Kentucky Conference: 2023
Table of Contents
1 Thessalonians 4:1-13
Reading
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Where is this world's playing? The whole world.
Is gone.
There was.
A good night.
Who did you see?
Oh, Cortana.
Could we read in Isaiah chapter 48?
Isaiah 48.
I'm going to read it out of the.
And the translation Isaiah 48 and verse 21.
And they thirsted not.
When he let them.
Through the deserts.
He caused the water to flow out of the rock for them.
Yeah, he clayed the rock and the water scushed out. And then also in Psalms 78.
Psalm 78 and verse 72.
00:10:00
And he sat down.
According to the integrity of his heart.
And let them by the skillfulness of his hands.
Does seem rather than that we are getting close to the moment when we're going to be raptured out of this world, I would like to suggest.
First Thessalonians four and five in these three readings that we have in these meetings.
Not thinking to focus so much on the first part of chapter 4.
The second part, which deals with the rapture.
And then the 4th chapter or the 5th chapter which deals with the day of the Lord, which is that day of judgment.
What's taking place in the world today seems to be developing towards that.
What we see around us is developments that remind us that we're getting close.
For the rapture there is no sign and so I suggest we read chapter 4. But what can see mainly on the latter part? I don't know if that's suitable. Why I desire my brother to?
Suggest something else if that's the case.
I have to stay for some minor what I have to say ports in my heart good.
Considering.
What?
Time. I don't think it would be harmful to spend some time going on the first part of chapter 4 as well. The time of this world was very strong from all good.
I want to group chapter 4 course.
First Thessalonians chapter 4, verse one. Furthermore, then, we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so you would abound more and more.
For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus, For this is the will of God, even your sanctification.
That you should abstain from fornication. That everyone of you should know how to possess his vessel.
In sanctification and honor, not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles, which know not God, that no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter, because that the Lord is the avenger of all such as we also have forewarned you and testified. For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness. He therefore that despises.
Despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us His Holy Spirit. But as touching brotherly love, ye need not that I write unto you. For ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another, and indeed ye do it toward all the brethren which are in all Macedonia. But we beseech you, brethren, that ye increase more and more, and that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business and to work.
With your own hands, as we commanded you, that ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing. But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, Even so them also which sleep in Jesus.
Will God bring with him for this we say unto you, by the word of the Lord.
That we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them which are asleep.
For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout with the voice of the Archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds.
00:15:09
To meet the Lord in the air. And so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.
Well, these incentive the 1St chapter, along with that the last part of verse nine and the first part of verse 10. These Thessalonians had turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for His Son from heaven.
Chapter 4 two, I just wanted to point out how the chapter begins. We found in verse one there is that sad exhort you by by whom, by the Lord Jesus. So this isn't exaltation by the Lord Jesus and you go to the end of the chapter. It tells us that because of this now we'll go into what these are there wherefore comfort one another.
With these words. So these words are very important, isn't it? As we mentioned as a brother, Brother Bob mentioned with the last eight. And sometimes, I should say often we look at the bad things. We look at how bad this world has become. We get discouraged. But yet in this chapter, the latter part give us the hope because we're not of this world as we're saying, we're not of this world that faded away. And then the first part of the chapter is our brother mentioned. That is good because.
This is how we are to walk. We are to walk as a light to this world, even though this world is coming to its very end.
It's called the Enoch chapter, hasn't it? Because Enoch walked with God and then Hebrews it says he had this testimony that he pleased God.
So to walk to please God through a world that is completely corrupt, brother and I have been incredibly amazed at how corrupt things are turning in our country and we need to be aware of it, not to be mixed up with it, but we need to be aware of it to not get mixed up with it. So he says, furthermore then we beseech you brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus.
That as ye have received of us, how you ought to walk, and to please God.
So you would abound more and more just like to make this comment as we start to go over this chapter that you'll notice in Mr. Darby's translation that.
From verse 15 to verse 18 is a parenthesis.
And I think it's good because he's talking to these Thessalonians believers that evidently had had lost some of their relatives that believed and they thought, well, they're not going to be here when Jesus comes back to establish his Kingdom.
At the end of the great tribulation, so he says in the verse 14 and I want to connect that verse 14 with the first verse of chapter.
Five. But notice verse 14, if we believe that Jesus died and rose again.
Even so them also which sleep in Jesus.
Will God bring with him?
That means when he comes in his Kingdom, he's going to bring those that have fallen asleep in Jesus.
OK, but if they've died, how did they get to be with him?
And so verse 15 through 18 is a parentheses that shows how those that have died and gone to be with the Lord and are buried, how they get to be with Him too, so they can be brought with him as well.
And then he starts in chapter five with the what relates to.
The second coming at the end of the Great Tribulation, when he's going to come with his Saints.
00:20:06
The times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that are right unto you, for yourselves know perfectly the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. That's his coming at the end of the great tribulation. So I just like to clarify that I think it helps to understand this chapter connection with the rapture, the what the apostle Paul received as to the rapture of the believers at the end of this period of grace which will take place.
At any moment now.
It's helpful for us to understand that the Old Testament knew about the appearing of the Lord Jesus. And if you look at Zechariah chapter 14, they had been given a little light as to that event. And he speaks of the appearing all throughout the Old Testament, particularly the prophetic scriptures, the prophetic part of it. But in Zechariah chapter 14, right at the end of verse five, it says, and the Lord my God shall come.
And all the Saints with the.
Now they knew they would come with the Lord Jesus, but they didn't know how it would be possible for the Saints, those Old Testament Saints, to be with the Lord Jesus, to have their bodies there and to come to be with him at his appearing. And so Paul was given that revelation. It's a part of Paul's doctrine. What we've just read in First Thessalonians chapter 4, particularly here, verses 15 to 18 refer. It really is the revelation of God. It's.
It's verse 15, verse one, verse 15, right at the beginning it says this. We say unto by the word of the Lord.
It was a revelation of the risen Christ and glory to Paul. And so he tells, he gives further details in first Corinthians 15. How is it that they were going to appear? What kind of condition would their bodies have? Well, it's Paul's doctrine. He tells us how the body would be changed and goes into it as well, speaks of it in connection with redemption, the redemption of our bodies in Romans chapter 8.
And so this is really very significant. It's a part of Pauls doctrine. And so here these first eight verses, I've just referred to it brother Bob, but just it's a paragraph. It's a paragraph in the you see it in the Darby translation. If you don't have a Darby translation, I highly recommend it because you have the proper paragraph definitions in that translation. And so he's giving.
There the Lordship of Christ, if this is true, that the Lord Jesus is coming and we should live in the expectation of His coming, it should have a practical effect upon our lives. And so he gives that little bit of definition of the practical holiness that is ought to be characteristic of every believer as a result of the Lord's coming.
That's why the apostle Paul doctrine is so important. We find among Christendom that sometimes they'll say, why Paul, you don't need Paul's doctrine. They, they drop it for various reasons. But Paul gave us a lot more insight. He, well, let me give you an example. When he spoke to the Ephesians elders told them he will see, they will see his face no more. But he told them three things. I think it's in connection to our chapter.
Turn with me just briefly to Acts chapter 20. There were three things that he said to them. Acts chapter 20 he said when he was with them he said this verse 24. The latter part he said, I have received of the Lord Jesus.
To testify the gospel of the grace of God, that's the first thing he did, and that's the first thing we ought to do. We've been saying that in our hymn.
In our opening hymn about the grace of God. And the sad thing is some of us stop there and don't go any further. It is good to be reminded that we have been saved by grace. It is good to be reminded of the finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ. But that's just the beginning of things, isn't it? So Paul said that yes, we didn't stop to proclaim the gospel of the grace of God. And then if you go on in the verse 25, then he said, I have gone preaching.
00:25:05
The Kingdom of God, a brother earlier mentioned about the Kingdom, someone is going to be, oh, I should say Kingdom is going to have a king. There's going to be a king coming, the righteous king, he's going to reign in righteousness. That's part of the thing that we look forward to and actually walk in the moral side of that Kingdom to come. But then there's one more thing. So you have preaching the gospel of the grace of God, the Kingdom of God.
And then in verse 27, he said, I have not shunned to declare unto you all the council of God. I think that's very important to be remembered. I know the word shunned is not. We don't use that often. A shun simply means to cut off or to stay away. I didn't stop. I didn't cut off telling you, I want you to know the whole council of God.
Well, here we just talk about part of the Council of God. Paul talked about a lot of the counsel of God in his in his epistle. He talked about the mysteries. But one of the important mystery is you can look this up afterwards in Ephesians and Colossians, the mystery of God. But what is that?
The mystery of God is that there is going to be a body on earth but ahead in heaven. That's the mystery of God that the Old Testament saying didn't know about that. Then there is the gospel of Christ, that we as part of the bride will be air and joint air with Christ.
What a wonderful mystery to be revealed. So here it's expanded towards that. How would we achieve that? Well, He's going to ****** us out of this world. That's the rapture. We're not going to go through tribulation because we're too weak to withstand a lot of those. That's why those owl of temptations, we're not going to be there. He takes us out and He doesn't just take us out, He takes us out to be with himself.
From Bob, I have a question for you in verse 16. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, and with the voice of the Archangel, with the trump of God. Isn't he going to bring my mother, father, and grandmother, and those with him?
Aren't they riding now? Isn't he going to bring him with him?
He's going to raise them from the dead so that they can be with him when he comes in power and glory at the end of the privilege. Aren't they coming to the clouds with him?
Because that's when he raises the dead, when he gets in the cloud. So my question is, why must that be assigned to a future appear?
I just say that that takes place before the appearance.
The Old Testament says they didn't have knowledge of the distinction. They had no knowledge of the.
Rapture at all, it wasn't a part of the revelation to them. And So what he's telling them here in chapter 4 verses 15 to 18 really is that there was an event that's going to take place before the appearing. And so we know that it's going to.
Take place approximately 7 years, maybe just a little more than seven years before the appearing of the Lord Jesus. And this is something that has been lost and christened them. It's the air of covenant theology to blend those two appearances of the Lord. The Lord Jesus will come and he'll come in two different phases, you might say. The first will come. He will come to take his church. And so this is what he's saying to them here by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent or not go before them which are asleep.
So at that time.
The bodies of the Saints will be raised, those that have died, and their spirits and souls will be reunited. They'll stand on the earth just as the Lord, the head of the church, stood on the earth, and they'll have their bodies will be glorified. And then you and I who are alive, our bodies will be changed, Paul says in First Corinthians 15, in the moment.
In the twinkling of an eye, we'll all be standing on the earth.
Our bodies change, and then we'll all go up together to meet the Lord in the air.
00:30:00
Approximately 7 years later, just a little more perhaps will come with Him, because we will have been with Him for all that time. As the tribulation period, the beginning of sorrows and the tribulation period unfolds, we will be with the Lord. So at the rapture, the bodies of the Saints will be raised glorified condition and their souls and their spirits will be reunited to their bodies.
Then we will rise together.
My question though, was not about that.
When Jesus comes to the clouds.
He's going to lead them in glory, and then he's going to raise their bodies for their He's going to bring them with him to the clouds. There they will be raised and we will meet them in the clouds. I don't understand why it must be assigned to the appearing when he's going to do that, and we know he's going to do that.
Why must this verse then be assigned to the appearing? It doesn't wreck anything. It doesn't promote covenant theology or anything. It just consistent with what it says is that he's going to come. He's going to bring my grandmother and my mother and my father with him, their soul and spirit, to the clouds. And then he's going to raise their bodies. And then we follow immediately changed, and we will meet together in the clouds.
That's where he says it's going to take place. So why assign that to an appearing? Why take it out of the context of where it is and make it about the appearance? We know that there's an appearing and it's a separate event and it's seven years later approximately, as was said. But why jerk that out of the context and make it mean something that has to do with the appearing when I know that they're coming and I'll see him in the clouds?
I don't believe it's taking it out of context brother. I think if you see that as Mr. Garvey put the parentheses from verse 15 to 18 that what he's talking about in verse 14. Even so them also will sleep in Jesus will God bring with him and he's talking about the appearing he will bring those. Why is that he appearing if he's bringing their soul and spirit with him. They're not raised yet.
They're coming with him from the place where he is here. I agree that that's going to take place, but that's not what he's referring to here. Why not? That's that's what he's referring to is the appearance. And so it connects with chapter five in the first verses there. Well, that's the exit. That's what I don't understand, and maybe I'm just stupid. I don't understand why it must be the appearance. Why is this the appearance? What's here in the context says it's the appearance and William.
God bring with him well, He's not from heaven to the cloud.
The entire book, we can't narrow it down to just this chapter. So if we look at what chapter 3 is bringing out, the apostle is looking first in chapter 2, looking forward to the appearing of the Lord and the end of the chapter, and the Saints would be his crown and rejoicing at that time at the appearing. And then in chapter two, he takes up the afflictions of the Saints.
And in the end of the chapter.
He because of the coldness of the day and what they were passing through. It could show the affections and he takes that up and he says the Lord make you to increase and abound. Verse 12 of chapter 3 and love one toward another and toward all men, even as we do towards you. The end to the end He may establish your hearts unblameable and holiness before God, even our Father at the coming.
Of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his Saints. So there's the context, It's really the appearing. And he takes up the subject of their hearts being established in affection, love and light holiness. And then he expands on that subject of holiness. If we're expecting to come with the Lord at his appearing and the establishment of His Kingdom, what is our life? Should it not be in full conformity to that hope and expectation?
We should not be walking as it says in verse 5 as the Gentiles which know not God similar to the expressions of the sentiments and the hymn that we sang. Why would we want to have any part of this world in its ways if our hope is the appearing really is what the context is his Saints coming with him and so I think then when we come to verse 14 and the the reassurance to the Saints of those of their brethren.
00:35:22
Who have died?
And they're really looking for the appearing, and they're not intelligent yet as to the truth of the rapture and those things that surround it. It's the appearing that they have. They're waiting for the Son of God from heaven to do what? Establish His Kingdom. Well, they're going to miss out when He comes. And they're not thinking about us coming with Him. They're thinking about His coming and setting up the Kingdom. He's going to expand and fill out their understanding now of these events.
And so he says in connection with those who have died, they're not going to miss out that the Lord Jesus died and rose again. He's going to bring those which sleep in Jesus with him.
When he sets up his Kingdom, he's going to have all the Saints with him. Well, the first question you're going to ask is.
How is that going to happen?
How is it that he's going to bring them with Him when he comes? Well, then he explains in this parentheses how that's going to take place. First he's going to raise the debt, and then together we're going to be caught up with the Lord. Now we're with the Lord. We meet him in the clouds, in the air. That's how we're all going to be with him at his coming, Those who died and we who are alive, that's how we'll be with Him when he comes and sets up his Kingdom.
And so in Revelation that says, behold, he cometh with clouds, that's his appearance. Meeting him in the clouds is the rapture. And we don't want to confuse those either by just seeing clouds in both verses. And so really I think that's why it's the context. What has been the context of the book up to that point is the appearing. And this little parentheses brings in the truth of the rapture, which you do not find previously.
And less part and he explains how is it not only that the dead are going to be with him when he comes, but what about us too? How are we going to be with him when he comes if he comes with all the Saints? Well, first he's going to catch us all up to be with him. And so it's not him bringing the souls that are in heaven, disembodied spirits with him in verse 14. That's not the subject. It's bringing all the Saints with him when he comes. How's he going to do that? Well, first he's going to.
Raise the dead, all caught up together, where we're the Lord, and then when he comes and his appearing, we're all with Him.
Does that help?
Sorry.
My mind of confusion is this, where are the Saints who are dead already? And I think that's the question because some people think that, well, if they are with Jesus.
Then they're already up there, so why would they be raised again? So I think someone may have to clear up the question, when a St. died, where is he? Is he really in glory? We sometimes use that phrase. We sometimes use that saying he's with Jesus. We know there's some truth to that. Maybe somewhere to expand that more while the body is still under grave.
Better.
Yeah, that's where they're at.
And if I should die tonight or today, in the next moment I expect to open my eyes and see his face.
They are there with Him. That is the hope. We are not waiting in some waiting room someplace. That's the wonderful thing about those who've been redeemed by the blood of the blood of Christ is that it should they close their eyes and death here, the next thing they see is their Savior's face and His presence. And I don't know how long it will seem between then and the rapture, but it'll probably seem like a few minutes because of the glory of that place. It's not our glorification.
But the glory of the place is there and being in the presence of Christ is that is the blessed hope that we we have is that we will go to be with him. And then the rest of the blessed hope is this. I mean, is that wrong?
You can comment on that rather than just one thought here.
Very good outline of the chapter that we have, and if there's a little confusion, maybe that could be.
00:40:10
Taken up after after the meeting. Steve, I, I just you, you were very clear in your in your explanation. I appreciate it very much personally for myself.
I was just thinking about the Lord Jesus. When he went to the cross, he gave up the ghost and they took him down and they prepared his body and they put it in the tomb.
And on the third day, the city would rise. And in Acts chapter one, you recall that origin of where?
Those ones were there, the angels, those men and wife, they said, You men of Galilee, this one with whom we see going up, and the clouds will come again in life manner, and so on.
And so it was then that they saw in that day. And though I think I understand what you're getting at, Steve, we're not going to be so concerned with who's with him and that day. And these ones in Thessalonica, they had lost sight of the resurrection. They maybe even lost sight.
Of those that were alive, he takes up the resurrection, but he mentions Enoch. We touched on it in Hebrews 11, but in Genesis 5 it tells you of Enoch and how old he was when he was here. And then it says he was no more and he had been taken up alive. And so Paul comes in with his brotherly lovely, he speaks about it and he explains to them that as we have in his parentheses, what's going to happen? And he just comforts our hearts with that thing. And I think that we really now, I believe we really need not get too far from that thing.
You know, Paul went in there to explain that to them so that they would have a real understanding that in that moment.
We which were alive would not go before those which had already gone into the grave. And so in First Corinthians 15, but thanks be to God, which gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. And so those ones that were in the grave would be caught up as we've already taken up, and we would remain alive, would be caught up together with them in the air. And the blessings in you and I is when we all come back together.
I don't think Paul meant any more than that there.
Concern those who had died would miss out on the coming of Christ, but when you look at this.
Explanation of what is going to take place.
It's a revelation made to the past of Paul. It's unfolded in a wonderful way.
The coming of Christ for the Church actually effects those who have died firstly.
Because it says the dead in Christ shall rise first. But of course it's all going to happen so quickly, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. But I just find it interesting that the concern is about the dead.
Those who have died.
They're the ones that are influenced first by the return of the Lord Jesus for the church and something else. Reference has been made to Enoch.
And Brother Robert referred back to Zechariah how that the Lord was coming with all of his Saints.
Now what is amazing to me is that this was revealed to Enoch back in Genesis, and the ground that we have for that is Jude. It tells us here in Jude.
14 And Enoch also the 7th from Adam prophesied of these say.
Behold, the Lord comes with 10,000 of His Saints to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them, of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. So sometimes we wonder, just how much did Old Testament Saints?
Know about the future.
And if we only had Genesis, we wouldn't really know that this wonderful.
Future revelation had been made known to Enoch, but we read about it in Jude, so it's a wonderful book that we have, and I believe that.
00:45:00
You know the appearing of Christ.
Ought to indeed have an influence on our walk and our ways, and that's brought out in the first part of this chapter.
There's something else I noticed in the first part with respect to abounding. Now if you back up to chapter 3 and verse 12.
The apostle says the Lord made you to increase and unbound in love one toward another.
And toward all men.
Verse one of the next chapter.
He ought to walk and to please God, so you would have found more and more.
And then we have it in verse 10.
We beseech you, brethren, that ye increase.
More and more, this, to my mind, conveys the importance of spiritual growth.
And that's what God looks for.
And in writing for the Colossians, the apostle Paul, he desired that they would have found in the knowledge of God more and more, you know, I think.
There's really no neutral ground, you might say, when it comes to spiritual things.
We're either growing, we're increasing, we're abounding more and more, or we're going the other direction. It just kind of reminds me of being on a bicycle.
As long as you're moving ahead on the bike, everything is OK.
But you can't just say, well, I'm going to stop the bike.
And expect that everything is going to be OK. It's going to you're going to fall over. So I just mentioned this because it's been a word to my own heart that we might realize that if we're not growing, we're really shrinking.
And.
The Apostle Peter, his desire was that we would grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ.
And this is all in view of his return. I believe every chapter here in First Thessalonians ends with the coming of Christ.
What a profound influence it ought to have.
On our walked in our ways.
The apostle John, he spoke about it. You know, you could say that it does not yet appear.
What we shall be. But we know that when he shall appear, we're going to be like him.
We're going to see him as he is. I take it that's his appearing in glory.
There's always an expression with the verbs that are.
Brother's desire, the beginning of the meeting that we touch a little upon the first part of the chapter here. And of course it's been mentioned by our brother Wally that our walk is something that we should be concerned about, and we have excitation through the whole of the Old and New Testament concerning.
The Christians walk, the Christians standing.
I mentioned this before at a conference some years ago. I was puzzled and reading the early chapters of the Book of Judges where we see a number of kings that were missing.
Their thumb and their great toe. Well, without the thumb you could not grasp anything. Without the great toe, you could not stand or walk. And so that.
Was very puzzling to me, but we have these exhortations and I was like like to look at just a verse and Colossians chapter one.
In connection with one of the early verses in Thessalonians that we've read that you might walk.
Worthy of the Lord unto all, pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and.
Not only do we have the word stand and walk, but another verb that's used that speaks and speaking and a verse just came to me a few moments ago and should characterize us as we.
00:50:14
Take up portions of His blessed word in First Corinthians chapter one and verse 10. Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
That you speak the same thing, and I might add in meekness.
Like to say that in the first part of chapter four of our portion here brethren docs specifically about two things importantly.
Sanctification.
Means setting apart from what this world practices, and especially in connection with this sin of fornication.
Sexual.
Sin committed outside of the bonds of marriage. How important it is it's being set aside completely in our world. How important it is that we respect it.
God has given us sexual desires, and God created it that way.
And there's a place for sexual activity within the bonds of marriage, very important. But to give place to anything outside of that is fornication. And that is what we are to do, to abstain from fornication. Verse four, that everyone of you should know how to possess.
His vessel, that's his own body.
In sanctification.
And honor, the Holy Spirit of God dwells in our bodies. How can I use my body in something that dishonors God? That is not what we are called to brethren. So that is a very important thing that is gone into also in First Corinthians chapter six and seven.
But I want to mention the other thing that is here encouraged.
In our chapter is verse 9 as touching brotherly love.
You need not that I write unto you, for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another.
There's two mentions of the word love that are two separate words in the grief. The first, brotherly love, is phileo.
It's that love of mutual appreciation and we are told to.
Just read it in Hebrews chapter 13.
Let brotherly love continue. That's what's so precious about these times of conference, when we can get together and discuss things together. We learn our position. We learn to appreciate one another. Brethren, that's important. But there is something else that is added here in our chapter.
Yourselves are taught of God to love one another that's the agape love that's the love that God had toward this world. God loved this world. He gave his only begotten son. That's the love that God has because of who he is not of because of anything that there is of worthiness in us to be loved and so there may come come times when.
With my brother, I have a problem with him. What am I going to do? That's where we need to bring in this agape love, to continue to love. Even though there might not be the mutual appreciation. There's a difference. How am I going to handle that? I'm going to continue to love, brethren, but it's not the same love. It's the love that we are told to love one another. I think that's so important.
00:55:05
Sanctification. But then it also talked about abstain from fornication. I know it was mentioned briefly, I think the word fornication, we don't use that word much anymore, do we? And there are young people don't even know what that word is. So you need to learn it. Parents, is not the responsibility of a school teachers to teach them things of such. It's not a Sunday school teachers responsibility. It's not the assembly.
Its responsibility to teach your children.
It needs to be taught over the word of God and in prayers fornication. And then there's the other side too, that I found perhaps in the practical side. I've noticed among the other things, that when we hear homosexuals, that's a fear. Lesbians, we don't even want to talk about it. I heard the other day they want to pull the kids out of school because the principal is one of those.
Well, at the meantime now, by the way, I'm not saying I support that that's that's a terrible sin before God. But yet in a sense we no longer talk about people who are living in sin. Perhaps the principle at that school prior to that was one who lived in sin, but yet as if it was OK, it's not as well if there's such a thing as a higher degree of sin, we seems to become tolerant.
Lot of the things that this world have accepted and you might say you're being legal. No, we're being what the word of God have to say or even a simple thing is divorce that are unscriptural and we marry afterwards that fornication or adultery. So we need to cling back to the word of God and to abhor those things that are evil. We talk about Enoch. Enoch was in a terror that the world was in a terrible condition.
But yet he preached. You know what's interesting too is we don't know if anyone was saved from Enoch's preaching. Not until his sons, his grandson Noah. And even then, we didn't read up anyone being saved. But we see the grace of God's hand that his family was preserved.
I made a note in my Bible in a reading meeting with Cellars and I'm going to share because I think it helps in this chapter, Chapter 4, verse one. The chapter 5, verse 11 is the personal lives and view of the Lords coming. Our personal lives and view of the Lords coming.
And from chapter 5, verse 12 to the end is the collective assembly light in view of his coming. And we need to keep in mind that our view should be of his comments while we're here. And as you mentioned, those things David reminds me of.
What Wally has said in Bob 2 verse five it mentions the word the lust of concupiscence.
If you don't know what it means, I wrote that down too. Selfish human desire for an object, person, or experience any or all of those things are things that will change your view of His coming, or get your eyes off the Lord so that you no longer recognize it.
It says in verse seven, For God hath not called us unto uncleanness. What brother David Speaking of, but unto holiness first Peter 1000 be holy, for I am holy. So he would have us to walk in these things. And then we have the love that's been mentioned in Chapter 9. And I believe it represent or shows a personal side of love. And it also shows a collective side of what's necessary in the assembly, how we should conduct ourselves with one another because you know, I believe that's the natural heart of a believer.
When we're in guilt with the spirit that we take on that love of God.
We take on the characteristics of Christ and then we walk in them, and then individually, if we do that, then simply collectively.
One follows the other.
It's helpful to see, well, he's addressing the motives if the motives aren't right, then really nothing else is going to be right. So that we've he's worked by the Lord Jesus that as you have received of us, how you ought to walk to please God.
Now this world is filled with people trying to please themselves, and so the spirit of the age is to please yourself and to you have rights and so on and just fight for your rights and please yourself.
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Fornication was the sin that characterized the Gentile world. God has intervened in the Western world and because of Christianity and the light of Christianity, we were exposed to the light of the righteousness of God and the moral standards of the Word of God in the Western Christian world. But now largely that has been given up during the last 50 years. And so the motives for the believer.
These things affect us and we live in a world that is pleasing itself. So the exhortation that Paul gives is that he says he already spoke to them to walk and to please God.
Their motive was to please the Lord, not to please Himself. And fornication is really to take pleasure without any reference to God at all. I might just say that He brings in another incident. Another possibility is that verse six, that no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter. So the Gentile world was characterized by fornication and even in the assembly it was a possibility of a brother defrauding another brother.
In connection with his wife and so he brings in the governmental actions of the Lord because that the Lord is the avenger in verse six of all such.
As we also have forewarned you and testified, so he brings in this teaching in connection with sanctification. Are we sanctified everything in this world, the advertising and all of the visual arts and all of everything is.
Designed to breakdown the sanctification, the separation of a believer.
From this world that crucified the Lord Jesus, that rejected him, and that has not changed its mind at all. It's still on the same course. So let's take these instructions and consider.
Is it really the Lord Jesus that we're trying to please? Are we doing this to please Him? If the motive isn't right, then we will not have an appreciation for the coming of the Lord, and we will not even take this exhortation to study, to be quiet. Verse 11.
To do our own business, to work with our own hands as we commanded you, to mind their own business and do our own work, and to do it as unto the Lord and not as unto men. That's what he's saying.
Mind their own business, do our own work, Produce fruit for the Lord because He's coming.
The obvious confusion it's been thrown into the mix is to redefine these words. Like right now the Anglican Church in England is going through a process of making a decision to call marriage between homosexuals holies.
They at present do not permit one of their Anglican priests to perform a wedding, but they're also working on that. How can we get there where we can call it a holy union?
Redefining things. So when you read these things like about holiness.
We need to understand what those words mean in the biblical sense and not let somebody redefine it so we can think about it. Why do you think there was such a strong push over the last years for homosexual marriage to be legalized? Because there were religious people in that movement that knew that if they could reach the point where marriage was introduced or the idea that they could be such a thing, redefine that word.
Then it would be more accepting to religious people. And it's it's worked. There are groups and churches now that are working on ways to call this a holy union, to redefine everything. Well, that's the day we live in. And as far as fornication goes, there's still plenty of people in the world that know what it means. But here's the interesting thing. I have talked with a number of young men over the years that will tell me they think it's not a sin, that it was OK as long as you weren't married.
It's nothing wrong with it that that's that's a good thing to do get get it out of your system and then you get married and you settle down and then you stay loyal to one woman. Well, that's a lie too. And I think that there's, it's had an effect on evangelical Christendom to let the guard down and like, it's not really a biggie. Well, it is a big.
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Like the connected thoughts that have with the subject of the body. Because it's the resurrection and the bodily return of the Lord Jesus Christ with His Saints. Bottle it.
As you have seen him go up into heaven, so He'll come in like manner. He's not going to have just the spiritual appearing in this world. He's coming back just as He went up. He is their man forever, a man in heaven, spirit, soul and body. And God intends to have you and I there with him, not just as spirits, but spirit, soul and body.
That a sister's funeral some years back and mentioned in the funeral that that body lying in the casket was just the empty shell, but her spirit and soul was with the Lord. But you know that empty shell is a precious empty shell.
Those folded hands in that casket had raised children, they had cared for the Saints, and we could go on and on. Our body is precious to the Lord.
And he intends to raise up those bodies and unite them again in a wonderful new state of being glorified with him. But he intends to have us there, spirit, soul, and body. And so the body is important. And in First Corinthians 6, he says in the end of verse 13.
The body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body and God.
Has both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by his own power. And so as part of the subject of this chapter. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, Even so them also which sleep and Jesus will God bring with him, just as God raised the Lord Jesus up.
Bodily resurrection.
So He's going to raise his sleeping Saints and those bodies, and what we do in them now is important to him. Their precious bodies. They're not to be misused. He intends to have us there, just like his beloved Son and heaven above with him, His house filled with children just like his Son, not just in spirit and soul, but in body too, and absolute holiness. And if I'm really expecting the Lord to come, and that's my hope.
I'm not going to involve myself in those things that defile the body because I'm looking forward to that. And if I'm going on in a way that's defiling the body in that way, I'm not looking for his coming. In fact, that's the last thing I want to see.
You know, you cannot divorce the theory. You cannot divorce the doctrine of Scripture from the practice in our life. It's intended to have a moral effect. If we're looking for his coming, then I ought to be walking here like I'm looking for his coming. How can I defile the body?
That's going to be just like His when He comes. These things are so intertwined together. It's just one more note so we don't mistake it. But in verse 16, the end of the verse and the dead in Christ shall rise first. That's resurrection from the dead. That's not being raised up to meet the Lord in the clouds. They're going to rise.
First from the dead. That's the first event is the point.
Not that they're going to rise first to meet the Lord in the air, and then later we will. Even if it's separated by milliseconds. No, the thought is the dead shall rise first. The 1St order of events is that they're going to be raised from the dead together. You know, it's a beautiful word together, isn't it?
Together, you know, as loved ones go and our brethren go, that word becomes more precious to us together.
Oh, he'll not separate us.
One group from another. When we are brought into the presence of the Lord in the clouds, it's going to be together. And wasn't that what was burdening their hearts? These deer loved Saints were gone. Oh, you're going to be together.
You know, Mr. Darby and his lectures in Toronto, he had several lectures on the second coming of the Lord Jesus. They're very easy reading and they're very edifying. But he said, you know, there's not going to be an advantage for one over the other.
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The dead will not have an advantage, the living will not have an advantage, will all rise together. He likened it. He said, made the statement, you know that the Lord Jesus stood on the earth a glorified man, the head of the church, and he rose bodily and was received to that shekinah glory cloud received by the Lord God, sat on the right hand of the throne of God. And the church is going to have to go up the same way. The body of Christ is going to have to go up the same way as the head went up.
Everyone that is a member of the body of Christ and those Old Testament Saints too, but every one of us he's addressing really the church here and might, might make that distinction in connection with First Corinthians chapter, First Thessalonians, chapter 4. He's speaking specifically of those that are in Christ.
So those that are part of the body of Christ are going to be raised, and those that are alive are going to be glorified.
Will stand on the earth and will rise the same way that the Lord rose and go through.
Satan's realm, you might say, through the heavens, through the 1St heavens, 2nd heaven will go up through Satan's domain and will be paraded in victory before those fallen angels in that whole heavenly host, and in victory will enter into the courts of glory. And so the head is He's the first fruit of resurrection.
The second installment of the Resurrection is going to be at the Rapture, which we've read of here.
The third installment is in Revelation chapter 20. So the rapture, the resurrection, you might say, takes place in three stages, so in chapter 20 of Revelation.
Let's read verse just the last part of verse 4.
Them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads or in their hands, and they lived and reigned with Christ 1000 years.
Then put a bracket just beside verse 5. There's a parenthesis here at the beginning of verse 5A Bracket. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished.
Brackets then he continues the subject. He says this is the first resurrection. Let me read it again. The last part of verse four. They lived and reigned with Christ 1000 years. The end of verse 5. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath heart in the first resurrection. And so that's the last installment in this resurrection that we've just read up in Revelation will take place just before the appearing of the Lord Jesus.
And that resurrection will take place, and then the Lord will come, and he'll come with all of his Saints.
In verse one of chapter 4, it says as he had received about how you ought to walk God so you would abound more and more. And so they were to walk as they had received it and that raises the question of how did they receive it and that's given in the 13th verse of the previous chapter or sorry, the 13th verse of the second chapter for this cause also. Thank you God without ceasing because when you receive the word of God.
