Lawrenceville Conference: 2001
Table of Contents
Titus 2
Reading
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We can join in the through our Lord Jesus Christ.
He thanked me for.
That great love that was extended to us.
So that we know now a joy that is not the world is getting.
Mirth but.
Is the reality of a relationship with thyself on a racial statement?
We give these names to our thoughts for.
That joy which can be ours even in adverse circumstances.
Now our God and Father we're here to.
Read thy word together.
And we have an enemy that would.
Seek to cause the flesh to manifest itself, that there's plenty of it in our hearts, our God, that would manifest itself. So we ask thee then for grace, that as we open thy word, that there may be a waiting upon one another, and.
Especially upon the leading of the Holy Spirit.
We ask your God that that will work blessing upon us this morning, blessing which we certainly don't deserve, but which thy heart desires to give us.
We pray that our directors through the right portion of scripture.
We pray that the thoughts expressed might be that is, which will encourage those, and perhaps their feeble and discouraged and.
Might animate to our.
More vigorous, younger brethren.
To do thy will, and to hold fast to that which thou has given us.
And that the children might receive something, a little something, to Oh God, we pray, Thou art the one that knows how to meet every need, and we look to thee in the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ with Thanksgiving. Amen.
Agreeable to looking at the second chapter of Titus.
That's a question, brother.
I'll say the answer is yes.
I certainly.
Chapter 2.
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But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine. That's the age men be sober, grave Empress, sound, and faith, and charity and patience. The age women likewise, that they be in behavior has become a holiness, not false accusers, not giving them much wine, teachers of good things, that they may teach the young women to be sober.
Who love their husbands.
To love their children, to be discreet, chase keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, That the word of God be not blasphemy.
Young men likewise exhort to be sober minded.
And all things showing thyself. A pattern of good works in doctrine, showing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity.
Sound speech that cannot be condemned, that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of you.
Exhort servants to be obedient under their own masters, and to please them well in all things, not answering again, not irlining, but showing all good fidelity that they may adorn the doctrine of God, our Savior, and all things.
For the grace of God and bring of salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly loss, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself.
A peculiar people, zealous of good work, These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authorities. Let no man despise thee.
Over the last few years, I have been increasingly impressed.
That there are things that accompany sound doctrine.
Things that.
Go with it.
We like to have sound doctrine, and I certainly believe in sound doctrine.
I don't think. I think if we fail to teach what sound doctrine is.
We've done a disservice to the generation coming after it.
But there are things that accompany sound doctrine or become sound doctrine.
And Titus in this chapter is exhorted to speak those things.
And what we have in the verses that have been read are the things that become more accompanied sound doctrine. They go along with it. God never intended that we be.
Solely doctrinal experts in our heads.
Charles Kohler used to tell me, and I was a young man under his ministry in Brooklyn. No truth is yours until it gets into your boots.
Or your shoes till you walk in it.
And God never intended then that we just be academics and the things of God he wants us to to.
Walk in it and to live a life consistent with what he teaches us. I believe that's the.
Wonderful character of what we have in this second chapter of Titus.
It's sometimes helpful just to get an overview before we take up a portion of the word of God. And just in connection with what our brother has said, I might say that a little contrast between Titus and Timothy is that in Timothy you have the need for sound doctrine, and I've never counted, but you can count over and over and over again. The apostle Paul exhorts Timothy.
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As to the need for holding sound doctrine, especially in the second epistle, where there was an attack on the very fundamental principles of Scripture, we need to have that basis, as our brother has said. But if we have the need for sound doctrine in Timothy, then in Titus we have the need for sound behavior, That which goes with it, as you say. And I might just say I've enjoyed and I know there's an overlap in these chapters, but just in a general way, we might say that in the first chapter we have sound behavior if godliness in the church, in the assembly. In the second chapter you have.
Godliness in the home and in the third chapter. Godliness in the world, in those three spheres, brethren. And if the truth doesn't affect us in that way, if it doesn't have a practical effect, then there. If we come here and we take up these things, and we're doctrinally accurate, and we go home, and it doesn't have a practical effect on our lives. Rather than I say this carefully, then, but we might as well have not have come. If it's not going to affect our hearts and our consciences that it might affect our walk, then sound doctrine we can be.
Clear as ice and just as cold. And so, brethren, let's let these things that we have before us by the spirit of God this weekend, let's let them sink down into our souls that they might indeed have a practical effect on our life.
The last day that my father was alive, he called us to his bedside.
Died at 91 years old, or almost 91.
And he had requested that he could go home to be with the Lord from a bed that wasn't all hooked up with the tubes and things. And so he he lay there in his apartment, and we were called to his side, and he read to his Ezra, Chapter 7 and verse 10.
That Ezra prepared his heart.
To seek the law of the Lord.
And then he emphasized and to do it.
And to teach. And he said it's no good to just learn the doctrine.
And he spoke to a couple of us who were his sons, and to my sons, and he said.
Learn to do it. Learn to do it. What an impression that makes when someone is perhaps speaking their last words to you. Learn to put it into practice.
Brother, young brother who had been recently brought into blessing.
Would come from the Dominican Republic when they asked me said if somebody asked what church were from.
Could we say it's the Iglesia de la Santa Doctrina, the Church of the Sound Doctrine?
I said if you use it that way, it could be a denomination.
But all that might be true, that we were the Church of the sound doctrine, that we walked in the sound doctrine. That would be good, wouldn't it? Well, the dear brother has grown a lot in his soul now and I'm sure would not ever suggest that answer to give somebody when we were in Venezuela. Brother, you will remember this.
We met a nice group of Christians there that refer to themselves as La Santa Latrina. The Sound Doctrine Assemblies, perhaps 200 of them orderly.
Is that what the Lord intends, that we call ourselves or the sound doctor? Or to walk in the sound doctrine so that people look at us and say there's the sound doctrine carried out in practice?
Sound doctrine is to be desired. Isn't * **** and you're not speaking against that in any way, but and it's the basis of sound.
Practical Christianity. And if you don't have sound doctrine, then you're undermining the very basis of practical Christianity. That it doesn't stop at this mere doctrine. And that's what you're getting at, isn't it? It is something to be practiced. Notice in chapter one and verse 9.
In connection with the elders.
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That he may be able by sound dot both to exhort and convince the gainsayers, so it's the basis upon which exhortation is given.
Chapter 2 and verse one. We've already spoken of sound doctrine. Notice verse two. Agent women, aged men, be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith.
Notice.
A little further down, verse 8. Sound speech that cannot be condemned, I'd like to ask what do we mean when we say sound doctrine? What does that term mean?
Isn't it that which began at the beginning in Acts Two? They continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine the Lord had said upon this rock, I will build my church. In Acts Two He begins to build it by the Spirit of God, and the doctrine that came from the apostles began it.
Then there was fellowship, then there was breaking of bread, and then there was prayer.
That's the beginning of it.
And this goes back into the past eternity, does it not? In the first of Titus we have.
Searched verse two in hope of eternal life.
Which God that cannot lie and promise. Before the world began eternal life, it was always there, Christ was always there, and but it was in the mind of God that it should be manifested here in this world.
In this world and so but it was what happened these times manifested these words.
Through preaching the Word.
As to the church goes back there, chosen him before the foundation of the work that we should be holy. That's practice, isn't it, ****? And without blame before him in love, God's thoughts from way back before time began, as in the world.
We see it in the Old Testament illustrated because when there was blessing in Israel at times of weakness and ruin, and when there was a revival at various intervals in their history, it was the result of going back with to that which had been established at the beginning. A copy of the law was found in the crash of the temple. Someone read it in the ears of of someone else. It was not going to. It was not looking for something new or starting something new.
But I say, it was going back to that which God had established at the beginning. And when we come to the book of Jude, and we have appalling days of apostasy brought before us, days, perhaps, brethren, very parallel to the days in which we find ourselves. Jude begins his exhortation by saying, It was needful for me that I write unto you, and exhort you now Notice this, that you should earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the Saints? Jude wasn't telling them to look for some new foundation or basis now.
No, the foundation has been laid, Brethren. The apostles and prophets laid the foundation. They were given the fundamental doctrines of Christianity to lay down. At the beginning Paul spoke of himself as a wise master builder, and he warned about building on another foundation.
That's what sound doctrine is. It's going back to that which was laid down at the beginning. And I can't overemphasize for our young people enough for the need for reading the word of God. Go over these things. What's going to preserve you when you hear something presented that's not according to the word of God? What?
It's going to preserve you. I believe it's to be well rooted and grounded in the fundamental doctrines of the word of God. Saturate your minds with them. But if I could just say this is a little warning too, because I've been saddened sometimes to hear a statement made that goes something like this.
We are gathered to a person, not a doctrine. Now, Brandon, that is true. We are gathered to a person, the person of Christ. And if we ever lose sight of that brethren, we're going to be discouraged and we're going to go astray. We need to have the person before us. But, brethren, if I make that statement to excuse the need for sound doctrine, I believe we're on very shaky ground. We're on very, very shaky ground. We need the the principles. We need the foundation.
And don't make a statement that may sound pious in itself, but is only part of the truth. We're gathered to a person, brethren, but we need to stress the need for maintaining tenaciously, holding on to the sound doctrine that was laid down at the beginning. That person to whom we're gathered is the truth. The truth. You can't divorce them. And really, when we think of them.
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The sound doctrine for the cruiser is connected with the glory of this person.
The Lord Jesus Christ, which is so important for us to realize that the truth will give the glory to the Lord Jesus Christ.
And being in a place where we have the privilege of having the truth is to be in a place where the glory of the person who comes exceedingly important to us because it is to God.
Now all glory should be to the sun.
Some teaching as its origin in God.
God always teaches according to his own knowledge and it's never needs to be changed.
It's said in contrast to man's teaching, because man is always ignorant to some degree or another. Consequently, anything that he teaches, he has to revise it as he learns more and it constantly changes. But we come to a book that has its origin in God and God knowing all things, who teaches like him. And so he teaches us, and it's always consistent with his own nature and character, whatever he has to say to us.
And consequently, if we accept it as from himself, we have something that will last for eternity. It's sound, it's going to last, and it's from himself.
It says of the Bereans in Act 17 that they were more noble in the Thessalonians, in that they searched the scriptures daily to see whether these things are sold. And the thought is not that they questioned the doctrine of the Apostles. But the thought is that their faith should be founded upon the word of God. So whatever you hear in these meetings, if you have not gone back and searched out the things that are said to see, whether or not it or they are in accordance with the word of God.
There's been that much remiss in our thinking. So we need the word of God.
As the basis of sound teaching has has been just pointed out, there's no one that teaches like you.
That's why we have our Bibles open in front of us. And I encourage the young people as we listen in these meetings, look at these verses that we're talking about. Is that what it says? And never fear the truth. It will stand. It's the thing that's most solid in a changing world that we live in. Never fear to be challenged in your soul by the light of scripture.
It is a danger signal if I get uncomfortable when I am challenged by the light of Scripture. But I should be willing to bow to the full light of Scripture. Sound doctrine is not something that is lopsided, it is something that is balanced, and we need the whole of Scripture. What impresses me, brethren, is that none of us are sufficient in ourselves. We tend to be.
Slanted One Direction or another. Therefore we need constantly be challenged by the light of Scripture to read it, to examine ourselves in that light always.
That's why too, we need to avail ourselves of the ministry of the word in the assembly. Now, if I want what I want to say, I want to say carefully because it's not the word of God, as Bob said, that needs balance. This is perhaps the only balance truly balanced book there is in this world. But it's we that need the balance. And I found that sometimes those who do not avail themselves of ministry in the assembly, they're like Ephraim. It says Ephraim, is a cake not turned. And you know yourself, if you put a cake on the griddle and you don't turn it, it becomes too well done on one side.
Not enough. On the other, that's what we are. We're creatures of extreme. But I believe that God has instituted ministry in the assembly in a way where we get that balance, perhaps. Where in no other way. There's many who will put a man up at the front. They'll take what he says at face value, never question it. They might get part of the truth. They might get one side of it. Nobody balances it. Nobody corrects it if there's an error. But rather than when the spirit of God is given liberty in the assembly to minister the word, we're thankful for those who can set out clearly and concisely.
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The doctrinal principles of Scripture. Others can take the same portion and make a practical application. Others too can bring out the gospel from that same portion and you get that balance. If someone says something that's wrong, the spirit of God through another can correct that. And it's the importance I say, of availing ourselves of ministry in the assembly. In fact, I would just suggest this too, that when you pick up good Christ exalting ministry and read it because God has raised up, I believe those who have written to written Good Christ exalting ministry, and it's a help to us.
In our study of the scriptures, it's good even there to read a balance. You take Mr. Wolston. He can bring the gospel just about out of any portion. Mr. Darby can bring the principles before us. Mr. Kelly can refute error. Mr. Ballot brings out a nice little gem here and there and makes some beautiful applications. I encourage you to read, have a balance when you read written ministry because just as in oral ministry, different ones have different abilities given of God. And that's why we need to be careful too, to give the Spirit its rightful place.
It's true that the assembly doesn't teach, but it's in the assembly we learn as taught by the Spirit of God.
In reference to what Brother Jim was saying earlier about the importance of doctrine and not despising it.
And Brother Bob expressed some thoughts along the same line. I want to say a word of warning that there is a movement of men.
In the in the world of Christian men who publicly say that doctrine is not important.
That's dangerous.
And it leads to all sorts of error. Remember, doctrine is the basis on which we know how to live.
So a little later in this chapter I I just want to not to get ahead of ourselves, but look at verse 11.
The grace of God, which brings salvation, has appeared teaching us, teaching us.
The Word of God teaches us and be suspicious of any.
Any movement or any group which deprecates teaching, teaching is important.
And I'm thankful that I have had the privilege of sitting under men who have taught the word of God. This means that, and it's a helpful thing. But that becomes the basis then for a way of living.
In this room, probably this weekend, the next two days, if anyone class is singled out to be addressed directly, the most likely class that will hear their words.
Most frequently as young people, that's just the way it is on gatherings like this. But the word of God doesn't do it that way. And this is an opportunity to recognize that fact in this chapter, that when God is going to exhort us, he begins with those who are the most responsible in this room. Amen. He doesn't begin with young people. He begins with the age men.
Those who take the place among the people of God is being by God, held the most responsible for the behavior of those who walk in this room today, those who are going to be held the most accountable for the walk. The practice of the doctor in this room today are the aged men and one of the most important aspects of the exhortation to them.
Is the practice of that which they're teaching today. And so he begins in verse two, And he says the aged men. And oftentimes because the men take the public part, they may be more referred to. But in this room, the class addressed second. Can I say as the second most responsible class in this room for the way the Saints of God represented here walk.
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Is the aged women.
It's such an important point, Brother Don, that I believe we need to sit and think about it a little bit. Because if there's problems, if there are problems among the young people, it's not the young people that we need to get after. We need to get after the ones who are responsible for setting a bad tone or or not being faithful.
And I look at.
I remember riding on the train with Alan Hadley to New York one morning and I was talking about the older brethren and maybe was in my late 40s at the time, and he says, **** you are one of the older brethren now, be careful how you walk. And I've been grateful for that because we tend to look at another class and and find fault with them, whereas we need to look at ourselves.
How am I setting an example?
If those of us who were older are we sober?
Grave discrete.
Are we sound in faith?
In love and impatience.
Have we gotten impatient with some of the young people perhaps?
And do we help them by that? Does that go along with sound doctrine to be impatient?
You mentioned this chapter as the home in view, didn't *** ****? The first chapter of the assembly? Somebody did, Brother Jim. He probably did. Did you mention that, Brother Jim? Yeah. OK, OK, Brother. Well, the women have the top place in the home as far as I'm concerned.
