Kentucky Conference: 2010
Table of Contents
1 & 2 Timothy
Address—R. Thonney
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.
Let's start our meeting with.
Number 42 in the appendix of the flock Humbug.
Xavier Leadus, by thy power.
Savior, lead us by thy power.
Staying into the wrong ground.
Here's sometimes the way.
Seemed to be an old slumber to come back around.
It's hard to order.
On the straight and narrow way.
It's not everything. I love each other and.
Now they don't go and pray.
Nothing clear. I'm so still powerful.
But more. You have all that stuff, baby.
Hey, Roger, good morning. Good morning, Congress. Which shall be?
In my eyes.
And yours every day.
Let's do the and not be.
In my presence we are now.
Big.
In thy presence, where to take your?
Name to my friends themselves of where?
You are swing. Time is done, they can turn.
And I cry with her.
We can wander.
We can stop her. We can die.
Wandering along together.
With our beautiful.
The land by the Lord give us my.
That's.
Pat on my heart this afternoon to speak.
On the two epistles.
Of Timothy.
More.
Giving an outline.
I really have been impressed with the importance of getting.
Outline of Scripture.
You know when you're going to build a house.
Before you start building, you get what are called the plants, and they're on.
Paper is put, how long, how wide, how high that house will be. You just don't start building and see how it's going to end up.
You go by the plans, and in His Word God has given us very specific instructions.
Relative to his house, because he does have a house.
Here in this world, a place where he dwells by his Spirit.
It is not a physical house made of brick or stone or wood. It is a spiritual house made of living stones. I'm looking at a bunch of living stones out there.
00:05:14
Stones, naturally speaking, are dead, but he's given us life, brethren.
And he's building us together into his house. In First and Second Timothy we have the house mentioned. The church in Scripture is sometimes spoken of as the body of Christ.
But we're not going to focus on that aspect of the church this afternoon. We want to focus on the House.
Aspect. Would you turn to chapter 3 to what I believe is a key verse in understanding the whole of First Timothy?
Chapter 3, First Timothy, chapter 3, and verse 14 through 16.
These things write I unto you, hoping to come into thee shortly.
Paul is writing to Timothy as an individual, not addressed to an assembly, but I But if I tarry long verse 15, that thou mayst know how thou Artest to behave thyself in the House of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the in flesh, in the flesh, justified in the spirit scene of angels preached unto the Gentiles, believed them in the world.
Received up into glory. There you have the house mentioned, and I think that verse 15.
Is probably a key verse to understanding God's desire in his house, and we'll look at more specifically some of the details.
As relates to his house, when it's the house aspect, it's our conduct, he says.
He was hoping to come shortly, but how Timothy ought to behave in the House of God.
So it's behavior, it's our conduct. How are we walking? Does God have anything to say about that? Yes, it's pretty clear He has quite a bit to say about how we walk in this world because it's His house. You come to my house. I have specific desires in my house.
And sometimes we put up with things with from guests, but if the things we get a little bit out of hand, I might say something.
To the guests, God has something to say to us as to His house, brethren, and I think it's important that we understand it. But notice, the House of God here is the Church of the living God. I love that.
He's not a dead guy.
He's the living God.
And we are his household. And then it said additionally, and I think this is really tremendous to get a hold of the pillar and ground of the truth. And what does the pillar do? You got pillars in this room. What are the purpose of those pillars through this room?
Got six of them here that I can see right now. What is the purpose of them?
To hold something up, hold up that ceiling. If it weren't for those pillars, maybe.
That feeling is so heavy it would just come down.
And So what does God put in this world to hold up the truth of God? It is the Church of the living God. It's the pillar and ground of the truth. It's what upholds the truth of God. How important that is to understand. You know, men have been sincerely.
Desirous of maintaining, of upholding the truth of God. And they have formed institutions, sometimes institutions of higher learning. And it's interesting to hear about the founding charter of those.
00:10:14
Institutions of higher learning, Harvard and others, if you look at them, sometimes they have scripture.
They were founded to propagate the knowledge of the Word of God. Today those institutions are far away from propagating the knowledge of the Word of God. What happened? Because those institutions are not set by God to hold up the truth of God. What is it? It is the assembly, as God has shown it in His Word, that is put in this world to.
Uphold this is God's thoughts about it. I'm not I'm not talking now about what you see around us because.
There's a lot of ruin that's come in, but we want to get the picture as God purposed it in the beginning. He set the assembly to be the pillar and ground of the truth. Sometimes I say this.
We're going to have reading meetings here and I really value the reading. You know why? Because it's a meeting where the profits.
Speak two or three and the others judge, we say, oh, I thought that was an open meeting. Well, I think that principle is used in the open meeting as well, but I wouldn't limit it to that.
Certainly used also in a reading meeting and there may be two or three brothers that give the sense of a certain scripture. Maybe one of them gets a little bit off key and doesn't present it like it should be. That's why scripture says let the others judge.
It's not judging the person, it's judging what is said.
And there's no room for sleeping in a reading meeting, brethren, because if you're going to go to sleep, how are you going to judge? Measure what is said. You got the Bible open in front of you. You measure what is said by the word of God. And if it's not straight.
I hope somebody will say something, say brother.
Let me put it a little different way and give the balance to the truth of God so that the truth will be maintained. This is what God has said in this world, to be the pillar and ground of the truth. Well, the Lord help us, because if we function as God means it, there will be a testimony.
You know, in the book of First Corinthians.
It says that if they would when they unlearned and umm unconverted, come into the meeting of the Saints and all would speak in tongues and all speaking in other languages.
There will be people that don't understand if I start speaking in Spanish this afternoon. Well, there's some that will understand. There's quite a few that won't understand. What profit would there be in that?
Unless there was interpretation, and that's what Scripture requires that he says. If that would happen, the people that come in would say you're all crazy.
But if it would come in and all would prophecy speak from the word of God in an understandable fashion, then they would fall on their face and confess God is in you of a truth.
They would be convicted in their consciences, and that's the testimony.
Of the House of God. God is in US, brethren, and He is the living God.
And therefore, if the Word of God is opened, it's something that penetrates.
It's something that cuts and it will be evident. Notice verse 16. There are six small phrases that reading it, you can see that it applies to the Lord Jesus.
But I've often wondered why, after Speaking of the House of God, he gives these six phrases about the Lord Jesus.
God was manifest in the flesh. That certainly was the case, wasn't it?
Justified in the Spirit. The power of the Spirit of God was there to give evidence to His words.
00:15:04
Scene of angels For the first time when God became Incarnate, angels could see their creator.
Preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.
And I puzzled about that verse for a while because he was received up into glory before he was preached to the Gentiles. What is it talking about here?
And what came home to my soul, brethren, is what he's talking about is.
The mystery of godliness seen in the assembly as it walks in its proper order as the House of God, the Church of the Living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
And so in that way, God will be manifest.
The Spirit of God will have His place in our midst to lead us and to guide us. Scene of angels, yes, even the angels are here to witness what's going on. Why do those sisters all have their heads covered? Scripture tells us because of the angels.
That's the way the sister shows that she recognizes the order that God has set. It's a testimony not only to men, but to angels preached on, preached unto the Gentiles. If we maintain that proper order, there will be blessing in the gospel believed on in the world, and then the final thing in connection with the church's testimony in this world as the House of God received up, and it should be.
In Glory.
Oh, the glory of that moment when we're going to go into the glory of God.
So I suggest that's the thought here in connection with the truth of the House of God, the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. Now go over to Second Timothy and I want to point out what I believe to be a key verse in Second Timothy. We'll read a few verses here in chapter 2.
And verse 19.
Nevertheless, the foundation of God standeth sure.
Having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are his.
And let everyone that name it the name of Christ depart from iniquity.
But in a great house, notice that there is the house mentioned.
Doesn't say the House of God though.
Why not?
In the great house there are not only vessels of gold, and vessels of and of silver, but also of wood and of earth, and some to honor and some to dishonor. If a man therefore purge himself from these.
He shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the Master's use, and prepared unto every good work.
We are also youthful us, but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace with them.
That call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
So there we have the House mentioned no longer.
As the House of God, but a great house.
Why is this? You know, it's interesting. In Scripture, generally speaking, when you have a second epistle, it's because failure and ruin has come in in some way.
So it complements the first epistle, and you find that in First Timothy God gives the house in the order that he desires it to be.
We should not lose sight of that. Even though the ruin is great, brethren all around us and people are giving up and they say what's the use of struggling longer? Nobody respects the word of God. Don't give up.
It's still God's standard.
But here in Second Timothy, it's not called the House of God, it's called a great house.
Yes, it's the sphere of Christian profession, because it says.
00:20:02
The Lord knoweth them that are His, and let everyone that nameeth the name of Christ or the Lord depart from iniquity. In other words, it's a place of responsibility.
You name the name of Christ, then you are in this house.
How are you walking in that house?
This is the question I think that is addressed here and it's very helpful.
To get a hold of the fact that there are different kinds of vessels in this House.
Golden, silver, wooden and earth.
What a difference. Golden and silver vessels. I don't think I have any of those kind of vessels in my house.
I have some made of wood, yeah.
And if you some of the pottery is made out of earth, I guess you could say I have some earth and winds too.
So here we have different vessels.
But then it says at the end of verse 20 some to honor.
And some to dishonor.
Which are the ones to honor?
Which are the ones to dishonor?
You know, you might say, well, looks like gold and silver vessels should be the vessels to honor.
Maybe that means then that the wooden and earthen vessels are to this side. You know, Scripture doesn't say that.
And it's interesting to me, and meditating on these verses, that Scripture does not define a vessel to dishonor.
You might take it by default what it might be, but it does define what is a vessel to honor.
And it says in verse 21, if a man therefore purge himself from these vessels to dishonor.
He shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the Master's use, and prepared unto every good work.
What I want to encourage this afternoon is we don't need to be looking around and trying to designate who is vessel to honor, who is vessel to dishonor. My place in view of these scriptures should be to be exercised before the Lord that I might be a vessel to honor, that He can use. Is that your desire? I trust it's my desire. It's not trying to determine this one is gold and this one is wood. No, the Lord knows them that are his.
He'll take care of those matters. We don't have to be worrying about that. But our place to be exercised is what kind of a vessel am I? I desire to be a vessel into honor, and Scripture tells what a vessel to honor is. So then I want to be exercised about that.
And I sometimes say, brethren, we need.
To be careful, associations are important in life.
I don't think we treat our sisters here, treat their kitchens like we sometimes treat the Assembly of God.
I go to your kitchen, some of your sisters, and you have a bunch of dirty dishes sitting on one side of the sink. I said, hey, I'll help you out here.
And I start, I fill some sink with nice soapy water and the other side with rinse water. And I take a dish off The Dirty pile and put it in there and clean it up and rinse it. And then I put it back with The Dirty ones. Are you going to say something to me? I think you will. You don't do that. Why not?
It get dirty again. You'll have to wash it again once it's washed.
Once that dirt has been taken off, then you separate it.
You put it separate. These are principles that are well known in our homes. Another thing, once we get a nice pile of clean dishes, you don't take one of these dirty ones and put it over with the clean ones. You make a distinction.
Sometimes we worry about making those distinction. It's not a matter of brethren of judging persons, it's judging what contaminates.
00:25:10
That's what's important so that we will be vessels to honor. And the Lord comes into his house and he says I need a vessel to do a specific work. He will find this ready for the master's use.
Everything around is confusion.
Everything around is discouraging when you start looking at it, but what I want to encourage you to be exercised about.
Is don't try to fix everybody else. You worry about yourself. How are you before the Lord? Are you a vessel to honor I come into my house. I want to drink a water I don't go to where The Dirty dishes are. I go to where the clean dishes are and I know there's one that can use it right away and when God comes into his house and he wants.
A vessel he could use. Are you ready?
For him to use. Don't worry about condemning anybody else. Leave that with the Lord in his in this great house. There's a lot of confusion all over the place. Don't get discouraged. You yourself be faithful in view of the principles of the Word of God about his house.
So then it says in verse 20, will you also youthful us, but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace. Notice this with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart, you know.
Sometimes people have presented this as a statement of our collective testimony. I don't think that is right.
It is a statement that should exercise us individually and if you are exercised individually and I am exercised individually to be vessels unto honor sanctified meet for the masters use we meet together, there will be the collective side. That's the result, but it's not the the object that is pointed to here. I think that is very important.
So I see young people sometimes that are going on rather sloppily.
Allowing things in their lives that they know are not right and they come in, they say this is what we profess this group of Christians. No, you've got to take this individually and be exercised to be a vessel ready for his use. Then we can meet together. And as we meet together, we'll find we have common thoughts.
The Lord help us, brethren, in our testimony. I'd like to go back now.
We've gone for about 1/2 hour and I'd like to go back to first Timothy and just point out some of the features, if you might, if I might put it that way, because they're very practical things in connection with the House of God in First Timothy. And then go to Second Timothy as well. We did. It would be encouraged. Timothy was a young man.
Glad to see young people here with evident interest in learning the truth of God.
Thank God for it. Lord, awaken your desire even more.
But just like to point out these because Timothy was a young man and evidently was a timid young man. Sometimes people are pretty timid, young people especially.
That don't let that discourage you. God can use. You and God use.
A Timothy in his day. Let's go back to chapter one of First Timothy.
It's interesting that according to.
Verse 3.
Paul.
Left Timothy at Ephesus. What it did is said about Ephesus in the New Testament.
I'm sure you've noticed that it's it's interesting to think about it, to meditate on it.
Emphasis was one of the place where Paul was for the better part of three full years.
00:30:08
Ministering the whole counsel of God. And so the book of Ephesians is one of the most wonderful.
Treatises.
On our heavenly blessing that there is in Scripture wonderful.
Then we have the 2nd Epistle of Ephesus.
Of the Ephesians.
In Revelation chapter 2.
And we find there was a serious deficiency.
They had left their first left.
Brother, where are we in connection with this?
Is Christ your first love or is it something else?
A young man. Is it sports? Is it cars?
You young ladies, I don't relate too much to the young lady's side, so I'll just let you decide what what is first like.
But here these Ephesians had left their first love. It was all outwardly in order.
And there's nothing wrong with order not speaking against order that there was a deficiency inside that only the Lord could see.
How that speaks to my own heart rather than I can't point the finger at you because I know the Lord has to deal with me.
Oh, how much she paid to redeem it to God.
Does that mean nothing? Is there not a sense of love to Him in our souls? You know why I find it so important to come each Lord's Day to remember the Lord Jesus and His death is because there I see the price that He paid for me.
There that love is kindled again. Oh, the awfulness of the cost that was paid on that cross to redeem.
And it touches this heart of mine. It makes me realize what is the source of Christian life. It's not a matter of outward obligations. You've got to keep to this order of things. No, it's a matter of heart constrainment for the person of the Lord Jesus.
Then we have in Acts chapter 20 what Paul spoke to the Ephesian elders.
Very interesting what he said to them. So much that could be observed there, where it's not our purpose to do that this afternoon.
But there's a telltale mark of decline in that.
In that after he was done with his address, they came and saw him off on his journey, and they sorrowed most.
Not about what he said of the ruin of the Christian testimony, that what he saw ahead they saw at most that he would they would see his face no more. Didn't seem to be a concern on their part properly.
Of what he had said about.
Men arising, taking disciples after them.
Sad, but here we have an Ephesians that Paul left Timothy there in Ephesus. Where what purpose? Notice verse three of chapter one that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine. Brethren, doctrine is important.
Yes, we need practical ministry to stir us up.
As to our conduct, the doctrine teaching is important, and I really believe it to be important that we be grounded in the New Testament doctrine. As to the church, seems like we're starting to lose out more and more as to those foundational principles that are so important.
That's where we stand as the Church of God on that foundation of the apostles and New Testament prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone.
00:35:03
But notice now verse five, the end of the commandment is and there's three things I'm going to point out.
Charity or love out of a pure heart and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned. Oh, how important those three things are in connection with our lives with the Lord.
Charity out of a pure heart, you know, it's so easy to allow resentment and bitterness.
To come in, somebody doesn't treat me right.
And I remember that one. I'm not going to let it go.
That's going to hinder you and it won't be love. Out of a pure heart, let it go. Somebody has offended you, Don't hold it.
Love needs to flow out of a pure heart.
And you know that love that it speaks of here is the agape love. It's the love that loves not because of what the object is, but because of what the source is.
I'd love to ask the young people in the youth village where we go sometimes to give the gospel, Why does God love us?
First answer I normally get is because we're his children. Hey wait a minute, you haven't accepted Jesus as your savior. You're not one of his children. Still, He loves you. Why?
The next answer is because we're his creatures. Well, that's true, can't deny that.
If there's a better answer, I said God loves us because God is love. It's not no matter what I am, it's because of what he is in himself. And even when I failure, when I fail, his love never changes.
Because God is love and as he looks at you, doesn't matter whether you failed looks at you in love. Yes, if you're out of the way you're not going to be happy in your soul, but he still loves you.
That love can never change. Now that's the love that you and I are to have. One for another as well. So that's the first one. Second one is a good conscience.
Conscience very important part of our being. You know when man was created.
He did not have a conscience. He was what we call innocent. Innocent simply means.
No knowledge of good and evil. That's what it means.
But when he ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, immediately he recognized that he was naked.
And God said, Who told you you were naked? Who told him? Conscience.
And so Khan is really a little.
Latin additive that means with science is what comes next.
With the knowledge of good and evil, and every human being has a conscience.
You're not a believer in the Lord Jesus. Your conscience is defiled.
But when you come to the Lord Jesus and realize that God has taken care of us in question, we have.
You accept the Lord Jesus as your Savior, what scripture calls a purged conscience.
Question was settled in Calgary. That precious blood was every stain of sin away. Now we have a purged conscience. But Scripture speaks about a good conscience here. And I like what Paul says in the book of Acts chapter 24.
I think it's verse 16 and he's speaking before the Roman governor and he says herein do I exercise myself to have always a conscience void of offense toward God and toward men?
Brethren, we need to have exercised consciousness, Paul says in the last.
Chapter of Hebrews Brethren, pray for us, for we trust we have a good conscience. He was exercised, and that's what I want to be. You know you can be exercised, but if you let down your guard, something comes in.
00:40:14
And then we send, and there's conscience to tell us. Don't keep a bad conscience.
Keep a good conscience. Exercise yourself. Judge sin as soon as you possibly realize that it's there.
So the third thing here is faith unfeigned, that is confidence toward God.
Don't let it go.
Hebrews chapter 10 says.
Cast not away, therefore, your confidence, which has great recompense of reward. What I see that Satan wants to do is to question God's faithfulness and make you doubt Him and His Word.
Sometimes say brother.
You want to doubt me or doubt anybody else down here in this world. I can understand why you may have doubts, but if there is ever a doubt that comes into your mind about God or His Word, refuse it immediately. It comes directly from Satan. You know, Sometimes we can't understand things. Why does God allow it to happen this way?
I don't know.
I can't give you the answers. There's one thing that God.
Is faithful always at all times. Trust Him. Trust him at all times. Ye people. I love what it says in Proverbs chapter 3. That verse we quote quite often.
Trust in the Lord with all thy heart.
Got some corners where there are a little bit of doubt lingering.
Get rid of that doubt, it'll only hinder you.
I love the way the Spanish translation and the old version reads.
I can quote it theatre the Hilva. They told it to Corazon in noise trives and to Propia Prudencia. The word is.
When it says don't lean on your own understanding, it's the word in the Spanish of stirrups on a saddle. You know how you have the strips on the saddle? When you get on the horse and you start getting lopsided, you put your weight on those stirrups to keep yourself straight.
God gives you some understanding, but the point is that little understanding that you may have, and you should use the understanding you have.
Don't trust your own understanding. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Oh, how important those points are. Don't let anything shake your confidence in God. I want to go briefly over some of the things mentioned in First Timothy. We get down to chapter 2 and we find that he instructs Timothy that prayer should be made for all men.
All that are in authority.
You pray for the president of this country.
It's important that we pray for, he said. Well, I'm not in agreement with him much more than you should be praying for.
Whatever it is, whether you agree with him or not, you pray for him. That's what Scripture instructs that we might have a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and honesty. And so later on in verse eight he says I will therefore that men.
Pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting.
That's the man's part and then you have the ladies part in verse 910. What is the latest to do?
It says that they adorn themselves.
Ladies like to adorn themselves.
Generally speaking they do, but what are they supposed to adorn themselves with?
Not outward things, but verse 10 which becometh women professing godliness with good works.
00:45:01
You know, there's certain sisters always doing something good for somebody else.
That makes that person beautiful. They are adorned. In first Peter chapter 3, we have another ornament spoken of, the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit which is in the sight of God, a great Yes, sisters, you ought to adorn yourself, but the way Scripture says, not the way this world teaches.
Chapter 3 we have.
Bishops mentioned from verse one through verse 7.
Bishop is sometimes called an elder.
Or.
An overseer there are those who oversee in the House of God for the order, the spiritual.
Well-being of those that are there, that's important. We need spiritual oversight. We need to know what it means to submit ourselves to one another.
We are to be responsible.
Because it's the House of God. Now I have to confess, as a younger person, there were times when some older brother came up and.
Ministered a little word of adjustment for me.
You know, maybe I didn't appreciate it so much at the time, but as time went on, I must say I value that highly. We need those that see to us spiritually. Like to mention that in this chapter when he speaks of bishops or elders, he doesn't tell Timothy to name elders. He does give them the moral qualifications that would characterize them.
If you look closely at Scripture, only apostles or in the case of Titus and Apostolic delegate were those who could name elders.
We have no authority today to name elders. Do we have elders? I think by the qualifications that we have here, we can recognize elders. And I think another thing here that is.
Interesting what Paul says to Timothy. If anyone, any man desire the work, the office of a Bishop, he desires a good work. There's a brother that has a desire to be a help to the people of God. That's a good work you're desiring.
Maybe you don't fulfill all the list of qualifications here, so can't really say that you're an elder, but if you're doing that work, know that you're doing a good work.
And Scripture leads it that way.
I think that's important. Naming of elders sometimes goes a different direction. We really don't have authorization from scripture to name elders.
From verse eight we have the question of deacons or ministers, those that handle.
The material matters in connection with the Church of God.
The collection.
The chairs, the meeting room, whatever it might be that has a material association through the Church of God. How are they to be? How are they to act? Well, you have the qualifications given here so that there would be order in God's house. Important points to meditate on, just like to go on now to chapter 5 and verse one and have to move a little bit quickly.
Notice rebuke not an elder, he says to Timothy, but entreat him as a father, and the younger men as brethren, the elder women as mothers.
The younger sisters with all purity, in other words, our relationships one to another, are important. How is a younger brother? Because Timothy was a younger brother, how is he to treat an older brother always with respect?
Though he was to entreat him as a father, how would you entreat your own father? You would do it with respect, I trust. In that same way we are.
To deal with those who are older than us, may the Lord give us to always respect those that are older. Maybe they're not always right, but they do have quite a bit more experience than we do, so we should be careful in our relationships.
00:50:12
And the younger men as brethren, how wonderful it is when young men can be together in the healthy relationship of brothers in Christ to encourage each other.
And then it says the elder women as mothers, Yes, there's older sisters that have carried a good testimony and were to treat them as.
Mothers.
And the younger women as sisters. And he adds this note with all purity. Lord help us young brothers when it comes to our relationship with young sisters to maintain purity. Be careful how you treat them. Scripture says it's good that a man not touch a woman.
But because of fornications, let everyone have his own wife and let everyone have his own her own husband.
We're living in a world of sexual promiscuity. Don't go that way.
God is designed intimate relations between a man and a woman to be in marriage, and it's very beautiful in this place and very proper and very right.
But outside of marriage, be careful. You can damage yourself terribly by not being careful. So Timothy was to tell, tell told to to treat the younger as younger women, as sisters with all purity. Well, we have the question of widows, how they were to be taken care of because there was no social programs in place at that time. They needed to be taken care of.
And so he instructs that go over to six chapter because we got to move along. We have there in uh.
Verse uh six something that is to characterizes godliness with contentment is great gain.
Oh, it's beautiful to see a person that's content.
With what he has, I must say brethren, I've been in some wealthy homes in my life's experience and some extremely poverty stricken homes.
And my greatest?
Joys were experienced in those poverty stricken homes where there was contentment. Godliness with contentment is breaking.
Not saying he can't be content, if you have a nice home you can.
But the tendency of the world that we are living in is to always want more and more and more.
Not be content.
Be content with such things as ye hath. We brought nothing into this world, and it's certain that we can carry nothing out having food and raiment, or covering. Let us be there with content. They that will be rich notice it's not being rich, but it's the will to be rich that fall into temptation. And the snare for the love of money is the root of all evil.
I like in South America sometimes to ask the brethren who has the love of money, a rich person or a poor person?
Of course there's a lot of poor people down there and they almost always say the rich people.
I say, how about the poor people? I don't have any. Oh yeah, they do too.
They have the love of money because they don't have any. Maybe the rich have the love of money because they have it. The point is, the problem is not in the money. The problem is in the love of it. You know, in this country we have been prospered. I don't want to say blessed because it hasn't. Material prosperity has not always been blessing, but I want to say we have been prospered above.
Almost all civilizations up to this point.
And I want to encourage you to do what Paul tells Timothy to do here, to be generous. Notice verse 17. Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God who giveth us richly all things to enjoy, that they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate.
00:55:20
Lord help us, brethren, I really believe that we need to use the monies that we have in view of that coming Kingdom. Everything down here is going to dissolve. You and I have seen how the economic system that we're living in is starting to crumble. I don't know how much longer the US dollar is going to maintain its value. It's been slipping for years and I think it's getting ready to go down even a steeper slope. God knows He's the one that maintains any order down here.
But it was kind of humbling to me. Some time ago, I heard.
Somebody did a study on how much American people American Christians give to charity. The percentage was 2 to 3%.
That is incriminating. I say it from my own soul.
Is that all? When we have been given so much, Is that possible? Let's be.
Rich in good works, willing to distribute.
Now, chapter one of, uh, Second Timothy. Just want to point out the fact that those three things we mentioned in First Timothy 1/5 are mentioned.
Notice verse 3.
A pure conscience verse 5. Unfeigned faith verse seven. God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power.
And of love and of a sound mind. There you have those three things that we spoke about in First Timothy 1/5.
We didn't can't take too much longer here. Our time is is coming to the end, but I just want to point out a few more things chapter 2 verse one thou therefore my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Grace is the power of Christian testimony today.
It is not the principle of law. Think about that.
Chapters verse three it says speaks about a soldier. Verse 3, verses 3 and 4 soldier. Verse five speaks about an athlete. Verse six speaks about a husbandman or a farmer. These have spiritual lessons for us to learn how important they are. I'm just going to have to leave it at that.
Chapter.
Umm 3 and verse.
UH-14 But continue thou in the things thou hast learned, and has been assured of knowing of whom thou hast learned them. Earlier in this chapter he's talking about the characteristics of the last days.
And he speaks that men will be in verse 2, lovers of their own selves.
Well, if that doesn't characterize.
The Great American Dream today. Live it up.
Love your own self.
The next one, Covetousness. Mr. Darby's translation translates it lovers of money, and then later on it's lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. Are the people of this generation lovers? You said it, there sure are lovers.
The lovers are the wrong things.
That what characterizes us. It's discouraging when you look at that, even coming into what is called the Christian profession. But Paul says to Timothy, continue thou and the things thou hast learned and been assured of knowing of whom thou hast learned them. That from a child that has known the Holy Scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable.
Now before we close, just one more thought from chapter 4. Paul is coming to the end of his earthly course down here, and he says verse six, I am now ready to be offered.
In the time of my departure is at hand. Notice verse seven. I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith. Beautiful state.
01:00:07
You know the Lord Jesus, when he came to the end of his life down here, could say to his Father, I have finished the work thou gave us me to do.
Paul didn't say exactly that. He says I have finished my course.
Did Paul gives? Did the Lord give Paul something to do? Yes, I believe he did. I think he did.
It pretty devotedly.
Can't really criticize it. Yes he did make some mistakes sometimes, but he was a devoted servant of Christ.
Has God-given you something to do?
Yes, I believe He has every one of us. When we get down to the end, the Lord is going to call us home, whether it be at the Rapture, which we expected any moment, or some other time that He deems fit.
Is there going to be any sense in our souls that the Lord gave me to do?
I really didn't pay much attention to it. How am I going to face them? Brother, let's be exercise. Yes, you may be a young person, yes you may be timid, but be encouraged. Be exercised to use what the Lord has given you.
Little time that we have left, let's pray.
Father, we're thankful for Thy precious help us to walk in the light of it. Bless Thy word, we pray and continue to guide us this afternoon.
Isaiah 53
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.
And his heart was constrained. We just had a hem about the course of God's love and the manner often in which God constrains our hearts by His love and the person of the Lamb. So I believe we have that Lamb to be occupied with in the Isaiah 53.
Stop.
Isaiah chapter 53, verse One who has believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plan, and as a root out of a dry ground. So have he. He hath no form nor comeliness. And when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men. A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.
And we hit us at where our faces from him. He was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely He had borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with His stripes we are healed all. We, like sheep, have gone astray.
We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shears is dumb, so he opened it not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment. And who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off out of the land of the living. For the transgression of my people was he stricken, and he made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death.
Because he had done no violence, neither was any defeat in his mouth, yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He had put him to grief. When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed. He shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hands. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied by his knowledge. Shall my righteous servant justify many?
For he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him apportion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with a strong, because he had poured out his soul on the death, and he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
When the lab is introduced to us.
In picture on the Passover night in Egypt.
The people were each responsible in each household to go out into their flocks and to select the land.
If they were too poor to do so, they could go to their neighbor and share a lamb with the neighbor.
And shows us a lab, but as the.
Exodus proceeds. There it finally says D Lab.
The truth of the matter was that no man had one that.
Fully satisfied God's requirements.
And so in Genesis 22, when Isaac asked his father, where is the Lamb?
For a burnt offering.
I uh, Abraham's answer is beautiful. He says God shall provide for himself a lamb of the burnt offering, and only God could provide a lamb for himself.
For God needed a lamb, but so did we.
And uh.
God is the one that could provide the Lamb and did so in John's gospel. It is primarily in the first chapter when John sees the Lord. He says behold the Lamb of God. And most of the gospel is really a picture of the 10th day to the 14th day as seen in Exodus 11 umm twe chapter 12.
00:05:19
But.
Where the Lamb wants it was selected, was kept from the 10th day to the 14th day, and observed to see whether it was a suitable Lamb, and passed the qualifications necessary to be the Lamb that was slain. And in John the Lamb is presented particularly to us. And then we have, as the gospel progresses, the Lamb from the 10th to the 14th day is observed.
And found to be perfect as God's Lamb is suitable for the offering here in Isaiah 53.
The lamb is in their midst. Really, they don't recognize it. They don't see him as the one that God had provided for them. And so he grow. He grows up in the midst of a dry ground. There was a a land of no fruit for God.
And, uh, there was no beauty in him to the eye of those who were there. And, uh, so we thank God this afternoon that we can observe the land for our own heart, and that God, in his grace to us, has given us to see beauty in the Lamb, and to delight, as John the Baptist did, to behold him.
If there's anyone in this room that doesn't see in the Lord the Lamb.
It's because you're blind.
Not physically blind, but spiritually blind. And if you're spiritually blind, it's because of unbelief. The Word of God connects seeing with believing and blindness with unbelief. And so perhaps you don't see anything this afternoon in the wars as the Lamb. That's God's provision for your need. If that's the case, then a report is given to you and the question is, have you believed the report?
Well, if you don't believe the report, it's because you do not believe the testimony that God has given you concerning His land. And therefore there is and you're seeing. You don't see. And in fact, in John 9 where He's spoken of, it says your sin remains. That is, you might say, well, I don't believe that, I don't see that and so on. But it's just the evidence of blindness.
And so it's a wonderful thing to say, if necessary. Lord, help thou mine unbelief, that your eyes might be open, that you might see beauty and have your heart constrained by the person of God's Son, his Lamb.
First verse is mentioned in John chapter 12 which you're mentioning.
On verse 37, That though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him. The saying of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report, and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?
Therefore they could not believe because that Isaiah said again.
Here's a quote from the 6th chapter. He had blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts that they should not see with their eyes nor understand with their heart can be converted and I should heal them. These things set is this when he saw his glory and spake of him?
Serious to not see beauty in the Lord Jesus.
Blindness. Spiritual blindness.
