that old story.
Years ago. This was many years ago.
Maybe 100 years ago, I don't know for sure, maybe a little bit less than 100, but there was a man named Albert Drecker who was a bridge keeper.
His job was to take care of a drawbridge that went over a river, and sometimes there were boats coming down the river and he had to open the bridge and let the boat through. And then sometimes there was train. There were trains coming on the railroad track, and he had to make sure the bridge was closed so the trains could go over the river. And one day Albert Drecker was letting a boat go through the bridge.
And.
Uh, just as the boat was going through, as, as the boat was just about through, he started to lower the bridge and just then he heard the whistle of the train in the distance and he knew he had time.
To close the bridge, we stayed right there on the job because he had to do it, man, because he had to. He had to have to keep his hand on the lever to close the bridge. And he knew if he stayed on the job, he'd have the bridge closed in time for the train to go over the river.
But something else happened just then too.
His little boy. He saw his little boy come running along the Bank of the river toward him, and then his little boy stumbled and fell into the river. What do you think Albert Drecker did?
00:20:08
When he saw his boy fall into the river, I think he did.
Yeah, that's what you think you might do. You know what Albert Drecker did? He kept his hand on the lever. He thought about the people on the train. He loved his little boy, but he kept his hand on that lever and he watched his son.
Struggling in the waters, but he kept his hand on the lever so that the bridge would be closed when the train came through because there were a lot of people on that train that would die if the bridge wasn't closed.
Did Albert Drecker love his little boy? Yes, he did. As soon as the as soon as the bridge was closed, he dove into the water to rescue his son. But his son Adrown.
He loved his son. Let me ask you a question. Did Albert Drecker love the people on that train?
What do you think?
He probably didn't have a clue who was on the train. He didn't know who they were, but what he did was an act of love. Those people on the train, it wasn't a matter of feeling to those people on the train.
There's a matter of doing what needed to be done and he sacrificed his son for those people on the train. Now that reminds us a bit of what God has done, doesn't it reminds us that God gave his son for us. That was real love. I want to talk about that because that is the greatest love story. You know, there's there's lots of books in this world, probably few things more popular than love stories. We all like love stories. We hear, we, we watch, we like to watch couples that are.
And just engage or about to be engaged. Umm, we like to watch parents with children. We would like to see the love. But God has given us an illustration of love that we can never forget. And that's what I want to illustrate this morning with itself.
Now who can tell me what is what? What do you suppose you're gonna talk about?
How about somebody else? Yes.
The Lord dying on the cross between the two thieves that we're trying to think of the two thieves, right? Let's read about that in Luke chapter 23. This is the greatest illustration of love, the greatest love story we can ever tell.
Luke chapter 23, We love him because He first loved us, and this is how God showed His love. We have a verse in Romans 5 that says God commands or God shows or demonstrates his love to us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That's what God showed His love. And so we're going to read the story in Luke 23.
And talk about that just a little bit.
We'll read, uh, Luke 23, starting with verse.
33.
And when they were come to the place which is called Calvary, there they crucified him and the malefactors, one on the right hand and the other on the left. And so we have 3 crosses on the a flannel graph here.
That's what they call this thing. Here is a flannel graph, 3 crosses. And there were three men on those 3 crosses. They used to put these crosses up in a prominent place close to a rope. We don't realize that from the from the scripture here, and I'm not going to sit with you in this case, but the Romans habitually chose a hill close to a road for crucifixion so the people passing by could see Roman justice.
And so the Lord Jesus and two thieves were nailed to crosses and put up on the hill called Calvary for people to see. And if you hadn't been there and looked, if you were just passing by and didn't know what was going on, you were looked up and said, oh, there's three criminals.
00:25:12
Because.
Out on the outside they look pretty much alike. If anyone looked worse than the other it was probably the Lord Jesus because they had beaten him and he was bloody from the beatings and the thorns put on his head.
And so people would have looked at at the the three.
Men crucified there and said, oh, there's three criminals.
And, you know, we all look pretty much alike.
But the Bible tells us something.
Yes, man looks on the outside as the Lord looks on the heart. Does he always do that? Yes, He's doing it this morning. God is looking into each heart here, and He knows what you're like on the inside.
No, I see a bunch of boys and girls that are dressed, nicely dressed and clean faces and mostly look like they're awake.
God looks on the inside, and that's what we have a little picture of here.
This is what God saw when people were passing by the hill of Calvary. They just saw three men. But this is what God saw. He saw his perfect Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
And he saw two malefactors. That's what it says. Let's read about it in Luke 23 year anniversary.
It says in verse 33 there they crucified him and the malefactors. Malefactor is somebody who does something wrong.
We could be called mouth factors. What's another word for malefactor? Male means bad. Factor means doer. OK, so a malefactor is a bad doer. What's another word for a bad doer? A Sinner. Sinner. Yeah. And that can describe us. And the Bible says what? What does the Bible say? Read that, missus, please. There is no difference. Fraud standing come short in the glory of God. Romans 32233. Right. There is no difference.
These two men beside the Lord Jesus were just like us, and we're just like them. We're sinners.
But there was one difference.
Who who could read this verse for us? Oh God, let's see the hands go up.
And in.
And he knew that he was manifested to take away our students and into his first John series 5 good He was manifested. He was shown to take away our sins, and in Him is no sin. And so we have the Lord Jesus represented by a white cross with a little blue around it to show that he came from heaven. His righteousness was heavenly righteousness, divine righteousness. And the two men beside him were.
Centers represented by black crosses.
And that's like us. We weren't like him, we were like them.
Well, let's read it, but it says here Verse 34 then said Jesus father forgive them. But we uh yeah. Verse 34 then said Jesus father forgive them for they know not what they do and they parted his raiment and cast lots.
And the people stood beholding, and the rulers also with him, derided him, saying he saved others.
Let him save himself, if he be the Christ, the chosen of God. And the soldiers also mocked him, coming to him and offering him vinegar and saying.
If thou be the king of the Jews, save thyself. And the superscription also was written over him in letters of Greek and Latin and Hebrew. This is the king of the Jews. I just think we read this story. We've all heard the story so often.
This happened. This happened here on this earth. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was down here. He was doing nothing but good and they crucified him.
Has somebody ever been mean to you?
I've had somebody being mean to me.
00:30:03
What do we wanna do when somebody's mean to us?
No, he didn't. And you know the wonderful thing is he was the one person that was entitled to do it. God says vengeance is mine, I will repay the Lord. Jesus had the right to take vengeance and he didn't. Instead he said Father.
Forgive me. Just think of that. And he desires that every one of us should be forgiven this morning. Are you forgiven? Have your sins been forgiven? The Lord Jesus prayed for these people that were crucifying him. And he said, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. And you know, the truth is when we do something, we say, Oh yeah, it's bad, but we really don't realize how bad it is.
When we sin, we don't realize how serious that is. We don't really know what we're doing.
God does. God sees what we don't see.
Well, verse 39 one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him. That means he made fun of the Lord Jesus. He mocked him and said, if thou be the Christ, save myself and us. And the other answer rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God? See, thou art in the same condemnation. And we indeed justly, for we received the due reward of our deeds. But this man has done nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord, Remember Me when thou cometh into thy Kingdom.
And Jesus said to him, Verily I say unto thee, today thou shalt be with me.
In Paradise. And it was about the 6th hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the 9th hour. And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst. And when Jesus had cried, with a loud voice he said, Father into thy hands.
I commend my spirit. And having said thus, he gave up the ghost.
Now we have just read about the death of the Lord Jesus. It was wonderful.
We read some details about it. God tells this is God's story. Every detail here is important. And he tells us a few things about the men who were dying beside the Lord Jesus. You know we're all dying. You realize that?
From the day we're born.
How many here have ever had a scan?
That's bad that you still have the scabbard to fall off.
God, it's part of you that grew and then died.
And we change our skin. They tell me every seven years that we, we, our whole skin is changed. And what happens to the whole skin is, is gone. We're dying continually, even while we're growing. And part of it is dying because the Bible says the wages of sin is death. And this world is full of sin and our lives are full of sins. The person never sinned. They would never die.
Well, the Lord Jesus, he never sinned and he didn't have to die, but he chose to die.
He chose to die between 2 Thieves.
And these two thieves knew who was between, who was next to them and one of the thieves. They made fun of the Lord Jesus. As a matter of fact, both thieves did at first. And then one thief changed.
One thief. We'll say it was this one here.
Said to the other, Don't you realize that we're about to meet God? This is no time for joking.
And it's true. Now life is serious. We like to laugh. They say laughing is good for us. But there's a time to be serious and realize that we are guilty before God and we need salvation. And so this one thief will say it's a thief on the side here closest to me.
He said to the other.
We deserve what we're getting. We indeed justly, we received the due reward of our deeds. But this man has done nothing amiss. He knew the Lord Jesus was innocent. He didn't know how perfect the Lord Jesus was, but he knew the Lord Jesus was innocent. And he said to Jesus, Lord, Remember Me when you come into your Kingdom.
00:35:05
He turned to the Lord Jesus and trusted the Lord with his future. How many here, I wonder? Don't hold up your hand. How many here have trusted the Lord with your future? Not just your future in this life, but how about your future in the next? Remember the story we sang about the little gypsy boy?
He says, oh, it's wonderful to know that someone loves me. Tell, tell everybody that story. That's what we're doing this morning. There's no better news than to know that God loves you. He gave the Lord Jesus to die for you.
That whoever believes in him should not perish and have everlasting life. What about your future? If you were to die this morning and it could happen, if you were to die this morning, where would your soul be? Well, this man here talk to the Lord Jesus about his future. Have you ever talked to the Lord Jesus about your future? It's very important everyone of us have a future.
Where are you going to spend eternity?
There's this life too down here. If the Lord leaves you down here, you have a life to live.
If you live it without him.
You're in danger of dying without him.
And being without him forever.
Now is the time. This man knew his time was about up.
He talked to the Lord Jesus about his future. He said, Lord, Remember Me when you come into your Kingdom. Jesus said to him, verily that means truly I say unto thee, today thou shalt be with me in paradise. That was good news. This man didn't realize how good that news was, I'm sure, but that was good news. Now it says after that it's about the 6th hour. There was darkness over all the earth until the 9th hour. That means that God.
Something that man had no party.
It was between him and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I wanna talk about what God during did during those three hours of darkness.
This is very important to everyone of us here during those three hours of darkness. This is what God did.
He took the sins.
Of that believing thief, and laid them on the Lord Jesus, and he took my sins, and laid them on the Lord's youth.
What about your sins?
Did Jesus bear your sins during those three hours of darkness?
Well, you know when the three hours of darkness.
It says here.
Isn't that? Isn't that wonderful?
The perfect Son of God bore our sins in his own body on the tree. Well, that's what happened during those hours of darkness. And then after the three hours of darkness were ended, the darkness was lifted and here is what God saw. I'm counting.
Now isn't that amazing?
Two innocent men, two righteous men, One because he was the Son of God from heaven.
And the other I wonder if anybody knows why this cross is edged in red?
Who would? Who would like to suggest why that cross? Why I put a red edging around that cross? Anybody have any ideas?
Well, you're getting close, but not quite yet.
00:40:27
Cleans us from all sin, all sin. That's amazing, all sin. You know, when I clean a house, or when I wash dishes, or when I do laundry, do you suppose I ever get anything perfectly clean? No, we can't do it, but God can, and Jesus did. The man on the cross beside the Lord Jesus was just as righteous, just as pure in God's sighted as his own Son.
That's the word of God.
Has that work been done in your life?
Are you righteous and pure in God's eyes?
This is what God saw. Well, our time is about up. We know that these all three men died.
All three men died. What do you think these things are supposed to be?
Funny looking things here, yes. What are they? Gravestones. And if these, those men who died on Calvary, two of them, their bodies are still in this earth. That's why I only have two gravestones. Why is there no gravestone for the Lord Jesus?
Why is there no gravestone for Lord Jesus? Why?
There is no grave down here that holds him. Not now. Now.
The Bible tells us something.
Something else?
It is appointed to man once to die and after death.
For judgment, I've other things I could use to illustrate. I want to remember there are two destinies for each one of us here. Where are you going? Which state are you like? Are you like the seas that believed and experienced the law of God? Or you like the thief who didn't believe and will never know the love of God? We love him because.
He first loved us.
The Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. Well, we have just a couple minutes left, maybe to sing one song together. They might have a song.
42 December 4343.
#43.
One door and only one, and yet thighs are two.
All right, that's correct. Our God and Father, we pray that each of us here might even seriously think of the words we just sang.
There's two choices, two sides to the door. There's an inside and outside. We thank dear God for each one here. That's on the inside, and we pray for anyone here who might still be on the outside, not trusting the Lord Jesus as Savior.
We thank you for this wonderful story, for this wonderful demonstration and eternal expression of your love. We thank you this morning, our God and Father, for our Lord Jesus Christ.
Ezekiel
Ephesians 4
Reading
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.
I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that you want worthy of the vocation wherewith here Paul, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, even as he are called. In one hope you're calling 1 Lord, 1 faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all, and in you all.
But unto every one of us who've given grace according to the measure of the gift of Frank. Wherefore he says, when He ascended up on high, He let captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. Now that He offended, what is it that He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended at the same also that ascended up far above all heaven, that He might fill all things. And he gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists.
And some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the Saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
That would be henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the sight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie and wait to deceive.
But speaking the truth and love may grow up into Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplier, according to the effectual working and the measure of every part, make us increase of the body to the edifying of itself and love. This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth not as other Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God.
With ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their heart, who being past feeling have given themselves over until lasciviousness to work all uncleanness with greediness. But ye have not so learned Christ, if so be that ye have heard Him, and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus. That you put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful love, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man.
Whichever God is created in righteousness and true holiness, wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and send that let not the sun go down upon your wrath, neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labor working with his hands distinguishes good that he may have to give to him that needeth. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth. But that was just good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.
And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed until the day of redemption.
With all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking, be put away from you with all malice, and be kind one to another, tender hearted and forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake and forgiven you.
One more, one face, one baptism, one God and Father of all. So then he has a note where it says there is one body, it says.
It may be translating. The body is 1 and so on. Body is 1, Spirit is one. God is 1, Lord is one.
00:05:05
If we could leave this out there is or is the forest would be so much the greater just be part of this because the question was asked where it says in verse 3 endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit to move on to peace and move on to peace.
The question was asked if we break it. Of course not. The the Spirit has formed one body and there is one God.
And that means to walk together in unity.
The enemy has done his work in Christendom, and there are funders, maybe thousands of denominations and bodies that Christians are identified with. That's not keeping the unity of the Spirit. You can't make that. We can't change it. We can't break it. The Spirit of God has formed it. There's one Lord and there's one gone, and there's one Spirit and there's one body.
That truth, if it gets a hold of medium view in front of us, ought to say that.
OK, I've sent it this way, I said. I think the worst sin that a Christian can commit is to support divisions in the church.
There's that. That's just totally contrary to what the church is. The church is one body formed by 1 Spirit, united to 1 Lord and and and worships one God and Father of all. Just one and these other false.
And, uh, we have to hang our heads in chain that the enemy has done in the, the realms of brethren as well as other parts. And, uh, it's a shame. The enemy knows that he wants to divide, scatter and do his evil work and he's done it. But it's great for us to hold fast to the truth that we have in Scripture and we brought in peace.
And unity by the Spirit for the glory of the same Lord and for the honor of our Father. That's our responsibility. We have such a precious remembrance this morning.
The Dean was concentrating on the Blessed Lord in glory and his precious every Lord, stay Lord.
I was asked. I asked one of my dear family.
We used to be with us and it's not. She's connected with some denomination and so on. I said to her, I said, did you remember the Lord Jesus in his death, Bless the Lord's Day.
00:10:39
When it says endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit, we can't break it. The Spirit of God keeps it, and we can keep it in the proper expression of it by walking in the truth of the long life.