It starts with a little.
So we old men can't take all these responsibilities.
There were mothers in Israel.
So we got words to both the aged men and the aged women, James writes to us and says be doers of the work and not hearers only.
Receiving your own self if we don't practice what we preach.
Our testimony is not worth much.
Teaching us to observe whatever, I commanded you that last verse in Matthew.
This teaching is so necessary to start at the beginning, the doctrine that came.
That was filled up by Paul.
As we've heard the Old Testament doctrine, it's wonderful all the way through. But God had one more thing to reveal through one apostle from heaven.
That's Paul. So when truth, church truth comes before us, it comes from Christ in heaven through Paul.
To teach us behavior while we're left here to represent our Savior who is put out of this world. But God keeps a testimony going down here.
And if the body doesn't keep in connection with the head, we're not going to know the truth. The truth shall make you free.
And if the Lord makes us free, we will be free indeed. But free for what? To serve? To serve our master.
So the practical side is so good for us, Jake.
In First Timothy chapter 4, verse 16.
Taking unto myself, and under the doctrine.
Continue inland.
We're doing this.
Thou shalt save thyself, and then that give me now what celebration is that, brother Clint?
Was that what salvation is there?
Now save thyself and them that hear thee.
Oh, I see what you mean.
Well, I think that our every day going on and every day going on.
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Salvation testimony, if you might put it. What's your testimony going to be if we don't do what the doctor has given us?
You save yourself from a lot of problems in life in a practical way, don't you?
The word there at the beginning of verse 2 silver I think is a a good one. I noticed the margin my Bible says.
Vigilant sobriety in Scripture is often contrasted with drunkenness.
Person that is drunk is under the influence of something he's taken in.
And it's possible to be drunk not merely with alcohol, alcohol or alcoholic beverages, but through person present circumstances in life. There's a lot of pressures in life. Sometimes we get totally under the influence of those pressures that we cannot operate as we ought to, as believers. And in a certain sense that is not sobriety. But sobriety is vigilant.
How important it is for those who are younger to appreciate those who are older and vigilant.
They have more experience and OFT times a word to the wise at the right time is extremely helpful. I'm thankful for brethren that were vigilant with me and sought tendencies that were not good and gave me a word to the wise in time. I thank the Lord for that, but that's something that is necessary in our day.
Not just allowing those who are younger to go on their way to learn their lessons the hard way by experience, but to be vigilant how important that is.
One of the dangers that we can get into is an academic approach to the things of God.
Sometimes young people say to his wife, don't you have Why don't we have Bible schools and seminaries?
What's the danger in that? The danger in that is I'm not going to tell you that they don't learn some wonderful things there and some very good.
Correct teaching as to God's truth, but they're thrust out into the world to teach it, sometimes before it's been put into practice. And God wants us to learn something, put it into practice. I was noticing in the Psalms in Psalm 25, it says leave me in my path.
But in JMD's translation it says make me to walk in thy truth, to walk in it.
And that's the hard part sometimes is that we don't walk in what we learn and what we.
God never intended we go to a seminary or a Bible school and learn all these things and then go out and teach it without having put it into practice.
Please don't think that I'm despising those faithful places where they have held the word of God and have taught it to men. What I'm saying is the danger in that and why.
It is not. What we need to institute is that you need to walk in what you learn and then it becomes good to you. That's not true of any other discipline that I can think of. A man can can get up and teach something and not practice it at all in most disciplines, but in the word of God.
It can't be that way, and God will not allow it to be that way.
And so we have to get into the word and walk in it, and the sobriety is an important thing. Or as as we we we talk about it, sometimes there's a sense that we're dealing with the truth of God. We're not dealing with human opinions here, We're dealing with God's communication to it, and it can't be treated lightly.
Men get up today and they make us a speech in the world and they have to start with a joke that's almost routine. If you go to a a class on public speaking, they'll probably tell you that's a good way to start a thing off. And it's it's spilled over into divine things. People think they have to start off with a message, with a joke. You don't need to. We're dealing with sober things with with God's word.
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Solemn.
I was one time in.
In Alan Hadley's living room with brother London and he said to us, do you really believe that the world is under judgment?
And Alan and I both responded, yes, No, he said. You know.
I nearly I didn't know what to say, he said.
What are your life would be totally different if you did.
We're dealing with solemn, serious things.
We can't play around about it now. That's a word to me because I like a good funny story or or I I enjoy telling. Some of you know me well, know that I. That's a weakness. I have to tell funny stories and and and.
Sometimes that can lessen the solemnity of what we're trying to communicate. We are communicating God's truth.
I I work for 15 years for RCA.
The credit department there and they had a.
Motto. In those days, they talked about their colored television as being living color, living color.
And I often thought, really, that's what God wants us to display his truth in living color, vividly seeing the truth of what we're bringing out and we take away from.
With a lack of sobriety sometimes. One time I was.
Visiting in Palmyra, me and I had given some ministry on the book of Book of Romans.
The next time I came.
Whether Jonathan Sachs and brother Bruce Conrad called me as lovingly aside and said and read me the verse Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary distinct.
And there's a Brother **** when you were here the last time, there were some dead flies in what was otherwise very, very good ministry. We don't want to discourage you, but we just want to bring that out so that you can, you know, I felt my feet washed. It was a blessing thing.
Rather, we have to be careful.
This sobriety is right. What was the other word that is in the margin, Bob Vigilant.
It's not a joke. What we're into and so vigilant is important too. We have to be watchful. We can't be slovenly and careless. And in the activity, as older brothers, we have to be sober in our way and discreet.
Somebody want to tell us what discreet means?
Mr. Darby has a footnote on that word, and he's a sober mind, sound mind.
Going back to what we were saying earlier.
Older than ones that.
Living and speaking.
Be careful and what we teach the younger ones. Remember Tom McMillan saying to us, telling us one time, he said.
President has got what younger brothers don't have.
There's only one way to get His older brother had God.
Older brother.
What's that good here?
God, experience, experience. Thank you.
Well, it ought to exercise any of us who take part in the assembly and ministry, not just the older ones, but all of us. Perhaps there are those here, and you take part in the ministry and the local assembly reading meeting on Thursday night. You take part in the ministry on Lord's Day evening. And there's a nice comment made about the Lord Jesus, who of course is the perfect example in all these things. It says of all that Jesus began. Notice this both to do.
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And to teach Now the Lord Jesus, as we know, was the fine flower. There was evenness and consistency not only in what he did, but what he said, so that everything he said, everything he did, corresponded with what he said. And so we need to be exercised. And why did the Lord Jesus have moral weight in his ministry? Well, it's true he spoke the very words of God. But what gave moral weight to his ministry was that everything he did corresponded with what he said. I can't always say I'm the fine flower, that everything I say and everything I do corresponds.
But, brethren, it ought to exercise us. And no matter where we come, in the age categories that we might slot one another in, there's always someone watching us. Young people watch us. They know. Our children watch us. They know what if we're consistent in what we say and what and what we and what we do. I tell those incidents that brought it home to my.
Next morning the sister with whom my wife and I and my oldest daughter who was four at the time sister we were staying with, she said to me at the breakfast table. She said, Jim, would you like some milk? And I said no, I don't really care for milk, thank you. And my 4 year old, in all seriousness looked at me from the other side of the table and said, Dad, why do you tell us in meeting that malk is so important and you don't drink it yourself. Now if you there's a difference between spiritual milk and cows milk I realize but what it drove home to my soul brethren is.
That what we say is going to be weighed by our children, by our young people, though they're looking for that consistency in our life, and it ought to exercise any of us that take any responsibility for the Ministry of the Word in the Assembly.
There's a verse in John chapter 8 that bears out exactly what has been said as to the Lord Jesus Christ. And chapter 8 of John and verse 25 they saying to him who art thou? And he says altogether that which I have said.
On you there is that divine consistency of being Exactly perfectly representation of the words that he communicated has been said, certainly invade the word of God, but they were substantiated by that perfect moral display.
In his life.
And he talked about not aware as to whether or not a particular exhortation of Scripture is necessary to be applied to us at that moment.
Whether we need it, if you will.
But I'd like to suggest this for consideration.
How do I behave when I?
Think nobody is watching?
Do I need the exhortation then? We're all here and we have on our meeting manners, our meeting behavior. When we may be with our brethren and at home or at some other time, we tend to act with some consideration to the company that we are in, at that moment in time, and in fact, sometimes when we get in, can I say bad company?
We tend to act in keeping with that company and it causes grief in our lives many times, but I would like to suggest that the Lord Jesus.
Acted the same. Whether he was in the synagogue, whether he was in the home, whether he was on the mountaintop alone. There was a consistency to his life that was never changing, and oftentimes.
Find that if we recognize how we're acting when there's nobody else to see it, that we do need the exhortations that are given to us to apply to our own soul and life. And it's a humbling thing.
One of those verses that's been a check.
Very much with what you say is what it says in Philippians 4, and I'll just read it.
The 4th and 5th verses rejoice in the Lord Always and again I say rejoice.
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It meant that Mister modern moderation or healing Ness be known as the old man, and this is the state the Lord is attacked. Well, there's my hand. That's how close the Lord is always to me.
So we're never alone. Somebody's always watching.
When you say John, he was always acted the same, you don't mean that literally. You mean he acted consistently with the situation and with the state of soul of each one he was dealing with. Obviously he dealt with the Sadducees quite differently than the Pharisees.
They were the fundamentalists of the day, and he called them hypocrites, a generation of Vipers. But the Sadducees, they didn't believe the fundamentals of the faith at all. And he dealt with them quite differently, didn't he? His perfection was as you read that verse, John 825 Who art thou? I am altogether, absolutely what I say. And he was the truth, and he spoken in perfection and as far as consistency.
Are you consistent? The answer is no. Am I consistent? The answer is no. There's only one man that's ever walked this earth that was perfectly consistent with everything that he said and did. He was the truth, and that was our Blessed Lord. You're not consistent. I'm not consistent. And we don't know everything either. I think of First Corinthians 82. If any man thinketh that he knows anything, he knoweth nothing yet.
As he ought to know it, we only know in part. He knows everything at every moment of every circumstance and every situation and every nation and every people and every language. He knows it at once. He knew it in the past. He knows it in the present. He'll know it in the future. He never learns anything. He is God. He is the absolute foundation of all truth. We just know partly. We just partly are consistent. And so on.
And that's so important to get ahold of because when we set ourselves up to be something, to be an authority or whatever it might be, we're on very dangerous ground. This is the authority right here. And young people, the world's opinions constantly change with every fresh generation, science changes. It's not a stable science that what they believe that 20 years ago they've discarded, now they got a new theory and then they're going to have another one.
But the word of God does not change, and so we've got something which is absolutely stable.
It wasn't very long ago in the in Christendom the women went to church with hats on, with heads covered. Now that's all changed. Has the word of God changed? No, it hasn't. But man's attitude has changed. So to get caught up with and carried along with the the thinking of the present, the now generation. No, no, we must always have our thoughts formed.
By the Word of God.
That's why Peter, in his first epistle in chapter 2, tells us that the only.
Guide we have is the Lord Jesus in whose steps follow, leaving us an example. He's the example. He's our prime example. The Apostle Paul could say we followers of me even as I am of Christ and the Lord Jesus is our example. And as you say, Chuck, he's the perfect example.
Well, it's not just the older men, is it? That Titus was to exhort. There was a word for the older women too.
And I don't know, dear sister, if you appreciate how very important you are in the assembly.
How very important you are as a Christian, you think? Well, I don't minister the word, but.
Godly women. Older women.
Are what produces the tone of the assembly very often, and I have enjoyed thinking of these dear older women.
That.
Are in behavior has become a holiness.
Not false accusers or slanderers, Not given too much wine. Teachers of good things.
00:55:03
No, that's the Gather the sisters together and have a little meeting on prophecy, right?
No, it's not what they're the teachers defined in the following verses.
They are to teach.
The younger women.
Not prophecy or church truth, but they're to teach them that realm of things that can only be set by the divine.
By the.
The good example of older women.
I just remember a dear sister in Woodbridge. Some of you might remember her, Bill Bothwell's mother.
Dear Sister Agnes Bothwell, who came around to our house on occasion.
And pitch in with helping my wife with the burdens of the.
The children and all the while speaking things that were edifying. We need that sort of thing. And dear sister, if you are older and God has put you in a position where you may change the life and power and and health of a household by.
Doing what is here and by your good example.
God granted there be more of these that would step into that role, not be looking for a place to have a series of meetings on.
Bible studies on this subject or that subject, but to go around and teach the younger sisters in their homes what will be that which will make us sound in good home, and that's so important that I believe it's almost.
I was going to say foundational in the assembly, but I think that would take away from those who teach the doctrine, and I don't want to do that in any way. But certainly it would make a big difference in our assemblies if we would have older women who were heeding this and taking up the responsibility of teaching the younger women. Now, Titus was not told to teach the younger women, was he?
That wasn't his job. And God is wise in that because there's a grave danger in that. God knew what men were like, and there could be a very grave danger in the man going around and teaching the younger women things. But he has appointed A vessel to do it, and that's the older women. And I thank God for those who do it. And any of you don't be discouraged and think that if you're doing that, don't think that you're you don't count.
I believe it sets the tone of the Christian home and the Christian assembly.
Those older women who are teaching first by example and then by by by precept are teaching what is the proper character of the woman in the home. And it's it's foundational. The home is the foundation of the assembly, isn't it?
I remember back in earlier years of the century there were 5 maiden sisters, all sisters.
I can still see them sitting there in a Toronto meeting 12345 and it was so impressed me that on a Wednesday morning when someone came on to him.
How you see them, I believe that that they just as you were saying who can tell what a what a blessing.
Those sisters words are the Toronto meeting through the years that they were there. One of them became my old Sunday school teacher and she left an impression on me that was never, never been loved.
5 million ladies. They went on to the Lord, and what a blessing they were for the strong meaning over those many years.
And I asked a question in connection with women teaching.
And Acts 21.
01:00:04
First of all, I believe that.
Prophesying we don't understand sometimes. Basically, it means to speak for God. To speak for God means to speak for someone else, but particularly in the Bible, is to speak for God.
I think we have one incident where Aaron was said to be the prophet of Moses, that is, he spoke for God.
And women have the privilege of speaking for God.
And it's a wonderful thing when it was. History can communicate God's mind, but it doesn't refer to public ministry. Nothing in that Scripture is given to suggest anything that would go against other instructions in the word of God. And so the women's prophecy.
Those daughters that prophesied, I believe they spoke for God in a particular way and God honored that and there was blessing from it. I think that verse should be read in its entirety. Acts 21, verse 8.
And the next day we that were a whole company departed and came into Caesarea, and we entered into a look the House of Philip the Evangelist, which was one of the seven, and a gold with him. It doesn't take us beyond the home of their prophecy.
In our expression, teachers of that which is right is in the setting of the home, and it gives liberty to the sister who may very well prophecy, in the sense of speaking, to education, exhortation, and comfort. To those dear young people or younger sisters with whom they are concerned, there is a liberty of grace in teaching that which is right, that would extend.
Beyond household duties.
And so I think what our brethren has pointed up is that they both there and Phillips House. And this is the sphere in which our dear sisters have the liberty of priests who speak to whatever need might arise. And in First Corinthians 11.
I'll just read the fifth verse, Every woman that prayeth or prophesied with her head uncovered.
Dishonoured her head, but that is even all one, as if she were shaved. In verse 17, after he's discussed the headship of the man and the relative order. God, Christ, man, woman, and he's finished that subject. In verse 17 he says now in this that I declare unto you, I praise you not that you come together, not for the better, but for the worse, so the instruction in the first.