00:10:01
We find when John the Baptist announced to this one was in the first chapter of John's Gospel that there for the most part there was a already a rejection and a blindness that is developed through the not only John's Gospel, but in all the gospel. But it is beautiful to see that when he made the announcement the second time, two of John's disciples who heard him, they turned and they beheld that beauty in the Lord Jesus.
They realize by faith who He was as the Lamb of God, and they turned from following John to follow the Lord Jesus.
And so how beautiful it is when the Lord Jesus is presented and there's a real work of faith and the opening of the eyes of the blind, as Dawn has said, then we find there are souls even today still being turned.
To the Lord Jesus, but it's interesting too, before he raises this question at the beginning of this chapter, and I almost suggested that we begin with the reading of the last three verses of the previous chapter. In fact, maybe you'll just allow me to read them because it might have been better if the chapter division had been at the end of the 12Th verse of the previous chapter because that's really where there's a perhaps a more proper break. But.
See that as it may, let me read verses 1314 and 15 of chapter 52. Behold, my servant shall deal prudently. He shall be extolled, and he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high. As many were astonished at these, his visage was so mired. More than any man, and his form more than the sons of man, so shall he sprinkle many nations.
The king shell shut their mouth at him for that which has had not been told them, shall they see, and that which they had not heard shall they consider. I'd like to just suggest here that we have something very beautiful in God's estimation of this one that is taken up in the 53rd chapter because He raises this question. Who has believed our report? And there's many multitudes today who haven't believed the report.
Israel as a nation didn't believe the report and rejected God's lamb. And to this day there's judicial blindness on the nation of Israel. But isn't it beautiful that God first of all, gives his estimation of his servant? And it's helpful when you go through Isaiah to find that when the servant is singular, it is almost always, uh, the Lord Jesus that is being referred to prophetically.
And so God gives his estimation in the opening verses of the 53rd chapter. We have man's estimation due to his rejection and spiritual blindness, and there's no beauty that we should desire him and so on.
But before we have that, God gives His view, because God always gives his view first of His Son, his servant, and the one who accomplished the work to His glory and satisfaction as the Lamb of God, the one who offered himself as the sweet savor. Brethren, God gives His estimation. And what does God say? There's a day coming when my son is going to be extolled. He's going to be very high. He's going to have his rightful place. The kings of the earth are going to stand in awe with closed mouths because of him.
God was looking on to the future day and he says in the mean time, he's the rejected one. In the meantime, there's few who believe the report, but there's a day coming when he's going to have his full exultation. And if I can just make this little suggestion too. And brother, and I don't want to be dogmatic about it, but in the 14th verse where we read of chapter 52 when it says his village was so mired more than any man, I want to make this little suggestion.
That perhaps this is not so much the physical sufferings of Christ that are being referred to here, but that a little illusion or hint of that which took place in those hours of darkness, where we will never understand what fell on the Lord Jesus. And I know that His back with the physical sufferings was plowed with. I know they beat His blessed face. I know that He wore a crown of thorns. I know they plucked the hairs of his cheek.
But I suggest that this statement is a little suggestion of that time when he came under the judgment of God, when God hid the face of the Lord Jesus from this world, when he dealt with his Son as to the question of sin. And I think it's so beautiful that it's brought in here at the beginning of this section of this portion in in the book of Isaiah. Because brethren, that's what our blessings are all based on. Is there gonna be blessings for the world in a future day?
00:15:24
Is God's Son gonna have his rightful place? Are we brought in the blessing now by grace and on the grounds of.
Putting our faith in the Lord Jesus and availing ourselves of the Lamb of God and His sacrificial work yet. But brethren, what is it all left on or what is it all based on? It's all based on those sufferings that took place in those hours of darkness. All the physical sufferings of Christ, as awful as they were and as good for us as it is to go over them. And tomorrow morning when we remember the Lord, it's good to go over those physical sufferings. But let's remember.
That the physical sufferings of Christ never atone for one sin. They're not the ground of our blessing or Israel's blessing or the blessing of the nations in the coming days. All blessing is based on those atoning sufferings. And so I suggest He brings them out here, looks on to the day of glory. Now he goes fast and raises this question, and now he's going to go over some of the sufferings of the Lord Jesus as well as that mighty sacrifice.
And I say, brother, it's good for our souls because it's the ground of every blessing we are possessed now and for all eternity.
Currently the nation of Israel is blinded, and so they don't see beauty in that blessed One. And you can talk to a Jew and point to the Scriptures and even read this passage of Scripture and their eyes are blinded to see him. But it's good to see here in this 53rd chapter, the context is really perhaps at his appearing that their eyes will be open, they will see him, and they will recognize him and their hearts will be touched, perhaps particularly in connection with the remnants here from.
Versus umm, maybe down umm.
Versus 5 down to the end. It's really, it speaks of, uh, brings in, uh, substitution there, I believe, uh, 10 times. And, uh, so you have it really in connection with the three words us or our or we. And so they see the Lord Jesus as having, uh, borne the judgment on their behalf as being the Lamb of God, their land. They didn't recognize him as their land, but now they recognize him as their land. And so in Zechariah chapter 14.
Is perhaps when they see him then they will recognize him in verse four. His speech shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst of toward the east and the West.
He will appear, He will be manifested, and they will recognize him by the grace of God.
A wonderful contrast in verse two. He should grow up before him as a tender plant. And then when we shall see him?
Well, how wonderful thing, brethren, that.
He wasn't unseen to the eye of his God, his Father, and so the Lord Jesus.
From the moment of if I could put it as to his incarnation for the moment of his birth to the moment of his death, the Father looked upon him with intense delight and appreciation. And he grew up before him as a tender plant and as a root. The ground was dry, Uh.
There was no fruit for God from that ground until that plant was planted there. And then for the first time God could look upon that land and say, now I see, I see a root from which there will be fruit for myself. And so in a prophetic sense, actually the this section of Isaiah begins in the 49th chapter where God.
Looks upon him as the one and from Isaiah 40 to 49, the people are charged with idolatry and, uh, they had idols instead of the true God, and consequently there was nothing, no fruit for God from them. But then as we have when the Lord says in John, I'm the true vine, and my father is the husband. And in the 49th of.
00:20:10
Isaiah and on through this section, he replaces, he becomes the true vine of Israel. He becomes the one that grows up as the tender plant before his God. And uh, all that then identify and become part of him, become part of the fruit for God that could not be found from the nation prior to that. And so from the very beginning, at least while man didn't see it.
The one that mattered, if you will. God looked upon him and enjoyed his growing up as a tender plant before his holy eye.
As a root out of dry ground, there was nothing in this world to sustain him, was it? And it was really that sense of his Father's favor that really sustained him. In fact, when it says in John's Gospel chapter one.
We beheld His glory, glory as of an only begotten with the Father. They looked at Him, and there was a man who lived, not for any earthly reason, but because there was one who lived ever in the sense that his Father's love, his Father's eye was upon him. That's what sustained him.
All the way through his life down here.
He was a rude head of a dry ground. Nothing down here sustained him in that position.
And it says He has no form nor comeliness when we shall see him. There is no beauty that we should desire him.
There is nothing in him, naturally, that particularly attracted people.
Remember 1 brother commenting on it if you would have seen Jesus and his 12 disciples passing by.
You would not know who Jesus was in that mix. There was 313 men going by. There was nothing that marked him outwardly to the crowd. They saw no beauty in him and they talked about him. They said we know him. He's the Carpenter.
We know his brothers and sisters. They saw in him nothing more than a normal person down here.
But oh, so much more there was to His glorious person.
So there were perhaps three reasons that they if they rejected the Lord Jesus when he was here, that is the nation of Israel for the Jewish people. One was because he didn't come from a distinguished family. He came from a poor family, as you say, raised in a Carpenter shop in Nazareth. Can anything good thing come out of Nazareth? The question is raised there in John chapter one. And so he came from an undistinguished and poor family.
He then, as Bob said, he lacked as they would, we would say worldly pomp and glory as he walked about. There was nothing to distinguish him. Usually when we see an artist's depiction of the Lord Jesus and his pathway here, there's some glow or some light around him, something that would distinguish him from other men. But as you say, that wasn't true. And then there was spiritual blindness. And so those three things combined.
There was they saw no beauty in him. But isn't it beautiful, brother, that to the eye of faith, as it says in Psalm 45, verse two, thou art fairer than the children of men. Thus the eye of faith. And isn't it wonderful to consider?
That's for you and for me. This afternoon, by a work of grace and grace alone, our eyes have been open to see beauty in the Lord Jesus. And there were those two in the days of the Lord Jesus, weren't there? There were those whose eyes were opened by faith to see beauty in the Lord Jesus and to see beyond the fact that I want to use this expression very reverently and carefully, but beyond the fact that He was more than just another man.
He was more than just another man. He was God manifest in the flesh. He was the Son of God. And we were talking about God's estimation, and Don was talking about the Lord Jesus growing up as a tender plant before the eye of God. And isn't that why the heavens opened on different occasions? And heaven delighted to look down at that object walking in this world. God the Father delighted to gaze down at his beloved Son.
00:25:21
And a voice declare, this is my beloved Son, hear him. This is the one in whom I'm well pleased and so on. That was not man's estimation of the Lord Jesus. That was God the Father's estimation of the tender, tender plant. But there were those weren't there who did see, as I say, beauty in the Lord Jesus. And there are those today by grace, brethren, and it's only by grace. We believe the report, we believe the gospel.
The gospel is going to go forth tonight, God willing, and we trust that the Spirit of God will work and eyes will be opened.
By faith, by grace to see beauty in the Lord Jesus. The work is still going on, but for the most part, men even today do not. They're blinded. And especially the nation of Israel, as Brother Robert said, just repeat for three reasons. There he was from a poor and undistinguished family. There was no worldly pomp or glory about his demeanor or his person as he walked here in this world. And there was spiritual blindness. And that veil is on the hearts of Israel, of the nation of Israel to this very day.
And won't be removed until a coming day when he removes it and they do recognize who this one was that they flew.
His Godhead glory was veiled with a human form, wasn't it? That's why it says in the book of Hebrews.
Speaks about the veil, which is to say his flesh, so as they looked at him to just another man.
But there were times when the.
Glory shone through that human veil when He stood in the boat and calmed the winds and their waves. And even the disciples said, What man is this? Didn't they know who he was? But brethren, do we really know who He is? Do we grasp the tremendous glory of His person? And then when He was, when they were coming to take him and to bind Him?
And he says, Whom seek ye say Jesus of Nazareth. He says, I am. It went back and fell to the ground. His God had glory that shone through that human veil. But there was another glory that could not be head, brethren, and it was His moral glory. It could no He could be no less than he was the perfect Son of God.
And so as he spoke to the scribes and the Pharisees, the doctors of the law.
Often marveled at how lawyers are so great in taking your words and tripping you up and making you contradict yourself and making you say what you didn't even ever mean to say. They're experts at that.
But when they surrounded Jesus, they could never trip him up. He was a completely perfect man, morally perfect, and they always went away confounded. That was his moral glory, shining that could not be hit.
It's a common saying. We all, most all of us know it. Among men, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
And often beauty, seen or not seen is a reflection on the not the person that's being viewed, but the person that's viewing.
And it's so true with respect to the Lord Jesus. When beauty is not seen in His person, it's a reflection on the viewer, not on himself.
And so when the Lord Jesus was here and man saw him, there were evidences that man recognized him. Even though some said is not this the Carpenter or the carpenter's son? There are others that when they went, the soldiers went to take him. They said never man spike like this man. When Pilot examined him, even as a human judge, he said he's innocent. He recognized the motivation of those that have brought him to him. And they said.
00:30:07
Well, I know they brought him here to me for envy. And isn't it true even among men? Take a very beautiful young woman, perhaps among her peers, what is the natural tendency? Send me, Why am I not that? And so on. And, uh, the reason?
Able slew his brother Cain was because.
He saw in Cain righteousness and recognized in himself by contrast, evil. And so thank you Cain and Abel. And so Cain slew Abel because Cain's works were righteous, enables, I'm sorry, evil and.
Abel's were righteous.
So it was with Lord Jesus. The lack of seeing beauty in Himself was a reflection on the sinful condition of man. And God enables us to see beauty in him because He has given us a life.
That loves that beauty. He has given us the eternal life, His own, the life of the Son. And so when we see that love in Himself, we have a nature now that is attracted to it, rejoices in it when we see the Lord Jesus to our souls.
Our our lives respond to it and are constrained by it, but it's not the life of nature.
That life says away with this, we will not have this man among us that God has given us to see beauty in them, because we by the grace of God have put faith in the Lord Jesus and have received the life and we look at them and we say, can't have enough of that. I want that forever. And so the apostle Paul expresses what we trust would become fully practically the desire of our own hearts too, to have him.
I want more.
If we could look back a little bit further in chapter 52 we get a little phrase I think adds dimension to chapter 53, Isaiah 52 and verse 10. The Lord has made bare His.
Holy heart, Isaiah 53 begins to lead our report. To whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?
Isaiah 52.
His holding arm. The Lord Jesus was down here. He was incomprehensible to his own people because though they professed holiness, they didn't understand or appreciate it.
And that was his strength, His Holiness.
God had given a report in the Old Testament times, and by his word by his prophets as to the person of the Lord, and how they were to recognize him. And it says in Deuteronomy chapter 18 and verse 18, it says, I will raise them up a prophet among their brethren, from among their brethren like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.
And it shall come to pass that whosoever will not hearken under my words, which he shall speak in my name, I will required of him. And so God had given a faithful re record, a report, and by the prophets have spoken of, uh, this man. And uh, he had desired to give that written record and speak to his people that they might receive it. And so it is today we have a written report, a record from God himself that's accurate and faithful as to the deity of the Lord his.
Holiness, as you say, and umm, the perfection of his holy work and this work of substitution. And so those that are umm, uh, in that day of, uh, his appearing, the remnant that, uh, hearers word and has heard his word and believed his word, those are the ones they're going to recognize him. And so on the day that we live now, those that do recognize the Lord Jesus as the faithful one, the Lamb of God are the ones that believe his word, believe his record, believe his report.
And so we have the Word of God.
00:35:01
It's a serious thing to set aside any portion of the word of God and say I don't want to believe that.
I'll just see you now first John 5.
That he had to believe. It's not the record that God has given.
His son makes God a liar and I don't think people maybe think of it and have respect but if I don't accept.
What you are telling me, I see, I don't believe it. That is making you a liar. That's really what I'm doing to you. I'm making you a liar. And that's very serious to think about and make God alive. You know, it tells us more than once that.
It's impossible.
Prasad a lot.
Now that which is.
Not possible with men.
Tells us that it is possible to lift up God. All things are possible. But it does also say that it is possible for God to lie.
So God has given the record concerning His Son and this book that we hold in our hand.
And how important it is to test it.
As the truth of God.
As those girls said, God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.
I was thinking of the beauty of Dan, you know, speaks and sounds about how the duty of man, it vanishes the way I believe it's Psalm 39, not the statement.
139 and verse 11.
When Tau with rebuked the correct land for inequity, thou maketh his beauty to consume a way like more.
Early every man Hispanic.
We see the contrast in the Lord Jesus.
You never needed to be corrected.
Even his thoughts were in perfect harmony with the will of God. You could say if I do all these those things that please the following.
And so rather than this beauty consuming away, you know, like a garment.
I can put a nice suit and close into the closet and for a time perhaps it looks very good, but I can come back sometime later and find out that it's been attacked by law.
And the beauty isn't there any longer in that particular.
To the close.
You know that's how it is with NAND. NAND at first. Apparently they have a very.
Attractive.
Appearance about you and even morally you might think that so and so is a very wonderful person, but the fact is in time you're gonna see failure. There will be shortcomings and access characteristic of the first man, the first atom. You know he was a failure and everyone part of his race has failed since. But how wonderful the contest in the last Adam is the Lord Jesus Christ.
And truly, it could be said of hints that that it is altogether low.
What a path you had to go to the cross.
Verse three. Think of this man, this Lamb of God.
Was there encouragement?
Go on to the end.
Even though she loved him, even those who said and recognized as God and were in their measure of comfort to the soul. He could say to them when he was facing the last Passover and he wanted them to partake of it with him. He said ye are they which have continued with me and appreciated it in his soul, but his general path in verse 3.
Was a difficult, very difficult one. Umm, he says. He's despised what I want. What a thing to go through life despise.
00:40:08
I misunderstood, rejected, or let alone of men. Leave that man alone. Let him go his own way, as it were. He was a man who constantly faced the sorrows of life and felt it as none other man did.
We know what pain and suffering is, but nobody has suffered pain and suffering as he did.
Our senses to it are in measured dolls, but his were not.
This will not uh, the greater love a person has, the greater capacity they have to suffer. Is love exceeded any and exceeds any of ours? Sometimes we can only take so much and we sort of back away from it. Even at the cross he refused the medication or the cheap wine that they wanted to give him the dollar census.
He's he's Wanda. He's one to worship.
Man of Sorrows.
And acquainted with grief.
With a commentary of his pathway down here.
And it's been mentioned at times that you never find the Lord Jesus laughing in Scripture.
There was one time that it mentions he rejoiced in spirit.
But as he passed through this world and saw the misery, the degradation that sin had.
Done through the whole creation. Just think of a brethren when man was created. In the beginning they lived up to 900 and some years old. Today we hardly can get up to 100. Whatever has happened to this creation?
Sin has degraded the whole thing to a place where not what God had in mind when He created it. And as he passed through, you find him groaning in spirit, deeply moved because it was not what he had in mind. To see the suffering, the sin. And brethren, as we pass through the world too today, we need to have God's thoughts about it all.
You think of the awful suffering in other parts of the world.
Children dying of hunger and bombs blowing up mothers and children.
Can we do anything less than grown? Is this what God had in mind? How can it be? No wonder the Son of God passed through this world. He was a man of sorrows.
And acquainted with grief.
He came under his own and his own received him not, it says in John's Gospel chapter one, but here he's despised and rejected of men. And so in verse two it says that there's no form nor comeliness or nor lordliness, and he didn't come and pomp and great glory as a king. But then here in verse three, he's rejected. He's left alone of many of the Darby translates it. And so he really wasn't a part of the inner circle.
As it were, He came unto His own, His own refuge of God, and the One whom they should have recognized and received, why they wanted to have nothing to do with them. And so how his heart must have been, uh, broken at the thought of those that He loved and came to bless, and those that were of the highest.
Order of society, you might say, those that were in the chief principal places of ruling among the people.
They, uh, sought with envy to uh, keep anything, any of the people from believing on him. They desired in their envy and their hatred, to umm, ostracize him. And so he was left alone of men.
3061.
Can you repeat that 261?
00:45:18
The Holy.
Water.
Don't stand God's name.
And all rise.
Peace
Gospel—J. Hyland
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.
Let's begin the Gospel meeting with hymn #9 on the Gospel hymn sheet from every soul by sin of prep. There's mercy with the Lord and He will surely give you rest by trusting in His word. Let's stand and sing this number 9 and if someone will please start it.
We will save you now.
May drive and all the way to the ground.
And.
Pay What's the name of you?
And save you now.
In hand with all delayed you are.
41.
08 God began all day, Christine all Day.
Umm.
Turn with me first of all in our Bibles this evening to the Book of Ezra.
As for Chapter 7.
00:05:05
Ezra Chapter 7 and I want to read the last clause of verse 12.
Perfect Peace. And at such a time, before I comment on this, I'd like to read another portion. It's in Luke's Gospel chapter 2.
Luke's Gospel, chapter 2 and verse 13.
And suddenly there was with the Angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts, praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace, goodwill toward men. I have it on my heart this evening, and seeking to present us simply and clearly as possible from the word of God.
To look at some scriptures that bring before us the subject of peace, you know peace is on everyone's mind today. Just this past week, there were peace talks took place in Washington and.
The Prime Minister of.
Egypt was there or Israel, I'm sorry.
The Palestinian leader was there. Egypt is later on going to get involved. the United States, of course, were the ones that invited these parties to the table. And peace, peace talks and summits and negotiations have been going on for years and years in connection with the Middle East and in other parts of the world. But, you know, I thought of this verse as I heard about these peace talks this week. I thought about this verse in the book of Ezra.
Perfect peace. And at such a time, and yet you say, how can this verse be true at such a time as we are in the history of this world, How can someone get up and talk about perfect peace?
Before I explain a little bit as to how we can do that, I want to just read just some statistics. And even if these statistics are somewhat accurate, they show that there is very little, if any, piece in this world, nor has there really been peace for many, many centuries and millenniums. Just listen to these statistics. These are statistics put out by the Society of international law.
In London.
And they say that in the last 4000 years of man's history there have been simp only 286 years of peace and that in those 4000 years there are has been an estimated some 3.64 billion people killed in various wars and skirmishes. They also say that in the last 300 years.
There have been 286 wars in Europe alone.
In recorded history there has only been peace 80% of the time and that over 8000 peace treaties have been made and broken. Not very promising statistics are they? I remember 2/1 Time being in Flanders fields on the border of Belgium and France and as we all know there are thousands of thousands of people buried in Flanders fields.
You drive around those graveyards and there are gravestones as far as the eye can see.
I've stood at the meningitis where there are 56,000 names engraved on stone tablets of men and women that were never found to bury in Flanders fields.
But I remember going to a museum in that area called Deadlines. When I went to that museum three or four years ago, it had just opened and it is a very sober look at the two great wars that took place in Europe.
The First and Second World War. But what impressed me most was just before you leave that museum, there's a monitor, and there is a scroll of dates on that monitor, a continuous scroll of dates and wars that have taken place since the last World War. And I stood there and watched those dates. Now, some of those wars were small wars, civil wars in various places.
Other of those wars, if I were to speak of them tonight, many of us would remember when those wars took place and they were perhaps more significant and so on. But what impressed me was as I watched those dates scroll by, there has hardly been a year since the last World war that there hasn't been some conflict, large or small, at some point, somewhere in this world. There is no peace in this world outwardly tonight.
00:10:31
And yet Ezra says here, perfect peace. And at such a time, and we're going to go on with the Lord's help. And as we look at various scriptures, we're going to see how well there is no peace in this world outwardly. Yet tonight we can preach a message of peace, a piece of in an inward peace and peace with God, and peace as to the future, and how the uncertainties of life can be erased in a moment.
By coming to know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior. And so I read here in Luke chapter 2.
And here again, we might wonder. We might ponder as we read these words.
Spoken by the angels at the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ as they announced to the shepherds this wonderful news that the Lord Jesus had been born in Bethlehem, that the Creator of the universe had come an incarnation into this world and was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laying in a Manger. And as they announced this good news, heaven breaks out with this wonderful announcement. Peace on earth.
Goodwill toward men. But you say, Jim, how does this go along with what you have just told us, the statistics that you have just read, what we see and read in the news every day. Well, you know, again, there will be no peace in this world until the Prince of Peace comes back. Because if we were to go on in the Gospels and we will mention certain things as we look at certain scriptures.
The one who lay in Bethlehem's Manger, the Prince of Peace himself come down to earth. He was rejected. He was eventually taken out and nailed to a Roman cross. They set away with him, away with him, crucify him. They sent a messenger after him saying, We will not have this man to reign over us, and that is why there is no peace in this world tonight. They chose Barabbas over the Prince of Peace, a man who was characterized by three things.
He was a robber, he was a thief, and he was on trial for sedition or insurrection, which as we know is rebellion against authority. And what do we find today? Violence and corruption and rebellion against authority not only practiced, it's all we've been practiced from the Garden of Eden down. But it is preached and glorified, and it has become full blown since the Prince of Peace was rejected, and not until the sun of righteousness rises with healing in his wings.
Will there be peace for this earth? But you know what the messy agenda there, What a sad message we would have to proclaim. But you know, in Isaiah 54, it speaks of those who proclaim good tidings and peace. And that's what we have to proclaim tonight. We have good tidings. We have the gospel to present, and we have a message of peace. We're not going to preach World Peace here tonight.
But we're going to preach peace. And so with this in mind, I'd like to go to a further scripture and it's in the book of Job.
Job, Chapter 22.
Job, Chapter 22.
And verse 21.
A point now thyself with him.
And be at peace. You know tonight peace is not found in peace talks and summits and negotiations. Peace is not found in signing treaties that are not worth no more than the paper on which they are printed. No peace tonight in connection with the gospel is found in a person a point now thyself with him.
And be at peace. Who is the hymn that is referred to here?
00:15:04
Well, Job perhaps didn't have the understanding that we have because he didn't know the Lord Jesus as the Son revealed an incarnation the way we do tonight, but all for our purposes tonight. The hymn is the Lord Jesus Christ because he is the only one who can give true and lasting peace. Now I want to make it very clear that we're not again, we're not talking about outward peace.
Even in the circumstances of our lives, I'm not going to stand here and tell you if you receive the Lord Jesus as your savior, that you're going to have everything become peaceful and happy in your life. I'm not going to tell you it's all going to be smooth sailing from here out. But what I'm talking about again is an inward peace in your soul. Oh, you know, the storms of this life do rage.
The world is getting worse and worse as it sweeps on to judgment.
But you know, peace is not found in the absence of adverse circumstances.
It's found in the presence of God and his Son, the Lord Jesus. It comes from knowing God as our Father.
It comes from knowing the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior. I'm going to repeat a little illustration that's often been used in this regard, but I've enjoyed it. I've had opportunity to visit some of the great art galleries of Europe. I'm very interested in art, and I've had opportunity to visit some of those galleries and see the paintings of the Old Masters. And I have never seen this painting of which I'm going to refer, to which I'm going to refer.
But you know, I am told from history that many years ago in Europe there was an art contest.
Put out to some of the great artists of Europe and there was a reward for the person, the artist who would depict best the subject of peace on canvas. And we're told from history that many artists took up the challenge of that contest, took paint and brushes and put set to work to paint what they felt best depicted piece.
And when the day came of the exhibition and the judging and those paintings were unveiled, there were some beautiful paintings.
Of some very tranquil scenes, fields of tranquility.
Animals grazing quietly in green pastures, calm seas and beautiful sunsets. But none of those paintings were chosen by the judges as the best depiction of peace.
The painting that was chosen, believe it or not, was a painting of a waterfall cascading hundreds of feet over a precipice. And if they say it was so well depicted, you can almost hear the roar of that water as it crashed to the rocks below.
But out in front of that waterfall from the bank was the branch of a tree, and on the very end of that branch.
There was a bird's nest with a bird sitting quietly on her eggs. There in the front of that falls, with the roar of the falls in her ears, she could sit there resting in her creator, so to speak. And there on her eggs she sat in perfect calm and peace. You know, the small things of creation often teach us, doth not nature itself teach us? And the artists had depicted it in this way.
And the judges felt that this was probably the best description of peace of any of those paintings. And that's why I say it's not in the absence of difficult circumstances. It's not in making a peace treaties and having cease fires and all that. No, it's found in a person. It's the trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you don't know the Lord Jesus, my prayer is that tonight you would take these words to heart, these words spoken by Elizabeth.
A life has so long ago in the years of Job, a point now thyself with him and be at peace. You know when we present the gospel, we don't present social reform. We don't present reformation. It's not simply theology. No, what we present or who we present is a person, and to know that person is to have true and lasting peace. I'd like to develop this a little bit by going to the book of Romans for another scripture.
00:20:15
Romans chapter 5.
Romans chapter 5 and verse one.
Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Well, here we it speaks of being justified by faith, and those who are justified by faith, they have peace with God. Perhaps you've heard it. I've heard it many times. The question raised, have you made your peace with God? You know, I could never make peace with God, but I don't have to make peace with God tonight because the Lord Jesus has done it for me and to come in simple faith.
To trust in the work of Calvary, to trust in the Lord Jesus, is what is going to give peace Tonight you remember the story of the Philippian jailer in Acts chapter 16, And there we find him in that jail. He'd fallen asleep and there was a great earthquake that shook that jail. And there were two missionaries in that jail that had previously been locked there, and after they had been beaten and ill treated. And that Philippian jailer, when he woke up, his heart was troubled.
He was afraid, he was scared and he came in and says he came in trembling.
There was number peace in his soul, but you know, there was a gospel message presented to him on the cold, damp floor of that dungeon that night. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. And oh, tonight it is faith. It's believing. It's simply to trust in the Lord Jesus.
You know, I watch people.
As they hurry to and fro, especially at the airports.
And I watched their faces, because what has struck me in recent time is the fear.
That's written on people's faces as they hurry to and fro, as they conduct their business, as they're shuffled around this planet. You can tell by the very look in their face, on their faces, the very fear in their eyes that men's hearts are failing them for fear and looking for those things that are coming on the earth, and that there is no peace in their souls that they have troubled hearts.
But all the remedy, I say.
Is the Lord Jesus Christ being justified by faith We have peace.
With God, you know, some of us in this room have opportunity on occasion to go to countries where something other than the true God, or someone other than the true God and his Son is considered our worshipped. And you know, it's a very sad thing to go to a country in an area of the world where they bow down to idols of wood and stone and other commodities. It's a very sad thing to to hear people wail out their hearts.
To someone who is in the tomb, someone who is in the grave.
There's no peace. And what has struck me in visiting some of these places is to realize that people are trying their whole life to appease their gods or their gods. They're trying to make peace. And yet I suppose, having spent their life trying to make peace with their God or their gods, they realize deep down.
Let's say cannot, cannot do it. Recently some of us in this room stood at the three great pyramids in the Giza desert. And you know, those pyramids are the burying places of some of the great Pharaohs that ruled in Egypt in the glorious days of that nation. And you know, those Pharaohs and those of their day, they spent their whole lifetime trying to prepare for the next life, trying to make put things in order. So hopefully.
Peace was made with their gods. Were they able to do it? Oh, no, Oh no. They left great monuments behind. You know, the Great Pyramids are the only one of the Seven World wonders of the world that are still standing today. There they are as a monument to a glorious time in the history of the Egyptians. But where are those Pharaohs who were buried in those tombs? Oh, if they didn't know the true God.
00:25:11
They're in a lost eternity. They may have spent all their time and gone to great lengths and great wealth to try to prepare for the next life, but if they didn't know the true God, how misconstrued their efforts are and were. I was reminded recently of a story about a man, a doctor, who was born in Scotland on May 13th 1839.
His name was William Patton McKay and he was brought up in a Christian home.
He, like many here, had a mother who prayed for him daily and constantly. But you know, as he hit the teen years, he shook all that off. He decided that Christianity in the Bible wasn't for him.
And at 17 years of age, he finally left home to go off to university.
But before he left home, his mother gave him a Bible, and in the front of that Bible she inscribed his name, a verse of Scripture, and put from love with love from mother. She took that Bible in his luggage as he laughed. But William McKay had no time for the things of God or God's word, and when he got to university, he began to live like the prodigal son with riotous living.
But he was a very brilliant young man, and he kept up his studies even though he'd go out on drunken brawls on the weekend. He lived fast and free, as we would say. And finally, to get some more money for another binge, he sold the Bible that his mother had given him.
As the years went by, he did very well in his studies and he graduated with honors and he became a very famous surgeon.
In Scotland, his thrill was when the ambulance pulled up in front of the emergency door to be able to take a patient that others had given up on, an accident victim that others had given up on and bring that person back and uh, restore them to health and and so on. And he became very famous for his ability to do just that, cases that everybody threw up their hands and said they were lost.
William McKay would often be able to pull them through.
But one day they brought in an accident victim and as William McKay assessed his victim, he realized that this man wasn't going to make it. And the patient finally said to him, he said, doctor, what's the prognosis? And William McKay, he'd become very hardened to these cases. He just shrugged And he said, oh, you'll you'll make it OK.
The man said no, I want to know the truth. Is this a life and death situation? Because Doctor, I have peace and I'm ready to go.
Those words really struck home to William McKay and after a hesitation, he said. Well Sir, he said. I'm afraid you have it best 3 hours to live.
A perfect a look of perfect peace came over that man's face. He said That's OK, doctor, and he repeated his statement. I have peace.
And I'm ready to go.
As hardened as William McKay had become to life and to these cases, he felt a little softened. And as he was about to leave the room, he turned back and he said, is there something I can do for you in your dying moments?
The man said yes, as a matter of fact, there is something you can do in my jacket pocket, there's my last paycheck and he said I wish you would have it delivered to my landlady. And he gave the address.
He said I I owe her for my, uh, my rent. And he said whoever you send to take the check to the landlady, if they would simply say to her, can you send him the book? I would appreciate it. Doctor McKay said. What book? Oh, he said the landlady will understand the the, the request. Well, Doctor McKay made arrangements for someone to go from the hospital with the paycheck to the landlady and to ask for the book.