There are some verses in the Galatians that establish that to check and might have to read a few of them.
In Galatians 5.
Obviously one verse to start with and then I'll go back and read a few more. I think the 25th verse you notice in our chapter walk, were they the vocation wherever they were called? Walk, It's our walk. Now Relations talks about that in the 25th verse of Galatians 5. It says if you live in the Spirit.
Let us also walk in the Spirit.
Our walk, what we do and our our place.
Enforces our testimony more than our thoughts if it doesn't agree with the scripture, and that's one thing that the Spirit of God always does.
He always instructs us according to the Word of God. The Spirit of God never guides the child of God apart from the Word of God There, there's there's nothing person learning that we have the spirit. There is one spirit, there is one body. Now to walk in it.
Uh, well, we go back to this, uh, fifth chapter of relations again and read a few more verses. The first verse says stand fast into liberty for his crisis made us free and be not entangled again with the use of *******. That establishes what was the trouble then so prevalent is to go back to the, uh, the ******* of the law.
Man likes to be under the law because it's.
Makes him think that he's doing something for God.
There are two things we can do that.
Affect the Spirit of God, but he never leaves us. We have the Spirit of God. He never leaves us. We can grieve Him.
If we allow the right time, the Spirit is great. There's no power there then.
Or we can quench the spirit government. We have a direct word about that too, which not the Spirit of God. We're with your field. Well, quenching of the Spirit might be the hindrance of the ministry of the truth in my brother or even in myself. If the Spirit of God wants me to say something that's according to this book and I don't say it, I'm quenching the Spirit. Am I quenching another brother? What are you saying? That's a bad thing to do?
Just go ahead, buy this book. Well, that's going down to.
Notice that there are the.
The works of the flesh. We don't have to read much to see here. The works of the flesh are in contrast to the fruit of the Spirit. The works of the flesh begin in verse 19. Now the works of the place.
We're not put that is in the flesh, but the flesh is in US properly and we can't get rid of it. We could go back to.
Actually, that's 17 to find out about that, but maybe we'll have time for that.
They remember Exodus 17 was. I'll just say this because you can remember it.
And it's where God.
Says the Lord has sworn and will not repent, that the Lord will have war with amulet from generation to generation. Talking about this, we've often traded young people. The only trouble with you, you're just like your parents. You're the same quality person. That's that's what it is. The place never gets any better from generation to generation. It comes out because of the lack of control.
00:15:28
Well, that's enough about the works of the flesh, because we know what that is. But now let's go down to the fruits of the Spirit.
But the fruit of the Spirit is Lovejoy, peace, long-suffering.
Meekness, faith, goodness, meekness, temperance, I guess that there is no law. You don't need any law for those things. Those are wonderful qualities. And then we have that first, we've already read. They have that our Christ have crucified the flesh with the affections. Unless if we live in the Spirit, we live in the Spirit. We do live in the Spirit.
Amen. As the Spirit of God lives in the Spirit He, He, he sealed it till the day of his redemption.
Let us also walk in the spirit. It's a continual trial. It's like a journey. You're taking us on yesterday dawn, from one place to another place to another place. You said the Lord stopped them 40 times. Maybe give them the instruction. Well, that's what we need. As long as we're down here because the flesh wants to get out. And if we don't?
Walk if we don't walk in the Spirit.
We don't look like we're living in spirit.
I'd like to hear somebody else say something.
There's a nice thought that's brought before us Deuteronomy chapter 32 in connection with walking in the Spirit.
In verse 24.
It talks about Asher and.
Let Asher be blessed with children, let them be acceptable to his brethren, and let him let him dip his foot in oil. That's walking in the power of his spirit, isn't it?
And as a result, we would be acceptable to his graduates.
If we deviate from this book, that is the truth.
Our word is truth and we are not walking in the Spirit. He will never cause us to deviate from the Word of God. He wrote it. The Spirit of God wrote it. He involves us, believe and guide us. He is born to one body, uniting us all together and to be controlled by the Spirit of God for the glory of Christ and according to this book.
That's our responsibility, and if we all did that, there'd be unity that everyone could see.
Probably mentioned yesterday that the first three versus our exhortation.
And then from verse 4 to 16, it's the doctrine of the epistle again. It's not telling us what to do, it's just telling us what there is. There is one body statement of fact, and I think it really helps to see that.
The body is one.
It can never be anything else. Even as you say, Chuck. The many different factions that Christians have denominated themselves by does not change the fact that there is one life. There cannot be any more than one body. It's what God has formed by 1 spirit.
But what happens is that the testimony that we give has become fractured. So you go out into Mayfield and ask generally, where are these Christian people that they're talking about?
Well, you'll find that the outward testimony is splintered. Nobody is going to get the idea by looking at what is outward that there is one body.
00:20:10
Still, that truth remains, and that's the wonderful thing to keep in mind.
Remember in Bolivia when we had some trouble down there, visited a brother who left fellowship for a time and he said, how sad, brother, that the body of Christ is all broken up into bits.
I said, brother, I've come over here because I want to tell you that you and I, even though we don't break bread together, are still members of one body. It is not broken to death. There is one body. We are just not acting like there's one body.
We should, we should, and if, like it's been said, if we walk in the Spirit, then we will show that unity of the spirit.
That forms the one body.
So it helps to distinguish with the difference between there is one body and the testimony that is born to that truth in this world.
Go back to chapter one.
For a moment.
And.
Verse 20, Chapter one. Verse 20. Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places.
Verse 22 and have put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth All in all. And then chapter 2 and verse.
21 in whom the whole building, fitly framed together, groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord.
In whom ye also are builded together for inhabitation of God through the Spirit.
These two points or passages are really lay the foundation for the exhortation of our chapter and that is the Lord Jesus.
Was here on Earth.
And he accomplished God's work of redemption and laid the foundation in himself and in his work. And then God takes him up to heaven, so the heavenly places, and from there that heavenly man is given.
Us to be his body.
And we are associated there with him, a heavenly body.
In chapter 2, the habitation of God by the Spirit has to do with the earth, and so when you have in our chapter the body, it is that he it's.
The truth of it, that is, it should have it upon our soul, is it's a heavenly body in union with its head in heaven.
And on earth it is seen as the habitation of God by the Spirit. And so it was formed on the day of Pentecost by the Spirit into one body. And that is actually the unity that is formed. It's a fact. It's the unity that was formed on the day of Pentecost by the Spirit.
In its character, a heavenly thing, a heavenly people, an association with the heavenly man.
On earth, the habitation of God by the Spirit, and as a consequence of that truth, we're given the exhortation to walk in accordance with it. And so the matter of keeping the IT doesn't say keep the unity of the Spirit in the verse, it says keep that unity that exists in the uniting bond of peace, and it's already been given.
Brother Chuck, I think quite clearly.
We may not break the unity of the spirit. That's that's to break the unity of the body really, which is formed by the spirit and that's impossible, but we can fail to practice it. And that's the exhortation that are given to us. We can fail to keep it in the unity of of peace, the uniting bond of peace. We can fail in those things. And brother and I just like to say.
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It's true the problems exist outside this room and we can go out and look at Christendom and we already have this afternoon. But the Spirit of God would exercise our own hearts and our own consciences in this room about ourselves.
Are we together, maintaining the walk that is directed, as we've been told, by the Spirit of God, to walk in peace with one another and in unity?
There are conferences passed in which there were brethren sitting with us in this room or not with us in this room this this afternoon. Why? Because we who have been in this room have not collectively maintained this truth. And so we need to be exercised in our own consciences. Let the Lord put his hand on us to show us again we haven't been doing it. And I want to go back and say.
Unless we individually walk in our own lives in Canaan.
We can't properly practice the truth that's given to us and exhorted of us in this chapter.
If we walk in the world, if we walk in the wilderness, in our personal experience, and that is the character of our lives, we cannot practice this truth as it is in Jesus.
We have to walk in that heavenly character because our life is Christ and He is a heavenly person and if his life is not displayed in US, His life was lived in.
Perfect accord with the leading of the Spirit, and there was unity in every action and harmony if I could use the Word. And there was perfect harmony in every action in his life with the Spirit. That's what Doug said yesterday about the first part of this chapter. Christ did that. He was in prison for God.
There's a illustration that call attention to in the Old Testament when Balaam wanted to.
Or Valik wanted to bring a curse, and he hired Balaam to do that, and he sought to bring down a curse from above, from God's vantage point, if you please, and he was not allowed to do that because God would not curse his people.
But what he could do? He could work with the lust of their flesh and attract them to carnality, get them into.
Failing to walk as a true Israelite would walk, and he was successful. The same thing happens with us.
God does not allow.
A division in the body of Christ.
The Spirit of God maintains one body.
The God.
Has allowed the enemy to test us from time to time on the practical side of our walk.
And what Don has been calling our attention to as a warning, I believe, is precisely this. He can get our walk. The enemy can get our walk, not to where we say we are or not, according to the three things in this verse. And our walk becomes poor, carnal, or whatever. And then the enemy can bring in trouble.
Only as loud of God, of course. That's the vantage point where the enemy can attack us. He cannot attack us on the basis of the truth that God maintains one body that will never fail. And we can cling to that in faith. But when we cling to that in faith and then go out and practice in our walk something that's not in keeping with this, we have an open door.
00:30:02
For prom.
There's a book, I think it's in the in the BTP, the step I have taken by epidemic. He was a minister of the Baptist Church. I think it's a good book to read why he left that position he was in and a very, very highly, very gifted man. But he got a hold of the truth that we're looking at and he said I'm in the room place.
The official stereo position that he had and just became one of the members of the body of Christ. He would finally use and give him much good sound ministry.
Doug, that example you were giving of the Israelites, they linked up with the many, the Moabites, didn't they join their sacrifices together?
And it seems like the greatest tragedy of it all was that it happened in the last encampment, when they could look over into the land that flowed with milk and honey.
And to think that not one of them that entered into that crossed the George who died 24,000.
I don't think there's a discrepancy. It says there are 23,000 died in one day and Corinthians and 1St Corinthians 10. And what about the other thousand? Well, I don't know how clear that is, but perhaps there were those who who were thinking that they were getting away by falling a flash and join in the unity, thought they could get by with it. But nobody got by with it. Nobody possessed that good land so.
The point is, is so important.
He says in verse four there is one body, one spirit, even as ye are called, and one hope of your calling.
Mr. Darby comments on these next 3 verses. They're really 3 unities here.
The fourth verse is the unity that's referred to in connection with the Spirit.
2nd is a unity that's connected with the Lord, and the third is the unity connected with God. So we have all three persons of the Godhead and increasing scope to each one.
And the first one is 1, which is referred to as vital.
The Spirit, the one Spirit which formed the one Body, is also the source and power of the one hope of Our Calling.
As we had that calling presented to us in the first chapter, and Paul's prayer in the first chapter was that the eyes of their understanding might be enlightened that they might enjoy, might enter in, might comprehend that that calling, that heavenly calling to which they were called. And so as Bob said, it's not here in exhortation, but it's something to teach us so that we can understand. And it's umm, these things are in the fifth corners. It's a work of God.
Yeah, it's the work of the Spirit and we are the ones who are blessed by it.
So it might be saying I can't.
We have those, you can be gifted by them if you need it to carry it out.
He did that. He left the systems.
That stands in contrast to when they took the oath of the law. They said all that.
The command is what we do. They didn't have the power to do that, did they? It was too much. But in Christianity, we, through the Spirit of God, we have the life and power.
00:35:02
You mentioned Don, that verse four is vital means that.
Only those who are true believers are members of that one body.
But verse five is the circle of Christian profession, 1 Lord, 1 faith, one baptism. It includes all those who have outwardly taken that position by being baptized.
And then verse 6 is a circle which embraces all of creation, one God and father of all who is above all and through all and verse the end that last phrase of verse six in you all is really points back to verse 4 applies to those who are true believers. But I think it's helpful to see verse 4 is.
The circle of Christian reality.
Verse five is the circle of Christian profession, which includes verse four, and verse six is the circle that embraces all of creation. Because as much as people may not acknowledge in an outward way one God and Father of all, still He is God and Father of all in the sense that we have in Luke's gospel chapter three. I think it is where it gives the genealogy.
The Lord Jesus, it takes it back to Adam, which was of God. So God is the originator of all things.
And so in that sense, it embraces all creation.
Verse seven and what follows is connected with what comes before it and that is.
Lord Jesus in chapter one is that heavenly man which has gone on high.
And to him, in union with himself has been formed the body that is in now an association with him as his body in its vital oneness with himself. We're not only in unity with one another in a vital way, but we're in unity with him. And that's even more wonderful, really. But we are with him. And now.
He's at home, if you will, in heaven.
But we're still on Earth.
In fact, and so because we're not there with him and we have need, because we're still on Earth.
God is at work, gives to him the place of giving to us.
Everything that's needed for us until we're with Him. And that's the verses which follow in his grace. He who has gone on high as it refers to these He, uh, he.
He's ascended up up on high and so from himself are given to his body. And in this chapter, it's the individual that's given. In other places, it's a gift or an empowerment in Romans where it's God and, and uh, in Corinthians where it's the spirit. But here it's the Lord himself giving people, empowered by himself, giving grace of himself.
To be that which will minister to his body which is here on earth. And so it's being explained to us so that we can know that while we're separated from him.
In fact, physically, yet He is overseeing everything and providing for everything until, as we have in the very end of the Word, that we hear the Bride with the Spirit in US and among us.
And we together say, Even so, come Lord Jesus, and until that moment everything that's necessary for us is provided by Him, and we have some of it explained to us for our encouragement and for our exercise to fulfill our part in it while we're here on earth.
00:40:01
I think that should really encourage and.
And uh, stir us up, brethren, too. Notice verse seven again unto every one of us. There is no such thing in the body as a member that does not have a particular function.
And the tendency in.
Christian circles, and as Don was saying, even amongst ourselves, it happens, brethren, we tend to be some of us maybe sit more towards the front and others sit more towards the back saying well, I don't have too much to do here. It's not the right attitude to take every one of us. It says very clearly, not every gift may be a public gift, but there should be exercise on the part of every one of us.
Is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ, even the sisters.
This applies to them just as much as the brothers. They do not take part in public ministry, but there is a place for them to function and we all need to be exercised to be instruments in the Lord's hands to do what he gives us to do. It's interesting the other two places that Don mentioned.
Where the gifts are mentioned, I'd like to refer to those briefly first in First Corinthians 12, because it gives us the same thought that.
God wants to use every one of us, not just particular ones.
1St Corinthians 12 Notice what it says in connection with the manifestation of the Spirit. In verse seven. He manifests himself.
By the gifts he gives notice verse seven says the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit with all.
Now go back to Romans 12 where you have the gifts mentioned as well. Here it is God the Giver.
But notice what it says here in verse.
Three of this chapter for I say through the grace given unto me to.
Every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, according as God had dealt to every man the measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office, so we being many, are one body in Christ, and everyone members one of another. But there's no such thought in Scripture of certain ones.
Who are to, to, uh, have all the activity and others just sit back and relax and don't do anything that's not in the scriptures. Lord, help us to be exercised, brethren, in view of this precious truth that we are one body.
The one question that I was asked so often at the hospital after talking to to nurses and so on, the nomination do you belong to that is a question which will never be asked once we get home in glory.
That question will never be asked again. What denomination you belong to? There's only one. So what did you say, Jack?
I said, well, let's go back to the 1St century. Go back to the 1St century. How many churches were there?
Just one was the answer. I said that's right. Another one came back to me after I talked to her and she said I've been thinking of what you were talking about. She says you're right, the nomination of religion is not of God.
I'd like to notice here how the Lord does what he wants in these verses. It's it's his side of things a little bit in these verses of giving the gifts.
Uh, just to illustrate a contrast to it, when Moses wanted to deliver the children of Israel from Egypt, he began his work still in Egypt, and he ran into opposition from the enemy and he was limited in what he could do as long as Pharaoh was active in power.