16 verses of First Corinthians 11 doesn't directly apply to the assembly.
It applies to other spheres like the House of Phillip and.
Other places where I remember I used to go to the County Hospital in Chicago and we would meet together in the in the basement when I say we the Christians that had come to minister to pass out tracks and seeing him patients and we stand in a circle and we would pray.
The sisters would pray. There was not a church meeting. It's just prayer before we would go to the to the place. And I was young and learning and I was disturbed that many of the sisters that prayed didn't have their heads covered. Well, First Corinthians 11 Says that when she does that, when she prays or prophecies in a public way, which is normally the function of the man, her function is normally in the home. We learn that in Titus.
Praise and prophesize in a public way. She should have the sign on her head that she's subject to the man, and if she doesn't wear that sign, she's taking his place without acknowledging it. And that's not God's order. So it's a serious thing when they don't follow that. And I ended up by not going down to that circle because I wasn't happy with the goings on there. I had learned the ropes of the hospital. I just went up to the wards and.
01:05:02
Passed out the literature and told to talk to the patients. But I just cite that as an illustration. I was just young in the faith, but I knew the Scriptures enough to know that when the women were praying there, they were violating Scripture without having their heads covered. And we often apply that passage to the assembly. Well, I think that in the assembly where the woman is taught that she ought to have the sign of subjection on her head because she's being taught.
And.
It says in Titan, Timothy. Let's just look at that for a minute first, Timothy 2.
On the subject.
First, Timothy 2 verse 11 Says, let the woman learn in all in silence, with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor do you serve authority over the man, but to be in silence. He goes back to Adam and he goes back to the very first.
Part of the word of God as the basis for his teaching.
Let a woman learn in silence with all subjection. Is she showing subjection if she's learning and sitting under the sound of the word of God without her head being covered, That's the sign of subjection, isn't it? And so when she's learning, even in the assembly, she ought to be covered. I think you have to. You have to get the the whole picture of the difference between the woman's place and the man's place. The man is the head, and she ought to acknowledge that in every way.
And he ought to assume the responsibility in every way of being head and many problems that come up in our families and so on is because they they had has failed in his headship. And he ought to be teaching his wife what is the proper thing and that she ought he ought to be ministering to her caring for her.
Helpful to notice that in the exhortations are to the aged men, almost all of them, in fact all of them have to do with the man's behavior.
He as a man will tend to do speaking rather in the assembly or out of it. That's the tendency of the man in the public place to be one who's going to talk and said the exhortations given to him have to do with the behavior that is becoming to what he has to say and the upkeep of the doctors. But all the exhortations to the aged women, it's reversed really.
Because she tends to be the one who does not speak in public, and we've talked in the last few minutes about the different spheres and places and subjects of where she may speak. But almost all the exhortations to her has to do with her speaking when she does in the prideful place. And so she is exhorted concerning that age sister to have a department in keeping with when she is going to speak to another younger sister.
About being attached to her children, about speaking to that sister as to being attached that mother, to be attached to her husband, to be a home keeper, and so on. Those things which are right. And I mention it because I believe it's often a difficult thing for an older sister to fulfill these exhortations of responsibility. It's much easier to say, well, the brothers talk about that in the meeting.
And so on. It's not easy sometimes to fulfill.
Or a sister to fulfill these responsibilities to the Lord in which she should be. She may not. It's not. Let me add, It's not being a busy body. That's not what the Lord's talking about here. But the Lord is saying to her sister, Eight sister, you have a responsibility and to your younger sisters.
In the appropriate time and occasion and circumstance to speak to them, to love their husbands, to be attached to their children, to be discreet, that is, careful. In speech there are times to say things, and there are times to refrain, to be chased in your personal life, and so on. These are important expectations, and often times by God's order, they come more from the older sister than the brother.
01:10:04
It's interesting that this in verse 4 to love their husband seems to be the only place in scripture that women are to be taught to love their husbands, and it is helpful to see that it is not.
The agape word that's used, It's the fileo word. It's the word of appreciation. And no one like an older sister who has had the experience.
Can be a help to a younger sister. Older men or younger men even can't understand this. It's the older women that understand this and can be a help to the younger sisters. Often times in the first years of marriage there's a lot of stress and adaptation that takes place in a marriage and if there were the help the proper health in that timely fashion, I think it would be extremely helpful in our day.
When marriage is so under attack that the older sisters, help the younger sisters, especially in those first years of marriage, to know how.
That they would know how to love their husbands. That mutual appreciation, how to give him the place of headship, How to cook the meals in a way that would be.
Attractive.
And how to submit in a proper way as well. I think there are a lot of practical things that older sisters can say to you that those who are brothers don't have too much clue about him 2:30.
Oh Lord, when we.
Pray.
Great.
Our loving God we thank you for.
This portion of thyroid and we would have to acknowledge and honesty and.
Don't do that. Well you know the learning that often but we stand before the exercises that this meeting meetings have cost in our hearts and.
And found the end of repentance and acknowledgement of our failures and Ukraine that these things made.
To his fruitfulness in our lives for the glory of our Lord Jesus.
Food for the blessing of our home and encouragement of those who.
Who we have, older ones are responsible for.
Directing to create father to help us each one now to be submissive.
We pray Father our Lord Jesus precious name and.
The next thing on the agenda is the noon meal.
Umm, as in previous years, we have a room out this door to the left for those who are older.
And I think Phil told me there's 40 some meals going to be served in there. So you won't have to go through the cafeteria line. And we want to encourage all that, want to to go in there because previous years sometimes we've had to recruit people to go in there to use up the meals. So please go fill up that room.
The rest will go out this door.
And down the hallway.
In the side and through the cafeteria line and.
As soon as you've eaten, please don't stick around.
In the dining hall there to eat because we don't have enough for everybody to sit at one time and so move along and do your conversations. Other places also like to say that we need more young people to sign up out there. I think there was still 4 slots unfilled for this meal, but we'd like to encourage the young people again to serve up on a voluntary basis.
Sign up for serving on a voluntary basis.
Also, there's a nursery down this hall at room 105 and also a playroom for younger children in room 107 and down this hall over.
My left is a men's rest area in room 114 and a ladies rest area in room 113. If you need a little nap, those are older, that's a good place to go.
01:20:08
BTP is going to be here on display only today, so please make a visit there. They make quite an effort to bring down a lot of good literature and it's a good time to pick up things you need. Also, the tapes of the meetings will be available for suggested donation of $1.00.
I'm going to ask Lemoyne Smith to give thanks for the new meal.
Blessed Father and our God, we look up to Thee with praise for our Lord Jesus.
For one who is a perfect example.
Perfect object.
Lord Jesus, we thank thee, Thou wilt have thy.
Bride glorious church without spot or wrinkle.
And we just ask for grace to take home thy word we've had before us.
We thank you for this meal before us too, and we ask thy blessing on it.
My blessing on our fellowship together to in the name of our Lord Jesus.
Amen, Amen.
Keep it in mind.
I'm fine.
We were glad to have Robust on that year too, but last year he couldn't come either.
But anyway.
Titus 2
Reading
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Over God and our Father.
You'll feel the joy. Realize that we're living in the day of grace.
When you think of grace.
Through the lines of that, this reveals the heart of God who delights.
In giving that which.
Is from the largeness of his bosom of love, and we rejoice that he is at full liberty. We show grace because of the great sacrifice made that Calvary without his Give thy beloved Son, Lord Jesus.
00:05:07
And where he laid down his mind the judgment of God, that God indeed might be glorified.
Will this work for God?
And this work also.
Has met our need.
So now, because we were redeemed, we live in hope and anticipation.
The glorious moment, Lord Jesus, as we've been singing, and thou shall come, and thou shalt call us.
That is the reading to be with thyself there and the glory.
The moment that will be.
But then we think of the reigning day, Lord Jesus.
But thou shall come forth as.
The Clemente, King of kings.
Lord of Lords.
I think of that glorious day, and my glory shall be manifested.
Lisa come.
With thee to reign, Lord Jesus, what lies before us?
And we take it in.
Now we're here and we're in the school of God.
We're going to take up thy precious word.
And whom I'd hear thy voice?
To direct us in, this line might be lived out.
In the light of that glorious woman, that all shall be set right.
Lord God and our Father, we just bow humbly.
Because it's grace.
But we deserve nothing. But how great thou art.
So we vow and Thanksgiving we bow to worship and praise and thy blessed precious name, Lord Jesus. Amen.
Let me continue on with two.
Very nice. Verse five or something.
Chapter 2 and verse 5.
You know the age of women, teaching the younger ones to be discreet, change keepers at home, good obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemy. Young men likewise exhort to be sober minded, and all things showing thyself a pattern of good works in doctrine, showing on corruptness, gravity, sincerity.
Sound speech that cannot be condemned, that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of you.
Exhort servants to be obedient unto their own masters, and to please them well in all things, not answering again, not furlining, but showing all good fidelity, that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things.
For the grace of God that bring us salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity.
00:10:04
And purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority. But no man despise me.
I think it's important to notice that in verse 5, the point isn't that you lock the woman in the house and not let her out.
That's not the point here. When it's his keepers of home, at home, it's really the thought is taking care of homework, diligent in homework. In other words, the house isn't the sufferer and.
I know some have built on the usual rendering we have of that to make it almost appear that the sisters should be locked up in her house and not allowed out.
But I don't think that's the point at all here. But there is to be a diligence in homework.
Things are to be attended to and taken care of at home and.
I suppose the there's almost an appropriate connected today with with being a woman who takes care of her house. There's almost a mockery of that idea. Let me say to the young sisters that are here, you can't do anything better.
Then take care of your house and be a homemaker and.
Being the governor of the state of New Jersey, as we just added lady governor and a very capable lady governor.
Is not nearly so important.
As a Christian woman, maintaining a home for the Lord, bringing up her children for the Lord, providing a place for her husband to feel encouraged and and helped along the way, Now is that enslaving or is it liberating? I think it's liberating.
Setting an example for the younger women, that's the .1 of the big issues really. Because young the young women need someone who has a good reputation to set examples.
In being homemakers.
There to be a guard too, as to evil coming into that home. And it's remarkable. We were Speaking of doctrine this morning. Sound doctrine. And when you come to Second John, where there's a warning against those who would come and bring unsound teaching into the home, come to your door and present those things that are false, who is the epistle written to? It's written to a sister. And we can be thankful for wives that have that discernment that when one comes to the to the home.
To present something that's contrary to the scriptures, contrary to the person and work of Christ, that they have the discretion to guard the home and keep that and keep those things out. And I might say this too, that it's often the mother, the wife of the home that sets a tone on a daily basis.
True that the husband is the head of the home, he's to take the responsibility for the headship. He's too responsible to get out the word of God and read it in the home, make sure there's a time of prayer and so on. Some interesting that when you have in the Old Testament the kings of Israel as their chronicle is given, it's often the mother's name that is mentioned. And then whether that king did good or evil in the sight of the Lord because her influence in the home was directly responsible with how that king turned out, whether he was a good king in Israel or an evil king in Israel.
And so it's a wonderful thing for a sister to have this place. We've been talking a lot about sisters. It's good to realize that it's Christianity that gave a woman a wonderful place. Women sometimes have stepped out of that place, thinking that Christianity and the principles of Scripture are too constricting, too confining. But when you trace through the word of God, you find that Christianity gave women a place even above what they had in Judaism. And some of us have been to heathen lands.
And when you go to a heathen land, you find that Christianity gives a place of women, a wonderful place, a place beyond anything they enjoy under any heathen or false religion. And so it is this, Brother **** said, a very wonderful place. But it is the sphere in which God has placed that sister, the sisters. And when they seek by the grace of God to carry out their responsibility in that place, that I believe, God uses it in blessing not only to themselves but to their families and to others.
00:15:34
We had mentioned this morning regarding the order.
In which God has placed each of us to function in responsibility.
And when this order is maintained?
It's so that the word of God should not be spoken against. It's when we fail in these responsibilities that we incur the criticism and judgment of others, but the whole purpose of maintaining the order that God has set, whether it's for us older ones, or for the younger men and the younger sisters and older sisters. It is in order that the word of God might be respected and not spoken evenly against.
I believe in the whole is a place where.
Learn something of the love of God.
And especially the Christian home. I wasn't brought up.
In a home where they knew the Lord and I was brought up in a foster home. So perhaps I didn't know very much about love in the sense that.
There was no outward show of love or affection, or to hug one another. But in the Christian home, as we've already heard of, these were to be taught to love their husbands, to love their children. You think of being in a home where there is that love shown, and love is giving. That's what love is.
Love makes his sacrifice in the home.
You think of God's love and the sacrifice he made to provide salvation for us, the cross. We think of love, you know, as something that.
You perform in a way that's not really making any sacrifice, but love makes the sacrifice, and so that love that's in the home is going to spread to the assembly.
And as India is only to where we learn.
And we are taught to love one another. Well, this is so important in the Christian home in these days that we're living in these are dark thieves, and the world is filled with hatred and envy and all of those things we need, we need brethren.
That show of affection one for another instead of finding fault with everything.
We need to have hearts stirred by the love of God, whether it's in the home or in the assembly.
There was a series of books came out a few years ago. I don't know if they're still in print. I have a tendency to think books stay in print forever, and I'm thankful that John Kaiser keeps me informed that they, you know, 20 years ago it went out of print. I asked John for something a couple days ago and he told me today. I went out of Prince 20 years ago, but this book was called Martin Luther Had a Wife.
And it was charming to read that book and see something about her.
Catherine Funbora, I guess her name was, and what a tremendous influence she had in that in that home. She made the home what it was. You tend to think of Martin Luther, but you forget the fact that he had a wife and it was just a series of sketches like that. I I think there was another one.
Is the opposite way and said Harry features, so had a husband and it sketched the the spouses of.
Somewhat well known people, and you began to realize how important was the spouse in the life of that person. And I just would encourage our young sisters not to think that, well, that's the end now. I'm not, I'm not going to be the governor of Illinois or whatever. And then so life is over. But to realize that you have a tremendous effect.
00:20:21
In the home in which you are.
I was talking to a young lady a little while ago that I've known for some years and I hadn't known that she wasn't teaching anymore and she told me no, I'm at home and I thought, what a wonderful thing, a privilege for her to be at home and to be able to guide that home. That's the best thing you can do, is to guide them.
It's I think that scripture is used for that. She is to guide the home. She guides it. She makes the direction in which that house goes. Think of what was it Susanna Wesley that was the mother of John and Charles West. What an influence that woman had and you could think of many, many others. Think of Samuels Mother Hannah. What a what a wonderful person.
She was and.
Just just enjoy that thought, young sister. That nobody's trying to restrict you or put you in a cage or or lock you up so that you don't have to, can't develop whatever the Lord is giving you to do this. What you do in your home, sister, that, that.
Makes it possible for her husband to function in the place that the Lord has given him. Her place is going to be highly rewarded by the Lord in the coming day. So we need to, I think we need to put more emphasis on that, but.
The men aren't the ones to put the emphasis on it. Who is to do it?
Others keep the family together. That's it. And it's the mother, the older women that are to pass that on and get that message across to the younger women.
And don't don't be taken in by all the the feminist literature that's out there. The feminist literature. Forgive me for saying anything, but it's garbage, and what you need to do is to get God's viewpoint of it. And you'll find how highly important is a woman's position who is seeking to govern her family for the Lord, guiding her home for the Lord.
Making sure that that home goes on in a godly way.
You can ruin a home. We've known of cases where men, I think John Wesley himself had the most. From what I remember reading, he had one of the most unhappy homes that you could possibly have and it didn't help his ministry at all.