Doctor McKay went on on other floors of the hospital to make his rounds to other patients, but he couldn't get the words out of his mind. Doctor, I have peace and I'm ready to go. He kept thinking about this patient and finally when his rounds were completed, he went back to the emergency floor and he met the nurse who had helped him attend to the patient a few hours earlier. And he said to the nurse, he said, what about my patient?
00:30:20
Did he get what he wanted? She said. Yes, he did get what he wanted, but he died a few minutes ago.
Doctor McKay said What was the book that he wanted? Was it a bank book or something like that? She said. Well, it's still under his pillow. Why don't you go in and see?
Well, Doctor McKay went into the room and he reached under the pillow.
And he pulled out a book, all right.
He pulled out a Bible.
And as he pulled out that Bible and looked at it, it fell open.
And in the flyleaf he saw his name and the verse his mother had written there so many years before with love to her son. And God used it to strike his conscience. And he took that Bible under his arm, and just as fast as he could go without looking conspicuous, he made his way up to his private office several floors above, and he fell on his knees with that Bible in front of him.
And he turned to the Lord Jesus Christ, and he found that inward peace that he had never found.
In the fast life he had lived, or in the ability to heal so many who had come in with seemingly hopeless cases.
And the first thing he did was to call his mother, who thanked God was still living, and got the news that her prayers had been answered and that the Bible she had given him so many years before had been used by God to convict him of his need, bring him to his knees.
And bring him to the Savior, you know, William McKay wrote one hymn that we know of.
And this is the hymn. We praise thee, O God, for the Son of thy love for Jesus, who died and is now gone above. Hallelujah, Thine the glory. Hallelujah. Amen. Hallelujah, Thine the glory. Amen and Amen. What a hymn for a man to write who for so many years had run from God without peace in his soul, but saw a man dying with perfect peace.
And realized that he had something that he didn't have. What would you do if you were on that hospital bed this evening? Would you be able to say I have perfect peace and I'm ready to go?
Serious question, isn't it? I'm going to tell another little story before we pass on.
Not a farmer, some years ago on the East Coast of California of the United States.
The New England coast. And this farmer farmed a tract of land that was very open to the storms that rage sometimes along the East Coast of the United States. We've all heard about Hurricane Earl this week and how Hurricane Earl has been coming up the East Coast of the United States. And this farmer farm this tract of land and he found it very hard to keep a hired hand because when the storms raged, it became.
So difficult to keep things in order and keep things battened down and the doors bolted and so on, that fired hands would come and go, and they were very hard to retain. And so one time this man, he needed another hired hand, and he put an ad in a local paper, and he got several answers to that ad, but none of the ones that answered this ad and that he interviewed seem suitable.
And many of them, when they realized the situation, they weren't willing to stay anyway until one man came into his house. He seemed a little bit like an unlikely choice for a hired farm hand, but he interviewed him, the farmer interviewed him and explained the situation. And this man, this potential farmhand, gave a very, very strange reason why he felt he could take the job.
He said, Sir, I can always sleep while the wind blows all but, the farmer said there's some ferocious winds that blow along this part of the New England coast. He said, Sir, I can always sleep while the wind blows. Well, the farmer thought this was a rather strange response, but he was desperate for a hired hand and so he decided to try him out. And this hired hand proved fairly efficient. And then one night.
00:35:11
The wind began to blow. A storm raged along the coast and over that farmland.
And the farmer heard his windows rattle. He felt the building shake.
And he got up and he went outside, and he came and banged on the door of the hired hand. And he was appalled to find that his hired hand was sound asleep. He went inside. He shook him in his bed. He said to him, Don't you know there's a storm raging.
The hard hand opened his eyes and looked into the face of his employer and said, Sir, I told you I can always sleep while the wind blows.
The farmer thought he should fire fire him right on the spot, but.
He decided instead to hurry outside and see what he could do to secure what possessions he felt might be left and get in, what animals might have not yet blown away with the storm. And as he went out and around the farm, he was surprised to find that there were tarts over the haystacks. And they were secure, very secure. The chickens were in the chicken coop, the cattle were in the barn, the horses were in their stable, The barn doors were were were barred, the windows were shuttered tight.
And the farmer realized what the man had meant, that when a storm was approaching, he didn't wait until the storm hit, that he made preparation and enduring that storm, that hired hand, unlike the farmer himself, could sleep in perfect peace knowing that he had made the proper preparations. And I think you see what we're trying to say very quickly. Are you ready tonight? Do you have peace with God? There's a storm of judgment coming on this world.
You know, the condition of things we see in this world tonight is not going to get any better.
I don't put any stock in the peace talks that they had this past week in Washington, DC. In fact, if you listen to the report of those peace talks, it sounds very iffy and flimsy at best. And I doubt there was much accomplished, even though there was great expense to bring these leaders together. And things are only going to get worse. And it's going to end with a storm of judgment over this world, like this world has never seen nor can they even anticipate.
But are we ready for that storm? You can have perfect peace tonight, as we said, by knowing the Lord Jesus as your savior. I'd like to read a further verse in the Book of Colossians.
Colossians Chapter One.
Colossians, Chapter one and verse 19.
For it please the Father, that in him should all fullness dwell, and having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself, by him I say, whether they be things on earth.
Are things in heaven? I read this portion because I want distress for a few moments. The value of the blood of Christ. You know again, we could never make peace with God. But the Lord Jesus went to Calvary's cross, and there he lay down his life. He could say, I have glorified thee on the earth. I have finished the work that thou gavest me to do. We sang a hymn at the beginning of these meetings.
This afternoon.
God is satisfied with Jesus. We are satisfied as well.
And I know there are just so many here this evening who are trusting in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Who have availed themselves of that precious blood. And so here we find he's made peace.
Through the blood of His cross. Because God has taught mankind from the very beginning that if there's going to be blessing and if there's going to be peace in the soul, it must be based on the death and the shedding of the blood of an innocent victim. That's what all those sacrifices showed in the Old Testament. When I see the blood, I will pass over you, he said to the children of Israel the night they were going to leave Egypt after the destroyer had passed.
Through the land. And so he's made peace through the blood of his cross.
You know, over the history of mankind there have been a number of summits or parliaments held UH in connection with the great religions so-called of this world. But one of the most notable was held, I believe in the city of Chicago in 1893, and they say at that parliament there was hardly a Western religion and Eastern cult that wasn't represented there.
00:40:25
And for days different leaders of those religions and cults presented their case presented their religions and why they felt there was virtue in what they vote what they believed. There was a Christian man name was Doctor Joseph Cook who attended that summit that parliament and he waited till the last day of that summit and till he was the last speaker and he arose and.
He addressed the audience and he used Lady Macbeth from Shakespeare's play Macbeth as his example.
And those relie those leaders from around the world. Most of them would have been familiar with Shakespeare's writings. I grew up in Canada, where we studied a lot of Shakespeare and I enjoyed English and literature and took extra classes in it. And we read a lot of Shakespeare. And I enjoyed Shakespeare from a literary standpoint, and especially his play on Macbeth.
But there is a lady there, Lady Macbeth, Macbeth's wife, and she had blood stains on her hands.
Not literal blood stains, but she had the stain of murder on her hand, on her conscience. And Joseph Cook. Doctor Joseph Cook, When he stood up and addressed that audience he drew from Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth, he said, I have a lady to present to you, Lady Macbeth, and she has blood stains on her hand, and those blood stains are troubling her conscience day and night. They're driving her mad.
Now who? Who has the remedy? Who in the audience can offer Lady Macbeth peace? Whose religion can get rid of that blood stain on her hand and give her conscience peace? They say. There was dead silence in that large audience. He waited to see Who would dare to stand up, but no one did. All those religions and cults were dumb.
In the face of such a case.
Doctor Joseph Cook looked heavenward. He said. I'm going to call witnesses.
The Apostle Paul.
In whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sin.
Let's call another one the Apostle Peter, redeemed not with corruptible things as silver and gold, but with the precious blood.
Of Christ. How about a third witness, the Apostle John. The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin.
You know it is only the blood of Christ tonight that can cleanse away sin.
It's only the blood of Christ that can give you a purged conscience tonight.
It's only the blood of Christ that can make you comfortable in the presence of God and fit for the presence of God.
It is only the blood of Christ tonight that can give you title to heaven.
You know, there's a day coming when multitudes, thousands, times 10, thousands and thousands of thousands are going to be gathered in heaven and they're going to sing. And what are they going to sing about? They're going to sing about the blood of Christ. They're going to sing about the blood of the lamb that has redeemed out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation. What a day that's going to be. And again, I know there's just so many here who are going to join in that song.
But all tonight the question is, has the blood of Jesus taken care of your sins? If the blood of the Lord Jesus has not taken care of your sins tonight, you are still lost. You are on your way to hell.
And you have no peace, you say, Jim, you, How do you know that? You can't see into my heart. No, I can't see into your heart. But I know if you don't have the blood of Christ, you don't have peace. I do know that because there is no other peace. There's no other inward peace tonight than knowing the Lord Jesus and the value, the cleansing value of the precious blood of the Lord Jesus, you say. How do you know blood cleanses sin?
00:45:16
I can't tell you how blood cleanses sin, but I know it does. I've experienced it in my own life.
For almost 50 years I've known the cleansing power.
Of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it gives me a thrill every time I hear.
Of the blood of Jesus. It gives me a thrill every time we talk about the Lamb of God.
Who takes away the sin of the world? Does that give your soul a thrill? Does that give your heart a thrill tonight? If it doesn't all tonight, God loves you. The Lord Jesus died on Calvary's cross. He gave his life. He shared his precious blood. And God is commanding his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. The Lord Jesus loves you. I delight to echo with the Apostle Paul.
The Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
Can you truly say that if you can, you have that inward lasting peace?
But let's go on to another portion in the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 13.
Hebrews chapter 13 and verse 20. Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus.
That great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do His His will. Well, I read this because I want to speak for a moment of peace in connection with the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what we have here. We have the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, because we've spoken of the death of Christ.
How important when we present the gospel to stress the death of Christ Because with the the wages of sin is death. And the Lord Jesus has died on Calvary's cross. He's died for my sins. I trust you can say he's died for your sins. The Lord Jesus shed his blood. He's made peace through the blood of his cross. But you know there's something else too. So wonderful. And that is the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
You know again when you go to other countries where they bow down to dumb idols or they pray to someone who's in the tomb? Oh, what a sad, pitiful thing it is if you ever heard people wail out their hearts at the hour of prayer.
And pray to someone who's dead, you'll know what I'm talking about. It's just about tears your heart out to hear it. It's a sad, sorrowful thing. But oh, tonight we have joy in presenting the gospel because we present one who's risen from the tomb. And I want to stress the resurrection for a few moments tonight, because if Christ be not raised, your faith is in vain and ye are still in your sins. But thank God he was raised again for our justification.
And on the resurrection morning the stone was rolled away, so that those who came early could have a complete testimony that the Lord Jesus had bodily risen from the dead, and they could hear those glorious words. And were there ever such glorious words announced in this world as those words announced, He is not here. He is risen. Come see the place where the Lord lay. You know we have a tomb in Christianity.
It's not the great stone coffin where Mohammed lays. It's not the tomb of Buddha. It's not the grave of Confucius. It's not the pyramids of the Pharaohs that reign at one time in Egypt. No, it's a tomb. But it's a tomb that's empty. And the Lord Jesus, when he came forth from the dead, he remained on earth long enough to give complete and ample testimony to his own.
That he had not just risen in spirit, but that he had risen bodily. He showed himself to about 500 brethren at one time he said to his own Handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bone, as ye see me have. And you know you are responsible tonight to the Lord Jesus. He's a risen man, and you're responsible to him. He's your savior tonight, if you'll have him.
00:50:05
But you know, if you won't, the day is coming when you're going to stand before that man.
Yes, you are. You're going to stand before that man and you're going to look into his face and you're going to see him as your judge. In that connection, I'd like to go back to the Book of Isaiah for a moment to give a solemn warning. Isaiah, Chapter 57.
Isaiah chapter 57 and the last verse of the chapter verse 21. There is no peace, saith my God to the wicked. Not a solemn statement. There is no peace saith my God for the wicked.
But you know, this verse has a far more reaching meaning and impact.
Than just the fact that there is no peace now in your soul if you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ.
Because when we consider this, we think of an eternity.
Lost and in hell, where there will be no rest, Where there will be no peace. A place where, as the New Testament tells us, there's weeping and gnashing of teeth.
A place of torment if we were to take time and go over to Luke's Gospel.
We find the Lord Jesus telling about a man who went there and in hell. He lifted up his eyes, being in torment.
And he wanted one drop of water to cool his tongue, to get him and to have momentary relief.
You know, it's interesting to me that he never asked to be released from there. You know, when people are are in a bad situation, usually what they want is release. I suggest that he realized his destiny was fixed, but what he wanted was momentary relief, somebody to come to him. But he had to learn that not only was there no release from that awful place, but that no one could come even with momentary relief.
You know, when the volcano went off in Iceland a few months ago, my wife and I were in Europe and, you know, it was a very helpless feeling to be on another continent and know there was no way off. I said to my wife one night, I said, if one of our daughters calls and there's a family emergency at home or something like that, there's nothing we can do about it but trust the Lord. There's no way off this continent until things settle down and they put flights back in the air. It was a very helpless feeling.
But all I thought of what a helpless feeling it will be for those who end up in a lost eternity, with no peace but continual torment and the agony of a conscience. It says where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched, the agony of a conscience that will remember a gospel meeting like this, and will remember the word of God that was spoken in their ears as to a point of refuge and salvation, and yet realize that it is no longer applicable to them as such. That's why the Lord said the word that I have spoken.
The same shall judge him. In the last day we've had a number of scriptures read and quoted.
If you go to a lost eternity, one of the things that will cause you unrest and torment and agony and the absence of peace for all eternity will be the memory of the verses from God's Word that we have read and that we have quoted tonight. But before I close, I'd like to turn to one more portion, just a few pages back in the 26th chapter of Isaiah.
Chapter 26 and verse 3. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee because he trusteth in thee. You know, we began with those words in the book of Ezra, perfect peace. And at such a time, yes, even at such a time in the world's history as this, we can have perfect peace in our souls. We can have that inward calm and rest that comes.
From knowing God is our Father and the Lord Jesus as our Savior, and here we find that there's perfect peace.
When we have our minds stay on the Lord Jesus, how often those of us who know the Lord Jesus have enjoyed this verse knowing he'll keep us in perfect peace as our minds are stayed on him as we trust him in the circumstances of life. And I wouldn't want to trade places with anybody that isn't a Christian, I see the frustration.
00:55:21
On the highways and at the airport every day they talk about road rage. I think airport rage is even worse. People frustrated with a delayed flight, people frustrated because a flight is canceled and bad weather and all this kind of thing, and they lash out at the agent behind the counter and those who are around them. You know it's hard enough when you have the Lord, at least someone who knows the Lord. I'm always thankful I can step back and say no, Lord, just give me the grace to get through this.
Just keep my mind stayed on thee. Help me to trust you. And obviously you don't want me on that plane this afternoon. Just give me the grace to get through it. So that's hard enough. No wonder people who don't know the Lord lash out at the first person in in front of them. They want, they need to blame. They need to blame someone. But all how wonderful to have that piece. This is a positive side of of Christianity. Not only is there a happy eternity, not only is there rescue from hell and heaven ahead, but in the interim there's a wonderful piece that comes in the circumstances of life.
It's the peace that the Lord Jesus left with his disciples. My peace I give unto you.
Not as the world giveth, give I unto you, Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Do you want that peace tonight? Oh, at the end of this gospel meeting, I plead with you to come to the Lord Jesus, come to know him. There's nothing like it. You can have perfect peace and at such a time, peace for eternity, peace of knowing where you're going when you leave this world and when the Lord Jesus comes to know that you're going to be gone, to be with him.
And peace in the circumstances of life while we go through this world. We won't turn to it, but I'd like to just quote a scripture in closing. It's in Romans chapter 15, verse 13. Perhaps this scripture sums up best what is on my soul tonight and my prayer for you if you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ, is This might seem like a strange verse to apply at the end of a gospel meeting, but if you don't know the Lord Jesus.
And you don't have that inward peace that we're Speaking of. This is my final prayer for you tonight. Now the God of Hope fill you with all peace in believing. Oh, just believe, and you'll find that wonderful peace that he so desires you to have. Let's pray our God and Father.
The Name
Children—J. 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.
Matter of fact, there's so few children in the front, I may have to call on some of the adults.
Oh, this is better.
Nobody has to sit in the front row. But I know that when I was in school, I chose to sit in the front row because I could see better and I could pay more attention. I could learn better.
It's interesting how people like to have the front seats in the basketball game.
The background Sunday school.
Well, let's start Who has a choice and we most of the children's songs are on the.
Back of the hem sheet, the Backpage, but we don't have to stick to that. Anybody have a choice? So a song to start with this morning.
Looking for a hand? Yes Sir.
#46 #46 glad TIDINGS. Hiding tidings are a word we don't use very much anymore. Tidings is the old word for news.
Glad tidings is good news. Good news I bring that Jesus has come to save me.
What's better than that? To know that you're saved? And he calls and he calls all the girls and he wants all the boys to, to trust in him and have all their sins washed away now #46.
Bloody idiom.
You know, as I've singing this song, I was thinking how wonderful it is. Says he calls and he calls all the girls and he wants all the Bo IS2. I know when some girls are doing something, they don't want to invite the boys.
And sometimes when boys are doing something, they don't wanna invite the girls with the Lord. Jesus wants everybody, He wants you. All right, how about another song?
See a hand and I got bad eyesight so if I miss something somebody help me out.
No choices.
I see a choice, yes.
#44.
All right, this is a true story about a boy who was dying in a tent years ago. And matter of fact, this happened many years ago. I've discovered this story in a book written by Richard Newton in 1876. So the story is at least 134 years old and more, more than that, probably because he heard it from somebody else.
A friend of his actually was the person who went in to the tent to tell the gypsy boy about the Lord. So that happened somewhere prior to 1876 #44.
Into the tent.
Whenever he said he'd have said he.
00:05:54
Need I my perish, my hand will behold.
Nobody ever thought 3 high school.
Tell it again.
Turn it again.
Salvation. Sorry, read me Lord.
Till I can say of the children of men.
Nobody ever has. So beautiful.
Anything we call the light where love is rest.
John does the enters of how many of them God may give some good. So every person says he than I am sure that he sent him for him.
Halloween.
Halloween that only I can.
Salvation story, referee before I go.
Till one can say of the children of men, nobody.
Ever has no Christian before?
You know, with the first song we sang with Glad tidings. Good news. This was good news to that boy who was dying.
I think he knew he was dying and right at the last moment someone came to tell him about the Lord Jesus. And so it says, bending, we caught the last words of his breath.
Just as he entered the Valley of Death.
God sent his son, whosoever said he.
Then I am sure that he sent him for me.
You know this is personal salvation.
Maybe there are boys and girls here, maybe older ones this morning who've heard this as long as they can remember.
But they can't say it was for me.
Jesus died for you. Have you received him as your Savior? All right, we have time for one more at least.
Where?
OK, yes.
#47 #47 This is a very joyful song.
#47 when he cometh. When he cometh.
You hold precious girl, precious love and his love.
He will be out there, he broke gathered on him for him in the younger one of the bright one is love man and.
The joy of the glory it is riding around on the gate.
00:10:11
Little children's lentil children are legitimate.
And long.
I thought you had time for one more yet. That'll be the last one. One more song.
OK, there's missing somebody.
What number?
What number 4545 OK #45 just the right side #45.
Too little lies, too long to cry, to live the way to give him his word.
Human told me to kill what's on his way to a new word for him almighty.
All right, let's layer him sheets aside now, and we're going to ask God's help this morning.
Our God and Father, we've just sung about each of us having two ears to hear Thy truth. We pray that we might have ears and hearts open this morning.
To receive from thee in such a way that we could look up at the end of this time and say thank you, Lord, for what you gave me.
We might be conscious.
That you are God, have a message for each of us individually, and that there is always that opportunity to hear.
To receive from thee. We thank you this morning for your word.
For this opportunity, and above all for our Lord Jesus Christ, in His name, Amen.
Now I wonder how many came prepared.
You know, it's important thing to be prepared. I used to have nightmares when I was in school. I dreamed during the night that I was waking up and going to school and suddenly realizing I wasn't prepared, I hadn't done my homework. I'm thankful to say that most of the time when I was in school, I did my homework on time, which made it doubly a nightmare because I didn't know how to deal with not doing homework.
But I even after I got out of school, I used to have those dreams and I'd wake up in a cold sweat because I wasn't prepared. That was just for school.
How many here are prepared? We're prepared to meet the Lord this morning. How many came prepared?
Knowing the memory verse that we were given last week, how many here know what the memory verse was?
This for this morning. Anybody here know what the memory verse was?
Anybody.
Does anybody know what their memory verse was? Anybody think they can say it? OK, go ahead.
Very good. She came prepared. Anybody else?
It's important to be prepared. Some maybe some of you thought you were going to get out of the responsibility this morning. No one's going to check because you're going to a conference. But you know, and I'm not, I understand that I just.
00:15:02
Does it feel the same way about things?
But it's wonderful to be prepared, wonderful to have these verses stored up in your memory. Am I missing anybody else? Go ahead. Yes.
OK.
Neither is there salvation in any other.
For their There is no other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. Acts 412. Three people who are prepared. Anybody else prepared this morning?
That's all right. You know what's a wonderful thing to be prepared?
When you meet somebody.
That needs to hear about the Lord Jesus. You're prepared. You have these verses in your heart and in your memory. All right.
So we can talk about this verse a little bit. I'm going to put it up on put up on this board here so we don't get things confused. Tripod.
And I think we can all pretty much all see it. Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men. I believe out of yes, I left when I, when I read up the verse, I left out some left out some words, didn't I? Well, that's, that's the way I do things.
You know, because I when I was writing the verse, I was thinking about projects you want to talk about and I wasn't trying to talk about that business under heaven.
And anyway, we'll talk about what I've got written up here because it's the, it's the, uh.
Part of the verse.
Neither is there salvation any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men. I left out the phrase given among men. We'll just have to do without that phrase right now, whereby we must be safe. I think I probably would have run out of space on the board anyway if I put on the whole verse. Neither is there salvation in the other. Now I'm going to illustrate that with a little story.
Years ago.
Umm, I read a story written by Mr. Willis about a Chinese woman who went out into the field to cut grass and I don't know why she went out in the field to cut grass. Maybe she was make cutting grass for a bat to make a basket or something. She took two of her children with her.
And while she was out away from the village, cutting this grass.
A tiger showed up.
Umm.
You think she was very comfortable about that? A tiger with two Cubs came to visit.
Well, the tiger wasn't comfortable about it, and the tiger attacked the woman.
And of course, she had this knife that she was cutting the grass with, and she slashed at the tiger with the knife. But if you're a woman with a knife against a tiger, who's likely to win?
Who?
Yeah.
Someone's out there listening. Yeah. The tiger is very likely that when tigers are big and powerful and there you go, good. They're they're used to fighting. And this woman probably wasn't used to fighting tigers at all. But she did. She had something she knew about. She'd been in the market a while earlier, and she'd heard a missionary mention somebody powerful named Jesus. And she quickly thought of all the people could possibly help her. And there was nobody there to help her. So she cried out. Oh, Jesus, help me.
And she kept crying out. Oh Jesus, help me. And you know what happened. The tiger ran away.
True story, the tiger ran away. Well, he'd already scratched her up pretty badly. And so she she managed to get back to the village and she with some help, she got to the hospital where she heard about the Lord Jesus and she found out who Jesus was. But this is the important thing. And I don't know how a ******** or a Chinese lady pronounces the word Jesus.
I don't think they say Jesus quite the same way we do. Maybe Yazoo or something like that, but the Lord Jesus heard his name.
And he, he has control over all of creation, you know.
The Lord Jesus could calm storms, he could raise the dead, and he can chase away tigers. And she called on the name of Jesus, and that made all the difference. Now she, you know the Chinese, they have gods.
00:20:08
And, uh, she didn't call upon one of her gods. She doesn't even know who Jesus was.
Which he heard that that name was powerful and she called on the name of Jesus. Now it's wonderful. People all over the world call in the name of Jesus. It's interesting we're talking about a name today. Neither is there salvation any other for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. Not any other name. We're talking about names.
Now I'm writing directly opposite me is a fella.
I'm going to ask him some questions. What's your name?
All right, Bob.
What's your name when you go to South America?
Roberto.
When you were a little boy, what did your mother call you?
Robert.
Umm, anyone ever call you Bobby?
I'm surprised.
Anybody else have any other names for you that you answered too?
I reason I ask that because my name is.
John, my name is John. Oh, by the way, I know one other name for you.
Mr. Tony, you answer to that name. Yeah, sure do. My name is John.
And if I were in, when I was in Mexico, they called me Juan.
Hold on. Yeah.
And when I used to work with a girl who was from Germany and she called me Johanna.
Because that's how the Germans say John. And if I were in France, they'd call me John.
And.
Umm, if I were in Russia, who knows what they would call me in Russia?
Let's say, let's say Russian equivalent of John.
Ivan, Ivan, or even Yeah, Ivan. And if I was in Ireland, they call me Ian or Sean. There's two different ways to think it's there. Umm, anyway, I'm this list could get too long. And I'm also known as Mr. Kaiser. Those are all names, legitimate names.
And you know what? Innate people sometimes come up to you and say, what's your handle, your name? Why is because a name is, uh, is something by which we access, we form a connection with somebody else.
Now if if someone if I said I was Abraham Lincoln.
Do you think anybody would accept that? No. There has to be a mutual recognition of a name to make the connection. I'm not Abraham Lincoln, but I am John. I answered the name John, I answered the name one. I've answered the name Johannes. When I was up in Quebec, uh, I answered to the name Jean and I answered the name Mr. Kaiser.
And uh, uh, just for the sake of illustration, we'll pick on one other person here. What's your name? Jim. Janet. They never call you James. Yeah, right.
OK. And, and what's your full name? James Nelson Highland. James Nelson Highland? See, he's got different names, but they're all his name. His parents gave him that name. We recognize that name. So sometimes I'll get on the phone and I'll call up and say, Jim.
Or I can, I can send him a letter addressed to James Highland or something like that and the connection is made. Names are important to make a connection. Now you know the reason I talk about this is because the Lord Jesus has a name. We call him the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:25:05
And I said that when the Chinese woman called on Jesus, she probably didn't say.
Jesus, she probably said something like yezu or something like that. The Chinese pronounce it differently and umm.
I wonder does anyone know how an Arab pronounced? I know and I know you know. Does anybody else know how an Arab pronounces the name Jesus?
Pardon. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. OK. And I thought somehow I thought I heard that some use the term Issa. Is that correct? Muslims use the term name Isa for Jesus. But they're talking about the same person. All right, Isua Isa. Now, the reason I say that God has made it so easy. He doesn't just listen to our lips.
He listens to our heart and no matter what how we pronounce it with our lips.
He listens to our heart. And so when this Chinese lady called on Jesus using her Chinese language, the Lord heard.
Now I want to talk about how important name is.
I have here, umm, a long tally. Is anyway anybody here good in math?
You can What's this number right here at the bottom? Read that number.
Pretty big number isn't umm.
Yeah, I had a lot of money. Yeah, 23 million, that's my thing. I just, I just before this meeting, I wouldn't use the adding machine there and ran up a bunch of numbers and just I knew I was going to get a big number and I didn't know how big until I got got to the bottom here.
That's a big number, $20 trillion. Anybody here got $23 million? No, that's, that's more money than all of us, probably all of us put together by by a good deal. I wanna tell you a story about a man who had a big debt. Now this was, this happened over 100 years ago over in Russia and there was an officer in the army of the Czar of Russia.
The czar's name was Nicholas. Who knows what a czar is?
What's the Czar? Yes.
What do you like?
Well, more than that, however, in this country. Maybe they deal with money. But, uh, what's a czar?
Zar is like an emperor, like Zar is like to think they are more than kings. They're, they were the emperors of Russia. They California, they called them czars. OK, very tough man in the Russian government. He's like the king or the emperor. Cesar Nicholas had an army and in his army he had an officer who was responsible, responsible for paying the soldiers. And this officer, we don't know his name, Uh.
He he was, it was his money. It was his responsibility every week to pay the soldiers for being soldiers.
But this man had a problem.
He, uh, also liked to gamble. I mean, he liked to waste money. He thought it was fun to waste money just for the, for a thrill and, uh, the possibility of getting some little bit back. And so he took the czar's money and spent it just for fun.
Was that good or bad?
What's that called?
When you take somebody's money, what's that called?
Feeling great. We have a big word for it now called embezzlement. But he was just stealing from the czar. But one day, you know, he sat down one evening, I should say, he sat down and he knew he he owed a lot of money. He started adding up that's this is and adding an addition right here. He started adding up all his debts.
And he got to the he got the the total finish. He looked at it.
00:30:02
And it was humongous, it was terrible. He could not pay that debt. And so he took this, this total. And at the bottom of the page he wrote some words.
What's that say?
What's it say you can take a great a day yes. Who can pay so great a debt? So we had this sheet of paper with all these, all these uh debts totaled up and then he, he, he looked, he picked up his pen and he wrote who can rip? Hey, so great again.
And then he picked up something else.
He picked up a gun. I've got what they call a price down here. It'll do the job. He picked up a gun. What do you think he was going to do with that gun?
What do you think he was gonna do with that gun? Yes, kill himself. Yes, he was. He was in despair, but he didn't want to die.
And so he was, he picked up the gun and he was looking at that list and he just got so sad. So he got sleepy and he went to sleep.
With the gun beside him and while he was asleep.
Czar Nicholas decided to walk through the camp.
And he saw a light on in that officer's tent, and he went to investigate because it was late at night. The officer should have been asleep. And he walked in and here's the officer all leaned over this table with his head in his hands maybe, and the gun beside him and this terrible piece of paper.
And SAR looked at it and it didn't take the SAR long to figure out what was going on. This man was in trouble. He didn't owe millions of dollars, but he owed lots of rubles. That's what they Russian money is, rubles. This man owed lots of money and.
Czar understood what the why this man had the had the pistol, had the gun right there beside him. What do you think now? The Czar picked up some What do you think the Czar picked up?
What is it? I'm sorry it picked up a pan. Have you heard this story before? Oh.
I thought someone was going to say, well, he tried to pick up the gun and arrested the soldier right there. You're right. He picked up the pan. He picked up a pen. And, you know, he took the pen and he took the piece of paper and he wrote underneath that one word.
Nicholas, and that's not by the I didn't spell it the Russian way, Sorry about that. You wrote Nicholas just a name, and then he quietly walked out of the tent.
And that a little while later that that that soldier woke up and it was getting toward morning. He says, well, I'm about to get this over with. And he he starts to reach for the gun and he, his eyes sees that piece of paper.
With that name on it.
Where did that name come from?
Well, it's it was obvious to him that while he was asleep, the Czar had walked in and seen his death and seen his guilt.
And taken responsibility for him. He checked his Pennsylvania other papers that he had that were signed by the Czar, and yes, it was the right signature.
And he was saying he was delivered. He knew that the Tsar knew all about him and the Tsar was taking care of that great dent. And it was all because of a name. It was all that piece of paper. Boys and girls, men and women this morning does that name.
The name of Jesus mean anything to you hasn't done anything for you.
You know, it's wonderful, the other side of this verse that we, there's we, we ran a verse this morning. Neither is our salvation any other, for it says there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. The other side is another verse, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
00:35:00
We talked about this Chinese woman who called in the name of the Lord.
There was this Russian officer who trusted in the name of Nicholas. There's a verse in scripture in in Jeremiah says unless let's read it Jeremiah chapter.
UH-15.
May 17.
Yes, Jeremiah chapter 15 and verse 16. Thy words were found, I did eat them. Thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart, for I am called by thy name, O Lord God of hosts.
Does that name mean anything to you? The name of the Lord Jesus now?
One thing we didn't talk about in our verse before is this little phrase. Here I want to talk about it very briefly.
There is none other name. What does none mean NONE? Who knows what NONE means none?
Yes, zero. Very good. It actually is contraction of two English words.
Not one. You know God wants us to understand there is no body else that can save us. None means not one. That's what it literally means. If you don't believe me, look it up in a dictionary. I did not one. There is not one other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be safe. Some people say, oh, any religion will do.
Let me illustrate something to you.
Anybody here would like to have a brand new fluorescent flashlight? Anybody like to have a brand new fluorescent flashlight?
Hold up your hand if you like to have a brand new fluorescent flashlight.