00:45:07
And so, uh, he, uh, he could only operate in a limited way. And in fact, things got worse for the children of Israel when they tried to act under the authority from through Moses. And, uh, they got that the taskmasters got harder and harder and caused the people to even, uh, faint and want to give up. But once Moses got the children of Israel on the other side of the Red Sea and.
Pharaoh was dead and all of his Armory then he could execute commands from God on behalf of God as he pleased. This is what the Lord Jesus has done. He has destroyed the stronghold of Satan, sin and death, and he has brought a people on resurrection ground. And now the Lord can do what he wants and get what he wants from his people. And that's what he's doing here in the exercise of giving out gifts.
For the building up of his body, the church, I just wanted to give a little emphasis to that side.
I'd like to make a comment to we all know what the matter being puffed up is, and we hear his comments about someone having a gift and thinking more highly than themselves and they ought to think. But I want to look at the other side of it for a moment. There's also a tendency sometimes in us, maybe different individuals, but we say I can't, I can't, I, I, I'm nobody, I, I, I'm not able to.
I, I, I just, well, I just have to sit and be quiet. I can't do anything. I want to say to your brother, sister, if that's what you feel in your heart.
You're putting the Lord down.
And that's a serious thing. That's a false humility.
It's a false thing. It's not a God, it's of the enemy of your soul.
The Lord Jesus has given you a measure of grace.
And if you look at yourself and and result result in those kind of sentiments, you're saying, Lord, you didn't.
You didn't give me that.
I don't have anything. You didn't give me anything.
It's not true and it's wrong to think that way, and it's a loss.
To the Lord who has given you that grace, and it's a loss to his body for which he has given it to you. Yes, it's in different measures, it says according to the measure. But to every one of us has been given, and we do not want to put the Lord down and what he's given or despise in our hearts the measure of what he has given to us. Mr. Darby made the comment and it's a helpful one, he said.
Humbleness or humility isn't thinking low thoughts of yourself.
Being free of yourself and not thinking of yourself at all.
And if I get self occupied with what I have.
That may result in pride, or it may result in feelings of inadequacy, and so on. Both are wrong.
The deliverance from self and the use of what is given to us is with an object for the blessing of others and the forgetfulness of self.
Like to say that example of a young brother who had a responsibility to speak at a funeral of his nephew.
And the responsibility was just overwhelming him. And he said, you know, I just, I just cannot go ahead with this. And so he was advised that he would, if he would go ahead and depend on the Lord that walking from the back of the Funeral Home to the front, that long walk, that there would be grace and strength given that if you don't do it, you would never prove it.
And he turned around to face 500 souls there in that Funeral Home, and you couldn't detect that he was even nervous, hourly though he was.
And so we come up against those things when we say we just can't do it and really mean it and feel it. But if we don't go forward in the responsibility, we're going to miss the wonderful experiences of having that strength come in that's not our own and carries us through.
00:50:21
What is it then? How can we know, and how can we know what gift we may have so that we can use it?
I It was greatly helped Bob on that point by a sister knowing a few here. Her name is Miss Patridge who lived in Columbus, OH and she's been with the Lord like a few years now.
She was the most gifted.
The evangelist of children that I've ever known.
One of the most gifted evangelists I've ever been privileged to know in my life.
And she said one time she prayed to the Lord. And she said, Lord, what's my gift?
And she said the Lord didn't give her.
The answer that you could understand.
And so she asked for it again. She said, Lord, what's my gift?
And she said, each time she said it, the Lord said children.
And she said, well, Lord, I don't have any children, I.
And, uh, but the Lord put it on her heart, children. Well.
And she began to evangelize children and was amazingly gifted evangelists with children.
But the point in it, I believe, is this.
It isn't to be occupied with the gift itself and say, Lord, what's my gift?
What is better is to say, Lord, what must thou have me to do? And if we get instruction from the Lord what he wants us to do, He will give us the gift that is necessary to fulfill what He has given us to do. And I believe it's a wiser prayer.
Than to say, Lord, what's my gift is to be looking to the Lord and say, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord will have us to do something and he will empower us whatever is necessary, whatever measure of gift is necessary to do that work. And I think that's a wiser thing for us than to be just simply saying the Lord, what's my gift?
I like what uh Moses when he was sent to.
Egypt.
And he says I can't even talk.
The Lord said to him, What is that in your hand?
All right, Lord, that was what God used.
What do you have right now? Use that for as much as you may feel your inadequacy and it it is good to feel our inadequacy because then we depend on the Lord. We're looking to Him for the grace necessary to carry it at all. So the Lord help us young people to be encouraged.
Like you like Don was saying not to ask particularly what gift I have, but just to do.
What He lays on your heart, do it.
The greatest need of an evangelist.
Isn't.
The ability to preach the love for souls and and God.
And put that necessary burden, that emphasis of soul. Here's a need and the Lord may put in what your heart to see that need and feel called of the Lord. Not every need we see is where called of the Lord to do anything about but pray, which is the greatest of all things we can do but to as the Lord puts that burden, then fulfill the burden.
And that's even the greater thing than than what we tend to think about is what we call ability.
And that's, that's the lesser part really of what's needed.
Someone would like to comment on a verse that we have in Second Timothy chapter 4.
4.
Verse 5.
00:55:11
It says do the work of an evangelist and they control schools by ministry.
Helpline illustration.
Uh, brother Harry used to use and I believe he's in connection with this verse.
He said.
My wife looked after the children and provided the meals in our household.
And she, he said, when she was sick.
I did what I could. There was a need there for my children and I didn't have a particular ability. I didn't have a particular gift in providing meals or the other things that were needed in the household. But the need was there and I love my children and I did what I could. And I believe this verse is in that same sentiment that is.
Paul is speaking to Timothy, and Timothy perhaps did not have.
A particular gift in the Gospel. He wasn't specially suited to the work. We know he was a timid person and so on. He didn't have that part of a lion that many evangelists seem to have.
But Paul said, do the work. There's a need, Timothy, and there if, if our hearts are truly taken up with love for souls, even if we aren't specially suited, there is a work often that we can do in love for another soul that might meet that need, whether it's in the gospel or in in the context of the body in the assembly. And let's help.
You know, not every place has every gift.
Not every assembly has necessarily someone that's particularly gifted as as a teacher.
It's been said that the gift of the pastor is is a very rare one.
And it the the consequences among the same should seem how rare that gift really is in in in the shepherding care of the flock.
But don't look at oneself and say, well, I'm not evangelist, so I'm not going to tell this soul about the Lord Jesus. I'm not a pastor, so I'm not going to try to help my brother in need. There is a place for doing the work when, even if there isn't a specific, umm, empowerment of the Spirit that would make us do it all the time and everywhere.
There is a.
Worse than second Timothy as well in chapter one that I think is beautiful to think about in connection with.
Uh, doing what the Lord has given us to do.
Verse six he speaks of that Timothy stirred up the gift of God says, Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God. It can be dormant. Stir it up Timothy, which is in Z by the pudding on my hands for God. This verse seven God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of.
Power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
That's the spirit God has given us, and this is written in the last epistle when there was so much departure. It's still true today. Young person, older ones too. God has not given us the spirit of fear.
Do you ever grip your soul? Does mine?
That's not the Spirit that God has given us. The Spirit that God has given us is of power and of love and of a sound mind.
How long are these gifts gonna be here?
1St 13.
That's really cheerful to think about it. They're always going to be here while we're here.
Till they all come.
01:00:01
The unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, under the measure of the stature of the fullest of the Christ.
And God's not going to fail in it. The end result will be perfect.
According to His original purpose, we sometimes start something in a building, project or whatever. The end result is far less than we had hoped for it, but our hearts will be raptured with glory that the glorious end result of the work of God and the work of the Lord Jesus Himself and the work of the Spirit with the Church.
And it's the final product will be absolutely wonderful.
To God's glory and for our eternal happiness.
Just like to mention in verse 11, we have 5 gifts that are given in persons.
Apostles and prophets. According to chapter 2 and verse 20, it says we are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. So it was men that God used in the beginning of the church to lay the foundation work. So we have the epistles of the New Testament, we have the doctrine, and upon that foundation we are built.
So we do not have these in person today. We have what they have left for us in their teaching, in the epistles especially. And then we have evangelists that are those are them that go out and bring in new material and.
And then we have pastors and teachers, those that build in that new material into the church.
So it's interesting.
There are evangelists. We need to be encouraged in the gospel. I think that is significant, isn't it, that in Second Timothy 4, the last chapter that fall wrote, he says to Timothy do the work of an evangelist and brother. And I really believe there needs to be a definite exercise. Seems to me that it is a healthy thing in assembly life when there is an outreach in the gospel.
Look to the Lord what you might do to carry out the good news. Hospitals. Nursing homes.
Detention homes, prisons. There's plenty of places to be active about carrying out the gospel at the end of the year. Go out with calendars, reach the neighborhood for the Lord.
It really is a good spirit when there is an active interest in the gospel.
Lord help us in that.
The question regarding the end of UH first 11.
It says that some pastors and teachers.
Have often been brought together and.
You also have a gift to the teacher or the separate but often seems possibly.
Umm, maybe in some together.
The teacher deals with the word.
I don't think it necessarily means that they are both in one person. It could be, but not necessarily.
But I think they are connected and that both are mentioned in connection with building into the into the church these new members that are brought in to shepherd them.
01:05:02
We do have pastors, brethren. It's always mentioned in the plural, never in the singular in Scripture.
But there are those who have a heart for God's people, and perhaps it's a very quiet work.
People have the idea that a pastor is somebody that gets up front and preaches. Not necessarily. I've known a lot of people who have a real work as a pastor, but they've never preached publicly. They go after souls when they see them strained. It's a work of a pastor.
A teacher is one that perhaps is more public because he teaches the Scripture. It's very important. The church does not teach. The church is taught by those gifts that Christ gives.
N.
I think we have an example of the three gifts in Acts 11. It's just a case in point. Uh, I don't wanna spend a lot of time on it, but in, in Acts 11, you in the scattering, there was those who went out and preached the gospel and the number believed in verse 21 turn to the Lord. Then in verse 22, you have the work of the pastor, I believe.
The tidings of these things came unto the ears of the church, which was at Jerusalem, and they sent forth Barnabas. So Barnabas took up a work there that the others the previous had not carried out. And he, I believe it says he exhorted them, uh, in verse 23, purpose of heart, they would cleave unto the Lord. I I believe that follows along with the pastoral gift, but that wasn't enough to establish them well. And so he calls for Paul.
And in the following verses and he taught them. So that's just a case in point of different ones functioning and the harmony between them and doing it. I think, brethren, it's nice when we we see a need that we encourage a brother who has a gift along the line to meet that need.
We don't all have all the gifts.
Believe also they're closely connected in while distinguished and not always, as Bob said, in the same person. And that is they're connected with meeting in need of a soul.
And what you see in the example here and the purpose for which they're given in Ephesians 4 is the Lord's provision to meet the needs of the body so that it will grow. And a person who has a care for souls seeks to meet that need. And in I believe it's in part why after the gospel is given, even first, even more important than the teaching.
Is the shepherding care I think there's an order in which they're given here because that need of the shepherd to encourage the soul to cleave with purpose of heart to the Lord. Now that they're the Lords is is foremost an immediate that's what the soul needs and then it needs to grow by teaching it needs that as well but also.
The teacher needs to have a sense of the pupil in the sense that one message doesn't fit every circumstance. And when you see Paul's epistle, he always addressed his brethren according to their specific needs and to in many cases he knew them very well. Not in every case, but he knew them. And he ministered according to that sense that the Lord had given him of what they needed at that time.
And that was his focus, and that needs to be the focus of the teacher as much as it does in any other gift.
You speak over somebody's head doesn't profit them at all.
It isn't teaching isn't what you know.
And telling everybody else what you know, it is seeking to meet the need of the soul wherever that soul may be in their own personal growth. And the pastor is the one that often discerns that that soul is starting to wander. That soul is needs pasture or encouragement or something. And and to go and put one spiritually speaking arm around them and say here, brother, sister, can I help?
Don't you have that order in Acts chapter 20 when Paul, with his last words to the Ephesian elders, he spoke of speaking publicly and from house to house. There the word is given in a public way, but how nice to have that follow up from house to house. We can't go into every nuance and every detail necessary in a public way. And so it's nice to have that pastoral side that would come in and perhaps speak to the soul in an individual way so they can get a hold of the truth.
01:10:23
It might have been presented very clearly, but sometimes we don't come to things all at the same time. So the pastor would come in and that house to house side of things in a personal way and without bringing things to growth on this because ever in view in this 4th chapter, it's the edification of the Saints that's the end in view.
In the secondary sense.
Three.
Angeles pastors and teachers.
It is possible for an assistant to carry those functions out.
Not. Not publicly, not.
As well as the men.
You have a beautiful example of a of.
Pastor Timothy, don't we set it in that there was no no man like minded you cared for.
What was that cared for? Your soul, your state, Your state, that would be.
Accommodation that's gonna be received. No man like my spirit or mistake and I'm encouraged and second Timothy chapter.
Obviously all recognizes Timothy to be uh, there was a need to have the ability as you she shepherd sold to communicate the mind of God to them. Not not necessarily have.
A, umm, definite gift to as a teacher.
But to have the ability to communicate the mind of God.
To those that he was trying to.
And with that, possibly.
Be able to see I'm not I'm not trying to go against anything that is necessary because I I feel that there's a distinct difference Shepherd and a.
Master.
I think applied us. That's mentioned in Second Corinthians Chapter 7.
Verse 15 it says his inward affection is more abundant towards you.
And then in the next chapter, Chapter 8.
But thanks be to God, which put the same earnest and care into the heart of Titus for you. So that was the heart of a pastor wasn't and, uh, connection with that verse that was referred to in connection with Timothy, uh, I understand in another translation.
01:15:04
Uh, it's translated care with genuine feelings. So there was an entering ending to the circumstance of that person that he was ministering onto.
Uh, some time ago I was meditating upon.
Uh, the subject of a pastor or a shepherd.
And by way of contrast, we have Genesis. Am I my brother's keeper? Oh, that's the very contrast. Or opposite, isn't it? And then we get such individuals as Nehemiah. That, uh, is mentioned in the second chapter of that book. There was come a man to seek the welfare of the children of Israel.
Then in the book of Esther, we have more decay that had the same heart, that had the same care, the same purpose. And so we have that Timothy and Titus too, don't we? And so lovely to see that there was that identification with those that they were ministering unto.
1St 13 We've commented on it several times, but it may be to look at it a little more closely. There's four things mentioned in it.
And all four of them are.
Like the Lord is working and providing so that all four will be realized in all of us. The first one is till we all, not just some of us, not a few of us, but till we all come in and it's nice to connect back to unity. So we all come in the unity of faith. And so there is that work.
That brings us into the practical and eventually eternal oneness of unity of faith that is our portion in the Lord Jesus.
He also says, and the knowledge of the Son of God, what what a wonderful purpose of God, that we all would be brought into a true full knowledge of the Son of God.
That knowledge, that enjoyment, that results from that knowledge, to know Him is to love Him. And what more could we desire but to know Him better? And God is ministering to us so that the end result is that we have it fully, not partially or not just so so, but.
All of us will enter into the full knowledge of the Son of God and then it says unto a perfect or Mr. Garvey translates it full grown man. This world has an expression. the United States has, I think the expression of no man left and no child left behind program sort of an idea. While there's some children or there's some that just in education and so on, they get left behind.
The Lord says no everyone, I want everyone to grow fully. I don't want any stunted children. And that's the heart of the Lord Jesus for you and me. He doesn't want us to be as if we're left behind or half grown or just partially developed in our Christian life. But his, his desire and his work is so that every one of us in an end result is full grown. And then he says the 4th 1 unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
What a standard. What an incredible standard, Reverend.