Which he heard of us, He received it not as the word of man, but as it is in truth the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe. So they had received how they were to walk as coming not from men, but as from God as its source in God. That was really what he's encouraging them to do in this chapter. And so it was by revelation, not by human thought, but by divine revelation that they had received this.
And apart from Revelation, you and I would not know how to please God. And so that's what He brings in in the second verse. For ye know they knew this by Revelation, the commandment which we gave you by the Lord Jesus. And he goes on to speak about what was known by Revelation, about fornication as far as what is and is not pleasing to God. Now that's kind of a preface to a question I have on the 4th verse. I realize our time.
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Is almost gone, but I was hoping someone would touch on this. He says that everyone of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor. The knowledge of how we possess our vessel and sanctification and honor, Does that come by revelation or does that come by experience? And whatever the answer is, I wonder if a brother or two might spend just the next couple of minutes explaining to us.
How we know?
How we can possess our vessel in sanctification and honor.
Well, one verse still into that somebody read close to it First Corinthians chapter 6, verse 18 Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body, but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.
That's a unique thing. It means that your body is harmed, your brain is harmed, your emotions are harmed, and your spiritual life is harmed. It's a unique thing and it's treated as nothing in this world. So Christians have been affected by that to treat it a lot less than we used to think about it or that the Scripture says about it. So this thought our brother is bringing forward that we need to understand.
Exactly specifically, how to possess?
And gone into a path of sanctification is an important thing, but starting with it, it's a unique sin.
That is destructive.
There are psychiatrists who say that there are many men in this country who have lived lives filled with fornication before they got married that cannot have a normal life with a woman without serious treatment. That's how bad it is. I think it's important too, to mention the the careful when you get on the Internet as deformed ***********.
When you see things that you're not supposed to see.
And to me that poses.
A very real important question for our sisters. You know when Adam and Eve sinned, God gave them clothes to cover themselves. The tendency of this world is to go around as uncovered as possible. So men go get buttoned up right up to the very neck with the tire around there to tire. But women?
Tend to, in this world's way of thinking, to show as much of their body as they can.
That's a quest that's a serious thing for our sisters to deal with, too.
Please sisters, cover yourselves for the glory of God. And brothers, be careful what you look at on the Internet or wherever it might be because that's the way you tend to start degrading this world. Because Satan knows the lusts that are in our hearts and he tries to.
Waken them so that we can be turned out of the.
Way of the Lord. So the Lord help us, dear young brothers, to keep our vessels, our bodies for him. And when I see the way God used men that knew how to do that, oh, I want to encourage you young men. It's so good to see so many young men with a desire to be under the sound of the word of God. Keep your bodies sanctified.
And don't give in to this world's ways of doing it because it's so important.
With your question.
I tend to think that the second part is.
The result of the reflex of the first, so the 1St as you mentioned, was by the commandments that they had been given that knowledge that had been imparted to them.
They were to abstain. The result of abstaining would be that they would possess their vessels and sanctification and honor. One is the reflex of the other, and so one is that the negative abstain results in the positive possessive sanctification and honor.
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We can turn to Romans chapter 6 just to give a little foundational truth.
In regards to how we possess our vessels to sanctification.
We have very similar instruction in Romans chapter 6 and verse 13.
It says. It says. Neither yield you, your members, as instruments of unrighteousness.
Unto sin, but yield ye yield yourselves unto God.
As those that are alive from the dead.
And your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.
It's helpful for us to understand the foundational truths of the gospel that we're dead as to what we were in Adam and we're alive in Christ and.
We can't, certainly can't go into these truths in the in this meeting, but without these foundation, this foundational understanding of having died in Adam and living in newness of life.
We're we're going to, we're going to struggle.
With the practical side of Christianity, the fundamental truths are are what what really Christianity rests upon. And so I just present that with no time left, but it's important.
It's restricted to six again, 18 and 20.
What no ye that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own. You're bought with the price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God.
So I think briefly it answered to your question, which is excellent.
If we're doing anything that is outside of war, by God.
That is not properly possessing. We don't belong to ourselves, we belong to the Lord, and everything that's done should be done to glorify God.
And I would just briefly just quote this from first young people love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.
Read it to you because I'm 40 Rd. We're 16. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flush, lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the father. Whatever works. So using these tests to ask yourself is what I'm looking at.
Thinking about talking about doing.
Lord by God is it. It's a part of this loving the world there, isn't it?
And if the answer is it's a lot of the eyes play, subscribe, play, it's not properly possessing. I think your question, Mike is excellent.
For 36 in the appendix.
One of Satan's greatest tricks is to tell you you're missing out. God's withholding something from you. Adam and Eve were in the garden and everything was perfect in every direction. Imagine just looking out. Everything's perfect and there's one tree and Satan says that's the very best, and God's holding it from you.
And it says four times the just shall live by faith. And part of overcoming is understanding that God has the very best for each one of you.
And he tells you what it is in his word, and it's not ever less than the very, very best. And faith believes God and says, OK, that's what I want. And The thing is, the trap is laid in vain for the people who see it. When you see the trap, if I'm going to try and trap you and I, I put out this circle and I and I put this treat in there that you'd want. But you see me do that. You're like Matt, that's goofy. I'm not going to take it. Well, the enemy of our souls is laying a trap every day for us.
And if we see that trap, we say, I don't want that because I know that's not God's best. You're not going to fool me because I know he loves me. So the Lord help us that we have that earnest desire to please the Lord as our brother mentioned that and that we would walk as as our brother Phil said, in the newness of life. We're not here to try harder to try and make The Who we were in Adam do better. He's given us the power of a brand new life in Christ.
Towers & Wells
Address—Bernie Roossinck
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.
So the.
This clock says relate and that one says we're on time.
So we're going with that one because they can see it.
My name is Bernie from West Michigan. Certainly happy to be with you all. This is noted as an address to young people. And as I look across your faces, I am really thankful to see so many young people here. And I'll tell you, it really wasn't very long ago that I was just a kid and somebody else.
Have more ability and.
Scriptural understanding was standing up here. I hope that what we have before us this afternoon would be profitable for the young people and for the older ones as well. I would like to start by singing #151.
Lord Jesus, when we think of thee, of all thy loved and grace.
Our spirits long and fain would see thy beauty face to face #151.
Hey, Cortana.
Cortana, you're welcome.
Well, as I said before.
Wasn't very long ago I was one of you guys.
00:05:00
And I always look forward to the young people's addresses. And, you know, the Scripture has a lot to say to young people and.
And I know the challenges that are facing young people today are immense, and the attacks of the enemy against you and your Christian walk are tremendously strong.
I have a subject before me that I hope will be a benefit and help to you.
And it's something I've been thinking about off and on for a number of years.
And that is building towers and digging wells.
And I'd like to take this up in the life of Uzziah.
In Second Chronicles 26, verse 10.
We'll start with that Isaiah was a king of Judah, and he began to be king of Judah when he was 16 years old.
And he reigned over the Kingdom of Judah for 52 years, I believe it was.
Maybe we'll read a little bit more than just one verse to set things up here. Second Chronicles 26.
Verse one. Then all the people of Judah took Uzziah who was 16 years old.
And made him king in the room of his father Amaziah. And he built Eloth and restored it to Judah. After that the king slept with his fathers. 16 years old was Uzziah when he began to reign, and he reigned 50 and two years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Jekyllaya of Jerusalem. And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord.
According to all that his father Amaziah had done, did.
And he sought God all the days of Zechariah, who had understanding and visions of God, and as long as he sought the Lord, the Lord made him to prosper.
Forsake of time, Let's read now end of verse 8. For He strengthened himself exceedingly.
Moreover, Uzziah built towers in Jerusalem, at the corner gate, at the valley gate and the turning of the wall.
And fortified them. Also he built towers in the desert and dig many wells.
For he had much cattle both in low country and in the plains, husbandmen also in vine dressers in the mountains and in Carmel. For he loved husbandry.
Let's go down to the end of verse 15. He was marvelously helped.
Till he was strong.
We have time, we'll come back to the end of his life, but for now I would like to spend some time.
With you, dear young people, and these two activities that he did, building towers and digging wells.
Not sure exactly which order to take them up, so we'll take them up in the order that they're given here in the scripture. So let's talk about towers for a minute.
A tower is.
Symbols, pictures to us strength in many ways.
Both in the scripture and even in today's world. I'm sure those of you that are a little bit older remember when the Twin towers fell and.
New York, right, 911 and what a.
A sad day that was.
I still find it amazing that that happened. The Lord allowed that to happen and.
An attack was made on the symbol of power and economic force in the world that day, and the Lord allowed that to happen. Towers speak to us of strength, protection. I would also suggest to you that they speak of what's fullness.
Just by way of example for you kids.
I remember I, I enjoy some of the Old Testament stories that I remember when Jihu was writing this chariot and the watchman in the tower, I think it was in the city of Samaria, was looking out over, you know, and he's hey, hey, there's somebody coming.
And the question is, well, who is it? Because he drives like Jihu? My dad used to say that to us like don't drive like Jihu. That's apparently he was noted for a certain type of driving that was somewhat wild. But anyway.
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That kind of watchfulness is happening out of these towers, right? And so I'd like to have a few applications for our Christian life about watchfulness and protection and strength 1St. And I would suggest to you young people that Amaziah here was helped by the Lord.
And he delivered his the people of Judah from their enemies. So we didn't read this specifically. I should have how that he warred against the Philistines and the Arabians and the Ammonites and so on. And the Lord gave him help. And one of the other things I like about Uzziah was he liked farming. And so do what?
Says he like husband for any head cattle and he had vineyards and so on and.
You know the enemy would like to take things like that from us in a spiritual sense as well. When there are resources that you have in your Christian life that are helping you and you enjoy the Lord and helping you in your Christian walk, the enemy sees that and he wants to take it back or destroy it if he can.
And so here Amaziah built these watchtowers. I can picture different, maybe little fortresses. Fortresses.
So on and and you know, I'll just use an example. Maybe Steve, you could be up in the tower and be looking out over hey, here comes Robert. This is not going to be good. Get ready. I'm sorry, Robert, I'm sure you wouldn't destroy anybody's vineyards, but I pictured these towers like that and Amaziah built these so that he could protect.
What God had given you know the Lord promised his people a land flowing with milk and honey.
The enemy of your soul wants the opposite for your Christian life. Problems, destruction, erosion and just take it away.
Before I get into the practical points I have about towers though.
We need to talk about the Lord Jesus because He is the ultimate tower started as Psalm 144 together.
Psalm 144.
And we're going to read verse one and two.
Blessed be the Lord, my strength, which teacheth my hands to war.
And my fingers to fight my goodness, my fortress, my high tower, my deliverer, my shield, and he whom I trust, who subdue with my people, under me, while dear young people, the Lord Jesus is that high tower.
That gives us that strength and protection. And I want to tell you in today's world.
More and more necessary than ever before to have a day by day close relationship with the Lord. We need this Hightower, this fortress, the strength that we can go to. You know we. The question was brought out in the last meeting about the environment that you young people are living in today and how it is so against God and against.
His counsel and his principles.
And in many ways, I know that we're heavenly people and we're not involved in the Daily Politics of things or we shouldn't be. I remember my dad used to teach us when I was a kid, The potsherds of the earth thrive with the potsherds of the earth is what he would tell us. And you know, young people.
It's frustrating, it's sad, it's scary to see what's happening in the world today.
The Lord Jesus is the high tower, the strength, the fortress, the deliverer, the shield. We need all those things. Now let's turn over to Proverbs 8.
Or 18 I mean.
I love this verse. Had the center kitchen wall for a good many years.
Proverbs 18 verse 10. The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous runneth into it and is safe. Oh how much we need that today. The name of the Lord is a strong tower. Young people, don't be ashamed of the name of the Lord.
00:15:03
Be willing to be counted as a believer, as a lover of Christ, to say to your friends and your coworkers and other students or whoever. I belong to Jesus. The name of the Lord is a strong tower, and I'm not suggesting you use the name of Jesus like some kind of a.
Magnetic force or a shield or a lucky charm of any kind like that. What I'm saying to you is.
Confessing the Lord Jesus to your friends, to your coworkers, it's a it's a very, very important thing. And that strong tower, so important in their Christian lives.
Now let's turn to Psalm 61 for one more thing about the Strong Tower.
I love this passage as well.
Psalm 61.
I know that many in this room have had to deal with problems.
I was chatting with Matt at lunchtime.
Things happened. The Lord allows things that are tough.
I, I, I can't even begin to enumerate as we look up and down these rows, things that God is doing in the lives of each one of us. I enjoy this so much. So I'm 61 verse two from the end of the earth will I cry unto thee when my heart is overwhelmed.
Lead me to the rock that is higher than I, for Thou hast been a shelter for me.
And a strong tower from the enemy. I will abide in thy Tabernacle forever. I will trust in the covert of thy wings. But dear young people, that's the place of protection and safety and comfort. Is your heart overwhelmed this afternoon? I think maybe there are folks in this room that feel that way right now.
When my heart is overwhelmed.
Lead me through the rock that is higher than I.
For thou hast been a shelter for me, and a strong tower from the enemy.
O brethren, that's where we need to be. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I is the Lord Jesus.
OK.
Now I'd like to take up with the Lord Jesus being the ultimate strong and high tower. A few things practically for you young people regarding towers in your lives. First Peter chapter 5 we'll start with.
Probably quote most of these, but.
Believe it or not, you get nervous when you're standing up here, so we're going to open the Word of God and read it together first. Peter 5, verse 8.
And I want to apply these young people.
Around being watchful.
Be sober, be vigilant for your adversary. The devil is a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.
Like I'll I'll tell you the story about this verse. Some of you have been to Newfoundland at the Gospel Tent.
When I was a kid, when we would go from town to town, we would go from door to door and hand out invitations to the gospel tent and my brother Benz came running up this road.
And behind him was a big German shepherd dog.
And the owner of the dog called the dog off. Everything turned out fine. But afterwards Ben's quoted this verse to us. He goes, boy, that was like the the devil, like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. And he almost got a big chunk of them too, Buddy.
But he did. But those of you that know Benji would smile at that. Young people, the enemy of your soul is walking about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. And we're told to be sober and to be vigilant. And I would suggest to you that this is one of those towers that you should build in your Christian life of being vigilant and being sober, because we know that the enemy will do everything in his.
Power to take you out or if you can't detract, maybe you're a saved young person, you're a child of God. He knows you can't take your salvation, but he would like to take your testimony and any usefulness for the Lord that you might have. And so he's attacking constantly. So the first one I just want to encourage us, all of us, brethren, is we need to be vigilant and sober.
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That is a tower that you should build and that I should build. Be vigilant. Be sober.
All right now Habakkuk chapter 2.
And I've often said this, but the reason that we keep the books of the Bible in the Sunday school book is so you can run through the song in your mind to find a book like this. Habakkuk, chapter 2.
At least I need to use a book that I saw like that.
And verse one.
I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch and see what he will say unto me.
And what I shall answer when I am reproved.
By young people, what I would like to suggest to you in this verse is.
Standing.
Watching.
Sat upon the tower and watch.
It is important.
To listen to what the word of God is saying.
I will watch and see what He will say unto me. I want to suggest this to you. I hope this is not out of its proper context. It's important in your life to cultivate a habit of sitting quietly and listening to the Word of God, or reading it for yourself and listening to the Spirit of God. Bring things out for your spiritual growth.
And for situations that you have on a day-to-day basis. And so this is the tower that's important to establish in your lives to stand.
To and be watchful to sit there and listen to what the Lord wants to say to you.
Now, I think sometimes when some of these minor prophets were bringing these things out, they didn't have good news to say to the people of Judah or Israel because they were living in big problems. But I would like to apply this to you right now and to me, the Lord wants you to just sit and listen and be in the word of God. That's a, it's a tower that's so very important for your lives, for all of our lives.
One Corinthians, chapter 16.
And I'm thinking of verse 13.
What she stand fast in the faith?
Quits she like men. Be strong now. The word quits you like men is Old English. It doesn't mean to just quit. It means stand up and act like men.
Or women.
Don't just float along through life and carried away with every wind of doctrine and this and that and the other thing and no, it says the swatchy stand fast.
Act like men and women. Maturity. Be strong. This tower, brethren, is so important in our lives.
Stand fast, you know the current of the culture today would just sweep you away.
Stand fast and watch and be strong. It's, you know, it's, it's tiring, it really is tiring to be faced full on every day with just constant pressure to compromise the counterfeiting, the messaging that's sent our way.
From the culture is so I don't know about you brethren, but I I come to a conference like this and it's so refreshing.
To be together with the Lord's people and to have encouragement and to visit with friends. To be over the word of God.
It is such a Oasis, if you will, to come apart and to stand fast. Don't quit.
You know, it takes real purpose of heart. I think of Daniel, right? He's he and his friends are carried away captive out of Judah here. They are slaves to a Pagan power. And Daniel may well have said.
00:25:18
Nothing I can do about it. If you can't beat them, join them. And yes, hand me the bacon, hand me the pork chops, hand me the wine. And knowing that that was against what the word of God taught and the culture would say, what does it matter now? Just do it and be willing to stand fast and says Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself.
And that really means that he decided he he considered what was before him and he decided I'm not doing it.
And the Lord provided a pathway, a escape, if you will, for him to honor those exercises. You know, it speaks of him being brought into favor with the Prince of the eunuchs. That guy didn't have to give Daniel a chance, but the Lord worked in his heart and he made it happen. So this is the tower. I just suggest you young people don't.
Fold don't conform.
Purpose in your heart to stand fast and stay strong. The Lord will honor that, and He'll give you the.
What you need to do it?
Two Timothy, chapter 4.
You know, we really could spend a whole conference on Second Timothy. We're not going to do that. Timothy was a young person.
Maybe much the same as some of you. I believe he was not outspoken or outgoing, maybe a bit reserved and the apostle Paul had to say in a in a various places remind him.
Stir up the gift. Don't neglect the gift that's in you. And then he had to tell the some of the.
Assemblies. When he talks, you listen to him.
So Timothy was a bit timid.
Let's read verse 4 here. Verse five. Watch thou in all things since the Second Timothy 4-5. Watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of the evangelist. Make full proof of thy ministry.
You know, Paul was at the end of his life when he wrote this, he says later on in the chapter. I'm now ready to be offered.
I find this chapter very touching because you know, at the at the end of Pauls life, he's he's saying to Timothy, now you step into the harness.
You young people, we need you.
Here the apostle Paul was saying to Timothy, I'm almost my journey is almost done. I'm ready to be offered and I find it so beautiful that he said to Timothy, do your diligence to come quickly. I want to see you and and bring my coat, bring my the parchments and bring the books.
I find that beautiful. And then he says come before winter too. You know, it's winter, brethren, spiritually out there. It is. And here the Apostle Paul knew that.
That he was passing off of this scene and the young Timothy was going to be used of the Lord for great blessing. I want to encourage you young people, build this tower to be willing to pour yourself into the service of the Lord.
And to be willing to endure affliction, it's not easy, you know, the the easy path would be just to float along and do whatever is good for you and forget about everybody else. But the Lord wants your life. He wants your heart, He wants your service. And again, the common word here is watch in all things.
All right, Hebrews chapter 13. This one is really actually for you that are older.
Hebrews chapter 13. I want to say this to you young people. There are older ones in this room that love you, that have influenced your lives, that have taught you, that have instructed you, that have coached you, that have prayed for you, that have loved you, that you may not even know.
00:30:12
And.
I want to say to you older ones.
You have, we have a responsibility to guide and to shepherd.
And to watch for the souls of the young people to bring them through hard times.
Very recently I spent some time with a young man that was really struggling immensely and he he told me I feel like I'm all by myself and I'm lost in the woods.
I didn't even realize it.
Maybe some of you were there and there are older brethren that love you that are watching for your souls. I want to say this to you young people. It says here, obey them to have the rule over you and submit yourselves for they watch for your souls as they that must give account that they may do it with joy and not with grief.
Dear young people.
We want to be able to bring you along in the Christian pathway with the Lord's help, so that in a coming day when the Lord says.
Give an account of your time. Give an account of the.
Ability, the talent that I gave you to be able to say with joy that you poured your your concern, your love, your care into you, dear young people, your older brother. And I'll give you a farming example. Some of you have heard me mention this. And if you want to see a picture of it after I got it on my phone, but come and see me. It's called ear pinching.
What happens is the size of an ear corn is made.
When the corn is five leaf or about knee high and if stress is put on that plant at that very young time, the girth of the year scrambles. It always is in double S. So maybe it was going to be 22 rows around and then it will go down and by twos. So I have examples of ears that started out that 22 rows around and they went down to 12. What happened?
And the very young development.
Some stress, some unnecessary problem happened.
And that is never gained back. You can't get it back. So you older brethren, I'm talking to myself here. Beware. What are we doing that could be pinching off irreversibly?
The development for the good of the Lord and his people and the young people, now young people.
Some older brother or sister takes you aside and gives you some advice, some coaching, maybe even challenges here, the lifestyle you're living. Don't be mad. They love you and they want you to be able to guide you and bring you along so that they can give account to the Lord in a coming day. Yes, this is what happened. So this tower that I'm talking about, I got to keep moving.
Young people is this.
Cultivate a relationship with your older brethren.
You know things are different today than they were in the 50s or 40s or 30s, whatever. 80s or 90s even. Remember how old I am?
The fact is, things change. The word of God does not change, and we want to.
Help you grow and thrive in your Christian life. And so that's the Tower. And you older brethren, me included.
Easy for us to stand in our little circles and talk about the way it used to be. Get out into the corners and crevices and there are young people that want and need to know you and the story. I think of the verse there in Deuteronomy chapter 8. My dad gave me this first when I turned 40. Thou shalt remember all the way. The Lord thy God hath let thee.
These 40 years in the wilderness.
Put your own age in there.
To prove thee I can't quote it all to do thee good if I later ran this how it finishes. Oh, we need that. That's a tower. We need to have build that.
Matthew 26.
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Matthew chapter 26. Let's begin with verse 40.
It's to set the scene here, it's the night before the Lord went to the cross. They're in the Garden of Gethsemane and the Lord says he began to be sorrowful and very heavy, and he takes Peter, James and John with him. They go further into the garden and he says to them.
See here, while I go Yonder and pray, and the Lord is out there in the garden, and in agony of soul comes back, and they're sleeping.
This is the power verse 40. What could you not watch with me one hour?
Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation. The Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. Well, dear young people.
Cultivate.
A prayer life.
Be constant in prayer to the Lord, and I don't say that you need to.
Be on your hands and knees all day long. You can pray while you're driving, you can pray while you're doing just about anything, and you don't even need to use words sometimes.
Just a soul that is communing with the Lord constantly.
Lord, what shall I do? Lord help me. Lord, I don't know how to handle this situation.
Lord, I'm lonely, I'm tired, I I'm in a jam. Whatever it is, the Lord values that. And here in the Lorde, agony of soul, these three disciples are like pretty sleepy. And the Lord goes, couldn't you give me one hour?
Boy, that strikes my soul. Brethren, sit there on Lord's Day morning and remembering the Lord in his death, and you know, I have to chastise myself. My mind is here and it's there and it's all over the place. And I have a feeling that's probably true for most of us.
Oh, the Lord wants our devotedness and our couldn't you watch with me one hour? What a privilege to do that. And so I just want you young people to consider that.
Put the Lord first. It gets there in Matthew 6 where it's seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.
That all these things will be added on to you. And that's not speaking about once either, that's talking about needs. So Lord, I want a new boat and a fast car. Nope, that's not what it's talking about.
Put the Lord first. We don't have time to develop that anymore.
Proverbs, chapter 4.
Proverbs, chapter 4.
Verse 23.
This is another tower that you need to have in your lives, young people.
Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. Another translation says keep your heart more than anything that is guarded.
For out of it are the issues of life. Guard your hearts, young people.
And it takes constant diligence and watching to do this, but it's so important. The heart is the seed of the affections. You know the enemy wants nothing more than to capture your heart.
And take it from the Lord.
Keep your heart. Guard your heart with all diligence.
You know, and that's just in.
A couple of things in everything you know, I, I, I look across your faces to your young people and I, I, I know that you're thinking about things like careers, you're thinking about relationships, you're thinking about.
A spouse? Perhaps you're thinking about studying. Whatever it is, keep your heart with all diligence.
So.
Essential to have this tower to be on guard constantly because you know that. Going back to the picturing you know, Steve's vineyard and Robert sneaking up to steal some.
I shouldn't use your brethren as an example, I'll use myself.
Bruce, you mentioned Al Coleman earlier. Al is a lovely brother. I love him a lot. You never see a man more in love with the.
00:40:05
Preaching of the gospel hardly than him.
You just listen to Brother El Priest, and you just watch the love dripping off of his hands.
Anyway, his wife Lena had a green thumb and she was good at gardening and she had a big strawberry garden. So myself and a few other young people one day took some liberty to sneak through that garden and pick strawberries, which is stealing. Don't do that. So I'm putting myself in your shoes, Robert.
Anyway, she had a defense mechanism in the garden and I didn't know about it.
1000 my hands and knees lifting up the plants looking for red strawberries, and I came face to face with a giant rubber rattlesnake.
And a realistic one, too. I was about here, about this. Far from this thing. That was the end of stealing Mrs. Coleman strawberries that were out anyway. Keep your heart with all diligence.
Now let's switch over to Wells.
Amazing how quickly time goes.
Wells in the Scripture really speak of refreshment. They speak of it to me, and the application I want to make right now is making the Word of God your own. There's probably other applications to Wells, but let's first turn to Genesis 26.
This is a passage that I have enjoyed my whole life.
And I first learned this from my dad, who I praise God for.
The scene here is.
Isaac.
Had been warned by God, don't go down into Egypt like your father did. And so he got as close to Egypt as he could get.
And he got in trouble down there. There was a lapse in his life, and he got in trouble with the bimbolect. So let's take this up in verse 17. Isaac departed thence and pitched his tent in the valley of gear and dwelt there. And Isaac digged again the wells of water which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father.
For the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham.
Well, young people.
There are a lot. I know that not all of you were raised in Christian homes. Many of you were. If you weren't, I would tell you this.
There are many, many, many people in this room that care for your spiritual refreshment and that have dugout wells out of the Word of God and made it their own in their lifetime and they want to share that with you.
And here are the Philistines had taken the wells that Abraham dug, and they filled them up with dirt, and they wanted to take away that refreshment. And so it's a beautiful thing that we find Isaac digging in the place where he knew there was water, and he knew it because his father had found water there, too. And I just want to say this to you young people about this.
It's important to dig your own wells.
You need to do that. We're going to get into that in a second, But it's also a beautiful thing to carry on in the teaching that you've been given and the and the heritage that you've been given. You know, it's a it's a beautiful thing, a marvelous thing to be able to come Sunday morning and be gathered around their precious savior and.
To remember him and his death, that's a wonderful heritage. Don't give it up.
And the enemy would like to fill up that kind of a well with dirt and say, ah, forget about that. Why don't you go someplace where they have good music? You can just roll in, sit in your seat, do nothing. Somebody will give you a motivational speech and you'll go home for lunch and piece of cake. Oh, brethren, that is walking away from the wells that our fathers have dug.
I'm not trying to pick scabs here or anything, I know that there are.
Weaknesses in her assemblies. I know that there are ones and twos. I know that there's loneliness. But young people dig these wells that your father's and mothers have dug. Dig them out for yourself. There's water there.
00:45:06
And then we find growth in Isaac, and he goes and digs his own wells too. We don't have time to develop this. I'd like to hear this ministry from somebody else, though. Verse 19, Isaac's servants digged in the valley and found there a well of springing wire. Verse 20, they digged another well. Verse 22, they digged another well.
Verse 25. There Isaac's servants digged it. Well, young people, be in the word of God.
Read the ministry that we have available to us and dig out for yourself what God's principles and councils are. It's so important and valuable to have this well.
Jeremiah, chapter 2.
That's one more thing before we turn there, I just want to say this to you young people.
Remove not the ancient landmark.
Is a principle in the Word of God.
It's a dangerous thing to just try to change things, to modernize God's word is.
Pure, right, True. That's what we need. Don't throw off the ancient landmarks or remove the what your father's and your grandparents have said. Don't do it. Value the truth. All right, Jeremiah, Chapter 2.
Verse 13.
For my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters.
And hewed out them out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. While young people, I want you to do the opposite of this verse.
Don't forsake the fountain of living waters. The Lord Jesus loves you. His purposes are for your good and blessing. And the enemy would tell you that's not true. Just like we had this morning with with Adam and Eve in the garden, right and the enemy's messages, God is shipping you. You're getting ripped off.
He's lying to you. He's not young people. And to forsake the fountain of living waters.
And to try to find satisfaction, peace, fulfillment.
In this world, it's not going to happen.
Here they had shows. The other thing they did was they hewed out broken sister in second hold no water a sister and it's like a a tank, if you will. You know, in today's world we just go get a Poly tank of some kind and fill it up with water.
In my work we have lots of tanks.
Everywhere from 50 gallons to couple million. A cistern is a tank. And here they are trying to to.
Get satisfaction out of a broken take. Maybe we drill a hole in this water bottle.
Can't get anything to stick? Nope.
Yeah, I think of the Gospel hymn. I tried the broken cisterns, Lord, but the waters failed.
Ain't as I stooped to drink, they flat and mock me as I wailed. Now none but Christ can satisfy believe that young people. None.
But Christ can satisfy.
You don't have to be very old in this world to know about people that have met tragic ends by trying to satisfy their longing souls with the things that this world has to offer. I'm not going to get into specifics, but a family we're close with in the last couple of weeks.
Had one of their sons.
Dead from an overdose?
Crack pipe between his fingers. Did it satisfy that for a moment? Young people?
Don't forsake the fountain of living water since the Lord Himself.
Exodus chapter 12.
15 Sorry, Exodus 15. This was right after the Children of Israel came out of Egypt and went through the Red Sea.
00:50:13
Uh, there was a lot of singing and rejoicing and then there was a bit of trial and the Lord in a very miraculous way at Mara healed the waters and by casting in a tree, Speaking of the cross of Calvary and the waters were healed. And then then there's Ernie. They come to verse 27. They came to Elam where were 12 wells of water and three score palm trees and they encamped there by the waters.
Well, brother and I would suggest this about that passage.
It's 12 months in a year.
One of the Psalms speaks of a full life being 70 years.
The Lord has in mind.
Your refreshment and your blessing your whole life. And He wants to provide that for you.
Be at this Oasis of Elam. 12 wells of water, Bobby, 12 months a year. The Lord don't take a month off. Leave us on her own, does he? 70 palm trees.
Yeah, I can't quickly find that verse in the Psalms, but it's it speaks of man's life being 70 years. Brethren, the Lord is in all the way home. Savior, don't forget that.
Every day, every day, brethren, especially you young people, be in the Word and walking with the blessed Lord, and you will find that Elam every day.
We're pretty well out of time here. I'm going to skip a couple of these.
One more in First Chronicles 11.
The scene here is.
David's mighty men are being enumerated and.
We'll read verse 17, First Chronicles 1117, And David longed and said, oh, that one would give me a drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem, which is at the gate.
And three breakthrough the host of the Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem, which was by the gate, and took it and brought it to David, But David would not drink of it, but poured it out to the Lord.
And said my God forbid at me that I should do this thing.
So I drink the blood of these men that have put their lives in jeopardy and so on. Well, what I would like to say to you young people about this is.
These three mighty men.
Were so devoted to David.
That they were willing to answer his request. I don't think David commanded them a Jared, get me some water and make it quick. He didn't say that. I think he was on a hot day saying, oh, man, would it be nice to drink a glass of water out of the well of Bethlehem. And those three men, you hear that? Yeah, let's go do it. And they did it. They broke through the Garrison of the Philistines and they.
That water and they brought it back to David. David, we brought you this water from the well of Bethlehem.
What devotion to their master. Now, young people, you're willing to do that for the Lord Jesus? The Lord Jesus requests, desires mean enough to you that you want to do it. I hope they do. And here David took that water and he looked at it. So I can't drink that. And he offered it to the Lord. I believe it's like a drink offering. He's this Lord is yours and he just poured it out.
But that is a beautiful, beautiful picture of devotion to Christ.
Oh, be at this well, be willing to go draw from this well. The Lord Jesus so values your affections and.
You know, it says there in Corinthians, the love of Christ constraineth us. We have to do it, young people. It's worth it.
It's worth doing.
OK, I'm going to give you one more verse that I read this morning.
And then we're going to close with him. Isaiah 21.
00:55:06
I'll read verses 11 and 12.
The burden of Duma.
He calleth me at Abserer Watchmen.
One of the night, Watchmen. One of the night.
And the watchman said the morning cometh.
And also the night.
Stop right there.
Dear young people.
We, I believe, are living at about one minute to midnight.
It feels to me like we are extremely close to the Lord's coming. How many of you have ever been out on a pitch black night?
And seeing the Morning Star.
I remember a few years ago I was going to go fishing with a friend of mine and we were going to go down the.
Pier Marquette River in Michigan, which is a pretty good steelhead river for fly fishermen. And he said we got to be the first people down these runs and to do it. We're leaving at 3:00 AM.
So we did, where I was in this drift boat, in the front of it, holding a little flashlight.
And it was black dark as the pure Marquette River is only about for me to Mr. Stone wide there pretty narrow trees hanging down anyway.
Get to a break in the trees and lo and behold, there's the morning Star, just as bright as could be.
Boy, that was I just moved my soul. Young people, the morning is almost here and here this question says to the Watchmen, what of the night?
And he says it's almost morning.
We're almost there now. It also says the night cometh to young people. The Lord comes back today and you're yet in your sins. It's night for you forever. Think about that for the rest of us, that no one loved the Lord Jesus. Watchmen, what of the night? It's almost morning. I love that. Praise the Lord that it's almost morning. I think the clothes.
Sustained a verse or two from.
The night is far spent and the day is at hand. I think that's 168 maybe.
We'll sing the 1St and the last verse of this hymn.
#168.
Oh yeah.
I have.
1 Thessalonians 4:14-5:7
Gospel 1
Gospel—Stephen 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.
We begin this evening by singing #14 #14 on the hymn sheet in front of you.
Are you lost in the blood?