I I'm gonna see hands high. I want some seasonal enthusiasm here.
If you like you're you're pretty sure you I always see some hands there. OK, I'll tell you how to get it. There's somebody in this room whose name you know.
You should know anyway who has a brand new fluorescent flashlight in his pocket and all you have to do is ask is to mention his name and point to him because there might be duplicate names in this room. Point to that person and say and say that person's name.
Who? Who wants to volunteer to do that? All right.
Point to the person and say his name.
I'm joining out.
Yeah. Oh, are you what you mean for?
But you illustrate a very good point. You illustrate a very good point if you look in the chapter.
It says and somehow they got.
Let's turn to Romans chapter 10 very quickly and look at the chapter where this verse is found. Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Notice the context of that verse, Romans chapter 10 and it says in verse.
Romans chapter 10 and verse eight it says well verse 7.
Over six Romans chapter 10, verse 6, The righteousness which is of faith speaks on this wise say, not in thy heart, who shall ascend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down from above. Who shall or who shall ascend into the deep, that is to bring Christ up again from the dead? But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and even thy heart. That is the Word of Faith which we preach. My point is, God has made it so simple. We have a state like this. Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Now I didn't tell this boy, what's your name?
Yeah. What's your name?
I didn't tell Jared who to call on.
But it was still pretty simple for him, and God has made it still more simple. He's told us who to call on now if Jared had said John or Johnny or Mr. Kaiser.
00:40:04
And pointed at me, I would respond to any of those names.
God has made it so simple for us to receive salvation, neither is there salvation in any other. Now if you pointed to me and said Betsy, was that a word?
No, it's important to know the name. You know. It's a privilege. Do you appreciate the privilege of knowing about the Lord Jesus, just knowing about him, knowing the name? But what happened to that poor Chinese woman if she hadn't known the name of Jesus? I'm going to. This is a brand new flashlight. I bought it last week for myself. Did not flash it. Give it away for years.
Welcome.
And by the way, is fluorescent in that that flashlight glows in the dark. That's what they mean by fluorescent now.
Neither is there salvation and any other. It's important to know the name that forms the link between you and the giver.
Neither zero salvation or any other, for there is no other, not one other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Know the name and use it.
Use it call on the name of the Lord.
Our time is about up. We have time to sing one more song.
Anyone have a choice?
Any choice, I just leave your hand. OK, Phone number.
Oh, 41, OK.
#41.
All around the throne of God in heaven will many children sing children and things are all forgiven. Will heavenly anthem frigging singing glory.
Glory, glory to God.
In time rolls off on the quiet will be already.
Twilight, ever lighting light and joy, has never been taking glory.
Let's pray now, our God and Father.
We thank you for the privilege this morning once more.
The Will
Address—D. Rule
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.
Amid faithful. Amidst unfaithfulness.
The darkness only light.
Thou didst thy father's name confess, and in his will.
Be like #230.
Oh Lord, when we.
Are all on the earth.
Umm.
Umm.
On their hands.
Lightly.
Honey.
The blood of our hands and everything.
Right.
Turn with me to Isaiah chapter 46.
Isaiah chapter 46 and verse 9. Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is none else.
I am God and there is none like me declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times the things that are not yet done saying my counsel shall stand and I will do all my pleasure calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country. Yeah, I have spoken it. I will also bring it to pass.
00:05:08
I have purposed it. I will also do it now over in Ephesians chapter one.
Ephesians, chapter one.
And verse 5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ, to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the Beloved, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace.
Wherein He hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to his good pleasure which He purposed in Himself.
Before me this afternoon to speak on the will.
You take a concordance.
Let me open it or a Bible program and you enter the word will in scripture. You'll get far more references to it than you.
You almost immediately say there must be some other way to look at this subject.
For thousands of expressions of will in the Word of God.
Because it's so central to man's being.
And God's being and the Lord Jesus.
Thinking a few minutes ago about little children.
I've never known a child in my life. Maybe you have, but I would say it's a rare exception. I've never known a child in my life to learn the word yes before it learned the word no.
Because no in the little child is one of the first expressions.
Of its will after it can talk. It expresses its will before it ever can talk. From the moment it comes out of the womb, we almost immediately.
Have that which expresses the will of that infant, and when it can verbalize it, it says no.
Very quickly.
We're going to look at the will.
First of all, God's will.
And then the subject of will as it concerns the perfect man, the Lord Jesus Christ. And then we'll look at ourselves because when we open up the Word of God, we learn about, it's intended for us to learn about God, to learn about the Lord Jesus, and to learn about ourselves as well. So the verses that we read in the beginning here express the will of God.
A God who does all things after the council of his own will.
Everyone, even people who say I don't believe in God in some part of their being, recognized that God's will ultimately is supreme.
If your will and God's will don't agree.
Ultimately, his will be supreme.
He has the power, and at times he exercises the power to hinder your will.
Or mine.
And so God acts according to his own will.
And as we read in Isaiah 46, before this world was ever created, He willed certain things.
And they'll come to pass.
Absolutely nothing that he chooses to act upon concerning his will will not come to pass. Everything will.
00:10:04
It's a large subject. We'll just scratch the surface of it this afternoon, but we recognize when we use the word will that there are lots of little adjectives connected with it. We call, we speak of a goodwill.
The will of the mind, the will of the flesh, the will of man.
There are all kinds of There is a will of desire.
Separate from a will of action, which is important, and we'll seek to distinguish between the two. But when we think of will, we think of a lot of things that have to do with.
The will and when we read these verses that we read about God.
We see that it speaks of the good pleasure of his will, and in fact sometimes the very word will is translated and Mr. Darby's translation, for example, in contrast to the King James, it's translated as.
A good desire or good pleasure and so.
The will, the desire, the wish, the want all tend to be related as expressions of something in.
Us that chooses.
And at times acts upon the choices that we make.
Sometimes it just doesn't. I would like to do this or that. We say, well, that's a sort of an expression of will.
But we never get around to doing it. We never end up putting that wish into action. I would like we say, and then it doesn't happen. It's not that we didn't want it to happen at some level of our being, but when it actually comes down to the point of action, it doesn't happen with us. And so here God expresses to us that he has a will.
And that there is a good pleasure connected with the will of God. And how wonderful that is, since his will is supreme, to know it's a good one. Our will isn't always the will of the flesh is evil.
But in God, his will is always good.
Always good.
The will of God.
Is always perfect, and I say these things because we have to contrast it with ourselves.
Because God has given us the capacity to will, and very often we find our will and God's will don't align up, don't go together.
And, uh, yet it is well for us to recognize, to accept, to believe.
We want to be happy, we want to have peace.
If we want to be in fellowship with God.
To recognize at the beginning that God's will is good and God's will is perfect.
And God's will is an expression in himself of his good pleasure.
And so he does what he does.
He didn't ask our opinion, did he?
You know, sometimes when there's going to be a collective will in some matter, there is a meeting that takes place between the parties involved in it, whether at work, at school, sometimes even.
In the assembly.
Umm, where we hope if it's such a case, we're seeking the will of God, the will of the Lord in a matter, but nonetheless there's a coming together and we call it council.
And there's a formation of a common will.
Jim, last night he spoke of peace talks, and there's an effort in peace talks to find common ground, a common will that people will go along with or submit to.
But we all have it, and we all like our own.
00:15:00
There's, umm, it's just our nature.
But we'll look at ourselves more particularly.
Later. So we have the will of God. It's perfect. It's complete.
And he is working to fulfill it. And when he has fulfilled the counsels of his own will.
He will rest just like He did on the 7th day of the preparation of the earth for man and creating it to His satisfaction for our habitation.
He rests, but since another will has come into the creation, since that point, a will expressed by that word called sin, God hasn't rested since.
He didn't rest today, he didn't rest last night. We did, but he didn't. He won't rest again until all things are in order, according to the councils of his own will.
And that he has fulfilled them to his satisfaction.
And uh, for us, to his, our blessing.
I'd like to look now at the Lord Jesus.
Is a perfect man a perfect pattern for us as to the matter of will?
Turn with me to Psalm 40.
Psalm 40, verse 6.
Sacrifice and offering that it's not desire.
Mine ears hast thou opened or digged? Burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required?
Then said I lo, I come in the volume of the book. It is written of me.
I delight to do thy will.
O my God, yeah, Thy law is within my heart.
I'll turn over to Isaiah 50.
Isaiah chapter 50.
And verse 4.
The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary.
He waketh morning, by morning he wakeneth mine ear to hear, as the learned the Lord God hath opened my ear. And I was not rebellious either, turned away back. I gave my back to the smiders, my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair I had not my face.
From shame and spitting.
And now Exodus chapter 21.
Exodus chapter 21.
Verse two. If thou buy in Hebrew servants, six years shall he serve, and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.
If he came in by himself, he should go out by himself. If he were married, then his wife should go out with him. If his master of giving him a wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters.
The wife and her children shall be her masters, and he shall go out by himself. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children, I will not go out free. Then his master shall bring him unto the judges. He shall also bring him unto the door, or unto the door post. And his master shall bore his ear through within all, and he shall serve him.
00:20:01
Forever.
In these three passages, they all refer to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Directly or.
In picture form, you may have noticed that all three of them have to do with the ears.
Because.
In Scripture, the ear is connected with the will.
Just like yesterday we had the eyes and seeing are connected with faith.
Or unbelief.
All of us have probably most of us have done it, but I suspect all of us have seen it when a little child goes like this.
What's it doing?
It's saying I don't want to listen, I don't want to hear.
Why? Because I want my way.
He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear, Scripture says, because the ear is a question of Will you have an ear to hear? Are you willing to hear?
The word says to us.
The Lord spoke in parables in the Gospels that hearing they might not hear, seeing they might not see.
In other words, they were not going to get the point, they were not going to understand unless they were willing to believe him and listen, Submit, if you will, their will to what he had to say. It's not different this afternoon. You may sit in your seat. I may stand here.
With ears.
That are, I won't listen unless I like what I hear.
And then I'll let it in, Otherwise I'll keep it out.
And so there is the question of hearing.
In Psalm 40 it's bringing before us the incarnation of the Lord Jesus. It is telling us the position and place that He took when he became a man. In Isaiah 50 it's his daily life, and in Exodus 21 it's the position that he has chosen in love to remain.
For eternity.
And because once having come into manhood, he has made the choice, now that he's completed the work the Father gave him to do on earth, that he will remain in manhood. He remains with his ears. He remains a person who does the will of another.
Without any expressed will.
Of his own when the master speaks.
He says, I delight to do thy will.
Oh my God.
Now you sometimes I sometimes do somebody else's will without delight.
I do it because I don't have a choice.
The boss says and I want to keep my job. I might not like what the boss says, but nonetheless I do it.
I'm a child and mom or dad says and I do it because I don't like spankings.
At least that was the way it was in our house, and that's the way it is in Proverbs.
There is the doing the will.
Without delight.
You take an even obedient child. His children are easy to for us to relate to this afternoon. And it's more unvarnished in a child than an adult. He's more subtle about it, but the little child.
Has a desire. It has a will of its own.
And so it says to mom, I wanna go out in the yard.
And mother says no, not now.
And the child submits if he's an obedient child.
It had its own will.
But it didn't exercise it because it obeyed the will of another.
That is not an expression of the character of.
00:25:06
Obedience in the Lord Jesus.
It may seem small, but it's huge.
The Lord Jesus as a perfect man.
Simply.
Waited.
For the expressed will of the father, and acted on it when it received it, he never as it were, to use the child analogy.
Said I'd like to go out in the yard and have the father say no, never.
His whole being was given over with pleasure to the will.
Of God his Father.
Can we do that?
We weren't born that way. When we were born, we could not possibly have done that.
God, however, wants your will and his will to be one will, to be perfect, to have no difference in it at all. The will of God and the will of the Lord Jesus. As a man, we're perfectly united.
Some have said he had no will.
I would prefer the expression of it that the will was won and it was the perfect one.
But nevertheless, in US, in nature, it's not that way. I've got mine and God has his, and sometimes, often.
They don't agree.
But the Lord Jesus.
When he said An incarnation, I delight to do thy will, Oh my God, he was expressing.
What he was.
Perfectly. He had no other desire. He had no other wish. He had no other pleasure in his being.
Than to do.
The Father's will.
He then makes a statement that's very important.
Thy law he says in Psalm 40, verse eight. Thy law is within my heart.
He knew the Father's will.
Suppose you say I want to do your will. I do. You have to know it, don't you?
You have to know it.
Somebody that knows you real, real, real well, it's probably better than anybody else that able to say, given this situation, this is what he would want or she would want. It's an expression of knowing.
To be able to say I know.
This person's will.
And the Lord Jesus said thy.
Will, for thy law is within my heart.
We'll emphasize it later, but do you want the will of God?
Then you have to know it and it's been expressed you have it on your lap.
Perfectly expressed to you.
But when I said that we don't, and as we're born, we're not able to, always will the same way God does.
When you put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and receive the gift of God, eternal life, you receive the life of Christ. You receive that life which can say.
I delight to do thy will. Oh my God, you can. You have the capacity.
If you have eternal life, the life of Christ, to be able with honesty, say within, I delight to do thy will, Oh my God. There's a conflict that goes on, which we'll see later concerning that life.
00:30:00
But nonetheless, the life is there.
In Isaiah chapter 50 we have the daily life of the Lord Jesus, and so he wakes up morning by morning.
To here and then obey.
Perfect.
Did you get up this morning?
With that submission of heart and thought.
Say it's a new morning, what is thy will?
This day, so it was with the Lord Jesus. There are times when we see his actions as we trace his life on earth. For example, when Lazarus is sick, he doesn't act because of the need there, tremendous need.
But he since 2 days where he is, why if he didn't have yet the father's go message, so he waits.
Saul, a man after the flesh.
Couldn't wait seven days for Samuel the prophet to come. The circumstances were too overwhelming. They were too great. He couldn't manage it. So he just goes ahead and exercises what he thought was best. He exercised his own will and it was a will of disobedience and it cost him.
That's the point, which Sampiel said. You're not gonna be the king.
Lost him a lot.
We have the Lord Jesus then in Exodus 30.
Umm Exodus 21 as the Hebrew servant, and he chooses to remain the man. And so his ears are digged. He will like we.
Remain in a place of obedience to the will of another.
For eternity.
It's it's an incredible thing to my soul. I can't express it.
I think that.
The reasons for it, and if we went into them, we wouldn't get through this subject, but it's a tremendous thing that he will remain a man and in doing so, he will remain in that place of submission of will to the will of another forever.
Now one more verse before we go on to ourselves about the Lord Jesus in Romans chapter 8.
Romans, chapter 8.
And verse 2.
The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
Has set me free from the law of sin.
And.
There we'll see if we have time in Romans 7, something about ourselves and the conflict that goes on in US and wanting to do, having one will to do this and then another will to do that, going on at the same time in US. And here in Romans 8 we have the solution to that need and problem that we have.
And it's really summed up in this verse the spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
Has set me free from the law of sin, the will of sin and death.
The thoughts?
The intents.
The actions.
Of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Were formed in him by the working.
Of the Spirit of God.
That's perfect, man, I say that again.
The thoughts, the intents.
The actions that took place as a result in the Lord Jesus were formed in him by the work of the Spirit of God.
He stood in responsibility as a man.
He was a man.
But the Spirit of God worked in that man.
00:35:06
To form.
The very thoughts that he thought.
To give power to the actions that he acted.
You and I have eternal life.
That's not enough to do the will of God.
We also need the Spirit.
And the Spirit of God that dwells within us would act in us in the same manner.
The Spirit of God would take the Word of God in US and apply it in living power.
To form in us our thoughts, our intents and the resulting actions.
My wife's grandfather used to say.
Read the Word of God.
Until your very thoughts are formed by the language of Scripture, The very language of Scripture.
Forms in us by the spirit patterns of thought. Have you ever, ever, ever in your life read the Word of God and it promoted in you the desire to disobey God?
Impossible.
Never.
There's hardly a book of man you can't pick up that'll stir lust in you in some form or another.
Never, never. God's Word.
The Lord Jesus lived by it.
He's been without food for 40 days.
Pretty tough test when someone comes along and says here's some food.
Or you make some food, you have the power to do so.
The answer is by the word of God. His thoughts were formed by the word of God. He says Man shall not live by bread alone It's not enough to live by, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God shall man live.
Let's turn now to ourselves.
A little more painful subject, but necessary turn to 1St John, chapter 3.
One John chapter 3, I'm going to read this verse.
Umm, in verse four in the new translation, everyone that practices sin practices also lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness. Verse 9 Whoever, whosoever is born of God, doth not sin, for his seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin.
Because he is born of God.
Verse four tells us what sin is. Sin is lawlessness. You can turn the verse around too. It means the same thing. Lawlessness is sin. What's it mean? It means the principle of self. Self will is sin, the very principle of being without.
Under the authority of one who has the right to say yes and no is sin.
The moment as I say I will and act on it without direct reference to the one who has authority over me, be it God in the absolute, or my mother or father is under his authority, or some other. If I'm a servant in some capacity, the moment I introduced in my being, I'm going to have my will in this.
I'm in the case I'm in a situation of lawlessness, being without law, being without restraint to another in my actions.
The nature of sin, it's the nature of that principle of that thing that's in our bodies at the present moment. It's a lawless thing and it has a will of its own. You ever heard someone say, well, it's got a will of its own, It just does what it does.
00:40:11
You've got something in you called sin that has a will of its own, and that's what it does. It does what it does because that's what it is.
And sadly, it's a dishonor to God.
It's a shame that's what it is.
So in contrast to that in verse nine, who so do with the is born of God does not commit sin. He can't because he is given a perfect life and a perfect nature that.
Never, ever wants to do its own will.
It is the life of Christ who says.
From the heart I delight to do thy will, Oh my God.
This is the root problem.
God often gives us a picture of what it's like in the beginning.
Think about Eve.
God said something, she was under will to another.
You are not to eat of that tree.
She after Satan speaks to her.
She saw it, she took it. She ate it.
She saw it, she took it. She ate it.
She looked at it and said it's good.
It's desirable.
It's a pleasure.
The world lives on it.
Called the will of the Gentile in one place.
Man in the flesh, that's how he lives. He looks at it.
He says it's pleasurable.
It's good.
He desires it. He takes it.
He eats it and he dies.
We've got that nature.
It's just a part of our being in the flesh.
Use this illustration many times. I think even in this room I put a yellow line right here.
And I say to you, don't cross that yellow line.
Immediately that thing in you called, sin says.
I want to cross the line.
Because I don't want somebody to tell me no. I'll decide yes and no.
The will of the flesh does not want restraint, it wants its way now.
And it will have it if it's not constrained from it.
In Eve's case, she looked at it and it was truly could be said it was good.
But once man sinned, the desires within him were corrupted.
And now he even lusts after what's evil.
He he he glories in his shame. He takes what is even vile among men.
Turns evil in his thoughts. Are good into evil in his thoughts because he's a corrupted creature.
But in contrast, the Lord says, I delight to do thy will, O my God, It says in Ephesians 6, doing the will of God from the heart. Isn't that what we want to do it?
Can't we each say, I want to do the will of God from the heart?
And so Psalm 143 times passing, we'll look it up, but it says.
Teach me to do thy will, O my God.
10th Isn't there a response in our court of Allah hearts this afternoon I speak to you as brother and sister in Christ.
Don't we have that desire not to shut our ears, but simply, without restraints, say to the Lord, teach me to do thy will.
00:45:09
In Psalm 119.
Maybe 10?
It says thy word that I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee.
The Word is character forming. The Spirit of God takes the Word and occupies the soul with it to teach us the will of God. The life that is within us responds to it and says, yes, that's what I want to do. I want to do that will, the will of my God. It finds pleasure in it.
It's a wonderful thing to come to a conference. At least it is to my own soul, and I'm sure it is to yours too.
And one of the benefits, if you will, of the weekend is because we spend so much of our time together.
Occupied with the things of God and the Lord Jesus and the Word, it tends.
It tends.
Toward strengthening and promoting the enjoyment of the will of God in US, because we are not exposed for the weekend to the same pattern of life that we left to come here.
And we are not constantly being exposed to all of the world's will presented to us.
Put it another way.
In First John, you'll find things that are dramatic, opposed to each other, diametrically opposed. They're completely opposite to each other. Jesus and Satan is one a pair.
The spirit and the flesh is a pear.
And the father and the world is a pair.
The Father's will for you is Christ.
His Son, the world's will for you, is anything but Christ.
Those wills are opposed. The will of God and the will of Satan are opposed in the world.
And so.
Everything that you see all day every day is the work. Not everything, but it's the tendency of Satan to draw you into.
To form your thoughts, your desires, your pleasures, your intents in the world.
The.
Father's contrary or perfect will is to have you find your delight with him in fellowship with his son.
Let's go back quickly to Romans Chapter 7.
Most of us, perhaps not all, but most of us recognize that Romans chapter 6 gives us some doctrine that tells us that we are dead with Christ, we have when Jesus Christ was on the cross for us, God looks at him as.
There for us and we are identified with him and his death. And so doctrinally he says when he died, as far as I'm concerned, in my eyes, so did you.
So it says you're dead with Christ. Then he goes on to say, and I want you to look at yourself that way, reckon yourself dead unto sin.
But then God always gives us the whole truth of the matter, and when we get to Romans 7, we find a conflict because our faith and our doctrine don't line up very well sometimes with our daily experience. And so here in Chapter 7, we're just going to read a tiny bit out of it.
Where it says verse 15, he's struggling with this question of what's going on in him. I will say he has life, he has the right desires given of God to do God's will.
But he also has a conflict going on in him that he doesn't know how to resolve. And verse 15 it says for that which I do.
I allow not that is I I don't own it for what I would. That's an expression of will.
00:50:06
That I do not. But what I hate that that I don't want to do that I do.
Who hasn't experienced it?
I say I want to do this. This is what pleases God. That's my will, that's my wish. That's my way. And then there's something.
That, I'll say, makes me do something else. Well, how can that be? I will this, I will the good and I did the wrong, I did the bad. Why did I do that? Well, that's what he is looking at within himself.
So he says verse 18 For I know that in me that is, in my flesh dwelleth no good thing, for the will is present with me. But how to perform that which is good I find not.
When he looks at the matter, he recognizes there's something in him.
There's that condition called flesh, there's that awful principle called sin in his body as a will. And he says that's not me, but it's still working. It's still having its own way, it's exercising its will.
And I sin and I acknowledge it's sin. He doesn't excuse it and say I made a little mistake, I couldn't help it, that's just the way I am. So he gets wretched about it.
Because in verse 23 says that thing that will that's working in me.
Umm is bringing me into captivity. It's controlling. And then in verse 24, O wretched man that I am, that's where he gets to. I'm, I'm a wretched man. I, I, I hate it.
Who's going to deliver me from this body that has this awful will in it?
He learns an answer in verse 25. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. He needs a deliverer to be delivered. He can't deliver himself.
He needs a deliverer and in chapter 8 he introduces the Spirit of God and says he's greater than that awful will.
That principle of sin that takes over in the life, and he introduces that thought.
That the law of the Spirit of God in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death.
And when the Spirit of God is given that place in.
Us then it will work in us in a power that overrules.
So Peter says he that has suffered in the flesh, please cease from sin, that is their suffering and not giving in to the will of the flesh. And if it's just me, I will well give in. Let the Spirit of God will not. And if it is given its place.
So is it? Is it? Let's turn over. You have given its place. I want to read a verse in Romans.
2 verses to close, perhaps in Romans chapter 12 and 8:00 and 10:00.
Romans chapter 12 and verse one. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies, the living sacrifice wholly acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, and be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove. And I'm gonna word, add the word practically, that you may prove. What is that good and acceptable and perfect.
Will of God Now over to chapter 10.
Verse nine. Reading the new translation.
If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus is Lord, and believe in thine heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
00:55:00
There has to be.
Given of God.
A true willingness.
Open ears.
To fully submit to the truth of God.
There is within.
Us a tendency, a very strong tendency.
To want.
Scope for just a little bit of our will.
And we decide, no, I don't want to do that.
I want this little bit of my will.
And so.
There are lots of things in life that we will.
Taste.
C Maybe even take.
Or we'll just look at.
But we don't want to take it. We don't want to taste it.
Eat it. We want to look at it, we want to take it, but we know we can't eat it.
The minute.
The will is allowed to look.
The case is gone.
It's gone.
It will lead to the taking and to the eating.
And brethren, it's it's just there.
It's a humbling thing because it's there, but it is.
I read these last two verses because there is that.
Beseeching that there be that purpose of heart within us to say to the Lord.
My body.
Is yours?
To control.
The mind that has previously been filled with the will of man has to be transformed by filling it with something else which doesn't happen overnight, but it it has to be transformed by occupation. You have 5 minutes left in the day.
What do you choose to see, to think about?
Does the Word of God draw you over everything else?
The.
Or do you have a will?
Variety.
I visited a man.
I never met him before.
But on Monday of this past week, he had an operation for cancer.
The outcome of that operation.
Is.
Still has cancer.
And expects to see further specialists about it.
God is going to deliver him from that trial.
Either by life.
Or by death.
Lord Jesus.
Says to him, I believe, Come unto me.
All ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. My yoke is easy.
And my burden is light.
What will he find?
The Lord Jesus.
You will find with the Lord Jesus these words.
That were said in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Not my will.
But thine be done.
That's peace.
That's rest.
There is no other peace or rest in such circumstances as that, because as the Lord Jesus himself in the garden.
01:00:09
When faced with what he was facing, could say if it be possible let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless not my will but thine be done because.
It is not natural.
God didn't make us.
In that way.
To want to face what the Lord faced, including death.
God doesn't intend us to say, oh, I'd be happy to do that.
Never says to the Lord you'll be happy to go to the cross.
No, well, I didn't say I'll be happy to go to the cross, he said. I delight to do thy will.
Oh my God, regardless of the cost of it, I want to do it. That was what controlled him.
There are things that naturally God doesn't look at us and say you're going to want to do that just because you're submitting to my will. No, he does not.
But the perfection of the Lord Jesus and the only answer at times in life is to be able to come to that point in the soul where there can be rest.
As the Lord Jesus found his rest in the words and in the heart, not my will.
But thine be done.
Let's pray. Our God and Father, please give.
Isaiah 53
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.
Isaiah chapter 53 and verse 4.
Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with His stripes we are healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on him.
The iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. His broad as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off out of the land of the living. For the transgression of my people was he stricken, and he made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death, because he had doth no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth, yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He hath put him to grief. When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed.
He shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied.
By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he hath poured out his soul unto death.
And he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
We know that the Lord Jesus was perfectly presented to Israel as their King and Messiah.
You've been enjoying him this weekend in this chapter. Is Lamb of God is that too?
Let in the fourth verse, and it says, Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem him.
Not is as He presented himself to them, and He entered in to their griefs, and their sorrows, and the condition of the nation, and relieve them.
By the healing of the sick, by the giving of sight to the blind, by restoring life to the dead. And those were manifestations of who He was as given here in this chapter and others.
But they didn't honor him in it. They didn't accept him. They didn't esteem him. In fact, the very opposite. When he's on the cross, they look at him and as it were, as we would say today, well, he's getting what he has coming to him. That was their their attitude toward him, that God is putting his hand on him.
They mock him on the cross at the other end of his life and say, well, if you're really who you say you are, well, you just tell God and, you know, take you down off that cross. That would be not assuming him. And uh, yet the day will come in the future, still yet to come when he presents himself to them again, that they will have to go through the recognition of this chapter.
And, uh, say.
We we assumed him not he proved himself all that he is.
He bears more our griefs than He carried our sorrows. But.
He's the one that was wounded in the House of his friends.
In that regard, I, I'd like to read a couple of verses in the 106th Psalm because we spoke the other day, yesterday of the Lord Jesus being alone and the pathway of the Lord Jesus was the pathway of loneliness. Often you read of him alone and then in connection with the cross, we sometimes sing that hymn alone. He bare the cross alone. It's great to sustain. And then in connection with the remarks that Don has just made.
00:05:11
And there are three birds that are used in the 102nd Psalm and connection as figures in connection with the Lord Jesus. And I believe it bears out just what we're saying. I'm going to read the seventh verse first of all, because it goes back to the comments we made yesterday where it says of the Lord Jesus to the figure I watch and I'm as a Sparrow alone upon the house top. You know, just to stop and consider the language here.
And to think of what it produces in our souls as we think of the Lord Jesus and the fulfillment of this verse, no doubt at the cross. Again, this whole pathway was a pathway of loneliness, but particularly the cross. He could say that all would forsake him and he would be alone. And yet he said, I am not alone, for the Father is with me. But now in connection with Dawn's remarks, back up to the sixth verse.
I am like a Pelican of the wilderness.
I am like an owl of the desert. You know, both those birds were unclean under the Levitical order, and yet they are used here in connection with the Lord Jesus. And I have pondered why they are used in that way. And I make this simple suggestion that that really is the way Israel treated the Lord Jesus, wasn't it? They treated him as unclean, they said, as it were. He's not fit for us, for our company, for our society.
And in the end, they took him outside the walls of Jerusalem and had him nailed to a Roman cross. They have. We esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But I want to make this comment because Don has alluded to it. And back in our chapter, this verse we began with is sometimes thought of in connection with the cross, but it's not in connection with the cross. And I think it'd be helpful just to read the context.
Of its quotation in the book of Matthew. Matthew chapter 8.
Matthew chapter 8 and you'll see it quoted here and it shows that it's not in connection with the cross. Don has already brought out what it is in connection with, but just to see this.
Matthew chapter 8 and verse 16 When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils, and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick. Now notice this, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet saying himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses. So here we have the verse quoted fulfilled in the Lord Jesus.
Feeling with those that he healed the effects that sin had brought into this world.
And as the Lord Jesus went about healing, and as he saw the offenders of sin, he felt it very, very keenly.
In fact, it's often been said, and rightly so, that the Lord Jesus in the years that he grew up in this world and then commenced and carried out his public ministry because of who he was, the holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners. One, He never became used to sin and its effects. You know, we become callous and used to sin and its effects. My sister and my brother-in-law are both nurses and they work in hospitals and they work with.
Patients that go through some very desperate illnesses and so on. And, you know, you get used to it. You, you talk to my sister and husband, you know, they kind of get used to it and it kind of just rolls off them. And I think that's how you have to survive to some degree if you're going to work in a situation like that. A person who works in a nursing home, well, they get used to elderly people and the effects of the aging process and so on. Not only that, we go to school, we go to work, we hear.
Things, we see things every day that we kind of get used to it after a while if we're not careful. But the Lord Jesus never got used to sin and its effects. Why did he groan and weep at the grave of Lazarus? I believe it was more than just sympathy with those sisters. It was sympathy, but He groaned in spirit and was troubled as he felt very keenly in his soul, his holy soul, the effects that sin had brought in. And I suggest that that's really the thrust of what we have here in this verse.
00:10:16
And when it's quoted here in Matthew as he heals the 6th and you know, often he touched them, Why did he touch the leper? Why did he put his hand on the eyes of the blind? He in a sense didn't have to, but he entered in to what that person was going through. He felt wisdom, the effects of sin, sin apart, of course, but in that way he bore their iniquities, that He bore their infirmities. He felt with them the effects of sin.
Well, if I can just say this, brother, isn't it wonderful that the Lord Jesus feels what we're going through this afternoon too? He feels that with us. He walked here in this world, He felt the effects of sin, He groaned and wept at the grave of Lazarus. And he feels with us He sometimes sing, and though ascended, feels afresh what every member bears.
How often when the blessed Lord?
Saw one who was in need of difficulty.
It says of him that, uh, he had compassion upon them.
And they just noticed in there in Matthew chapter 8.
All that, I'm sorry, Matthew Chapter 9 and verse 36.
But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them because they painted and were scattered abroad as sheep, having no separate laws. Just one example, but you know, I think compassion.
Is seeing somebody in their need.
And having pity.
On that particular individual and also having an earnest desire to seek to help that one in your need. It involves feeling with that one. I believe in their particular need. And I think that's nice how you bring this out that you know, in the case of of Lazarus, it speaks of how the Lord, he was troubled, but the margin says he troubled himself. In other words, he didn't have to.
Enter into the feelings that those that.
We're sorrowing over their loved ones, but he chose to do that.
And I think it's beautiful to contemplate.
The humanity Christ, how He enters into our particular situations with human feelings as well as that which is designed. He has the power to deal with it.
That's beautiful, Wally and John 11 and, uh, it's gonna like to read, uh, the footnote, Mr. Darby as he comments on that first 33 where it says he was.