You're going to be like him, I half likened.
Not sort of a little bit like him, a faint shadow of himself in a moral way. No, will never be the Lord Jesus, but.
You have his life, I have his life. That is my life himself. His life is my life and his. It's the full measure. I love Brother Clem's comment that he made multiple times in my hearing and in conferences. And he said God is so pleased with Christ that he wants heaven to be full of people.
Bread
Gospel—Doug Buchanan
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.
Tonight we're going to talk about bread.
No, last night.
Someone gave me a loaf of bread.
I never did anything to deserve that or asked for it or anything. Somebody was kind and thoughtful.
Of grace.
I don't want anybody to go on concrete.
Not just for bread for our stomach, but.
Let's say #35.
Over the state here that he died for me.
From condemnation we have made me free. He had. He that believeth on the Son and said he had.
Everlasting life #35.
Let's rise.
Give us give it up on the sun that day.
00:05:42
Nsnoise.
We are thankful for the message you have sent to this world.
We are thankful to the Lord Jesus Christ who came in person to bring down a message of love.
A mercy of forgiveness.
To those who needed it most. We're thankful for each one here who has a desire to hear Your Word. We ask Lord, as we open up the scriptures, which we believe is inspired by Your Spirit, we ask Lord that You would speak to us.
Open up our hearts. We're thankful our God and Father for the love and freedom have been shown through Him, and we ask that I speak to us now.
Tonight.
I want to thank you for having us sitting here and listening.
Well, we're going to have before our souls tonight, I trust.
This book This book came to us from God, inspired by different writers over a long period of time.
And it is God speaking to you and to me, and we want to read from its passages and get a message for you and for me.
To get to know our God.
It tells us about a savior that we were singing about.
A Savior who came down from heaven. God's beloved Son.
When he saw the desperate need of mankind. We're in.
And tonight, he sees you.
Where you're sitting.
And He knows the need of your soul. And I pray to God that that need would be met tonight. And if you do not know the Lord Jesus as your own personal Savior.
You would come to have a full assurance.
That he died for you.
I stand up here because I am fully persuaded of these things.
I have based my life on what is in this book.
It's not the opinions of men.
We have a creator God and he speaks to us and He has spoken to us in many ways.
But this is the best way. This is the complete fullness.
Of God's word to us.
We go to school.
And we hear opinions, thoughts of men, many of them good, many of them.
Have no basis.
And they change from year to year.
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This book never changes.
Last week.
I was down in Florida.
I went down the beat, go for a walk on the beach.
And I met a man.
We went for a walk together on the beach.
This man.
Was a.
Ex military man.
It had a hard life.
But in time, he had a family.
God gave him a.
Family.
As the years went by, trials came in.
And that day, this man.
Soul was burdened for his family.
Things had come in to tear up and ruin a family.
And he tried with all his power to help his family, and he didn't know what to do.
You know.
Seeing is an awful tyrant and it destroys people, it drags them down.
Some of you may be feeling this now.
Even in spite of being in a Christian home, you may feel these things.
Maybe some of you young people are at a hard spot.
Place a decision.
I've walked a few years, been through a few small trials.
This book has the answers.
We were walking down the beach.
We were noticing all the turtleneck.
It's the it's the season for the sea turtles to come in and lay their eggs.
All down that coastline, about every 10/15/20 feet, you can see a excavation.
Where a sea turtle has come in dug a huge hole.
Deposited its eggs in that hole.
Covered this and back over the eggs up to 100 of them.
All during the night.
And then go back out to C for another year.
We were walking along the beach and we noticed these turtle nests and in some of them you could see where the turtles had hatched.
And you could see the little shells, soft shells about the size of a golf ball, where the turtles had hatched out.
A creator God.
Made that turtle.
That way.
But he made you and I different.
In a different way.
As we were walking along the beach.
Some of these problems of life.
Entered into our conversation and we stopped.
The waves were coming up on lapping our feet.
I looked down on the beach there and I thought I saw a little baby turtle. Oh, it looked like it was dead.
This friend that I had met reached over and picked it up.
And they were still alive.
Poor little thing.
About half dead.
He looked at me. I looked at him.
And he started walking out in the water.
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He carried that turtle over the Breakers as they were rolling into small ones, but too big for a little turtle.
He got his legs all wet, he walked out in the water and he carefully put that turtle.
Out in the water where he needed to go to find food.
Walk back up to the beach.
Didn't say a word to me.
I didn't say a word for a little while either. We just thought.
Hello Turtle.
It had no mother that cared for it.
His mother had come up two months approximately previous, laid the eggs and gone back, gone out, back out in the ocean. And every one of those little turtles was left on its own. From that day on, the day they hatched, they're all on their own.
Now their children and young people.
That's not true of you and me.
We were a lot more dependent.
And that little turtle was.
There's not a single one of us that ever made it in life.
If we'd have been left up to our own the day we were born.
Of all God's creation.
Little human beings that are born.
Are probably the most helpless and dependent of all God's creatures.
Why did God make us that way to start out?
As we grow up, we don't like to think of ourselves as having that kind of a weak.
Beginning.
Place of dependence.
Most of us had a mother or someone who cared for us.
Brought us up.
You know God is interested in you and me in a special way.
Every young family that has had a child has learned the joy of parenthood and of taking a precious little infant.
And caring for it.
And it's.
Huge need.
God made us that way.
Why did God make you that way and me that way?
I beg leave.
Because he wanted to develop a relationship with us.
He wanted us to be dependent on him and he wanted to meet that need.
Whether it's food or clothing or fellowship or love or correction or whatever.
It's a wonderful thing. I wouldn't trade places with any creature.
From being a human.
God made me.
But yet.
How sad it is as we look out on the world and see independence and no recognition of God.
It's a joy to Washington to sit down in a restaurant.
And look out and see somebody bowing their heads and thanking their God for the food.
Boys and girls learn to do that.
God made you.
For that reason, he wanted to hear your voice.
He wanted you to be dependent on Him, and He has the resources. He has the provision for us. Let's look in the Word of God and see a little bit of it. Open your Bible to the first chapter of Genesis.
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Genesis chapter one.
Verse 27.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created him, male and female created he them. And God blessed them. And God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed.
Which is upon the face of all the earth and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed to you. It shall be for me.
Very simply stated, here we have God making the world and then putting as the head of the creation, making man in his own image and likeness, and setting him up as the head over it, to rule it, to control it, to order it, and to enjoy it and to be God's representative before all the creation as His image.
Now we're living. Approximately 6000 years later, it's going on.
And we see a lot of things, they're out of order.
When we were walking down the beach.
Concerned about the little sea turtles? They're called loggerheads.
We discussed some of the point, those things.
Do you know?
That.
Those sea turtles, the loggerhead and the leatherback and some of the others.
They come in to the same place where they were born to lay their eggs many many years later and apparently navigate by the stars or the moon to find the same spot.
Where they were born or where they were hatched?
God put that instinct in those little animals.
They needed it. They didn't have, they don't have a mother that cared for them like some of the other creatures and like we.
Wonderful.
Now God has made us a different way.
He made us in his own image and likeness.
Because he wanted to have a relationship with us.
And how many men live their lives today as if God did not exist?
How must our Creator God mourn as he looks down on this world and he sees people going out and doing their own thing and living and even denying the existence?
Of a creator God.
You children and young people will be taught some of these things about evolution and so on.
Possibly in school.
How to say?
How deprived our creator God is being made by his creatures. The one of the highest ones that he made are the ones that have deviated the farthest.
Cubans do far do far worse things than any turtle ever did.
How about you?
What are you gonna do with your life?
Your creator God wants a relationship with you.
00:25:02
Have you formed a relationship with Him? Have you come to the Lord Jesus Christ and own Him as your Lord and Savior?
Have you thanked him for what he's done?
Here we have in Genesis 1.
The wonderful place that God made for man, and I put him in and he gave it God, man everything. And yet people today blame God for all their problems.
Whose fault is it?
That we're in the situation we are now.
Why are there wars out there?
Why is it that man can't govern himself?
Turn their back on God.
They departed from the order God set them up in.
Chapter 3 of Genesis.
We'll read about the cause.
Genesis 3, verse 17 And unto Adam God he said, Because thou has hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it. Cursed is the ground for thy sake. In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also, and thistles shall it bring forth to thee. And thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.
Thou thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken, For dost thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
We said we were gonna talk about bread tonight.
Here we have the first mention of bread in the Bible.
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat breath.
Chapter one, no sweat.
All abundance. What had come in in between?
Believe the lie of Satan more than the provision of God.
That's really what sin is.
It's.
Unbelief of God.
Turning from him to some other source.
For sustenance, God had provided it all.
And he still does.
Yep, let's turn over to Isaiah.
The book of Isaiah, the middle of our Bible.
Chapter One.
Verse 2.
Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath spoken. I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and that his master's crib, but Israel does not know My people does not consider.
Verse 718.
Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be.
As white as snow.
Though they be red like Crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land. But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken in.
After sin came in.
Sweat, sorrow, thorns and thistles. And I'm a farmer and I'm still dealing with them.
00:30:06
And every one of us is dealing with the consequences of sin.
And the Lord sends a message.
Come now, let us reason together.
He never told a turtle to do that.
Nor is someone of the other animals.
But he calls you and me to this.
Reason.
He put a head on our shoulders. He gave us the capacity to think and to reason.
And we ought not to use it to reason against the man that gave it to us, the creator God who gave it to us.
Here he's speaking to Israel.
We're seeking to do that tonight in the gospel meeting.
We need breath.
We need food to sustain us.
And were under the.
Judgment of sin and death.
How are we gonna get free?
Where does life come from?
Now let's turn over to the New Testament.
John's Gospel, chapter 6.
Verse 33.
For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth his life unto the world.
Then said they unto him, Lord Evermore, give us.
This breath Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger. He that believeth on me shall never thirst.
Many, many years have gone by now since Isaiah wrote and since the book of MO uh, big book of Genesis was written and we have now God sending his Son to give life.
You see the history of man and the bread and the food of this world.
No one was able to recover what had been lost from the very first sin.
And death, sin and death have been destroying men ever since. And God waited in patience to see if someone could liberate and bring in obedience.
And life through obedience.
And no one obtained it.
No one found the fountain of life. No one found the bread that gave eternal life.
They sought it in the wrong way.
Israel sought it by the law. The other nations had given up God altogether. They were even farther away and ruined. They didn't even acknowledge the true God. They were in idolatry and other things.
When the fullness of time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman.
Jesus Christ came into this world.
To give life.
To give us the bread of life.
To live.
To overcome sin and death.
And give us everlasting life.
Oh dear.
Once to 9.
00:35:01
The Lord Jesus invites you.
To take him.
As your Lord and Savior.
To believe on him.
He brings life, not just a temporary renewal of the atom life that all his creatures receive from his hands.
There in the Garden of Eden, not just a prolongation of life here.
In the midst of a world where sin is so rampant and all its consequences.
But He came to deliver us from the ******* of sin and death.
And the slavery to them.
Through the.
Work of the enemy of our souls, Satan.
Who deceived Eve in the very beginning and tempted her to depart from the path of obedience.
And to believe a lie rather than the word of God.
Let's go back.
And notice a little bit earlier in chapter 6 of John.
The Lord Jesus in this chapter had multiplied bread. It's interesting to consider the subject of bread in the New Testament all for the Gospels many, many times mention bread.
Let's go back to Matthew's Gospel and notice the first mention of bread.
In chapter 3.
Or four Chapter 4.
Matthew 4 verse one.
Then was Jesus LED of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, he was afterward a hungered, And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.
But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
These 4 verses.
Peak volumes concerning the Lord Jesus.
It was necessary that this perfect man be tested to prove who he was.
And to be able to enter into the stronghold and bring life and blessing in the midst of a world of cursing and sin.
And so.
This blessed man, the Lord Jesus.
In order to prove the point, subjected himself 40 days without bread food.
A perfect time of testing. This was gonna be the test.
And it was.
Same test that Adam and Eve had failed in.
But this man.
The Son of God.
Proved.
Who he was.
And that he would not be drugged down in disobedience.
As a man to his God.
And so when the 40 day 40 days without food were there.
I expect he was pretty hungry. Very few people have fasted that long. Perfect test and so.
00:40:01
The tempter comes.
If thou be the Son of God.
Command the stones be made bread.
The right answer was to go back.
To what God had said.
We're always right in going back to what God says.
We're secure there.
It is written obedience.
Is not that part of what growing up as a human being is all about?
Learning how to obey.
If we don't, we could not make it through life at that young age. But somehow or other, as we grow up, we think we're independent and we can do it on our own.
That is foolishness.
Now the Lord Jesus, he could have, He was the Son of God. He could have commanded the stones. It wasn't a question of that. The question was obedience to God.
And he was obedient.
Man shall not live by bread alone. Just because there's bread there or you need bread doesn't mean you take it.
Did God give it to you?
Or did it come from another source?
That's basically what sin is.
Taking it from the wrong source is sin.
And that's what we do so often.
Man shall not live by bread alone.
God who created that man and set up the world the way it is.
Purposefully made us the way he did so we could be in relationship interdependence upon him and prove his thank his provision and give him thanks for it afterwards.
Have you thank God for what he's given you?
And start out with bread.
And so we learn.
Of a man now who is overcoming the power of Satan.
The Lord Jesus Christ was coming down into this world to bring deliverance for those who were enslaved in sin.
And we present him to you now as the one who can give you deliverance and me deliverance.
And provide food.
And bread, and not just material bread, but bread for our souls.
Now I'd like to turn over.
The Luke's Gospel Chapter 15 Notice another case about bread.
It would have been nice to notice in all four gospels, but we're going to just, uh, skip on to Luke's Gospel Chapter 15.
Henry, that little portion of a well known story.
About the prodigal son.
Luke 15.
And.
Verse 11.
And he said, A certain man had two sons, and the younger of them said unto his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto him them his living.
Not many days after, the younger son gathered altogether and took his journey into our country, and there wasted his substance with righteous living. And when he had spent all, there rose a mighty famine in the land, and he began to be in want.
And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into the fields to feed swine.
And he would vain have filled his belly with the husk that the swine did eat, and no man gave unto him.
00:45:04
And when he came to himself, he said.
How many hired servants of my father's have bred enough and to spare?
And I perish with hunger.
I will rise and go to my Father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy Son. Make me as one of thy hired servants, or we're just going to stop there. I know you know this story.
Now we find a different use on the lack of bread.
We see a typical example of a young man who has come of age in the energy.
Of his.
Youth.
And he wants to go out.
And enjoy life.
With what he thought God owed him or what he thought his Father owed him.
You know, that happens to us, especially seems like the guys.
We're getting a certain age.
We feel we can handle life. We're ready to meet life.
There's a lot to enjoy out there, and Satan has dressed up his world more than when this man lived in it, but it's the same principle.
He forgot how dependent he was.
His father gave him.
A good portion and he went out and enjoyed it for a while till it ran out.
And that'll happen every time without exception.
You go out in the world, the things that God has created, even even without the without indulging in the wrong de degraded, sinful things, but even the good things. If you try to satisfy your life with those, you'll come to a point where you're hungry.
If not literally, your soul.
We'll be tired and famished.
You know God in his wisdom.
Let these things happen to his chosen one sometimes.
Back to the walk on the beach as we were walking along.
Some of the hardships of life coming out.
Trying to comfort each other and give hope and encouragement.
Two of us guys walking along the beach there.
Could share some of the things the way God?
Passes us through trial affliction.
Scarcity of this for that.
And there's two ways to face it.
One is to accept it as from God and seek to learn by it.
And the other way is to go it on your own without God.
Which way you're gonna do it, young people?
Oh, I believe as I look back on my life.
I wasn't any better than this son.
I can see.
Wonderful mercy and grace of God breaking down my soul, humbling me and bringing me where I would bow before Him.
And repentance.
And say yes, Lord.
What were you?