Where he made the mistake of getting up, I guess on in the church after the his fellow people told him that he should have a wife. He got up and announced his engagement before he even talked to her.
Announcement from the pulpit.
She learned about it listening to him. That started off wrong right there, didn't it? But young sister and and older sisters foster that in the younger sisters, what we need is mothers in Israel, we need women who will step up to the place God has given them. I hope.
I love Barbie and I won't mind my saying this, but you know, everybody knows Bob, Tony and and I went down to go to Bamba one time and.
I watched Bob come in and.
Lean over and say to Barbrianna, you got to stretch the meal a little bit today.
I've invited the guys who are working on the meeting room to come for lunch.
And there wasn't a bit of complaint.
Maybe in Dexter, in her heart, I don't know. But she did it in such a nice way and we all had plenty to eat.
God honors that kind of a.
A willingness to provide the environment.
In which a family can mature my mother I will always, until the day I'm called home, to be with the Lord. I will honor the memory of my mother and the things that she did to drain us and teach us and and to provide a place for my father where he could function in his place in the assembly. So it's important.
00:25:20
It's one of the most important things you could ever do.
Let me make a practical comment.
To young married couples.
Don't get yourselves in the position.
Where you both have to work in order to pay the mortgage and make expenses.
Take a Take a simple dwelling where the father, the husband, the responsible one his earnings can pay the bills.
And Mother stayed calling.
The the effort of Satan is to get the.
Father and the mother out of the house, into the workplace, and then the children get turned over to you don't know who.
That's of the safety. That's the state. It's not just garbage, it's satanic. It's really an effort of safety to attack the very foundation of society. And where is it? It's in home. It's in the hope. And he says if I can just get the woman into the workplace and I will have succeeded. He's done that since World War 2, when the women had to be called in to make the munitions and all that.
They got into the workplace and once they got into it, they've never gotten out of it and it goes back to that.
But that's that's where we are. What is a young Christian family to do? Don't get yourself so loaded with expenses that you both have to work.
Outside of the home, that's just a bit of, I believe, sound advice.
Just in that regard too, I might say to those of us who are husbands, that we need to allow our wives to function in the sphere that God has put them. And I have been grieved sometimes in visiting in Christian homes to find that the husband sometimes doesn't let the wife function in that sphere that God has given them. For instance, if you come into my house, you won't find I try to run the kitchen.
Disaster. You wouldn't want to eat there if I did, but I'm just saying I'm not trying to be funny. But brethren, sometimes I think some of these difficulties. We look at the woman and we say, well, she stepped out of her place or she's not doing what she should. But perhaps the reason is we as brothers haven't allowed her to function. I've enjoyed a little contrast in two instances in the life of Abraham and Sarah, because as as men we are heads of our home and a just another little site. Sometimes I go into a home and I see a little motto.
Over the kitchen table that says Christ is the head of this home. That sounds pious, brethren, but it's not the truth of God. The man is the head of the home. Christ is the head of the man. The man is the head of the home. And as such, we need to be exercised to carry out our responsibility. But there's two instances in the life of Abraham and Sarah that I think give us a nice balance. Because there was an occasion where Abraham listened to Sarah and he didn't exercise his headship and it got him into a lot of trouble. In fact, the people of God today over in the Middle Eastern.
Because Abraham listened to Sarah on that occasion, I say, he did not exercise his headship. But you come just a few chapters over, and there's a remarkable statement made. It says, hearken unto the voice of Sarah, thy wife, in all that she sat unto thee. Because there came a point in their marriage. When Sarah had more discernment in a situation than Abraham had, wasn't a question of his headship, but it was a question of her discernment. And the Lord told Abraham that he ought to listen.
To what his wife had to say. Brothers, that's a good word for us. It's a good word for my own soul. I'm thankful sometimes for a wife who has more discernment, sees more clearly through a situation, or more quickly than I do. And I believe we have the word of God to exhort us, to stop and to listen and to weigh what our wives have to say in those situations. And we never want to relinquish our headship. I don't mean that. But we can be thankful for wives and mothers.
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God gives that godly discernment to in the case of another case, in the case of Abraham and Sarah, when those three random kings.
And Abraham said it to Sarah. Quick may ready quickly 3 measures of fine meals needed and make cakes upon the heart and so on. Which sort of bears out what my brother **** was saying.
Get something ready in the heart and I don't know what you did well then afterwards we read about it says that when they said on the awareness of my wife and he said behold in the tent.
That was her sphere.
When it comes to the younger men in verse 6.
I move on because I think we can Brothers can go on and talk about women's problems and what they need to do all afternoon and I don't think the citizens appreciate that usually, but I've appreciated what's been said. But verse 6IN regard to the younger men is one thing, one exhortation to be.
Discreet, but then he gives the real secret to helping the younger men, he says.
Make you be a pattern. You be a pattern.
And there's nothing more important.
In my estimation, that a pattern that shows us what to do.
It's easy to talk about what to do and we could go on and we could spend the whole afternoon telling people what to do, but where can we be patterns?
And I think that's what God wants us to do.
The older ones to be patterned to the younger ones, but in a very special way. This man who was given the wonderful responsibility of these exhortations about things that go along with sound doctrine, He was above everything else, to show himself a pattern or an example of good works. And may the Lord help us to do that, to be an example.
Into younger ones.
I think if you think in your back in your own life, you'll probably cherish the memory of some brother or sister who was a pattern to you of what a believer should do and what he should be and how to operate in their lives. And I thank the Lord for those patterns that I've had in my life.
Count Zinzendorf wrote a little poem about his mother.
In which he called her a pattern of faith.
A pattern of faith. When you think of Tom Jinzenburg as wonderful to think of the things he did, what a wonderful how he was wonderfully used in the Lord. I say, mother, I think it was his grandmother. Excuse me, but he called her pattern of faith. Pattern of faith I listened yesterday to to.
Barbie Cannon and and her sister talking about their grandmother and and it was delightful to hear.
Not a good example from their grandmother, and it was encouraging to hear that I didn't know her, but I I wished I did. And there are lots of people like that. Think of one and think of the effect it's had in your life and then be a pattern to someone else of what to do. It's easy to talk about what to do. It's a lot harder to be an example or a pattern.
How is a young man supposed to know these things? Let's get down to basic scriptural facts.
The 6th, the 7th and the 8th verse. A young man is not going and neither will I or anyone else.
Know anything apart from the Word of God? That's where we learn it. That's where we get the truth. That's where we get the doctrine. That's where we know what God wants is by studying the Word of God.
In practical things, there's a lot of things that we do and say and could do and say that may be a help. But if we want to get to the real godly facts, here's where we find it in our hand this afternoon, the word of God.
And we're not going to learn anything apart from it. What man says sounds good. It may be good when it comes to mathematics or how to make money, but when it comes to obeying the word of God, you've got to know the word of God to do it. And if you don't know the word of God, how are you going to know anything about doctrine? How are you going to know how to have sound speech? It's the word of God, and I'd like to encourage every young person in this room to read the Bible.
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Read it. Read it. Read it. Don't stop.
And the proof of our love.
Disobedience.
And what are you going to obey this?
Good doctor, this sound, doctor.
We can talk a lot, but it doesn't mean much. But when we do, the doers of the word not here only.
The sound doctor.
Referred to the doctrine that came out in the Church.
In its practice in the first chapter where it appears the second of Acts, they continued steadfastly in the apostle doctrine, fellowship, and breaking the bread and prayer. Now obedience. Know the word leading and obeyed. That's a proof of love, and it will bring happiness. If you know these things, happy are you if you do them. Practical things are.
Right here to do us.
Hello, John 14. How it's borne out to us. The Lord said that he loved me.
Keep my commandments.
That's very straightforward.
It strikes home to me anyway. He loved me.
Keep my commandments as he kept his Father's commandments, because he delighted in the will of God.
How could you have quoted that verse if you hadn't read it?
Right, right. You have to read the word of God. If you want to know what God's mind is, you're going to have to go to his book and learn about it.
Rather eat it more than once, brother. Yes, more than once, a brother once said. You don't learn the way of God by osmosis, you'll learn it by reading his word.
And that's there's not a better method in which we can follow what God wants than to read His Word and find out what he wants. We're not going to learn it any other way but by reading His Word and following Him. And in the Word, God not only teaches by doctrine or precept, but he also teaches by example. We've been talking about examples and how we remember those in our lifetime who have been examples to us, and it says whose faith follow. But when you read the word of God, read these stories, the histories of men and women and young people that God has recorded.
He's recorded these histories, and not just their faith, but sometimes their failures, and he's recorded them to teach us. My brother was saying sometimes we don't perhaps have a good role model in our own lives. Perhaps there's some here. And you weren't brought up in a Christian home. You didn't have Christian parents. You weren't brought up in the assembly. You didn't know those older brothers that some of us remember while we were growing up. But God has given us wonderful examples in his word. And these examples are to teach us. But if we don't read them.
And familiarize ourselves with them. We're not. They're not going to be brought home to us at times when we need them. And made a blessing. When the Lord Jesus spoke to the disciples in the upper room, he brought many things before them, and then he spoke of the Spirit. It says, Who will bring all things to your remembrance that I have spoken to you. In other words, they listen to what the Lord Jesus said. And then he said, when the spirits come, he'll bring these things to your remembrance and make them good to you.
But if we don't read it, the spirit can't bring to our mind, to our remembered something we don't need. He's the remembered Sir. And when I was younger, I read some of these stories and I heard them at meeting. I heard them read in the family, reading at the table. And I didn't understand these stories. I didn't understand why different ones in the Old Testament went through different circumstances and why their stories were given to us. But I'm thankful that I was familiarized with them.
And now, as I've got a little older, the Lord often brings those stories back to me when I'm going through some difficulty, some circumstance. He brings those stories back to you and shows you the faith and the failures of these individuals and how they acted in the situation, whether they acted wisely or unwisely. He shows us the blessedness of obedience to the word of God. He shows us the folly of disobeying you. You want to know whether it's young, whether it's profitable for young people to sow wild oats.
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You don't have to go out and sell them to find out. Just read the word of God. He shows us those who sowed to the flesh, they reap to the flesh corruption. But read these stories. Familiarize yourself with them as well as, of course, as Brother Dave has been bringing before us, the doctrines and principles of the New Testament. We need those too. But we need the illustrations that help us to understand what we have in the New Testament. Maybe you won't understand it at the time, but read it. Read it over and over and over again and you'll find the Lord will buy the Spirit, bring it back, and make it a blessing.
In Daniel chapter 6.
Speaking of examples, I believe it ties right in with what we have in our chapter Daniel, Chapter 6.
In verse three it says Then this Daniel was preferred above the presidents and Princess because an excellent spirit was in him and the king thought to set him over the whole realm. Now we're going to get some problems because there's a lot of envy and and people who don't like that idea that he'd be put over the whole realm. Verse four then the presidents and Princess sought to find occasion against Daniel.
Concerning the Kingdom.
But they could find none occasion or fault.
And as much as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him. Then, said these men, we shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God. I read that sometimes, and I I have to tell you, I read it with tears, because I think.
I wish that were true of me, that the only thing they could find about me that was wrong had to do with my relationship with the Lord. That is, that I was a Christian. And so.
That exhorts us to the very thing that we have in our chapter, which says.
That we're to live in such a way.
Verse eight that he was opposed.
Might be ashamed having nothing to say again.
Is that possible?
I think we've known Christians as such as that. They live in upright life and they live in such a way that nobody can bring in any accusation against them. What a sweet Saber that is. What a blessing it is.
And what an honor to the Lord Jesus, whose precious name is called upon us.
Because sure is anything. If they find something in us, they're going to blame the Lord.
They're going to say, oh, that's that's a Christian. I don't want to beat 1.
Have you ever heard people say that? That's a Christian? I don't want to be one talking about us. And it happens sometimes.
We want to live in such a way as Daniel did, with that excellent spirit, in such a way that they could not fight anything against him. Does that mean that Daniel never did anything wrong?
When Daniel was taken prisoner, he was probably a teenager.
And it says of him that he purposed in his heart, and that's why many years later you find him honoring God.
In every circumstance and under every condition. When it says that, when Daniel knew that the Declaration had been written and signed, it says he prayed three times a day as he did a four time, it didn't change him one bit. And it's because he had purposed in his heart when he was a teenager to serve the true and living God. And I'll tell you this.
That for everyone in this room, That's true of everyone in this room. If we purpose in our hearts to serve God and obey Him, we're going to prosper just like Daniel, then we may not become millionaires. That's not the thought. But God will see to it that we do prosper if and nothing else in our soul. Amen. When God writes to young men in First John Two, it is because the word of God.
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Abiding in them had made them strong. Well, how does the word of God abide in one by his daily.
Regular taking it in.
I've written unto you, young men, because you're strong, and the word of God abides in you the Lord Jesus Christ said in John chapter 15 and verse 7. If you abided me in my word, abides in you, you shall ask what you will, and it should be done unto you and my Father. So here we have the power to overcome the world, which we're exhorted to not love the world, not the world, and so forth in that second chapter.
John But if we take the word of God in and we obey the word of God, then we have power to overcome the world, and we have power with God. To Ashworth. We will and will be done into us, because we're asking according to His mind, Where do we get his mind? In the Word. So read and and and meditate upon the word of God and take it in. Tell us we have been exhorted many times before the Word of God forms our thoughts, and then we can pray intelligently according to the mind of God, and he will honor what we ask.
We don't know for sure, but it almost seems the way that the apostle addresses Titus in verse six and seven, that he was perhaps a young man himself.
And I do think that it is really remarkable that in youth those who have the most influence are other young men. And I say, choose your companions carefully. Ask yourself.
Are they leading me in the right direction? I looked back in my youth. I can think particularly of one young man that steered me in the right direction at a crucial time. God used him.
In bringing me in the right direction, I don't know where I would have been if it wouldn't have been that instrument that God used, that God does use young men.
Somebody has pointed out with the Lord, Jesus was relatively young, 30 years of age when he went out into public ministry. And the disciples too, they were probably some, most of them relatively young. And so it's young men that are examples that what a blessing to have an example like Timothy heritage.
There's the Scripture abounds with beautiful examples to follow in Scripture.
And with Daniel, it was his purpose of heart that we read out, particularly in the first chapter. But because of his faithfulness, he was a blessing to his three friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. It's true that later on they had to stand the test themselves, because we're all tested individually, and when it was in connection with the fiery furnace, Daniel wasn't there to answer for them. But no doubt it had been the faith and testimony and the.
Encouragement of Daniel that so strengthened those three young men that when the test came for themselves they were able to stand. And David, I believe it was said, I am a companion of all them that fear thee and that keep Thy precepts. Is that true of each one of us? Can we honestly say that we seek our companionship with those that fear the Lord and seek to walk in his truth? I think what Bob says is a very good word for not just for those of us who are those who are younger.
But those of us who are a little farther along, middle-aged, and we need and for our families to seek, who do we have in our homes? Is it those who seek to who are an encouragement and a blessing to us? Is that those who seek the honor and glory of God and his Son, the Lord Jesus? If it is, it will be a blessing not only to us, but it will be a blessing in our home as well.
Interesting that when Stephen was stoned.
Those that were throwing the stone laid down their clothes at a young man's feet. His name was Saul. Later on he writes of himself in First Timothy.
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1.
Verse 15 This is a faithful thing, and worthy of all expectation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. Howbeit will this 'cause I obtain mercy? That in me first, also me first? Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering, fought for a pattern.
To them which should hereafter believe on him if we want a pattern, just like a pole after he was saved.
He's a patent.