Groaned in the spirit and was troubled, he says. Here it is inward feeling in spirit, produced by.
Deep pain caused by seeing the power of death over the human spirit. There was so far indignation that there was deep antagonism to the power of evil and sin and death. It may be the groans is the best word.
But just think, as he walked through this world and saw things, he was the creator.
He made us to live. He didn't make us to die. Why do we die? Because.
Of sin that has come in, that's not the way he meant it to be. And if he walked through and saw the devastation that scented wrought, it weighed on his hymn. He felt it. And that's what we have in this chapter, Isaiah 53 and verse four. I think that is really important to see the distinction.
Some people say that there's four is what is true of the cross. You mentioned that, Jim, that it's not the cross there, it's his life. He bore those things. He felt them in that. I don't think it's proper to say that the Lord was ever sick, but he bore their infirmities.
He bore their griefs and carried their sorrows. He felt it in himself.
But he was never sick himself because that was the workings of of sin in the sinful flesh. And the Lord did not have sinful flesh. It was fully humanity in connection with him. I think that's very important people.
00:15:19
He mistakenly say that all Christians should be.
Should have no disease today, and if you have disease, it's a lack of faith. That is wrong teaching. This is not the cross. This is during the life of the Lord. Jesus felt those things. I think it's good to be clear about that.
And it's helpful to go back and read the songs and that connection isn't it, because the songs give us the innermost feelings and breathings of the Lord Jesus.
As he walked through this world in the path of faith and service, and to see how he felt things and felt things so very keenly, and to see too how he felt the rejection of those he had come to bless. Reproach hath broken mine heart. And the physical sufferings too, and all those things, they're brought up. You have the circumstances of his life and work in the Gospel.
But you'll never have your heart strings tugged in the way you will unless you go back to the songs and read those innermost breathing again. The 40th Psalm, the 22nd Psalm, the 69th Psalm, the 102nd Psalm, and other places in the Psalms where the innermost feelings and breathings are brought out. Just like to make this other comment too before we pass on in connection with what Don said as to the nation.
And their estimation of the Lord Jesus, because it's beautiful in contrast.
To see the thief on the cross, when he turned to the Lord, what did he say to the other malefactor on the other side of the Lord Jesus? He said, we justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds. And then he exonerated the Lord Jesus. He said, But this man has done nothing amiss. What a complete contrast in estimation to those who sat down and watched him suffer, those who passed by and reviled him.
Those who said, if thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross, save thyself and others, and he saved others himself he cannot save, and so on. That was their estimation. But the thief on the cross, he got things in the proper perspective, realized that he was in the place of condemnation, but that there was a perfect man hanging beside him who didn't deserve what he was getting though the nation at large.
This is what they attributed to him and felt, as you say, was getting his just dessert. Well, that's the way of blessing. But I I just think it's a beautiful contrast.
We speak of suffering for Christ and we are identified with His name. Perhaps when someone is given a gospel tract to take a small illustration, and it's rejected because of what it is, and in that way we suffer for Him if we are identified with His name.
But there is another kind of suffering connected with the Lord that we can enter into is brought out in Scripture and is connected with this first four and that is suffering with.
Price we have had before us here in this first, how He suffered in the presence of the results of sin and the creation, and in His soul there was suffering connected with it, as He saw, as Jim has already said, what took place with Lazarus and the grief and the sorrow upon others, as well as the very fact that Lazarus had died.
Brought suffering into the soul of Himself. And in the measure in which we buy our life, eternal life, the life of Christ, in the measure in which we enter into these things, that can be said that we suffer with Christ when we too feel what sin has brought into this creation, and we feel it is in our measure as He felt it.
God says you're suffering with him. You're you're with him in that character of suffering. It's a real privilege, brother. And but as Jim says, umm, it's so easy to get the opposite direction. And that is how do I get out of suffering? We're, we're so inclined, even when someone is sick, immediately the first thought in us is Lord make them well, it isn't always his will or his purpose to do so.
00:20:24
And sometimes the Lord brings a person into suffering with a purpose of glorifying himself in it.
His promise is to be with Him in the suffering, and that is to bear it with them. And it sometimes, may the Lord help us, not always to just say Lord remove the suffering, but a deeper work of God in the soul really is to get into that suffering as the Lord did, in the sense of feeling it and feeling it in the person and what they're passing through. And in that we suffer with Him, and we look forward to the day of glory.
When the suffering is passed, but God's ways are often today accomplished in suffering and they were accomplished in the Lord Jesus in this suffering that he passed through in that today when he sympathizes with you and I as a great high priest. And as we see in Hebrews chapter 2, the fitness for his present work was that what she suffered in his life and including, of course, the cross, but not only the cross. It was what he passed through and suffering here that has made him a compassionate and perfect high priest for us before God.
And so we too can enter into that and in our manager, not high priest, but we can have compassion with one another.
We have Romans in Romans 8 suffering with them and I think it's helpful to see it there, which you mentioned, and just read a few verses there in Romans 8 and verse 17.
If children were children of God, then heirs heirs of God and joint heirs of Christ.
If so, be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together, there it is, suffering with Him. And if you have that new life in Christ, you're gonna feel it that this world is so terribly out of order. We think we mentioned the other day, we look around and see the suffering of humanity, the hunger, the children dying of starvation.
Sickness because of lack of treatment. Bombs going on, blowing people up.
That should make us grow on breadth. We have a nature that sees that that is not what God had in mind. So you have in the verses following about the whole creation, groaning and traveling in pain. I sometimes say the there's a difference between groaning and complaining. Complaining is not right for a believer in the Lord Jesus.
But groaning is proper. What is groaning?
Bronine is the simple recognition of the fact that things are not what God had in mind for His creation, and they're going to be in the coming day.
Liberated from the ******* of corruption, and brought into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.
Wonderful to think about in the millennial day that the whole creation is going to be liberated.
Oh, in a different world, this is gonna be. I don't think we have any concept.
I would guess, given what we have in scripture about the millennial age, the leaves of the tree of Life, or for the healing of the nation.
I don't think there will be a need of hospitals or pharmacies or doctors because he's gonna heal. The nation's wonderful to think about and the animal creation and the.
Plant creation too, that has been so effective. Everything is out of whack and out of order. Who can put it straight today? There's nobody can put it straight. It's that way and all we can do.
00:25:13
Is growing and in that sense, like you say, Don, we suffer with him, we see it and we should feel it. And if you are a real believer in the Lord Jesus, you will feel it and that is suffering with it.
Well, there were greater and deeper sufferings that we can't go into.
So if he goes on the profit to say to us, he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.
Uh, Lord Jesus perfectly entered into the condition of the nation of Israel. He was baptized.
By John suffer all righteousness and taking his place with them and their place as a nation out of order before God, but that wasn't going to do it completely. We had to go on and take the judgment of God. So it is for us. We can bear with humanity. We can suffer with Christ in that way, but there's the suffering of Christ that he alone.
And we have the privilege of becoming worshippers of himself.
Wonder if this person and the praise of his work.
So you would say done that verse five is more the suffering or sin from the hands of God that.
Took place in those three hours of darkness.
That's how you understand it. I think that it says our inequities and our trespasses, they've made them his own. He says prophetically, my sins are not hidden. That is when the Lord Jesus bears our sins, bore our sins.
He literally took them in responsibility upon himself to the full extent that he could say of himself, my sins are not his.
And so when he took mysense and the responsibility of himself to deal with God about them, he calls them his own. We look at them and we say, my sins were collectively our sins, our transgressions. And he takes them, and he says their mind, and he bears them in our place.
As only he could, none other could be the savior but He.
There's a him, perhaps we sing that perhaps expresses it so well, our, our sins, our guilt and love combined, confessed and borne by thee. And so it kind of bears out, doesn't it, what Don has has said. I think we used to think when we were young people, He took my sins and my sorrows and he made them his very own. He bore the burden to Calvary and suffered and died alone.
I'd like to just say too, in that connection there were in John's gospel where you have various hours mentioned, there are two different hours in connection with this suffering. In fact, it might be helpful to look at that because.
It distinguishes between what we've already, what we've had in our fourth verse, and then what he goes on to speak of in the fifth verse of our chapter.
First of all in John Chapter 7.
And verse 30 Then they sought to take him, but no man laid hands on him.
Because his hour was not yet come. And in the 8th chapter we have a similar statement. But you notice here in connection with this hour of suffering, it's in regard to man laying hands on him. Because there was an hour coming when he was going to suffer like he had not suffered before at the hands of man. And we know the circumstances surrounding the trial of the Lord Jesus and then finally taking him out and nailing him to a Roman cross. And so there was an hour of suffering when man did lay hands on him.
It wasn't at this point in the 7th and 8th chapters of John, but it was coming. But there's another hour in connection with his suffering that's brought out in the 12Th chapter. There's little distinction made here that's very important.
00:30:06
In John's gospel, you don't get his agony in the garden in keeping with the character of the gospel, but you do get this, this verse, the 27th verse of John chapter 12. He says, now is my soul troubles, and what shall I say?
Father saved me from this hour, but for this cause came I unto this hour. Now the hour here, I suggest, is not so much the hour of His suffering at the hand of man, but it was the hour of His suffering at the hand of God. Father save me from this hour. And when he bowed in the garden in his agony, as we get in some of the other Gospels, what was it that caused Him to bow in such agony?
And the sweat, as it were, great drops of blood falling down to the ground, was it not the anticipation of that hour when He would suffer at the hand of God the Father, when our sins would be laid on His blessed head, When He would bear our sins in His own body on the tree? And so there were the physical sufferings of the Lord. There's that which He felt in His pathway. There was that which He suffered at the hand of man, when they laid hands and took Him from the garden.
To pilots, Judgment Hall, and back and forth that night from one to another, and so on. There were those physical sufferings he felt as they stretched his hands and his feet on a Roman cross and nailed him there. But there was something even greater than that. Brethren, perhaps we in a little way enter into those physical sufferings. I like the way the one hymn writer put. But none of the ransomed ever knew how deep were the waters crossed, or how dark was the night the Lord passed through.
Ere he found the sheep that was lost. What was the hymn writer referring to? Not the physical suffering, but those atoning suffering. How deep the sorrow, who can tell which was for us to endure? So I think it's helpful to separate these two things because as we said yesterday, the physical sufferings of Christ, as awful as they were, they never atone for one sin. But what it was when he felt those strikes.
In those hours of dust, when he was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our initiatives, when the chastised limit are pieces of condiment with his stripes clear heels. Rather. You'll never enter into that, I suggest, for all eternity. Perhaps we'll have a little deeper appreciation and understanding in the coming day. But will we ever really enter into those atoning sufferings, brethren, Those atoning sufferings as we consider them for eternity?
They're gonna bring forth fresh bursts of praise and worship from our hearts, but I don't think we'll ever enter into the depth of this country. And I think that's why God closed the scene in Darkness is too awful to humanizing.
It's the person that sustains the work, and his person is beyond our comprehension.
That is, suppose Adam but never sinned and had children, and one of his children had sinned. Could Adam then, because he had no sin of his own? We sometimes say, well, I can't die for you, and you can't die for me, because I I've got my own sins and you have yours. But suppose Adam had never sinned, but one of his children had sinned. Could Adam have offered himself to God as a sacrifice for his child? The answer is no, he could not.
Adam and his condition had no sense of what sin was, and as such he could not bear it. It wasn't the Lord Jesus, and only the Lord Jesus as the divine person become man.
Understands what the offense of sin is through holy God and only He fully comprehends the awfulness of the disobedience of the creature to His Creator, and it has.
Fully entering into it that he can take the place that he did and bear it. But that's why in picture form in in umm, Exodus 12.
00:35:02
It it's a lamb D lamb because there was only one in Genesis 22. It is umm God shall provide for himself a lamb because.
The Lamb could not be found from mankind, even if mankind there were those in mankind who had not sinned, they would not have been ones who could have borne the atonement work. It's only in his person that that he could do it and did and it's unique and it's it's something that is holy, that causes results in that we can never.
Fully comprehend the depth through which you passed. It's beyond us as creatures to know. But it was Him as a man that did it, and his person as being able to sustain it. And why? It says, for example, in the anticipation of it, that it was beyond the human, as it were. And so the angels of God, even in the garden, are there to sustain the vessel.
From which the work is to take place, because the vessel was a human vessel, it was a body prepared for him. But even the the the thought of it was so beyond us that just the vessel that in which the atonement was to be made needed the strengthening support of angels to to hold it, even though it was the very body in which in which was manifested.
Uh, the fullness of the Godhead, as we have in Colossians one the cross or the work of the cross is a.
Matter that as we contemplate it, it helps us to see the greatness of His person, and it's that which makes us worship Him.
We can thank Him forever for removing our sins, but as we see as person in the work for God first of all, and then for us, it's what makes us worship Him and will worship Him as we enter more into it as we're in His presence.
I've enjoyed doing the.
Thought that you have the cry of abandonment in Matthew and Mark.
And the three hours of tardiness are mentioned in Luke's gospel that there is no cry there.
And one of the commentators.
Vomiting on it makes this statement and I thoroughly enjoyed it, he says. There in Luke's gospel is where you have him as a perfect man.
And he in the perfection of his humanity, in the garden there, as in no other gospel, he sweats, as it were, great drops of blood falling down to the ground. This comment is made, that as a completely holy man, to contemplate the thought of contact with sin.
Was terrible to him, and he shrunk from it, and he prayed, and he said, Father, thou be willing, let this cup pass from me. Is there any other way that can be done? And the fact that he shrunk from that show the holiness of his character.
But then and the perfection of his humanity completely submitted to the will of God, he said, not my will that thine be done when the time comes.
For the abandonment.
In that gospel, there's no cry because he's so fully submitted to the will of God to go through it.
Fairly enjoyed that time. And brethren, it's true we'll never understand that. Sometimes we understand a little bit about physical suffering.
And but you were mentioning about it, Jim, I agree that there's nothing that compares with the suffering of those three hours of darkness, but I don't believe we crossed very well.
00:40:01
The awful gruesomeness of Roman crucifixion. It was those Roman soldiers were practiced in cruelty.
In every possible way. And we sat in a nice meeting room. Brethren, we sit on comfortable seats.
We have nice air conditioning taking care of us and.
We don't for us be a helpfulness to even the physical suffering. And then there was the sufferings of his soul, the reproach that broke his heart. It's another aspect of suffering, the suffering of those three hours of darkness. I like to put it this way. And then it helped me, rather than the first three hours he suffered.
From the hands of man.
For righteousness sake.
The last three hours, the hours of darkness.
He suffered for sin from the hands of God.
And that by far is the most powerful, but it will never fully be able to grasp. But we can look at it from afar, brethren, like the Ark, when it was going to cross the Jordan River, the children of Israel had to be 2000 cubits away.
It wasn't something that they could witness very close and when we look at the cross, that's the way we look at it from a distance.
And it makes us worship and praise.
Like to make this comment connection with what's been said about the gospels?
And I suggest brother may not reason about it.
We we missed something important to our souls, in keeping with what Bob just said.
Mark presents him to us as a perfect servant. Very first verse of the Bible, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, tells us to be lost. All the gospels tell us that he is the man Christ Jesus, and we know him, the Son of God. But each gospel has its own way of presenting it, and we need to keep them where they are, not mix them.
Where we will get in?
Off the holy ground, Mark presents him as a perfect service.
And when he goes and he does the work of the servant.
And he's in it. It was proper for the servants to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
When he is presented in Luke.
He is presented as demand, the perfect man.
Who bears the judgment with God dealing with him, and the expressions concerning him are in keeping with that.
But John's Gospel is the Father and the Son, and we need to leave John's Gospel as we see it.
In Genesis 22.
Where you have Abraham the father, saying to the others, abide here by the ***.
Well, I in the last go Yonder to worship, and John's gospel takes the Father and the Son together.
And so it says there and they went, both of them together, and that togetherness is never broken, never seen in any other way.
Than that in the presentation of the work in the Gospel of John.
And as the consequences has already been said, it's the Father and the Son who go Yonder to worship, and in that we do not.
Enter in to what took place and so there is no expressions of suffering from in it. There is no expressions of the human suffering that we associate with the other gospels because it is beyond it is it is something that.
The Father and the Son together worship and the Sons offering of himself.
00:45:07
To the Father and the character of Leviticus, Chapter one.
And the burnt offering is what is presented and it's special to God, it's special to the sun. It's almost, I would want to say, a family secret between them because it's beyond us to fully understand or know what it meant to the Father or to the Son to undertake that transgression. I mean that transaction, not transgression.
But to undertake that move?
So he simply says in John's Gospel, the cup which my father has given me, shall I not drink it just like to say too, in connection with the Lord Jesus ability to be the sin bearer that is illustrated very beautiful beautifully in the brass that was used in the Old Testament in connection with various things that alter that is such a beautiful picture of the cross is the brave and altar.
We find when Israel thinned and was bitten by the serpent, that the remedy was to put a serpent of brass on the pole and all that looked were saved and so on. It's very remarkable if you trace through the Old Testament that there are 7 references to the fact that the broadly weight, either the weight or the cost of the brass, couldn't be found out. Seven references to the fact that it could not be found out.
Because the brass, brass and Scripture speaks of endurance, and it speaks of righteous judgment, and in connection with the work of Calvary, the work of atonement. It speaks to us of the ability of the Lord Jesus to endure the wrath of God against sin because of who He wants. Only a divine person, only God's beloved Son, the one who took on him, holy humanity.
Is the only one that could have the ability to endure or bear our sins in his own body on the tree. But that weight and that cost of the brass in the Old Testament could never be found out. And it's remarkable because all the other commodities in connection with the Tabernacle in the wilderness, the temple built later under the direction of Solomon, even when they came back in the days of Ezra and those ones.
When they came back from Babylon, everything else was carefully weighed and measured and recorded, but that which spoke to the heart of God, of the ability of the Lord Jesus to endure the judgment of God against Him. God made sure that seven times is carefully recorded that it could never be found out.
Brother, I have a question next Wednesday. Little powers of darkness.
So umm again question umm, do we have the only thing we have?
Is those that kind of darkness?
It's a year to $30. When it was first we tried Eli. Eli, Madam Sebastian.
It's not a statement question.
That's going to react.
That's a, uh, record that's given to us, Nelson. I sometimes think of it this way. I trust it's right.
At all through those three hours as the judgment was falling on him and all this fury, there is no complaint from that center cross.
Silence. Complete silence. He suffers.
All that judgment for sin.
But there's an awful moment at the end.
When God turns his face from them, it's the God that was his strength to stay, and he cries in the total anguish of his soul. My God, my God, why don't forsake me?
00:50:06
Like Don says, it's holy ground, brother, and as best we leave it as scripture, as closely as scripture puts it, just to take it that way.
We consider the terrible destiny of those who die in their sins.
They're going to experience eternal performance in the Lake of fire, where there's weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
We cannot enter into this with our finite minds. I believe it. It boggles the mind to consider eternal punishment torment.
But we can rejoice.
Knowing that this punishment is passed for the believer.
Because the Lord Jesus, he was wounded in my transgression. He was bruised from my liberties. I think it's important to make it personal. I believe that during those three dark hours, the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Exhausted.
If I can use that word, the judgment that you and I we would experience for eternity in the lake of fire, and not just for you and me, but for all the redeemed Old Testament as well as New Testament.
The judgment that was due to the redeemed has been now compressed into three hours. Can we enter into this? The Lord Jesus suffered that.
And that's why I believe in the lamentations we read there. Is it nothing to you, all you that passed by? Behold, and see if there'd be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, wherewith the Lord has afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger.
You know, it's good, I believe, to think about those hours.
Those three car dollars.
No, there's been a movie produced called The Passion.
And I've never seen the movie, but I know many have been affected by it, coming out weeping as they looked at what the Lord Jesus endured the suffer.
But I believe it depicts what endures the hands of damage, the physical stuff.
Is there anything said in there or showed about what happened during the three dark hours?
You know what can be compared to what he suffered during those hours of darkness?
Yet I believe.
Missing in that particular video, you know, that's where he suffered for sin, just for the young child that he might bring us to God.
What we have in verse five and six is substitution. I think that's whether, Robert, you mentioned that it's how many times in these verses you say 10 times. I could just point them out if you like.
Verse five, The first one is, he was wounded for our transgressions. The second time is he was bruised for power iniquities. The third one is that the chastisement of our peace was upon him. The 4th one, and with his stripes we are healed. And then verse six, the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
And then the 6th one, in verse eight, he was taken from prison and from judgment, And who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off out of the land of the living, for the transgression of my people he was stricken. And then the 7th one, verse 10. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He hath put him to grief, when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin.
And then the 8th one is, uh, at the end of verse 11, he shall bear their iniquities. And then the 9th one, he hath poured out his soul unto death, and he was numbered with the transgressors. The 10th one, he bare the sin of many.
00:55:18
That's helpful. I would like to make a comment on the fact that there are sometimes.
Two, uh, words that we have in Scripture that are put together and to understand them is very helpful. One is propitiation and the other is substitution, which you're talking about is substitution and God accepted.
What Jesus did as a substitute for us.
And in substitution we say Christ died for us. My father-in-law used to make a comment that I found a little bit strange when I heard it first, but I think it's true. You said Christ died for God. That's propitiation, and that is important too.
Because.
Sin had put in question God's holy character, and propitiation was that part of the work of Christ which fully vindicates God's righteous character. And if God was going to come forth and forgive sin, that must be done. Not only is the Lord Jesus a substitute for us, but.
Christ died for God and you have that word used in first John chapter 2 and verse.
Umm, maybe we better read it.
It's verse 2.
The end of verse one. He speaks of Jesus Christ the righteous.
And he verse two is the propitiation for.
Our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world or for the whole world. He is the propitiation for the whole world.
And I see that many times people don't clearly understand the work of Christ as far as propitiation is concerned.
Price work on the cross has propitiated God as to the sins of the whole world. We can say to the whole world God is satisfied with the work of the Lord Jesus. You can come now as a guilty, repentant Sinner received forgiveness of sin. That's propitiation and in propitiation it's the sins. It's the question of the whole world. Christ died for all. That's propitiation.
But when we come to substitution, it never says in connection with substitution that Christ died for the sins of the whole world. Notice what you read in the end of this chapter 53 and verse 12.
As it says in other places.
Ye bare the sin of many.
So often I hear gospel preaching and they say Christ died for the sins of the whole world. You're talking about substitution. That is not correct according to scripture. If you're talking about propitiation, yes, He died for the whole world and God has propitiated as to the question of sin so that he has not compromised in his character as he comes out to forgive the repentance Sinner.
That was tremendously important in the great debt of atonement. In Leviticus chapter 16, there were two goats chosen. One was for the Lord and one was for the people.
The first goat was killed and his blood was taken within the veil and sprinkled on the mercy seat. That's propitiation. God is satisfied with the work of the Lord Jesus.
But then the high priest came out, and he placed his head, his hands on the head of that second goat, and he confessed the sins of the people on the head of that second goat. And that second goat, which is a figure of substitution, was taken out into a land uninhabited and let go. Those two parts of the work of Christ are very important. They were both.
01:00:23
Tremendously.
Uh, fulfilled in the work of the Lord Jesus on the Christ.
Let's Psalm 69.
Oh, then I restored that because I took not away.
There.
There's a distinction to the in the order of the Scriptures and we need to recognize that. And so here in Isaiah 53 or 52 at the end of 52 That was read to us yesterday, it says in verse 13, Behold, my servant shall deal prudently. He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high. God has approved of that man. And then a little bit later in verse 15, so shall he sprinkle many nations or astonished many nations.
The king shall shut their mouths at him, for that which had not been told them shall they see, and that which they had not heard shall they consider. So God's man is exonerated. He's exalted, He's glorified, He appears, He comes at the appearing, and the world recognizes that this one has accomplished God's purposes, and in perfect obedience and humility.
Has been that land of God, and now is exalted.
And then our part next in verse five, as it was brought out in verse 4, three leads his work among his people, his life for us and his life for his people among his own. But here in verse five, it's his work of substitution. And so it's our part next, not our part first, his part first. He's exalted. And so it's.
The thought is being brought forward correctly that.
It's God's part first. The Lord Jesus died for God's heart as it were, that he might be exonerated as to the question of sin. And so in chapter 6 of Isaiah it says in verse 8 then also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? It's God's part first. Then said, I hear my send me. And so it's wonderful to be able to enjoy this in our own souls.
As to the, as how the children of Israel, those that are the remnant and, uh, come through the tribulation period and recognize the Lord Jesus as their Messiah, they'll say, but he was wounded for our transgressions. They're going to recognize his work and it was on their behalf, but they'll recognize his glory. They'll exalt him Wonderful for us to recognize an exalted as we did this morning, I believe.
We announced to ourselves and to this world that he's God's man. He's risen. He's glorified.
So those that, uh, are going to speak these words.
Are restored Jewish lemon and each and every one of them are saved to enjoy blessings here on earth. But we can apply.
What they will enjoy, to our own case, that's why we're here this afternoon taking up this portion.
But I think in verse 6.
Where it speaks about the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of assault. We're talking simply, or shall I say only about believe.
Because they're the ones that are speaking these words. It's not that the Lord poured the sins of the whole population that ever lived. You know, it tells us to Hebrews 9. I believe it is that Christ was once often prepared the sins of many, just as we have here in the last verse. We bear the sin of many. Not all are going to be received at all, are going to be saved. It's only those who have faith.
If he had been a substitute for every sin of all the world, God would not be able justly.
To put the center in health that would not be just. And so those that go to hell go there because of their own sins. They refuse what Jesus did on the cross, and they will suffer for their own sins and hell forever.
01:05:16
I'd like to turn to.
Zachariah, Chapter 12.
Saccharide chapter 12 gives us the these people that were speaking about the last few minutes and following the remnant of Israel's faith, those who will be able to speak these words that we have in Isaiah and truth and.
Just read a little bit here in Zechariah as well. He says there's 10.
Umm, And I will pour upon the House of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplications, and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced. And they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him as one is in bitterness for his first born. They go through the process of repentance.
So do we. We don't start out seeing beauty in.
We are All Souls individually.
He's a man.
But God brings us to that place in our souls where we see ourselves as God sees us. We're like Job, who said I heard of thee by the hearing of the year, but now mine I see it thee. And what did it produce in them as a result? After he really saw himself as as God saw him, he said, I abhor myself and repent and dust and ashes. So these people in a particular way will.
Look upon him whom they pierced, and they'll say we did that.
We, they will take upon themselves. They weren't living at that time, of course, when it actually happened, but they recognized the human art and their own hearts in it, and they recognized the responsibility collectively as a nation of people. And they see them and they mourn. They they're in bitterness of spirit and they see the wounds in his hands because he is restored to them privately in this fear before he seemed to the world publicly.
In his power and glory. And so it says in verse 11. In that day there should be a great morning in Jerusalem, as the morning has had in ribbon in the valley of Magiddon. And the land shall mourn. Every family apart. The family of the House of David apart and their wives apart. The family of the House of Nathan apart, their wives apart. It isn't simply national, but it's individual. It gets down to the family. You and I might be part of families who have been Christian families for generations. Doesn't work.
But that doesn't save us.
God has no grandchildren. Every one of us has to come as a first born child, as a child in God's family. We don't get there because of our dad or mom or grandparents. And so it says every family apart, their wives apart, the family that Nathan apart, their wives apart.
And so on to the end of the chapter, all the families that remain, every family apart and lives apart. And they will say we he was wounded for our transgressions. They look upon the wounds in his hands and they recognize at that point.
We didn't just put in the debt.
But at that same point in time in which we he was wounded in the House of his friends, his friends, his friends, his family, Israel.
He he says he bore our transgression, He took our flight before God in the work of repentance, and salvation will have its full work in the souls of these ones who are awakened to their needs. They won't be people that have ever heard the gospel in our day, but they will then go through their period of learning to know who He is and to accept Him as the Messiah who was atoned for them.
So we have the two aspects in our sixth verse of our chapter, that is.
The collective aspect of national repentance for Israel and then the individual, all we like sheep have gone astray. That's the collective side of things. But then the language changes and says we have turned everyone to his own way. It comes right down to an individual aspect of things. And so as what we see in the 12Th chapter of the of Zechariah, there you have those two things.
01:10:23
And that's individual repentance has always been the way of blessing, hasn't it? You know, it's easy for us for, for a person to say, well, all have sinned. And I think even if we were to go out on the streets of Mayfield tonight and ask people if man is a Sinner, I think if people are honest with themselves, they'll say, yes, man has done wrong things, he's a Sinner. But it's quite another matter to bring it down to an individual aspect of things.
And that's why when we present the gospel, we seek to impress upon souls the need for individual repentance, not just to recognize that the human race has fallen and that all are like sheep going astray, but that we've turned everyone to his, to his own, his own way. And even in our Christian lives, I don't want to go beyond this verse, but even in our Christian lives, that's the way of blessing too. You know, sometimes there's failure comes in even collectively amongst the people of God.
And it's good to get on our faces collectively, maybe in a local assembly. We fall on our faces collectively when failure has come in. But the real path of blessing and restoration is when we individually recognize our part in the failure and the sin, and there's an individual work of repentance in each soul. And so it will be for the remnant in a coming day. Yes, they'll be the as Dawn says, they'll be the collective side of things.
But there must before there's real true blessing and the Lord can really come in on this for their for their peace and for their their blessing. There has to be that individual recognition to.
They will not minimize it.
I say that because.
The most general aspect is all of send. We can narrow it down and just take ourselves in this room and say we extend. We take it as Jim says, one step further. I ascend, but make a full stop when you say it. Don't put any butts after. Don't say I have seen but.
Umm, the examples, they're, they're very, very serious examples in Scripture.
King Saul said I have sinned, but he didn't repent. He immediately went on with his bot, which was Samuel. Honor me now, therefore before the people.
Uh, Judith said. I have sinned. He went that far, but he didn't repent.
He only felt it in the consequences of the loss to himself, not in what he had done to the Lord Jesus and in the loss to himself. It caused him to go out and hang in the snow, but there wasn't any repentance towards God in it. And so these ones will not stop short.
They'll be in bitterness of soul that takes the repentance, takes the responsibility of what I have done. I don't say I made a mistake or some such euphemism, say I've sinned. And in fact, in the Old Testament, in cases where a sacrifice was to be offered, they not only had to say I have sinned, but they had to say what it was. Of course, we could not confess all our sins, but in an individual way.
If you have or I have offended someone, sinned against them in a personal way, when we go to say we're sorry, it is important to say I sinned against you by doing whatever it was I did. There's something more humbling and important to not just even say I sinned or I did wrong towards you, but what really brings the soul down as it needs to be brought down is to say I lied against you.
Or I did this or that, and specifically specific in the sin, the acknowledgement of what the sin is. And so in this case of Israel, they'll be very specific. They recognize the wounds in His hands and they take the responsibility for having to put them there.
01:15:02
In Luke 15 it tells us that there's joy in the presence of the angels of God over one Sinner that's saved, no?
It says over one Sinner that repents.
Thing to go emphasis is on repentance, and I believe in the case of the prodigal there was true repentance.
Hi, this is Jim.
Against seven, against eight, it was reality there and you see the result there.
Young man brought in some places.
Just unspeakable favor during the father's house got the best rolled on. Bring on his fingers, shoes on his feet.
The fatty cat is killed. There's a celebration.
Repentance is a change of attitude is a change of mind, willingness to.
Say that God is right and I'm wrong.
Taking sides with God against oneself.
I'd like to thank Wally. That was when he was sitting there with the figures, that prodigal son that that repentance came. There was a change in his thinking.
And he thought not about getting away from his father, and he thought about his father's house.
And then he got up and he went back.
As conversion.
So important, it's very important. It's repentance.
So many people that say oh God forgive me, do not repent and they just want to go on with their sin.
But there is no salvation apart from repentance.
So King Saul said I have sinned, and his next words are Honor me now.
The prodigal son said I have sinned against heaven. He took it even higher. And then his next words are, I am not worthy. And that was his true place within himself. Having said that, he thought what he could ask for was make me now as one of thy hired servants. But having properly repented, then he found out the father's heart. There was no attitude in the father. I'm going to make you a hired servant and put you in your place that you deserve for what you did, No.
The Father's heart was bring forth the best Rd. but it's important to see that the Father allowed him to say I am no more worthy because it was a necessary part of the son's repentance. Having said that, he cuts him off and he doesn't say make me now is one of the higher servants. The Father says this is my son. So God would say to us, hi beloved, you from eternity.
I want you to be one of my children. God doesn't need any more hired service. What He wants is sons that can sit down at His table and enjoy fellowship with Him.