Are you hot in my life?
I'm trying to get to watch blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Turn with me to Romans chapter 4.
We'll read a few verses there. Romans chapter 4 and verse 6.
Once four and verse 6, even as David also describeth the blessedness.
Of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works.
But I want a subject that's been on my heart for a week or so. Is this subject of righteousness without works? What is God's righteousness?
How is it extended to you or do you bring it to him? What is righteousness without works? What is God talking about? It says in this verse the blessedness, the blessedness of the man. The next verse says verse seven saying blessed.
Are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered? And the next verse that says blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin says blessedness. In the first verse it says blessed. In the second verse we read, it says blessed. In the third verse we read, God has a message for you because God has a heart for you.
God has a heart for you because He wants to.
Place you in a place before him of love, of holiness, of acceptance. A place where he can.
In our terms, give you a hug forever and let you know the love that's in His heart for you, His purpose for you is to bless you. And three times in these verses it spoke of blessedness, blessed and blessed, but it also speaks of righteousness.
00:05:07
What is righteousness? We'll look at it this evening. In fact, we'll spend a fair amount of time on what isn't righteousness, because the particular person on my heart this evening is somebody who has sat in a gospel meeting many times. You could probably give the gospel quite effectively and accurately, but the Spirit of God has yet to.
Man, I shouldn't put it that way.
You have yet to yield to the working of the Spirit of God. In your heart. You know the facts, but you can get through a meeting like this and you can get on and you're relieved.
Want to describe the person, what may be going on inside you at the moment? Because you're the one that's on my heart this evening. But I'm going to give you an example that applies to believers. And if you're a believer in this room, this could have much of the message this evening should directly apply to you as well.
And there was a situation in my life where I was disobedient to the Lord. The Lord had asked me. I wasn't going to be specific. I'll be specific. I knew at the age of 12 That it was very clear to me that the Lord was calling me to remember Him at his table. And that's not my subject this evening. But I want to describe what went on in my heart.
Because perhaps it's going on in your heart this evening when you don't know Christ.
Every single time we would read for the next 5 years, I didn't take my place at the Lord's table until I was 17. And every single time we sang hymn on Lord's Day that had anything to do with remembering the Lord specifically spoke of it. I kind of hoped that no one was looking in my direction because that was something that was obvious and outward that I wasn't doing.
But maybe you've been able to get away with it.
Because people think that you're a believer and the Spirit of God is knocked on your door before he's spoken to you before you haven't listened and He's speaking to you in these meetings. And perhaps in the prior meeting, there was some word there. There was something there that spoke to your heart and you knew that you're not right with Him, but you were able to ignore it. And people can't look into your heart.
Tonight I want to allow, if you will, that the Spirit of God would look into your heart.
And expose what's there. Not because he's here to make you feel bad.
But if you're hanging on to something that causes you to refuse to reach out and receive from Him, then you're hanging on to something that's keeping you from Christ. So let's turn to another verse where these verses that we read in Romans were quoted from in Psalm 32.
We just read was it said in the first verse we read as David referred to David. This is a Psalm of David, Psalm 32.
Earth One says.
Blessed is he.
Whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered? Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile, that is, there's nothing.
That has to be in hiding.
I don't say you've robbed the bank. I assume you haven't. I don't say you've stolen from your parents wallet or from someone else's. Perhaps you have, perhaps you haven't.
But is there any cloud between your heart and the heart of the God who loves you? Is there something there that you've held back and you're hiding it? It says here the expression was and blessed verse two at the end of the verse, and in whose spirit there is no guile and David goes on to say, when I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring.
All the day long you've heard the message you, who I'm addressing, heard on my heart tonight. You've heard the message of the gospel before, and it may be that your bones have roared and you've quieted them. It may be that there's been conviction from the Word of God and it's pressed down on you and you've pushed back on it. I did it for five years in another area.
You can be a believer seated in this room. There may be something burning on your conscience.
00:10:01
And you push back on it. It says there's blessedness in having it all out in the open before God, nothing hidden, nothing covered. It says in verse four, for day and night thy hand was heavy upon me. My moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah. And verse 5, David says.
I acknowledged my sin unto thee.
And my iniquity have I not hid. It's my prayer for you tonight before you walk out of here, that you can say, not because of words you heard here, you've heard the gospel over and over and over again, but because God by his Spirit has pressed that word into your heart, you can say, I acknowledged my sin unto thee, unto God.
And the last verse of the Psalm says?
Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice ye righteous, and shout for joy all ye that are upright in heart. You might know what the righteousness of God is.
Burdens partly on my heart because my grandfather.
Preached many hundreds of times, perhaps thousands of times from platforms like this. Grew up in a Christian home. You grew up with parents who loved him. He grew up with parents who had good training for him and.
He could clearly state the gospel. In fact, he said, up through the age of 12, if some friend on the playground had argued with him about the Bible or about the gospel, he could have explained it to them.
And he would have.
But at the age of 12, it was without Christ, without the rights, and without any sense of the righteousness of God as having.
But applicable to him.
He was lost. He was on his way to hell.
There are many here in this room who have godly parents who love you. Many here in this room you could explain the gospel.
What, I ask you, are you like my grandfather without Christ? Maybe 12, maybe older than 12, maybe younger, but you know the word of God.
So what God does is He's provided an instrument to look into our hearts, and we'll use that first.
And then we'll turn to what Christ has done. It's provided an instrument to look into our hearts. My son's involved in learning welding, getting training and welding. So the little I know, I've learned through him or watched a training video that he'd like to share. And apparently you can have a really good quality Weld. You can have one that looks nice on the surface, looks good.
But I guess if it's a really important situation if you have an oil pipeline.
And you want to know that that Weld is quality. You need to, if you're a person in training, you might get a bend test on your Weld. But if it's out in the field there, you need an X-ray of it to look on the inside. Because you can get a good bottom level root pass and it might look good there. And you can have a cap on top and it might look good. But somewhere in the middle there, there's some bubbles at a key point and it weakens that Weld.
Under pressure it breaks and you can have your oil pipeline and it can snap in the field and there's tremendous consequences.
Because of something hidden in there, but the X-ray brings it out. Well, suppose that you were a window washer in the Burj Khalifa. I understand. Still the tallest building in the world, 2716 1/2 feet tall. 163 stories. And for this example, we'll only put you 100 stories up.
And you're got a nice harness and you double check that and there's a chain there to hold you.
Up. You didn't bother to check that one. It's got to be good look kind of looks good.
And so you go out and you're hanging there.
Which of those links is expendable?
Which one would you say? Well, I've got, I've got eight or nine of them are pretty good. One or two of them are.
Well, maybe they're a little sketchy, but who cares?
You have to have every single one. You want 100% quality in that circumstance. Maybe if you're towing your little brother in a wagon in the backyard and you have the 10 lengths, you might say one or two are little sketchy.
00:15:08
I'm not concerned, and maybe that's the kind of attitude you've brought all the way along with what God sees of you. But early this week I read a quote and been coming back to my mind a lot this week in a secular context. It was about business owners and the quote was you can't read the label from inside the bottle.
And for the business owner, the idea was that you're uniquely unqualified to have an outsider's view of what people think of your business.
The quote's been going through my mind. You and I are uniquely unqualified for giving a proper judgment of what we are in the sight of others, let alone in the sight of God. So let's turn to some questions that God uses to probe the heart to show what's in there. Let's turn back to Romans chapter 2.
I'll read the principle of it and then just a few questions.
Romans, chapter 2.
I'm going to read the first verse of Romans 2. Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judges. For wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself, for thou the judgest doest the same things.
Would like to use a couple verses a little further down in the chapter, but just look at the principle there.
Have you ever accused your brother, your sister, your mom or your dad at least in your thoughts of lying?
Maybe it was an adult and they said something and you thought for a moment and you said, eh, don't think so.
Don't think so.
You're saying in your own morality, you're saying it's wrong to lie.
You're looking on them and you're judging, and you're saying it's wrong to lie.
Have you ever in the workplace? Perhaps you work in a?
I'm sure work in a fast food place and the rules of the fast food place got explained to you during training and you're allowed X amount of food and you can have it after the shift. I don't know what they're all different in different restaurants, but suppose in your place you're allowed to buy the food at half price and you see a colleague and the first day of work and there's that leftover hamburger there and it's 10 minutes to closing and they're just going to.
Throw it away anyway. They told you not to eat those. But the colleague picks it up and eats it and says, ah, we do this all the time here. And you think to yourself, you just had your training the day before. You think to yourself, oh, but that's stealing. My parents would call that stealing. That's stealing.
It's turned down in the chapter.
To verse 21.
Now talking to a different group of people than at the beginning of the chapter, but the principles are the same.
An instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which asks the form of knowledge and of the truth. And the Thou therefore, which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? Thou that preachest a man should not steal.
Dustile steel.
Thou that preaches a man should not steal.
Dost thou steal?
A meal, a string, and then illustrate. I'm going to illustrate again.
We lived in Ecuador for six years, lived in a neighborhood kind of far from the downtown. We frequently caught buses. We frequently caught taxis. We didn't have our own vehicle. It was a taxi stand in the neighborhood. And when it wasn't convenient to catch a bus, we caught a taxi at that taxi stand. And there are certain places you had to go regularly and in the taxis there.
It's probably been more than 40 years since I've been in a taxi in the United States that I can remember, so I have.
You've probably been in one here. I don't know how it works, but there they have a taxi meter with these big red numbers, and it starts out at a certain number fixed by the government. And there's the dollar value. They use the dollar, the US dollar there. There's a dollar value on the meters. And when you start up the taxi, that dollar value should be showing. And then as you're driving, that meter is running.
00:20:15
If you're going quickly down a high speed Rd. it's moving quickly.
If you're sitting stopped in traffic, it goes fairly slow, and so there's a little bit of a variety in how much you have to pay from where we lived to where we needed to go toward the downtown.
But there was a fairly narrow range and I don't remember it, we'll say it was about 225 to 265, unless traffic was really horrible and then it might have hit about $3. Not bad.
So he hopped in the taxi and the whole way there I always liked to talk to the taxi drivers and kind of make conversation. I figured it gave sometimes it gave an opportunity for the gospel. At the very least, I felt if you gave him a gospel tract at the end, they were a little more receptive because you showed interest in them as a person.
So we're talking with the taxi driver and the hallway there. He saw our appearance, assumed that we were tourists because we hadn't seen him before. It wasn't one of the regulars at the taxi stand. So the whole way there, he was talking about our country and how corrupt our country is and our bankers. Our bankers are all, they're terrible. You know, they run off to Miami, they take the money and they shuttle it around and they're off to Miami. And if they don't go there, the judges, they're taking money and.
And they're taking money on this side and they're getting away with it. And he went on and on and on about the big corruption. This kind of stuff you could read on the front page of the newspaper. And I imagine he felt pretty good educating the tourists. We'd lived there several years.
We got to the location the meter should was normal traffic should read about 2:50 or something. The meter read around 4:50. And I'd been watching it. I'd been watching it go and go and go and go and go and wondering all through this corruption lecture what he'd have to say. And I pointed out a few things to him and told him how much I was willing to pay. And he said.
He accepted it without a complaint. He knew exactly what he'd been doing. There's places you can go and you can get those taxi meters fixed and they'll run quicker and you'll have a little switch underneath and you can just hit that little switch. And if the person doesn't know what they're doing, well.
They had the money anyway.
How many crops in that taxi?
There was more than one corrupt person in that taxi. Let me ask you a question.
It's money, the only thing you steal.
It says and I'll read it again here.
Thou that preachest a man should not steal.
Dost thou steal? Do you steal?
What do you have that doesn't belong to you that you just take anyway? Let me give a different example.
Suppose you are working in that fast food place and you're being paid by the hour, and when you're on break, you talk with your fellow employees, people around your age, and you're.
They're paying just over minimum wage and this is hard work.
But you got trained and you do the work and you're not. You're not taking money. You're not even taking that hamburger.
If the owner of the franchise were there and the owner of the franchise were present or the guy that trained you, if there's no customers in there, then, well, I mean, you should be wiping down the tables. You should be sweeping up. You should be. Aren't there things you're supposed to do under those circumstances? I mean, there's no customers in there. It really, it's not like the lunch rush or anything like that, but there's jobs to do that you got told we're supposed to do. But the manager.
The owner's not there.
Thou that preaches the man should not steal.
Dost thou steal?
It's convenient for me to stand here because I can. I can step on your conscience, right? And I can skip any examples that cover myself. I'm going to give you another example. Remember, when you waste what is not yours, I believe it's stealing. You're taking what's not yours. Isn't that the very definition of theft? You can't keep it down to just money, right? Or a cookie, or some physical good.
00:25:04
When I was.
Teacher.
In the 90s, taught in the Chicagoland area and there was, I wasn't paid by the hour, but I had a contractual obligation. During that contractual obligation, I was there from whatever it was. I don't even remember. We mauled the teachers at school, arrived earlier and left later, but I think it ran 7:45 to 3:45 and you had to be there in the school during that period of time and after that period of time.
You got a little extra.
And I worked it out with my wife. It worked better if I just got everything done at school and then came home and focused on everything at home.
So I would often leave there after five or something like that. I didn't enjoy grading and so.
By setting up a lab test, some creative new activity way of explaining things that was very enjoyable. But grading, grading was awful. You had to find out that you had explained this to somebody three times and Mike Cho still didn't understand it and you just why? I've been through this over and over again. Why?
So it was, it was emotionally stressful in a funny kind of way to sit there and go through paper after paper. And occasionally, you know, you get this little jolt of joy and wow, finally.
But that was that was painful. So they had in the room, which was kind of they just gotten in a year or so before they had educational cable. So there was C-SPAN in the room and I have a distinct memory of one day, just one is sound in the background, right. So you have C-SPAN going and it was.
A history panel somewhere in Washington, DC and somebody had written Daniel was his name. Don't know his last name.
But Daniel had written this book on eliminationist anti-Semitism and you can imagine it was exciting. He was being interviewed by a panel of professors on his theory on eliminationist anti-Semitism. And we'll share a lot better than grading.
And there's that professor from Notre Dame, and he's standing up and he's kind of given the professors on the on the panel A hard time because they were given the other guy a hard time, but they weren't using evidence. And he was defending the fact that they were doing a terrible job. He'd brought U.S. history students here, and I could probably give you a few of the facts from it because that was a whole lot better than.
But oh so let's see, no plus one. I didn't get that man. Short shrifted the grading. I still got home on time.
You can't relate, Kenya.
You've never done that with your phone?
You've never taken what wasn't yours time wise and wasted it, have you? Fewer.
There's one who's pure and when he looks from outside that bottle, that label says guilty before God. I want to give you. There's two more questions here, by the way, and it was quite an encouragement to me the first reading this morning. Our brother Matt stood up and he gave a wonderful little very brief.
Heartwarming talk on the first of those, the second of the questions, so I'm going to skip over it.
The end of the second reading, he got up and gave another heartwarming little talk on the third of the questions here. And so he's covered them nicely if they weren't spoken to. Touch your conscience, I'm sure that the Spirit of God can take that in. Touch your conscience with it because it's been covered already today. I want to go to one more before we turn to the beautiful side of the subject.
The next one is just for a verse for connection that's in Titus.
Chapter One.
Just have to turn the tiger.
That is chapter one and verse 2.
In hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie? It's a wonderful statement. God that cannot lie.
00:30:00
So to finish this section, what's on my heart, I just want to ask you, in the language of Romans 2, you that say that lying is wrong?
Have you ever lied?
Well, I mean, not a big one.
Let's turn to John, chapter 12. I'm going to tie these two together.
John, Chapter 12.
And I'll read from verse 3, just for a little context.
John chapter 12 and verse 3 then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment. And saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him.
Why was not this ointment sold for 300 pence and given to the poor? I'm going to stop there.
Why was not this ointment sold for 300 pence and given to the poor?
Is that a lie?
You know I have.
A strong doubt that Judas ever went up to Peter and told him about the tuna he caught on the Sea of Galilee.
You know, topped top Peter's story of bringing in a bunch of stuff in his net. Well, what about the tuna that I got?
I'm pretty confident Judas didn't bring that up.
In fact, Judas hadn't done anything that allowed any of the other disciples.
To detect what was going on inside him. And so when Judas says that, is that a lie? Why was not this ointment sold for 300 pence and given to the poor?
I'm just asking, it's just a question.
Simple question. In fact, I care about the poor.
But the one running the X-ray machine on Judas's heart gives us the next verse too. And the next verse says this. He said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and had the bag and bear what was put therein.
Judas's question was a lie because he was hiding the motive of his heart, and the motive of his heart was to take from whatever that sale would have been.
And pocket some of it. Sure, he didn't pocket all of it, but he was covetous. He held the bag, and if the money passed through the bag, he could get something.
Maybe you could sell it for 320 pence. 300 would go in the bag, 20 in his pocket. I don't know, but Judas question didn't fool the eye of God Judas question, as simple as it sounds.
Didn't fool the eye of God, it passed the disciple test.
Perhaps it passed the Judas test, but it didn't pass the X-ray test of God. Judas was guilty before God.
Let me turn to what it says on the outside of all of our bottles. We can't read the label from inside the bottle.
What God says from outside us is a perfect description of what's on the inside. Turn to Romans chapter 3.
Romans, chapter 3.
Verse 19.
Now we know that what things soever the law saith, saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
If you're attempting tonight to present your own rightness to God. If you're attempting in your thoughts or you haven't even thought about it.
And think that you can appear in the presence of God exactly as you are right now, and present what you've done. Have you ever said that it's wrong to lie? Have you ever said that it's wrong to steal?
00:35:09
Have you ever done either in the slightest degree?
God says whether you agree that you have or not. God says guilty before God.
The label on your bottle says guilty.
That's not the gospel and I want to change now.
It's a necessary part of the message. It's a necessary way, the reason God gave us the law to detect, to expose, to be an X-ray machine, to show what was on the inside. But that's not as good news. We began with blessedness.
And blessed and blessed. And talking about liars and thieves isn't talking about blessedness and blessed. And I want to take the time we have left to show how God can be absolutely consistent with who He is. He's holy, He's light, and He's loved. And how can He be totally consistent with himself and still accept you into His presence?
That's the righteousness of God, His total, absolutely consistent.
Behavior and taking a person like me and like so many others that are seated here this evening.
And saying you have a place in my holy presence.
It can't do it if we're attempting to come to him, holding out our own righteousness. But if we come, we're going to have to come consistent with who he is, consistent with his character, and that is his good news. I'm going to read in Romans chapter one just very quickly.
Speaking of the Gospel.
Verse 17 The gospel of Christ is mentioned in verse 16. So in verse 17 it says for therein or for in the gospel.
Is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith as it is written?
That just shall live by faith.
I want to talk to you about a person briefly.
And then go to his work. I want to talk to you about the Lord Jesus.
You know, these facts of speaking tonight, the person on my heart doesn't need this instruction as a fact that you've never heard before, but I want you to hear it for the first time, perhaps as pressed into your heart by the Spirit of God. And so let's turn to Psalm 69.
Psalm 69.
Psalm 69 says.
The speaker being.
The Lord Jesus Christ speaking for Voice of Prophecy, prophesying many years before this event and expressing.
His heart.
Verse 4.
They that hate me without a cause or more than the hairs mine head you can't say.
You can't say.
If God calls you guilty before him that you're not but the Lord Jesus could say they that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head. They that would destroy me being my enemies wrongfully are mighty.
Then hear these words. Then I restored that which I took Nah away. Here's one who not only wouldn't look on a single second of his master's time as a perfect man here in this world. Forget touching the money that belonged to someone else. He wouldn't touch a second of his master's time.
And here, in this moment, he says.
Not only do I not take, I give back what I didn't take.
That is the Lord Jesus. That's the person that delights God. Here's one. When he looks at you and he looks at me and he slaps the label on our bottle and it says guilty before God, what we are in ourselves, if we were to present it to him, that's the only thing he could say about it. Here's one.
00:40:03
That doesn't just not steal. Here's one that restores what he took not away.
Let's go to the other aspect.
I want to throw this one in. I didn't go through this question because it was covered in the reading, but this aspect wasn't so.
The topic of adultery. I just want to read a verse about the Lord Jesus.
Matthew, Chapter 17.
When the X-ray of the eye of God.
Looks down on the Lord Jesus.
Looks down on him after those 30 years where we have so little written about what he did.
And looks down on what was hidden from our view. And there's a similar expression to this. But in Matthew 17 we get the expression again and this time at the end of his life describing the Lord Jesus as he's about to go to the cross in Matthew 17 and verse 5.
While he yet spake, behold a bright cloud overshadowed them. Behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved son.
In whom I am well pleased bring this up in the subject of adultery that came to me in meditating on it, because.
You can do everything right with your eyeballs and have your brain wrong. You can look away, but not think away.
Or when it comes to this person, every thought, everything on the inside.
Everything was pleasing to God, His Father, that person in his very thoughts, not just in what he did, I can't say it that way. What he did was fabulous in his life, but not only was what he did in his life fabulous, everything that was on the inside was fabulous. And when it was X-rayed by the eye of God.
He gives a conclusion that tells it all.
He says I am well please, this is the one he delights in.
We've gone back to heaven at that moment.
In every right, God would have been righteous.
In receiving him.
Or would I be?
Where would you be?
I want to take you to another verse on the righteousness of God. Turn with me.
To 2nd Corinthians.
Chapter 5.
Before we read it, many of you know what I'm about to read. But before we read it?
I just want you to think about this.
There's this one God, and he's holy. God is absolutely holy.
Can he take you consistent with his holy character?
And bring you into his presence and sit you down there and welcome you to His house.
Is he consistent with himself in taking you?
And your sin and setting you down there.
You've run into people.
And they will. Oh well, he didn't mean it.
Didn't bother me too much, I'll let it go.
I think of that image when projected on the God as the grandfather God.
Looking on dad and mom as a dad and mom raised the children and maybe they were pretty strict and maybe they were kind of made the children toe the lines and I'm speaking stereotypically this certainly isn't true of all but now that they're the grandparents that kind of enjoy the role of.
00:45:01
Taking him out for the ice cream cone instead of saying no, no, that's really not good for you because wow, the eyeballs light up and they're excited and, and well, it makes grandpa feel pretty good, doesn't that when you see the grandson or the granddaughter and those eyeballs light up and the big smile and you know, the mess and the reaction later on.
Our kid kind of deserves it, doesn't he? No, I doubt any of you think that way.
But some people look at God that way. They think God is a God of love and he can be the stereotypical grandfather God. God is holy and to be fully consistent with himself, we need this Second Corinthians 5 verse 21 for he.
Hath made him to be sin for us.
Who knew no sin?
On the cross.
My Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ was made sin for me.
He was treated as hanging there on the cross, as though I were hanging there and in all the awfulness of the things that I've done.
He stood there for me. He was treated as sin.
And now where is he, my savior?
As a glorified man, and he's in heaven, He's there righteously. God had every right to put him there. He was delighted with his work. But there's more than that, it says.
But.
That we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. He did it so that He could be totally consistent with Himself as holy in love, and saying that He wants me and His Son in His presence forever. Can you say that?
Are you seated in this room, hanging on to your own righteousness?
Thinking, daring to think that you could appear before a God who doesn't have a breath of a lie in him. Not just words spoken, but in actions taken absolutely, totally, completely transparent. In fact, they skipped over the verse. I want to read it. It's in John chapter 8. It describes the Lord Jesus, but it describes our God because.
That's who he is.
I love this verse, become one of my favorites in the Word of God.
I'm going to read it from Mr. Darby's translation. I think it's a little more clear. John chapter 8, verse 25.
They said, therefore to him, Who art thou?
Jesus said to them altogether that which I also say to you.
Does that convey to your heart what it does to mine?
Who are you? Everything that I've said to you, who he was and what he said matched 100%.
You might say, well, I'm listening to you this evening, and when you're done and when you're quiet, I can keep going.
But we've also been reading God's Word this evening.
And the one that you will meet someday.
Is 100% exactly what he says he is. Everything he writes in this word is everything that he is. He is totally, absolutely, purely consistent with himself and he will be and how he treats you. And when I appear before him, I'm in a new bottle. The label on my bottle says.
Accept it in the beloved Do I feel it perfectly? No, I don't. But I'm inside the bottle. And remember, we're uniquely unqualified to give all the right thoughts. When you're inside that bottle, you can't read the label correctly. So who labeled that bottle? God did.
My bottle says accept it in the bloat. My bottle says right here what it says here and back. I guess I've turned over, but back in Second Corinthians chapter 5, it says we're made to righteousness of God. No, it says we're made the righteousness of God in Him. It's anchored in that person and that is how I can appear before God.
00:50:04
Why? Because he's delighted with his son.
He is absolutely, totally, completely satisfied with who his Son is and with what his Son has done. That is how you can appear before God.
I want to turn to.
One of the scripture related to that in Psalm 22.
This is another scripture. In just the last few years it's become very precious to me.
Psalm 22.
I'm just going to read the 1St 3 verses.
My God, my God, why as thou forsaken me, why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
Oh my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not, and in the night season, and I'm not silent, but thou art holy, O thou that inhabit us, the praises of Israel.
You're familiar with these words. You know that they were spoken. My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me from the cross?
Those hours of darkness at the end.
I love this little word.
My if I'm that word over and over again in the Psalm, trace it out. My, me, mine as he speaks. But I love it in that first expression he says, my what distance was he putting between himself and God? You know when somebody is hurting you.
What do you do?
Somebody stomps on your toe, What's the reflex?
And you yank the toe back.
I was mowing in the garden, didn't know we had a nest of yellow jackets a couple weeks ago and mowed right past them and they followed me and stung me four times. It was the instant reaction. Slap away and get rid of that thing that was attacking me.
And then take care of the source of it.
But the first reaction is to get away from that pain, right?
Sometimes it's words, and perhaps you've been hurt by the words. Perhaps you've been injured by the words of someone who they do love you.
But they've said something that hurts.
It's hard and it's hard to take.
You shrink back.
And you change just a little bit, and you protect yourself from more hurt, right?
But this is perfect man do when he's being made sin for me.
This perfect man, as it were, reaches out and he says my God. He doesn't say you God, He says my God. And in that word there's an expression of the perfection of that man as he was being made sin for me.
And when God looks at him now, and he looks at the Lord Jesus Christ, and he says.
What won't I give to someone who's in him?
I can give anyone anything, anything consistent with myself to one who's in Him. I want to finish with these verses because my bottle says accepted and the Beloved, but it's the end that matters. So I'm just going to read from Ephesians 1.
Their precious verses, you know them, but just to emphasize.
This is what he is worth.
Going to read a few of the verses there.
Umm.
Ephesians one and verse three. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ? What has He given? Every spiritual blessing? Why? Because Christ is worth it and I'm in Him.
00:55:14
My address doesn't say guilty before God, it says in Christ and Christ is worth it. What does your address say?
The next verse, according as He hath chosen us.
In him.
He chose me. He chose me in His Son, in Him before the foundation of the world. That we should be What? Just like Him, holy and without blame before Him in love. Just like Him, holy and without blame before Him in love.
I'm going to skip down to verse six. To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted.
In the beloved.
I'm going to write something on here.
That's our time.
Comes to an end.
If you're close enough to read it, maybe you can help me. Jared, what does it say?
Says my righteousness.
There one of you in the room this evening that in figure has it clutched in your hand.
And God wants to be able to express his righteousness, his estimation of his son to you. He would like to take you from if I can beat the figure to death, he'd like to take you from in the bottle that says guilty before God because that's what he sees written on it. And he'd like to move you to in Christ before him and all he asks.
Is for you to reach out and take it. That's it. Receive. It doesn't ask you to give him anything.
What do I need to do to receive a gift with my right hand?
I need to open it up and let go and receive.
That's what he would ask you to do tonight.
Three Things That Will Make You Unbreakable
Fishers of Men
Children—Titus Buchanan
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People are going to keep coming in, but that's OK That's great. If we sing a start now, we can maybe get an extra song in. Who wants to pick a song? All right, go ahead. And I apologize I don't know everybody's names. I'm starting to learn a few because we just had, there were quite a few who were at Michigan camp not too long ago. So it's great to see somebody again. Which one did you want?
45 all right.
Let's sing #45.
I'm going to apologize. I'm not fond of those things over there. When I have Sunday school at home, I like to push it out of the way because I don't like standing behind one of those things. All right, so I'm going to be out here with you, 45.
All right, very good. That was a great one to start out with. That goes pretty well with what I want to talk about today. That's great. All right, I see a bunch more smiling faces up here. Who else wants to pick one? And by the way, if there's somebody that wants to come up, we have lots of open chairs. It'd be great to fill them all up in the front row. All right, again, you won't be able to see very well if you're in the back. This is meant especially.
Little children, right? All right, Owen, what do you want to sing?
It's a great one.
I don't know if you could hear, but he said Jesus loves me. I think that's probably a favorite of most everyone. That is the first. Let's see. Oh, the first one on the back. We're going to sing a lot off the back. Okay, First one on the back. Let's think 2 verses. Okay, so the first one and the last verse, we'll do that. All right, Jesus.
I don't know if you need.
To have a lot of community, it is you are not going to get it.
Istics.
And I brought down the eyeball.
Mixer with all of us and all of our lovely Yeah, I can see you. I don't see you. I don't see it.
Good. I saw some people over here doing some hand motions and you know, I think that's great.
I'm going to stand over here because I want to make sure that everybody can hear me. I know I have this thing on here, but.
You want to find a spot.
You need another chair. Let's pull it. Can I?
Sit on this chair.
All right, so you know this is a wonderful song. We just sang 3 words.
00:05:05
That are so important to know what are they? What were they? Yes, Jesus loves what?
What?
Me, do you know that for your very own self? Do you know for sure that Jesus loves you? Can you say when you sing that song, are you just singing the words or do you really know down here, where is this?
Your heart, right? Do you know in your heart that Jesus, the one who hung up on the cross, he loves you?
That's what the Word of God tells us. Jesus loves us. That's beautiful. OK, let's sing another song. We'll sing one or two more. Maybe. Who wants to pick one? Maybe one from this side? We've been picking from the other side. Would any of you girls like to pick a song? If not, that's OK.
You can think about one maybe if you want to. You don't have to have it out of the book. Sometimes it's hard singing out of these little books. You can just say the name of it. Maybe there's one that somebody has that's an action song like those.
Should we think? Should we go to this side?
OK, all right, who has the one now #2 #10 OK, what's that one? Is that around the throne of God in heaven? No, that's what is that? Is that it? That's a good one. All right, let's sing that one right around the throne of God.
All four here for you Managers Day. I'm going to say I don't scream.
All right, very good. You know, that's, that's a wonderful, a wonderful little hymn, little song, you know.
There was something said yesterday that I thought was beautiful. It was very good. Somebody said something about heaven. Who remembers what that was?
Who? Who wants to be in heaven?
You know me too. But let me ask you something. Why do you want to be there? Why do you want to be in heaven? I would like to hear somebody tell me why would you like to be in heaven? That's a really good thing. That's a really good thing.
But it's not the lake of fire. Yeah, that's terrible. Who's there? Satan. Why would you like to be in heaven? Somebody help me out.
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Evan, why would you like to be in heaven?
That's what I was looking for. I thought that was so nice. Yesterday there was somebody said something about, yes, heaven is a wonderful place, it will be a wonderful place, but what's going to make it wonderful? It's the man Christ Jesus that paid for our price at Calvary. He's going to be there. He's going to be there.
And we'll be.
For those who say yes to the Lord Jesus, for those who say I'm a Sinner, I need a savior, there's only one way, The Lord Jesus Christ, if you said yes to him, you'll be there. You'll be there gathered around him there, praising and worshipping him, giving him thanks forever. How wonderful.
OK, we better. Maybe we can. If we have time, we can sing later.
I'm going to grab my Bible real quick over here and I'm going to need some help.
OK, somebody remind me where the verse is found?
Robert, you guys know really well. Let's see here.
You know, I think who was it?
Your dad said yesterday. Maybe it wasn't him, somebody said about singing the singing the.
All the books of the Bible in your head. That's a really good point, because sometimes I use that a lot. I think that's good. So what comes right before Proverbs?
Psalms. That's right. So I'm in Psalms. I better keep going. Let's see here.
There's a lot of songs there. Let's see. So Proverbs Chapter 9 and verse 10 says I'm going to read it once and then instead of having you all say it, which I really love to hear everybody say it individually, but we might say it together. OK, I'll read it to you first.
It says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy is understanding.
Proverbs Chapter 9, verse 10 Very good. All right now you know, sometimes it's nice to have the.
The older people have to say it too, right? We all need the Word of God. So maybe, sorry, maybe we can have everybody say it. How about that? OK, all right, we're going to say it together. Sometimes this is hard because some people go fast, some people go slow. We'll try it. OK, let's see. It starts out and we're going to say it. Ready. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy is understanding.
Proverbs 910, I about forgot the reference. OK, very good. OK, that was great. That is a very good verse. And I'm going to tell you, somebody could explain that a whole lot better than I can probably. But I would like to talk about I've got something a little bit different on my heart this morning and you might have already guessed it again if there's any little people.
Back farther that would like to come up.
You're welcome to, because we have some stuff on the floor here that you probably can't if you're sitting in the back.
Anybody. It doesn't have to be just little people. If anybody else wants to come up, they can too.
So this morning, what I would like to talk about are three things that the Lord said, OK? But first of all, I'm going to tell you why, why I want to talk about this, OK?
When we.
Kentucky, the local assembly here sent out their letter. They sent it out and very kindly sent it out and we received it and the assembly where we are at and the first time we heard about.
The Kentucky conference this year, as soon as we told the kids we might be going to the Kentucky conference, what do you think the first thing was that they said? Now you can't say it if you're one of the ones in our family, somebody else guess what do you think was the first thing out of their mouth?
Maybe they don't even remember. What do you think it was?
When that's a really good guess. Absolutely. That's a great guess. But yeah, what's the that's an excellent guess. And I've said this a lot. I I don't like to stand up very well in front of say, I remember saying my verse when I was a little kid and it was, I'd count how many till it was my turn. What's that? Let's have one more guess, maybe two. Now I'm going to give you a hint. Look at the floor, OK.