So when Paul wrote to Timothy as a young man, he admonished him to not let any despises you, but to be a pattern or a model be an example. In these very things that the apostle is exhorting, Titus can teach the young men, and I'm amazed at how similar are the attributes to which Titus was exhorted to teach the young men.
How much they resemble the attributes of the old men who were to be brave and so forth. And so that's exactly the thing that should be communicated to the young. And here is Timothy, a young man being admonished to not behave in any way so as others to think I'll of him in order that he might be a pattern and and word and in teaching. And finally it says that give thyself.
Until I come give thyself A tense to read it. Doubtless I have some reference to public reading, but.
We cannot overemphasize the value of reading for ourselves the word of God on a daily basis.
As a young person.
Often get influenced by others easily. So when we look at some, for example, we should be careful as well. As a young person, do we see others in ourselves? But more so do we talk about others often. And that's the problem as we have here. We have been exalted for the parents, for the women, for the age. And perhaps, maybe there is a lesson here for us too, that often we're so occupied with other people's problems.
And we'll reflect that onto our young people. So we have to be careful of who we talk about. You know, sometimes as parents, when we talk about a certain brother in front of our children, we'll find that that will reflect on them, on how they behave on other people. So we have to be an example that way. I'd like to turn to a verse here in John's Gospel.
The last chapter of John's Gospel.
John chapter 21 Dear Peter was occupied with someone elses problem and let's take a look at his question and then we'll take a look at what the Lord answer is for him. Verse 20. Peter turning about see as a disciple whom Jesus loved following which also lean on his press that suffer and said Lord which is he that betrayeth thee. Peter was quite occupied with that and it was interesting to see that.
Up to this point, it looks like they still do not know who betrayed the Lord. And you know, I can identify with that because often we like to know when something goes wrong, who did it. We're so occupied with that and perhaps use the word got him. Now I want to clarify this. I spoke on this one time and a sister called me afterwards saying are you talking about me? So I want to clarify that I'm not speaking against anyone in particular, but in here the Lord in verse 22 gave him a nice answer that I have.
That I've been enjoying verse 22 Jesus saith and to him and.
Sorry, verse yes. Verse 22 Says, if I will not be tarry till I come, What is that today? What is that to thee? Here's the answer. Follow about me rather than be occupied. We have instructions here to follow. We have been told here to have sober mind, to to have some doctrine, sound speech and so on. In fact sovereignty.
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So we need to not look at anyone else but the follow after Our Blessed Lord with His word.
As we move on, we get servants brought before us, and we're bond men. And it isn't said to any of the others, but to the servants that they have the privilege of adorning the doctrine.
Perhaps we just say a brief word about adorning. It's decorating it and making it look good, isn't it? If you're doing something and a servant who is faithful.
Has the privilege of adorning or making the doctrine look good instead of bad.
That's a sobering thought. Some of the things that are said here in regard to them are very important, but I noticed the first thing is to be subject to their masters. That word master there is despot. But where did we get our word despot from? They might not always be a very easy person to work for.
Where to be subject to, they may be very despotic in their way of handling us.
But to be subject to them adorns the doctrine.
I can tell you that I've had some bosses in my life that are very difficult to listen to them and do what they said.
But to do what they said.
Is the way of adorning the doctrine, making the doctrine look good.
I just mentioned that I love it because I think that we sometimes, in this day and age, we get the idea that a kind of rebellion or doing other than what we're told to do is right. It's not right if we're told to do something wrong that is contrary to the word of God. The principle is we obey God rather than man. But leaving that aside.
Because you think that isn't the right way to do it. There's no reason not to be subject to your matter. The one who's told you what to do and you make yourself acceptable in everything. Not answering back, not game, saying when's the last time you you.
Answered back into your boss, the person who had authority to tell you to do something. That doesn't mean that you can't respectfully suggest something to him. That's not the point here, but it's kind of a back talk.
And and back talk is something that perhaps I'm very conscious of it because my father dealt with it very severely in the home. He didn't permit it. And I many a time I had my mouth smacked for backtalk. I had a tendency to do that.
Again, saying we're back talking is a serious thing. The Lord is telling us here. You're not going to adorn the doctrine if you do that.
Then this is not purloining.
Not robbing.
The Master.
I read an article the other day that the thievery and American business of paper clips and stationery and and four point pens and things has an enormous price on it to industry. When's the last time someone stuck to two pens in our pocket, came over and worked with them because we needed it at all? That's purlining, isn't it?
Actually, the definition of purloining is using in others as though it were your own.
Which is of course dealing in that sense, but it has the sense of not realizing the propriety of.
Personal property, The right thoughts toward the employers things taking them as ones own or ones own purpose use.
There's an interesting.
In that.
Ninth verse and to please them well in all things.
That's the part that you need the grace of God to do.
During the Millennium, there's going to be thousands that are going to feign obedience, and they're going to obey on the surface and externally that king of kings, but they do not obey in the heart. And this verse here says, and that they and to please them well, in all things, that's bowing to their word, not just.
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Out outside. That said, yes, I'll do it, then go outside and swear it.
That's absolute falling to the bosses will. And you know that's the that's the path of pleasure. And during the Millennium the ones that are blessed are the ones that bow to the Lord's will and not do it, feigning obedience. And so it takes the grace of God to do this. You know, you you go out there and you have a bad boss. You can't do it except you get on your knees and do it. And when we do that, it's actually service to the Lord.
Because I think it's in Ephesians and Colossians. When he writes to those who were slaves or servants to ungodly masters, he tells them not to do it with eye service of men as men pleasers, but in singleness apart as unto the Lord. And he tells them that if they do that, then they'll receive a reward because they serve the Lord. Christ, Those servants might have wondered. Those slaves might have wondered, well, how can I serve the Lord? I've got to get up every morning and go and work for an ungodly man. He doesn't appreciate me.
He sometimes abuses his authority, but the Apostle says, you submit, you do it as unto the Lord. And maybe the Lord will use that even in the salvation of your ungodly master. But nevertheless doing it unto the doing it as unto the Lord, it was actually service to the Lord, and they would get a reward. And so these things are very practical. But brethren is a great movement today to teach us to rebel against every level of authority.
With young people going to school, I'm impressed that not only is rebellion against authority practice today, it's always been practiced from eating on down. But the difference today is rebellion against authority is not just practiced, it's preached and propagated and it's ingrained in our young people. I I'm appalled at how subconsciously our young people have this ingrained in them. Be careful. Let's all of us guard against this rebellion against authority on every level, whether it's.
In governmental authority, whether it's authority in the workplace, whether it's authority in the home, children to their parents, husbands and wives. If we don't recognize that authority, then this is going to seep into the assembly and we're not going to recognize the authority that God has invested in the assembly.
We have to remember too, that these servants were really slaves in those times. Often they never had liberty to be on their own. And yet, as has been mentioned, Paul says to them, in Colossians it is ye serve the Lord Christ. They were servants of the Lord. Sometimes I think we use that term designating just certain ones who may travel about.
Brethren, everyone is a servant of the Lord. We serve the Lord Christ. It's interesting to me in South America some time to go talking to a brother, and he mentioned to me how he felt led to go back and get a secular job because he found more liberty in giving the gospel than he did when he was involved in publishing work of gospel literature.
And the reason was that people, he said, would ask me, what is your work? And he said, well, I'm working in some gospel literature. And he said he could just see that when he said that they just tuned him out. Here's a man that doesn't live in the real world, but there are those if you can. If you say, well, I'm a Carpenter or I'm some other job, here's a man that lives in the real world.
And he says, I can see immediately that they listen on a far better level. So, dear brethren, you that have jobs with some company.
Do it heartily as to the Lord, you can adorn the doctrine in a way that others may not be able to do. You have an advantage in that position, and you are serving the Lord Christ.
Adorned means to.
Add to something that is already attractive not to make something.
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That is not attractive. Try to make it look good. But adorning is to add beauty, and the doctrine here, as we know, is the word and the Christian life, and we are to add to that beauty by our line.
The opposite is that the word of God be blasphemy by our conduct and what God has joined together, let not man put asunder doctrine and practice. God has joined them together and if we separate them, it's to our loss.
And so.
Where it wasn't practiced, the word of God is not adorned, It's blasphemed.
And that's the opposite of adorning it.
Giving weight to it in the fact that it's real and livable. And when people look at a life that has been subjected to the word of God, they seem the blessedness of it and the fruitfulness of it, and in that way it's adorned.
What a marvelous privilege to be able to do that.
Say, Brother Barry. It's something that's already a beautiful thing, but you add to it what a privilege God has given us to do that, to be able to adorn his doctrine. And if we live according to the word of God, that's exactly what we do. What a marvelous privilege God has given us.
I would like to just have you consider when you read Titus and see where the word of God is carried out. Because in our minds where Bob has talked about serving the Lord, and in our minds that's passing out tracks or preaching the gospel or whatever. But you need Timothy and Titus both, and you will see.
The service of the Lord is.
Taking care of for a mother to love her children and take care of them and doing the voice and changing his diapers and the and the men and Titus were to learn how to go to work and provide for their families and this kind of thing. And even the younger are taught to take care of those who are related to them, who are older and have.
Physical needs that the assembly wouldn't have to do that, and you'll see that the word of God applies to every facet of your life.
And you don't have to go anywhere to adorn the doctrine of God. You don't have to become anything that you're not already to do it. And we lose sight of this sometime, and we become dissatisfied at work. And we think, well, if I could just get rid of this job, maybe I could have some little work for the Lord. Well, we've had instructions with the service. You've got some little work for the Lord right there.
In submission to your master at work and showing him that you obey the word of God and you're subject to the Lord your Savior, and that's the work of the Lord for you at that point in your life.
We we have, we have to be careful because.
Christianity is everyday life, and we don't have to go anywhere to please the Lord. And I'm not discouraging anyone from any special calling that God might be calling them to, but I'm just encouraging you to where you are right now. You can adorn the doctrine of God and no matter what relationship you are in, a special call in life in the scripture was the result of one busy occupied with the little that God had put in their hands and where He had placed them.
When he called the disciples, what were they doing? Why there were some who were mending their Nets. They were busy at their employment. It didn't seem like a very must have seemed like a very mundane job. They might have complained about their Nets being broken, but there they were busy doing what what they had been given to do. Matthew was collecting taxes at the receipt of customs and I. My point is they were busy with what the the little sphere that they had because they that are faithful in that which is least.
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Are faithful also in much, and we see this in Business Today. Men set up a business or a corporation.
And you go to work for them. You don't usually start at the top. No, They start you down near the bottom and they prove you. And if you're faithful in what they give you to do and they find out you're honest and a hard worker while you move up through that corporation. Now would God run something more careless than humans? No. And so this is the way it is. And I've noticed that the young people who stay after the team meeting and put away the tables and turn the chairs for the afternoon meeting, or the young sisters who stay in the kitchen and wash the cutlery afterwards.
They are the ones that God is going to use in a perhaps a larger sphere later on. The young people who just kind of drift outside and stand around talking and never realize that there's a floor to be swept and things to be done and in books to be put out why God isn't going to use that them in greater service. And so if we're faithful in the little spirit that God has placed us, maybe it's a very mundane job at the office. Maybe it's, as you say, Brother Henry standing at the kitchen sink. Maybe it's taking care of the children. But do that faithfully, a service unto the Lord.
And if we're faithful in that, then the Lord may put something else in our hands. We had a clergyman one time.
Come and and take his place at the Lord's table with us in Chatham, and he had been a minister for some time and trained in it and.
We were talking one night about.
When the Lord was more pleasing to the Father.
Whether it was in the years in the Carpenter shop.
Or when he was in public ministry and brother Roy Hoover said that he felt, I believe correctly.
That he was equally pleasing to the father, whether in the carpenter's job or in public ministry. The man was very upset because he had been trained and thought that he was in a superior position to those who worked in in Carpenter jobs. And I've always thought about that lesson that.
The Lord Jesus was equally pleasing to the Father. When did God open the heavens and say, This is my beloved Son, and whom I am well pleased?
The first time.
He had just set out on public ministry. It was that whole pathway that was pleasing to God and I believe it went up as as as brother Don was bringing before us before in the afternoon meeting it was.
It was all of it went up as God is a sweet savor. So I think we need to correct our thinking sometimes if we we fall into a thought of clergy and laity without realizing it, sometimes the man who is.
Loading fish or the man who is.
Sweeping floors or whatever can be just as pleasing to God as the man who goes down to South American preaches the gospel. The right Brother Bob? Exactly.
Just think of the Lord Jesus has been the majority of his first 30 years in a carpentership that that makes me marvel, brother.
What was that person doing here? Was God Incarnate? Where was he spending all that time?
Carpenter, Chef. What's he doing in the Carpenter shop?
Making furniture, I suppose. Making things that are useful.
Subject in the first years to his parents. What a, what an example, what a blessing. What a, a, a.
A sign of approval that God puts on physical labor? That's done hardly as to the Lord.
And if that's done that way, brethren, the.
Testimony that results is tremendous. I think it's more from those that have secular jobs, to tell you the truth. Not saying that it's not important to go out and minister the word that has its place to me, but let's not set one above another. They're both equally important.
01:15:05
Equally important, in John 829, he says, the Father have not left me alone. I'll catch these words, for I do always.
Those things that please him, whether he was at the Carpenter shop, whether he was in public ministry, whatever he did, was pleasing to the Father. He was doing his will. I came down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me.
And he did it perfectly, didn't he? And to finish his work, he finished, yes. I was just going to add to that about.
The time he was the most pleasing to the Father was when he was forsaken of God on the cross. There he was accomplishing the will of God in the face of divine wrath against sin. Never was the Father more delighted in him than when he was making atonement.
Then he said it's finished. Yes, it was all over there. When he was 12 years old, he was doing the following. Yes isn't a marvelous thing to realize.
This one who did the will of God.
Who walked in this world and now has gone into the glory?
Is given to each of us that are born again the same light.
That he lived out here in this world. He gave to us eternal life. And it's only that light that can manifest the glories of this person. Eternal life. I give unto them eternal life.
And he said to.
Timothy lay hold of your life, you say? Well, Timothy didn't have eternal life. Did he have to lay hold on? Timothy had eternal life the same as we have, but he had to lay hold of them. He had to manifest that he had such a life. Think of it. And God's given us a spirit. God the Holy Spirit is the divine person living in our bodies.
And he's given to us the word of God.
And He's given to us himself as the object for our hearts. Brethren is where we're coming from. We're not going to produce something in the flesh.
For the glory of God.
But it's where we are. We are the children of God. We have divine life. We have the word of God. We have the Spirit of God. We have the object to fill our hearts, the Lord Jesus. And we have the hope before us. One day we're going to be with him and like him.
And as all the grace of God.
That's what we have in that 11Th verse, isn't it? For the grace of God, and I'll read it the way it should be, that bringeth salvation to every man. Now that's that's pure, unadulterated grace. He brings it to everybody. It's true that it has appeared, but he brings the grace to everybody. And then the next two verses, of course, we've already gone through them teaching us, and that's what we were doing this afternoon from the word of God learning from it.
And what you just said.
Looking for that blessed hope.
That's when he comes to take us to be with himself and the glorious appearing, that's when he comes back with you and me. And we're going to love that we're going to love is appearing. We're to anticipate the day when Jesus Christ will reign in power. This is not the reigning time. This is the suffering time for the church as we go through this world. But there's going to be the raining time. Think of it. And there's a crown for all those that love his appearance.
You have the thought of being with him there in the glory. You know, the Rapture just takes us there.
Then it's the glory.
All that's attached to that glorious person, our Lord Jesus Christ.
The law of Moses was given not to all men, but to Israel.