Pascal and my God.
Bless all my things were on the day.
By Almighty.
He was Led
Gospel—R. Boulard
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.
OK.
It's my little migraine.
Of prayer and grace.
O Come back to Jay, come back together.
Long and play in the green swing and that's all man I am being shall rely on.
I'll be fine.
Go backwards of God. Never speak to God. And what's the name?
And all for a day.
In the beginning, I won't let him come back and forever. They can't let God. It's when he's went hard and well behind my mouth.
And then all when you had snakes all in life.
He reigned and prayed and forested and there's too proud of him. I'm sad. And I dreamt of all her eyes and I was.
Someday by them I followed the one of the faith, I'm afraid.
You all have a great day in my place and that heart.
Oh God no damage is.
Like right here, falling together.
The great spring and then my own life, right Experience and all we're giving our dream.
Well, let's ask God blessing upon this hour together our love.
I'd like to read just one verse in opening here in Matthew's Gospel Chapter 7.
It says there in verse 13.
Enter ye in at the straight gate, or the narrow gate. For wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction. And many there be which go in there, because Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
00:05:07
Dear friends, tonight we're going to look at some of the times in Luke's Gospel will trace with the Lord's help.
How the Lord Jesus was led in shame and mockery from one place to another.
And finally.
Led to the cross, led to that place where he was crucified, rejected of man, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. But tonight I want to tell you in faithfulness to your own soul, that if you sit here in your seat tonight not knowing the Lord Jesus as your Savior, not knowing the forgiveness of God on a righteous basis.
Because of the blood of Jesus Christ that was shed.
On the cross of Calvary to cleanse you from all sin. If you've never availed yourself of that blood, you're not cleanse. You sit here, you're being LED in the way that leads to destruction.
It's a solemn thing. You don't have to do anything tonight.
You don't have to do anything if you're going to go into a lost eternity. Just keep going because you're being LED into a lost eternity. This is what it says here in Matthew's Gospel.
Chapter 7, it says it's a Broadway that leadeth to destruction. You're being led by the enemy of your soul, Satan, into a lost eternity. It's an internal banishment from the presence of God and eternal banishment from the light of the glory of God. An eternal banishment from the blessing of God, from the heart of a God that loved you and created you and wanted to have a relationship with you. Oh, God is love.
But God is light, and so God in his desire for your blessing, saw that because of the fall of men, man in that garden of the Lord, that place specially prepared of God to have fellowship with his creature man, and how he'd fallen into sin. God saw that man had begun that road, that broad Rd. that led to destruction, and God in his wisdom in a past eternity.
Had planned for your salvation and for mine yours, if you'd receive His Son the Lord Jesus as Savior. And so God in His wisdom saw that you were being LED in the wrong direction to destruction, and God sent his man to take your place.
And to be LED to the place of crucifixion, the place where he would give his life for yours, where he would bear the judgment, if you would receive him as a savior, where he would bear the judgment in his own body on the tree.
To set you free from the penalty of your sins, and that is the judgment of God and banishment from his presence eternally. Judgment because of sin. God is holy and cannot look upon sin. And so we find in the Isaiah chapter 6. I'd like to perhaps just read it to be clear and simple.
In our present presentation of the Gospel tonight.
How the Lord Jesus willingly is presented as one who came to take your place.
That you might not perish in your sins.
For God, Southern loved the world.
That he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish.
But have everlasting life.
And so he says in Isaiah chapter 6, in the eternal counsels of God, the little picture of those councils in a past eternity, in verse eight it says also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send?
Who will go for us?
Then said, I here am I send me the Lord Jesus came down willingly from heaven itself.
The purest heights of glory, where sin can never come, where he eternally enjoyed the presence of His Father.
He came from the purest heights of glory into the filth of this wicked world.
To save your soul.
To arrest you in your course of disobedience and rebellion against Him, and to tell you of His love. Oh, will you listen tonight? Will you have ears to hear the Word of God? Well, let's turn to Luke's gospel and look at those passages that have to do with the Lord Jesus being LED.
00:10:08
And I'm not going to go into a lot of detail here, but I will say this. In Luke's Gospel chapter 22, we find in verse 54 the first time that it presents the Lord Jesus being LED.
And God gives us detail in Scripture not to satisfy our curiosity, dear friend.
But to tell us details that we need to know.
The details that in His love He tells us to win our hearts.
To tell us how much of A substitute he became and why. And so the very first time we find here as we look in Luke's Gospel chapter 22.
I'd like to read from verse 47. It says while he yet spake, behold a multitude, and he that was called Judas, one of the 12 went before them, and drew near unto Jesus to kiss him.
But Jesus said unto him, Judas betrayeth thou, the Son of man, with a kiss. When they which were about him saw what would follow, they said unto him, Lord, shall we smite with a sword? And one of them smote the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear.
And Jesus answered and said, Suffer ye thus far? And he touched his ear, and healed him. Then Jesus said unto the chief priests and captains of the temple, and the elders which were come.
To him be come out as against a thief with swords and staves. When I was daily with you in the temple Ye stretch forth no hands against me. But this is your hour and the power of darkness.
Then they took him and led him, and brought him unto the high priest's house.
And Peter followed afar off, and when they had kindled a fire in the midst of the hall, they and were sat down together. Peter sat down among them.
Want to read? Just hold your place there and we'll read in Acts chapter 8 I believe, or Chapter 7.
Notes, Chapter 8.
Acts Chapter 8.
And verse 32, the place of the Scripture which He read was this. He was led as a lamb, or as a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb dumb before His Shearer, so He opened us, opened He, not His mouth. In His humiliation His judgment was taken away. And who shall declare His generation? For His life is taken from the earth, while it was prophesied that the Lord Jesus would be LED.
As a lamb to the slaughter, it would be prophesied that the Lord Jesus would come into this world to save sinners and that the Lord Jesus and His love for you would take your place.
And as God's lamb would bear the judgment if you would receive him as Savior.
Would bear the judgment for you. He would be LED. Wouldn't be forced. No, he would follow in humility and in meekness.
And to accomplish the will of His God and Father, He would follow those that would lay their hands, their filthy wicked hands, upon His holy person. Oh dear friends, tonight the love of God is magnified as it shows us here that it was a mob that took the Lord Jesus.
It was a mob that laid their hands on him. They took him, says in another gospel, I believe it's John's gospel, chapter 19. It says that they bound him.
The Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us. The Son of God who saw you as a Sinner and came down from those courts of glory. That one came God's man. And in Luke's gospel, as we've heard in these meetings.
He's presented as the Son of Man, God's man, a new race of men born of a virgin, born of the seed of the Holy Ghost.
God's man, the man Christ Jesus, who came as the sinless Holy One, the one who knew no sin was made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
Well, it says they took him and led him and brought him into the high priest's house. And another gospel, I believe it's again, it's John's Gospel, says call to the palace, the palace of the high priest, and Peter followed afar off.
00:15:12
Well, dear friends.
There was a mob that came.
They were going down the Broad Rd. of destruction.
To destruction.
And they did had rejected God's man. God had shown by works of the Lord Jesus, by his words, that he was willing to forgive, that he was willing to bless man. And they rejected the grace of God. And a mob was sent to lead that blessed One from the Garden of Gethsemane and to lead him into the High Priest Palace. You know, I think of this.
Of how the Lord Jesus came from the palace above the palace some of him is written that calls it the Ivory Palace.
He came from that palace and he was led into that palace of the high priest, you know, the high priest in those days.
They bought their high priesthood, apparently.
They would want to be the high priest and so they would pay a huge sum of money to the Roman government that they might be appointed.
High Priest And this man lived sumptuously, this man lived in a palace. And the man that came into this world to save your soul, you'd receive him as Savior who shed his precious blood to cleanse you from all sin. He could say the foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head, but he entered this man's house. Ohio We have in the Luke's Gospel many homes that the Lord Jesus entered into.
Many houses, some houses were there was great blessing that they entered into the home. But dear friends, tonight the Lord Jesus entered into this home and there was no blessing for that man. He didn't receive God's man. And we want to plead with you tonight as those that are, if you're still lost sitting in your seat tonight, you don't know the Lord Jesus is your Savior and you've never cried to him and told him that you're a wicked Sinner and that you feel the burden of your sins.
That you feel the blackness of the heart that you have, that staying with sin, and you want to get rid of the burden of sin. You've never had that personal relationship with the Lord Jesus. Why? Tonight we plead with you to receive the Lord Jesus as Savior. He wants to give you a blessing. This man, the Lord Jesus, entered into his home and he didn't receive a blessing. Will you receive the blessing tonight?
Well, if we look a little further on.
It says that Peter sat down among them. You know, brother in Colorado said this made this statement.
Maybe you're sitting on the center's bench tonight, you're sitting in a chair tonight, and you're sitting on the center bench.
He's sitting waiting for judgment.
Waiting for the judgment of God. You know, the Lord Jesus said, behold, I come quickly.
And he's just about the day is just about up and we see that judgment is about ready to fall upon this wicked world that crucified the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, the Lord of glory. And Peter was sitting down among those that were there that had led the Lord Jesus to the high priest palace. Where are you sitting tonight?
What's your relationship with that one?
Are you sitting on the center's bench? Have you ever been honest with yourself and said, I'm lost, I don't know the Lord Jesus as my savior? I feel guilty before God.
Do you feel guilty before God if you're not saved tonight? If you don't know the Lord Jesus as your Savior, all we trust that you feel guilty tonight.
Because God has appointed a day in which he will judge this world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained.
God is going to judge this world for what it did to the Lord Jesus. Peter was sitting in the wrong place. But you know, Peter was restored to the Lord. The Lord turned in verse 61 and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him before the crow, Thou shalt deny me thrice. And Peter went out and wept bitterly. Well, there was restoration for Peter. God wants to restore you to relationship to Himself. God was in Christ reconciling the world.
00:20:05
Unto Himself, God wants you to be reconciled to himself. Well, let's look at the next one, the second time that he was LED, verse 66.
Says, As soon as it was day, Luke 22, verse 66, As soon as it was day, the elders of the people and the chief priests and the scribes came together and led him into their counsel, saying, Art thou the Christ tell us? And he said unto them, If I tell you, you will not believe.
And if I also ask you, you will not answer me, nor let me go. Hereafter shall the Son of man sit on the right hand of the power of God. Then said they all, Art thou then the Son of God? And he said unto them, Ye say that I am.
And they said, what need we further witness for? We ourselves have heard of his own mouth.
Dear friends, this beloved one God's man was led from that mob scene in the High Priest Palace. He was led into the council of the religious Jews of the day, the most religious people upon planet earth, those that had received a religion from God himself.
Had received the law.
And they had known what it was.
To have the word of God, the oracles of God.
He led. He was led into their counsel. He was led into a company of those that knew the word of God. He was led into the company of those that were perhaps of the Levitical priesthood, those that were in oversight among the people of God.
In that land of Israel, he was led into the company of the most religious people that there were.
And those people?
They had the audacity to ask, Art thou the Christ? You know what that means? The Christ? It means the anointed one, the one that was sent from God. Are you the one that sent from God?
Messiah is the same word, really it's the Hebrew word. But Christ is the anointed of God. They recognized who he claimed he was, and the Lord Jesus is the Christ, the anointed of God, the one whose God, who God has appointed heir of all things.
The one whom God has appointed judge of all you know, He used this name, the Son of Man. Hereafter shall the Son of Man sit on the right hand of the power of God.
That's his name as a judge.
Let's read it in verse in chapter one of the Book of Revelation.
Revelation chapter one.
And verse 12 I turn to see the voice that spake with me, and being turned, I saw 7 golden candlesticks. And in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, one like unto should be just son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and gird about the paths with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white as like wool.
And as white as snow. And his eyes were as a flame of fire. And his feet like in the bra fine brass as it as if they burned in a furnace. And his voice was as the sound of many waters. Just turn over to Revelation chapter 20.
We don't like to speak of judgment, but in faithfulness to God and in faithfulness to your soul, we need to speak of this one who was there in the presence of these religious Jews.
Revelation chapter 20 and verse 11, The same man, it says here I saw a great white throne in him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them.
And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the books were open, and another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books according to their works, And the sea gave up the dead which were in it.
And the death and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them, and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. This is the man, dear friends, that was led into the council of those that ought to have judged righteously, those that ought to have judged according to the word of God.
00:25:08
And they didn't consult the word of God.
Let's just turn to Deuteronomy chapter 13.
And verse 14 it says.
Just that one comment in verse 14. Then shalt thou inquire, and make search, and ask diligently, and behold, if it be truth, the thing certain that such abomination is wrought among you.
Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword. This little comment that's made here makes Search and ask diligently and behold if it be a truth and the things certain. You know, dear friends, tonight in Jewish law, under the Jewish law, they were to make certain that if there was one that was brought before the Sanhedrin, before the council, they were to make certain that what was being presented to them was the truth.
And we know that they spoke lies and they had another gospel tells us that they presented false witnesses, many false witnesses. But dear friends, tonight those of us that know the Lord Jesus as Savior recognized that he was led. He was led there in meekness and he recognized the authority that he had established among those that were called his people, and he submitted.
To that unjust judgment that they reckoned before him. And then as they announced that they didn't need any further witnesses, in verse 71, then it says the whole multitude of them arose and led him unto Pilate. And so the Roman world, the Roman government, the political side of Rome was involved. Now they led him unto the Gentile powers.
Her brother this afternoon reminded us in Exodus chapter 12 That there was going to be a lamb, and it refers to him in three different ways. It says here in Exodus 12, it says, take to them every man a lamb, a lamb for a house in verse three. And then it says in verse four, the household be too little for the lamb. But then it says in verse five, Your lamb shall be without blemish a male of the first year. Ye shall take it out from the sheep.
Or from the goats.
Dear friend, this man Christ Jesus is my substitute.
Almost 2000 years ago, in AD 29, approximately, because of man's incapability of even keeping track of time. We don't know the precise time even that the Lord Jesus was crucified, but it believed. We've believed that it's about the AD 29, almost 2000 years ago, this man.
Was taken and LED into Pilate's hall of judgment. And they said this about him. They accused him falsely. It says they began to accuse him. Verse two, chapter 23 and verse two, we found this fellow perverting the nation and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying, saying that he himself is a king, Christ a king. And Pilate asked him, saying, Art thou the king of the Jews? And he answered him and said, Thou sayest Then said Pilate unto the chief priests and to the people. I find no fault in this man.
I find no fault in this man. You know this man, the Lord Jesus came into the presence of Pilate, the Roman governor at the time.
And he received this commendation, as it were. I find no fault in this man. He said it four times. He said it four times. I find no fault in this man. There was a perfect man that stood before him.
A man that was suitable to go as God's substitute provided of God. The Lamb of God provided to go to the cross of Calvary to bear the judgment for your sins. A perfect, holy, sinless. 1A substitute. God requires that sin be judged. And here he stood before Pilate.
You know when I was in grade school, Grade 8IN Ottawa.
Had a history teacher that loved the Roman Empire, loved to talk about the Roman Empire, loved to.
I remember him on the blackboard giving a full scale diagram of a Roman road and how they had to have so much crushed rock and so much packed slag sand, and how much thickness of the cobblestones and the curvature of the road to the drainage system, all those things. He loved the Roman Empire and he loved to speak of the Roman Empire in connection with its civilization and its ability.
00:30:26
To govern on a righteous basis. And he loved to speak of the Senate and, uh, all the Roman forms of government and how righteous and organized that government was. And I used to think to myself as he spoke of those things, of how the Lord Jesus stood before Pilate, before the Gentile powers. It was the time of the Gentiles. And I used to think of how the government of that day would accept.
That a man would be brought into the presence, into the courtroom by a mob.
But God loved your soul. That's how much God loved you. He allowed a mob to take that blessed man and bring him into the pilot hall.
To lead him, simply lead him without a struggle.
To accomplish the will of God.
To prove to you.
That your unregenerate heart would never repent, would never come, except there would be a divine work of God in your heart to receive the Lord Jesus. We're all born in sin and shape and iniquity. None of us can lift ourselves up out of the ditch of sin.
And that man came and was led. He took your place and he was led into Pilot's Hall. Dear friends, there's no righteous government.
There's no righteous judgment in the courts of this country. There's no righteous judgment, very little. There may be some.
But oh, how many cases we hear of those that are unrighteous in their judgment.
You know, there's a man called Alexander Cruden who wrote formulated the concordance to the Bible and he did it in beginning approximately the year 17120.
And he was just a young man. He was falsely.
Imprisoned, I guess is the right word by those that had something against him, falsely imprisoned and condemned as a madman. And so he spent some time in what was called the toll booth of Aberdeen and Scotland.
But when he got out of that place, he desired to do a work for God.
He was a real believer and umm, he began to tabulate a concordance. He took every word that is written in the Word of God, except the ends and the ifs and some of those words, those small words, and on little bits and pieces of paper. He began in a brilliant way, without a computer, single handedly, without any help to write out different places.
Where the different names of different ones were listed, different words in scripture reconciled. You know that his concordance has been in print for over 250 years without any cessation.
Not man of God was falsely accused, and he was brought into the courts of the day he was brought he was.
Falsely accused, falsely imprisoned, but he was released.
And then this world, dear friends, there are those that are falsely accused, and the Lord knows how to deliver his people. But the Lord Jesus came into this Roman government, into this Roman judgment hall, and God didn't intervene.
Because he was God's lamb, God didn't intervene to release him.
God allowed that the Lord Jesus would be in this court and would be condemned, says you know, in another place in Mark's gospel, I think it is chapter 15.
Verse 15 says Pilate willing to content the people release Barabbas unto them and delivered Jesus here is a man given to public opinion.
00:35:06
He was led into the company of one.
Who was more concerned with public opinion than with righteousness? Well, it says in verse seven or verse six, chapter 23 of Luke, verse six, when Pilate heard of Galilee, he asked whether the man was were a Galilean. And as soon as he knew that he would belong to Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who himself also was at Jerusalem at that time. When Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad, for he was desirous to see him of a long season.
Because he had heard many things of him, and had hoped to see some miracle done by him, if any question with him in many words. But he answered him nothing. And the chief priests and scribes stood and vehemently accused him and Herod with his men of war sediment not, and mocked him, and arrayed him with a in a gorgeous robe, and sent him again to Pilate.
So let's just turn to Matthew's Gospel chapter 14 I want to read.
Here just, umm, a couple of verses.
Verse 5. Matthew 14.
When he would have put him to death, he feared the multitude, because they counted him a prophet. This is in connection with John the Baptist. But when Herod's birthday was kept, the daughter of Herodias dance before them, and pleased Herod. Whereupon he promised with an oath to give her whatsoever she would ask. And she being before instructed of her mother, said, Give me here John Baptist head in a charger.
And the king was sorry nevertheless, for his the oath's sake. And them that sat before him with him at meat, he commanded it to be given her. And he sent and beheaded John in the prison. And his head was brought in a charger to give to the damsel, and she brought it to her mother. And his disciples came and took up the body, and buried it, and went and told Jesus.
The Son of God, the Lord Jesus, the Lamb of God, the one that was lead was led into Herod's presence, into the presence of a murderer, into the presence of one who was governed by public opinion as well. But we find that he was at odds with this man Pilot. But you know, Herod was at Jerusalem. Each one of these individuals.
Was responsible before God as to how they would treat this man. The Lord Jesus inherit, you know, he said, umm, He was sent to Herod because he, the Lord Jesus, was of the jurisdiction of Galilee.
You know who lived in Galilee? The poor people lived in Galilee. You'd call them. The working class people lived in Galilee, the educated people, the wealthy people. The financial district perhaps was in Jerusalem. All those places. The military center was in Caesarea.
But in Galilee it was the working class, the poor. The Lord Jesus walked among the poor, the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, that man.
Who came in love for your soul, to offer himself a sacrifice to God, without spot as your lamb, if you'd receive him as Savior. That one came and lived among the poor. He came and lived and walked among the poor.
Not among the rich.
Among the poor.
God values those that are poor and those that are lost, those that need a Savior, it says in Second Corinthians it says that you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich, that blessed one.
Who created this world, came and became poor in this world. So he came and he was sent to Herod. He was led into His presence. This is the 4th time that he was led, and it says that in verse eight that he hoped to have seen some miracle done by him.
Oh, he's had a long time. There was a long desire in Herod's heart to see something of a miracle that the Lord Jesus would have done.
You know, the Lord Jesus had done many miracles in the land of Israel and it says.
When there were those that were sick, it says.
00:40:02
They came unto him, and He healed them all.
He healed them all.
Herod had a desire to see a miracle, to experience something perhaps supernatural. He wanted an experience. He saw religion, or religious figures, if you might put it that way, as in a source of entertainment.
But he didn't have a sense of his own need as a Sinner, as a murderer.
He was at enmity with God.
It was all right for others to experience a miracle, but he didn't want one for himself. He just wanted to see a miracle.
Dear friends, tonight, if you don't have your sins forgiven, if you have a burden of guilt of sin, a burden of sin, tonight God wants to do a miracle in your life.
You know, I was in a wicked city, the wicked city of Las Vegas, at a trade show many years ago.
There was, as I worked in the automotive business, there was a trade show once every year, the last month of the last week of October, sometimes the first week of November, a week in that city of Las Vegas. And there's not much to do in that city for one who belongs to the Lord Jesus.
And so I would walk the streets and seek to speak with different ones and so on. And as I was walking down the street one day, I went into a hotel to use the restroom facilities. And as I went into the restroom, there was a shoe shine man sitting by his shoeshine stand. His name is Richard.
And as I walked in, I saw under his stand the Bible. And I said, Sir, is that your Bible?
He said, uh, yes, that's my Bible. A black man. He said, uh, that's my Bible.
Dear man of God, he said, this is my work for the Lord right here in this hotel. He says, folks come in and sit down and I shine their shoes and I tell them about the Lord Jesus and he looked me in the eye. He says, do you believe in miracles? I said I believe in miracles.
He says you sit down, I'll shine your shoes and I'm going to tell you about a miracle, he said. I live in Maryland for many years, but I left my wife and family in Maryland and I came to seek my fortune in Las Vegas.
And pretty soon I'd lost all my money and I was sleeping under the hedges.
Along such and such a street, sleeping under the hedges, I didn't have a place to stay, I had nothing to eat, he said after three days.
Of sleeping under the hedges with nothing.
He said I walked by the Fremont Mission. He said you know where the Fremont Mission is. I said, yes, I know where the Fremont Mission is. He said I walk by that door.
For that mission, I was so hungry, he said. I looked into that door and all I see is Whitey's in that place and I walked by. I said I'm not going in there, he said. I slept under the hedge.
Another night but he says I was so hungry the 4th day he says I come into that mission the next day. He said you know what those people did? They hugged me, they loved me and they told me about the Lord Jesus.
And I got saved. That's a miracle, he says. I got saved. I took Christ as my savior, and my sins are gone. And now I tell others about the Lord Jesus. That's a miracle. Dear friends, tonight God doesn't want a miracle for somebody else. He wants a miracle in your life. Tonight. He's willing and he's able to cleanse you from all unrighteousness, to wash your sins away perfectly, because the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sins.
But it's not complicated to be saved tonight. You know, I use that term saved. You know what it means? It means to be saved from the judgment of God. Let me read it to you in, uh, John's Gospel. We want to be careful to be clear as to some of these statements that we're making. The Lord Jesus said this.
John's Gospel, chapter 3.
He says in verse 18.
00:45:00
He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world. And men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone that hate doeth evil hateth the light. Neither cometh to the light, lest his deed should be reproved, but he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought.
In God then the last verse.
Perhaps the 2nd to last verse, verse 35. The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth upon him.
Dear friends, tonight God has passed judgment on this world.
The soul that sinneth, that shall die.
And this world is guilty.
Of the judgment, a false judgment against the Lord Jesus.
And of crucifying Him, of leading him out and crucifying him.
And dear friend, tonight we want you to be saved. If you don't know the Lord Jesus, we want you to be saved from judgment. We don't want you to go to a lost eternity. God doesn't want to. It says he's not willing that any should perish, but that all should be saved and come unto the knowledge of the truth.
Well, it says in verse 26. Let's read verse 24.
Chapter 23 of Luke, verse 24, Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they required. And he released unto him that was for sedition, and murder was cast into prison whom they had desired. But he delivered Jesus to their will. And as they led him away, they laid hold upon one Simon a Cyrenian coming out of the country, and on him they laid the cross, that he might bear it after Jesus. Well, we know in another gospel, I believe it's John's Gospel again, it says that.
He, bearing his cross, went forth.
They led him away.
This is the sixth time that they led him.
But there was someone that was walking close to the Lord. There was someone that was passing by, perhaps a sirenian. His name is Simon, you know.
It says in another gospel it says that he was the father of Alexander and Rufus, and you know that Rufus is mentioned in Romans chapter 16.
But this man walked closely to the Lord. He walked by the Lord and umm, he had the privilege. Perhaps he didn't appreciate it at the time, but I wonder if we were going to see this man in the glory. He carried the Lord's cross. But in another gospel, as I say it says, the Lord went forth bearing his cross. You know, the Lord allowed that chapter 22 of Genesis would be read some portion of it this morning. And I thought of this.
In connection with the Lord Jesus in Genesis 22 it says there that.
Umm. In verse 3.
That Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his *** and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up and went under the place of which God had told him. And then it says in verse 6, Abraham took the the wood.
Of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son, and took the fire in his hand and a knife, and they went both of them together.
Well, we know that the wood being laid upon the Lord Jesus is a picture perhaps to us of the Lord Jesus coming in and into this world and taking the human form. What speaks of humanity? But I would just want to make this application that the Lord Jesus took that wooden cross upon his back.
Took your place, dear friends, as the Lamb of God took your place.
We're going to go to the 4th to the place of judgment, to the place of death and in your stead and if you'd receive them as Savior was going to take the judgment for your sins in his own body on the tree he took forth. He took that that cross.
And without a murmur, carried it, took, took it, took it forth.
And then it says there followed him a great company of people.
Have you ever thanked them for taking that cross, for being LED, and for going forth to that place? Have you ever thanked Him for what He endured? Oh, we know that it wasn't the sufferings as He was led from one place to another that puts away any sin, but it proves to us the love of the Lord Jesus, doesn't it? So it says here in verse 32.
00:50:25
There were also two other malefactors LED with him to be put to death, 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 another on the left. Then said Jesus, Father forgive them, for they know not what they do, and they parted his raiment and cast lots.
Wanna just read another portion in Matthew's Gospel?
Chapter 27.
Verse 45.
Now from the 6th hour there was darkness over all the land under the 9th hour, but about the 9th hour Jesus cried with a loud voice saying Eli Eli Lambai. That is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
And then in verse 50, Jesus, when he cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost, and behold, the veil of the temple was ran, and twain from the top to the bottom, or from above to the bottom, and the earth did quake in the rocks rent. Well, you know the Lord Jesus was led to that place as the land of the slaughter, and he was led after he was falsely accused. He was led as he was falsely brought into the.
With false charges before the Roman government, before the Sanhedrin, he was brought before a murderer, before Herod, and finally he was led.
As a criminal.
With land is a condemned criminal. He took your place as a criminal. You've sinned against God. You've defended the holy God. You're condemned to death.
You don't know the Lord Jesus, the Savior. You're condemned the judgment, eternal judgment.
And he took your place at the cross of Calvary as a criminal, as it were. But God in those three dark hours as He was the Son refused to shine. And the Lord Jesus in those three dark hours.
For the judgment for my sins, for the judgment for yours, if you'd receive him as Savior.
Three hours. He exhausted that judgment. He should say at the end of those three hours it is finished. He bowed his head and gave up the ghost.
God's land was led to that place of sacrifice. We know that in Genesis chapter 222. It's just a picture of the Lord Jesus being led and they went, both of them together. Well, you know, the Lord Jesus isn't there anymore. He's arisen.
Risen seated upon the majesty on the right hand of the majesty on high. And I'm just going to read in the last few verses of Luke's gospel, chapter 24, we don't have a lot of time left, but verse 50, Luke 24, and verse 50 says he led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands and blessed them. And it came to pass while he blessed them, he was parted from them and carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.
And we're continually in the temple praising and blessing God.
Dear friends, tonight there's a risen man seated.
In heaven, interceding for His own, One who is a substitute was the Lamb of God, and bore the judgment for my sins upon the cross. One who wants to forgive you, He could say upon the cross, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, and God wants to give you a free pardon tonight.
Forgiveness for your sins, The offense that your sins have caused him.
A holy God. You've offended him, you've rebelled against him, and he wants to forgive you.
He wants to forgive your sin. Won't you accept a pardon? A free pardon?
No, George Washington, the 1St president of this country, was a man that was not accustomed to giving pardons.
But there was a man who was condemned to death during his presidency.
00:55:03
And his mother sought to have him released and.
He desired, she desired to have some sort of clemency for that man, her son, her only son.
And there was an enemy, one that was not a friend of that man.
Who saw that his judgment was not fair?
His judgment was unrighteous and that he was going to be called to give up his life because of some false charges, and that man went to George Washington and pled for this man's life.
And George Washington said that he wasn't accustomed to giving pardons.
But he said this is just your friend and you're just pleading for your friend. He said no, this man did me harm, this man.
Offended me. This man did things that were I've been at odds with this man for years, but he says he's not being righteously treated. And George Washington gave a pardon.
To that man, he said, if an enemy would come and plead for his life.
He thought that was something that was unusual, but you know, dear friends, God sent his son.
To those that were at enmity with him, God sent his Son from heaven to give a free pardon.
To accomplish a work of redemption, to purchase you from the path of rebellion and disobedience to God and to shed his precious blood to cleanse you. And now you know in verse 50 it says he led them. Isn't that nice? The Lord Jesus led his disciples. He led them out.
To Bethany, and he blessed them there.
Well, you say that might not really apply to me. I'm just going to read in the 23rd Psalm the last portion of Scripture that we'll turn to tonight. Psalm 23 says the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want, I'll not need anything. He maketh me to lie down and greet pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.
Is he leading you dear friend tonight? Our brother this afternoon spoke of the will of man.
The will of God, the purposes of God and how God is going to have his way. And you know what says in Luke's gospel, I think it's chapter 14, it says of the Spirit of God that he might compel them to come in, that my house may be full, heaven is going to be full. Are you going to be there?
But it says in the book of Proverbs that death and hell, hell and destruction are never full. Never full. God is going to have his way. Heaven's going to be full. Are you going to be there? Have you decided for Christ? Let's sing one more hymn #12 Let's stand and sing this.
I am.
Without one.
Please.
What am I?
Transforming.
And by by let me.
Come to the day.
Just as I AM and.
Waiting.
On to your end, my Lord.
1330 Five and.
Clan came.
01:00:01
Old Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Signing.
Away.
Yeah.
I need to leave my old life.
Just as I am.
Loudly.
From the heart.
Heard of the flame?
Be caused by.
Promised.
Land.
On.
I'm.
Just as I am.
I am.
Proud of God.
Our loving God and our Father we.
May the Lord Jesus, the Lamb of God, we thank you.
Isaiah 53
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.
Three, perhaps starting with verse 7.
Isaiah 53, verse 7.
He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before his. Her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment. And who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off out of the land of the living. For the transgression of my people was he stricken, and he made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death.
Because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth, yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He hath put him to grief. When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin. He shall see his seed, He shall prolong his days in the pleasure of the Lord, shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied by his knowledge. Shall my righteous servant justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he hath poured out his soul unto death, and he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
A comment that's been very helpful to my own soul with respect to this chapter and other parts of the Bible as well.
Beginning at verse 7 to the end of the chapter.
It's not any more the remnant that we talked about yesterday who said he was wounded for our transgressions and we have the word our and for our iniquities and so on. The viewpoint changes here and it's really.
The one that's looking at it is not us as much as it's gone. It's the Lord Jehovah. And he's giving a commentary on it as he sees it and as he viewed it. And sometimes it's very helpful. We say we wanna know God's thoughts about something. How does he see it? And so I believe from verse 7 to the end of the chapter. And when there's a my or an I.
It's himself that's referring to my people. It's not our people, It's not us, but it's my people. And uh, when he says I, he's speaking, I will divide, I will do this and that. Another example of the same way of seeing the perspective is when the apostle John is writing the revelation. It's the revelation of Jesus Christ.
It's what he had to say about it. And so that John would get the right perspective on it. He says in the end of the third chapter, he says, John, as it were, you come up here, you come up, hit her so that I can give you the picture from heaven's viewpoint instead of from Earth. And so the revelation from that point on is given primarily from heaven's viewpoint of what's going to take place.