What do you want with my life?
What's it gonna take young person to bring you to surrender?
To God's way, a blessing in your life.
Some nuts are harder than others to crack.
00:50:04
The good thing is that this sun.
Came to himself.
And it was scarcity of bread that brought him to his knees.
That's happened many times.
This, this boy wasn't the only boy that went through that.
What's it gonna take for you? Are you gonna go have to have to go down along how far down that road are you gonna have to go in waywardness and departure from God?
Before you turn around.
And recognize.
God's plan is best for your life.
Well, this is this. This story has a wonderful ending.
They go into the Father's house and their feasting.
This is a picture of the delight of God the Father.
And having one of his repentant children, wayward and lost, come back to him.
And the way is open.
Through Jesus Christ.
To do that very thing today.
The Lord Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father, but by me. And moreover, He has proven it to us by going up there to the cross and taking that punishment that the Sinner deserved.
So he could bring us into the banqueting house where there's bread a plenty.
The longer you go down that path.
The more you learn about what it costs God to give us bread.
That is the everlasting bread, the bread of life.
That the Lord Jesus spoke about in the 6th chapter of John. We're going to turn to those verses before we close.
The more we learn about what it cost him.
The more it opens up to our hearts.
Appreciation for what God our Father has called us to as dependent creatures that start out so feeble and weak in our childhood and infancy, and are brought along to enjoy such rich wonders of His thoughts towards us that we can sit down and enjoy together with Him.
Won't you give God the pleasure of having your fellowship? Won't you turn your life over to Him?
Believing on the Lord Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and start walking down the path of obedience and faith in Him and enjoy the bread of life.
So going on to the 6th chapter of John again in closing here.
Just another detail or two here in John 6.
Verse.
50.
The Lord Jesus here, in anticipation of his going up to the cross and giving his life, he speaks about it, and he says, This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever. And the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.
The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my life is meat, and my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me, and I in Him. As the living Father has sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live.
00:55:14
By me this is that bread which came down from heaven.
Not as your Father did eat men and are dead. He that eateth this bread shall live forever. This is a spiritual bread that gives us everlasting life for our souls and the Lord Jesus in laying down his life on the cross.
Shedding His precious blood to wash our sins away, then figuratively speaking, He is the one to take and appropriate as your Lord and Savior.
And you do it by believing on Him in your soul, in your chair where you're sitting, or wherever He calls you. But don't wait until too late, because there's coming a day when, as our brother said last night, there will be a day of hunger, of not hearing the word of the Lord anymore.
Let's close with a him.
Number one.
Phones persuade.
How do we leave?
Almost.
Way.
To greasy.
And now?
Don't go to the same.
We thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ who came from flesh and blood to give his life in order that we might be saved, in order that we might have life through faith in him. We thank thee for all that you went through in order to bring it to us. To us. We thank you for extending the day of life and grace fell tonight and we think of.
Ephesians 4
Reading
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.
This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye have forced not walk, not as other Gentiles walked in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their heart.
Who being past feeling, have given themselves over until lasciviousness to work all uncleanness with greediness. But ye have not so learned Christ, If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by Him, and the truth is in Jesus.
That you put off concerning the former conversation the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lust, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man, which after God has created in righteousness and true holiness.
Therefore, putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Being angry and then mad. Let not sun go down upon your wrath either. Give place to the devil.
Let him that soul steal no more, but rather let him labor working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying.
That it may minister grace unto the hearers, and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath, and anger and clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you with all analysis.
And be a kind one to another, kinder hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you.
Just like to make an introductory comment.
Or, uh, not so much what's in the chapter, but just the spirit of things. And that is very often. And when we read the word of God, our tendency of our thoughts is to, as it were, bring God into our lives where we are. And that's right. And that's necessary for us. And because we're on earth and we're in the trials of life on earth, we tend to bring God down to us.
In our thoughts and in our hearts to meet us in whatever need we see at the moment. But I'd like to suggest, brethren, there's another way of looking at it and perhaps we can look at it this way this morning for ourselves. And that is the Lord Jesus is not here on earth. He is in heaven and it's a profitable for the soil.
When in spirit, as it were, we turn it around and we say.
With let us be together with the Lord where He is.
In the heavens, and this is a book of heavenly things, and as it were, we can sit down with the Lord Jesus this morning in spirit where He is, and can look together at the matter of need as He would minister to us. And then when we leave this place, yes, we have to, as it were, by God's direction, if I can put it this way, we have to come back down to earth.
And continue on with the light of heaven in our souls, with the enjoyment of heavenly things in our spirit, and go through things with Him or for Him here on earth.
And rather than simply be focused on our, you might say, our own needs, see that we are, we have put off the old, we have put on the new. The Lord gives us instructions for and then he sends us forth, if you will. And that's really the way Scripture does look at it in this context. And that is the Lord Jesus came from heaven as a heavenly man and he came down to earth and he lived here on earth.
His heavenly life.
To serve God. And when the work was finished, He returned home. Now He has called us in union with Himself to be with Him there. And He would sit down with us, and if you will give us instructions, and then He would send us forth to be here on His behalf. But a heavenly people, with heavenly objects and enjoyment of His presence and Himself where He is now.
00:05:13
And we would go forth and serve Him here on earth when we leave this place, but also in our spirit, returning to enjoy Him where He is. That's Canaan.
Does that describe the two groups of Gentiles which are here? He talks about the occasions.
Change and it says other Gentiles and then he talks about the understanding darkened. That's those that live on earth, but you go back to the first chapter and you have the eyes of your understanding enlightened to the heavenly situation. The church is with Christ in heaven in the purpose of God.
In that first check.
In the exhortation, it's as if the Lord, as we sit with Him in His presence where He is.
Then give us instructions so that when we go among men, when we leave, as it were, that time together and we go among men, he's saying don't be like them.
Don't you put off those things?
In Colossians the thought is put them off, but here he speaks of it as something that has been done and he's saying don't pick him up again.
That old man has already been put off in this in Ephesians, and so he says, don't pick it up again, but don't pick up with the things of the old man, the things that the Gentiles walk in and that you're going to be exposed to.
When you're there as light and love for me in that world, don't be drawn back into it.
I just wanted to to back up a couple of verses and, uh.
Go over that again before we go on verse 15. But speaking the truth in love, they grow up unto Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ. From whom? From Christ the whole body thickly joined together.
And compacted by that which every joint supplier you look at your body. Every joint has a function and to define something for the health of the body.
So it is for the body of Christ. Remove the whole body, thickly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplier. So if you're a member of the body of Christ, you are a joint.
And you are to function for the good and blessing of the entire body.
According to the effectual working in the measure of every part, notice the emphasis in this verse. Every joy in every part make it increase of the body. That's what builds up the body into a healthy body every every.
Member is performing its function as directed by the Spirit of God. They can increase of the body.
Unto the edifying of itself in love then we get to the first word we started, but I just I was just looking at that 16th verse how it it it does away with anyone who is a member of the body of Christ and saying I don't have anything to do everyone has something to do for the good and blessing of the entire body. Every joint supplying it and a wonderful to see the picture that.
Envy, one of us, has something that we can contribute for the good and blessing of all.
I don't want to belabor your point where they're gone, but I thought of the three captains in their 50s that went up to Elijah and the 1St 2GO up and they tell him to come down, but the third captain, he goes up with his fifty and what does he say? Oh, let our lives be precious in my sight. And I thought of it too, as no doubt they were the ones that were part of the remnant of Israel.
And they, they knew the danger that they were in and the danger of the way. And, and just to make that flea, let our lives be precious in my sight. And to think of the confirmation that Elijah could give them that their life was precious. And now you can go safely on and counting upon the guidance and wisdom for the way.
00:10:19
And start your advance.
S.
1718 we have.
A reflection back on what these Gentiles, these other Gentiles of how they want stayed there for and testify in the Lord that she henceforth not as other Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God for the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their heart and being past feeling have given themselves over on the recipient's desk to work all.
On the wholeness with greediness, that's what we used to be.
Unfolds what we once were as Gentiles and now he goes on to what we are in Christ.
Man never rises above himself. He can never get beyond his own limitations of his own mind and his own imagination.
And the only way we know God is when he reveals himself to us and God has chosen, blessed be God, to make himself known to us in the person of the Lord Jesus. But we're going to leave this place and enter back into the circumstances of the world where man's thoughts don't go beyond himself in his own imagination. He's his mind is darkened. He didn't want the knowledge of the true God. He willfully.
Turned his back upon it to live without God in the world and the consequences they're seeing here and he's telling us the apostle Paul saying don't do that.
Don't walk that way. Don't walk in the imagination of your own mind. God has made himself known to us perfect, perfectly in the person of the Lord Jesus.
And just one other comment about it. It says who Speaking of by reason of the hardness.
Umm of their heart, or the blindness of their heart. Mr. Darby translates his hardness being verse 19 past feeling.
To me this is very significant in this way.
Man calls the things that are described there his way is law.
The fornication and such things that man goes after, the uncleanness, the unsatisfied or unbridled lust of man that he goes after, those are virtues.
To him those are things that satisfy the flesh in man. God looks at it and he says he is so corrupted that that is hardness that is opposite the true love of God.
Man's so-called love is really lost. It's a desire to have something for self regardless of what other people think or feel. It's for me it's and it's God says that's harness.
That is hard.
God's love is His sovereign goodness toward others, and He would have us always to act in love, which is always considers its object.
As what is good for the object And how can the need of the object a person, an animal, a turtle, How can that need be met?
And yet.
The thoughts of man are totally completely twisted and false if he gives up the true knowledge of God revealed in Christ.
I'd like to say to young people especially, don't make close friendships with the world, with the people of the world which live in these wicked ways. Don't make you. You have to brush around shoulders with them in school and so on, but don't make them your close friends. You have not so learned Christ. You don't. You don't find a pattern for living from any of them.
00:15:22
Because they're not safe, they're not members of the body of Christ. So that's so important that especially the young and I just, I just read it. I just heard of a man of a nursing nurse.
She got married six months ago. Now she's divorced. She, she didn't. The man she married, she didn't even get to know him. She didn't. She hardly knew him, and he hardly knew her.
And that doesn't come out until it's too late. Sometimes you, you, you join yourselves to a, to a something that's commits you for the rest of your life. You should better be sure that you know that person and that they are Christians and that they're walking and so as, as Christ and walking with Christ as earth.
Sometimes fall under the banner that we want to be a help, but I think of what Paul said to the Corinthians Saints. He said he are epistles known.
And read of all men. You know, that's kind of an alarming statement to my soul, to think that how well we are known in the community in which we live. And there's a certain communication among the neighbors, You know, they're watching and sizing things up as to what Christianity is all about. But to be known and read daily. Recently there was a neighbor.
That, I would say got saved by observing a manner of life. And that kind of a salvation is a good salvation, isn't it? Saved by a manner of life. So if we're young or we're older or whatever age we are, if we really want to be a help, let us just walk quietly in the truth. You don't have to say a lot and.
Be more of a help than trying to get into close quarters with some of these questionable situations that go on.
Stay away from it, don't be smudged by what's going on.
Let's go to first John 5. Connect up with this word, understand?
The Gentiles evolved with the world and they had strong understanding.
In the first chapter, we have already seen that those who are up there have the eyes of their understanding that they may know the highest truth in the world. The greatest thing that God has ever done is raising somebody from the dead. That's the greatest work that's ever been done anyplace. And so how do you get the knowledge of that in Matthew 5? I mean in Matthew.
10.
Matthew 15 There are three words.
In the 10th verse.
Matthew 15.
He called the motor.
3 words. They're for us.
Here and understand, listen to what God has to say about it as the truth is in Jesus. He's our standard. You've got to learn Christ. Well, Christ is our standard. Jesus is our standard. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. You're going to find he's a model in both of us.
Hear and understand, listen to this truth that's coming again out of invasion for the Saints of God.
Oh, it's so precious. You think of that, but then you get the reverse of it, the understanding direction, alienated from the life of God when you get into the life of God by taking Jesus.
If you don't have that, you can't get into that understanding. Well, I don't guess I finished reading that person first job, which is so wonderful for us.
00:20:01
In First John 5.
The 20th verse.
We know that the Son of God is coming. He's the Son of God. He's the Son of man. He's Jesus. We know he is come.
And the next What's the next step?
And that he has given us an understanding.
That understanding is given to the states is in the first chapter of Ephesians. It's heaven. That's a situation. Doug Don has called us up to take the standard up there.
What's what's it given to us for? He has given us an understanding that we may know Him that is true. Who is true?
As the truth is in Jesus.
Stitching our Chapel.
The expression, the truth.
As it is in Jesus.
The Lord Jesus was the perfect living expression of truth.
He could say, I am altogether that which I say unto you, There was no difference between what he said and what he was in his life. I might say to you, truth. God says, don't lie. That's a statement of truth. God says, don't lie.
But do I live? That is my life, the living expression of not mine, the Lord Jesus. Life in that way was perfectly transparent. He was altogether that what she said.
That it's the truth as it is in Jesus.
And further than that, every action of the Lord Jesus was directed.
By the power of the Spirit of God, the Spirit of truth. And so that's the truth as it is in Jesus, the living expression of the truth by word and word as perfectly directed by the Holy Spirit and he. We are encouraged, if you will, we're really exhorted to know the truth and to live the truth from that source.
So this verse is not just a doctrine for us to understand that the truth is in Jesus and and know it, but in our lives in the measure that we understand the truth in Jesus, our lives show us and it's practically displayed.
Because He is our life.
Christ, who is our life. We had a life in Adam and it manifested itself as the nation's walk, as we've seen. But we have the life of Christ and in we have the Holy Spirit, and so that life is to be displayed in our everyday.
Experiences.
To be lived like we really have.
I remember very well.
I got stabbed when I was a freshman in college through my optometrist and.
And I was playing baseball at the time, engineering student, and I went out for baseball. I don't know how I did it, but umm, at any rate, uh, after I got saved, they noticed a change. They tried to get me to smoke. Oh, they tried so hard and they tried to get me to drink liquor and I would do it. And so most of the audience here was raised.
In Christian teachers raised in a Christian family, I was not. Makes it quite a difference.
But they, they want to, they see you are umm, holy, holy soul of that. Those are the terms that they'll shoot at us. Show them that, as it says here, umm.
Diversity speaks about being holy.
00:25:02
There's many, many of them are there.
So we earned him and had been taught by him that the truth is in Jesus. Once you come to know him, you you have an example and you have a power in the Spirit of God who involves you. Now you have the word of God that you read every day. I hope so. And that gives you power to say no.
That those that are in the world, they think that that's, that's a wonderful life. It's not. It's not. There's nothing to it.
There's there's nothing of any value to it.
Some of us know our brother Lance Fervor in Bermuda and he said there are the days when he was deep in the world and in the rock band and, and just going on quite a day that performance for quite some time to come. And he got saved one night and he was wondering how he was going to tell his boss that he couldn't go on with this kind of lifestyle and.
So he decided he was going to wait for three or four days and look for the opportunity to tell his boss.
And so he thought he D waited long enough and so he went up to the boss and he told him I can't go on this circuit any longer. He said I got saved and my life has changed. The boss looked at him and he said I know when you got saved, your plane went Askew and he didn't know it. So the world, you know, we can't really pretend before the world. It just doesn't work. They've got our number because even our language, the way we speak.
Is a very quick indicative that this is not our bunch of people here and.
Verse 22 is something that.
As it's presented to us here in Ephesians, it's something that has been done.
In Colossians, In Colossians it's looked at as something that you do and be done with it once you've done it. But here is Mr. Darby translates it, having put off.
According to the former conversation, that is, you put off that old person that you were, and he's saying having done so, that old person corrupted itself according to its loss, and that was the nature of the life he lived, a life that was constantly being corrupted by the loss that were controlling it.
He then in verse 23 speaks, I believe, as something that it should be a current ongoing.
Activity in our lives. The constant renewing of the mind.