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I'm going to tell you, look at the I bet you got it. What do you think, fish? You're right. The first thing that came out is Daddy, can we bring our fishing poles? You know what?
They wanted to go fishing. Does anybody else like fishing besides the kids? I think about every little kid likes fishing, right? You don't even have to catch anything for it to be fun, right? Well, this morning, if you didn't get to go fishing yesterday, or even if you did, there's some fish here that I'm going to need help catching. OK, I need some. I'm going to need some really little kids to help me catch them, probably.
All right, there's three right on this side. You know, I've been standing over here.
Would you like to be my helpers this morning? Would you three like to be my helpers? All right, I'm going to need more than that too. OK, so I'm going to need you three. You don't have to come over here quite yet. Anybody else want to be my helper?
Owen, you want to be my helper? All right, we might need more than that too, but we'll see. We'll start out with having you 4 be my helpers. OK, Now, as we go through here, I've got some fish and, you know, fish kind of swim a lot of times in. What do you call that? Well, oceans, that's a good point. But they kind of swim all together.
What is it? Schools. Thank you. And I never liked school, so I don't remember that word. But yeah, they kind of swim in schools. But here we got them swimming along here and we have two different ponds or lakes. You know, this is a beautiful place out here. You know, I I think it's beautiful out there. And that was a lot of fun yesterday when the kids were fishing. But I would like to go fishing and we got to stay in order here. OK. Do you think fish stay in order? They come up for the next bite? Probably not whenever we're fishing.
Remind me your name. What is your name? Come over. What's that, Sarah?
Clara, I'm sorry, can you come help me over here? I'm going to get you a a fishing pole here. Here's a fishing pole. I'm going to need you to come down here and I'm going to need you to be my little fishing helper. Can you come way over here? You can come over here and I'll show you where to start. OK, Now all of these are is some of these. You can come right down here. It's OK to step on it. These most of these have something on the backside.
And these are the verses that I want to talk about today, right. And there's there's three main things. You're going to start down with that little green fish down there. And you don't have to do it quite yet, but I'm going to show you what they are three main things. Oh, that's great. You caught one. All right, you hang on to that for a little bit. The first one is going to be this. I'll come over here so everybody can see it says I'd like to have help.
One of you that loves reading, tell me what this says. Come unto me.
Very good, very good. You know, there is a song that isn't, I don't know if it's in this little, this one here who said come unto me. Can you hold that for me? I need I I always like to have help. You can just hang onto it right there. That's great. You just hold it right in front and you don't have to hold it up high. You can put it down a little bit, but come unto me. That is great. OK. And I've got another one here. There's a little song that has all of these in here kind of maybe not the exact same words.
What does this say?
Follow thou me. Would you mind holding that for me? It's good if we can hold them here where everybody can just remember it. And then this is the one I want to get to eventually. I thought, what does that one say? I will make you fishers of men. That's great. All right.
You know what, I don't like having you two way over here, so I'm going to move your chairs over. Looks like nobody else is going to join us, so I'm going to I'm going to move these over here.
Because I don't want to leave you out, let's have you sit over here.
Can you two come over here? That way you can maybe see a little bit better. We'll get down to that side, but if you want to squeeze in here, that would be great.
I don't like having my back that way, all right?
OK, great. So now we have 3 things. But you know these are going to come in a certain order, right? And you already did a great job of fishing. You gave me a reference here and I want to start with the first one. Who remembers that song? We might sing it later, we'll see. I usually run out of time, but let's see, there's a song that says kind of takes these three things.
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And one the first verse, one's in the second verse, and one's in the third verse, the first one says.
Yeah, you're right. It has that in there, right. Remember here? What here, Christ calling? Come on to me. Who's saying that?
Yeah, that's right. OK. So I want to talk a little bit about that first. I think this is very, very important. And you know, there were in the prayer for Gospel last night, there were prayers that went up.
For you little ones.
We long to have you little ones come to know the Lord Jesus, to say yes to the Lord Jesus. And here this says, come unto me. Why do you think we need here? I can get you a chair if you want to sit down. Well let me go down here and grab one. Why do you think we need to come to the Lord Jesus?
What's that?
Oh, you said it good, right? Do you want to sit back down here? You can sit down here if you don't want to have to stand up to wash our sins away. I guess nobody else can hear on this, but here, I'll hold this up here next time to wash our sins away. Hmm, That's good. Guess what? Here's the first verse. Does anybody really love reading? If you do, would you mind turning to Romans 323?
That was the first fish that was caught.
Anybody can read it, whoever wants to.
If you want to turn to Romans 323, yeah. Can you read that for me? Read it nice and loud here. Oops, just a second.
You can hold that. That's kind of fun to hold.
For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
Very good. Wow, all you think everyone, everyone sinned. Yes.
That's right, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
You know what? We talked about heaven and hell earlier. You mentioned that Satan was in hell and we talked about the Lord Jesus the man Christ Jesus.
He is who we will be gathered around if we know the Lord Jesus. You know. But you're not going to just go there. We're not born.
We're not born on our way to heaven. We are all born. What?
On our way to hell. That's right. We're all born sinners and there won't be any sin in heaven. Not even one. Not even one.
Not even one sin in heaven. You know, this is so important because.
We all want you to be there because the opposite. I talk about opposites a lot. The opposite is terrible. It's a lake of fire.
OK, so now I need another Fisher. Which one of you guys was going to be here? You, you two were going to be my little fishers. All right, Fisher, you go down there and start fishing for the next one. OK, let's find a fishing pole. I'll give you a fishing pole here. You want to have the fishing pole and then we'll see how many we need. Go ahead and catch the red one down there on the end. Would you like to go fishing to? You can wait. Just wait a second. You can grab a pole, but we'll wait. We've got to go in order here. So would you mind catching this red one?
Perfect. Thanks.
OK, now let's see what the red one says on the backside of it. You can hang on to that one and we'll, we'll just leave this one here for a little bit, OK? And you can you can take that one when we get there. What does yours say?
John 316. Oh, I love that verse. All right. You don't even you know it off the top of your head, right? I think about everyone probably does. Go ahead, tell me what it is. Whoop, whoop.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Very good. Did you hear that? Did you hear that? We're all sinners. We're born in this world sinners. We're on our way to hell, the lake of fire. Something had to happen.
Here it was just you just told the gospel. Did you know that?
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For God so loved the world. He didn't want you to be in hell, He wanted you to be with Him. God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son, that you or you, or you, or you, or you, or me, or anyone who says yes to the Lord Jesus can be saved from that lake of fire.
You can be saved because He paid the price for those sins that we talked about, the Lord Jesus, what did he do?
He hung on that cross and those three hours of darkness. He was punished at the hands of a righteous, holy God. For what? For what? Why? So that you and I could come to the Savior. We would have a Savior. He's punished for our sins so that we could come to Him. His blood was shed.
There, after he died, what did the soldier do?
What did the soldier do?
He went with a spear, and he thrust it into the side of the Lord Jesus.
Terrible.
Hatred. What happened?
Something came gushing out, flowed out.
Blood and water, and that is what washes our sins away.
I don't know how, but I know it does. It does. And then we can be what the big word is called, redeemed with the precious blood of Christ. All right, we better keep going here. OK, very good. Did you catch a fish? All right, let's see, Romans 58, if somebody wants to turn to that. What do you have there? You're doing a great job of reading these verses. Romans 5/8. Can you read that?
Really nice and loud.
But God commanded his love toward us, that in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
That is wonderful. God commendeth His love. He showed His love. You know, there are so many ways that we can, so many different verses we could read about the love of God and about God sending His Son to die in our stead because we were sinners.
On our way to hell here a beautiful verse. He loves you. He loves you so much, God loves you so much that he would show his love by sending his only son, His only son who he loved. He sent him down for you and I. Let's keep fishing.
Let's see, who did we use this one? Did we catch this one? I don't think, Nope. Would you mind? Would you mind catching this fish right here?
You can step on there, I think it's OK.
I got a bigger fishing pole, but I tried it earlier. It's kind of hard to catch those things. OK, good. Now you pull it out, you can pull, take your fish. You like taking the fish off the hook? All right, let me see what it says. Can you flip it over somebody that can read? Can you tell me what that says? What does that say on there?
1128 Matthew 1128. Can my reader over here tell me what Matthew 1128 is?
You still have the microphone.
Oh, I put it over here. OK, Matthew 1128, here's everybody. Listen, listen, look, listen.
Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Very good, here it is.
This is where that this is that verse, right? The first of it says, come unto me. Oh, you that labor, all you who are in sins and guess what? All have sinned. So we're all there. We all start out there. We are sinners. Are you trying some way to get to heaven? Are you trying to do other things?
There's no other way. You know, last night I was going up to our hotel room and I went up the stairs instead of taking the elevator normally. I poked the little button that says Level 3, and then that takes me to three. I get off and I go to the right place. Well, I went up the steps on the end where you can rundown if there's a fire or something like that. And I got off and I went down to the room and I tried my key. It wouldn't it, the little red light flash. Oh no. So I tried it again, man, my key must not be working. So I tried it again and again.
And I looked up and I realized I was at 2:10 instead of 310. Guess what?
It wasn't going to do me any good, right? I was down, I wasn't up on the floor. I needed to be. That key would do me no good.
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You know, there was only one way to get into that room and that was to have the right key. And I'm telling you what the right key is. It is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the only way.
To be in heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ is going to be. Right. All right. We better keep going. I need another fish. You want to be a fisherman? Pretty bad. So why don't you come up here and then you can come up and catch this one. OK, Owen, you can go ahead and go fishing. Can you give one of these here? You want to take that fishing pole you catch? I don't care which one we go first. Let's catch this one right here. Can you catch that?
It's kind of hard sometimes, yeah. You can just poke that onto there.
Yeah, those are. I tried those and they wiggle all over and they're pretty hard to catch.
Let's see here. Oh, OK, somebody tell me, what does that one say?
Peter 318. Second Peter. Maybe try Second Peter. Second Peter. Very good. Second Peter 318.
All right, we'll, we'll.
We'll we'll take turns. All right. Sounds you want to step up there for the next fish here in a little bit. What is what is second Peter?
Oh oh boy, 318 what does that say?
But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and forever. Amen. We must have moved on to the next poster. Where's the poster? Where's the big poster that said, oh, let's see, there's one more. Maybe it said follow me somewhere. Oh, there it is. Oh, thank you, thank you.
It says follow me now, I'm going to move on here and I'm going to talk to you.
As if you have come to know the Lord Jesus. Again, we pray that you have come to know the Lord Jesus, that you have said yes. OK, if you have not, it's a very sad thing. But there is still time right now. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not here in 5 minutes. Right now there is still time.
Grow in grace and in the knowledge. What did it say?
Very good growing grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Is that right?
So now, if we've come to know the Lord Jesus, if we said yes to the Lord Jesus, that is absolutely wonderful. But you know, it doesn't stop there. It doesn't stop there. Now He wants us to what?
Follow him, right? Follow him. He wants us to. What happens if you follow somebody?
If you're if somebody's right here and you're following them, you start to you may start to get to know them, right. There's some more verses. We need to keep going here because we're going to run out of time here. Let's go. Who did? Who caught the next fish? Was there another fish right here? Maybe. Let's see what this one is. Can you catch that one? We'll see what it says on it.
What does that one say? Can you tell me what it says?
Colossians 4. Two. All right, let's turn to Colossians 4.
2.
Thank you. You can, yeah, you can sit on that chair down there if you want to. Colossians 4, Two, we're going to run out of time here, so I'm going to.
You want to read that one?
Continue in prayer and watch in the same with Thanksgiving.
Very good. I want those three first words continue in prayer here. Now we're going to talk. We're talking about following the Lord Jesus. There's a couple things that are very important and who remembers who remembers the second verse to that song that we talked about? The first one was hear Christ calling, come unto me. The second one says.
Read What did you say?
Read your Bible, pray every day. We lost a fish somewhere, but that's OK, there's another verse.
That we'll look at here in a second. Read your Bible, pray every day. What does that say on it? Oh, you found it. Very good. Very good.
Yeah, we'll look at that one here in just a second. This one talks about prayer. What is prayer? What is prayer? What does it mean to pray sometimes? Yeah. Thank the Lord Jesus for what you thankful for. That is wonderful to thank the Lord Jesus. And you know, it's wonderful to thank the Lord Jesus for dying for us. If we've come to know the Lord Jesus, it's wonderful to thank him for all that he did at Calvary. That's wonderful. But you know, when we pray, it's kind of like we're talking to the Lord Jesus.
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Right. Have you ever had a best friend that you never talked to?
No, me neither.
I did have a friend that couldn't hear or talk, but I still went like this to him and did a whole bunch of stuff and I don't even remember it now. I don't remember how to do it, but we're still talking, we're still communicating.
OK here prayer is like talking to the Lord Jesus. OK, the next one that was on one of these fish that got pulled out of the water was Revelation chapter one. If you want to turn there, Revelation chapter one and verse 3.
Let's see here.
Did you find that? All right, go ahead. Blessed is he that's readeth and they that hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written therein for the time is at hand. So I want to talk about just for a second, we're almost out of time here. There was some things talked about last night, the first word of this verse.
What did Mr. Rule say? There was a word that he said, the very first word in this verse. What was it?
Search the beat. But but what is it blessed? He talked about that. That was wonderful. You want to be blessed. You want to be blessed.
Here we talked about praying. What was praying? I was talking to the Lord Jesus right now. How many people like a one way St.
No, no, here. Would you like it to somebody?
If you talk to somebody all the time, but they never talk back.
Well, there's a couple ways of talking back, but.
The way I'm talking about here, it's wonderful to have a conversation and to be able to learn more and build a relationship if you want to have a true relationship. I'm going to venture to guess that if there are folks in here that are courting.
In this room, it's probably not just one talking right? If you want to know the Lord Jesus.
Prayer is very important, but so is reading. You want to be blessed? What is this that I'm holding? What is this that I'm holding? The Bible? The Bible? What's the Bible?
The word of God, right? And if you want to know what God has to tell you, we got to read it. Got to read the word of God. If you want to know him better, you got to read the word of God.
Read the Word of God and pray. That's how we can follow Him. That's how we can learn more about Him. That's how we can have a relationship with Him. OK, now we only have just a few minutes, so let's move on here real quick.
There's some fish on the other pond over here in this lake. I need a couple more helpers.
How about some down on this end? All right, let's take two of you. Three of all three of you come down this way. We'll go. Can I have the fishing poles? I think there's three of them. Can I have that red one? Can I have that fishing pole, please? Oh, you guys got one. All right. I need all three of you to go down there and you can catch a fish. I don't even care which fish you catch. You can catch any of them.
You can try to catch a fish.
Is there anything on the backside of that one? Oops? No, we're looking for one that might have something on the back. OOP down doesn't. Does that have anything on the back of it? Oh, very good. What does it say? Matthew 516? All right, my reader over there, can you turn to Matthew 516, please?
Would you mind holding that up nice and high for me? We need a little reminder here what we were. Why are we even fishing? OK, now somebody read what's on the sign over here. One of you on this side. I will make you fishers of men. Now we've talked about coming to the Lord Jesus, coming to know Him as our Savior, the very first and foremost. We can't do all the rest.
Without truly, without knowing him, we could be like Judas, which is very sad.
He did for a little while, looked like everyone else he was following. I pray that not anyone here in the room this morning that you're just going along with the crowd because eventually when everybody else does this, you're going to do this very important to truly not only know the Lord Jesus in your head, but in your heart, truly know him and love him.
00:40:16
I will make you fishers and men. If you know the Lord Jesus, if you want to follow Him, he can use you.
Even when you're this big, Even when you're this big, What does that say? Who's my reader? Let's see. Matthew, I think, was 516.
Ear light is so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father, which is in heaven.
Let your light so shine before men. You know what that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father, which is in heaven. Are you saved by good works?
Can we get to heaven by doing really good things? No, we talked about that. There's no other way. We talked about how you have to come to the Lord Jesus as a Sinner. Lord, I want to be saved. There's no other way. But when we come to know the Lord Jesus and we want to live for it, we're following him. We want to live for him.
Even just going day-to-day pleasing the Lord.
Day-to-day, other people will see you.
Other people will see that you're happy. Other people will see.
The way you act, even that alone, many come to the Savior. The Lord can use that right. Doesn't even have to be words. Let your light so shine. If you're happy in the Lord Jesus, the way you walk, others are going to see it and they're going to want to have that same thing that you have, OK?
Yes.
We can use words for sure. We had the gospel preached earlier over here. There was John 316 read, very important. I believe there will be thousands of people in heaven that heard John 316 and said, yes, Lord, I want to be saved. All right, there's another verse. We're really out of time here. I need one more fish. Did you find any more fish that had something on it? Oh, great. Mark, what is that?
Mark 16/15.
OK, let's see what that one says.
We're probably going to run out of time, but we'll read this one and then.
Let's see.
Very good. You want to read that one nice and loud. He that believe us and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be.
Let's find a.
How about the one right before that Mark? I might have said the wrong one. How about Mark 16, verse 15, One verse, right first, right before that. And he said unto him, and go ye all into the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. Very good. Go into the world, all into the world. You know what? I think it's important.
I know it's important.
Here there are folks in this room that have gone far, far away. And how wonderful that is to bring the gospel. We talked about what the gospel is. It's good news, right? To those people that maybe have never heard it before. But did you know that even here, all of you, whether it's in school, whether it's whether it's just in the grocery store, whether it's walking down the street, whatever it might be, did you know there's people right here in your own town?
Wherever you live that may have never heard about the love of the Lord Jesus, did you know that?
All the corners of the world, even here in the US, we talk about going other places a lot, and that is wonderful. That's wonderful. There are terrible things happening around the world and there are many who don't know the Lord Jesus. But even while you're little like you are, you can preach the gospel in your own little corner. That's wonderful. And there's different ways to preach the gospel. We talked about that. OK, our time is really up.
Don't. There are many times I have to hang my head and James say.
I haven't said a word for the Lord when I should have, but you know, there were a few fish over here that didn't have anything on the back of them. Not every fish up here had something on it.
But I think we ended up fishing for all of them, right? And I was thinking about that just a little bit before Sunday school. And I was thinking, you know, we need to tell everyone about the Lord Jesus. Why? Because we don't know who the Lord.
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Has well, he loves all.
Who is going to come to him, right? And we don't know how the Lord is going to use all these different things, but it's very important we go into if you could think about all the world is everywhere that you go, that we live Christ, that we shine for him like we talked about the light and that we are fishers of men that we are telling others about this wonderful love. Why would we want to preach the gospel?
Because he loved us so much to save us.
We ought to want to do something for him and tell others about that same love. Now reach down, picked us up out of that horrible pit, and set our feet upon a rock. The rock, the Man Christ Jesus, who loved us and gave himself for us. Our time is up.
The Church in the Old Testament
Address—Steve Stewart
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The meeting this afternoon by singing hymn #9999.
On Christ salvation.
Lords help. I'd like to take up two questions this afternoon.
Yeah, Ron, the Lord changed things.
Like to take up two questions this afternoon. One is.
Did the church exist in the Old Testament?
Or is it just in the new? And two, was the church prophesied of in the Old Testament spoken of in the Old Testament scriptures?
I know there have been many challenges and questions have arisen in these things. Is Reformed theology has made a comeback in recent years and perhaps are those here who have been challenged by those questions. I know I was at one time in my life and so hopefully with the Lord's help to take those up in a way that would come across clearly from the Word of God.
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That your faith might rest.
And the divine inspired pages of this book.
1St place I'd like to look at is in Exodus.
Chapter 12.
There we have the account instructions for the Passover. This was the time of the birth of the nation of Israel.
And God was about to bring them out of the land of Egypt.
And this company of individuals was going to be formed into one nation.
And in the instruction with a Passover in verse six of Exodus 12.
And he shall keep it up until the 14th day of the month of the same month, and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.
Then we're going to turn to Exodus Chapter 7.
Excuse me? Not Exodus 7X7, sorry about that.
Acts Chapter 7.
The word that we're looking at is assembly.
We saw it there in Exodus, and now let's look at Acts Chapter 7.
Again referring to that same time back in Exodus.
Act 7, verse 37 This is that Moses which said unto the children of Israel a prophet, shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me him he shall hear. This is he that is Moses that was in the church in the wilderness, with the Angel which spake to him in the Mount Sinai.
That word church should be assembly, and everywhere in the New Testament you find the word church.
With one exception that I am aware of, it should really be translated assembly.
The word, I don't know Greek, but it's ecclesia, and it means called out once. The exception is in the uproar in emphasis later in the book of Acts. And the town clerk comes out and appeases the people, and he tells them that the apostles were not robbers of their churches. Well, it really should be temple robbers.
The original word for assembly in Greek isn't even there.
But for some reason they translated it robbers of your churches. It should be just temple robbers. Every other place it should be assembly. Now actually in that very same chapter, interestingly enough, we get the word assembly translated that way. I guess we should just turn to it.
Acts 19.
And.
The verse that it first referred to as 37 for E of brought hit her. These men, which are neither robbers of churches really should be temple robbers, or yet blasphemers of your goddess. But when he comes out.
And speaks to them.
In verse, well verse 32 I think is where I want it. Some therefore cried one thing and some another, for the assembly was confused. Same word ecclesia called out once here is properly translated assembly and it has nothing to do with what we call the church. And so really context is what determines what this word assembly means.
Here it's just the assembled individuals that were out raising a ruckus over the gospel in the.
City of Ephesus.
What's the point? God had an assembly in the Old Testament, the nation of Israel. It was the assembly of the congregation.
They were called the assembly of the congregation nationally in their national birth.
That the church, as we would think of it, just that thought assembly there they were collectively looked at as an assembly.
Now let's turn to Matthew chapter 16.
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Matthew is the Gospel as it is presented to the Jew brings out the rejection of their own Messiah, and consequently the setting aside of Israel and the introduction of something altogether new. And in Matthew 16.
When the Lord asked the disciples the end of verse 13, Whom do men say that I the Son of Man am? They said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist. Some Elias and other Jeremias are one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed.
Unto thee but my father, which is in heaven. And I say unto thee, that thou art Peter, And upon this rock I will build my church or my assembly, and the gates of hell are shall not prevail against it. Now note just a side note, verse 19. And I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of heaven.
What's the side note? Notice that the Kingdom is distinguished from the assembly here.
Let's keep them distinguished as we go through the New Testament scriptures.
Upon this rock I will build my assembly. What rock is that? Well, not as a Catholic Church takes it that it was Peter back. There's two different words he tells Peter. Thou art Peter. The Lord had given him that name when he first met him. Now Peter is finding out a new understanding of the meaning of that new name he got and that name Peter.
Is.
Petros.
It means a stone petros. When the Lord says upon this rock, it's Petra, the rock. He's the rock.
He is the foundation of the church. He is the one upon whom He will build his church, not Peter.
Peter wonderfully learned this truth later on and ministers it in his first epistle that we as living stones are built up a spiritual house, Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone, that stone that was rejected by the builders, but chosen of God and precious.
And Peter learned more and more over time with that new name he'd been given men. But the Lord is the Petra, the rock.
And he says the gates of hell, or really should be Hades, shall not prevail against it. That doesn't mean that all the forces of darkness and Satan and so on, and his evil angels will never prevail against the Church. That's not what he's speaking about. The gates of Hades, that condition in which the spirit and soul are separate from the body.
Is not going to prevail against what he will build. Why?
Because he was going to go down into death, defeat death and being raised from the dead.
No longer in that condition. And that's what the psalmist says. That will not leave my soul in Hades. No, he wasn't left there. He was raised from the dead, defeated death, and upon that foundation of Christ, gone to the cross, died down into death, raised again upon that imperishable foundation, He would build his.
Assembly.
You know, each of the New Testament writers has a different.
Line of things as we say different things that the spirit of God.
Use them for to bring out, but they the truth as a whole and so they intersect in places. I'd like to bring you to the intersection of Peter and Paul, but I want to note one thing first. After the Lord had told him what it was going to take to lay that foundation.
He then brings before him later in the chapter.
That he was going to go to Jerusalem and there he was going to suffer and there he was going to die. It had to take place for that foundation to be laid. And what does Peter do? He says to him. He took him and he rebuked him.
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He rebuked him.
Be it far from the Lord, this shall not be unto thee.
I really think Peter, who had given this wonderful confession and that truth that had been opened up of this new thing that was going to be introduced.
A new assembly he calls my assembly in distinction from that assembly and the congregation in the wilderness. Peter lost the privilege here of being the one who would reveal that truth.
Oh, he wonderfully learned from this, and the Spirit of God used him, but God was going to take up another instrument.
To reveal the truth of what he first introduces here in Matthew 16, it was introduced on the wonderful confession that the Lord Jesus Christ was the Son of the living God. Let's turn to Acts before we see that intersection with Peter and Paul.
Acts Chapter 9, Saul of Tarsus, arrested on the road to Damascus, converted, saved, he's with the disciples in Damascus for a time and then it says in verse 20 of Acts 9 and straightway he preached Christ, or really should read Jesus. They would have no objection to Christ being the Son of God.
But they sure did object to the thought that Jesus was the Son of God.
Straightway he preached Jesus in the synagogues that he is the Son of God. That's where Peter.
Was in Matthew 16, but he interfered with the Lord going on to lay that foundation and so it's given to another to take up the truth of what would be built upon that foundation, but nonetheless there are ministries intersect in Ephesians chapter 2. Let's turn there.
And see where Paul?
And Peter?
Come together in their.
Very distinct ministries.
Ephesians 2 and let's start with verse 11.
Wherefore remember that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, are called uncircumcision by that which is called the circumcision, the flesh made by hands, that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
The Gentiles were in the place without having any claim on Israel's.
Blessings, covenant blessings, and even the promises to Abraham went no further really than this earth. And there were promises about the Gentiles in connection with that, but nothing to the Gentiles.
But now in Christ Jesus, he who sometimes were far off.
Are made nigh by the blood of Christ, for He is our peace, who hath made both one that is Jew and Gentile, and have broken down the middle wall of partition. What was the middle wall of partition? It was the law that maintained that distinction and separation between Jew and Gentile. You remember in John 4.
Where the Lord went to Samaria.
And he said on that well in Sychar, and it says there about that well. It was in the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. And if we were to look back in Genesis 48, we would read of Joseph saying to or Jacob saying to Joseph, One portion of I given to the above thy brethren, it was the first born's portion, that which I've taken out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow.
And then in chapter 49, when he blesses his sons, he says of Joseph, Joseph is a fruitful branch by a well.
Whose branches run over the wall. And there he was by that well, that fruitful branch, and he was reaching over this wall of partition, and he blessed that woman of Samaria. And there are others too, we know in the Lord's pathway.
As he reached over that wall of partition, but that wall of partition was there.
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Let's keep reading in Ephesians having abolished in his flesh the enmity even.
The law of commandments contained in ordinances for to make in himself of twain, 1 Newman.
I stress that this is something new. This is not just something that it was in the Old Testament and now takes on a new character. This is new.
That he might reconcile both unto God. Both Jew and Gentile need to be reconciled to God.
In one body.
By the cross.
Having slain the enmity thereby, and came and preached peace unto you, which were far off unto them which are nigh. For through Him we both have access by 1 Spirit unto the Father. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the Saints, and of the household of God. And our Here's our intersection and our built.
Upon the foundation of the apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief coroner Stone.
In whom all the building, fitly framed together, groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord, In whom ye also are builded together for inhabitation of God through the Spirit, the wall remained.
Until the cross.
They could not be reconciled to God in one body until that wall was gone.
The church could not have existed in the Old Testament while that wall were inhabited.
But now we are built upon that same foundation we read about.
In Matthew 16, in No. Peter speaks of Indiana his own way, though he doesn't take up the truth of the church.
He intersects with Paul here.
The apostles and prophets are brought in because they are the instruments that were used of God to reveal and to open up.
The truth of the Church.
Let's turn to acts again.
This time, Chapter 4.
X4.
Verse 10 Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel.
That by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by Him doth this man stand here before you whole. This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which has become head of the corner. The point I want to make here is He.
Again, it's reinforced he did not become that cornerstone.
That foundation for the church until after they had rejected him and put him on that cross, and he died and rose again, this one who rose from the dead, that they were all witnesses of God, has now made him the head of the corner. It wasn't until that took place.
We're multiplying scriptures here because I want your faith to rest solidly on the Word of God.
Anyone of those scriptures, Matthew 16 should be enough for us. Upon this rock I will build my church. Future should be enough.
Let's look at, let's multiply the scriptures. Let's let our faith rest solidly on the divine inspired Word of God.
Let's go back to.
A little bit further in Acts.
Chapter 2 Well, let's look at a couple verses in chapter one.
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Verse five The Lord speaking to the disciples before he ascended for John, truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days.
Hence.
Just look over now chapter 2. We'll see that event.
Verse one. When the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.
And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting, and there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as a fire, and it sat upon each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Verse 22 Ye men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man, approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you.
As you yourselves also know him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands of crucified and slain, whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be holding of it. For David speaketh concerning him. I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for He is on my right hand that I should not be moved therefore did.
Rejoice, and my tongue was glad. Moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope, because thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades. Connect that with John or Matthew 16.
Neither wilt thou suffer thy Holy One to see corruption. Thou hast made known to me the ways of life. Thou shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance. Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day. Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh he would.
Raise up Christ to sit on his throne. That's not raised from the dead, that's raised up from his loins. And there's a coming day when he is going to sit on David's throne because he's the rightful heir of David. This is that raised up is not raised from the dead. And it's an important point. There are those who say the throne of David's in heaven, and this verse is saying he was raised up to heaven to sit on David's throne and he's administering David's.
Right now, and that Kingdom is occurring and you're part of it and he's reigning.
And it's a Davidic Kingdom.
That's not what this verse is saying. Raised up from his loins to sit on his throne. That's a coming day. Let's keep going. He's saying this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell. Neither's flesh did see corruption. That's why he wrote in the Psalm those very things, because he knew that God was going to raise up Christ from his loins of sin of throne, just like Abraham had confidence.
That God had centered the promises in Isaac, He would raise him up.
This Jesus have God raised up, where we are all witnesses, therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father.
The promise of the Holy Ghost He has shed forth this which ye now see in here. For David is not ascended into the heavens, and he never had a throne there.
Never had a throne there.
But he saith himself. The Lord said unto my Lord, saith thou unto my right hand.
Until I make thy foes thy footstool, therefore let all the House of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ.
He's sitting on his Father's throne, not David's throne. The Kingdom, the time of the Kingdom on this earth prophesied in the Old Testament, has not taken place yet. When it does, he will sit on the throne of his Father. David called in Chronicles, the throne of Jehovah, called in Matthew 25, the throne of his glory.
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On this earth, when all the nations are brought before him.
But for now he's seated on the Father's throne. He received the Spirit of God once at the river Jordan because of the spotless perfection of his person, descending like a dove, bodily took his residence up in that spotless man. But now he receives the Spirit of God for the second time because of his finished work and the glory that it brought to God. And the Father gives him the Spirit, and then he sheds forth that spirit. He gives it to his own.
And that baptism of the Spirit that he had told them was about to take place did. Let's go to.
First Corinthians chapter 12 Because there's something else that took place in that baptism of the Spirit.
One Corinthians 12.
Verse 12. First, the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body being many, our one body. So also is Christ.
For by 1 Spirit we are all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free, and have been all made to drink into one spirit.
Speaking with a man one time, felt the church existed in the Old Testament, bringing some of these things up with him, he said. Wait a minute.
On what basis are you going to be in heaven?
As kind of a funny question, I said, Well, the merits of the blood of Christ.
And he said, well, what about Abraham and Isaac and the Old Testament believers? On what basis are they going to be in heaven? I said, well, same thing. And he said, so you're going to be there because of the blood of Christ, and they're going to be there because of the blood of Christ. Yeah. He said, when you got saved and you came under the shelter of the blood of Christ, did you become part of the church? I said, yeah. He said, so were they?
I don't know what to answer.
This first answers.
It's not the blood of Christ that made you part of the body of Christ.
Not one are in that body that are not under the shelter of the blood. But it's not the blood of Christ that made you part of the body of Christ. It's the baptism of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost and then now in time you have been brought in. It's the baptism of the Spirit that brought those believers who were under the blood of Christ into one body and in time you believe. Let's turn to Ephesians chapter one.
And I believe too, thank God.
Ephesians, chapter one.
This is one of my most well worn verses I think.
Verse 13.
And whom he also trusted after they heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.
And whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise?
You know, if you threw a rock in that pond, and our brother told us don't do that, if you threw a rock in that pond and it was big enough, it would send a ripple out, wouldn't it? And it would keep going and going and going and going until it reached the edges. And I don't see any out there. They keep a nice neat pump. But let's say there were cattails growing around in that pond. And as that ripple went out.
More and more cattails would become enveloped in that circle, wouldn't they?
For every cattail that came into that circle would you have to throw another stone in No one time. 1 Baptism of the Spirit took place once, and in time you were brought in. When you were saved, you were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, and it made you part of the body of Christ. And the Spirit of God that indwells you and me dwells. Christ in heaven has united Him, us to him as our head in heaven.
Let's turn to one verse in John Chapter 7.
To connect some of this together.
John, Chapter 7.
I.
Verse 38 Lord speaking, he that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this fake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive. For the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified. Could the church exist in the Old Testament?
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No, the Lord Jesus had not gone into death and been raised and glorified.
The Spirit of God could not be given until He was and form that one body, nor bring you into it when you were saved. It could not exist in the Old Testament.
Visions 1.
We're 17.
That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, and the knowledge of Him.
And this is my desire, dear ones, that you two would come into the knowledge and good, the eyes of your hearts being enlightened. It's really how it should read, that you may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the Saints, And what is the exceeding greatness of His power to usward, who believe according to the working of His mighty power which he wrought in Christ?
When He raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. And have put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things. To the Church, which is to the Assembly which is.
His body, the fullness of him that filleth All in all, when did he become head, were united to the Lord, being indwelled by the Spirit of God. We read in first Corinthians 6 our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and it says there in that chapter, he that is joined to the Lord is 1 Spirit.