And so he says, come up, hit her. And then John gets, you might say to see it from God's perspective. And so to me in this, the verses which we take up this morning, it's a precious thing that God looked upon his Son as he's LED out to Calvary. And, uh, it's God that's saying he's LED as a, is at least a report, you might say, of that perspective. It's not so much.
While we see it and we look at the awful way that he's treated and so on, we do and we receive from that. We benefit from that.
But it's even better to say God looked at it and he watched the procession from the judgment hall to the cross, and he looks upon his Son and he says these lead as a sheep to the slaughter. But.
God takes tremendous appreciation for the way He went.
God looks upon it and he says he didn't open his mouth, He didn't say a thing. He went submissive as a lamb and he could say that's my servant, that's my servant. And he, God, could take complete satisfaction and find complete contentment in his own soul as he watched the proceedings.
00:05:16
Of what was happening, and see Him lead among from men as a lamb to the slaughter, but without a murmur, without a complaint, but as a submissive, perfect lamb going there to the slaughter. Well, brethren, may our hearts appreciate.
Umm, what our God saw and what He appreciated in His Lamb.
Twice here, it says he opened not his mouth connected with.
Those two statements there in the seventh verse, he was oppressed, he was afflicted, but he opened not his mouth. He was led at the lamps of the slaughter and was of the sheep done before her shears, and he opened not his mouth is that it's my own mind that suggests that God recognizing his.
Lack of self-defense in two different aspects. That is, there was the abuse of his person and he didn't complain.
And there was the abuse of his character. He didn't point.
Is that correct?
When it came to its person and character, he never as a man, He never defended himself, even in his pathway. Sometimes been pointed out that on another occasion there were two things that they accused the Lord Jesus of. They said thou art a Samaritan and half the devil. And he did answer the charge of having a devil, because that brought into question his deity. But He never answered the charge of being a Samaritan, because that was, if I can put it this way, a slur on his character.
Even the woman at the well said the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. And as far as his, uh, character as a, a man, as the humble servant walking here in this world, he made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant. But when it did come to the truth as far as his deity or to uphold God's character, then he always did answer. And so you find that before Pilate.
We find that when he was falsely accused, when they brought into question his man, His character as a man, He never answered. It says he answered him never a word, but he did answer Pilate when it came to a question of the truth that's concerning God's character or his deity, than he did answer, He said to Pilate, I wonder if I'll say it. And so I think what you say, John, is very true and very helpful.
And rather, isn't that something for us to consider in a practical way? You know, someone says something against us, someone brings into question a slur on our character or something we've done. And uh, the immediate response of human nature is we want to defend ourselves. We want to vindicate ourselves. But the Lord Jesus never did as the man. But when the truth is in question, then we always want to be ready to give an answer.
We always want to not be contentious when it comes to the truth, but we want to earnestly contend for the faith that was once delivered to the Saints.
That commend itself, John, maybe you have a thought. I was just thinking how that connects practically with first Peter chapter 2.
Might look at it briefly.
First Peter, chapter 2.
Umm, verse 20.
Verse 21 actually, oh, verse 20 verse Peter chapter 2 verse 20 for what glory is he buffeted for your faults He shall take efficiently. But if when you do well and suffer for you take it patiently. This is acceptable with God or even here unto where you call because Christ. This is the verse I was thinking of Christ also suffered for us. That's wonderful. We just sang about that.
But he did more.
Leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps, who did no sin, neither was violent mouth, who when he was reviled, reviled not again when he suffered, he threatened not, but committed himself to him. That judges righteously.
00:10:13
I think if we can grasp that John that helps us from trying to defend ourselves, committed himself to him that judges righteously. We we judge brethren oftimes from outward appearances.
But so often I found that I misjudged because I just see superficially and what a example we have in the Lord Jesus.
Pilot marveled greatly. Here was this man and I'm sure he had seen many cases argued before him, and people can be very eloquent in defending themselves.
And sometimes it's very moving to listen to defenses like that. But here is the Lord Jesus Christ, the very Son of God, and there he stands.
Completely mute before piling. Oh, how different we are, how natural it is to defend ourselves.
How important that we stand here and gaze at this one That was like a sheet before her. Shears is dumb. Did not open his mouth. You know I shaped before it. Sheared is fairly nice looking animal. After it's sheared it's kind of ugly looking. Nobody likes to be made look ugly.
It's natural to defend ourselves, but here was God's man.
Never a word in his own defense. If it was to God's glory, like you say, Jim, yes, he spoke, but when it was his own person, his character, he left that for God. And I think that is a real lesson to us so often because we want to defend ourselves, we start.
Quarrels amongst brethren. Lord, help us brethren to drink deeply of the Spirit of our Savior.
I trust this is the on the same thought many, many years ago, our dear brother Philip Gladding, who was in the Lord's work.
Make this statement, he said, brethren, I am to never defend myself If I'm verbally abused, if I'm slandered, I'm not going to defend myself. But he said I am always to defend the name of Jesus. And he gave example that during his ministry and his labor in different parts of the country.
If he heard someone nearby, take the name of the Lord Jesus in vain.
He would go over to that person immediately in a nice way and say, dear brother, please do not take that name in vain. That's my precious Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, that you are slandering and and taking his name in vain. He says please do not do that. And I thought that was good.
I trust that it's a long distinct thoughts we're.
We're taking them here, you know, We're not to defend ourselves.
The Lord didn't defend himself.
The perfection of the person of the Lord Jesus is brought out in it, and what's before us in that?
Did he feel it? Yes, he did. You could say reproach has broken my heart. He was a man. He was given feelings and uh, he particularly felt being isolated and rejected and he felt it in his soul. But as we said in the beginning, this is God's commentary on it. And that's the greater and more important aspect of it. It's the moment. It's between you and me.
And your treatment of me are my treatment of you. We haven't gotten where we need to be. The Lord Jesus here and the Father God who looks down upon him sees him as submitting to the will of God in the circumstance. And that's what goes deeper, brethren. And that's what is necessary for us to properly react to such things. All they didn't say anything, you know. Well they didn't say anything is for therefore I'm not supposed to say anything and so on. And our minds go that way that no, I'll keep my mouth shut because.
00:15:13
But that doesn't really deal. That doesn't really do it for the heart. But the God looked upon him as the Lamb led to the slaughter, and he saw in it that the Lamb was submitting himself to God in it.
And he finds his satisfaction in that. It's like, umm, verse 10. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He can see it as I have taken him into this place where he's to be bruised. It wasn't as it were. Man has done it. Yes, man did it. Man was the one that was re is responsible for murder in it. But that's not the perspective here. It is.
It pleased the Lord to bruise him. He hath put him to grief. It's not man bruised him. Man's put in degree, but it pleased the Lord to bruise him. And so the submission of character is the is the expression of Come unto me. I'm meek and lowly in heart. He was meek and lowly in heart, yes, before man, but more significantly before God.
And so he goes as a lab, submitting himself to the will of God in what was happening. And he's dumb.
He's done He. He says nothing in his heart to God or to man.
God has left a verse in the 39th, 1000 verse nine. I was dumb. I opened up my mouth to close the mouth.
Verse 39 Verse what brother? Thank you. Read it again.
This word oppressed means really to be ill treated in Mr. Darby translates it that way. So he was ill treated and then to be afflicted is really to be abused. He was abused not only physically but verbally and that word rails that we read in second there in first Peter really is needs to be verbally abused or to be railed upon. And so whether it was to be ill treated physically or to be.
Railed upon why there was the same effect there was the he suffered as a righteous man and in perfection showed that it wasn't going to be a lashing out as it was with the first atom. And so we have that admonition given to us as the Lord Jesus as the example given to us in first Peter there I just want to read one more verse in that chapter for the next chapter.
Because it says in chapter three, First Peter 3.
And umm verse 9 not rendering evil for evil, nor railing for railing, but contrary wise blessing, knowing that ye are therefore unto called, that ye should inherit a blessing.
So the higher motives of the believer are to be seen in a practical way.
So, as you say, he always sought the will and the approval of God the Father. And it's beautiful, isn't it, to realize that with the Lord Jesus, he understood very clearly that there would be a day of vindication and when God's approval will be yet given and shown. And you know, brethren, that hasn't happened yet. He has his rightful place in heaven today. God has highly exalted him, given him a name that's above every name. He's crowned him with a crown of glory and honor, as we get in Hebrews 2.
But the Lord Jesus has never been vindicated on this planet yet this planet that railed on him, this planet where he was abused and taken out and nailed to the cross, He's yet waiting for that time. And it's interesting, isn't it, that Hebrews even tells us, as he seated at the right hand of God, what he's thinking of and looking forward to, henceforth, expecting until his enemies be made his footstool. And really, the heart of God will never be truly satisfied until his Son.
00:20:02
Is vindicated and has his rightful place and God is able to show his approval to the world of his Son and what he accomplished for his glory here in this world. And brethren, if you and I can just grasp this in our souls again, it's going to help us. Whose approval and acceptance do we really want? I think we see a little of the Spirit, the Spirit of Christ and the apostle Paul in his dealings with the Corinthian Saints.
They questioned everything about him. They treated him as the off scouring of the earth. He said that's OK, we labor that whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him. He was looking for the Lord's approval. And brethren, isn't that what we really want? Thinking of Mary two in the 12Th of John, you know, she poured out her ointment at the feet of the Lord. And it wasn't just Judas that spoke against her. All the disciples spoke against her. You know, you never read of Mary saying one thing there in that house on the 12Th of John.
She never spoke up, but the Lord gave his approval. He gave his sense of what was commendable and for his glory, and she's wrought a good work and so on. Brethren, are we willing to take up that spirit of the Lord Jesus? He did everything for the Father's approval, for the Father's glory. Has it been fully vindicated yet? No, but it will be. And so he could commit himself to him that judges righteously. Before we pass on from the seventh verse, I'd like to just make this little comment to.
Because this verse is quoted in the 8th chapter of Acts, and I think it's very beautiful. You know, brethren, the Spirit of God hasn't left us in any doubt as to who is being spoken up here. It's beautiful. You know, so often we go to the Old Testament and we make applications and we see by comparing Scripture with Scripture who is being spoken of and it's the Lord Jesus. But let's just go to the 8th of Acts and read it. And it's the context of its quotation there.
Before I read this, we know the story well. It's the Ethiopian eunuch. And you know, the Ethiopian eunuch had come up to Jerusalem, no doubt having heard passed down from one generation to another in the court of Ethiopia, the story of the visit of the Queen of Sheba and how she had seen the glory of the Kingdom at Jerusalem under Solomon and had her heart's desires satisfied and her hard questions answered.
And seeing the riches and brought many of the riches given to her as gifts back to that country. And he'd heard of the glory of Israel in Jerusalem under King Solomon. But you know, when the Ethiopian eunuch came up, it was too late to see the glory of the Kingdom while under a Solomon. Jerusalem was not in its glory now. It was in its shame. Jerusalem had rejected the true Solomon. Jerusalem the Jews had taken.
The Lord Jesus, the true Solomon outside its gates and nailed him to a Roman cross. He was too late to benefit from the blessings of of the temple and so on. He couldn't receive the blessing inside the walls of Jerusalem. It was too late for that. But he leaves Jerusalem and in a wilderness place, he's sitting in his chariot. And I often wonder how he got a hold of a coffee of the 53rd chapter of Isaiah. Maybe we'll find out in glory that someone slipped him a copy, saw his dejection. Maybe he bought a copy as he left the gate of Jerusalem. Or I don't know, but somehow.
He secured a copy of the 53rd of Isaiah. He's sitting in his chariot reading it. And just noticed in verse 30, Philip runs directed by the Spirit of the Lord. And then in verse 31, Acts 8 and he said, how can I Philip? And asked him if he understood the reading. He said, how can I except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him the place of the Scripture which he read.
Was this he was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb dumb before his shears is dumb, so opened he not his mouth.
I'm sorry a lamb be done before his chair so often he nod his mouth in his humiliation. His judgment was taken from taken away. And who shall declare his generation, for his life is taken from the earth. Now notice this. And the eunuch answered. Philippines said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this of himself, or of some other?
Now, brother, unless there's any doubt in our minds as to who Isaiah 53 is referring to, here's the answer. Then Philip opened his mouth and began at the same scripture and preached unto him, Jesus, that beautiful. Doesn't that give a calm and a confirmation to our souls this this morning? We don't have to wonder who we've been Speaking of when we speak of Isaiah 53 and the sufferings of Christ.
00:25:29
That's not an application of Isaiah 53. That is exactly who the prophet was referring to in a prophetic way. And Philip begins at that same scripture. You know, it wouldn't have mattered where the prophet, where the unit was reading in the Old Testament. Philip could have begun at the same scripture, but the Spirit of God made sure that Philip had a copy of Isaiah 53 so it could be confirmed to to us that Philip began at the same Scripture.
And preached unto him Jesus. And what was the result? Why this man drank in these words concerning the sufferings of Christ. And he received it and went on his way, rejoicing. He was baptized and no doubt went back to Ethiopia with a great testimony as to who he had found. Not in Jerusalem he couldn't. It was in its shame. But he found it outside its walls, in the blessed Lord Jesus, the one who had indeed been LED as a lamb dung before her shears.
Well, it tells us in verse 80 was taken from prison and from judgment.
Lord watched it.
Design go to the Hall Council and the Jews.
And be there condemned, taken to pilot, condemned, taken to Herod and mocked, so on.
And where is it gonna end? He's cut off out of the land of the living. That is the consequences of these mock trials and evaluations of himself and his person is he's cut off out of the land of the living.
Who's going to declare his generation? And it's not brought out here, but, uh, the Lord felt that.
The Lord had a deep sense of being cut off in the midst of his own days. And, uh, he had come to bring a testimony for God to man, and now he's cut off in it. And so who's to declare it, to turn back just to get a little more sense of it, into the 49th chapter of Isaiah?
Umm.
It's not so much the length of days there, but in Isaiah 49.
It says in verse four. Then then I said, and this is the Lord speaking prophetically. Then I said.
I have labored in vain. I have spent my strength for not and in vain. Yet surely my judgment is with the Lord. My work is with my God. There's a submission here, but there's also a sense of as a man, uh, as it were, that.
Not looked at in redemption side of it and the cross, but rather here he is. He feels that Another example of it is the 102nd Psalm. It's very precious, really determined 102nd Psalm.
Uh, in the 23rd verse of the Psalm he says he who? Jehovah.
Everything that the Lord did, he with it, it was with respect to his, with, with God. Not we always look at the man's side of it and what people did to him and so on, but for himself, he always took it beyond that. And so here he's speaking to God.
He says he weakened my strength in the way he shortened my days. He recognized that Jehovah had the power of control over those circumstances taking place there that day in Pilot's Hall and so on.
Umm, and so he says that, and then he said, Oh my God, take me not away.
00:30:00
In the midst of my days now where they have a semi colon in the King James, there's really a break there. You could put dots in there properly to get the sense of what's being said here. The Lord says, Oh my God, take me not away in the midst of my days. Imagine what he's saying within his soul. We don't have it recorded. It's not between himself and fellow man, but he, he looks at the Lord and he says don't take me away in the midst of my days.
He was in his early 30s, in prime of manhood, if you will. And what's what's Jehovah gonna answer?
He's not gonna be down. That is, the Lord isn't gonna be silent to his servant in such a question and such a a a recording of what he felt and his soul at that time. And the answer is of Jehovah, thy years are throughout all generations of old. Hast thou laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands. What an answer.
Of the Lord to him he says, they shall perish, but thou shalt endure. Yeah, all of them shall wax old as a garment, as a vester shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed without the same. Oh, what a blessed answer, that he GI is given in those in those that time. And he said, thou art the same, thy year shall have no end, and so on. What a blessed response that he.
Takes him to his deity. Really. And uh, says you're my son, you're the same.
Uh, passage of what's gonna take place on earth isn't the full picture of the story. And, uh, and yet the Lord looks at him here in Isaiah 53 and, and he says, well, from he's cut off, he's gonna declare his generation.
It gives the reason why.
The end of the verse, he says. For the transgression of my people what He's stricken, that's why.
That's why he's cut off from the land of the living, he said. Well, why is it? Well, it's for the transgression of my people.
The Lord at this point Jehovah is recognizing the people. He doesn't say low am I? You're not my people. You send your whatever No when it comes to the work of the cross.
And the the what the Lord has to do there, the Lord Jehovah looks at it and it says it's my people and it's their transgression that he's being cut off for.
It's interesting that right at the beginning of the New Testament, his generation is declared. So it's the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. And then you have as well and Luke's gospel right down to the son of Adam, the son of God.
And so in the Jewish order of things, they oftentimes when there was a matter of judgment, they would declare the generation of the individual that was on trial. And so you see that in connection with the in Joshua, I'm just going to point this out in Joshua Chapter 7 and verse 16 in connection with Akan and it says.
There Joshua Chapter 7 and verse 16. So Joshua rose up early in the morning and brought.
Israel by their tribe and tribe of Judah was taken, And he brought the family of Judah, and he took the family as bazaar heights, and he brought the family of Lazar Heights, man by man. And Zapdi was taken, and he brought his household man by man. And Akan the son of Carmine, the son of Zabdai, the son of Zeera of the tribe of Judah, was taken. And Joshua said unto Akan, My son, I praise thee, give glory to the God of Israel well.
In connection with the Lord Jesus, if they had declared his generation, they would have recognized that this was the Son of David. They would have recognized he was the Christ Son, the Messiah come. But his generation was not declared.
How beautiful. But the Lord Jesus, his Gen. his generation has declared in Matthew's Gospel chapter one. I love to read those stories.
And in a certain sense, his generation was declared by what Don Red and Salma? 102 And God answers, thou art through all generations.
00:35:06
Is the eternal one God's beloved son, and God's answer was given fully in resurrection. And that's what, uh, we have to realize, brother. And sometimes in this life, there is not vindication. There wasn't for the Lord Jesus. He died, it looked like he was a criminal that had died. There was no vindication.
That God's answer is in resurrection, and that should be a real encouragement.
To us to go on in spite of everything here.
This is the prophetic word. Wonderful. Here we have 5, and in Daniel we have plans.
So God always has a perfect timetable and a perfect reason. Does indeed. And I think it's beautiful to see Brother Bill. And it's important to realize too, in the context of this again, that when it says my people, it's the Jewish people, it's Israel, isn't it? And they will be blessed in the coming day. He's going to bring them into tremendous blessing in an earthly way.
But if they're going to have to recognize first of all those wounds in his hand and in his feet and in his side, they're going to have to recognize why he was cut off. They're going to have to recognize that if that work of Calvary, that's a very act that they are rejecting him was the very act that God used to bring them eventually into blessing. And on the grounds of pure sovereign grace. We enjoy a chapter like this in connection with our blessing. We sometimes supply it in the gospel.
And rightly so. But it's important to realize that all blessing for man, whether it's the heavenly company in a future day or whether it's the earthly company, it's all based on that which took place when Jehovah laid on him the iniquity of us all and when he was stricken for the transgression of his people. You know, so often it's hard, isn't it, to think beyond what things mean to us.
Rather than I trust the work of Calgary means everything to us, but it's going to have a far, far more reaching effect than just our being brought into blessing. It's going to bring into blessing his earthly people. It's going to bring in the blessing of the nations of vast multitude that no man can number and every level of creation that as we said the other day, groans and travails and pain till now.
Is going to feel the effects of redemption in a coming day because really the sense in Hebrews is that he should taste death for everything. Every level of creation has fallen and come under the effects of sin. But on the grounds of the work of Calvary, it's all going to be brought. In fact, I just want to say this too. I thought of it when Robert was speaking last night. You know, the last thing that the Lord Jesus showed his disciples.
At when he led them out as far as Bethany was, he lifted up his hands.
And what did they see in those hands that were lifted up before he vanished from their sight? He, they saw those wounds. They saw those pierced at hands. And you know, it's interesting that in Zechariah the first thing they say is, what are these wounds in my hand? The last thing the disciples saw were those hands wounded. And when they see him another day, when the remnant sees him another day, they're going to ask that question, what are these wounds in my hands? And he's going to tell them what they are.
And they're gonna recognize that that work was for them, and not until then will they be able to be brought into blessing.
And every class last site, the last opportunity is given. Jim has just spoken about his people and the remnant. Verse 9.
It says he or they appointed his grave with the wicked. That was the intent. Let's give this man a pauper's grave with those other criminals that we have put to death.
As they saw him, but the Lord looked at it and said no.
The moments the work of atonement is done, the moment the Lord Jesus vows his head in death, and then the soldier pierces his side to bring forth the blood after that.
00:40:08
God takes over with respect to that precious body and that precious person, and he says everything connected with him and the world is done.
It's done. There's no more testimony. There is no more interaction between them. And so only his own touch him from that point on, they take his body from the cross, they prepare it for burial, they bury him. The the world that was gonna put him in a, a criminal's grave has nothing to say to it. And from that moment that he has taken down from the cross and taken to the grave.
We have no record that a single unbeliever ever saw him again on earth.
Every single record it was between himself and his own. And so he gives us, we are given perfect and a complete testimony as to the physical resurrection of the Lord Jesus. But it was to those of faith that the world has nothing to say to it and to see it. And so as he says, this was a of the Lord, he said.
He's stricken for the transgression of my people.
They intended, that is those who took him there, to put his grave with the record. But no.
He was, that is not fair. That's not righteous, that's not what I'm going to allow. And because he did no violence, he did not do wrong. He doesn't want to get a criminal scrape. Umm, there was no deceit in him and his defense, which was not a defense at all. He didn't defend himself as we've already had. And so the Lord gives, puts him with the rich in his death.
The world will see the Lord Jesus to return in power and great glory, and we have that in Revelation, uh, chapter one and verse 7. Behold, he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him involved hindrance of the earth, shall wail because of him, Even so for him.
And I was thinking of Daniel nine. Our brother referred to how in connection with Daniel's 70 weeks.
It says that Messiah would be cut off and have nothing.
Well, you know when the Lord Jesus suffered there on the cross.
And then expired. Gave up the ghost.
He hung there.
And the cross. And it appeared as though he was perhaps the biggest loser, that.
Man had ever seen, but when you think of what God has given to his Son in return for what He's accomplished here on earth.
We see that he enjoys the highest place in heaven. God is highly exalted him and giving him a name which is above every name.
And so it's wonderful to see that although man rejected the Lord Jesus here on earth.
We see that God has exalted him in heaven and uh, I was thinking in connection with, uh, Mao's being opened.
Shut on. You know, in verse 15 of chapter 52 of Isaiah, it says that the king shall shut their mouths at him.
Well, as the Lord Jesus was before Pilate.
The Roman power there.
The Lord Jesus itself as He opened not his mouth.
And Pilot said to the Lord, Do you not realize that I have power?
To crucify thee, and I have power to release thee. He was amazed at the Lord Jesus and how he answered nothing. But you know the Lord said, have no power against me, except that were given to thee from above.
And I believe that was brought out in Psalm 102, how the Lord Jesus recognized that what was taking place was truly of God and He was submitting to the will of God.
00:45:09
But the coming day, we're gonna see the Lord appear in power and praise the Lord.
In King of Kings.
And he will have the last word.
And Kings tells us here was shut their mouth in. So we look forward to that day.
Not many here in this room. We love the thought of disappearing when he holds his rightful sway.
Gives public testimony to who he truly is.
As the Son of God.
1/2.
Is God.
The light is the lightest to honor him.
Being with the rich in his death was perhaps fulfilled in two men that the Lord Jesus.
Or that God had ready to take care of the precious body of the Lord Jesus after he had laid down his life. And we know the story well. There was Joseph of Arimathea, and Scripture confirms in Matthew's Gospel that he was a rich man.
And he was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews. But when the Lord Jesus died, God had his servant right there. And he comes out boldly, and he goes to Pilot, and he begs the body of the Lord Jesus. All that secrecy and shyness, or whatever it was that kept him as a disciple secretly is now removed. And he owes. And Pilot grants him his request, and he takes the body of Jesus.
And another man joins him, who though he had spoken once in defense of the Lord Jesus in John 7, yet from the third chapter of John until the Lord Jesus died, you read really nothing about him but that one little comment where he defends the Lord Jesus in the council. And his name is Nicodemus. And what does he do? He brings a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about 100 LB weight. And think of the tenderness of those two men.
Those two disciples of the Lord who both of them to a great degree had been secret disciples during the pathway of Lord Jesus for one way or for one reason or another. But now they come and just picture the scene with love and tenderness for the body of the Lord Jesus. They take that body, they wrap it in those spices and Joseph has a rich man has that tomb and God made sure that the body of his beloved Son.
Was gently, also gently laid in a rich man's tomb, and not only a rich man's tomb, but a man who had genuine love and affection for the Lord Jesus with the help of Nicodemus. Oh, think of God's care for the body of His beloved Son, anticipating the moment that was so near at hand, when God would raise him from the dead.
And it was a tomb where there had been nobody, like no corruption of death that ever been there. And that body that was laid there did not see corruption either because God raised him from the from the dead. It's wonderful to see how God vindicated everything.
Oh.
Something to the Lord to recognize that He is the One.
That subjected the lamb to the suffering.
It's not essentially, although it's true that command treated him awfully, as we've had before us, but in verse 10, yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him.
What a thought, brethren, what it meant to God.
Himself, the Father himself.
To be participating in what's necessary for the work of fulfillment in this way.
Quite touched my soul this weekend and thinking about.
Demand says let's put him to death, we will not have this man and he takes them out to Calvary to put him to death.
But man has no power over his life. Man could not take his life.
00:50:07
Another that's there for Calgary is his people.
As it says, for the transgression of my people. Was he stricken?
If you go to Exodus chapter 12, when it's the slaying of the Lamb, it says the whole congregation shall kill it.
But in reality.
They're responsible for it is for the transgression of my people. Was he stricken? But they don't, in actual fact.
Put him to death.
In Genesis 22, the Father goes with the Son with the knife in his hand.
Abraham lifts up his hands with that knife in it to slay the sun.
And uh, yeah.
Blessed it be the person of the lab. The Father's hand does not slay the sun in that way either.
She's in the absolute last act of perfect submission.
Does not taste death from the hands of his people. He does not taste death directly as an act of Jehovah.
He expresses the perfection of it all by bowing his head and dismissing his own spirit.
That's the sun, that's the Lamb. That is our blessed Lord Jesus Christ.
I think it's summed up beautifully because as you say, God didn't take his life from him, but it was His will that he lay down his life. And so he says of his life that in John's Gospel, no man taketh it from me. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again. And then he adds, this little comment, this commandment have I received of my father. And I suppose that's the thrust of what he said. It says prophetically, Thou hast brought me into the dust of death. That is, it was the will of his father and to accomplish the will of the father.
In completion, the month then lay down his own life.
And I love to think, Jim, and that what you mentioned how he laid down his life. I think there's only one time in Scripture where the Lord speaks about his love for the Father. The end of John 14 says that the world may know that I love the Father and as the Father gave me commandment even.
So I do arise. Let us go ahead.
What majesty in that person?
That little statement that's made in.
Umm, couple of times in Genesis chapter 22, they went, both of them together perhaps as seen here, because it says in verse 10, it pleased the Lord. And at the end of verse 10, the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. But then you see in verse 11, he shall see of the travail of the soul or the fruit of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied. And so you see the Father pleased with the work, and you see the Lord Jesus perfectly satisfied with the results.
Of that work, the Father is pleased, God is pleased, but the Lord Jesus is satisfied. Just think of it. He's going to be satisfied for eternity with the results of that work on the cross of caliber.
The precious thing because the father couldn't have been satisfied that the son was not.
That is, he, the father, is the one that puts him into this position.
It's his will that he be bruised. He is the one that has subjected him to the suffering. But then the father can look and say, well, the son is going to see the fruit of the travail of that suffering and he is going to be satisfied. And that, if I could use the word comfort in it, is the comfort to the father's heart.
00:55:03
And he finds rest and satisfaction. And so even among men, we understand the principle of it. If someone has to put someone else through something that's very difficult for them and uh, realizes they're not going to like or the process that they have to go through still, let's say a parent with a child, if they can see that in the end result, we'll say the child after having been put through the difficult time.
In the other side of it can say, oh I'm so thankful I see now.
Or I appreciate now. And so the Lord Jesus looks at the fruit of the travail, of the bruising and, uh, the Father can say he's satisfied.
There's a contrast given in the SE 69th Psalm verse 31, and it says this also shall please the Lord better than an ox or Bullock that has horns and books. And so the the contrast given to what took place in the Old Testament and all those Jewish sacrifices just pointed towards the Lord Jesus and that would please the Father and the heart of the Lord Jesus would be satisfied too.
We're not always satisfied with the fruit of some work, are we? I'm not a farmer, but I know there are farmers here and they go out and perhaps they do everything they feel is necessary in putting in a crop, making sure that crop is irrigated, fertilized, whatever they do, making sure that the weeds are taken care of and so on. And at the end of the harvest, perhaps there's they're not satisfied with how many bushels per acre they got.
I've sometimes used this illustration too, those who know me best and if my family was here, they would attest to the fact know that I'm absolutely useless when it comes to working with my hands. But I remember one time I to graduate from junior high, I had to take a shop and I chose woodworking and I made a little book stand. But you know, I never really was satisfied with it. And sometimes during my youth I would make certain things and my parents had a.
Large wood stove in the basement of their home, and often before anybody saw the results of what I had tried to do that was gone in the fire because I was so dissatisfied. But I'd rather think of the work of the Lord Jesus. Think of what it means to the heart of God who has been glorified and satisfied in it. And think of what it means to the heart of the Lord Jesus and will mean in a coming day when he views that fruit in all its completion when he looks. And let's keep it in its context for a moment when he looks at his earthly people.
Finally gathered around himself, established there in their inheritance and brought into blessing and the shout of a king is amongst them and his knowledge goes out throughout all all. He's going to be satisfied. He's going to be disappointed in any aspect of what the work that he took up for the fruit of that work. Not for one moment. He's going to be completely satisfied. And then let's apply it to ourselves because we often do.
Gonna look around in the Father's house, brethren, perhaps this afternoon, perhaps before we leave this place. Gonna look around, not at just a few gathered like this, but he's gonna look around at the whole redeemed company. You're gonna be satisfied, Disappointed that he chose any one of us now. Sometimes he's grieved at us now, but when he views this in the coming days, all with him, like himself, gonna be satisfied. We're gonna say yes, but who's gonna leave the singing?
Again, whether it's His earthly people or His heavenly people, who's gonna lead the singing, He's gonna joy over His people with singing. He's the one that's gonna rejoice. The Father is gonna be satisfied with the work that the fruit of the work His Son accomplished, rather than can we imagine what it's gonna be like and what else? We're gonna be satisfied as well. I'll be satisfied when I awaken His likeness. You will be too. What a mutual feeling they talk about. There's nothing like a mutual feeling.
Nothing like that mutual feeling of satisfaction. The Father, the Son and his people fully satisfied for all eternity.
01:00:09
Is so important, isn't it, to realize that redemptions work is the basis of all blessing?
And we will never forget it, brother, and I often think that we are going to have bodies that are transformed into bodies like Him and His glory.
His body of glory, but there will be one only in that eternal day that will carry wounds in His body.
The glorious Son of God.
We'll never forget the cost it was to him to bring us there.
Oh, what a tremendous thing it is. And we never should forget, even here, the cost. And I think that helps us to keep us in place, Brendan, lest we think we're somebody.
In ourselves, no, it's what He has done. It's who He is and what He has done. That work of redemption that is the basis of all blessing. I enjoy looking at that little word in verse 10.
He shall see his seed and see how often in the verses that we read on Lord's Day morning and the breaking of bread, how often that little word is used. You noticed in Genesis chapter 22 That was read from yesterday.
Umm which is such a beautiful picture of the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus and.
There in verse 17 he says to Abraham.
Bless you know, bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand that is upon the seashore. And thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in thy sea shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. There it is Psalm 22, just to briefly mention it.
Umm.
Mm-hmm.
Verse.
30.
A seed shall serve him. It shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation.
Psalm 69.
In verse 36.
The seed also of his servants shall inherit it, and they that love his name shall dwell therein.
So I'm 102.
Verse 28. The children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before thee.
The blessing that flows from that work of redemption is incalculable.
OK, so you have him in Revelation, where he takes up the judgments in the coming day and the ultimate blessing for the earth and for Israel. You find him as the Lamb, don't you? It's interesting that only once he's mentioned as the lion of the tribe of Judah, the lion would speak of his strength and ability to open the book and to loose the seals and to take up the judgment, to bring about earthly blessing and so on. But in contrast to that, 28 times.