We are.
Always, Every day I think of our lives bombarded with things that will draw our minds back into the former manner of life.
So much of what can be heard on radio, seen on television, read in the newspaper, in the magazines, on the Internet.
Has the character of drawing the thoughts of the mind into the former manner of life.
And the consequence when mind goes there, then the heart tends to follow and we are drawn back into those things. And so he says, the renewing of the spirit of your mind, that's a constant ongoing need for us to.
Have our thoughts, our hearts, engaged in what the Word of God presents to us?
And fortified us as we start the day to guard us as we go through it, from being drawn away by the things we're exposed to even in the necessities of work and so on. Where our fellow workers, our whole attitude of the company itself is, is, according to the former conversation of our own in the 24th verse. Again, it's something that has been done.
00:30:10
Uh is looked at here as having been done. We have put on the Newman and then he tells us what that Newman is. It's created in uh, as it says, in righteousness and true holiness.
That's the new man, the man that is characterized by righteousness and true holiness and the exhortations which then follow, almost all of them are based on that truth.
Of what we are. We are those who have been created as new creatures in Christ Jesus to live lives of truthfulness and holiness. And the exhortations follow our exhortations of practically carrying out that righteousness and true holiness.
Comment down on the verse 22. It speaks of the old man.
Is that the same as the flesh?
Not exactly, but they're connected.
Flash is that sinful nature within me which knows nothing but lust and itself will, and it controls my life. That's the flesh that is within me. The old man is the position I held before God in the flesh as a creature of the flesh. And so it it includes the flesh, but it's the whole position of what I was before God.
And when to go back to?
To reinforce the thought, if you will.
When I enter into.
My death with Christ crossing the Jordan. When I enter into my death with Christ, then I change my position from the old man on the one side of the Jordan, and I cross the river, and I come up on the other side.
With him on the other side. And that's where the new man is introduced.
And it's a change of position and it is a change of enjoyment of a life with God that comes with the life that is given to me. And so it's there, is connected with it. And when it speaks to the old and the new man, the sense of putting it off and putting it on, that is with a new life in Christ, God gives by the power of the Spirit.
The putting aside or mortifying, as it says in Colossians, putting it out from active activity in my life, that former manner of life, the old man.
So when it comes up in our lives, we say that's what has been put off. I have no longer anything to do with that. And I think it's good to distinguish that because the flesh is always in us. But positionally we are in a place where we have put off. It's been done. And I enjoy the picture we have in the Old Testament when they cross the Jordan.
The 12 men from the 12 tribes took a stone out of the Jordan to the other side.
And those stones are seen to this day. But Joshua is a picture of the Lord. Jesus took 12 Stones and put them in Jordan, and then the Jordan flood again over them and they were not seen. That's the old man that's been put off. It's no longer to be seen any longer. What's seen is that which is on the other side, Jordan.
On the Canaan side, that's the new man that we are told that. We are told that having we have been put, we have put on that Newman.
These natural purposes, our energy that has split off in the old manner, There's just the work that God has done, none of that in Christ.
It's an exhortation to do something.
00:35:00
So it's it is.
In, in the sense that it's given, let's turn to Colossians here, it's looked at as having been done, but in Colossians it's it's the doing of it.
Umm in chapter.
Umm. I'm gonna refer, uh, to Mr. Garvey's translation because of the very nice parallelism that's shown there in chapter 2 of Colossians in verse 20.
It says new translation if ye have died with Christ.
Now chapter 3 says in verse one if ye then.
Be risen with Christ.
And then in verse five in the new translation, it says put to death. Therefore your members which are on earth and verse 12 Says put on. So you first have if you be dead with Christ, you are I am dead with Christ. Whether we enjoy it, whether we enter into the the the truth of it and walk in it.
The fact is we are dead with Christ and so he says to if you be dead with Christ, well you are. He presents it as a if you are, then this is what should result from it. And then the chapter 3 verse one says if you be risen with Christ, well you are.
We are risen with Christ. It's a fact.
But in the having died with Christ, and having risen with Christ, then not by the power of the old will.
It'll never do it. Man cannot do these things in the power of the flesh and the power of the will of man.
But if you be dead with Christ, if you be risen with Christ, then you have what you have in chapter 3 verse three in Colossians, if ye are for ye are dead, he states that now is a fact. And then he says your life, you have life in Christ and having life in Christ by the power of the Spirit of God.
The flesh is to be.
What says here? Mortified. That is the it's not. It's the practical judgment of the flesh as having no place, as having been judged by God.
And we're not to live according to it anymore. So here as an exhortation, yes, it is the new man, the life of the new man by the power of the Spirit of God.
Judging that which belongs to the flesh is Gilgal. But I think it's good to realize the work has been done, hasn't it? And we are to put that into practical effect because of the work that has been done. Looking back at Colossians 2, you mentioned Don verse 20, We've died with Christ. Go back to verse 12.
It says we are buried with him in baptism.
In which ye have been also raised with him through the faith of the working of God, who raised him from the dead, from among the dead. So it's something that has been done, but we are to put that into practical effect in our lives, and that's where the exhortations come in.
We could never do it by our will, we could never do it by the force of will. But what it is, is.
We have been given a life which is perfect.
The life of Christ, it doesn't, it doesn't want anything. Every one of us who in this room want to please the Lord Jesus Christ, that's an expression of our life. We didn't have to make ourselves say I want to please the Lord Jesus. The life we have, that's how it is. That's its nature. And God has further given us power by the Spirit of God.
And we are to live in the position and in the condition in which God has placed us in this new life. The problem is that there's still the flesh in US, and it's always ready to.
00:40:11
Have its way, it doesn't change and that's why there's conflict in us is because the flesh lusts us against the spirit.
But we're never given.
Any place in scripture to say that well, it's OK to accept that as a fact and therefore live that way and say well as an excuse? Umm, I couldn't help it.
Before God, who it's his power that it's done, but the exhortation as to the mortifying or putting to death side of it is in a practical boxes in a practical carrying of it out is looked at as an expectation founded on the provisions that we can do it in the Romans chapter 6.
And verse 6.
We read, knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him.
That the body of sin might be destroyed, That henceforth we should not serve sin, for he that is dead is freed from sin.
If you be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.
It's after we get the stated fact in verse six that we get in verse 11. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin.
But alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The old man as far as God is concerned.
This is accomplished at the cross. It's crucified.
He.
The second chapter Colossians have been referred to Chapter 3 verse nine says lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off.
And accomplished things, the old man with his deeds.
You know, it's not really exactly the same as the old nature, is it? Which we have with us until life here on Earth ends, whether by the rapture or whether.
By death, but.
This is one of God's delivering facts.
The the When you think of laying a loved one in the grave.
Umm, the finality of it.
Doesn't grip us at that moment.
But over the months and years.
The finality can be haunting.
Of the power of the grave.
But it's it's a blessed thing when you think of its power over the old man.
Over what we had been.
Think of that being.
Crucified with Christ.
God fully weighed how awful of things it was.
And he is also more.
Well, he had given us to be more of a conqueror in the one that's risen out from among the dead.
In the power of new life.
What a deliverance we have, but laying hold of it, reckoning it for what it is.
That's where we need the Spirit's help. You know, we look at people that are under the ******* of.
Addiction of one form or another. Yet these very truths are the delivery power, aren't they?
God's pulling measured.
Lead.
Corruption.
Everything else thanks to our old man, and he's put it right where it belongs.
And given us that which is new in Christ has risen out from among the dead.
00:45:03
What a what a deliverance that we really have. Reckoning simply means think that way. And that's what we have in our chapter here in verse 23. Be renewed in the spirit of your minds. We need to constantly be renewed that way.
We live in a world that appeals to the old man and his ways. We need to have a renewal of the mind, brethren, it really is important.
How we think? Do we think in line with Scripture, or do we think in the way that this world trains us to think? It's important. Scripture says a lot about how we think. We need to be careful as we pass through this world to have our minds continually renewed by the Word of God.
I have a question, umm, I'm sorry, I didn't ask it earlier. Going back to verse 19 where it says who being past feeling have given themselves over unto unto lasciviousness to work all in cleanness with greediness. And my question is tied with Romans one where, excuse me, Romans one it it says, uh, in verse 24, wherefore God also gave them up.
To uncleanness and a again in verse.
26 For this 'cause God gave them up unto vile affections.
My question is kind of an unbeliever through through pursuing a course of.
Absolute, uh, lasciviousness, wickedness, that at some point God give them, uh, a hardened heart to where then they, they're no longer able to even have any, any sense of, of right or wrong. Is that the, the right way to interpret that? Or how would one look at that thought in Romans one about God giving them up?
The consequences of the government of God. If you go back to the beginning, if I'll call this in Romans one, the paragraph begins in verse 21.
And it says because that when they knew God, it's the history of man morally that's looked at here in the governmental dealings of God with man according to his own will in opposition to God. So in verse 21, it says there was a time, there is a time in the history when every man knew God as he had made himself known, but when they did know God.
They didn't honor him as God. They didn't glorify him as God. They weren't thankful to know Him.
Because his will and theirs were in opposition through the flesh of man. And so it says, they became vain, their foolish minds.
And their foolish hearts became darkened. Instead of honoring God as God, man, not wanting God in his thoughts, turned his mind away from the revelation of God to himself. And he started to imagine.
His vain thoughts that we have in our chapter came in and and and he creates birds and animals and says this is God.
Now he's superior really in his mind to his God. It's just an image that he's created and he bowed down before it and he says God.
Well, therefore, as a result of that, because of what they did of turning to idolatry and images of idolatry in verses 22 and 3, then he says in verse 24, as a result God gave them up.
To the consequences of their own will.
And so they filled their the consequences was uncleanness because they live by the lusts of their own hearts. They dishonored themselves among themselves. What today is called homosexuality, who changed the truth of God into a lie and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.
And then verse 26 where you you read, you get to the point it says.
For this cause, God gave them up. That is, God's governmentally gave them up to the consequences of their own behavior. And so it can be in an individual life Today, God presents himself to a soul.
00:50:14
To give knowledge of himself, in spite of the fact that in a general way the world has given up that knowledge. But the light of the Gospel comes in, and man is presented it.
And he knows it. He understands the message of the Gospel.
But his will is in opposition. He doesn't want that knowledge.
So he willfully turns away and goes his own way and corrupts himself by his deceitful lust. And that is a hardening process in the heart. Pharaoh hardened his own heart really. And finally God stepped in and finished the process, if you will, and judicially put him under that state of a hardened heart. And then he, his judgment came upon him and so.
A soul that willfully turns away from the light and and goes down their own Rd. can reach a point where they're.
They're beyond. They fit themselves, really. It's a vessel for destruction. It's not talking about what's characteristic of a true believer, is it?
I'd like to just for a moment, get back to the old man and the new man. I read a story not too long ago about an elderly couple in a rural village in England some years ago.
And through the instrumentality of the Salvation Army at that time.
Was an evangelist there that preached the gospel. The husband and wife were saved.
And, uh, they were not an educated couple and.
And the husband decided that he wanted his wife to make him a uniform just like that, worn by the Salvation Army. And so the wife was an accomplished seamstress and made-up a uniform, but both of them couldn't read. And he said that he wanted something embroidered on the uniform. And the wife sent him out and.
Uh, she told him, well, copy something down that you see written. Well, he went outside the house and went through the village and he came back with a couple of words that the wife embroidered on the uniform and those words were under new management.
He passed a a store that had changed hands and now with under new management well.
That should be the situation with uh, and that is the situation with the child of God, where new creatures in Christ, aren't we?
Brother Harry Hale had a lovely strain that our minds make up our moral history in this world.
Let this mind be in you, which was in Christ Jesus. He said, why doesn't it say, let this heart be in you? Well, he clarified that by saying how important our minds are. And he went on to say that we are what we love and think about.
And out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth was going to tell us.
Lord speaks in verse 24 of this Newman.
Says of it.
Which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
That's the character, if you will. That's the nature of the new man. That's the nature of life in Christ. It's created after God in righteousness and true holiness. So then he shows us in verses that follow the practical living out of that life in the everyday circumstances of life. He says verse 25, wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor.
Well, if you are righteous and you have true holiness, do you lie?
00:55:00
Impossible.
So we're to live it out, the new man.
The old man was a liar.
Of nature, my practice, he lives.
But the new man isn't that way. The new life that is created of God in righteousness and true holiness, it doesn't lie.
It doesn't lie to his neighbor.
And he doesn't lie to his brother.
And the significant that the 1St.
Sin that came into the church in the book of the Acts was alive.
Incredible to think about it.
But it was detected.
And immediately judged. And it's interesting to think that Ananias and Sapphira.
Ananias really didn't speak a lie.
He acted a lie.
And Sapphira came in afterwards and confirmed by saying it she told the lie.
So.
Here to live in the light, there's no room for that which relates to the darkness. Line is not a part of that which is characteristic of Christian.
There's another thing I've noticed in the nursing home. Some of the AIDS, nursing aides and some of the nurses come in. They seem to be very nice persons. They have this ugly tattoo all over their body. Sometimes it's just an arm, sometimes it's almost the whole body. Scripture condemns that.
Where to be just as he made us umm, awkwardly and not decorate ourselves up like that. That's something I know young brothers in Canada, they got their tattoos put on them when they were in the Navy and.
They keep themselves covered. They're so ashamed of what they have. Before they got saved, they did this. Others have tried to have it removed and that's very painful. I understand.
But we should look different, not the way the world looks.
That includes all kinds of things. I look around and I don't see. I don't see any.
They all doctored up like the world does. Tattooing is very painful if you've done. I don't know if it's painful when it's being done, but to get it removed, it's very hard.
In the next verse, verse 26, he says be angry and sinified. Probably many of us have had heard different interpretations of this verse.
But I want to suggest that the primary thought in the verse is taken from verse 24.
That which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. That's what's being lived out now in these verses and in the context of that interpretation of verse 26, is God. Holy nature never accommodates sin and God has a fixed, if I can use the word attitude toward it. It's an offense.
Against His Holiness.
And there is Rap God alone is to carry it out. Never us, but the holy righteous nature which is part of our why we can be called the new man never.
Get.
With thin but it maintains a holy attitude toward it as an offense to the nature. The Lord Jesus is holy, love good, He hated evil.
The danger in US and as it says it qualifies, or is it where it says be angry and sin not?
01:00:00
Umm, let not the The difficulty is there is a holy anger.
But there's also a fleshly anger, and very often if.
It's looked at as an offense against God, then it can be seen as it is. But if it's an offense against me, then that anger is sin. And if that is, if my measurement of it is my own treatment and how I feel or my flesh feels, then that anger isn't. He says did not, Because if that's allowed, then holy anger easily becomes sinful anger.
And is to be judged as such.
Umm, let not the sun go down upon your wrath. The tendency that we need an exhortation about is.
You hear the Lord's name taken. His name.
And when you're newly saved, when you're new in the faith, it's a jarring thing.
You hear it the next day and the next day and the next day and the next day, and the tendency of the natural man is gradually you don't even notice this.
It ceases to be even something that penetrates hardly people can swear and curse and take God's name in vain and uh, work workplace and but what he's saying is don't get hardened to that. Don't get to the point where, as it were, that doesn't have any effect upon the soul. It never became nothing to the Lord Jesus and God's honor was when God was dishonored. The same is true within the next verse with the devil.
There's a tendency in us to let him push things around a bit and have his way. But the Lord Jesus holiness never accommodated that, never got to that point where that righteousness and true holiness gave in to it. Umm, it's it's the maintenance of the the light. In contrast to other verses in this chapter which tell us about forgive your brother and love.
And so on. But the love of God and the light that God is are never in conflict with each other. But we sometimes kind of take one and emphasize it in a way that puts aside the other. But he's, he's bringing before us the holiness side here. And we must maintain that even while at the same time God loves us, but he hates our sins.