And we're united to him, our head. When did he become the head? When God raised him up far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named.
That is when he made him head. There could be no body before there was a head. It would be a monstrosity, a headless body. There can be no existence of the church in the Old Testament. He was not made head until he was raised and glorified and seated at God's right hand.
Over and over and over in the Scriptures we get the proof that the church is a new thing. It did not exist in the Old Testament.
Was it prophesied of?
Was it spoken about?
Cut my time short.
We're going to look at the truth of the mystery. Hidden, gone.
And there are three passages in scripture which give us that truth and the first one.
We're going to actually not just three that speak of it, but there's three main ones that we want to look at where they're very explicit language. But for one point, first we're going to read in Ephesians one and verse.
9.
And having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation or administration the fullness of times.
He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in Him. The dispensation or administration of the fullness of times is when all the times of God have run their course. The testing of man, it's all done, and God is going to bring in a new administration in which Christ is going to be the head over everything both in heaven and earth.
A united system of glory, heavenly glory and earthly glory all.
Headed up in Christ, what is the grand purpose of God?
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I think if you ask many believers, they'd say all His grand purpose was to save my soul. Wonderful. It was to save your soul. But that's not the center upon which everything hangs. The center of everything that God is doing is the fact that He intends to glorify Himself in Christ.
In heaven and on earth, and think of it like a wagon wheel with a hub at the center, and all the spokes go out in a structure and support all the outsider and all the rest of the truth of God hangs upon that center. And Christ is that center. God is going to glorify himself and His well beloved Son.
Both in heaven and in earth.
That's what we might call the heavenly side of the mystery, its future. It's an administration that's yet to come.
But now let's turn to Colossians and see the earthly side.
Because there are two parts of that mystery. It's not only Christ.
Being the one in whom all things in heaven and earth are going to be headed up. You know in the Old Testament prophesied about Messiah reigning, but never said anything about all things in heaven. That was a secret in the heart of God. That only is brought out in the New Testament scriptures.
Colossians, Chapter One.
Paul had two ministries. The first one was the gospel. He speaks of that in verse 23, the hope of the gospel and it's preached to all creation or of why Paul and made a minister. He is a minister of the gospel.
Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, verse 24, and fill up that which is behind with the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the Church, which is the assembly, whereof I am made a minister. He was a minister of the assembly of the truth of the assembly, as well as the truth of the gospel. He had, if two platform ministry.
Or have I made a minister according to the dispensation, the stewardship that God had given him, responsibility that God had given him, connection with it to fulfill the word of God. What was given to the apostle Paul was going to complete all the revelations of God. The secrets that had been in the heart of God were now all brought up into the open, given to the apostle, and then on to the other apostles and prophets.
Even the mystery.
Which has been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his Saints, to whom God would make known. What is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles? Which is Christ in you the hope of glory?
That's the earthly side of the mystery. We thought of the heavenly side, the Lord Jesus exalted.
In the administration of the fullness of times, He'll head up all things in heaven and earth, but here, now, in this present time, His body, the Church, is here on earth, and all the features of Christ as that body goes on collectively and functions are displayed in this world. That is how Christ is displayed in this world.
You have a body.
And you have a spirit, and your spirit pervades your whole body. And you say in your head, I'm going to pick up this bottle and I'm going to open the cap and I'm going to take a drink.
It might not have said it out loud like I just did, but you saw what was in my head when I picked that bottle up.
And as the body functions on this earth, united to our head in heaven by the Spirit of God as it functions, who is displayed?
Christ is displayed, and so it's Christ in you in that sense, collectively displayed as a glory. And it's got the hope of glory because if Christ is displayed here in the church, what is its end going to be in that coming administration of the fullness of times?
We're going to share the place of headship over all things with him. It's the glory that's ahead.
And it's witnessed now in the fact that Christ is displayed in his body. Christ in you, the hope of glory.
00:45:01
Chapter 2.
For would that ye knew what great conflict I have for you and for them, and Laodicea, in as many as not seeing my face in the flesh. Anybody here ever seen Paul's face in the flesh? And this is for you.
Beth, their heart might be comforted being knit together in love.
And unto all the riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement or the full knowledge of the mystery of God. Last part of the verse. So really belong there.
So I'll just read it, dropping that out to the full knowledge of the mystery of God, in whom or really would be better in which?
Is hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words.
In the truth of the mystery.
Christ in the church is hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that are contained in this word. If you don't have a grasp and understanding of the truth of the mystery, you do not have in your hand the key to understand this book.
And those who don't have it really come with doctrines that are false as to that truth, they don't have the key in their hand. And Paul says, I don't want you to be beguiled with enticing words. And dear brother, dear sister, I don't want you to be beguiled either.
This mystery, it says, was hid from ages and from generations, now is made manifest to His Saints. Let's multiply scriptures again.
Romans, chapter 16.
Verse 25.
Now to Him it is of power to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret since the world began. We have in Colossians that it was hidden from ages and from generations, now made manifest to His Saints.
Here we read that it was kept secret since the world began, but now is made manifest and by the scriptures of the prophets according to the commandment of the everlasting God made known to all nations for the obedience of faith. Two things. You're not going to be an established Christian.
In your past down here, unless you know.
The truth of the mystery because the life and energy of the Saint.
Through this world depends upon your understanding of the truth that is proper to you in the dispensation in which you live. And not only that, those truths that are proper to the dispensation in which you live and I live are going to test our faith.
And so it's given for the obedience of faith.
They're going to test our faith. Now I want to point out one thing.
In a textual aspect that needs correction. In this it says now in verse 26 is made manifest by the scriptures of the prophets. Better translation is now made manifest by prophetic scriptures. Why is that important?
When we read in the New Testament of the Law and the prophets.
And the Psalms Speaking of the Old Testament scriptures.
If this really was.
By the scriptures of the prophets, it would be Old Testament scriptures.
It's not that word. The definite article is not there in the original. It's just by scriptures which have a prophetic character. New Testament scriptures have a prophetic character. We are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone.
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It's their scriptures which have a prophetic character that bring us into the presence of God and teach us the truth we need to know for our walk in this scene. It's by prophetic scriptures.
So let's turn to Ephesians.
Chapter 3.
Verse one.
For this 'cause I, Paul the prisoner of Jesus Christ, for you Gentiles.
If you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God, which has given me to you word how that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery and that's the only way it could be made known by revelation as I wrote a four and few words. He's Speaking of chapter 2 where we write about the middle wall of partition being broken down and God making of the twains you and Gentile one new man as I wrote a foreign few words.
Previous chapter, whereby when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ. Here we go again, Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.
Just jumping down to.
Verse 19 And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery which hath.
Which from the beginning of the world has been hid in God.
Who created all things by Jesus Christ?
Cautions don't turn, I'm just going to read it. The mystery which has been hid from ages and from generations, but has now made manifest to the Saints Romans.
According to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret since the world began.
Ephesians, which in other ages was not made known unto the.
Of man, and then a little further in the chapter, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God.
No, the Old Testament Saints don't speak of the truth of the Church, and unless we accept the expressed statements of Scripture, we will get nowhere in our souls as to this truth three times over. It's so clearly and expressly stated that this was not revealed, not made known. Not only that it was.
In God, not hidden in the Old Testament, not like the prophets that Peter spoke of who wrote and didn't understand what they wrote until it was hidden from them. This was hid and gone. Only now may manifest to the New Testament apostles and prophets.
Know the Church of God was number part of any subject of the prophecies.
Of the Old Testament.
Let's look at what the details of that mystery are.
Verse six of chapter 3 of Ephesians that the gentiles are really.
Should read they who are of the nations. They who are of the nations should be fellow heirs. Keep your finger there. I want to look at a verse in Acts 15.
Acts 15.
Paul and Barnabas going back to Jerusalem.
Verse three. And being brought on their way by the assembly, they pass through Fancy and Samaria, declaring the conversion of the Gentiles, and they cause great joy into all the brethren.
Same thing. Instead of conversion of the Gentiles, that should read conversion of those from among the nations. Why is that important? Turn over to Isaiah 60.
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Isaiah 60.
Speaking of future blessing for Jerusalem.
Verse 3.
Well, let's read verse one. Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.
Verse three. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness.
Of thy rising.
Verse 5. Then thou shalt see and flow together. Thine heart shall fear and be enlarged, because the abundance are the forces of the sea. A picture of Gentile nations shall be converted unto thee, and the forces of the wealth of the Gentiles shall come unto thee.
Yes, God has promises about the Gentiles in the Old Testament, but none to them. The promises are to Israel and the Gentiles will be blessed, subservient to Israel. There is a day coming in which there will be an end mass conversion of the Gentiles, but that is not what Paul was Speaking of.
In Acts 15 and Barnabas, but a conversion of individuals from among the Gentiles.
Not the conversion of the Gentiles and mass. And that is part of the truth of the mystery that the gentiles, those who are from among the nations, should be fellow heirs, fellow heirs. You know, my mother passed away and all of us siblings, we are, have an equal status in the inheritance. And there are grandchildren that will probably get something too, but they don't share the same status.
Myself and my brothers and sisters.
That's what it means, fellow heirs. It's not equal shares, it's equal in status in the inheritance. The same rights, the same place. The gentiles should be fellow heirs with the Jews, who we found in chapter 2 been joined into one body, the middle wall of partition broken down.
And of the same body or a joint body and partakers.
Of His promise in Christ by the Gospel, Three things.
Joint heirs.
Joint body and joint partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel. What is that promise? That's not the Old Testament promises of Messiah and the blessing he would bring in turn to Titus. And then we're going to have to close.
Titus.
Verse one of chapter one Paul, a servant of God, an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect, and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness in hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie promised before the world began.
There's one more.
I was thinking it was chapter 2.
Verse seven of chapter 3. Sorry.
Being justified by His grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope.
Of eternal life.
Joint partakers of the promises in Christ by the gospel, the hope of eternal life. Paul always looks at eternal life, or almost always at the end of the path. John looks at it more to the present possession. But it's that hope of eternal life had no part of Old Testament prophetic scriptures. They looked for a life that lived as long as the millennial Kingdom would last. But we have a promise of hope in Christ.
The hope of eternal life that we share with every member of the body of Christ.
Those three things form the core of the mystery, and none of them, none of them, are part of the Old Testament prophetic scripture. That is the mystery that was hidden, God not revealed. No, the church is not prophesied of in the Old Testament. It's didn't exist there either. Let your faith rest on the expressed statements.
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Of the Word of God.
1 Thessalonians 5:8-13
Reading
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We pray for.
God.
Exercise.
Today, Oh my God, it's the end of the day. I can't remember being browsed in all of you.
Verse 8, brother.
Chapter 5. Verse 8.
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I Thessalonians, chapter 5, verse 8.
But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith, and love, and foreign helmet, the hope of salvation. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him. Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another.
Even as also we do. And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labor among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake, and be at peace among yourselves. Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly. Comfort the feeble minded, support the weak, be patient toward all.
See that none render evil for evil unto any man, but ever follow that which is good both among yourselves and to all men. Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing in everything. Give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. Quench not the Spirit, despise not prophesying.
Prove all things, hold fast that which is good, abstain from all appearance of evil, and the very God of peace sanctify you wholly. And I pray God, your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless under the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it. Brethren, pray for us.
Greet all the brethren with unholy kiss. I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.
When I was a child I grew up on a farm and if my dad went away and said I had a chore to do or some task.
My tendency was to wait till the last minute.
But if my mother reminded me that Dad's going to be home at 7:00 as the time approached, I get concerned about finishing that task.
Because I had told my dad that I would do it. So I procrastinate until the last possible minute. I don't know if you have children like that, but some of you may have but when the.
Thought that he was just about to arrive was in my mind. It got me busy and I was thinking about that Bernie bracket and I were reminiscing a little bit about the early days. In between 1975 and 1985. There was kind of a revival that took place at the factory that worked. And eventually there were about 70 people in the factory that got saved between all three shifts. And there were multiples from them, their families that got saved and through the community in that.
But there was something interesting that took place. We would often I was sharing this with someone else, we'd say you got your Rapture shoes on.
And the thought was we're all wearing steel toed boots and stuff, and they'd be quickly left behind if the Lord shouted. But we were thinking about being ready for the Lord's coming. And we often did that and talked with each other, talked about the Lord's coming a lot. And it had an effect on how we conducted ourselves with those thoughts in the front of our minds, constantly talking about and speaking about it with each other. And.
Questions and all of that kind of conversation and I was thinking about that as we're having these meetings.
Now having those thoughts in the forefront make a difference. There's a sanctifying effect. The Spirit of God works to sanctify us, but there's a sanctifying effect at what's in your mind and what's in the forefront and what you're anticipating and this anticipation of the Lord Jesus eminent return because you can think about it. And a young person I did as a young person if the Lord came.
And he found me doing this.
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How do you answer that if the Lord came and I'm in the middle of this?
Or as our brother said about in our hearts and minds there when we first get saved, there may be rooms that we don't want the Lord to visit.
Well, it makes a difference when you think about that, the Lord's imminent return and coming for us. And then too, when we plan things, you know, there's nothing wrong with, as our brothers and several have said, there's nothing wrong with wanting to be married, wanting to develop a career, wanting to have some kind of job or business or whatever. But I remember a brother saying recently, we need to hold on to those things loosely.
I like that thought that they're important to do because if you just sit around and you're a young person and you don't make any plans for anything, life, well, I'm just satisfied to work at Denny's and flip burgers or something. That's complacency and planning, but holding on to things loosely with this idea in the back of your mind that the Lord is coming soon. Go ahead, get married, go ahead, plan for your career, plan a job. Do that. But keep in mind that.
He's coming soon and then does that thing that you're going to do, is it going to interfere?
With whatever gift you have from the Lord and whatever opportunity you have from the Lord to share the gospel with others.
And is it something that you hold loosely or does? Is it something that has you in its grip? That's another thing, you know, Scripture tells us that we are to.
Lay aside every weight.
That tells us.
Also, the sins that easily beset us put them away. Both of those things can hinder.
And that when you have in the forefront of your mind, hey, the Lord might come today. And when you get up in the morning and some of your first thoughts are after you greet the Lord and speak to the Lord as Lord, maybe you're coming today. And in light of that, you spend your day and you even begin your day, your prayer in your reading as you think how that relates to the Lord's coming, it makes a huge difference. And I was thinking about that period of time, how going to work.
And I didn't like the job that much. It was a welding job. It was hot in a factory. It paid well. But you know what? When people were getting saved and we were talking about the Lord's coming every day with fellow believers, I started looking forward to going to work.
It made a difference in my life and it made a difference in everyone there.
That's a good admonition, Sam. In our verse 8 here, it says we are of the day be sober. You know we're not on a on a cruise ship until we get home.
We're in a battlefield and we're not looking for someone who's just shooting Nerf darts.
He wants to take us out and kill us.
John 1010, deceived cometh not, but to steal and kill and destroy. And you, dear young people, he puts traps out there. He's not just trying to trip you up, He's trying to destroy you. This is for reals the next thing here. It says put on the breastplate of faith and love. My dear, beloved brother Steve Hall said. I have a little note. That's the bulletproof vest of confidence in God, because we're going to take hits down here.
We're going to get bumped. It's going to happen. And if our focus of life is ourselves, if we're the center of our solar system, we're going to question how could the Lord let this happen? What, like because I'm just supposed to have a wonderful life? Isn't that why God saved me? No, He saved me to conform me to the image of His Son. He's the center of the solar system, not me. And I'll tell you a brief story. When I was 19 years old, I just got married to the most amazing woman in the whole world.
We moved to Ohio and we were going to rent this apartment. And I said, Lord, just make it plain if we're supposed to live here. It was brand new. The water had never been turned on. And the guy said we have sulfur water. Well, I'm from Walla Walla, WA. I've never heard of sulfur water. And we're moving in and everything. And I go to wash my hands and I turn on the kitchen sink and anybody in here who doesn't know what sulfur water is.
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It was so gross. I was like, Nope, we're leaving just like that, babe, pack up, we're out of here. The thing is, if I'm looking, I want my life to be perfect and I go and do this. I unloaded all my stuff. Now I got to pick it all back up. And I'm like, Lord, why? How could you let that happen to me? I thought you liked me. And it makes this whole big trauma. Instead of saying, Lord, what are you trying to teach me?
And the Lord used that as an opportunity to show me that He could guide me, that I could trust Him.
That he had a plan. And the next one is the helmet of the hope of salvation. Where there is no hope, the people perish. I don't know how many couples I've talked to and they give up because they say it's not going to matter anyways. Well, guess what your farm looks like if you give up? It's all 100% weeds. Well, I'm not going to do anything anyway. It's not going to matter anyway. I'm not going to study for that test. I'm going to fail anyway. That's where the devil gets us.
We believe the lie that he, the Lord, isn't going to be faithful. That isn't going to matter. It does matter. And we need that helmet on, that he's for us because we're going to get bumped out here and that we have the confidence in him.
Chapter in verse 8 where we began it says but. And so in Mr. Darby's translation there's a semi colon and so we're not of the night and so but.
Let us and the Spirit of God is giving us the instruction that the Christian pathway.
Is an appeal to the heart and the affections of God's people and God is not giving us commandments as he did to the Old Testament Saints. And so he's appealing to us and the affections are really tender of those that are newly saved. And so the apostle is addressing those and with the intelligence of what the Spirit of God is bringing out is that the affections need to be guarded. And so he says here who are but let us who are of the day.
Sober, and so we're to be cognitive of the dangers that are about us and not to be intoxicated with the pleasures of this world and so on. I believe that's what he's bringing before us. And then putting on the breastplate of faith and love. And so the heart, the breastplate covered the heart. It covered the it's a picture of protection of the affections for Christ. And so they had been just newly saved.
In that verse, that is so.
Familiar to us in verse chapter one that they turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for his Son from heaven. What will damage those affections, which will cool those affections is not having the heart guarded. And so they needed to have the breastplate of faith. That's confidence in God and the object, the object of Christ himself, the breastplate.
The affections preserved for Christ himself and the affections, the love to know him as the source of love. And so he says this helmet too really protects our thoughts and the hope of salvation. So we have a a hope, we have a deferred certainty, but we have a hope of not only eternal salvation. But I believe here he's Speaking of our practical salvation.
It's possible to have a saved soul, but a lost life, and he wanted their affections to be preserved so that they would not only have a saved soul, but a saved life.
Everything in this present world tends to make us walk by sight, Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 5. We walk by faith, not by sight. I think that's such an important thing to keep in mind because everything here is geared to make us walk according to what we see around us. And I don't say we ignore what we see around us. We don't shut our eyes.
Now we use our eyes, but what controls our life is what God has told us in His Word. And that's so important to keep the focus on what God has said in His Word. We walk by faith, not by sight. Lord, help us to do that.
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It's interesting to consider some of those Old Testament.
Men of faith, Abraham, God said I'm going to give you a son when he had no son at all. I mean, it was pretty severe test of his faith. And when Sarah suggested that he used another option to have a son, why he didn't consult the Lord, he would have did what Sarah told you.
And then the second time Sarah came to him and says, cast out the bondwoman and her son, and Abraham didn't want to do that. But this time Abraham went to the Lord, and the Lord says you do what she says.
Brethren, when our wives say something to us, we need to listen. But don't do just exactly what they say. Take it to the Lord and do what the Lord tells you to do. That time, Sarah was right.
And so we walk by faith. But then I think of the awfulness of the test that God gave to Abraham. Take thy son and only son Isaac, and offer him for a burnt offering.
There is no record of any backtalk on Abraham's part saying well, Lord, he didn't you say that this was the one. No, no, top.
He simply obeyed. That's the obedience of faith. How important that we exercise faith in these last days. It's tough because this whole world is geared on going by what you see.
Lord help us in that. Another person that was a man of faith is David.
Can I? I must say I'm amazed at the simplicity of his faith when he goes down in obedience to his Father to see his brethren at the war. And there he sees that giant, and he says, I will go.
And fight the giant. And to David, it wasn't a question of David versus Goliath. It was a question of God versus Goliath.
And brethren, that's what it's about. It's not a matter of if you are able for this situation, it's a matter there's God up to this situation. And so we trust in him. We walk by faith. And David went forward and I, I'm amazed. I have often thought about David as he approached that giant and the giant looked at him in disdain and says, come here, I'll give your flesh to the birds of the field and the fowls.
To the beast of the field, and the vowels of the air. And he says, you come to me with a sword in the spirit. The spirit I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, whose whose armies you have defied.
The simplicity of faith is is beautiful to see that's what we're called to brethren, but on the breastplate of faith and love and then like has been mentioned the.
Helmet of the hope of salvation in the Ephesians. That's the helmet of salvation.
It's a little bit different focus, but here's the hope because it's talking about the question of the Lord's coming.
And, O brethren, things down here are not what you want them to be. So often there are situations in life that are difficult, that are inexplainable. Are you going to give up because of that?
Put on the helmet of the hope of salvation at a moment's notice. The Lord's going to give that shout, and we're going to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. We're going to be transformed into bodies.
Like his body of glory, Incredibly wonderful to think about it. And then we'll be with him in that eternal day. O brethren, this is what is ahead for the believer. Put on the helmet of the hope of salvation.
He made his efforts to David and here we have the word face.
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What is the middle letter of the word faith?
I What is the middle letter of the word pride?
I But in the one case the eye is trusting in the Lord. In the other case, the eye is trusting in oneself. And that's what characterized Goliath the giant. There was pride. And you know, pride goes before destruction, but.
David, on the other hand, he was trusting in the Lord, and he was successful.
Somebody said faith is spelled.
FAITH.
Make an acronym forsaking all I take Him, and when our trust is in the Lord.
We are on solid foundation, solid ground.
Brother Kelly said someplace faith to those that don't have it seems to be arrogance.
David's brothers thought he was arrogant.
Hooli.
He had confidence because, oh, by the way, I killed the lion and the bear, and you know what? I grabbed the lion by the beard and smote him. Yeah, the Lord delivered him into my hand. This guy, you know, he never calls him a giant.
And when he goes into battle, he runs at him. You think there's faith in this man? Yeah. You see it demonstrated. He runs at him. Do you run at your problems? When you're facing a giant, do you run at it? David did. He ran right at it. He picked up five stones. Why did he pick up five? Because he was ready for the other four brothers.
He was ready for the other four brothers that might pop out of the back of that army. He was ready for them and he had confidence in the one he had learned to trust when nobody was watching. And that's the thing. You hear, brethren, over the years talking about the Hitherto's we have in our lives. Every one of us has Hitherto's in our lives. And you have Hitherto's you've heard about from your parents and you've had Hitherto's that you read in Scripture and you have Hitherto's that you've heard stories of from your older brother. All of those things help us. So your own Hitherto's that have come in the past.
David knew in the mountains with the sheep what God could do. When's the last time you grabbed a lion, bite a beard, or even had an opportunity to do such a thing? He did. And oh, by the way, I killed a bear too. Is that arrogance? No, that's confidence in the God who delivered him, and confidence in the God that you've gotten to know and who has helped you in the past. And you have some Hitherto's should help you to face a new challenge, a new giant.
A new Goliath with confidence because it's the same God. And then run at him.
You're in a very different position, perhaps a better position than say David, because David had to learn. He got a lot of training when he was racing sheep. We in this case have been put on a different ground. There is no training required. You're handed this defensive helmet and breastplate and so on. But we have been put on a different thing. I know we spoke on that the other day.
We have been brought from darkness into light. Do we need to be reminded of that? We have been given a new life. You know our our brothers spoke on the church there. You remember he mentioned when the Holy Ghost came down that rushing wind is said to be looking. Mr. Darby's explanation is like a breathing noise, as if to me a new life.
But this is a spiritual life that God has given us, not only a new life, but now we have the Spirit indwelling in US.
Helping us so there is no strength of our own. It is all dependent on Him. And what's all been said is true. But now we have more admonition as if it were. Now do we have confidence that God will take us through. And that's why those helmets of salvation. You know how many times we hear someone say, I don't believe I'm a Christian anymore. Satan knows how to cast doubt.
Into one's mind. We need the word of God. We need the Spirit of God to help us to be more conscious of what the Lord Jesus is to us. So here. And we need one another too. That's why we're told to comfort one another with these words, because sometimes.
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We can't touch everybody. I know in a large group like this, there are people that we don't get along well. I shouldn't say that. We don't have a lot of similarities, so perhaps we don't click. I guess that's a better phrase. And there are some that you just naturally click and the Lord wants you to use that too. Someone that you can touch, Encourage them. We can't touch everybody, but encourage those who are around you. Comfort one another with these words.
Good to connect verse nine with the hope of salvation.
For God hath not appointed us to wrath.
That's a connecting word for.
So put on a helmet as a helmet the hope of salvation. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, and so its salvation looked at the end of the path.
And it's salvation from wrath. Well, we know we have the salvation of our souls now, as Peter says.
Salvation from eternal judgment. This is salvation from the wrath that's coming upon this world. And so part of what the apostle Paul had given the Thessalonians and the little time he was there was not only that the Lord was coming, but that there was judgment coming upon this world. And so in chapter one.
We'll connect those two together. Verse 10 and to wait for his son from heaven.
When we raised from the dead, even Jesus or Jesus our deliverer.
From the wrath to come.
And so it's looking on really to the wrath of God that's going to fall on this world and tribulation. Romans chapter 5, we get another verse.
Verse 9.
Romans 59.
Much more than being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.
That's again the same thing. That's what's coming upon this world. Let's look one more connection in Revelation.
A letter to the Church of Philadelphia.
He says to Philadelphia, verse 10 Because thus kept the word of my patience, I will also keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.
We've been, we have our hope and the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, our Deliverer from that coming wrath, and we need to have our thoughts as to what is going to take place in this world.
As we wait for him to come to be protected by that truth that we've been delivered from that coming wrath, and that is the certain end for everything in this world is going to be to fall under the judgment of God in that great tribulation. It's not going to get better. It's not going to improve. It's going to come under judgment. And we need to have our thoughts protected by that or we could go all over the place in our Christian pathway involved with all kinds of activities.
That really are a denial of the fact that this world is under judgment and it's certain to come. So it protects our thoughts, this hope of salvation from the wrath that's coming. And isn't it wonderful? The Lord Jesus bore the wrath of God for us will never pass through it. His church will never pass through the wrath of God because he has taken it all for us. Now there are those who say well, the wrath of God.
As the last 3 1/2 years of the Tribulation is turning a little over in Revelation.
And chapter.
6.
We get the 6th field and verse 12, and then under the 6th seal we find in verse 16, I said to the mountains and rocks fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of his wrath has come.
And who shall be able to stand? These verses take us up to the middle of the tribulation. And they say the great day of His wrath has come. And so there are those who preach that the church will be raptured halfway through the tribulation. But we've got to go through the 1St 3 1/2 years. That's not the wrath of God, they say. It's not. That doesn't happen till the 6th seal. And under the 6th seal we get raptured. Well, what's the key to that? The key to that is Revelation 4:00 and 5:00.
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We see before any seal on that book is open, the entire company of the resurrected heavenly Saints are there in the four and 20 elders complete. Not one is missing. We're all there before 1 seal and that book is open. No, the rapture is not going to happen under the 7th seal.
We're we're going to be all there before one of those seals is open. We're going to witness the opening of those seals by our Lord Jesus Christ. He's delivered us from the coming wrath.
We want to have that clear in our thoughts because it's going to protect us.
In the first reading Meaning of Suspension, that with this the 4th chapter was the Enoch chapter. The deliverance from the wrath is the Enoch deliverance. He was called out and is taken out of the world. Noah makes it through the flood, but that's carrying him safely through. That's a picture of the remnant of Israel being brought through the time of wrath. But here we have a different way of obtaining salvation, not going through the raft.
Of the mouth oriented oriented entirely entirely differently differently here.
This is one of the passages. First is one of the passages in Scripture in the New Testament that we can use and that clearly teaches us that the church will not go through the Tribulation period. Brother Steve has mentioned another one in connection with Philadelphia and we have that assurance that the church will not go through the Tribulation period. So the word salvation here is used a couple of times in our chapter, verse 8.
The hope of salvation, we could say, apply it to the rapture. We ought to have that blessed hope, what Titus address calls the blessed hope, which is the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ for us to rapture us out of this scene. But this salvation, the second word here, the second time it's used to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ.
The It'll be a practical salvation if we're going to be saved out of this scene.
We're not a part of this world and so let us who are of a day be sober. We're not a part of this scene that's going to fall under judgment. We're separate from it. We're heavenly citizen. We're a heavenly a body of believers might just point out that there's a couple of other ways that salvation is used. It's used very little, very few times in connection with eternal salvation, the eternal salvation of soul. But in Philippians chapter 2, that word salvation is used to gain.
And it's used umm, I think it's in chapter 2 The.
Chapter 3 that.
Verse 12 Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure. So it's really there is the salvation of the assembly.
You and I live in a scene the assembly is the assembly of the Lord Jesus were gathered to his precious name in the assembly is the object of the enmity of Satan himself. And so we have different dangers that come into the assembly and that we need to with fear and trembling, knowing our weakness and yet the strength of God that the assembly can be saved from the different dangers that come against it. So salvation is spoken of in different ways.
In the scriptures and here, we're going to be saved out of this scene.
By our Lord Jesus Christ.
I can back up and go to chapter one for a moment. I'm going to read in three different places and I ask you to watch for 3 words.
As we read them, faith, hope, love. Now let's go to chapter one, when Paul writes to these babes in Christ, these new believers, and he's explaining to them what the Christian life is all about after having been with them for a very short period of time. And so we'll read. Remember the three words, faith, hope, love.
00:40:19
Verse 3. Remembering without ceasing.
Your work of faith.
And labor of love.
And patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father.
Now chapter 4 again or chapter 5?
And verse A.
Let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love and foreign helmet the hope of salvation.
I'll go forward to his second letter.
That apparently was written not all that long after the first one.
Second Fells Thelonians, chapter one.
Verse three. We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, for it is me, because your faith groweth exceedingly.
And the charity or love?
Of everyone of you, all toward each other aboundeth.
Where is the hope?
Chapter 2.
Verse 2.
That he be not soon.
Shaken in mind, or be troubled neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter, as from us. But the day of the Lord or the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means.
For that day shall not come except. And he goes on to explain.
The three pillars of Christian life on a daily basis, our faith, hope and love.
And the apostle Paul here in these new believers begins with it. And if you go to the other epistles, you'll find the same three brought out as he writes to his brethren in the different assemblies. And it is the.
Necessary 3 aspects of our daily life as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Faith, hope and love. And it's wonderful to see without developing it at any detail. There's already been a lot said on it that in the very beginning, what did it result in them? Where there was faith, there was worth, there was labor.
Immediately in their lives that faith caused them to be active in the things of the Lord. What about love? Immediately and their life was the labor of love going on for others and one another, and those about them put them to work in love. And the third, what about their hope?
They got to be like the Lord Jesus right away, the man of faith who's waiting for the Lord to come the most. Is it somebody in this room? I'm going to suggest, no, I'm going to suggest that the greatest expression of faith in the hope and the expression of patience is Jesus Christ.
He is the man, more than any other, looks forward.
To having you and I in his presence. And he's waited patiently for 2000 years for that hope to be realized of having his own with himself. He's the man of patience. And these Saints here were entering into the enjoyment of it. And so then when he gets to the 4th, 5th chapter, he tells them that they're going to be conflict.
00:45:01
On those three things, and they needed the protection, and it's already been explained to us a little late. Recite it in slightly different words. What controls your heart, controls your life?
Whatever is most important to you in your heart here this afternoon is what has the greatest influence on your life this afternoon and tomorrow and the next day. And so the breastplate is that which is necessary to protect.
The most vital aspect of what we are our heart. And where's your faith? Is it in your head?
In faith, believe in thine heart, the Lord Jesus.
And consequently, that same armor that's in Ephesians 6 speaks about that need of protection of the heart. And then when it comes to the hope, it says the helmet because it's protecting the mind.
Is protecting the mind and thinking about the address that we just had and some comments made in that address is so important that if our mind does not have correct doctrine, we can't have correct walk.
Our thoughts are going to be wrong unless our thoughts are formed by the language.
And the truth of the Word of God. We need to be so occupied with God's Word.
As the source of giving us right thoughts, in Romans chapter 13, it says of some there, what did they need concerning their mind? Well, what did these people in Thessalonica need? Their minds? That the day they were saved and they'd only been saved a while, What was in their minds?
Their minds were full of wrong thoughts.
That they had accumulated in their lives all the way up to the point of their salvation.
And so they needed the transforming process of Romans 13 that says, be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. That is, they had to replace all the thoughts that they previously had with new ones, ones formed by God and God's thoughts that we each need and consequently.
We need.
Daily, to have our thoughts formed by the scripture rather than by the news or by what we're going to get at school or work or anywhere else. There is that When it's in the spiritual or moral realm, our thoughts need to come in that way. So what happens in in when he writes the 2nd letter?
It wasn't very long there after, but he's already got to help them because.
One of those three things they didn't have anymore in its proper way. What should be and what is for us, Each one we should grow. And so he's able to say to them the joy he found when he writes his second letter, he says your faith groweth exceedingly.
Next time I see you, will I see you groan?
Well, I outwardly when they're little kids, next time I see them, I'll know they've grown. There isn't any question about it. They've grown. It's a wonderful joy when we see each other occasionally when we in the conversation can see in a brother or sister growth. And sometimes it's pretty evident that God has been at work in that life and developed growth. And so here was faith growing.
Charity exceeding.
That love between them was active. It was growing.
But what about the hope?
Well, they receive false information. They had false communications that played with their mind. And what's the consequence when we allow things that are not of God? Well, an important point really is Paul said you got the truth.
And even if somebody said it was from me, you already know what the truth is, so don't accept it.
00:50:05
Don't accept it, refuse it. And then he goes on to show what the consequence of having their mind played with. He sets it, he corrects it in the second chapter to reestablish to them the truth of the hope that was set before them and why what they had heard was wrong. And so we often, in fact most of the epistles, not all, not the first one here, but the 2nd and many of the epistles were written to a correct.