But the grace of God has appeared to all nations. Black and white, red and yellow, doesn't matter what's your color, what's your nationality is where you live in the world. Grace of God has appeared. Bring salvation to all men. And it's not limited like Judaism was. Judaism was an enclosure, a fenced in nation. But Christianity is a world.
01:20:28
God so loved the world He gave his only begotten Son all men.
Let's not in any way narrow that in.
There's a growing.
Revival of.
False teaching with regard to salvation that would limit.
The accessibility of salvation to the elect, That's Calvinism, isn't it? Right? Actually, I don't know whether Calvin is really as responsible as people make him for that, but that's not the point. The point is there's a tendency, A tendency to limit it.
We had a young man who worked for us when we had a limousine company who told me.
With great conviction when it said God so loved the world that was the elect.
And the salvation was only available to the elect. God doesn't say that. I believe in election with all my heart by the way, and I praise God for election. I'm thankful for it. I realized that if it weren't for that, I'd be a lost and help bound center at this moment. But.
God provided a salvation for all. John Beg used to tell us that there are 6 words we must remember all may.
That's the wonderful provision that God made. What we have here, salvation for all men, has appeared. The work that the Lord Jesus did on the cross was sufficient to save anyone who would come to him.
The second is none will. That's the awful truth of the depravity of our hearts and the and the that none of us would of our own accord.
Received the blessed salvation. And then the last two words were some shall, That is, God has determined that some will believe all, they none will, some shall.
But anything that limits the grace of God is arrogant. Amen. Whether it be the restoration of an erring St. or the salvation of a lost Sinner. Anything that limits the grace of God and says he's committed as sin, so serious that he's outside of the reach of the grace of God. Consider that very serious heiress. Let's let's look at what God says about our state.
Right now.
And in the future, in first John?
Chapter 4.
Verse 17.
Says herein is our love or love with us.
Made perfect that we may have boldness in the Day of Judgment because as he is, so are we in this world. That's the most wonderful statement already it says as he is up there.
As he is up there, of course, this is in connection with judgment especially.
But as He is, so are we in this world. We're down here in the world. We're saved. Just as much as the Lord is up there. Perfect as to judgment, His judgment is passed. As to judgment, my judgment is passed. As to judgment. Your judgment is passed. The grace of God, that bringeth salvation to all, has appeared.
That the perfect salvation. Now let's look at.
First, John 3.
And verse two and I think it brings the new body in here.
For dark it says this first John 3 verse 2 Beloved, now are we the sons of God?
Right now, and it does not yet appear what we shall be we've got to wait for something.
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But we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him. For we shall see him as he is, but already as he is. Are we in this world as the salvation? Except for the body? We're waiting for that. And when he appears, we'll have that new body too. What comfort these verses bring to you.
Our time is up, but I'd like to just add a word or two. Clem. Yeah, and he's surely beyond judgment, but he's basking in all the glory of God and the love of God, didn't we say?
Are we? And she is. So are we. And we were singing in that first hymn. Whom grace has brought shall glory bring, and grace it brought shall glory bring. That's where we're headed, to the glory.
Want to think of the The Thief on the Cross?
All the key he went into Paradigm just as perfect as the Lord.
It also is just as perfect as the Son of God, Lord. You want the Lord into paradise through the work of Christ, except for his body, Right, Brother Clement? Yeah.
#195 #195.
We stand.
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For Jesus the Bee.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Reading
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
But we also sing.
76.
Rise, my soul by God directly strange your hands no more in peace. Pass though on his hand protects me. Drink that has the capture tree Is the wilderness before the desert land, where drought abide. Heavenly spring shall there restore thee fresh from God's exhaustless tides #76.
Ride my soul.
Racing Stranger.
I'm throwing me as I want this. I'm broadcasting. Trainer has broken.
There will.
Start.
There no stranger.
Was found in anything surrounding her something.
But I would not have you to be ignorant, rather concerning them which are asleep that you saw or not, even as others that have no hope. Or if we believe that Jesus died, he rose again. Even so then 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 to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
Wherefore, comfort one another with these words.
Remember her brother?
Even zip here in his home, going to perform his own thanking the different operation when we're with him on the Holy Mountain.
We saw the Lord in his glory.
Kingdom Lord.
And then he also seen from the on the morning to start from the morning stars will arrive in your heart.
I remember, Mr.
Glenn Excuse me, I remember mother Uncle Barry Murray Martin was 9 star.
In Tennessee, right after midnight after midnight.
They're trying all who's our.
00:10:00
Believe in the book of.
Thessalonians, these two.
Beautiful letters written.
It's probably where the very first letters written by Paul.
And we think of them in the light that they set before us both the rapture and the appearing.
And there seems to be much confusion.
In Christmas around us.
In the teachings of many that.
Don't separate. Really what we have as far as the rapture is concerned in the appealing box. I believe if you realize that the rapture, the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ for his own redeemed and for the Church is to take us away from the wicked, we're living in a wicked world.
Under judgment, because of the murder and the rejection of the Lord Jesus, though that rapture will take us away from the wicked and take us to himself in the glory, but the appearing is quite different.
Because when he comes, it is to judge the wicked.
And to bring the righteous for his people, his earthby people, into the Kingdom. And if we understand that, it clears it very in a way that's very helpful. So the rapture, we can think of it as our being taken away from the wicked, but taken into the glory and appearing as to do with judging the wicked.
And delivering his people, his earthly people to bring them into the Kingdom.
So this is very helpful for us because we have in these two epistles both the rapture and the appearing.
What we have in these verses that we've read is really a development of the truth that the Lord gave to his disciples before he left them to return to go to the cross and return to the glory. You remember in John 14 he simply said to the disciples for their comfort on that occasion that he was going to come again and receive them unto himself. But he didn't develop what he the truth there because like many things He spoke to them, they couldn't take them in because the Spirit had not yet been given.
And so he develops it here. He simply gives them the promise in John 14 And why did he give it to them? Because their hearts were troubled. They were afraid. And the Lord looked at that little company. He knew what was in their hearts. He knew they were concerned and afraid as they thought of the Lord Jesus leaving them and going back to the glory as he it says there the hour had come that we should depart out of the world under the Father. And he looks at that company. He knows what's in their hearts.
And he says, let not your heart be troubled. How could the Lord Jesus say such a thing, rather than on that occasion when he knew what was ahead for himself and for his disciples? One from his brother I will come again. What a comfort to to their hearts on that occasion. But they didn't understand the full development of how that was going to take place. And now we come over to the Thessalonian believers. They turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven.
In other words, they were actually looking for the Lord Jesus to come back and establish his Kingdom, come with their number, in the meantime die. They passed away and now they're concerned, well, have they missed out on the coming of the Lord? What's taking place? And so the apostle Paul writes to them by inspiration and leaves, as it were, nothing unexplained as to how this event is going to take place and shows to them that before the Lord Jesus comes back.
And appears in this world and sets up his Kingdom. There's another event going to take place and that those are their numbers who had died in faith, who are referred to as a sleeping Jesus because sleep is a temporary state, He says they're not going to miss out in any way. The Lord is going to come, he's going to give this shout and will notice this. As we go down these verses, he develops it and we with them are going to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. I don't want to get ahead, but he ends by saying.
Wherefore, comfort one another with these words. Brethren, as we leave these meetings, what comfort would we have if we didn't have something beyond this life? If in this life only we have hope in Christ, even if it was hope in Christ, but only for this life? We are of all men, most miserable. Well, it's true. We have hope in Christ for this life, but we have hope in Christ for that which is to come. And rather the event, the promise given, I will come again. We're just on the eve of the fulfillment of that precious promise.
00:15:30
Mr. McIntosh wrote a paper many years ago.
Which I think is important to keep in mind the difference between holding premillennial doctrine and waiting for the sun from heaven.
And.
There's a lot of discussion about the do you haul pre Trib, pre millennial breed, mid tribulation or whatever, post tribulation, all that sort of thing. There are a lot of views out there. The spirit of God is not interested and I say it respectfully, is not interested in getting us occupied with a theological position so much as to win our hearts toward the Lord and Jesus.
And a desire to be with him. Now it's true. He started out here, Paul says I don't want you to be ignorant, so we're not to be ignorant on those subjects, but.
The Spirit of God is not developing premillennial doctrine here. The Spirit of God is revealing the truth, but the object of that is to win our hearts so that we say come Lord Jesus.
It's been brought home to me in a way in reading and I hope it's not a misapplication.
In the story of the taking away of Elijah from from over the head of Elisha, as they go from place to place there in these, I call them theologians, the sons of the prophets who say, you know your message is going to be taken from over your head today, he says, I know it, be silent. How did he know it? He knew it in a real way, in his heart. And that's what I believe the Spirit of God wants us to know. It's always.
Possible to find people who can approve millennial doctrine somewhere and I by the way I believe in the pre tribulation pre millennial coming of the Lord Jesus for his own to take them all. I believe in it absolutely. I think it's created a terrible confusion that that there's been an increase in in the number of people who reject that but at the same time.
What I want for myself, and I trust you one for yourself, is that our hearts are engaged with that blessed one to such a way that we it isn't so much what our view is as that we're Our desire is to be with them, to be with them, to be with them. Now, Paul says I don't want you to be ignorant, brethren. I want you to know how this is offered to happen.
I want you to know how. And it's important to be intelligent about that. God cares that we have the detail. No, but the most important thing is are we really waiting for Him? And that's what you find in the first chapter. They turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God and to wait for his Son from heaven.
And that precious promise was given by the Lord in John 14, and that's how we know that he's coming again.
Now how that's all going to fit in and the details of it are given to us in various scriptures, but in this little passage that we have before it. I'm glad you suggested it, Brother Clem. I think it's important.
What we had wasn't the 7th year o'clock what we had in the game.
From all women there is, I think that I owe him is the whole incoming of gladness my eye.
And mother in the whole school.
Oh.
I'm glad it's my eyes. The glands of my heart and somebody could be here. We have bring it for us love. The singer of most of the Lord is coming and all joy is rich is getting darker. The light darkness power over light is just before the dark. Oh what Roy is nice room from me and that's what I'm saying.
00:20:09
Waiting to know he is coming for us just before the break today and let's and hope the thought of being with him, the one who loves them, who loves us and gave himself work and we had this this morning in our that was our game itself and blessed woman is coming for me and he loves us. He loves us every moment of the day. And God the Father loves him and there isn't anything that he's going to be allowed to come into separate us from that love.
He loves them and he's coming for us.
And we belong to heaven, and we're a heavenly people. We belong. We belong to heaven. And the Lord is coming soon to take us there.
The first chapter **** **** referred to, it says to wait for his son from heaven. And this 13th verse he says I would not have you to be ignorant forever. You see those Thessalonians, those 1St century Christians were waiting for the sun from heaven. They were expecting him to come at any moment. That's 2000 years ago. They were looking for him then and what had happened? Many of their companies had died.
So he said, I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, those that are not still living. They thought that while all the Saints that they were in company with were living still, the Lord would come take them to be with himself, or set up the Kingdom. I think they had the Kingdom more in mind. That's one. They said. Wilt thou at this time restore again the Kingdom of Israel? And he says, it's not for you to know the times of the seasons, But then he introduces the new order of things. But they were, they were, they were troubled.
What's going to happen to those that have fallen asleep, those that have died, that you sorrow not even as others which have no hope? Or if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, Even so them also would sleep in Jesus. Will God bring with him? When the Lord comes back? He's going to bring all the sleeping Saints with him. Well, how are they going to get with him? How are they going to get there?
The next verse is 15. To the end of the chapter are a parenthesis.
Explaining how the sleeping Saints get to be with him so that when he comes at the Rapture they'll be raised, the living will be changed and together we're going to be with the Lord and then he will come back and bring us all with him. That if you don't understand that.
That the wicked of verse 14 refers to the appearing when he comes back with the Saints, you won't ever understand 1St Thessalonians 4. The last verses from 15 to the end tell us how the the dead, the dead and the living get to be with him, so that when he comes back he can bring us with him.
That's excellent, Chuck and.
I'll tell you a story in my own life.
Which I didn't know all of these things then, but God passes you through some things to learn by experience.
47 years ago the Lord took a little girl from my life and.
We.
Found comfort in this and put on her gravestone. Bush 14.
If we believe that Jesus died and rose again.
Even show them also which believe in Jesus where God bringeth him when I'm thinking about it.
Was she going to miss everything coming to Revelation? No, no. This tells us how.
How she got where she is and now we're going to get where we are to come back and when she comes we'll come with her. So it's a great comfort.
I've said this sometimes, and I hope I'm not misunderstood when I say it. I would much rather meet a person who was mixed up about the details of these things and had affection for the Lord Jesus and was waiting for him to come but wasn't sure how it all fitted in together than to meet someone who had the best knowledge of this.
00:25:12
And yet had no affection for the Lord in regard to that. And now having said that, I'll add this. Paul says I don't want you to be ignorant about it. So we're not to say that ignorance is good or or there's a premium on ignorance. I had a dear friend who one time we were talking about some of these things he he says I don't like him. All this discussion I don't even want to hear about pre tribulation, pre millennial and all that, he says. I just don't like to. I don't like to think about it at all.
I know this brother. I know that he is. He's waiting for the Lord. There's no question about it in my heart, but it saddened me that it seemed like he wanted to be ignorant.
Do we want to be ignorant or do we want to have the truth? We want to understand it all. Now, brother, come here. I'm sure you're you're happy that you know how this is all going to fit together. Don't. Aren't you? More than that. More than that, we have here one of the four special revelations from Christ through Paul that are introduced in special words, so that in the 15th verse Paul says this we say unto you by the word of the Lord.
As we've been said, the Christians of the 1St century didn't have this knowledge. False doctrine came a little bit later and it wasn't written out. They didn't have it. It's all there. Certainly ought to know it, but we've been having wonderful meetings as.
From the Gentiles, they're brought into the one body. We might just turn to those other three scriptures that pull marks out in Ephesians chapter 3 to start with.
We know this one body truth, and we know what's got, what it's composed of. And here comes from Paul.
Who got his ministry from Christ in heaven? This word comes out of heaven. The other apostles didn't have it. So he starts the third verse of of Ephesians 3 with each word. How that by revelation he made unto known unto me the mystery down in verse 5, which in other ages was not made known under the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets.
By the Spirit. The Holy Spirit gave it and Paul gave it, that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, and of the same body and particulars of the promise in Christ by the gospel. Now that's the doctrine of the one body composed of Jews and Gentiles, or other words in the epistle about it. Now this morning we broke bread. Let's go to 1St Corinthians 11 to see what we have got for that.
And a special revelation from heaven.
Given through Paul for us another thing that we ought to pay attention to, and by the grace of God we will.
The 23rd verse of First Corinthians 11.
Now look what he said I received of the Lord, that which also I delivered unto you. We have been through this so much, and we practiced it this morning. I don't think we need the rest, need the rest of it. But it's a special revelation that is a witness that there is one body, there's a testimony to that, and it's the breaking of bread on the table of the Lord.
Now let's go to 1St Corinthians 15.
To get a little development about resurrection.
Which was given with a special mark out two.
In First Corinthians 15.
Verse 51.
Against Paul and his ministry that he got through Christ in heaven. And he says, behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. And he develops that. What a wonderful revelation. This came from Paul, to comfort us as to resurrection as to resurrection. Now we're getting in our portion in Thessalonians, Thessalonians.
00:30:12
The wonderful truth of the comfort of the rapture.
He's going to call us. They're not two second comings of the Lord. As I understand it, he came the first time and he's coming again, but different ones will see him a little bit different occasions and this shows it very clearly.