In Mark chapter 3, it's interesting. It gives a case in which the Lord was angry.
Uh, it's in connection with and this is interesting connection with what you said, uh, Don.
There was this man with a withered hand, and the Pharisees were there watching to see if he would.
He helped they wanted to impede the blessing that would always blow out for others, he says in verse five. And when he had looked around about on them with anger, being grieved through the hardness of Eric heart. We get angry when people do bad stuff to us.
The Lord never did get angry about that. It was when He they impeded the blessing. There's one other place in the Book of Mark that I'd like to draw your attention to in the 10th chapter.
In connection with the.
Little children that were brought to him.
And the disciples were rebuking them. And it says in verse 14 when Jesus died, he was.
Much displeased in the words in the Darby translation is indignant.
So the Lord Jesus was angry.
But there was no flesh in him to.
And wonderfully though, I just wanna bring out the other words too. He grieved in his heart. There was a holy anger, and at the same time there was a love that grieved. And the two were maintained in spotless purity and holiness together. And for us, the exhortation is needed, because so often if what starts out in a holy way degenerates.
Into send to see the Lord casting out those those that were at the temple, the money changers and he referred to his father's house and it was not to be come a den of thieves, was it? So they had so to speak to file the original intent. Umm.
01:05:39
You'd probably like to have gotten a bull whip and and snapping that around, but just the grease of our board of the Spirit of God would describe a small scourge.
The verse says be ye angry. It doesn't say always give expression to us. Umm.
The interesting difference between righteousness and holiness in our chapter. Uh, we're called to vote, uh.
Righteousness are is the acts that are right and good.
Holiness is the intrinsic abhorrence of evil and love of good within. So holiness doesn't always have to do something. It's intense intrinsic within us. God is holy within us. The Lord Jesus was holy also every time. Unholiness.
Evil was surrounded him. He was angry. He perfectly abhorred that. He didn't always give expression to it. And it's interesting and Mark there where it just says he looked on them with anger. It doesn't doesn't say he said anything or he did anything in John. He took the scourge and used it. That's righteousness he acted upon.
Evil that was before him.
And so we we're in a world that's unholy and we need to be renewed in the spirit of our mind that our that holiness.
Be given its right place within us we are holy we have a nature that doesn't work evil and uh, but we can uh lose lose sight of that and uh become.
Complacent and, and let our other nature take predominance in our life. So we need to, we need to, uh.
Remember, we are holy people, but that doesn't mean we always give expression to all the evil around us. But we do feel it, and if we don't feel it, it's wrong.
I'd like to tell a little story. I was working in a RF shielded screen room and in came the Peter Davidson. He was a Jew. I got talking to him and I said to him, I had my Bible there. I said I'll show you why your people hated the Lord Jesus. So I read to him. After 23. I'm not going to read that whole chapter, but when you get a chance, you sit down and read Matthew 23.
If there has there's ever been a scathing denouncing of the Pharisees and the scribes and those that set themselves up, it's in that chapter and.
Why did they hate him so? Because he told them just what they were. The hypocrites. The generation of pipers. How shall he escape the foundation of hell? I'm just quoting a few of his words. He didn't mince any words when it came to religious hypocrites. That's what they were, and there's plenty of that today.
Interesting in verse 28 in connection with stealing.
The law said thou shalt not steal, and that was it. But grace goes beyond.
That, and it says, let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labor working with his hands that he made that which is good, that he may have to give to him that need it. So grace goes far beyond law, Doesn't it beautiful to see how we should be known as those that give?
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It's more blessed to give than to be received, and that's what's characteristic of Christians is giving sacrificially giving. Lord help us to enter into the spirit of that far more than what law would require.
The next verse is the very same character. A lot of it says don't lie, don't let a corrupt communication come from your mouth. And as Bob commented, the previous person stops there.
Well, that's as much as was required under law. But grace and Christianity go beyond and turn to the needs of others. Just like in the last verse that went on to others. So in verse 29 it says, well, if there's a good word.
That would identify the heart of a soul, then give it given, don't withhold it, but go ahead and speak that good word which would would edify the heart of those spirit.
And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed into the day of redemption. And you mentioned that.
Uncle Clem there the other day we have that exhortation here in Ephesians. We have in First Thessalonians 5 the exhortation quench not the Spirit. And I enjoyed the thought that.
Graving the Spirit of God is doing the things that the Spirit of God tells us not to do. Quenching the Spirit is not doing the things that the Spirit of God would lead us to do.
I think it is interesting thing that in both cases we are to be sensitive as to the Spirit of God in our lives. He's in you. If you're a believer in the Lord Jesus, He dwells in you.
What's characteristic of a child of God is that they are led by the Spirit of God.
Don't grave him by doing things he tells you not to do. Don't quench him by not doing the things that he tells you to do.
The lights of the flesh is doing what our own will ask us to do instead of what God has prepared us to do by the Holy Spirit. We ought to walk in pleasing way to Him always and not allow the flesh to act.
It's interesting that it says that brings in his continually being in us. We're sealed into the day of redemption. The Spirit of God is never going to leave the true believer. And so it's, it's it's that more, much more of a serious offense against him to grieve him because he's not going to leave. We get into hard circumstances. We may go off and leave the difficulty, but the Spirit of God doesn't do that with the believer. He stays with the believer.
So the excitation in the next chapter is to be filled with the Spirit. What does that mean?
I didn't have 100% of the say.
And if the Spirit of God is hindered in any way, can be no blessing, can be used as channels for God can't bear any fruit from God, except it comes directly through the Spirit of God. And so.
There is a tremendous importance that we give places here to the Spirit of God.
In the last two verses we have a number of things that are mentioned that hinder the Spirit of God in doing what He wants to do in our lives. Like you say Brother Phil, producing that fruit that is characteristic of a believer in the Lord Jesus.
Pretty negative things here.
All bitterness.
And wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice. Pretty inclusive verse, isn't it? As to the negatives in the believer's life.
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It's just as large on the positive side in the last.
Be kind one to another.
Without discrimination, that would be.
Even the standard is God for Christ sake has forgiven you.
What an example.
I think this is the only time I may need to be corrected. We have the expression tender hearted.
Then said that it's human to offend, but it's divine to forgive.
That word, bitterness, brethren, does tremendous damage in the life of believers, and we need to.
Judge it.
The Lord help us in that it it is something that is referred to.
In the, uh, Hebrews 12 as roots of bitterness. It's under the ground, it's under the surface.
So a nurse, that person did me in, and I'm never gonna forgive them.
We might not say that in so many words, but we nurse that grievance.
Get rid of it.
Remember old brother Harry? Hey Hossein, I probably got it most off of the tapes and more than hearing him because he was fairly old when I was fairly young. But remember him saying never entertain?
A, uh, bitter thought about anyone in the sphere of your acquaintance that is so important, brethren, If you have a hard thought about somebody, get down in your knees.
And pray for the Lord's blessing on that person. Lord help us brethren. Satan knows how to take those roots of bitterness and make them sprout. And many are contaminated. That happened again and again among spreading. Lord, help us to do what we have in the last verse. Be kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another. Let it go.
Whatever the grievance was, let it go. There's somebody else that can take care of the matter and make it right. You don't have to try to make it right.
That's the heaviest load.
And we may even take consolation in the fact that, well, this is that has been done against me and is going to be settled the judgment seat of Christ. There's no relief in that either, is there? But to realize that when we're raptured home, our first look in the face of the Lord Jesus will cause us to forget everything that we should have forgotten here and we're not going to be able to take our case on.
Think of the Lord Jesus on the way to the cross.
Praying the Father forgive them.
Who? Who was treated worse than that?
Who showed the heart of God greater than that?
Even as God in Christ's sake forgiven us.
So the Spirit of Christ.
In that life is, Father is.
It's touching here how it says that even as God for Christ sake hath forgiven you, God forgave us not because necessarily just ourselves and our need, but because of Christ, he forgave us and so.
We should do the same but for Christ sake. Sometimes it's hard to forgive people, but then we look at Christ and see what he did for that person. Then we can forgive them.
174.
Be Filled With the Spirit
Our Lord's Affections and Present Work of Love for Us
Open Mtg. 9
Open—R. Thonney, B. Brockmeier
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.
Nsnoise.
Oh my God.
No.
Rain and shine yells crazy.
To the cross, so there's blood.
Oh, you're drunk by.
Nsnoise save my.
Blood.
And.
Nose.
Talked a little bit about that in our reading and I'd like to.
And follow on.
As.
The Holy Spirit.
This morning we mentioned in the reading.
The exhortation that we have in Ephesians chapter 5.
That says be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with a spirit. It's an exhortation.
Be filled with the Spirit.
If that's something that we need to be exercised about.
What does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? Can I ask you that this morning, Doug?
Means you said to be sold out, didn't you?
00:05:01
Anyhow, it means that there are no pockets of reserves in our vessel.
It's all for him.
If I have a glass, I wanna fill that glass with water and then it's half full of dirt.
I can pour a lot of water in the top, it might wash some of the dirt out.
But what I really need to do is get the dirt out of there first and then I can fill it with water.
Spirit of God.
God gives his Spirit, and how does he give it? Let's go to chapter 3 of John's Gospel.
I love this.
Verse 34.
John 334 For he whom God hath sent.
Speaketh the words of God.
Necessarily, that's the Lord Jesus, for God giveth, not the Spirit.
By measure.
Unto him as an italics.
In other words, you and I determine the measure, brethren.
You want to be filled with the Spirit. You and I determine the measure.
It is interesting in the scriptures to see those who scripture says were filled with the Spirit.
But first of all, let's talk a little bit. What does it mean to be filled with the Spirit?
The Scripture puts a simile there in that verse where it exhorts us about that says be not drunk with wine. Wherein is excess person that's drunk with wine? It's filled with wine. Can you tell it?
Yeah, you can.
How by the way they walk and by the way they talk. You can tell something's controlling that person. He's not in his own senses.
He is under the influence, we say, of what he's drunk.
But be filled with the Spirit. Can you tell a person that's filled with the Spirit?
Yes, I think you can. How? Same way by the way they walk and by the way they talk.
God doesn't give the Spirit by measure. He's a great giver. He's going to give all you want to fill that vessel of yours. And just think, brethren, the Holy Spirit of God, He's given to fill these vessels of ours.
I'd like to give a little example back in second.
Kings.
Of this.
I'm gonna have to look for the chapter 4, Second Kings chapter four. We have a little story here that kind of interesting.
Says verse one. Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets unto Elijah, saying.
Thy servant, my husband is dead, and thou knowest that thy servant did fear the Lord, and the creditor has come to take unto him my two sons, to be bondsman. Elijah said unto her, What shall I do for thee? Tell me, what hast thou in thine house? She said, Thine handmaid hath not anything in the house save a pot of oil.
Then he said, Go borrow the vessels abroad of all thy neighbors, even empty vessels.
Borrow not a few. When thou art come in, thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons, and shalt pour out unto into all those vessels, and thou shalt set aside that which is full. So she went from him, and shut the door upon her, and upon her sons.
Who brought the vessels to her? And she poured out? And it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said unto her, Son, Bring me. He had a vessel. And he said unto her, There is not a vessel more.
And the oil stayed. Then she came and told the man of God. He said, Go and sell the oil, and pay thy debt. Live thou, my children. Of the rest. There's just a little illustration of the fact that God does not give the Spirit by measure.
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Oil in Scripture is often a figure of the Holy Spirit of God.
And she was to borrow all the vessels she could have if she could not find from her neighbors, and poor, and poor, and poor, because God does not give them spirit by measure. And she filled up all those vessels, and only when they were all full did the oil stay.
Brother and sister, in the Lord Jesus, do you want your vessel to be full? God gives the Spirit not by measure, and He will fill you if you allow Him to.
I've met up with people that I believe that are, I'm no judge of the matter of their spirit filled, but I tell you, sometimes you meet up with souls that are just.
Such refreshing enjoyment of the person of the Lord Jesus can't help but feel that they are spiritual.
Still remember in the prison where we go on Saturdays in Lawrence County prison there.
A while back there was a one of the prisoners that came in. I don't know why he was there. All of a sudden he disappeared and we then never found out whatever happened to him.
It was a blessing to have that man in the room when we had our meetings. Such enjoyment of Christ and of the Word. How He encouraged us. He usually sat close to the back.
Couldn't help but feel that there was a great measure of the Spirit of God in that vessel.
It's such a blessing, and God wants to give the blessing. It's not His fault if we don't enjoy His blessing. It's our fault. We put things in the vessel that clutter it all up so that the Spirit of God doesn't have room to fill us.
So we have the exhortation to be filled with the spirit. And I like to go back to the book of the Acts just to notice a few individuals there. We already had referred to in this conference, Chapter 7 of Stephen. But let's go back to chapter six. First of all, it's interesting that.
Look who wrote both the Gospel of Luke and the book of the Acts uses that expression quite extensively, both in the.
Gospel and in the Book of the Acts.
Really is what is characteristic of the believers in the Lord Jesus in this time period. The Spirit of God cannot, could not, come on a human vessel in permanent form until redemption had been accomplished when Jesus was risen from the dead. Having accomplished that redemption and returned to the right hand of God, then he sent this Holy Spirit of God to indwell believers.
The Old Testament and the consecration of the priests.
Blood was put on the ear, the right thumb and the right toe.
Of those priests and their consecration. And then the oil was put on the blood.
That's the way the Holy Spirit can dwell permanently in the believer. Because of accomplished redemption, the oil on the blood, now the Holy Spirit of God dwells permanently.
And those believers in the Lord Jesus, and he's there, dear fellow believer.
To guide us into all truth.
But let's go to this 6th chapter just to notice what it says here.
Verse three of the sixth chapter of Acts. Wherefore, brethren, talking about the deacons that were being appointed for the.
Material administration amongst God's people. Look ye out among you seven men of honest report.
Full of the Holy Ghost and Wisdom. That interesting. One of the characteristics of a person full of holy of the Holy Ghost is wisdom.
Whom we may appoint over this business.
Verse five and the same please. The whole multitude. And they chose Stephen the man.
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Full of faith and of the Holy Ghost. There's another characteristic of a person full of the Holy Spirit. Faith, confidence in God. You know, we live in a world that calls in question everything to do with God and his Word.
One of the characteristics of a person filled with the Holy Spirit is they're filled with faith. Down further in the same chapter verse. Uh.
Eight and Steven, full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people. There's power in the testimony of a person filled with the Holy Spirit. Now the 7th chapter that we had read to us, it was yesterday.
Verse 55. Stephen and his testimony before the Council.
Beautiful testimony, he.
Being full of the Holy Ghost.
Looked up steadfastly into heaven and saw the glory of God in Jesus standing on the right hand of God.
Person filled with the Holy Spirit is not going to be occupied with themselves. You know what I noticed is that our culture that we live in tends to occupy us.
With yourselves. With ourselves.
You owe it to yourself is a advertising technique that they use a lot.
Oh, you do. You do it to yourself.
That makes yourself the object of your thinking.
Steven wasn't thinking about himself.
This Holy Spirit had filled him and his occupation was with a man in the glory of God. Because it's a beautiful testimony of what is characteristic in this dispensation, The Spirit of God down here filling vessels and occupying them with a man in the glory of God. Two things that had never been before in the history of this world, a man in the glory of God.
And the Spirit of God down here indwelling believers and occupying them with that man in the glory of God.
Oh, what a tremendous, brilliant testimony Steven was. They put it out, they killed him. That's the only way this world knows how to deal with a witness that way.
So we go through the book of the Acts and there's many examples of those who were filled with the Holy Spirit. I don't want to take all the time here this afternoon, but like to go back to the book of Luke, to the first chapter to see a family.
Of three individuals.
And it says of each one of them that they were filled with the Holy Spirit.
Generally, you think it starts with the father of the family, wouldn't you?
But not so here.
Let's just look at this chapter a few verses. It's a long chapter and we're not going to read a whole lot of it.