Wrong thinking and wrong teaching that the Saints had, and so we're constantly exposed with it and thank God that He has used even that as a means of His way of revealing to us truth that we can walk in. So brethren, we need faith, we need hope, and we need love as a constant of our everyday life. Brother Bob mentioned Abraham and being told to offer his son.
And he said that there wasn't, there's no record of him arguing with God about the matter or reasoning like, oh, wow, why, why are you doing this to me? None of that. But there was an inner conversation. And we know about that because the New Testament tells us. And it illustrates what you're saying, Don. He believed God, what he had told him. So when he was told to go to the mountain and sacrifice his son, his inner conversation, you know, the devil attacked him. We don't hear that conversation, but you know what happened.
But he goes OK.
What do I know? God told me this boy is going to have children. So faith reasons to what's next? I'm going to see a resurrection.
That's where Faith took it on based on what God had told him, Faith took him, oh, I'm going to see my boy resurrected. That's not what happened. Maybe in type it did, but that's not what happened. But Faith didn't take him to some wild argument or mad at God experience didn't he believed he was going to see a resurrection.
Commented on in the sense that we from the very beginning or taught certain things. But brethren, sometimes it takes a long time to learn them and we don't want to give up just because we fail. Abraham is a wonderful example of a man who failed in faith. When he started his journey in life, he was told to go out.
And leave his family where he'd been grown up.
And he laughed, but he couldn't leave his family behind as he was told to. That was a lack of faith. He was told where the promises were going to be to him. And he got there into that land and.
The conflict came up and what did he do? He left the place of promise and went down into Egypt and caused a lot of grief for himself with respect to the protection of his wife because of what he did. And yet God in infinite grace brought that man back into the place and caused his faith to grow so that when it came to the test regarding Isaac, he had learned.
And as Sam has said, we see him excel in it, and we find that same record given to us in Hebrews 11 as a wonderful example of a man of faith. But at the same time, just like the Thessalonians, it didn't last very long before they were in trouble. So often in our lives, things start out and there's the immediate initial joy of salvation and then.
The reality of everyday life hits us pretty quick and sometimes we don't live up to what we have already known. But I just say it as a matter of encouragement that God never gives up on His work to fulfill His ultimate result of making us like Christ.
I think that's a really good point. Yesterday there was a dear brother said to be. It would be nice if we spoke a little bit more about the path back to him when we have difficulties in our life. And I think that you explained that very well with Abraham there. It's good for us to recognize that as we come to Christ and are saved. The path is not an easy one. Sometimes it's difficult. I know myself, I've gone through difficult times in my life, and I'm thankful that the Lord can draw me back to Him and that there's a path back to Him.
00:55:14
I was thinking of all these points being brought out.
Really indicates to me that even through chapter 4 and into this part that we're in in chapter 5 that we need to be occupied with.
Upright things or righteousness and.
The brother said our minds get filled with thoughts that aren't right at times, and we often refer to that verse in Ephesians 5, the washing of water by the Word and how much we need to take up His word and read it daily says that He might present.
That He might present it to himself, a glorious church not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing that should be holy and without blemish. And that's what He's preparing us for right now while we wait for His return. It goes on in this portion. We often use the word comfort because that's what it says. But really he's exhorting. He's saying to exhort one another in these things, to stir each other up in them. And we need to help each other as we move from the individual aspect here. And then verse 12 and the assembly side of it.
Her collective side of it, I should say. And then also it says to edify, we need to build each other up in these days. And when I think of chapter 4 there it said that we might increase more and more. It reminds me of a verse.
In Proverbs.
Chapter 4 I believe.
I'm merely thinking of how difficult it is.
For each.
Often we hear over and over again how dark this world is. And that itself can be rather depressing, how dark this world is, how dark it is. And you know it is evil. It's truly evil. It's going to mention in this chapter a little further on, it's purely evil. It's run by Satan. You can't serve 2 masters, you can only serve one.
And so, as we hear it over and over again, surely we lose sight of the coming of the Lord.
Sure we surely we lose sight of any moment we would hear that shout we spoke of yesterday and be caught up, but I just really enjoy this verse in Proverbs 4 as we increase more and more it says in verse.
But the path of the Jostens is the shining light that shineth more and more under the perfect day.
The way the wicked is as darkness, they know not of what they stumble, but the.
Path of the justice is the shining light that shines more and more on the perfect day. We can't shine more and more, dear ones, if we don't take up with him, if we don't get caught up with him. Upright things. And he says occupy till he come. He's be occupied with him until he come.
And then shine brighter more and more into the perfect day. You won't see the darkness. The light would be so bright. And as we go along together, brother read in Philippians chapter 3 There I think a little further down it says Paul says, but follow together after me. He says that's the example of Christ is what he's indicating. There he was walking in the ways of Christ, Lord Jesus.
And so we too can go along together, following after him in those ways. And would be so bright.
Can't be caught up with the darkness. We can only be caught up with him.
Please remember that these dear things are suffering. They were suffering persecution, They were losing their personal property. They were some of them were losing their lives perhaps and so he says he presents to them at the end verse nine that they would obtain their obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ. That really is the final deliverance that they would have at his coming at the rapture who died for us that whether we wake.
That is, whether we're alive at the coming of the Lord Jesus.
Or whether we sleep, that is, that there would be those that would perhaps die before the Lord came to be absent from the body and present with the Lord either of those two conditions, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him. Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do. And so they were to use this hope, the teaching of this blessed hope.
01:00:13
That the apostle had brought before them in chapter 4, verse 13. Really. Verse 15 to 18.
They were to use this to build up one another and to encourage one another and to present to one another the fact that there was a final deliverance and the Lord Jesus would come himself for them. And so then in verse 12 begins a different subject of it's helpful and I've said it before. You notice if you have a Darby translation, there are paragraphs and the Spirit of God uses these little bits of teaching. Chapter 5, verse one.
Down to verse, the end of verse 11 is a paragraph, and he's got a subject in mind and he's teaching in connection with that particular subject. Then in chapter, in verse 12, now he begins really his final.
Encouragement and instructions as to the what it would be to be a believer in that day and for us as well, and the instructions that are given that they might go on in an orderly way.
The first thing he brings before them in verse 12 is that those that are in oversight. Now this isn't translated very well in the King James translation, but it says I'm going to read it in the new translation. But we beg you, brethren, to know those who labor among you and take the lead among you in the Lord and admonish you and regard them exceedingly in love on account of their work. So this is referring to those who are in oversight in the local assembly.
He's not Speaking of those that perhaps might take a lead in public ministry or anything like that. He's Speaking of those that are in oversight. And so they might they. The assembly was young, he was only there for maybe 3 weeks.
And he gave them some instruction, he taught them as much as he could, and then he was really forced to leave. And so he writes this letter. And as those that are new believers and a young fresh assembly, the Spirit of God was going to raise up those that would protect them and that would shepherd them. Let's look at Acts chapter 20 just to show that it's there's an act of God. It's the sovereignty of God.
In connection with oversight, God raises up those that will be shepherds for the flock. It says in verse 28, Acts 20, verse 28, take heed therefore unto yourselves is speaking to those that are in oversight and to all the flock over the witch.
I think over the which we're in. I think it's Darby translation, the Holy Ghost.
The Holy Ghost hath made you overseers. This is their work twofold.
To feed the Church of God, which he had purchased with his own blood. And really they were to they were to feed and then they were to watch in verse 31 and remember.
And so they were to be watchful, they were to feed the Saints of God. God raises up shepherds and that's the sovereignty of God in another place. It's, I think it's first Timothy chapter 3 verse one. It says it is. This is a true saying. First Timothy chapter 3 verse one. This is a true saying if a man desired the office of the Bishop or a shepherd.
He desireth a good work. A Bishop then must be blameless. And so those in oversight are raised up of God. And it's the sovereignty of God in that sense that he does raise up those that are self sacrificing and addicted to the service of the Saints. But then there is responsibility and there are those that are exercised to take up that work. And so that's what you have in second in first Timothy chapter.
Three. So here he's Speaking of their response to those who would be raised up of God to be a help and a protection to those of the Saints in that assembly.
In verse 10 it says who died for us, whether we wake or sleep, whether we live or die. As our brother said, we should live together with him.
01:05:05
And I just want to make this point to you that are younger than me. Nobody gets out of here alive.
Think about that. Nobody gets out of here alive. What is my life for?
What is the point?
If we live in view of eternity and we realize I'm not going to take anything out of this world except for people that I touch, that's it. My house is going to burn, my car is going to burn, everything I own is going to burn.
Why am I here? What is the point that we should live together with him?
That we would be in fellowship with the Lord Jesus and He wants that to be good enough. And it's not that we don't. I remember when I was 18 and I was like, oh man, I can't wait to get married. I'm not saying that's wrong, but to understand that's not ultimately going to fulfill us. That's not going to last our whole life. Eventually I'm going to die, or my wife's going to die, or both of us are going to die together, or the Lord's going to come. This life isn't going to last forever. So make what you do count.
Make it last, invest it on the other side and the second thing here in verse 11, our brother mentioned here, comfort yourselves together and edify one another even as all she do and I think you are saying.
Edify and comfort was absorbed and I just want to say to us, are we willing to get dirty with one another? There's a couple in our assembly that's been a huge help to me. Like I cannot. I feel like the guy saved my life. He didn't physically.
But he and his wife were such a help to us. They were willing to get dirty. They were willing to come to our house. They were willing to work with us. It was such a help. Not in judgment. It's so easy. You, you run into somebody, oh, how are you doing? Oh, it's so easy to get a rock and throw a rock at them. Are you willing to get off your high horse and say, wow, that could happen to me?
Wow, I'm really sorry. Let's see what we can do to put this together.
It means everything to the assembly, it means everything to the assemble, to the individual. And it builds up love. It builds us up. We go through a trial. There's a brother. He stood at the podium in Walla Walla and he was almost in tears because he couldn't hold his life together. And I said you and I are going out to lunch and I took him out to lunch and that meant so much to him. Did that cost me? Sure it did. It cost me a meal, cost me some time. What is he worth? He's my brother.
That's what the Lord is trying to exercise us in our hearts about these things and as we get to what our brother was sharing.
In the collective sense. But do I care about you? I can't affect you if I don't care about you.
All I well, I can affect you. I can drive you away if we want. As those of us who are older, if we want to make a difference in the lives of the younger, we have to reach with love. We have to reach their heart.
What comes from the heart goes to the heart. The Lord help us, every single one, that we would care. And I feel it. I feel it right here. This conference has been such an encouragement.
We need godly companions on the way home to glory, don't we? We see here in the verse 11 wherefore comfort yourselves together and edify one another is also you do I believe there's about 21 another who can go through love one another, care for one another, edify one another's about 20 of them. We need godly companions on the way home to glory. We think of pilgrims progress in the next story. One of his companions turned back. Another one was martyred. Another one was with him in the prison with giant of despair.
We meet companions and godly companions. You can look at an individual, look at their three or four closest companions and you can accurately predict the outcome.
The closest companions. It's very important. We need one another. We need God, the companions who can teach us the Word of God. I was thinking of these Thessalonians. There's the admonition in chapter 2 That says they received it as the Word of God. But we turn back to the three weeks that our brother Robert mentioned in Act 17. It says there were others.
There we were more noble, more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and search the Scriptures daily whether those things were so. Therefore many of them believed also honorable women, which were Greeks, and of men not a few. But when the Jews of Thessalonica had knowledge that the word of God was preached of Paul at Berea, they came thither also, and stirred up the people. Then immediately the brethren sent away Paul to go, as it were, to deceive. But Silas and Timothy are both there still.
01:10:04
Isn't it good that Silas and Timothy are both there still? It sounds like they were just sending Paul to the sea. Goodbye. But they had those three weeks of teaching. They have this letter. They have another letter, and Silas and Timothy abode. So it was very important for Paul to stress to look at those who are in authority, those who are teaching, those who are admonishing. We need one another. You know, our brother has mentioned the connection of faith, hope and love. And they when they just lost one, they lost hope and they had a problem.
There because they lost hope. With the exception of maybe third John, almost every single epistle in the New Testament says either the Lord Jesus Christ Christ, Jesus our Lord Jesus Christ our Lord, or our Savior Jesus Christ in the 1St 3 verses. When we come to Christ, we come to Christ. He's our Messiah, He's our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Sometimes people, they come to Christ, but they need to make him Lord.
Of their life, there needs to be the divine authority of scripture to follow.
And they need to live the life of some people who maybe have tried to make Jesus Lord. But when you look at their life, you look at their personal behavior, their home, their work life, is it consistent with the character Matthew, Mark, Luke, John of a life of Christ? Do they have the meekness, the gentleness, the sweetness, the wonderfulness in their life? Christ in you, the hope of glory. When we have Christ, we have everything, the Lord Jesus.
Christ that needs to be reflected in our heart and our life, even as faith, hope and love need to be intertwined. We need to be intertwined with one another. There's like 20 of them. Look it up as an exercise. I saw this one time and it had 20 points. I didn't memorize them. I should have. But we need the scriptures. We need to be reminded. Peter says, I'm reminding you again, don't you already know it? But I have to remind you again. And even Paul, Paul wrote in his scriptures, we need to encourage others who we respect and trust in the faith.
It's obvious from the two messages here that the brothers for maybe years had thought about those in.
Addresses thought about those subjects, the towers in the wells and the the distinction between the Jews and the church. It's very important. Sometimes these things come over years. I was thinking when we were reading about two of the pieces of the armor. If you count prayer, there's seven, but there's six listed in Ephesians six. Well, this is about our brother said 8054. If you go to Romans 13 and mentions the armor of light, that was about AD 60. And then Ephesians 6, which has the full armor, that was about 8064.
So over a span of about 10 years. So sometimes in our life there's there's things that are learned or understood over time. And maybe if you're preparing for a message or you're seeking to help someone, things may come to you as an epiphany and all at one moment. But some things God will work. It is God that worketh in you both the will and the due of his good pleasure. He may work with us over many, many years. We need godly companions on the way home to glory to help us if one falls and the other can help them up. How many times even Abraham went flat on his face?
We need one another, we need to encourage one another. The journey is nearing the end and what a blessing we can be in our daily lives will be encouraging one another.
I think back to the time in my life when I had possibly one foot in the world and one foot in the assembly.
I was going along every day figuring I had it worked out and meeting time would come.
I would try to find an excuse not to go.
Or maybe I would let my wife go to meeting and I'd put the kids to bed.
Well, the week that I would go, there would be a brother that would walk down the hall with me.
And he would say, Jonathan, you need to be out for the weeknight meeting with your family.
Maybe a whole month would go by and I'd leave the meeting and that brother would walk down the hall with me again. He'd say, Jonathan, you need to be out of the weeknight meeting with your family.
He kept reminding me and reminding me another brother would call me and I'd see his number on my phone.
And I wouldn't want to answer it because I knew what the message was going to be. Missed you at the meeting last night.
And so, you know there's a responsibility here. It says, we beseech you, brethren, to know them, which labor among you. You can't know one another. You really can't love one another. You really can't trust one another unless you go to meeting and be with each other. Proverbs 1824 Men that have friends must show himself friendly. And so, dear ones, we have to be together in order to connect with what our brother is saying back here. We have to be together.
01:15:19
And we have to trust our brethren. How would you know who has the oversight? How would you know who the Shepherd is if you don't go? Why would you ever listen to him if you don't trust him? Why would you think he has a care for you if you don't love him?
So how would you know if that?
Your faith is probably Wayne God's sour.
And so I merely point out that having one foot in the world, one foot in the assembly, does not work. It is not being occupied with Christ. It is not being prepared for his coming. We can't encourage each other that way.
Has the sense of recognizing them, and I believe so. You could read it that way. We beseech you, brethren, to recognize them.
Who those that God has raised up in oversight, those that are true shepherds, what do they do? They labor among the Saints and they take the lead. It's not correct to say over you and the Lord, but they take the lead in the shepherding work in the Saints among the Saints. They may teach as well as we could read other passages, but they.
Admonish you. And so he gives them three examples here. There's labor, they take the lead, perhaps in ministry, but perhaps in the work of oversight in the assembly. And they admonish you. No one likes correction. And you know, the shepherd often times gets his shins kicked. And there was a shepherd in Portugal, I believe it was, and he.
In those areas they have circular enclosure for the sheep. It has Stonewall approximately 6 or seven feet high. And a shepherd has will lie in the doorway, which is about maybe 24 inches wide. And one shepherd brother asked him how come he had so many scars on his shins. He says, well, that's from lying across the doorway and at night kicking at the wolves to keep the wolves out of the.
The sheep away from the sheepfold.
And so the shepherd is a very thankless work at times, but the Spirit of God here with this young group of believers that had accepted Christ as Savior, were looking for His coming. They had that blessed hope before them. Their hearts needed to be tender towards the Savior, protected, and they needed to recognize that the assembly was organized by the Spirit of God. It wasn't just a group of brethren and like a democracy that we're so accustomed to, but that God would select in His wisdom and raise up by His power those that would be self sacrificing.
And for the preservation of that assembly, that they would labor among them. And so that's why he says to esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake. What would the result be? There would be peace. And there is never a blessing in an assembly when there are those that are striving against the oversight that God has raised up. There isn't a peace in the assembly because there's a striving against the work of the Spirit of God.
In how he has raised up those in oversight. Now they'll answer to the Lord for how they go on, how the assembly goes on under their watch. We might just look at that in Hebrews chapter 13. I think it's being referred to before.
Verse 17. Hebrews 13. Verse 17.
It says obey them that have the rule over you and submit yourselves.
It doesn't mean to the way they want it done is the way they should it should be done and their opinion is a higher opinion so on. But they present the word of God in certain situation and so we should submit to that.
Says obey them rule, have the rule over you and submit yourself for they watch for your souls as they that must give account that they may do it with joy.
And not with grief, for that is unprofitable for you and so those that are in oversight.
01:20:06
Will give account of their stewardship. You might say their oversight during the time that they had responsibility because the flock is the Lorde flock. It's not theirs and it's the price that was paid was the blood of the his own son. The price was paid at the Cross of Calvary that he might have those that were blessed in his presence. So this is just he's giving them instruction. This young assembly young group of believers.
To recognize those that God had raised up to care for them, not to treat them shoddily.
Cultivate fellowship with those who are older in your assembly. Sometimes you see them all in a group of young people. That's fine. It's nice to have fellowship with one another. But cultivate fellowship with older ones and learn to ask good questions. That's a good way to learn, I must say.
I've been impressed at the end of Matthew's Gospel, the Lord Jesus gives the command Go therefore and teach all nations. It's really make disciples, discipleship. And I have accompanied older brethren in my youth today into Latin America. And I must say I learned immensely, not only about what they talked about, but the way they acted.
And the way they handled situations.
It was incredibly important learning for me. And so I just want to encourage you to do that. To know those doesn't mean they're perfect, they may make mistakes, but respect them because they're a little older, they have a little more experience. And so I remember an older brother in the assembly where I came to when I was 18 years old and Oak Park, IL, and I had quite a bit of confidence with him and I went up to him one time and said.
What do you think about this situation?
He says, you know what, I don't know what to answer you, but I'll get back to you. And it was a few days later, he came back to me in another assembly meeting and after the assembly meeting and said, here's what I want to share with you. And I must say I thoroughly appreciated and respected him in that. I just want to mention too, that word admonish includes correction.
But when there is confidence you can take correction, and I've been, I can tell you about times when I've been corrected by my older brother. I must say it was kind of a jolt at first, but when I stopped and considered and thought about it, it was extremely helpful in my understanding of the Scriptures. Let me give you one word or one verse that talks about.
Admonishment, too, that I found very helpful.
In Romans chapter 15.
And verse 14.
He says.
I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren.
That ye also are full of goodness.
Filled with all knowledge.
Able also to admonish one another. Notice that admonish doesn't start the list. First comes.
Full of goodness.
And so we need to think of as a brother that needs some admonishment. Have I shown goodness to that person? Am I filled with all knowledge? Sometimes you go up to a person to correct them and you don't have the whole picture and you get into the fray and you try to admonish them and it doesn't get over it well, very well. It's important to be filled with all knowledge and then able also to admonish.
Brethren, we need admonishment. I need it.
But let's learn to take it. And again, I say it to my younger brother. Totally. Fellowship with your older brother.
You're describing people that have grace in the way they do it. We jokingly have a little thing back home where I admonish one of my brothers, don't be get off my lawn guy. But the way you treat people because that guy, you know what happens? They get on his lawnmower. Don't be that guy. Don't be that guy in spiritual matters. Don't be the get off my lawn guy. It won't be received well and maybe you should just consider it anyway. But.
01:25:17
Grace, a lot of grace that comes. I heard a description of different ones who were.
Thankful that they received help and admonishment from different ones and it wasn't from a get off my lawn guy.
Sing 191.
191.
We mentioned.
Gospel 2
Gospel—Wally Dear
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Good evening.
One and all. It's so nice to see everyone here tonight. We hope that.
Everybody's here.
With a singing voice, we've got something to sing about.
So we're going to sing about the good news.
And then we're going to talk about it.
But before we talk about it, we're going to ask the Lord for his help.
So we want to sing first. You know, it tells us, I believe in Psalm 100, that we ought to be coming into His presence with singing. As I look around this hall here tonight, I see so many faces.
That our happy faces and the reason is because you got a happy heart, you got Jesus in your heart. You know all is well for time and eternity. You're looking forward to the coming of the Lord Jesus.
I know I am. It rejoices my heart to know that his coming is at hand. But as I look around here tonight.
I see that not everybody seems to have a happy face.
And I'm just wondering if maybe there's somebody here who, when they hear about the fact that Jesus is coming rather than.
Causing you to rejoice. It strikes terror into your soul. I used to be in that category.
And I understand something of how you feel.
Because I knew that if the Lord Jesus was to come.
I wasn't prepared, I was not ready and we're going to sing hymn here about being ready.
It's #22 #22 The heavenly Bridegroom soon will come to claim His bride and take her home.
To dwell with him on high, trim your lamps and be ready for the bridegroom's night. Perhaps we could stand as we sing #22.
The Heavenly.
Way lay in the cry every time I say it's blood from home. See you in the black.
So perhaps you could sing also number.
15-O blessed gospel sound, yet there is room that can remain seated #15.
Oh, blessed Gospel.
Let's go on the game now, where you here?
I don't know if it's raining tomorrow. I'm tired of a relationship and I'm.
Glad that you're beautiful right now.
00:10:45
We sang about a marriage feast.
And I'd like to turn to a passage.
That describes.
A marriage feast.
And.
It's found in.
Matthew, Chapter 22.
Matthew.
22.
So I'm just going to read the first part of the chapter and.
That which applies to this marriage feast. Matthew chapter 22, verse one.
And Jesus answered and spake unto them again by parables, and said, The Kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his Son, and sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding, and they would not come.
Again he sent forth other servants, saying, tell them which are bidden.
Behold, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready come unto the marriage. But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise.
The remnant took his servants and treated them spitefully, spitefully, and slew them. But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth, and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. Then saith he to his servants, the wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy.
Go ye, therefore into the highways, and as many as he shall find.
Bid to the marriage. So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good, and the wedding was furnished with guests.
And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment. And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hit her not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.
Then said the king to the servants, bind him hand and foot.
And take him away and cast him into outer darkness. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Here we have.
A king.
And he's preparing a wedding.
For his son.
His son is so important to him.
And I do believe that the King here represents God himself.
And the sun.
God's Son.
The Lord Jesus.
And you know, it tells us here that this certain king.
He sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding.
And the response is absolutely.
Horrific, it says here. And they would not come now you know when.
A royal wedding takes place.
00:15:02
There are great preparations.
Much.
Expense I looked up about royal weddings and I believe.
When Charles and Diana were married, the cost of the wedding was over $100 million.
And there's been royal wedding since that have cost 40.
$60 million.
These are very important occasions.
And I believe that in this situation.
The King.
Is so.
Shall I say, enamored with his son, that he wants to put on the very best?
Event.
That could happen.
You know the Father loves the Son. It tells us this. I believe in John chapter 3.
And he's given all things into his hand.
Because the Sun has perfectly honored his father.
You know the Lord Jesus could say I do always those things that please the Father.
Every thought, every word, every action was in perfect harmony.
With his father.
And so his father sought.
To honor him because.
The Sun had honored the Father.
And you know, it goes on to say that he that believeth on the Son has everlasting life.
And he that believeth not the Son, shall not see life, but the wrath of God.
Abides on him. We don't like to think about the wrath of God, but you know we have the wrath of God in this account.
As wonderful as the account is God reaching out to those who do not deserve to be present at an event like this.
I believe this is the grace of God in this chapter. Here if we back up into the previous chapter we have the story of the the husbandment and how that the owner of the vineyard let out.
The Vineyard.
To husbandmen, and then went away into a fire country.
And in verse 34, the previous chapter, it says, when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruit of it. And the husband took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other servants more than the 1St, and they did unto them likewise the last of all. He sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence.
My son, but when the husbandmen saw the son.
They said among themselves, This is the air. Come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. And they caught him and cast him out of the vineyard and slew him.
And so on.
Well, we know that God in the Old Testament, it tells us, I believe in Isaiah, that a vineyard was planted and you know, the Lord looked for good grapes from this vineyard, but it only brought forth wild grapes.
What a terrible yield.
When instead of nice juicy sweet.
Grapes.
Sour, bitter, wild grapes. Well, you know, I do believe that this is a picture of man's condition under the law.
God gave man the law.
The 10 commandments.
As a test.
To see.
If indeed.
His performance was acceptable.
00:20:01
What? God already knew what the outcome of the test would be, but He wanted to prove to mankind.
That man is a total failure.
But.
Man presumes to be able.
To please God.
Based on his own merit, I mean all the children of Israel, he said. All that the Lord has said we will do.
But it didn't happen that way.
Man, you might say, was put on the stage.
The curtains were opened.
Now God sits back to observe the performance.
And the performance is absolutely.
It's horrible.
So what does God do?
You might say.
The curtains close on the 1St man. The 2nd man, the Lord from heaven, is introduced.
And we find out.
His performance is absolutely perfect.
It's awesome.
And so man is in the audience looking.
At what's taking place.
You know there once tonight.
We need to be.
Allowing God to have his way and do it his way.
And.
Realize that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness.
To all those that believe.
Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. Praise God, the law came by Moses, but the law could only condemn.
That made demands.
On mankind that he could not perform. It was like telling somebody in the hospital room is paralyzed from the waist down.
I'd like you to take some laps around.
Hospital here, he says. I can't do it. Paralyzed him helpless.
And yet, man, you know he seeks on his own.
To attain God's standard of holiness.
But thank God.
For the plan of salvation. Oh the love that drew salvation's plan. Oh the grace.
That brought it down to man, the mighty gulf that God's expanded Calvary. So what happens in the Old Testament? You might say God is passive. Man is put on display.
Turn over to New Testament.
You find out that God is active.
And man is passive.
And perhaps we'll talk more about that.
But I do believe what we have here in this portion.
In Matthew 22.
In contrast to the law.
We have the grace of God.
And the focus is on the sun. Now we have a similar feast. I believe it's over in Luke chapter 14, you know, and it speaks there about how a certain man, he made a great supper and he bade many, well, I'm sure this was a great supper too, but perhaps over there in Luke.
Chapter 14.
My emphasis be on.
The blessing that God has for those that.
Respond in a positive way to the invitation and come to the feast and they find out.
This feast is out of this world. It's so wonderful. Well, I believe there was a great feast here too. But I think the emphasis in this portion that we're reading here is on the sun. God's desire is.
00:25:07
To honor the Son. It tells us that in John chapter 5, God would have all men to honor the Son as they honor the Father.
Because he that honors not the son, honors not the father who sent him.
And.
We're going to find out what happens here. It says they would not come. You know, the Lord Jesus came into this world. He tells us that he came unto his own. And how was he received?
It says they received them not.
But you know the Lord.
He gives man.
Opportunity to repent. You know, he's long-suffering. He's very patient, long-suffering, not willing that any should perish. And so it tells us here in this verse four again, he sent forth other servants so he doesn't give up.
He had every right, you might say, just to.
If I could say it this way, pull the plug and.
But you know, we find that the Lord, He is full of compassion, tells us that, and He's plenteous in mercy.
And he's.
Gracious, And he's ready to forgive, and he's ready to pardon me. We have a wonderful God. And so the message goes out again. Tell them which are bidden. Behold, I have prepared my dinner. My oxen and my fatlings are killed. All things are ready. Come unto the marriage.
Now we know.
The Lord Jesus, He preached the gospel before he went to the cross.
The Gospel of the Kingdom.
And.
But then he went to the cross, and he laid down his life, and he shed his precious blood.
And he died, and we've had so much about that in this conference. And it's really important to focus on what Jesus did at Calvary because when we consider what he endured and the suffering that he.
Endured, we come to realize that there's nothing left for me to do. All I need to do is to accept the work that He has accomplished and put faith in His precious blood.
We need to cast our deadly doing down down at Jesus feet and stand in him and him alone, gloriously complete. And so when the invitation went out.
Originally, there's no mention of all things already.
But now the Lord Jesus.
Has gone through the cross.
He's laid down his life.
He was buried, but he rose again.
It tells us He was delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification. Now the invitation is a little fuller. It says all things are ready. Come unto the marriage, I believe, as a result of His death and resurrection.
But notice what it says verse five. But they made light of it and went their ways.
One to his farm, another to his merchandise.
These pursuits were of more importance than showing honor to the King and to his son by responding to the invitation.
And coming to the feast.
00:30:01
It's so sad.
And how many there are today?
The invitation goes out.
Whosoever will may come.
And yet we find how many are not interested, They're too busy.
They've got social events.
They've got business.
They've got some kind of a construction project taking place. Don't have time?
To be present at this wedding. The fact is, they're saying they don't have time for God.
And that's the most serious.
Situation when we leave God out of our lives.
We're going to find out.
We're going in a downward spiral, things might be.
Looking pretty good for a time, but you know God has his ways.
And I think of that man over in Luke's.
Gospel, you know, he was a successful farmer and the crops just accumulated and accumulated and he's wondering what am I going to do Well, I.
I'll just tear down my barns and I'll build greater barns and I'll fill them up with these crops, and then everything's going to be nice for the future. I'll just take my ease. I'll eat, drink, be merry. That's what he thought about the future.
But he didn't consult God. He left God out of his thinking.
Is there anybody here tonight? You got big plans?
Of what you plan to do in the future. But have you consulted the Lord? Is God in your plans? You know He wants you to be happy.
He wants you.
To be successful.
Because he loves you.
And you know it, just there's a verse comes to mind.
With respect to happiness.
Some, perhaps have been.
To Boston.
And about 35 miles South of Boston, there's a little community, it's called Plymouth.
And Plymouth.
Is where the pilgrims purportedly landed after a grueling, torturous.
66 day trip across the ocean. They were seeking religious liberty.
It's kind of interesting that at the same time they were looking for that liberty, King James, who was in power at that time, he made a decree. We need another translation of the Bible. And so we got this Bible in our hands. Many of us do. It's the King James Version.
But in any case, the pilgrims, they made it across.
And so you go there to Plymouth and they have this.
Concrete.
Coppola.
Like a structured concrete structure, and then there's a gradient fence and you walk up to the grating.
And there's a big hole down there, and you look down in the hole.
And.
Has anybody ever seen this?
OK, I see a hand over here.
On the other hand, all right, well, it's not a big attraction, but when you look down in that hole, there's a stone slab, and on that stone it's imprinted 1620 and so tradition has that. That's one of the stepping stones that the pilgrims.
Stepped on as they landed. But 16201620, you know what it brought to mind? Proverbs 1620. So I'd like to just turn over there to Proverbs 1620.
00:35:15
And the whole verse, of course.
Is good, but I'm thinking particularly of the last half of the verse.
Proverbs, 1620.
What does it say?
Whoso trusts in the Lord, happy is he happy?
Is she?
It's so simple and Edward Whoso is the same as whosoever it takes in You, me, anybody else, you want to be happy.
You need to put your trust in the Lord and I speak to my own heart sometimes.
I'm not as happy as I know I should be and I'm wondering what is it?
That's causing this. What's the problem? I know the Lord wants you and he wants me to be happy.
And I begin to analyze the situation.
And you know, I find out that.
I'm doubting the word of God. Doubting it.
That's not good to doubt God's word.
Now I know if one allows.
Sin, disobedience makes 1 unhappy. And you know, it's been said that faith is salvation.
Obedience is happiness, but really faith and obedience, they go together because if you look up in the Greek.
There's a Greek word that means both faith and happiness, and sometimes in our Bible instead of.
Believing they put obeying and sometimes it's the other way around using that word. So if there is faith, I do believe it ought to be manifest through obedience.
But to doubt the Word of God is what is going to bring unhappiness. You know, somebody said one time, you should never, ever put a question mark.
Where God has put a period.
I just read that verse to you.
Whoso trusts in the Lord, happy is he, period.
But I tend to maybe want to put a question mark there. That's what happened back in the Garden of Eden. This is what Satan is up to tonight. He wants to sew in your mind a seed of suspicion as to the goodness of God. He wants you.
To doubt that the Lord really cares for you like a brother was saying here.
He was saying, you know.
Difficult things happen in our lives. Well, why did this happen? I thought you liked me.
I thought you loved me.
And if you really love me, why would I be in this trial?
I want to tell you something. Everything that happens in the life of the believer is an expression of the Father's love for you and for me.
And even in the life of the unbeliever, the Lord allows things that are very, very difficult.
In order to bring blessing.
I visit a man years ago, I remember down in Florida.
Went to a prison there with Paul Rudd I believe.
And.
So I'm walking down the island. Here are these.
Like cages. And there's men in these cages.
So there was one man standing right by the bars.
And.
I'm looking at him, you know, and he seemed to be happy. I'm thinking, what's going on here? I don't expect to see happy people in prison.
00:40:09
And then I looked in the back and there's this little table in the back.
And on the table was one of these.
Then then they'd come to know the Lord Jesus as his Savior in the prison.
And he was so thankful for that experience because he said if he hadn't ended up in prison, he would still be out on the street doing all kinds of bad things and ruining himself. But when he came to the prison, there was a chaplain that came and.