In our chapter.
Verse 15 We say unto you, We say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive.
And remain under the coming of the Lord shall not prevent or precede them which are asleep.
For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, and with the voice of the Archangel, and the trump of God. When the dead in Christ shall rise first, then we which are alive and remain, shall be caught up with them.
In the air.
Forgive me because that's a little simple. How many things know where our pattern acts of the heavenly after heaven?
This is a young man and young lady.
They get attached to each other and then they decide that they belong, but they're met with each other. Well, Emily's having a date and.
When they're when they're going to be married and then they're young.
I'm getting a hole ready maybe. Yeah. He doesn't have the money to build a home so he fixes up Home Park is bribes. But anyhow, he's back there and getting the hole ready and then on that wonderful day that he.
He goes, and he brings his wife, He brings her to the hole that he is prepared for her, or one thing. So our blessed Lord Jesus to You love the church, and He gave himself for it again. He gave all what he had, the Pearl of great safety in all my hands.
Church and in going to present the church to himself description of the church glories and so he's looking forward and and with an anticipation which is deal on anything that you and I should ever increase You're looking for the Lord for that day.
When he's coming back to this earth, he prepares the whole He can say, I go home, I go to the airplane for you, where I am also.
And that's really the.
And he's going to take her home to be with him forever.
And all one of them that will make and what or joy will be in heaven when that takes place is going to the church is right. Well, I was just going to stay in connection with what you said. That's really the key to to to it all. The fact that he's looking forward rather not just to having us in the Father's house, that's true. He will have us in the Father's house. But he said as our brother quoted, I will come again and receive you not to glory or to heaven or to the Father's house.
As true as that may be. But receive you unto myself, brethren, he's longing to have his bride with himself. He's waited almost 2000 years for his bride. Some of us, after we were engaged, we waited a number of months between the engagement and the wedding.
Maybe we thought it was a long time. We waited a long time for the preparations and all that needed to be taken to take place before the wedding day. But, oh brethren, it's nothing compared to the man of patience who's weighted these 2000 years and his heart will never really be satisfied until he has us there. But I just like to echo what it has already been said. Rather, he wants us to look up and to respond, not just because of the problems we're going through.
Not just because of the trials and the difficulties of the way. Now it is true. In Jude it says looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. And the longer we're left here, the more of a mercy it's going to be to be gone. And sometimes the Lord uses those things to stir us up and to wean us from this world so that we're looking upward and onward. And there is that proper response. But that's not what what he wants. That's not how he wants to get the response rather than do our hearts. So go out to the person of Christ.
00:35:01
We so attracted to him. Are we so occupied with my face, with the man in the glory, that our hearts long to be not just in the Father's house, but long to be where he is, that where I am? There he may be also. And I'd like to just say that we didn't comment on the end of the second chapter of of Titus that we had before us and the other two readings, but it really ties in, doesn't it? Because there are two things that were to be looking for brother.
Sometimes we say the raptures are proper hope. I understand what rather mean when they say that, but really the two things are tied together there, and we're to be looking for that blessed hope. That's what we're expecting at any moment. Maybe before we rise out of these seats at the end of the meeting, we're going to hear that shout. We're going to be called away in a moment, the twinkling of an eye, and we're going to rise to with bodies of glory and see our Lord meet him on the cloud and be escorted to the Father's house. That's the blessed hope, but it doesn't stop there. And the glorious appearing of our great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Brethren, doesn't it thrill our hearts to think there's a day coming when he's going to have his rightful place here in this world? A day coming when you walk down the street of Lawrenceville and you won't see open sin or rebellion, or hear the name of Christ cursed. Or if you do, it will be judged morning by morning. It will be dealt with immediately, A day coming when the knowledge of this blessed one is going to go out throughout the whole earth. And to think, brother, that we're going to come with them.
We're going to reign with him. We're going to be associated with him rather than if we lose sight of these two things, the blessed hope and the glorious appearing, we're going to get discouraged. We need that hope before us. Faith always needs an eye to the future, a hope, an object, a brother. Let's keep this before us. Not as a doctrine, merely good to enumerate these doctrines from the word of God the Brethren. Is this hope for reality in our souls this afternoon? Do we sit on the edge of our seats and anticipating, waiting and watching, thinking that perhaps before another sunset we're going to hear that shout if we do.
It says every man that hath this hope in him purifies himself even as he is pure. In other words, in the measure in which this hope is a reality in our souls this afternoon, in that measure it will give us the proper character of those who are waiting.
In Luke 16 I just want to read a few verses. In Luke 16, verse 19 there was a certain rich man which was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid in his knee full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table, or over the dogs cave and licked his sores. Now note this.
And it came to pass that the beggar died and was carried by the angels into Abrahams puzzle. Rich man also died of the spirit. The beggar died was carried by the angels. That's the disembodied state. After death, no resurrection. But in our chapter He doesn't send angels for us. The Lord himself shall descend from heaven and He'll take us home himself.
Not angels, but the Lord himself. He, as I was saying, he he has a bride here. He's going to come for her and bring her to himself.
And that connection check, I'd like to point out something that I have found helpful in Matthew 24. Those who give the interpretation that the rapture is to be at the end of the tribulation often use this scripture.
And Matthew 24 but it.
Is clear when you take in that detail that you mentioned. Notice in verse 29 it says immediately after the tribulation of those days and verse 31, he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other. And they use this verse to show that it's going to be after the tribulation.
But it is clear the distinction you make that in this case, when he's going to gather the elect of Israel at the end of the tribulation, he's going to send forth his angels to do that work. But in contrast with that, in our chapter, the Lord himself comes. He's the one that's going to come and take us away. Interesting to think about that, that.
00:40:15
Some of the great events, at least three of them, are marked out with a definite statement.
This is the last one, the best I think. The Lord himself shall descend from heaven well, starting in the Lords ministry in Matthew 3 it talks about a voice from heaven marked out that beginning of the Lord's service.
A voice from heaven, the Spirit of God, came down, and in the peaceful form of a dove lighted upon Jesus.
A man coming up.
Out of the water.
And the Spirit of God coming upon him. There's the first time you find the Trinity clearly in the Bible.
That voice from heaven was the Father, the sun coming up out of the water and entering his service, the Spirit of God.
Lighting upon him for the service and the voice from heaven, the Father. Now we go to and think about Acts 2. It says, Well, maybe better to turn to it. Another definite event in the course of God's ways to form the church.
In Acts 2.
And 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, it filled the house where they were sitting, a voice from heaven. How magnificent, how wonderful, And hear a sound from heaven to form the church. But when He comes for us, the Lord Himself is coming. We get the best.
In Revelation, one versus.
By the road that involves Herman, David and the blanket morning stars, well.
The offspring of David and the roof in the offspring that was from Israel was the right morning star. That's for the church. That's for the church. And this is what the Lord is looking for. He's looking forward to having the church. He's right with himself. Nothing can take the place. Nothing can take one thing from holiday, the bright morning star. Those who get up early in the morning and see the star up there there shines at all it's pristine beauty and loveliness.
And then?
My mind, little stars wink out. There's gone, but the morning star shines there often times just by itself. We've got the whole heaven to itself.
And then perhaps we gave that up. And then he turned his face away, and the next time he looked, it's gone. It's gone.
And though I will be, when the world comes, no sound of our comforter.
Is the Lord is coming. He's gone. And he's so silently. And we're going to be gone too, So silently we're going to, we're going to be gone to, we're going to be gone to be with Christ, the dear man and the glories who loved us and gave himself for us.
One thinks about some of those dear things they just in the past days of many today they don't know any component, the volunteers doctrine, but they love the Lord and they're looking for his coming. Looking for his coming. You ask him? Yes. And they're looking for the Lord to come. Yes. Well, it's the right hope of the Church, the bright hope of the Christian looking for that blessed.
Some of you will remember Brother Ike Wizzy in Maine.
John, I'm sure you remember him.
He suffered quite a bit with cancer at the end of his life and he lay there and someone came to visit him and said brother Ike.
There's a brother over to the Lisbon Forks that's preaching that the Lord is coming in two weeks hoping to encourage, and I said that long.
What was the what was the secret of that? He was waiting immediately for the Lord's coming, and a promise of two weeks didn't do anything for him at all. I've always been touched by that. Now that was one thought about the the Rapture. There's a contention that the Word does not appear in Scripture.
00:45:19
Our biblical words that don't. Biblical teachings where the word the Trinity doesn't appear in scripture.
The truth of it does. Where does that word rapture come from? Well, there's a species of bird which swoops down.
Catches away his prey and takes it away and now swoops down in the dark of night, but grabs in a mouse or a snake or whatever he got his in the way. They are called Raptors.
In Spanish, they use the Spanish Bible, the Rapture. That's right, that's Rapture. And so that's where it says when you when you're caught up together.
It's raptured, just snatched away. What a wonderful thought. Not like snakes, of course, and not to be devoured by the Lord, but to enjoy his affection for all eternity. But people who quibble about that don't let that trouble you when somebody tells you that there's no such word.
Clement is in the Spanish Bible and it is. It is in the Spanish Bible. I think that the word that is taken away, taken away, that's that's verse 17 caught up. Is that right? That's in Spanish. That's the rapture. You have something to say, didn't you, David? Was that you? Well, absolutely. I'd like to say this.
This was written about 64 AD or thereabouts and.
I'm wrong. It was the first first epistle that he wrote. First epistle followed, but nevertheless, up to that point and for a few years after that, they kept the understanding of the Lords coming for his Saints. And then they lost it. And when they lost him, the Church went into the Dark Ages, and it went for possibly at least 1000 years or maybe more, without the knowledge of the Lord's coming for his people.
And then it would recover. How thankful tonight, this afternoon, we can be that we have here in our hands. What actually tells us of that which has recovered you, You think? How could they ever lose it? It's written here. How could they ever lose? Because they lost sight of the fact that they were awake. They didn't wait anymore for the Lord from heaven. And are we waiting? You know, if we don't, the apostle Paul in Romans 910 and 11 fell asleep.
The Roman Saints about the recovery of Israel back to God's.
People again here on the third, he says. If you don't be careful, don't get wise in your own conceit, in your own thoughts.
Because if God cut off the natural branches, he can cut off the grafted in branches. And so as we completed these meetings, how marvelous to know that we have God's word. It's not man's word, it's God's word. And he tells us many of us this room have stood by grave sites, maybe everything. And that last word. Wherefore comfort one another with these words? What a comfort.
At the side of a grave where someone who you know.
Is God's child a blood bought St. that you're going to see that body in a glorious form in a coming day. What I thought of comfort and that's why it says.
That she sorrow not even as others which have no whatever. What hope does anyone have at a gravesite that doesn't know Christ? None. Absolutely none. You know, David said. After his child died, he got up and washed himself and ate and he said.
I'll go to him. He'll not return to me, but I'll go to him. And that's the hope we have this afternoon. Every one of us, many of us, those that have passed on well in Christ, we're going to see them again. Only they will have a new body, Just like Christ. Just like you were. Just like I will. Why did they?
00:50:03
Get into the faith how that's less than one, he hung on Calvary, the man who died for me to gaze into that blessed face and see that smile.
And see his smile. Oh, think of all the trials that we've been through down here. If it's it won't be anything. Just to see his smile and oh, how precious that will be. Yeah.
There with unlearned gazed our eyes on him with rest.
And satisfied with endless praise, a heart completely blessed.
You said that, David.
I'm not sure how you said it doesn't matter.
Why did the early Christians lose the hope of this company? Because their understanding of this truth was defective. They expected him to come during their lifetime and some had died. And that's why he writes this passage, to comfort those that sorrow not.
That sorrow. There's others that have no hope. They thought they were going to be found in the Kingdom. And anyone that sets a date for the Lord's coming discredits the truth of the Lord's coming, because that date will come and go and he doesn't come. And what the effect that has is and they they just give it up. That's the effect it has on us whenever we expect, we said, whether whether it's a year or a month.
Or a day, whatever it might be. The scriptures is very clear. We don't know when he's coming, but we do know he's coming. That's the important thing. We have to emphasize that he is coming, but when we don't know, and when you lose that sense of it because of bad teaching, you're not looking for him. Then you become very world. And This is why worldliness has crept into the church, because we lost sight of them. What's coming?
There's another reason also.
That the hope of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ was lost. We had brought before us already the aspect of our hearts desiring to go and to be with him. In the 12Th chapter of Luke he says that servant said in his heart the Lord delayeth his coming. So when the affection for the Lord Jesus Christ and the lack of the expectation ceases to be causing not to be a whole, then, as has been just said, our behavior degenerates.
That wicked servant began to eat and drink with a drunken and to beat, and the maidservants and the maidservants, so that when it the affections are have begun to wane, and that hope ceases to be an expectation. Then our behavior drops. And so it was in the churches history, and the dark ages as we call it, resulted in the loss of the expectation of His return.
We have been speaking about comfort here.
Wherefore comfort one another.
That's those of us that are left.
When someone dear to us has gone, but when you go back to verse 17.
Then we which are alive remain.
So there were those Thessalonians that had laid aside their loved ones, and there are many here have laid aside their loved ones, that there was life companion for them for many, many years.
And so you're standing there.
Looking down into that grave and there is the body.
Of your loved one, Are you really realize that she's absent from the body of that person, is absent from the body and present with the Lord?
Well, what? At first this is what a verse has been to the people of God, and what a verse it must have been to these dear Thessalonians.
Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the cloud.
To meet the Lord in the air. And this is so beautiful.
And so shall we ever be with the Lord together. We're caught up together.
We meet the Lord Jesus.
And with those who have gone before and those that are taken from this world.
00:55:07
Will be together forever.
Shells Will we ever be?
With the Lord.
How marvelous to have the comfort of that.
In the darkest situation, perhaps you could pass through here in this world.
But it's so like the Lord Jesus, because of his compassion, we see him in our mind's eye. We see him at the graveside of Lazarus, and there he is.
As the tears flowed down his face.
That blessed One who had all power, and there he is suffering.
You might say with those dear sisters.
Comforting, yes, but suffering with them as what had happened as a result of sin, Their brother was gone.
For what? A day for them.
When they'll be all joined together.
We caught up together to meet the.
Lord in the air, and saw, shall we ever be with the Lord.
Brethren, wherefore comfort one another? I hear our dear brother Christopher Willis saying. Oh, what comfort.
What comfort as to that blessed hope?
In the Lord's coming.
We can't say.
That anyone?
Who sets a date for the Lord to come beyond today is.
Wrong in spirit, if not in fact.
That blessed hope ought to be.
Perhaps today that's that's closer than what brother Whitney talking about two weeks. But it's it's a wonderful thing to have that blessed hope and it takes you back to Romans. In the third chapter it says oh have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
Then a further on in the book it says those are believing rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
When we get to the end of near the end of Revelation, it says that the.
Bride comes forth having the glory of God, perhaps today, perhaps today. What a hope. I heard Brother Clem of a just recently of a young man who had on his bathroom mirror that little motto perhaps today. And I was encouraged by that, because he wanted to be reminded every morning when he got up and looked in the mirror that this might be the day of the Lord's return. I held a little read a little article recently I.
Couldn't sleep one night, which is rare for me. And I was home and so I got up and I have some old volumes on my shelf of the young Christian. That was a periodical edited by Brother Armand, I believe, at the beginning of the century. And I pulled off one of those volumes just to read a short article and hopefully get back to sleep. And I think it was, I'm not really sure, but I think it was maybe the 1913 edition. And I read the New Year's editorial by Mr. Arman. And Mr. Arman was saying that with the condition of things in the world.