But uh, let's read from verse 11. Zacharias was doing his priestly service in the temple.
And it says in verse 11. And there appeared unto him an Angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. When Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him. The Angel said unto him, Fear not Zacharias, for thy prayer is heard. And thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John. Thou shalt have joy and gladness, and many shall rejoice at his birth.
For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink, and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother's womb. Many of the children of Israel shall return to the Lord their God.
This interesting a child in his mother's womb. I don't think we can limit God in the way he works. It is amazing to me times, brethren, I go through Latin America. I must say, rather than I just feel I have a tremendous privilege. I wish I could take some of you brother in a long sometimes just to see what God is doing in those countries.
00:20:29
And you can't lay down the limits with God. He works in ways you would never guess.
I never cease to marvel at how he works.
Here it was and baby in the womb of his mother, filled with the Holy Spirit.
Interesting.
So the first one in this chapter.
That it speaks of being filled with the Holy Spirit. Is John the Baptist in his mother's womb?
Now go down further.
And.
The Angel announces to Mary.
That she is to be the mother.
Of the Lord Jesus.
And she goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth.
Verse 39 And Mary arose in those days, and went into the Hill Country with haste into a city of Judah, and entered into the House of Zacharias, and saluted. Elizabeth came to pass that when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary.
The babe leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost, and she spake out with a loud voice, saying, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?
For lo, as soon as the voices thy salutation sounded in my ears, the babe leaped.
In my womb for joy. And blessed is she that believed, for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord. So the second one in this family that is spoken of as filled with the Holy Spirit is Elizabeth. I think this is beautiful. The babe in her womb evidently heard. They say that babes in the womb of their mother here.
And she heard the voice of the Mother of the Lord Jesus.
And leaped for joy.
And it resulted in her mother and his mother being filled with the Holy Spirit too. What it she says about Mary is is beautiful.
Oh, brethren, the results of letting the Spirit of God fill us are beautiful. Well, we know what had happened to Zechariah when the Angel announced that he would be the father of a little boy.
He asked how could this be?
You know, we all have to confess, brethren, that we sometimes reason things out naturally, and we can't figure out how in the world that could ever be.
So the result was he was dumb.
I don't mean dumb as the smarts, I mean he couldn't talk.
He couldn't talk until the day it was all performed.
But notice.
They came when John the Baptist was born and they were asking what his name would be. They thought it would be Zacharias because he's the only boy carry on his father's name.
But, uh, Zacharias determined that it was to be John.
And.
Let's read from verse 63. He asked for a writing table and wrote and said his name is John and they marvelled all and his mouth was opened immediately and his tongue loose.
Brethren, our tongues need to be loosed in the praise of our God.
00:25:00
Why is it that we sit in the Lord's presence sometimes on a Sunday morning?
And there seems to be something impeding the Spirit of God.
In the praise of that glorious person that we say is in our midst.
The Lord exercises about it. Brethren, I realize that we need to be led by the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God leads in order. And it can be at times that the little time of waiting on the Lord is healthy too. But you and I both know that many times there's long painful silences that I really believe are because of our lack of occupation with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Here's Zacharias was dumb. He couldn't say a word for so long because of the unbelief of his heart that is hindering anybody. Confess it to the Lord, dear brother. Let that mouth of yours be opened in his praise. Must say, brother. And being amongst the Latin brethren, some of you who been down in those countries, they kind of go to the other extreme.
It kind of stumble over each other to get up and give a word of praise to the Lord.
I've seen it often happen in Bolivia, brother.
That I brother gives out of him, and another brother stands up at the same time to praise the Lord. What do you do in that case? Well, generally the brother that came out to him waits until the brother gives his word of praise, and then afterwards we sing to him. Sometimes it isn't all exactly in the order it should be, but it throws my heart rather than to see the Lord praise given His praise.
When we think of how glorious he is, can we sit there in silence?
Let's not be like Zechariah because of our unbelief sitting there dumb.
Zacharias got through it though, thank God.
He his mouth was loosed, and he spake and praised God. Isn't that beautiful? First thing he does is praise God. Fear came on all them that dwelt around about them, and all these things were noise abroad throughout all the Hill Country of Judea. All they that heard them laid them in up in their hearts, saying, What manner of child shall this be? The hand of the Lord was with them.
And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost and prophesied, saying, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for you have visited and redeemed his people. Hath raised up and horn of salvation for us in the House of his servant David.
Beautiful the intelligence that there is in this man. Well, I just want to go to the book of Romans a minute before I give place to somebody else. Chapter 8, because it speaks of the Spirit of God there too and.
Just wanted to bring this out because we are living in a day when the Spirit of God dwells not only in US individually.
Buddy inhabits the house collectively.
Spirit of God is present.
But here is a verse I'd like to just mention.
Verse 14.
As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of ******* again to fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption.
Whereby we cry ABBA. Father, the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.
So the purpose of the presence of the Spirit of God in our lives is to guide us, brethren.
I have to confess that off times I really believe the Spirit of God.
00:30:02
Has led me and I quenched his direction in my life. It is not been for my good.
What happened a number of years ago?
A Wheaton conference.
Chicago area.
I was serving my time for the government then in a hospital in downtown Chicago.
And it just gotten back. Remember, we can conference used to start on Saturday, Sunday, Monday and then half a Tuesday. And I'd gotten off Monday, but I didn't get off Tuesday. So I came back to work on Tuesday morning and.
I, uh, had a truck. I was supposed to go out and get supplies for the hospital and I happen to be parked at a certain place.
Yeah, and, uh, there was a hospital supervisor standing there and it was.
Really enjoying what I'd learned at the conference. And so as if the Lord said to me, go speak to him about the Lord. Lord, he's a supervisor. You gotta be careful how I do this. Now you know how you put it off twice very powerfully, the Spirit of God.
Said speak to him.
And twice I put it off.
Was shortly after that another truck pulled up and said I got some supplies for the hospital and so I said OK, back up to my truck and uh, we'll switch the boxes over to my truck.
And.
When I jumped up on the back end of my truck and opened up the box, it was just one I'd rented. Somebody left some garbage in there. So I called to the supervisor and said what should I do with this garbage? He came over and stood at the base of the track. We're both looking in. All of a sudden I turned around and here comes this truck and smashes it right in the middle. Killed him.
I'm guilty, brother.
Guilty.
Not following the direction of the Holy Spirit. It's not only been then, but it's been many other times. Spirit of God is in us to guide us and we tend to in our culture, we tend to quell His direction. We need to be sensitive as to His presence within us so that we can be guided by Him.
We have so many other things that guide us in life, different sensory things that guide us. As mentioned the other night, Lawrenceville, how sometimes we walking through a mall and mall, they pump out that Starbucks coffee smell into the.
Hallway. And what is that for?
They know what's gonna happen. They'll draw you right in there to buy a cup of that coffee.
I don't think drinking a cup of coffee is wrong. Not saying that does anybody get their backup, but.
It's just the way this world that we live in works. It appeals to us in different ways to guide us in one way or another, and we need to be exercised about giving the Spirit of God place in our life to be guided in our lives individually.
Let the Spirit of God guide. That's why He's given to us.
And then collectively too, in the Spirit, in the in the meetings, in our relationship one with another, Spirit of God lays on your heart a certain person.
To go visit.
Do it. Maybe he lays on your heart to call up somebody on the phone.
Maybe some shut in that needs some encouragement.
Let the Spirit of God lead you in that way. That's why He's with us to lead us there. Be tremendous blessing. If the Lord lays on your heart a specific person, go.
Call them up, whatever it takes to be an encouragement to them.
And when we are here in assembly, brethren, we need to each one of us be exercised to give the Spirit of God's liberty. Sometimes, you know, I think when we talk about the Spirit of God, we have the idea that it's.
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Anybody can take part. No, that's not what we mean. What do we mean by the liberty of the Spirit of God? It we mean that everybody consciously sits down here and says, in effect to the Lord. Lord Jesus, we know that you're present with us. You want to use me? If you want to use this vessel, I want to be ready.
For you to use, then the Spirit of God has place to use whom he will. But if I sit down on that chair and say, well, I'm not going to open my mouth this meeting, what are you doing?
You're quenching the Spirit of God.
It's not only the brothers, the sisters too.
Sure, you're not going to open your mouth and take part in a public meeting, I realize that. But the attitude you have has just as much effect, positively or negatively, as any brother.
Lord help us brethren, when we come together. Spirit of God wants to guide us, and He will guide us if we give Him liberty to. Oh, it's beautiful to see when we give liberty, the Spirit of God the beautiful.
Meetings. Yesterday's breaking of bread was a beautiful meeting. How the Lord guided us to thinking of the glory and the crowns of the Lord Jesus. Spirit of God guides.
In different directions, and if we give him liberty.
Then it's beautiful. The result?
I want to say to you younger brothers.
The exercise in public meetings. Love to hear more of you younger brothers take part in prayer meetings, in the praise meeting to the breaking of bread so where you can start being exercised to be used.
Your presence there.
There you are. They're not as a gifted individual in a prayer meeting or an appraised meeting, but as a priest in the family of God and as such your capacitated to present prayer and praise to God.
Oh brethren, Lord, help us really believe. Sometimes our prayer meetings could be a lot more effectual if there was more exercise before the Lord. We really do have so much to pray about.
I think sometimes it's because we come and we're not exercise to pray that we just kind of let it degenerate into a certain few brother and that prey and the others.
Don't take part. That's not proper.
Everyone should be exercise. Still remember a prayer meeting I attended in Brazil when they were first in fellowship?
Was in the city of Campinas and I think there was about 15 brothers present. Every one of those 15 brethren prayed once.
I would say maybe about half prayed twice and some even prayed three times and that in the space of maybe 35 minutes on our knees. There was real short to the point petitions. And I must say I don't think anybody went to sleep in that meeting. Let's be exercised, brethren, when we come together to be.
Vessels.
Ready for his use?
The Lord help us bread.
This conference together we've had.
A lot about.
Our portion, our place.
An excertations concerning it.
Let us conclude our time together by spending a few minutes to be occupied with the person and present work of the One who has the supreme place, our Lord Jesus.
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Not by way of exhortation, but simply a way of.
Getting our eyes on himself tells us in Colossians one that in all things he might have the preeminence or the supreme and 1St place.
So let's look at the Lord Jesus as He was speaking to the disciples before he left this earth to return to heaven in John 14.
And as he spoke to the disciples, may the Lord, may we each take it as a word from the Lord to our own hearts this afternoon.
As if, and it is true in spirit, the Lord would say this to us this afternoon as we're gathered here together.
Verse four, Chapter 14, Verse one. Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God.
Believe also in me, In my father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you.
I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there you may be also. What a wonderful thought.
The Lord Jesus has now gone there.
The Lord is at this moment looking down upon us from his home, our home too, really. And he says he's there, the place is prepared by His presence there, and His work on the cross has fitted us for that place.
And what does he say to us? That where I am, there you may be also. Isn't it wonderful to think this afternoon that the Lord Jesus, as he looks down upon us, assembled here at this moment? He said, you know where I want you to be.
Point should be where I am.
That's our home.
And our home is where our heart is.
And his home is not going to be fully what he wants it to be until as he looks upon us, assembled here this afternoon.
We're separated in that sense. And he says I want you to come and I'll come for you.
And over in John 16.
A little more worried about the Holy Spirit, John 16 and verse 7. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth, it is expedient for you that I go away, and if I go not away, the comforter will not come unto you, but if I depart, I will send him unto you.
Verse 12 I have many things to say unto you, but I cannot bear them. You cannot bear them now. Albeit when He, the Spirit of truth is come, He will guide you into all truth. For he shall not speak of Himself, but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak, and He will show you things to come. He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine.
And shall show it unto you.
All the things that the Father hath are mine. Therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you.
A little while and you shall not see me, and again a little while you shall see me, because I go to the Father. Isn't this precious, brethren?
Lords, in this time of physical separation between us, the Lord has sent the Holy Spirit, as Bob has brought before us to indwell us, sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, and.
It's his delight. It's his joy to fill our hearts and our thoughts with Christ.
Isn't that a wonderful work of the Spirit?
Without measure.
He would bring before our hearts those things that are our portion, that we that couldn't be born at the time these words were written, but they can be born now. And we have the Spirit of God to present the glory, the wonder, the beauty, the affection of the Lord Jesus to our souls until we're united in the we are united, but until we're together forever.
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In his presence.
Thankfully, it won't stop when we leave the room that as we go to our cars and we leave this place, the Spirit of God is free to continue to draw the heart's affections to see the Lord Jesus and His beauty.
As he would be made more precious to our souls, let's go over to the 17th chapter.
Chapter 17.
Verse 18 As thou hast sent me into the world, Even so, if I sent them into the world, and for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.
As it were, in one sense, the Lord Jesus has drawn us here together to be with himself for this little time this weekend and.
We've enjoyed heavenly truth and the heavenly portion that is ours.
But in one sense, as we leave this sanctuary.
This Elam in the desert and what it says here we can apply. It says as thou has sent me into the world, Even so have I sent them into the world. And so we're going to leave and in one sense we're going to be sent into the world again.
We're going to have to live our daily lives until the Lord comes and calls us to Himself.
But he tells us something he's doing today and he will do tomorrow for us. What a wonderful joy and comfort it is to our hearts, he said. I sanctify myself.
That is, He has set Himself apart in a holy, pure place, so that as the Holy Spirit occupies us with Himself where He is, it becomes a preservative to our hearts. It keeps our affections and our thoughts in Himself where He is, in that place of purity and glory.
And.
It keeps the Spirit and the life from being drawn into all those things which spoil it and corrupt it and hinder it. And so the Lord, for our present preservation and our present need, says to the Father, When I, yes, I'm coming home to heaven. But as in heaven, He said, I sanctify myself. I set myself apart so that my own, even in the world, may look upon me.
And have the sanctifying effect of being occupied with myself.
Uh, let's turn over to Ephesians chapter 5.
Ephesians chapter 5.
Middle of verse 25. Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it.
That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word.
That he might present it to himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. What a wonderful encouragement for our hearts to be rest in. We've had a lot of exhortations that have been given to us at this conference to carry out in our daily lives, and exhortations bring before us our responsibility.
To live according to what's been given to us and the provisions that have been made for us.
But it's a comforting thing on this side of it to see what the Lord Jesus is doing.
From his side.
The Lord Jesus.
Is working.
For every one of us, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the Lord Jesus is occupied with each one of us, individually and collectively, as the assembly for members of the Body of Christ.
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How comforting really. His work is perfect for us. It's without fail and it will result in a perfect end.
So may we go forward with confidence in His love, in His care. Some of us are perhaps going through difficulties, weakness, the body, and perhaps trials and burdens. The Lord Jesus is doing for us a perfect work from His side of things to meet those needs, to care for them, cleansing us, and so on by the Word.
It was his provision that we were here this afternoon.
Said to her brother, I'll just repeat it. I said when we're talking about the joints and bands and Ephesians Chapter 4, brethren, your presence.
Is an encouragement to my soul.
To be here.
That's a joint and a band. Just to see you, just to spend a weekend with you as a brother and a sister in Christ, even if we never spoke to each other, is to the heart a joint and a band. It's a nourishment to the soul to be together in that way. Let's just read one more scripture in Revelation 22.
The last words of the Lord Jesus to us, and what an encouragement they are to go out the door with these words in our hearts. Revelation 22 and verse 20.
He that testifieth these things sayeth. Surely I come quickly.
What a wonderful.
What could we be sad with that?
The Lord Jesus who's looking at us at this moment, the Lord Jesus is giving by the Spirit these words to us. He says to your heart, surely I'm going to come quickly.
What a joy, brethren, just to walk out in the conscious enjoyment of that. Surely I come quickly.
208.
Crazy.
To love her born and raised.
Bright soul praise.
And day.
Life in your dream.
Filled with the Spirit
Open Mtg.