Give him the gospel, shared Christ with him, and he got saved.
So in that case, you know God allowed that prison experience.
To bring good in the end.
But don't let Satan deceive you. That's what he is up to. He is the great deceiver.
And Eve, we know she took up the fruit.
And she was deceived.
Eve deceived.
She thought that the devil had something better to offer than God himself.
She found out.
He's a destroyer, and we know that Adam, he ate of the fruit too. And by one man's disobedience, sin comes into the world. And death by sin. Death passes upon all men. Death is the king of terrorism. Why is it in the world? It's because of sin.
God had made it plain you can eat of any tree in this garden, except for that one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
And that's the very tree.
Of which they ate.
That was the first commandment that God ever gave to man, the first commandment, and he broke it. He failed. And so Satan acquires writes over the 1St man.
And as part of Adam's race, we are all.
Bound by Satan's captive chain.
Born in sin.
Sinners by nature and practice, we need deliverance.
And God has provided deliverance to His own dear Son and the work He accomplished at the cross of Calvary well we find here.
They just make light of this invitation. I receive an invitation to a wedding. It was last.
Well, I guess it was early part of the summer. Maybe it was last spring. Anyway, the wedding was last month.
And.
How rude would it be to basically tear up that invitation and toss it into the garbage? Not interested. You know, it was my own grandson.
Wouldn't do something like that. Many here have received invitations to a wedding. A wedding is supposed to be a happy event, and especially this event where the father is celebrating his son. And the response on the part of these people is absolutely repulsive.
They got excuses, Excuses and.
As we read on verse six, it says the remnant took his servants and treated them spitefully.
And slew them. I think that these servants, they continue to invite even though people were making excuses. And the more they invited, the greater the opposition grew to that invitation.
And what we have here is what happened in the book of Acts. You know, the gospel went out.
To the Jew first, but then it went to the Gentile. But in the very place where Jesus was crucified, the gospel, the good news of saving grace, was published. This is how God works. He gives man opportunity to repent.
00:45:14
And of course, we know what happened at Jerusalem. We know what happened to Stephen. They picked up stones and they killed them.
And I believe there were others that were persecuted at that time.
The Spirit of God had come down.
And you know man would not receive Christ in his humiliation.
He went back to the glory. The Spirit of God came down to announce his exaltation.
And they pick up stones to cast at those servants. Man does not want Christ, whether it be in humiliation or glorification. Exaltation doesn't want them.
All kinds of excuses though, isn't there for not coming to Jesus. It's so sad.
One time we were visiting on an island.
And.
We were staying at.
A place there we didn't know how to get there so.
Was about 8 miles on boat to the silent. So we see these people and they get big backpacks, you know and.
So we asked him, can you tell us how to get to this? There happened to be a lighthouse or a lighthouse was. Well, yeah. And so they put down the backpacks and they get out of math and they showed us, which is very kind of them. We really appreciated that.
So then they pick up their backpacks and they start away. But I had a gospel track. I said, folks, listen, you gave us a good steer. I'd like to give you a good steer as well. Here's a gospel paper message of God's love.
Oh no, we can't accept that. We already got too much weight. We can't.
What an excuse. See, I mean, people have all kinds of phony excuses, but there's not one good excuse for not coming to Christ.
Well, says the king heard thereof, He was wrought, and he sent forth his armies and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. I believe this speaks of what happened at Jerusalem AD 70. Titus with his armies rolled in there and just leveled that place. Jerusalem really came under the government of God.
And the Jewish economy was squelched.
And Jews were scattered.
Throughout the world now.
We know God is going to pick up with the Jew again, but we see what's happening here.
You know God is not mocked. Well then, it says they say.
To the servants, he says, the wedding is ready. They which were bidden were not worthy. Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find bid them to the marriage. So those servants went out into the highways, gathered together, all as many as they found, both bad and good. The wedding was furnished with gas. Now I believe this is the gospel, the grace of God, the good news, the glad tidings going out.
To the Gentiles beyond the bounds of Israel.
And there were those that responded and they came. And it tells us both bad and good. You know, from outward appearances, people can be good looking and perhaps go to church. And they seem very, you know, upright living people.
But there's others. You might say they're living in the gutter and they're involved in all kinds of vices. They're bad.
But no matter what, it's good or bad, they're invited. And it says in verse 11, when the king came in to see the guest, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment. So I suppose all these guests now they've come in to the wedding and the feast is prepared, all things are ready, and they're sitting down at these tables.
And now the king, he comes in and he looks around.
And the king has provided a wedding garment that is suitable.
00:50:10
To his.
Position and to the position of his dear son. And what a beautiful garment I would take it to be a wedding garment made by the king.
And he sees this person without a wedding garment, so you might wonder.
Why I put on this coat? Because I probably wouldn't be wearing this coat. But now I want to put in this coat because I want to make a point here.
All right, so you see the difference here.
OK, we'll just say the wedding garment was like this that the king provided.
Now here's somebody.
That's one of these times.
This person stands out like a sore thumb, so to speak, easily.
So.
Evident.
Conspicuous.
And the king sees this.
He says, Friend, how canest thou in hit her not having a wedding garment? Now he takes this man up on his profession because he comes to the feast and it might appear as though he has some respect for the son, and I suppose he likes the food.
But there he is without the wedding garment. And the king says, friend, he takes him up on his profession. But really he is an enemy of the king. He is an enemy of the King's son because.
He comes with a garment of his own providing.
With no regard for what is proper and.
What is?
Really.
Suitable.
And so he comes with this. I don't know.
If he went to a clothing store, he had this hanging in his closet.
But anyway, he comes.
And what is the King's response?
Well, we see the response of this man.
When the question was put to him, he had no answer. That says he was speechless.
Then said the king to the servants, bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
So what made the difference?
The wedding garment.
You know, there were those that came into the feast, I suppose there were religious people, You're religious people. There were those that were poor, those that were rich.
Those that.
We're old and young.
Those that were.
Well, from various walks of life.
But it wasn't a question of what.
One's performance was before they came to the wedding feast. What really counted was did they have on the wedding garment.
And you know, the wedding garment, I believe is Christ and the only way to be truly acceptable.
To the sun and to the king. I think here we have really referenced to the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom truth here, but it's Christ. This is how God accepts.
The Sinner who is willing.
To give up his own ideas.
00:55:00
Shed his own trappings, his own thinking, forsake it and accept God's way.
God clothes one with the garments of salvation, covers one with the robe of righteousness.
It's beautiful to see how the king, he takes everything in his own hands.
To supply what's needed. Rhymes. You know, the prodigal son. You know when the prodigal returned and he was repentant. And what does the father do? He covers them with kisses. And then he calls for the best robe to be put upon him. Puts a ring on his finger, shoes on his feet. He asked for the fatted calf to be killed. It brings him into the house. And what is the son doing? He's just allowing his father to.
Smother him with his kindness.
But that's how the grace works.
I think it is a Samaritan too. He went to the man that was.
Half dead, he pours in the oil into wine, trades places with them on the beast, takes them to the end. The Samaritan is doing everything for the man.
But that's what grace does, you know, Grace makes everything of Christ in nothing of ourselves. And this is what God wants. He wants us to honor his Son and to be saved, not by our own performance, our own effort.
But by his grace, for by grace are you saved through faith.
Not of yourselves out of works.
It's a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Well, perhaps we could.
Sing a hymn enclosing it.
I see that clock gives me a couple extra minutes here.
Let's say number.
16 #16.
Whosoever.
Community of Vanceboro driving by the service station.
Here's this car with big sign on the back of the car. Bold letters. I could read it from a long ways away and this is what it said. Please do not go to hell.
I never saw a sign like that in my life.
That's what God's desire is for every one of us, that we might be.
Saved.
And we might not perish.
That we might be in the enjoyment of eternal life. Know it and enjoy it. Because if you perish, you know it tells us here. That man, he was found hand in foot, cast into outer darkness. I believe that's hell. It's weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. And that's not a lifetime sentence.
01:00:23
That is an everlasting sentence. You know we hear about people.
That get a lifetime sentence and we feel so sad and people that have those kind of sentences they often they live in hope that maybe.
In time it'll be changed, but you know.
Jose Paris have no second chance.
And tonight is your opportunity to decipher Christ. We're going to pray. And as we pray, you can ask the Lord Jesus to save you.
I know prayer isn't what saves, it's faith and but you can express to the Lord.
What's on your heart? And He'll listen, and it's putting confidence in His person and His precious blood, and you can enjoy a full and free salvation.
Tonight.
Friends
YP Talk—Bernie Brecht
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.
You may read this today.
Caught my eye when I walked out. I picked one up and I read it quick. It says no warning.
That we heard last night from Matt, no warning, and he was involved in a serious accident.
I myself within one many years ago.
Back in 1972.
Man stopped in front of me and I was on a motorcycle.
You know that this isn't enough room sometimes.
So we had a little drive.
But what I have on my heart?
Is an extension of what we heard.
Yesterday.
From Mr. Brusink, from young people.
Building towers and digging wells.
What I have on my heart is the extension of that, and that is.
Buddy, your friend.
Once your teeth felt different.
And I read from the book of Daniel.
In chapter one.
Start with verse 6.
Now among these were the children of Judah Daniel and Anaya Michel Azariah, unto whom the Prince of the eunuchs gave names.
Or he gave unto Daniel the name of Belshazzar.
And Ananiah Shadrach, and the Michel Meshach and Azaria Bendigo. But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not be fired himself with a portion of the King's meat, nor with the wine that he drank. Therefore he requested France's eunuchs that he might not be filed himself.
Now God had brought Daniel into favor and tender love with the Prince of the eunuchs.
First of all.
Prove thy servants, I beseech thee, 10 days. Let them give me, give us pulse to me water. Drink, let our countenance be looked upon before they the countenance of the children that eat the portion of the cane's beef. As thou seest deal with thy servants, so he consented to them in the matter, and proved them 10 days.
At the end of 10 days, her confidence appeared fair and fatter and flashed and told children.
Which did eat the portion of the game's meat 17.
As for these four children, God gave them knowledge, skill, and all learning and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams.
19 And the king communed with them, and among them was found enough, like Daniel, Ananiah, Michelle Azariah. Therefore they stood before the king.
And things started to go South.
You can get over in chapter 3.
Verse 12.
There are certain Jews whom thou hast set over the affairs of the province of Babylon. Shadrach, Meshach and Mind have not regarded thee.
They serve not thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast said.
Verse 16 Shadrach Meshach had to go answered and said to us, Can you hold the Nebuchadnezzar?
I got a backup one first there 15 now if you be ready.
At that at what time you hear the sound of the cornet, the flute, the harps that but sultry and dulcimer and all kinds of music, you fall down and worship the image that I have made well.
Asked the same, No, but if he worship not, he shall be cast the same hour in the midst of the burning fiery furnace. And who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands? Shadrach, Meshach. And a minute ago answer to the king, old Nebuchadnezzar. We are not careful to answer thee in this matter.
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If it be so.
Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fire furnace, and He will deliver those out of the handful dying hand. But if not.
Being known on the Leo King that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou set up.
Then was Nebuchadnezzar full of fury.
Form of his visit was changed against Shadrach, Meshach and Guilty and Spake and commanded that they should eat the furnace.
Seven times more.
That I want to be needed.
Born in London, the men were bound in their coats. Their hoses, their hats and other carpets were cast in the midst of the fiery furnace.
Therefore, because the King's command was urgent, furnace exceeding half flame of the fires slew the men that took up Shadrach Meshach. And then you go, and these three men, Shadrach Meshach and Mingle fell down her fell bound, fell down bound in the midst of the burning fiery furnace.
25 He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose walking in the midst of the fire. They have no hurt, and the form of the 4th is like the Son of God.
The thoughts I had on those three men, there they were.
Taking Kathy, they would not bow down. They found favor with. OK, so that things kind of went as you read through there, things kind of went South.
And they would not bow down.
To what became a decree.
The thing that I enjoyed in that.
Is the 16th verse. It says, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee on this matter. Their minds were already set before they were confronted with that.
They knew the answer before they were given that option.
The king said you fall down.
Everything will be good.
We've already gone back on this quarter.
So.
They were already set in their mind. They were going to serve the living God.
And then later on, we have a portion with Daniel.
In chapter 6.
Then this Daniel was preferred above the presidents and the Princess, because an excellent spirit was in him.
And the king sought to set him over the whole rail.
Later on in that chapter.
Verse 11 Then these men assembled and found Daniel praying, making supplication for his daughter.
Sang a song just a little bit ago.
And the gain demanded because that is his prayer, worshiping his dog.
Then a cave was commanded and they brought Daniel and cast him into the whole denim lines.
Now the king spade, instead of the Daniel thy God, whom thou service continuously, he will deliver.
Stone was brought and laid upon the mouth of the den, and the king sealed him with his sickness.
Signal of the Lord's that the purpose might not be changed concerning Daniel.
Then the king went to his palace and passed the knife fast.
Neither were instruments of music from before him, and his sleep went away from him.
He cared for him, but he got caught in his own trap, so he had by decree.
Fulfill the law that he had made.
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And the king arose very early in the morning and went to haste the denim lines. And when he came to the den, he cried with a lamentable voice unto Daniel and the King's faith. He said to Daniel, Oh, Daniel, servant of the living God, this man's starting to cease him.
Servant of the living God is thy God, whom thou service continually able to deliver thee from wines.
Then said Daniel Lumpur, with King spoke in Live forever. My God has sent his Angel and has shut the lion's mouth that they have not hurt me.
Or as much.
As before him, Innocency.
Was found in me and also before the old king.
Have I done one for?
What I was thinking about in these passages here?
These four men, they got together. They were supposed to. The king had a dream and no one could answer it but Daniel. These three men got together and they prayed and they asked the Lord to show them.
They were in there was kind of a difficult situation.
And then?
They worked together. They were buddies.
They prayed.
They thought he.
When they went.
And they had.
If I set one.
That they are going to honor God.
Their God, they were going to honor him and we're not going to dishonor him in any way with food or drink.
Or not praying, because that's how that went.
They were thrown into the fire.
Uncertain that Daniel was in prayer for going in.
And they have. They were probably more than likely prayer with each other as they were going in.
And we see that there is another one in there and the whiteness of God. God will not let you go through a trial without being there with you. That I would say. I know I've done a lot of things. I've had a lot of trials.
With Daniel.
Doesn't say anything about HIV and then we go.
Chat, right? But I can't help but think that when they put Daniel in the lion's den.
Those three men were in prayer for them.
I know that that is.
That he was trusting into living God. He did. He was brought out of the lion's den.
And thinking about that buddy system.
There was a time, many years ago, when I have a little reflection about myself.
And if you don't know me, some of you have met me for the first time. Some of you I met many years ago, 35 years ago. My name is Bernie Craft. I'm from Iowa.
Back in the 70s, as Sam says, we worked together in a facet. There was a lot going on in that factory. There was a lot of a lot of commotion.
Young men getting saved, they're finding Christ.
And Christ was living in him.
It was kind of strange to me because.
The foreman and a supervisor, they didn't really care for it, but when a lot of these men got saved, their production went up. They were happier.
And they were working for the Lord. We weren't working for the man, we were working for the Lord.
And.
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The early part that I have with Christianity.
Was the fact that I was working in that factory.
A man came down into the shipping dock that I worked. I was the welder down there.
If you see cranes going down the railroad tracks, you see those iron bars holding them on the rail car. It was my job to Weld them together so that they would hold the bar, call the crane on the car.
Wasn't that very beautiful? It's an easy job.
We had a man named Alex George. He came down into the area.
We all knew he was a Christian.
I didn't like it. I didn't like Christians because I had decided earlier in my life.
One thing I did appear, I would raise the Catholic and I had a falling out.
And.
I just despised people that preached.
And we got Alex down in our area and I made a commitment.
To some friends of mine. I said that's fine. I said he'll be gone 3 minutes. I said all right and I tried.
I tried my best to drive that man out of the area because I didn't like it.
He was.
The unbeliever himself, I don't think he was saved more than a year.
But I didn't see something.
And I didn't pay attention to it.
He had Sam and I don't know how many others praying for.
I gave that man the Dickens. I said this on that Zoom meeting. He come in in the morning, said lunch, bailed out. I'd do something to it.
No morning. I grew up rope as much failed take his apple up. I take a bite of it, put it back.
Go back to work.
He'd come over there lunchtime, hopefully lunch bailed up.
Use that.
Stand here and I just think to myself, what am I going to do next?
When I took a bite out of the sandwich a couple times.
You put that sandwich up and look at it.
I got to the point where I thought I'm going to have to do some destructive things to get him, so I poured Gaz Mullane in his shoes. His work, too. That's what we paint on cylinders, so we ship them overseas. The salt water will affect the cylinders that Chrome.
Remedies use.
He just went there, took him over to the bathroom, coming up, put him on.
I can't get this guy.
I don't know what's wrong, I didn't see something.
I did not see Sam. There he is. I did not see Joe Bird.
And compass otherwise that we're praying that I would find Christ.
I had committed myself to hell because I knew I couldn't do enough good to get to heaven because that's how I was raised in the Catholic Church. You do good to offset the bad, and hopefully the scales will tip in your favor.
That's how I was released and I gave up.
And then one day.
This is a gospel term.
Alice came in and said hey bird, freeze that. I said take it away if I don't want it.
He just left it.
I sat there, looked at it.
After a couple days.
I slipped off the bathroom and I read it.
I read more.
I don't know how many 100.
I couldn't do enough.
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Couldn't do enough against him to drive him out and after six months I said I'd have him drove out in six months or in three months at six months.
I asked Christ through my life.
And I could not believe it myself.
Sam came down into the area. If there's any questions I have, I'd ask Alex. Sam was around, I'd ask him. I just couldn't understand it. I don't know, but I found something that I could lay hold of.
That I have that I could take and it was more.
And yours doesn't mind.
And thinking about Daniel.
And those three men?
They gave them different names.
They still have God in their heart. They would not bow to the King.
And that man Alex, I tried to knuckle him under as hard as I could. He would. And that's what I think dropped me more than anything was the fact that.
Everything I did to you.
It was just like.
OK, we're good.
No big deal.
So.
There's.
A thought that I had.
Especially for your life.
Is the best thing you can do.
Is find yourself.
A godly friend.
One that loves Jesus as much as you, if not more. Someone that you can confide in.
It may be your parents.
It may be a personal settlement next to you, I don't know. I've got a few that I can talk to and I can unload my herds.
And I know I've got a few that talk to me. And that is the best thing because you do not need to carry your burdens alone.
God will help you carry them.
And he's given you.
All these people in this room.
That will help you. And that's one of the things that that I really cherish is the fact that no matter what kind of a problem I'm having.
I could talk to the morning, I can talk to Bob, I can talk to Sam.
I now know Steve. I met him.
Fellow and got to know him a little more down here.
Some other people around here and some that I met 35 years ago, I can point you out. I can't really say your names all the time. I'll say the Buchanans. Anybody here know any Buchanans?
But.
In First Timothy.
In First Timothy.
In chapter 6, verse 11.
It says, But thou, O man of God.
Plead these things, follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness.
Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, life eternal. Where do thou art also called and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses.
And second Timothy?
Chapter 2.
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Thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that wore entangled himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who have chosen him to be a soldier.
That no man of war entangled himself with the affairs of this life.
I was an army for three years.
We gave, we were given, we were given a job, we were given an operation.
We've dedicated all our resources to that operation.
Because we didn't want faith.
And in this here it says no man that wore the tangles himself with the things of this world.
We didn't. We didn't entangle ourselves with things that were going on, problems. We dedicated ourselves to our operation.
To the function that we wanted to accomplish.
And that is something that all you young men didn't think about, the ladies that it is about. It is a war.
I'll give you a second there.
Not too long after I got saved, I got transferred to 2nd shift of 12 and experimental boon together.
I got stuck, they picked me. They said he wants you to go and do it and I said OK. So I went to 2nd shift, started working. I got there, I got about 10 people around there and he says pick whoever you want to work with you.
I said no. Any one of them guys, I don't want her.
I just didn't want to work with a girl.
15 minutes later I won't be there. I'm packing stuff, getting everything set up. Here she comes.
You all knew that was coming.
Here she comes, and I thought to myself.
That I'm going to let this.
But I gave it to the Lord and I said this will be funny.
We worked together for about 3 weeks.
One day she come over and sat down and I was at my lunch. We always sat right back. I always sat right in my work area because we didn't have time to go out.
Sat down, She came over and sat down. She looks at me and she says what's with you?
As we're able, she said. Well, you're different.
I said, well, I'll explain that. What do you mean by different? I thought she was going to get on this thing about not liking working with her, but she said I knew you before.
I knew you before you started acting this way.
That's what do you mean, she said. Well, I knew you when you used to go out more party with all them guys.
I said yeah. I said that's over.
I said I got something now that I've never had before.
I said I've got eternal life, I've got the Lord Jesus.
I know that I'm going to death.
And she said. And I, from that point on, she started asking questions.
After about a couple weeks.
She accepted, correct.
I'm just don't find it because here I didn't want to work with him. The Lord murdered there so she could find the Lord.
We don't know what's going on.
But then about 2-3 weeks later she comes in and she's really sad and I was thinking to myself, what's the matter?
You've been really happy for three weeks.
She says.
I can't tell you, I said. Well, what is it?
I said, is it Tom that was her boyfriend who were living together?
Yeah.
I wasn't gonna beat me up, no.
So you won't feel it.
She said yes.
I called on my buddy sister.
My friend Candy Kettleton, whom Sam led to the Lord.
He was working with me on that same department only a couple days over. Great time comes over here again. You got a problem.
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He said what is it? So I explained it to me, he says.
Well, let's just go talk to her.
OK, let's do that, I told Linda. I said we'll go talk to him.
This is alcohol always older ones and made it.
He did. He called several other people, too.
We went to see him.
We got off work at midnight and on Friday night went down to the old oh, I can't remember the name of that restaurant anymore. I don't even know if it's still there. Country Kitchen. Yeah, Country Kitchen. Nice burger. He's inside. He's inside, sitting down. Kenny and I walk in. He's sitting in the booth here. She's here. Kenny standing here, and I come walking. We're all standing there.
They're sitting, we're standing. And I looked at him and I said, what's up, Tom?
And he says, you know, before this night's over, I'm going to cut your throat from here to here.
I said, well, that's what the Lord's gonna have to do. I said that's what's gonna stop me.
Candy.
He walked up. He says, well, it's not all Bernie's fault. He let her to the Lord. I'm the one that told her she shouldn't be living with you.
And he hit him with a right hook right across his face and his glasses flying out. Cut his nose. He's bleeding. I picked his glasses up. That's your penny. Manager comes over, says you guys got these.
Kenny says. Here's the other chief.
Tom says I ain't fallen for that.
Found out later on because he said that earlier. Before that he said to me one day he says how can a just kind loving God take my parents away when I'm 12 years old?
He hated God.
And he was taken out of us and everyone else.
But anyway, getting back to it, we get thrown out. We're standing outside, we're in a grassy area about this big.
He's over here.
Yelling at us. Yelling at her.
And she's standing about 10 feet away from me.
We're over here.
And he mellows out as loud as he can.
Who do you love?
More.
Me or this Jesus that you can't see.
And that beautiful woman stood right there and said Jesus.
And it's on a proud of people.
Front Bus.
And it took the wind out of his sails so fast. He just.
You have nothing to say. The police came.
See your identity that there is without your face, blood run Canyon's face, Kenny says I strongly.
Wasn't going to say anything bad about Tom. We just left, he said. Were you guys there or?
Thank you, Linda took tall, he said Saturday morning. He said we're going to go to church this afternoon. So they did. I got back home from church. I got into an argument.
She gave him up.
Sunday afternoon he comes back and says I want to go back to church.
Went to church and Sunday night he got saved.
I come in and work on Monday morning thinking that I was going to get beat up.
Attacked. Sam came out the door from the factory. He was leaving early, just a few minutes and I was coming in. Sam goes, you ain't going to believe this. And I said what he said. Tom got saved.
That's exactly how I feel. I felt like the weight of the world was off of my story and I was never so happy in my life. She was just beaming when I got into work with her.
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And I've lost track of them. I haven't seen them for many years. And we got laid off in that factory.
But that's just a couple little incidents in my life about the buddy system and what I'm trying to say to you.
Shakrat, Meshach, Mendigo, Daniel. The Buddy System.
Keep a friend.
With more than one seven close.
Keep in touch with them constantly share the word with them.
These young people's things are just wonderful. I love it. It is it is awesome because the words of my friend Bobby.
Pause.
I've got to reconnect with a lot of people down here that I haven't seen in many years. And I'll say another thing, a lot of the people that I knew when I was down here 35 years ago are not home with the Lord.
And in this little story, there's a warning that says no warning that we all jump in to get a shoe and over the falls.
There's no more I popped over here with my motorcycle going 60 miles an hour. Vehicle Center also weighs in the road.
My headlight came down.
I spent six months in a cast.
LinkedIn hero, right? They had to rebrake it. Put screws in it.
It's all.
Doesn't matter now.
Because I know when I go with glory.
I won't have sore knees and I won't have sore elbows. I won't have a bad leg.
I'm gonna be able to show this.
That's one way.
As I was saying.
Is your.
How is Buddy close?
In mind for your boys might be a girl.
Someone that you can talk to.
Times get rough.
And most importantly, don't ever lose the communication connection with your parents.
Because I'll tell you one thing, I will do more than you know.
Sometimes it doesn't feel that way.
But they do.
1 Thessalonians 5:14-28
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#218.
So.
Every time I saw a Christian.
Also 160.
#161.
Forever with the heart.
And soul of heaven and being. So I am crying.
Verse 14.
First Thessalonians, chapter 5, verse 14.
Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly. Comfort the feeble minded, support the weak, Be patient toward all, See that none render evil for evil unto any man, but ever follow that which is good both among yourselves and to all men. Rejoice evermore, Pray without ceasing.
In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus.
Concerning you quench not the Spirit, despise not prophesying, prove all things.
Hold fast that which is good, abstain from all appearance of evil, and the very God of peace sanctify you wholly. And I pray God, your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved, blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Faithful is he that calleth you who also will do it. Brethren, pray for us. Greet all the brethren with an holy kiss. I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.
Just want to mention rather than rule had something special in his heart from John 17. Perhaps we can get through these verses in time to let him.
Get what he has on his heart. I think that would be good. These are short verses and I think we don't have to.
Get hung up on anything here.
They may be short, but they're profound, those seven things.
Are life changing but I totally agree with you.
In his writing speaks to these Thessalonians and he says we exhort you, you stirring them up, brethren, to warn them that are unruly comfort the feeble minded support the weak patient toward all He gives these little Nuggets and as we know when we live in this scene, we're affected by sin and everything that is.
Built or set up falls into disorder, it just decays, it falls apart and so you know the Lord Jesus in his love for his Saints is he brings out in verse 12 Those that were being oversight shepherds of God's people and the motive is love for the Lord, love for the Saints and now there might be some disorder that would creep in and he says to speak.
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To speak, to warn them, to really stir those up that are causing the difficulty among the people of God, those that are unruly. I believe the word is a military term and it's not walking in rank with your brethren, not walking consistent with the character of what it is to walk together. And so he says to warn them. That's the work of the.
Those that are in oversight comfort the feeble minded or the faint hearted. Those that are perhaps discouraged, disheartened and just about to give up, strengthen them and have a view of having a.
Have the eye out for those that are perhaps faint hearted. Support the weak. Be patient toward all. Now that's particular instruction to those that are perhaps in oversight. But it's good for all of us to recognize that these little excerpts are necessary. Now remember, the apostle Paul was speaking to this. These young Christians, they were just saved. They were just newly gathered to the Lord's name. He doesn't.
Try to correct them and correct any errors or anything. I don't think there's anything corrective in this epistle, but he just gives them little Nuggets to help them to oil the wheels, oil the chains, just oil things so that they'll run smoothly. And so it's the kindness of God that we can have this care for one another in this way.
Somebody likes to stir the pot.
There was a brother years ago in our assembly and he was funny guy and.
He used to say things to kind of get something gone, and sometimes it was funny, you know, and entertaining. But he had been good at that as an unsaved person. But now in the assembly, he would do that sometimes. And I remember talking with him and I talking to him and say, you know, yeah, sometimes it's funny, other times not so much. And you're entertaining yourself, maybe at the expense in a way that.
Isn't profitable because there are people that get offended by things like that. And I remember him taking it to heart and realizing, well, wait a minute, you know, why am I doing that? You know, for my, just for entertainment purposes. Well, if you're doing it in the assembly.
Maybe not the right place and I I know people that have a funny bone in them and they, they can do that kind of thing. But if you, if you hear about somebody and you hear somebody say they like to stir the pot.
It's often not a good thing.
And you know that they, for whatever reason.
Just seemed to want to do that kind of thing. If somebody says black, they say white. Well, that's not a good thing. It's not a good thing amongst the Saints to be doing that.
Says comforts of faint hearted in the Darby translation. And then there's a lot of people that are discouraged and we need to be sensitive brethren with our brethren and and be a help in the right direction. If there's faint heartedness, a wrong word, perhaps a strong word of exhortation is going to knock them down. So let's be sensitive as to the needs of our brethren.
Fun to make your helmet out of an overarching, overarching observation. Picking up from the end of verse 13 and then verse 23 last phrase and be at peace among yourselves and the very God of peace sanctify you holy.
And many of these things that are brought out in connection with has been a smooth assembly functioning and or as well as individual relationships. This matter of peace personally in your soul is extremely important. And what is peace? Peace is a nature that is at rest in the satisfaction of having everything that it desires.
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A dog has a nature. You give them a nice sunny front porch, a full bowl of dog food and water, a nice rug to lay on, and he curls up in the sun and that is a picture of peace. His doggy nature has everything that it wants. He scratch his head, he just thumps his tail.
We have two natures.
And if our passions.
And our will get active because there's something we want, there's something we want to correct that irritates us, and it begins to just consume us. Why doesn't this circumstance change? Why does this brother have to act this way? Why does this sister have to do that? And if we wake up thinking about it, we go to bed thinking about it, and we want to change it.
And our passions and our will are active, and we have no power.
To satisfy our own passion and gratify our own will. And it is a total lack of peace.
Now the one I'm irritated about might be going on just peacefully, but for me it's a total lack of peace.
But I have a new nature.
And that new nature is given everything that it needs from God, and it finds that satisfaction.
And those things that God gives if I exert my will enough and.
Maybe Satan gets involved and I get what I want now I've got it. Am I at peace? No, because I don't have it with a good conscience. And so I go warn that brother. That's a difficulty. But I'm irritated and I finally act in my own self will and I drop the hammer. Well, I fixed it. Am I at peace? I'm not at peace. I got what I wanted, but I don't have it in a good conscience.
Everything that God has to give us satisfies that new nature that we have without any twinge of conscience whatsoever. So he's the God of peace. He is the one who supplies everything that that new nature needs. What is it to be at peace among ourselves as to resign my will?
Being at peace among ourselves starts with me resigning my will and leaving it with the Lord. Then I can warn the unruly because I'm not coming from a place that doesn't have any peace. I can comfort the faint hearted because I'm coming from a place of peace.
And all of these things that unfold, the God of peace supplies what we need. There was a man named Ammon in the Old Testament, and he wanted a woman named Tamar, and he wanted her so badly.
That he began to pine away and lose weight. And he had a friend. We heard about good friends last night. He had a bad friend named John and Dan. And John and Deb says, don't worry, Ammon, I'll fix this up for you and you can get what you want. Well, he did. But it's after he got her. He said he hated her. And the hatred where he hated her was more than the love that he had loved her. He had no peace.
In the satisfaction and gratification of his own will. And he lost his life two years later. We want what God wants for us, and only in that way are we going to have peace. We have to resign our own wills. The God of peace will supply it.
Get yourself back. Elliott's thinking of others and the good of others, isn't it? And I find in our country, brethren, we are self-centered. That's the way our whole advertising system works, To think of yourself, what you want, what you can get.
Even Christ please, not himself.
Here's the creator of the universe. He did not please himself. O brethren, may the Lord help us. And so in these things it's thinking of others, warning them that are unruly, comforting the big hearted, supporting the weak, and be patient toward all. And then verse 15 see that none render evil for evil unto any man.
Whatever, follow that which is good, both among yourselves and to all men. Well, how important these are to think of others. Get outside yourself. We need to be delivered from ourselves, brethren. We we are. I often say to young people, we're dead bearing and risen to grin with Christ, a person that's dead and buried, that you go out and dig them up and see how they're doing once in a while.
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No, you leave them there. Just leave them there. Our life is on the other side and our life is Christ. And so when you look up into the glory, we can say that man in the glory, that's my life. We have the we have Scripture to show that that's my life. Oh, brethren, to be delivered from ourselves is so beautiful.
It's also the fact that we don't have the wisdom to be able to deliver ourselves in some of these situations, and some of these situations will never be fixed until we're safely with the Lord. And so he presents the Lord's coming, but not to avenge ourselves that I was thinking of Romans chapter 12 here it says in verse 19, Romans 12, dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place under wrath.
For it is written, Vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord.
Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him, if he thirst give him drink, for in so doing thou shalt keep coals of fire on his head, and be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. Well, we don't have time to expound all of that, but really the Lord is the one that has the right, the authority to exact vengeance. And in His governmental way we have the confidence. If we have faith, we have confidence in His ability.
To render correct verdict in the situation that might exist and we don't have to try to solve it ourselves. And so isn't it nice to just trust the Lord in faith with some of these situations that develop and not to exert our wills and interfere in the wisdom of God, the purpose of God for allowing that particular trial.
When you were bombarded with communications, you can get alerts on their phone and occur in a public area. You hear a beep in a ring, and sometimes you wonder if it's your own phone because the ring might sound the same. We are bombarded, but as Christians we have the Holy Spirit that dwells within us, and we need to build gateways to good and barriers to bad. Gateways to good and barriers to bad. There's about a dozen here. Between verses 14 and 23. You turn to Romans 12. There's about two dozen, so.