He's referred to as the Lamb in the Book of Revelation. And when they see him, they're gonna see him as such in a coming day. And it's the Lamb that eventually opens the seals. And all through Revelation, it's the Lamb. It's the Lamb because not only will we but the earthly company understand and recognize that, as you say, Bob, everything is on the basis of redemption. And so even in the midst of the heavenly company in Revelation 5.
He's a lamb, as it has been plain. Those wounds, as you say, He'll retain even. He's a glorified man today, and he'll remain as such for eternity. We're not gonna see him as he was. We're gonna see him as he is, but he's going to retain those wounds. And we know from a number of scriptures those wounds in His hands, in His feet, and in His sight as a constant reminder to either both the heavenly and the earthly company.
01:05:25
That their blessing is based on redemption and the blood that was shed by 28 times. He's the Lamb, and when he comes back to take up the blessings of this world and the blessings of his earthly people, they're going to see him as the Lamb.
Two, that it says Lamb because.
As in his first coming as the Lam is the submissive, obedient, dependent one who's mute.
And he takes that place without murmur.
And so God is that we're would say, this is the one who is worthy to establish order and righteousness over my creation. And so it's into his hands, the one who has been so lowly that he says he has done the work of redemption on the foundation on which things may be set right. He has made peace through the blood of his cross.
And now I appoint him to be the one. And so it's even as Lamb that he comes and puts down all that oppose that, which is against the glory and order of God. And, uh, so he's his character is Lamb. He's still the Lamb, but he takes on, as it were in that place given of God, a tremendous power.
To exercise the will of God, not in.
In that loneliness of place, but in that majesty and glory that he is so worthy.
Speaks of the wrath of the Lamb, doesn't it?
11 he's not only do we see him as the one that bore iniquity, but he's also the perfect servant to.
Present to man righteousness in the will of God who came, as you see in John's gospel in chapter one, he came and he was, behold, the Lamb of God. But in the same chapter He is the Word. He is the perfect expression of what God is.
And so as the servant he makes known and instructs and righteousness, he presents God to man and what God is. And that that is part of his work. And it's a wonderful thing that God has chosen to make himself known and to have a servant that can display him to us so that we might know righteousness, that we might know much more than that as well.
And so the whole earth, in this coming day of his glory, will be instructed in righteousness. Now it's, it's often been said, righteousness suffers. There is no man to do it.
When the Lord Jesus comes and instructs, then the earth will, righteousness will reign over the whole earth, and the whole earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord.
After Satan in the end, uh.
Rebels, after the 1000 years of peace and reign and righteousness, he will be put down and that will be removed from the creation. There will be a new heaven and a new earth, and then God himself will dwell in righteousness, won't have to reign anymore in that sense to keep it in control. But all that is in the creation in that point in time is simply righteousness will dwell.
There won't be any need for the servant to instruct in righteousness then either, because.
We shall know even as we are known, and so will the earth know and.
01:10:04
And uh, every man should be filled with the knowledge of the Lord.
No more education needed.
As well to recognize he never assumes any of these things for himself. Never.
As a man, it's all in the hands of the Father to determine and decide. And so in the last verse it begins. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the Great.
God has made the choice to put all judgment into his hands. God has made the choice to give to the Lamb the responsibilities that are presented, uh, in the revelation and the carrying of them out. And so He assigns him the portion which is his. And what a portion.
What other portion would be suitable or proper to him? He is given that place.
Of head over all things, not only to the church, which is his body, but God is placed into his hands. The authority over all created all creation, angels and man, and everything else goes beyond the scope of this chapter, but he's assigned the portion that is his.
With the great, or it's greater than the great, it's the supreme place.
Of which we echo.
With our God and we say thanks, that's what he deserves.
It also says that he shall divide the spoil with the strong. And so there is the thought of companionship, isn't there? Why He desires to have those that come into blessing because of his holy work, and he appreciates that which we.
Show forth as far as our devotion to Himself, and walking in the strength, as it were, of the Word of God.
That rejected 1 And so if we suffer with Him, we shall also reign. So the Lord values in this scene that we name His name, and that we do associate with Him as the rejected one. He isn't the accepted one at the present time in this world, but we look forward to that time. It is appearing, and He will be accepted, and that He will rule in righteousness.
And we'll be there this time.
And his people will be vindicated too. We've spoken of his vindication, but God is going to make sure that his people are vindicated too. You know, Israel today, Jerusalem, their enemies have their missiles pointed at them. They'd like to do away with them in a moment if they could. But you know, there's a day when Jerusalem is going to be the capital of the world. The blessing is going to flow down from God through the Lord Jesus, but through those people that are so despised today, those people that the enemies would like to annihilate with them.
And then out to the nations and the whole earth. But isn't it tremendous, brethren, to think that there's a day when Israel is going to be brought into blessing and all are going to bring their tribute up. The nations are going to bring their tribute up to Jerusalem year by year, and if they don't, they're going to be cut off and suffer pestilence and famine. Going to be that great recognition. But what about the heavenly company too, brethren? We're following a despised Christ now, as Robert said.
But rather than he's coming to be glorified in his Saints and to be admired in all them that are about him in that day, you know, when heaven opens up to reveal the Lord Jesus coming back in power and glory, his heavenly people are going to be with him.
We're going to come with them and the earth is gonna look up and they're gonna see the people that they despise, those they burned at the stake, those that they ridiculed, many that they cast in prison, those that follow the rejected Christ, and they're going to see his people all with and like Him glorified. We're going to reflect fully the glories of Christ in that day. There's going to be a declaration, so to speak, I and the children whom God has given me. Now, brethren, doesn't that encourage us to just go on following that one now?
Not looking for vindication now, but just to follow a rejected Christ, knowing that again God's heart will be satisfied finally in the full vindication of His Son, and satisfied in the vindication of those who have been have been associated with Him here in His rejection.
01:15:21
But before that can happen, there will have to be brought very, very low and many are going to be cut off and like it says in Zechariah 2/3 will be cut off. Think of the awful slaughter of those people and in their mortal anguish they will be brought to repentance, and then God will intervene and raise them up and.
They will be the head of the nation's.
Not like it is today. Beautiful to think about.
Just like to comment on this little expression in verse.
12 He poured out his soul unto death. Beautiful. Just, uh, meditate on that.
Poured out his soul unto death. No God has made us to live. Really it is not.
God's original purpose when he created mandate, it wasn't his purpose that man die, but that was brought in through sin. But here the Lord Jesus coming into this creation poured out his soul unto death. And there's little expressions too in the New Testament. I'd like to connect with this. And when he's in the garden, I think it's in Mark's gospel, perhaps others he says now is uh.
My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death. Within John's gospel he says, Now is my sole trouble, And what shall I say? What was it that trouble his soul?
Was the thought of that work of redemption that was ahead? And the contact was thin. He could say to his own people, let not your heart be troubled. But his soul was troubled.
Oh, what a savior we cannot measure.
What it would be?
To be the light of the world.
And I hang there in darkness.
You could say a body has thou prepared me.
With the soul is the expression of the vessel.
That is laid down in death.
Mm-hmm. We can't measure, but we can always be enriched.
And grasping but a little.
Of what it was for him.
To bring us into.
Everlasting.
Astonishing.
And the light of the world is going to rise as the Sun of Righteousness, SUN Sun of Righteousness, with healing in his wings. What a day of light and blessing and glory there is for this world when he rises as such.
I wonder if we could stand and sing 110.
110.
Oh God, thou knowest glorified.
My holy blood.
Open Mtg. 9
Open—J. Hyland, W. Dear
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.
Let's turn first of all, to the book of Ephesians.
Ephesians chapter 5.
Ephesians chapter 5 and verse two And walk in love as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savour. For a few moments I'd like to look at 4 portions of the Word of God that bring before us the thought of sacrifice in four different ways.
But we began here in Ephesians chapter 5, where we have that wonderful sacrifice of the Lord Jesus himself. We've had in taking up the portion in the book of Isaiah, the 53rd of Isaiah, that sacrifice, that mighty sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. And all through the Old Testament we find those sacrifices brought before us in one way or another.
Those sacrifices that were to the heart of God, just pale reflections and feeble foreshadows of what he was looking forward to in that moment when his son would go to the altar and would be offered up as that sweet smelling sacrifice. I say those sacrifices in the Old Testament simply pointed forward in the mind and heart of God to that work that was going to be accomplished there on Calvary's cross, because this was already pointed out this weekend.
The sacrifices of the Old Testament never put away sin. They put sin on account, as it were. But it tells us in Hebrews every priest standeth daily, ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices that could never take away sin and its significance, that in the Tabernacle, in the wilderness, and the temple later on built under the direction of Solomon when God's people were established in the land.
There was never to be a seat for the priests because their work was never done. They stood and offered those sacrifices over and over again. And they and the Levites and the children of Israel understood very clearly as they brought those sacrifices from day-to-day and year to year, that that sacrifice only atoned for that one sin, and then they had to bring another and another. But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sin.
Forever sat down on the right hand of God, and God will never require another sacrifice for sin, because the Lord Jesus glorified and satisfied him as to the question of sin. And God's Amen to that mighty sacrifice was the fact that He rose, raised him from the dead, and seated him at his own right hand. But here we find to the sacrificing connection with God.
Part what's the sacrifice was to God because you know it's true in the various sacrifices in the Old Testament, there are very various aspects brought in of man's need and the.
Specific sin and so on. But you know, there was the burnt offering too, and the burnt offering was for God. And I suggest that that's perhaps the offering that's alluded to in this portion that we read here in Ephesians chapter 5. And it is so difficult to move beyond what the sacrifice or the work means to us. Now, brethren, don't misunderstand me. I trust that the sacrifice of Calvary means everything to us.
As we have been saying in these meetings, it's the ground of all our blessings because God has taught throughout the whole Old Testament and the history of man, from the fall of man, from the introduction of sin into this world, right down that there must be the death and shedding of blood of an innocent victim if there's going to be any blessing for mankind or for this earth. But how to move beyond that and see as we've been saying in these meetings.
What the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus means to the heart of God. The sweet savour of the burnt offering rose for the nostrils of God. It was in type what the person and work of Christ was going to mean to his heart. And now that it's accomplished, there's that. That burnt offering, so to speak. It speaks of the continually continual burnt offering. Do you realize that the work of the Lord Jesus, that mighty sacrifice at Calvary, is as fresh and sweet to the heart of God this afternoon when it was accomplished?
00:05:22
There on Calvary's hill, and it will be sweet and precious to the heart of God for all eternity.
And when we're finally there with the Lord Jesus, what is gonna be our occupation in the Father's house? A lamb threshly slain. That work will be fresh. That work that is fresh to the heart of God will be fresh for eternity. And it will be fresh to our schools as well. And what will it do, brother? It will bring forth first fresh bursts of worship and praise from our hearts for all eternity. Because I believe true worship in the heart is really produced.
In entering into not so much what the work means to us that will produce praise, but what will really produce worship, is to enter into what the work means to the heart of God. That again is the burnt offering as it's brought before us in the Old Testament. And So what a sacrifice, brethren. And as we leave this place this weekend, may we go with this fresh sense in our souls of that mighty sacrifice. And I say not simply what it means to us.
Not simply the blessing that we've been brought into because of it, but may we have a fresh sense, in some measure at least, of what the person and work of Christ means to the heart of God and how much God values the sacrifice of his beloved Son there on Calvary's cross. But you know, whenever we take up any aspect of the truth, there's always something to exercise our soul.
Souls in regard to what is brought before us.
And so in that connection, I'd like to go on now and speak of sacrifice in connection with what ought to exercise our souls in view of what we have had before us in the reading meetings, what we've had before us in the breaking of bread, and what we had brought before us in this verse in Ephesians chapter 5. Go with me, please, to the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 13.
Hebrews chapter 13 and verse 15.
By Him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually. That is the fruit of our lives, giving thanks to his name. Well, here we have the sacrifice of praise. And brethren, as we have considered in these meetings, that mighty sacrifice all it ought to, and it will produce praise in your soul and mind. The sacrifice of of praise. If someone has done a great deal for you, aren't you an in great if you don't return to give them thanks? Think of those 10 lepers that were cleansed in the days of the Lord Jesus.
And when they were cleansed, only one returned to give thanks to the Lord. And I can just hear the sadness in the voice of the Lord Jesus, as on the one hand, he valued the response of that man's heart. But he said, were there not ten cleansed, but where are the nine? He would have desired that all ten of them returned to give him thanks. And oh brother, we ought to have hearts full of praise and Thanksgiving.
As we consider what the Lord Jesus has done for us, but notice it's called the sacrifice of praise. You know on the one hand, if there is any response of praise in your heart and mind, He has implanted that response in our hearts and on our lips. It tells us He put a new song in our mouth even praise to our God. All things come of thee, and of thine own have we given Thee.
It says, further, I create the fruit of the lips. And so if there's been any response in our hearts this weekend that we have to realize that it all comes from him. But when we do give him that response of praise so much, does he value that response in your heart and mind? The very response He has implanted there? He says, I value it so much that I count it as a sacrifice. It's all that we should give him when we think of what He's done for us and what he is doing for us and all that's ahead and that he's going to do for us in that future day of glory.
00:10:05
But he says the very thing that I've given you, you've given it back, and I count it as a sacrifice. How much do we give the Lord Jesus? That sacrifice of praise from day-to-day? And notice it's the fruit. It's the fruit of our lips. You know, worship has to do with that which is inward, and praise always has to do with that which is audible. Not that worship can't be expressed audibly and not that praise shouldn't come from our hearts. Because the Lord said, this generation draws nigh unto me with their mouth and praises me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.
He wants the response of praise from our hearts, but He wants it audibly. It's the fruit of our lips. It's a new song in my mouth. Giving, giving thanks to our God and so.
Open. Let's learn to open our mouths in praise and Thanksgiving. You know, I love to hear a sister working around the house and you hear a little note of praise, humming or singing the words of a hymn. A brother working around the yard or in his shop, and you hear that little note of praise.
He counts that as a sacrifice. There will be a reward in the coming day for every note of praise on your lips and mind. And I would just say in that regard to to parents, I believe we need to teach our children to sing. You know, we have so many such a wonderful heritage of good scriptural hymns that express the truth in a way that perhaps there's no better way to express things. But, you know, we can't expect our children when they get older.
To open their mouths and sing these hymns, if we haven't taught them, around the dinner table, around the piano. I'm thankful for the memory of standing around the piano, sitting at the dinner table and opening the hymn book and singing some of these hymns. And I want to encourage you too, uh, to memorize some of these good scriptural hymns. They'll come back to you at times when you need them most, and you'll be able to give expression.
Of praise and Thanksgiving in the words of these wonderful hymns that God has caused over the centuries, men and women to write. And so it's the sacrifice of praise. Yesterday morning in the breaking of bread, we didn't come to get, we came to give, to give the sacrifice of praise. But notice something else continually. He doesn't just want it for one hour on Lord's Day, or when we're together in a setting like this. And at the beginning of each meeting and at the end we sing a hymn or two.
That's wonderful, but he wants it continually. I know some of us are gonna go home to very difficult circumstances. I have no doubt there are brethren here this afternoon. And your burden. You think it's been a wonderful weekend, but I'm gonna have to go back to the burdens and cares of family life, business life. In the assembly there are often difficulties that arise, but he wants us to cultivate the habit of praise and Thanksgiving.
In our lives not to be like the children of Israel who got under the circumstances and grumbled and complained was mentioned in these meetings. We grown in this Tabernacle we grown and the Lord Jesus himself groaned in spirit and was troubled. But you know the apostle Paul said sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. And we don't just have a lot to praise him for. We have everything to praise him for. Brethren, we don't just have much to be thankful for.
We have everything to be thankful for. I know there are difficult circumstances, and I don't wanna minimize those circumstances. I know they're very real. But through it all, we can learn to sing. We can learn his praise. Even like Paul and Silas, at midnight they prayed and sang praises. And I've often wondered if they didn't remember that verse in the 119th Psalm that says at midnight will I arise and sing praises unto thee?
Because of thy righteous judgment, they realized what God had allowed was right, that he had a purpose. And it caused them, even at a midnight hour, to sing praises. And I'm sure it was jotted down in God's book of remembrance as the sacrifice of praise. And they'll get a reward in the coming day. And so it's the fruit of our lips. You want to bear fruit for God's glory. You can. There's a way to bear fruit. Maybe you can't do a whole lot, but you can bear fruit by giving him that little note of praise that he so desires and so deserves and is so worthy of. And again.
00:15:04
He will reward for any fruit for His glory in that coming day of manifestation. Well, giving thanks to His name. What a privilege it is, brethren, to offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually. But now just notice the 16th verse, the next verse, and we have another sacrifice brought before us. It says, but to do good and to communicate, forget not, for with such sacrifices.
God is well pleased it talks to Mr. Darby translates this to do good and to communicate of your substance because I believe what he's Speaking of here now is what he has entrusted to us in a material way. I know I'm quoting this verse a little bit out of context, but it tells us in the Gospels that it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful. I know in its context there is in connection with spiritual things, but.
I believe there's an application to temporal things. Do you realize that what God has given you in a temporal way, what he has entrusted to me in a temporal way, whether it's a dollar bill, whether it's my home, whether it's my vehicle, whatever it is, it has been entrusted to me and I am going to be held accountable with my for my stewardship. How faithful I have been with what He has entrusted to me.
It's not the amount that He's entrusted to us that's important. If it's one talent OR 5 talents, that's not the point. It's being faithful with what He has entrusted to us. I say that because sometimes our hearts are a little tricky. You know, we think, well, if we had more, we could do more for the Lord. No, if if the Lord wanted us to do more, He'd give us more. But He gives us what He knows our He can trust us with.
And He gives us that which is equal to the task that He has for us, for what He wants us to do. And as we look back, and I can only exercise my own soul, brethren, I can only point at my own heart. So I'm not pointing at anybody. I don't know your circumstances, but I'm simply trying to exercise my own soul in this regard. And perhaps it will exercise your soul too. But how faithful have I been? How faithful have we been?
With those temporal things that God has entrusted to us, Brother Bob was giving us a percentage of how much is given to charity here in this country and how appallingly low it is. And brethren, there are great needs today. The Lord Jesus is coming, and there are great needs. Do you realize that there are people in this world who cannot obtain a Bible on their own? Just go home after these meetings and go through your house and count how many Bibles.
You have in your home, and it's good to have Bibles and to value it and read it. But do you realize that there are some people that can't afford a Bible, some people in whose dialect it's never been translated, and there are those who are working on those translations into those languages and dialects and the needs are great. It's not, and it's not always great. Things are sometimes said in commenting on the work of the Lord in general.
Every drop in the bucket helps. It's a it's the little things and we need to be exercised. Brethren, the Lord is coming. Are we laying up for ourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust corrupt and thieves breakthrough and steal? Or are we laying up for ourselves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust corrupt and thieves do not breakthrough and steal? And what's going to matter in a coming day? How nice a car. I had nothing wrong with having a car that's Rd. worthy and a nice car. But is that what's going to matter when I stand and give an account of my stewardship? No, He's going to weigh every dollar that he placed into my hand.
He's going to weigh everything that he entrusted to me in a temporal way.
To see if I was faithful with what was given, given to me. And it ought to exercise our souls. Brethren, what excuse are we going to give him? And I want to, I want to be careful, brethren, but I want to speak very plain, brethren. What excuse am I going to give him when I stand there in the coming days? And down on earth, I've left a big bank account down on earth, I've lost a lot of worldly goods that I was keeping for some reason, and now they're all reserved under fire.
What excuse am I going to give him for not using what he entrusted to me for the furtherance of the gospel?
00:20:07
The blessing, the furtherance of the truth and the blessing of God of God's people in one way or another. Rather, I'm not going to have any excuse in that day. And so we need to be exercised to use that which He has given us. You know, on Lord's Day morning, there was a basket passed after the remembrance of the Lord, and we gave the sacrifice of our substance. But that's only one way to give.
And can I be very plain too, you know what sacrifice is something that we need to feel my putting a $10.00 bill in the collection on Lord's Day morning is not a sacrifice that's not really a sacrifice that's giving to the Lord, but that's not a a sacrifice you know in connection with the collection. It says in Corinthians were to give us every as he's prospered every man did I give did you give on Lord's Day morning as God had prospered you if you did then.
There won't be the same needs amongst the Lord's people and in the gospel and if we gave in other ways too, and I say everything to give everything to put everything I have on the altar. I'm not. I don't mean we shouldn't provide for our own. We're worse than infidels if we don't. I don't mean that we should go around in rags. I don't mean that we should drive a car that's not going to be roadworthy and we're going to get that's not what I'm saying rather, but what I am saying is.
Let's weigh everything in the presence of the Lord. You know, money is called filthy looper until we bring it into the presence of the Lord and then it's called the shekel of the sanctuary. Do you want your money to be considered filthy lucre or the Sheffield of the sanctuary? And when we bring it into the presence of the Lord and we say, Lord, what does this dollar worth? What does this commodity worth? Then it's sanctified in that way and it can be used in his service in that way.
And so to do good and communicate, forget not why? Because it helps someone else or it gets the gospel out of the word out. No, because with such sacrifices, God as well. Please think of his part every time you make a sacrifice on that, on his behalf. Why He it's his joy to him. It brings a thrill to his soul and to give him his part and his joy, I believe if we keep that in view.
Then it says we don't give grudgingly around a necessity, but God loves a cheerful giver. But there is one other sacrifice I'd like to speak of, and that's in Romans chapter 12.
Romans chapter 12 and verse one.
I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Well, we've spoken of the sacrifice of praise, the fruit of our lips. We've spoken of using our substance, our material things, for His glory and sacrifice in that way. But here's something that goes even beyond that.
Ourselves. This is giving ourselves, and we're to offer ourselves in sacrifice. You know, it's easy to give of our substance, but what about of ourselves? You know, if someone's sick, it's easy to spend a meal over, but isn't it another thing to take that meal ourselves and sit with that person and give of our time and talk to that person and encourage, encourage them? That takes perhaps more effort and more exercise.
Than just sending a meal over by someone else's hand. The stories told of a missionary who was giving a talk somewhere here in North America. And after the talk, it was suggested that a collection be taken up for the work in the far off country of which he had just spoken. And a basket was passed around and quite a bit of money was collected for the work. But, you know, there was a piece of paper put in by a young man. He didn't put money in.
But he put in that offering a piece of paper with the words myself, and he did go off eventually to the mission field. He gave of himself. He laid himself, as it were, on the altar. And that's what he wants. I don't mean we all need to go to a foreign field to serve the Lord. That's not what I'm saying. But do you and I get up in the morning with the thought that whatever He has for us to do.
00:25:03
In a little sphere in which we operate from day-to-day.
That we're willing to do it, that we're willing to go the extra mile and to give ourselves.
You know, brethren, we may never be asked in this country to lay down our lives physically for our testimony. There are many of our brethren today who are giving their lives in that way in other countries. And we don't want to forget to pray for them because it's a tremendous thing to think of how many are laying down their lives and suffering martyrdom for Christ. And it tells us in Revelation that there's a crown of life for those.
Who physically lay down their lives in that way. But there's a crown of life in another aspect in James one. And that crown of life is not so much for those that give of themselves, lay down their lives in a physical way in death, but it's laying down their lives in the aspect we have here. It's giving themselves, notice this, a living sacrifice. You know, it says in first John, we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
Do we really know what it is to lay down our lives for our brethren? When we think of what He did, the Lord Jesus, in laying down His life for us, all that ought to be the motivation. That ought to be the springboard in giving ourselves for one another. Oh, it may be a life of self sacrifice, but it's more blessed to give than to receive. And don't look for some return. You know, even in having people in and showing hospitality, we're told not to invite those who can invite you back.
Or give you some return, return a nice meal, but to have in the poor those who can't return the favor, so to speak, thus giving ourselves of a living, of a living sacrifice. And so are you. And I, I say to my own soul, am I willing to put myself on the altar? Because, brethren, there is another world, he that loses his life for my sake, and the gospel shall find it. The world may look on and say he or she has got a lost life. They could have been great, they could have done wonderful things. They got a lost life. But.
If you lose your life for his sake in the gospel, oh, he says, I'm going to reward in that coming day. Yes, brethren, there is another world. What world are we living in view of? So I say again, are we willing to give ourselves as a living, living sacrifice as we go home from these meetings, or may we be exercised in this regard? So again, what a wonderful thing it's been to consider that glorious supreme sacrifice.
Of the Lord Jesus who offered himself without spot to God. And then to be able to lift up our voices and give the sacrifice of praise to God continually, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name. Then to be able to use the temporal and material things that He has entrusted to us in his service for his glory, for the blessing of others, and then to give ourselves. Oh brethren, it will all be worth it in that day when he says.
Well done, thou good and faithful servant, Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.
I was thinking about Ephesians 5.
This afternoon.
Myself and our brother Jim has fought before us.
Our privilege is to offer.
The sacrifice of praise to God, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name.
And later on in this chapter.
Ephesians 5.
I believe we have referenced this very thing.
And I thought in connection with.
What a hell in my heart.
About.
AAA.
And I'm not talking about.
The American Automobile Association. I know we're familiar with that, perhaps, but I believe we have.
AAA in this chapter.
We have adoration.
00:30:00
Appreciation.
And accommodation.
Now in verse.
17.
Ephesians 5 and 17.
It says, wherefore be not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.
And be not drunk with wine.
Wearing a success.
But be filled with the Spirit.
It's a wonderful thing to realize.
That God's desire is that you and I, we might know what his will is.
He isn't trying to keep us in the dark as to what He has in mind for us.
The Lord loves us too much for that.
And we had.
Will brought before us yesterday.
And I was thinking in connection with, uh, what our brother Don spoke about.
How that in Philippians it says that God works in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
And that's wonderful.
That the Lord not only puts the desire in our heart to do something, but He gives us the ability to do it. He never asked us to do anything.
About what he gives us.
The energy, the strength, the ability to do it, we can rely on him for that.
Well, yearly password quality says.
Do you not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is? If you wanna know what the will of the Lord is, I believe.
You will not.
And it was Mr. Darby who was asked the question, how can I know what God's mind is for me? And he, I think, responded with a verse, The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him.
I don't know that he said much more than that, but that speaks volumes, you know, do we have in our heart a desire to ask for the Lord's honor and his glory?
We fear lest we bring dishonor upon His precious name.
The Lord really appreciates this kind of an attitude.
And he will lead and he will guide and he will show what his mind is now. It says in 18, be not drunk with wine.
Wherein is accept, but be filled with the Spirit.
We see a lot of drunkenness about today.
We see excess of wine, you know, back in.
I could just refer to this.
In the province.
And this is the last.
Chapter.
Of the book of Proverbs. Proverbs 31.
It says in verse.
Six, give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish in wine unto those.
That be of heavy hearts.
Well, I do believe that, uh.
Wine. Is that what she tells his cheers the heart of God and of man?
But excess of line.
And it does also say the proverbs that wine is a mocker and strong drink is raging. So we need to be careful, you know of the effect of wine.
I'd like to uh.
Think that there is that which is.
Truly satisfying to a heavy heart.
And that is?
The love of Christ.
And.
We find the Word of God is that which can share our hearts.
And it's good you know when a word is spoken that lists our hearts.
00:35:03
That cheers our souls.
And I believe you've hit that word in these meetings. Spent a wonderful thing to be here today, yesterday and the day before, and to enjoy from the Word of God that which can be the joy and rejoicing of our hearts. But it speaks here. Be not drunk with wine. We're in the success, but be filled with the Spirit.
The Spirit of God, of course, indwells every believer, however.
Not every believer is filled with the Spirit.
And I believe that to be filled with the Spirit.
Is to be occupied with the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
To have our thoughts.
Our words, our actions, controlled by the Spirit of God.
The Holy Spirit.
And there's joy in connection with this.
Back in Romans, it tells us that the Kingdom of.
God is not meat and drink, but it's righteousness.
And.
Peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.
And uh.
In the Acts we read about those that were filled with joy. I think it's the last verse of the 13th chapter of disciples. They were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost.
And of course, I'm day of Pentecost when they were proclaiming the wonderful news of the grace of God in these various times, no doubt they were very enthusiastic about this and they said these men are filled with no wine.
But it wasn't soft. They were filled with the Spirit of God.
And so the Spirit of God can just lift us right out of ourselves in a good way. It's true excess of wine can lift us out of ourselves too, but I believe in a bad way. And so to be filled with the Spirit has an effect, and I think we have the effect of it in these next 3 verses. Now this is where I think we have adoration speaking.
To yourself.
And thin and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.
I was looking.
In ER.
Milton Cordes of the hymn book in Death.
Just counted up the number of references to.
Adoration.
Adore adoring and it must have been at least eighty to 100 references in this little book. And we sang one of those hymns this morning which I trust never tired of singing. Number 80. Lord, we adore thee, for thou art this plain one, and so on. Oh Lord, we adore this, for Thou hast redeemed them.
A hemostat which describes worship and praise to God.
And as we sing these hymns.
It helps us to express what's in our heart adoration.
And how wonderful that is, adoration of God the Father and of his dear Son, who in love gave himself on that cruel cross there, the sacrifice for sinners. What a wonderful Savior we have to think about to adore. Adoration, making, singing and making melody in your heart.
To the Lord Well, I believe it was just brought out that praises that which has to do with.
Audible expression, but it needs to come from our heart, and you know if our hearts are occupied with the Lord Jesus.
And a wonderful he really is. And we think of his love for you and for me.
For me, we're gonna be singing in our hearts and it's gonna come out in our voices too. Well, adoration. Then we come to appreciation, I think in verse 20, giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Appreciation.
00:40:13
A thankful person is a happy person.
And we have so much to give thanks for.
We may not have a whole lot in this world.
But you know what we have in Christ?
Sees our eternal riches.
And.
The fact is that God's eye is upon you and me for good. I believe the Lord Jesus is our intercessor.
He never takes his eye off you or me. Never.
And.
His desire is to do us good.
And when we think about the love that He had for you and for me, giving himself the cost, His own precious blood, we have to realize that God is for us.
That's the Lord cheese sauce He's in all the way home, Savior.
You don't just save me.
In order to be in the Father's house.
But he saves me in order that.
I might walk with him, he might walk with me down here in companionship with him and he with me. And you know, he takes care of his own and I believe anything that occurs in our life.
According to this we have to give thanks for, well, this is a wonderful truth, giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But you know what we need to be thinking about how our actions affect one another. And so in verse 21, but I say we have accommodation, submitting yourselves 1 to another in the fear of God.
I read recently about an awful train wreck.
And this happened back in the 40s, and I understand that.
Well, it wasn't actually a wreck so much as it was a disaster. A train disaster. A train with two locomotives went into a tunnel and.
It was a long tunnel and there were many cars on this train, passenger train.
And in the tunnel, the train locomotives, they begin to slip.
And apparently they.
We're slipping and they had some sand and they put that on the tracks and saw him.
And they were having a problem.
And you know.
The result plus.
The train never made it out of its hunt.
And the fumes from that train.
Asphyxiated the passengers. Hundreds perished.
But when they examine those locomotives.
He found out.
That the brakes were lost, the front locomotive and the one behind it, but the front automotive was in forward gear and the one behind was in reverse gear. And somehow they were pulling and pushing against each other. And it was thought that if they had been pulling in the same direction, that disaster could have been avoided. But.
For some reason I don't know if there was some difference of opinion as to how to deal with the situation.
The train remained in the tunnel and many perished.
Well, I think of how sometimes even you send.
There can be this.
Pulling and pushing against each other and the result is not good.
But you know where there's this submitting to one another, and I don't mean in connection with fundamentals of Christianity and respect that a person who work with Christ, we don't want to compromise that.
00:45:00
Give up on that in any way. But the fact is there's so many things that come up that it seems we could give in. And it would be for the benefit of that if we were just willing to give in. And you know, when we stop and think about what we have earlier in this chapter and your father Jim's been bringing before us.
The fact that Christ loved us and he's given himself for us, offering sacrifices, sacrifices sweets, mountain Savior to God. We get focused on the Lord Jesus and his work. Some of these things that are really pretty petty.
Don't make a big difference. We can give in on and let the others want to add this way and everything is probably going to work out all right. So I think that's the thought here, you know, in connection with submitting yourselves 1 to another in the fear of God. Now I grant you speaks of the fear of God. We need to submit ourselves first to God.
But then to one another. So I just enjoyed these.
3/8.
Federation appreciation accommodation.
I just pray that it might be.
Antifa on my own sole as much as anyone else's.
This AAA.