Sometime I would recommend reading Romans 12 and then I Thessalonians 5. There's over 35 different instructions. They're very short, sometimes three and four words, but they're very, very important. You know, people use home remedies to try to fix problems. We need to use divine home remedies again, barriers to bad, gateways to good. God has given us His word. His word is living, is powerful, sharper than any two edged sword, piercing to the dividing of soul and spirit sometimes.
We don't know what our problem is. A few weeks ago I knew there was something wrong. I couldn't tell my wife. Immunology pill. I tried some other thing. Finally, a few days later I figured out what it was, but I couldn't figure it out. Sometimes we need an MRI or an X-ray in a spiritual realm. A loved one a few years ago had an MRI and it turned out there was something the size of a grapefruit and it was just an accumulation of tissue and water over more than a decade and it was removed. There was it was completely benign. There was nothing wrong, but it needed to be corrected.
We need those divine X-rays and MRI's in our soul and in our experience and that's what these scriptures are. Rejoice evermore. How important is that? We need to live in daily happiness and joy in the presence of the Lord. We can rejoice no matter how dark it is, how offering, how often and Peter and James is suffering connected with joy. You want more joy. God may bring suffering because I believe often it's suffering because the flesh suffers and then God can pour into the cracks, into the holes, into the the piercings.
His doors, Jesus said to his disciples, I give you my joy, and my joy no one takes from.
God has given us everything that pertains to life in godliness. He's given us it all. We need to take hold of it, lay it, and apply it wisely. I really enjoy thinking brother, and that there are two verses in our King James Bible that have two words alone, and I like to put them together. Jesus wept. Rejoice evermore.
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Put those two together.
And I like to think of these rather than verses from 16 forward, They're, they're really commands in the New Testament sense of the word commands. He doesn't say rejoice ever more if you can. No, just rejoice evermore. Hey, how does that work when you're going through serious trial?
You know, I've often thought of fallen Silas in the prison there.
Philip by their blacks bleeding their feet into stocks and.
It doesn't say they sang right away. It wasn't until midnight that they sang praise. They prayed and sang praises to God. Can you rejoice in that kind of a circumstance? Is that a possibility?
Yes, it is.
And I say this, brethren, God has set us in such a position of favor before Him in Christ, that even the things that seem to be negative can only and always work for our own good.
And so in that impossible situation, God shook that prison and loosened all the.
The bonds of the prisoners.
And fall in silence, Come out of that prison with trophies of grace the the Philippian jailer at his household. What a tremendous thing, brethren, to realize we have reason to rejoice evermore. Look at Philippians because Philippians was written in a Roman prison and there was a lot that Paul could have been down about.
But notice what he says in verse one of chapter 3. Finally, my brethren.
Rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you. To me indeed is not grievous, but for you it is safe.
Notice chapter 4, verse 4. Rejoice in the Lord.
How often?
Alway.
Did you hear that, brother and sister? The Lord again I say, rejoice.
Yeah, we do have problems here, and I don't think we can ignore them, brethren, but the point is, if we consider that place of favor that we occupy before God in Christ, there's no way we can do anything but rejoice.
This is the command, brother. Let it be a reality in our hearts.
Being a command.
Turn to Philippians chapter 4 for a couple of verses and then we'll apply them to our chapter and to the exhortations that are given.
Philippians, Chapter 4.
You'll notice the first one has to do with the peace of God. So you can look for those words and what I read verse six. Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. What's the consequence? And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
What has already been said? These things have to do with the will of God.
And here in the first the peace of God is enjoyed in the soul, when the will of God is submitted to.
And the peace of God.
We can have that same peace that God has about a matter when we submit to what the will of God is in that even if we don't understand why we still submit as this is the will of God. And if we do submit, then the consequence in our souls is we will enjoy the peace of God now.
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A little different aspect of it is found in the God of peace.
And that if you go down to verse nine, it says.
These things which he have both learned and received and heard and seen.
In me do.
And the God of peace shall be with you.
What's the keyword there do?
There is. The God of peace is with us.
When we do, Bob used the word command and in our chapter, these exhortations have the character in a New Testament sense of a command. So turn to our chapter and I'm going to just use the words that we've just had these things that you've heard and seen and so on in me do and what are they? They had seen it in the apostle Paul.
In his short time with them and now he's giving them these exhortations.
And so he says, rejoice evermore. Why does he say that? Because it's the will of God.
It's the will of God and if there is submission and doing.
There will be the peace as a result because one finds communion with God in doing his will. But there's conflict when I don't because God isn't with me in it. And so these somewhat simple exhortations have that character. He says pray without ceasing.
It's the will of God.
Do it and you will receive the benefit and blessing that he intends from it. In everything, give thanks. And in fact, he reinforces what we're just saying in it. He says this is the will of God.
In Christ Jesus concerning you and so on it goes on with the rest of them as the same character.
We know you need to remember too, that there are sorrowful situations even in this epistle. He says we sorrow not as others which have no hope. And so there are times of sorrow. And our sister Irene is sorrowing, her husband is with Christ, and she's glad that it's far better for him. But there's sorrow, there's something. So the Lord here, he speaks the Spirit of God brings before us the rejoicing evermore. That's the normal.
Course of life for a believer. There may be some exceptions, some situations that cause sorrow and so on. And the Lord grieves with us. The Lord Jesus wept as you read. Jesus wept. But the normal course of a believer should be a course of rejoicing and happiness. And so the believer should be recognizable on the street in every situation of life because he's rejoicing. His face radiates Christ, but he's also in the spirit of dependence.
He prays without ceasing, and so he's not on his knees 24 hours a day, but he spends time privately with the Lord in secret. But then he has the display of a spirit of dependence upon Christ, upon the Lord. He doesn't take out, reach out and take things that he hasn't received from the Lord, as it were. He depends upon the Lord in every circumstance and so.
These simple little instructions were given to these new believers. They were tender hearted, they had affection for Christ, they were waiting for His coming. And this is the spirit of how they ought to have been living. And He just gives them this little incursion. Isn't that wonderful? And so when we get older in the path of faith, we sometimes forget these things. So these three things really go together to rejoice evermore, to pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks. For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
So to have a joyful spirit, a dependent attitude and then a thankful spirit, it's opposite of what is existent in this world today.
The scripture mentioned seven things, and now brother alluded to these who are 7 things. In here we see seven things mentioned. The 4th should bring to our attention often to some sort of.
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Lovin or evil if it's not done properly in the fourth one. So as in the case of seven churches, the 4th church is Thyatira. In the case of seven feasts of Jehovah, you'll find that the 4th one was the meal offering with Levin in it, although it's been baked. And the seven parable will find that the middle 4th one has 11. So in this case a brother mentioned the three already.
And it was the will of God.
Then the 4th one is a quench, not the spirit. It's a mistake or it's a problem that we often fail that we may quench the spirit. It's difficult and I think some other can expand on it more. I often liken the verse in scripture. It tells us not to be like a horse nor a mule.
Because I can relate to both where sometimes we just want to go. I have so much to say. I want to say it now. Just like that race force, you put them behind the racing gate, it wants to go. And someone has to remind him that that the race hasn't started yet. It has to wait for his time.
And then there are times that would could be like that mule, pick me all you want, I'm not going to move. So we need to relate to that and be dependent on the Spirit of God. Should there be a long wait, maybe should be. Should there be something the Lord lay on your heart that you should speak up now I would encourage during the lunch hour and the break. Many younger ones have shared with me many wonderful passages.
And things that we didn't talk about, I'll relate a quick story. I've been there. I was one of you that didn't say anything. I'll show you. Did this with a brother Bob Bauman. I jumped on him one time. As a brother Bob, you should have mentioned this, this and that and that too. And brother Bob Bauman looked at me with a straight face. He said that was good, brother. You should bring it up at the next meeting.
So it's true not to quench the Spirit. It's important. Another seven things that's in the middle, the last three or the next three, if you really look at it, you can. You cannot do it without the Spirit helping. You see, we should see the whole Godhead involved, that God's will. Now the Spirit help to bring the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ out. So there with the Spirit's help, then we can prophesize.
Don't despise it. We can prove whether it is so from the word of God. And then we are told to abstain from evil. No, I don't think that's what he said is that abstain from all appearance of evil. And young people, they're often the phrase and our children used to use that. What's wrong with that? Tell me what's wrong. We can't always say what's wrong.
Because the appearance of that, sometimes even the spirit of that statement tells us that there is some rebellion spirit involved rather than staying what's wrong. So stay away from even the appearance of evil and be obedient to the Word of God.
In our chapter it says in everything give thanks.
Ephesians 5 and verse 20 says giving thanks always.
For all things and to God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. So not only in all things, but for all things. And I must say rather than I have found it a real help in my own Christian life when something happens that is fairly negative to say. Thank you Lord.
I remember one time I was heading east from their West Coast with my four kids in the car, barbed flew and we were just out of Pocatello, ID and it was the winter time as following the truck and a piece of ice came off the top of that truck and flew right into my windshield. Just shattered it. Ever.
I didn't know how to react.
My first reaction, my kids told me afterwards, thank you, Lord. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Lord. Now, Lord, help me. And so I was able to pull it over. But I was amazed, Brother, what happened? You know, when a truck's ahead of you, you generally doesn't see what's going on behind it. But that guy saw that happen and he pulled right over. It was a Pepsi truck. And he and he came back. He says, you guys all right? He said yeah.
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He says, I'm going to call my office, and he called his office and he says if you go to this address, we'll put you in a new windshield right away. Yeah, we we're delaying two or three hours, but it didn't cost us a thing to have a new windshield put in. Brethren, it helps to just accept every situation from the hand of God and say thank you, Lord, in everything. Give thanks and giving thanks for all things. This is important.
This is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
And then what you were mentioning about Brother Dave Quench, not the Spirit, how important it is. Notice the Spirit is in capital. It's the Holy Spirit of God that dwells in US.
Is there to guide us not only in assembly meetings, but he's to guide us individually every day.
Cultivate the sensitivity as to the presence of the and the spirit of the Spirit of God in my in our hearts brethren, because he's there to guide us and he will give you direction that you need the Lord help us to be exercised about this.
The verses 9 keys 20 and 21 give us what our proper response should be.
To the work of the Spirit in our lives. And this too was really in connection with these young believers. They have when you're lost, you're living under the influence of the enemy. And more than we would understand, we're under the influence of the enemy, particularly when we're lost. We're slaves to sin and so on. But when we get saved, if we walk in communion with the Lord Jesus.
Independence upon him, and we have that spirit. We're rejoicing in the Lord.
The Spirit of God will be at liberty to guide and so.
Our response should be not to quench the leading of the Spirit, perhaps in gospel work or whatever it might be. But then there's another response that says in Ephesians chapter 5, verse 30, Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.
Whereby, oh, chapter 4, verse 30, I'm sorry, whereby we are, ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. So grieving the Spirit of God is doing something that He didn't ask you to do and sinning, perhaps in a way that the Spirit has spoken and you have resisted and you have pressed your own will and gone ahead. And so these things are just in the tenderness. You can just see the tenderness of the apostle Paul.
And speaking to these new believers and saying the Spirit of God is going to try to work with you and don't quench that spirit. Just allow him to do his work. Despise not prophesying. So he's going to use individuals and they're going to prophecy. We might just look at the First Corinthians chapter 3. It's not a complete.
Definition of what prophesying is.
But it is a partial definition. Chapter 14 of first Corinthians. It says verse three. He that prophecy us speaketh unto men to edification. That's a building up in the things of God. Knowledge of the Scriptures exhortation stirring up the conscience is engaged then comfort, comfort of heart. Those three things particularly. But then if you look back in.
Or ahead to I'm sorry, back to Colossians. I think it's chapter 3 in Colossians. It says that we should be speaking with hymns, speaking to one another, singing, making melody in our hearts.
I can't find that. Maybe some verse, chapter 3, verse 16. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns, spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And so there are different aspects to the work of prophesying.
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And God knows how to use the word of God and to raise up individuals to prophecy, and they don't tell us what we want to hear.
They don't speak soft things, but they speak on behalf of the Lord. And so that's why the sisters cover their heads at a hymn sing is they may be prophesying, singing and the teaching and the admonishing of the Saints and so on. It's a part of the prophetic realm. And so then there's prophecy and we're to prove all things and to hold fast that which is good. I might prophecy something that's not true, not right, not according to the word of God, while we're to prove what we hear by the word of God.
And 1St Corinthians 14, the prophets speak two or three and let the others judge, not judging persons, but judge what is being said. You've got your Bible open in front of you. Is that really what it's saying? Look at it and it will be in the line if it's the right teaching. I must say, younger brethren, I want to say a word because when I was young.
I remember accompanying Brother Clem Buchanan in one of the trips and a brother spoke in a meeting and I didn't particularly like what he had to say at a centric Brother Clem Buchanan. Afterwards, when that brother speaks, I can't really hardly listen very well. He looks at me and he says despise, not prophesying.
That was a good correction for me.
He says you may not like him, but he might be saying something that you need to hear. Listen. And God uses sometimes instruments that we least expect. He used the mouth of a donkey to reprove me, disobedient prophet.
Brethren, bless not despise prophecy, but then like you say, Robert, prove all things hold fast that which is good. So we test it by the Word of God, and when we see it in the Word of God, then it's cemented into our hearts and souls. And then I think it follows on abstain from all appearance of evil, as something comes up that has the appearance of evil.
Abstain.
Think of being led by the Spirit as a brother who speaks. But then we too should think of other things. First of all, how can you be LED, especially publicly, if you're not at the reading, at the regular meetings? And I say this because we know when we go home, sometimes we find it difficult to be at all the meetings.
What happened at the prayer meeting? Should you be there?
Is the spirit they're guiding.
What about reading meetings or maybe a special meeting called for different purpose? I say this as an encouragement. You know, it's interesting. During COVID, I don't follow the US as much as Canada. We have people fighting, saying it's not good that Sunday churches are closed. They were fighting for it. You know, I'm not here to debate right or wrong because I know there are going to be different opinions. But my thought immediately turned to it was that how come they're not fighting to be at the prayer meeting or the reading meeting?
Where is our heart? Those are the prayer meeting is an assembly meeting. And as the old brethren of all used to say, in a sense that's the temperature gauge for the assembly. And you might say, well, there's so few there. Well, I think that's why you need to be there.
Well, there were many there. Well, that's why you need to be there. You should be at the prayer meeting as well.
Many conversations with young brother about this very thing. He had a lot of things to say about the problems and difficulties which no doubt were true.
But I said, why don't you be part of the solution?
But I related to him when I was in my 20s and the Lord restored me and I was back in meeting. I didn't come Wednesday nights very often.
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Brother Carl McCoy won Lord's Day morning after meeting, said Brother Sam, why don't you come to the Wednesday night meetings And I said, you really want to know? And he said, yeah, he could have laid into me his ability to do that, but he did it.
And I said to him, because the prayers don't get answered here, there's something hindering things in the meeting, the way the meetings are. I said at work, I pray with the Baptist brother and this evangelical on that one, and the prayers get answered that afternoon or the next day or the next week. Nothing gets answered here. That's how I felt.
Brother Carl said to me. He said, well, you know Brother Sam, he said, I guess then that's what we should be praying about.
And he said, would you be there next week? And I said, OK, And he started the prayer meeting next week. He mentioned a little bit about that. And he said something's hindering things here, brother. And he started off and the prayer was unbelievable. He just poured his out to God about what is hindering. All the young people are gone. Everybody's gone. All this stuff and it's dead. It seems dead. Well, if you're a young person, it's hard to go to a thing like that.
But he could have said to me, well, be part of the solution, and he kind of did because I was there the next week and I saw something take place that was authentic and real. And our brother Carl was. He just poured out his heart before God. And, you know, things began to change after that.
But I was excusing myself in a way that I shouldn't have been. But there can be a hindrance in our meetings, and those who are, are there. Maybe you ought to think about that. Maybe there ought to be some prayers about Lord. What's hindering things? What's holding things back? What is keeping young people away? Are we driving them away? And if things start changing, you'll want to be there. And after that, I did want to be there because I watched that there was something real taking place, that God was moving.
The Spirit of God began to do things and I was amazed. And he's able to do that. So there's another side to it.
And we should prayerfully consider that verse 23 and 24 kind of summarize all these exhortations. The very God of peace sanctify you holy and I pray God, your whole spirit and soul and body, that's our entire being.
They preserve blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. I look at that verse. I say, how in the world?
Can that happen? How can I be blameless? There's so many little fallacies in my personality and my actions. But look at verse 24. There's the answer, brethren, Faithful is he that calleth you who also will do it? It's not a matter of my faithfulness, brother. It's a matter of his faithfulness.
He's going to work it out, and He is working it out in US. And so the Lord give us that confidence that on that day when we appear before Him in glory, spirit, soul, and body will be found blameless before Him. Oh, brethren, what a tremendous thing it would be. In that day. The Lord exercise our hearts, not only our body, but our soul.
And our spirit, in every sense of the word, we need to be sanctified. Sit apart for him.
The world refers to this order, doesn't it? The world you'll hear the expression in the world, body, soul and spirit. And so they pay little attention to the spirit. But the spirit is God conscious. It's the intelligence of the intelligence of man and his God conscious person that part of them. And his soul is his emotions and what he likes is he dislikes and then embodies physical.
Appreciation, ability to physically.
Enjoy this world or exist in it. The world wants to forget the spirit, but the order here is very significant, spirit, soul and body. And so we need our thoughts. It's a marvelous, you know, you should think of the tenderness. The apostle Paul to speak in this way in the Spirit of God leading him. The spirit needed to be right for everything else to be right. The Spirit 1St and then the soul, the emotions and then the body.
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In chapter one.
Genesis, a man in his own image and likeness. God is a tripartite being is.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and so He made us in His image and likeness. I sometimes say to the brethren in South America, the plant creation as a body, but has no soul nor spirit. The animal creation has a body and a soul. They can they have their likes and their dislikes. They can show affection or a lack thereof. But ask a dog about God. There's no.
Spirit there to have any sense of God or his his existence. It's only man that is spirit, soul and body.
Our time is gone, brethren. I would like to turn it to dawn, please. The last half hour we got here. Please don't you go ahead with what you have in your heart.
Let's turn to John, chapter 17.
I'm going to make remarks, but I don't intend to take 1/2 an hour's worth of remarks. And so after I make what's on my heart, I would leave it open for others to share from John 17 according to what the Lord may give them.
We've had.
This weekend and the reading meetings and occupation with the Lord's coming and practical exhortations that would characterize our lives in view of it and give us a hope for the Lord to come and.
The This morning, what brought this chapter before me particularly was this morning we had three. We sang three different hymns.
But the character of all three hymns were really in the spirit of a prayer. All three hymns we directly address. Lord, we can see by faith in Thee a prospect bright, unfailing, and so in spirit, if we were singing them.
As I trust we did, our hearts were lifted up to express to the Lord what our thoughts were in a hymn.
Which is in the spirit of a prayer. All three of the hymns had that same character.
Of direct address.
It's important when we.
22 songs, if you will, that we opened this meeting with. We're not of that character. They were spiritual songs and they were reflections that we were making on our thoughts that we trust were formed by the Spirit of God. But John 17 to me is a wonderful reverse.
And I think a very encouraging way to end our reading meetings on the weekend. What's John 17?
Well, in John 13 through John 17, the Lord Jesus is anticipating the time when he's going to be separated from His own. And so he begins to prepare them for the time when the disciples and others, ourselves included, would not be with him and where He is. And so he concludes that preparation.
With his prayer for us.
And so I think it's important for us to see what the Lord Jesus has prayed and is praying his Spirit with respect to what we've had this weekend. And it's not our side of it. We ended up the reading portion with it's God that works. And here's the perfect you appreciate. We were told to pray for one another.
Don't we appreciate this morning that the Lord Jesus is praying for us?
Who better could be praying for us this morning than the Lord Jesus? Who better could anticipate?
His coming and how he feels about it. We've had an experience over this feel about his coming and what our thoughts are as to our hope and what that hope is. What's his hope And to me if we let him.
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Tell us, as he does in this chapter in his prayer. It's a prayer.
And so I just like to look at a few things that the Lord Jesus is praying.
Then and today, for you and I, in anticipation of the moment in which he's going to give a shout.
So he says and just get the context in chapter 17 and verse one, these words spake Jesus and lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour is come glorify thy son and the beginning of the prayer he is speaking to the Father and telling the Father and recognizing with the Father that his work here on earth that he came to do for the Father.
Is now come to a conclusion as Son of God, he could refer to it even though he hadn't physically yet been on the cross. That comes in a couple of chapters. But he prays to his Father and says, Father, I have glorified you on the earth. I have done the work which you gave me to do, and now you glorify yourself.
And so he begins that way. In verse six he says, I've manifested thy name unto the men.
Which men?
He says The men which thou gave us to me.
Out of the world.
You look at yourself this morning that way.
Do I?
I'm a person that God gave to his son and He's going to pray for me.
And you, he's going as he does here, speak for us in that context.
He cares about those that God has given him out of the world.
And so he expresses that.
And so he says.
Thou gave us the mate and so on, and expresses the thoughts. I'm not going to try to go verse by verse through the chapter.
He says in verse nine. I pray for them.
Can you leave the room this morning and with the consciousness that he just prayed to God said I pray for brother so and so and sister make it personal.
Lord, I pray for Dawn, I pray for Bob and so on. I pray for Mary and so he.
Thou hast given me those who thou hast given me. They are thine. Oh, that's a wonderful thing. He can speak to his Father and say you've given him to me. And they're mine, but they're yours too. And so we look. He's praying for us as belonging to himself.
And belonging to his father.
Better to belong to.
Is it possible? Can you imagine anybody you'd rather belong to than God the Father and God the Son?
So he says.
Verse 11, part of the prayer that is for us as we walk out of this room today and head back to whatever our other activities of life are.
He says.
They are of the world, Holy Father.
Holy Father, that's his character of his Father. And what does he ask for us in connection with it? He says keep.
Keep those that thou hast given me.
He wants us to be kept.
So.
Thus, prayer we could ever ask for to leave this room is that the Holy Father keep.
Verse 11 Through thine own name those who has given me.
The we we speak about entrusting one another to the care of the Lord.
Our Lord Jesus has the same character of his prayer. He's entrusting us.
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To Holy Father to keep us, and so he says.
Umm verse 14. I have kept them.
And the world hated them.
So what is he going to want for us? He kept them while he was here.
But he's not going to be here anymore. And So what is his prayer for us?
We weren't in the same position that these words had to do with his 12 disciples and the others that the Lord had given him and that he had part of his pathway. But his desire, as we see later in his prayer, was, does he say Lord take him out of the world? No, he doesn't. He says, I've given them thy word so they have it.
And that he then says, I pray not. Verse 15 Thou should take them out of the world.
But thou should keep them from the evil. That's the prayer of the Lord Jesus for you and I this morning.
Not to take us out of the world yet.
But to as wholly keep us from the evil. So we had an exhortation this morning and.
Abstain from every appearance of evil, and so on. We were given practical things on our side of responsibility that would contribute, if you will, to this end result.
Verse 17. Sanctify them through Thy truth, by word as truth.
What's been happening for the last couple of days?
What's the process that's been going on when you and I have been sitting here for several hours reading the Word of God and meditating together on it?
We're fulfilling this prayer.
Sanctify them through Thy truth. Thy word is truth. If we have been accepting what the truth of what has been given to us over this weekend in this prayer and this, these meetings, it has a separating, a sanctifying effect because God's Word is pure and it is that which has that character for us.
Verse 19 for their sakes.
I sanctify myself.
We had earlier.
Your life's where your heart is. Where's your heart?
Your heart, at least in measure and the desire of God completely would be my heart is totally wrapped up in that person where he is outside this dirty, messy, sinful world. And so the object of the heart being I set myself apart. He does, He has, He is set apart. He's not here anymore in this sinful world, but by being where he is and being the object of our hearts, then the occupation with him.
Is a separating purifying.
Activity of his that's embedded in his prayer.
To give time for others, I'll just quickly go down maybe to.
Verse 24 Father, here's the desire of the Lord Jesus. We talk about his coming.
We've been occupied with the anticipation of the hope of it. What's his prayer about it?
What should he pray for us concerning his coming?
Father, I will.
That they also.
Whom thou hast given me.
Be with me where I am.
Does that tell you something about his coming?
You and I have a hope formed to look forward to that coming.
Does he have a hope?
Yes, he does.
Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given thee.
With me where I am and what will be the result?
Of that desire of his heart we've already had. There's nobody more patient waiting for the coming than himself. He's waited for it a little longer than anybody in this room.
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Ever has or ever will. And yet He patiently waits. And why? It's wonderful what he puts in attributes, if you will, to our hearts, when He says that they may behold my glory.
Why is say such a thing?
Because He knows that when you behold His glory, it will be the supreme satisfaction that you will ever realize.
It will perfectly, completely and forever satisfy the greatest longings of the human heart of the new man. And so to behold His glory. It's love that He has for your soul and mine, that He would have us. Behold that glory of Himself that is His alone as Son of God, that is His as man, given by God to have.
And so.
Uh, I'll stop.
Let others.
Could you explain further Dom the two?
The two.
I don't know if you'd call it titles, but that the Lord.
Uses in verse 11 and verse 25. All the rest of the times it's just Father, but he says Holy Father in verse 11, righteous Father in verse 25. And maybe I see how Holy Father fits a little bit more with keeping them.
But why is why does he use those two titles, and why are they appropriate where they are in the Lord's Prayer?
Yeah, that's not. I don't really want to. No, I've never.
Complete that I feel free to put out so I would appreciate help. Maybe anybody might be able to help.
Verse 11 I believe the importance of the holy is the keeping from it's the character of God who is holy and it is His desire that we be kept consistent with his character of holiness and He recognizes the risk that there is in a world that is unholy and hates holiness.
In Romans chapter one, the world did not want to retain God in their knowledge.
Because to retain God in man's knowledge is the conflict that I don't want to do the will of God. I want my own will and it's a sinful will. And in fact.
There is a measure in which when the believers are gone from this world the will, the world will breathe a sigh of relief.
Because that influence for holiness will be gone.
And temporarily, man will be happy that you're no longer here.
To bother his conscience if you live a holy life. And yet we're constantly in danger of being drawn into it because we still have the flesh in US.
In James chapter 2 I'll make this comment about unholiness. In James chapter 2 verse one, it speaks about flesh and desire.
And, and, and it's pretty significantly important. We know what the flesh is. It wants to do its own will, and it's a sinful will.
In that verse where it speaks of our desire, it's important to recognize that flesh gets satisfaction temporarily out of what it does.
Man does sin because he finds, at least at the moment of doing it, he has satisfaction in what he's doing. And Satan uses that. And he sins because he's doing it in a way that sometimes in its right context, is the right thing. And God put the desire there.
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That which is moral and within the marriage is a fulfillment of a natural pleasure that is of God and is wonderful in its place in the man woman relationship as husband and wife. But there's desire satisfied in it and man fulfills that desire and adultery and other forms of it, but you can't say there's not a satisfaction in the doing of it. Here. I'm going beyond verse 11, but it's the sense.
Of a Holy Father that needs that he's praying to a Holy Father in that need that we have to be separated from the sense of evil.
But I believe in the verse 25 when it's, O righteous Father, that the day is coming when the world will know and recognize that God has always acted righteously and all his affairs with man and His place with man having to do with the earth.
He has been perfectly consistent in all that he has done, but the world doesn't know it. And so he's saying to us, but you know it.
You know it.
And he recognizes that we recognize when we are made the righteousness of God in Christ as we had in the Saturday night gospel, when we are made that part of what we are learned is the truth of the righteousness of God and how that righteousness is satisfied. We understand it as a people, but the world doesn't. The world has no real clue of what righteousness really is.
The operation of the earth and the governments of the world. We pray that they would.
Act in the fear of the Lord and act righteously, but we recognize and practice.
That very often the governments of the earth are anything but righteous in their character.
That the flesh and the desires of man dominate rather than what is.
Right managing the affairs of the world.
That is interesting to hear John John 17. There are two things that are there to help sanctify us rather than the 1St is in verse 17/17/17. Sanctify them through thy truth. Thy word is truth.
Important to you young people. In the day in which we live, anything goes. People think truth is relative.
Brethren, when it's here, thy word is truth. That is not relative, that is absolute.
And so truth is absolute.
I think the problem is sometimes when people look at us who fail in our testimony, they say you say you have the truth.
Look what you're doing.
And so they call it in question, and maybe they might. If we are the reference point, we are not the reference point. The reference point is God's word. And of course in the Lord, the Lord Jesus said I am the way. Is that true?
Is the truth in the absolute sense of it, beyond which there is no appeal, how important it is to get that settled in your souls, young people, in the midst of a world where, say, that's just your idea?
It's not just my idea, it's what God says in His Word, and I must go by that. But I think it's important for us to keep the focus of ourselves. So that's one of the things that sanctifies. I want to ask you young people, do you read the Scriptures on your own?
You have a time when you open up the Word of God and read it for yourself, just you and the Lord. I just want to encourage you to establish that habit in your life. It's so important that will sanctify you. We live in a world that everything we hold true is being challenged. And so here's something that is absolute.
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Thy word is true.
Read it constantly. Read it consistently. I say. Don't just jump around in your Bible from one side to another.
But read it consistently if you start Matthew's Gospel.
Wherever you stop reading market and then keep on reading from there, read through the Scriptures. That way you will understand it much better. But Scripture has a sanctifying effect and that's what we've been talking about in in First Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 23. But there's another thing here in John 17 that I think is beautiful to see. And I think Don mentioned it, but I just want to focus on it a little more.
Verse 19, he says, for their sakes, I sanctify.
Myself, that they also may be sanctified through the truth. Now that's His work of intercession at God's right hand. He has set himself apart in the glory to pray for us. And it's that we might be sanctified. That's why it's so serious for a child of God to get into sin.
You are more responsible than a person of the world if you sin, because you are sinning with that one.
Pleading for you at God's right hand and I don't pretend to know what he says there he says father there's Bob down there he's getting close to temptation keep him don't let him get into that and if I purposely.
Get into it. I am far more responsible. So remember that you have one who is interceding for you at God's right hand every day, every hour. Oh, what a precious thing it is to know. So there is reason that we should be sanctified, set apart, holy for God. That's why in our present day.
Against believers is to undermine the very idea that truth can be known.
That you the very idea that you can hold it in your hands, that it cannot be known, this idea that there are no absolutes, Bob said. There is, there is apologists one time.
Well, you quoted the word, but I heard what you said and it's the truth because you're repeating it. An apologist had AQ and a one time and somebody said in the Q&A there are no absolutes.
Said to him, Really, He says there are no absolutes. Are you sure?
There are no absolutes. Are you absolutely sure?
And all of a sudden, the guy paused and realized he just defeated his own argument. I want you to know that, young people, it's that easy to defeat some of these foolish things that people come up with is to push it out to its extent. Francis Schaeffer in the 70s wrote about those things, and he coined the word then that he had to coin just to make a debate with somebody or a discussion. He called it true truth.
The Word of God is true. True. It's what actually is. It is objective.
And you can prove that by pushing somebody with those kind of statements. But if you've been convinced you can't know it or that you have a sword that's made out of rubber, how do you fight? Don't let them do that. And much of the stuff on the Internet that tries to to suggest to people.
Older sister up in Iowa Falls who whose grandson keeps coming home with stuff from the Internet. He's got her doubting whether she can trust the word of God now.
Well, it's a lie, and it doesn't take long if you think it through a little bit to realize it is a lie. There are absolutes. That which actually is true is what reality actually is. And this idea, you have a truth, I have a truth, he has a truth, she has a truth. It doesn't fit the real world and no one lives that way anyway. You can point to an atheist or somebody that tries to say that. Do you live that way? Do you live as though truth can't be known? No, you don't.
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In your practical existence, day by day, they don't live that way. It might look good on a philosophy paper, but it doesn't work in real life. You know you, you think you can alter truth. Try jumping off a four story building one day, convincing yourself that you can fly. It doesn't work, not unless you provide yourself with wings or a parachute. But truth can be known. And if you believe that truth can be known, then when you do learn some things, it has a practical effect. It is a sanctifying effect. It has an effect on changing behavior and how you do.
I'm going to tell you a quick thing about a young believer who just told me this recently, he said. Something's going on in me.
He said I never used to do stuff like this. He said I was driving along and I could see a young woman running towards me. It wasn't dressed very well, covered very well. He says I never did this before. I put my hand up as I drove by. What did I do that I know why? Because he'd learned something and the Spirit of God had him put his hand up and the Lord showed him something. So Brother Bob, when you quoted that, who will do it?
He will do it. What's our side to cooperate with that by faith, right?
The fathers I notice in verse five had actually begin by saying, oh father, and I think that's how we are like when we first learned from the word of God, Oh father, we realize there is a father now. I think the Sunday school verse is that this week or last week I can remember Proverbs 9.
And tan give us a hinge to the next one. Proverbs 9 and 10 says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Many of us know that verse very well except we stopped there. There is there is a semi colon. We learned that it says after that and the knowledge of the holy.
Is understanding. It's good to know the word of God, but it's also good to learn what is holy.
Once you learn to holy, we now recognize there's a Holy Father now times gone, but you look down further. The Lord pray that that we be in him and he be in God. When we realize and learn to look at things from God's perspective as well, not just ours, then we can address him and understanding he's the righteous Father.
300.
By 325.
Because they could comment before we write.
17 verse 24.
The Sun's desire here, Father, I will, that they also whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am.
Why, that they may behold my glory, which thou has given me. We've talked a lot here about natural relationships and natural desires, and one of those desires is we have a desire that we would be known that there would be someone that would understand us.
First Corinthians, chapter 13.
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First Corinthians chapter 13, the very end of the chapter. For now, we see through a glass darkly.
But then face to face, now I know in part. But then shall I know?
Even as also I am known.
The Lord has asked us while we are here on this earth, to remember Him in His death.
To remember the suffering. But in heaven He desires that we see his glory.
The glory of the Creator and the glory of the Redeemer.
That's his desire, that's his thought for us to be with him, to hold his discord.
Look for that.
1 Thessalonians 4:14-5:7