State of things amongst the Lord's people. Surely 1913 must be the year of the Lord's return. Now he wasn't trying to set a date, but it was a present hope. It was a reality for our brethren at the turn of the century. And it was a reality for the Apostle Paul in these Thessalonians believers. Because when Paul said we which are alive and remain, who was he referring to? He was referring to himself. In the Thessalonian believers they were expecting the Lord to come. But the Lord hasn't come yet and we might say well has the promise made.
In John 14, failed when he said I will come again. We've been talking about hope.
Maybe I could just qualify that word. It was helpful to me when I was younger to realize here, brethren, talk about hope in the context in which we've been using it. Because hope connected with the first man or with this life is uncertainty at best. We hope to return to our homes after this conference, but maybe something will happen and we'll never return to our homes, even though we had every intention of doing so. But hope connected with Christ and with the new man.
01:00:02
Is never uncertainty. It's only hope in the sense of what it says.
Why? What a man has, why does he get hope? For it's only hope in the sense that we're not in the full good of it yet. Not not that it's uncertain. Not that the promise that the Lord Jesus made has failed. All the promises of God in him are yay, and in him Amen. To the glory of God by us was set in the Old Testament. There hath not failed one word of all his good promise. But brother, he has the day of grace has been extended. God is gracious. He's still compelling sinners to come in that his house may be filled.
But nevertheless, the hope of the Lord's coming is to be a present reality, just as it was back here, just as it was with our brethren earlier in this century. Let's go home with the reality of this hope, not only for ourselves, but for those that are asleep. And if you'll just allow me another moment, I'd like to say a little word about that word. Sleep. We have it here. We've got to get to verse 16 before the hour comes up. So don't take that long, please. I won't. But I I think perhaps there are some here who wonder, what does it mean when it says asleep?
And I used to ponder this as well, because there are those who teach soul sleep. You never have soul sleep in the word of God. Never. Those who have died in faith are in, not in a state of unconsciousness Now they're absent with the body and present with the Lord. And Paul said to depart and be with Christ is far better. It's the sleeve here is referred to the body, and it's only those who have died in faith, in the word of God.
That are referred to as asleep. Interesting to notice that Old Testament, New Testament, it's only those who have died in faith I say that are referred to as asleep. Why? Because sleep is a temporary state of things. The body sleeps in the grave. And it was a great comfort to my own soul as I stood a few months ago at my father's grave to realize that that wasn't the end. We laid the body aside, absent from the body present with the Lord. But that is not the end.
When the unbeliever walks away from a grave, that's it. It's over. But not for us all. There was sorrow at my father's grave. His children wept. His grandchildren wept. His brethren wept too. But we didn't weep with despair. We sorrowed. It doesn't say we don't sorrow, but we sorrow not as others who have no hope. What a comfort. What a consolation. Brother. Can I have a minute to check or not?
A minute.
Very good we we live in the light of this blessed hope and.
It's something very special. I trust in my own soul that I'm waiting for the Lord Jesus to come. But one thing that gives me patience in waiting is the thought that he has said I will build my church. So he's not going to come until.
That wonderful work is accomplished. It hurts. He's going to present it to himself. A glorious church not having spot or wrinkle.
So we can wait in patience, because this work is not finished, but it's going to be and the Rapture is going to take place. The passion Prevention has mentioned at least twice in this regard, and the patience of Christ in the in Revelation chapter 3 and.
It's not the patients waiting for Christ. So much of the patience of Christ waiting for you. Yeah, he's he's waiting.
All right, verse 16.
We haven't said anything about that. Not much. The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout. Mr. Darby renders that an assembling shout. Mr. Kelly renders it a shout of command, like the general to his army, the Admiral to his Navy shout of command.
Archangelical voice. It's not the voice of the Archangel, but it's with archangelical voice, new translation, and with the trump of God. What are those three things? What are we going to hear? What do those things mean? That's my question.
In regard to the archangelic waste, I think it's fortunate that we have translations in other languages that help us with that because in German, for example, as you know, Chuck, it's my stimulus, it's the quality of the queries. I don't know, I thought you did, you were talking German to me earlier today, but it was, it's it's the quality of the voice. It's not The Who it is that's talking.
01:05:08
Is the quality of it. It's not Michael coming in.
It's the Lord's voice. It's the Lord. It's not Nichols voice, it's the Lords voice. But what is meant by Archangelico voice? What's meant by that voice of authority? Yes, yes. And power. And power. It's like the Supreme Commander of the armed forces issuing an order, right? The general voice shout of command.
Because that voice is going to call all the dead from the graves from Abel onward that had faith in God.
Think of the power involved in doing that.
Well, Bob, do you think the shout will awaken the sleeping Saints?
Serious question.
And I have no doubt. All right, then. What's the trump? What does the trump mean? There's there's a, there's a sequence here. The shout. And then who's shouting? Well, the voice of authority, archangelical voice. And then the trump is. Now it's time to go arise, my love, and come away. That's the Trump shout is the trumpet. The shout is to awaken the sleeping sights, and the trumpet is to tell them to move.
That's.
Is that a right interpretation of the passage? That's First Corinthians 15 in the last Trump. OK, I rise My love, My fair one, isn't it? That's it. That's it. Arise, my love. My heroine can come away. Never think of Roman army. Mayor was three Trump's that sounded too for the troop to March. The first Trump was get ready.
Get your things ready. That's been shot. That's been sounded already. Yes. OK what was that? I asked if it's been sounded already. That first one in principle it has been sounded. The second Trump is getting ranked to March and that is principle has been sounded already. We should be walking in fellowship with our brother and it only remains the last Trump to March.
To go move off together, yes.
Is the center and the center of all that one thing to do of all those areas of real chilling in the upland resort?
There you go. The second there was this.
46,000 rivers and all levels of each other. The statement is in the being here we're speaking about about the the whole of the all the families is all those little children who need a family will be a family and it's all there. All the freedom of glory and happiness And there won't be there won't be a a cloud and there's no one let me do nothing doesn't ever the on the on the ocean.
Oh, how wonderful will be this, Behold of Christ, and on the left gave himself. Will the world? Will the people of the world hear the shout? Will they hear the trumpet?
I don't think they will. But you shake your head. No, I agree with you. But how could what do we have to approve that? Well, I've just thought of it, Chuck in illustration in the Old Testament with Israel, when they left Egypt, it was such a silent exodus that not even a dog lifted its tongue. I know that's not a New Testament scripture, but I thought of it because people talk today about rape disasters when the Lord comes, they talk about car accidents and planes going. And I think people are missing the point.
I'm not going to say what's going to happen when the Lord comes because God doesn't answer all our curious questions, but I think they're they're missing the point when they get talking about all this kind of thing and when it says not a dog lifted its tongue. I've learned to appreciate that more, having visited some in 3rd world countries because you visit a third world country and there is a din of dogs day and night. First time I took my wife to to Port of Spain, Trinidad, I tried to prepare for this din of dogs day and night.
She wished she had some of the machetes that she saw people carrying down the streets. But it is, and I believe that when it says not a dog lifted its tongue, it is more of a miracle than we in the Western world realize. And I'm sure Brother **** and Brother Coleman and others will agree you've heard these. But I just say that what I believe, when we leave this world, it's going to be a silent, orderly exodus. God is a God of order. He is a God of order. And when we go, he can do it, brother.
01:10:19
He can do it. He can take us out of this world quietly and orderly, and I would suggest that the world for a short time.
Will just go on. May be thankful that those Christians that were only a nuisance are finally gone. I'd be glad to hear what others say, but I just bring up.
Can I read a verse yes in Second Thessalonians chapter 2 and verse one?
Is a power unseen in this world.
And the power of that person, God the Holy Spirit, gathers us to the precious name of the Lord Jesus.
And here we have in verse one of chapter 2, Second Thessalonians. Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, I believe, when God the Holy Spirit who has been here for 2000 years.
Lives at that shelf.
Every radiant one will go. It will be silent.
So it says in the end of the book, the Spirit and the bride say come the Spirit down here wanting Christ to come too, right?
I'd be interested Brother Chuck, in asking this. A brother in a fellowship meeting in Woodbridge some months ago, suggested that we will hear the voice and have time to pull up to the side and turn off our car key. I I just didn't. I don't have any.
Assurance that that is a scriptural thought. No, I I don't think that'll be true. But I agree with what Brother Jim said. And God is a God of water. He knows what's happening. He knows what's going on. I saw a God of judgment.
He's also a God of judgment. And at the Rapture, that's going to beginning, that's going to be the beginning for this world of the worst judgment it's ever experienced. Why should anyone say there aren't going to be terrible accidents in that crashes? If the pilot of the plane is taken, who's going to pilot that plane down? I know God is able to do that, but the idea that he's a God of order doesn't prove it at all. He's also a God of judgment and and the events that are going to happen after the Rapture are going to be judgment, judgment, judgment, judgment.
Very fast. They're going to be very rapid in a short time. Very fast, Yes. I'm wondering if my principal Paul's having heard the voice and some saying it thundered, might not be the way it will be when we go. I I just said what I did because I think we need to be very careful brother not to go beyond what scripture tells us. And if God doesn't tell us what's going to happen when we're taken out then we need to be silent on that that as well.
And we can sit here and suppose one way or the other, but God has told us enough in His words so that by faith we can grasp the reality of these precious things and know that rather than at any moment we're going to be gone. And how does the verse end? And so shall we notice this Ever with the Lord, just meditate on that. When He's in glory in the Father's house, we're with him. When He comes back to reign over the earth, we're with Him. We'll never leave his side again. We're going to be ever.
With the Lord sometimes. I don't always walk in the conscious sense of the Lord's presence. Now doesn't mean He leaves me or forsakes me, but I don't walk in the conscious sense of it. Brethren, there's the day coming when we are going to be there with our glorified bodies, and we're not going to be in the conscious sense of His presence. We are going to be in His presence, and we're going to be ever with the Lord. There are many of us that have been sitting here silent, and if I can speak for the, I think, silent majority, I have confusion over.
The 16th verse in connection with the three things and I wonder if.
We get a little help again as to.
The difference between the three. The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel, and with the trump of God. I'm sorry, I don't understand what our brethren have been saying exactly in connection with the show, being something that's first and maybe already taken. Please help me out.
01:15:04
No, I don't think they meant that. The illustration that Bob was giving, I think it was Bob was from history. There were three trumpets blowing, and we're waiting for the last trump, the last trumpet. The first two have already been. It's like a race on your heart. First trumpet get sat, second trumpet go. And that's the thought. And that's the last trumpet. When that sounds, we're going to go, go be with the Lord. That's just an illustration as to what this, this trumpet, the last trump means.
But to shout, it's as Darby says, an assembling shout. We're not just going to go a piece meal one at a time. We're going to He's going to assemble us and take us to heaven together. And it's an assembly shout and and and Kelly renders that a shout of command. Like the general with his army, he gives a shout and the voice of the Archangel, it's not the Archangel, it's archangelical voices. It's an arthritis. The article isn't there, it's.
It's the voice of authority that speaks and everyone will respond to that. Is that, is that helpful? Or David, you go ahead and ask more questions. That shout is what's going to awaken all the sleeping things from all times and that's necessary because notice the end of the 15th verse, it says.
We shall not prevent them which are asleep that were prevented. Old English word that means go before.
Present and just simply means that we are not going to go before the ones that died to meet the Lord. And so he explains how that's going to happen. Well, how are those that have died going to be awakened by that shout? That shout That awakens the dead. So it says at the end of verse 16, the dead in Christ shall rise.
1St So first is resurrection, and I'm sure it's not going to take very long, but it's interesting. I remember several years ago in Los Angeles we had First Corinthians 15 in the readings and brother Dan Jacobson pointed out when it says in a moment in a twinkling of an eye, he says it's not talking about the rapture, it's talking about the resurrection. And then it says here then we which are alive and remain there is a sequence.
They will rise first, then we, which are alive and remain, will be caught up together. I'm sure it's not going to take long because God's power has no limits to it. But think of the power of all those sleeping Saints. Where is the that redeemed dust from those bodies that died, those that died at sea? The bodies, their bodies were dissolved into the sea, were eaten by fish. Where is it?
The power of God in one moment will call them from wherever they are. They're going to be raised incorruptible because it's these bodies are redeemed, brethren, and God is going to take these bodies of humiliation and change them into bodies of glory. And so it's that redeemed us, that is in the graves that God is going to take and.
Raised into bodies of glory and incorruption.
The northern Army there, being the most of the Army, will be asleep. I remember it's a California trial. And he says all these other curriculum, we're just a huge family or whatever. But anyhow, most of the Army would be asleep and there'd be a hero in that long garden.
Well, that was the first blind from the summer. We'll come all up and get out and they get ready and they pack their bags and they get the next and the next line to the chocolate. They get into their playlist. They need Ready to Mars. And then the lineup comes. We all move along and go.
But time doesn't enter there anymore. Time will enter. We're in. We're living in circumstances. There is a question. Time doesn't mean anything involved. I'd like to just suggest that the prototype of the assembling shout.
Is in John 1143, but it's a qualified prototype, the Lord says.
01:20:05
Come forth. But he puts a word in front of it, because had he not put that in front of it, they'd all have come for it. John Five, it says. All that are in the grave. Show. Hear his voice and come forth.
And so there's a qualified prototype of that. I believe in John Chapter 11 and verse 43. Lazarus come forth. What'd he do? What choice did Lazarus have at that point? He didn't know. There was no choice whatsoever. When the Lord calls us, we will go.
Some people say he struggled out of the grave with the grave clothes. I don't believe that. I believe he immediately stood in front of the Lord. You think he walked out?
Beg pardon? Do you think he walked out? I think he just was brought up by divine power. And that's what I believe is the the point here. We're going to be raised by no glorious hour when we will be transformed and brought out of the grave and stand ready to March on and then all joining together. This isn't going to be a long process though, is it, brother? Is the world going to see us? When?
Dan Jacobson didn't mean it was going to be a long process.
#217 two 70.
And shall we leave my face?
And I never live in my voice.
And grace.
Well, I.
Just.
Take the mind and make a heart. Keep in mind the last words of this chapter.
01:25:07
Wherefore converts or new translation says encourage.
One another.
With these words is wonderful gossip. Reading me, you have a responsibility or a good person.
But give thanks.
Our God.
We have so much to be thankful for and especially these two days together.
And we just praise and bless and thank thee for the riches of the.
Truth of our position now as being in Christ.
And our love brethren who have left this scene as to being with Christ.
And that soon we all together shall be like him who has that glorified body.
The head of a new creation.
The Risen Man.
Already in the glory.
And we shall be like him.
Tremendous thought.
But oh, the mercy which goes on toward us and toward the world in general. We're so thankful for that.
And something is known of thy grace, the riches of thy grace, the glory of thy grace.
Before says ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is true of every believer, we know something of that grace.
But oh to see thy face.
To be with thee and to be like thee now help us to be encouraged as we've just been admonished.
With the words that have been before us, to remember them, help us in that, and not to be hearers only, but doers of the word, putting these things practically to use. We've had such good practical ministry that way.
We earnestly pray for all of us.
The young ones in particular rejoicing the seed, many that are very interested in these truths.
But we ask for blessing upon all and mercies the rest of the day, and the rest of the way.
We commit us to thee and give our thanks, Lord Jesus, in thy worthy name. Amen.
The.
Prayer for the gospel is at 6:30 again in the library and the gospel.
At 7:00 PM.
The meal tonight will be all held in the cafeteria. No service in that special room. If there's somebody that needs assistance, can't go through the line, why, they can sit in down in the cafeteria and there will be those that will serve them. But I've been told that there is quite a bit of variety in the foods that will be served tonight and so.
They're encouraged everyone that can to go through the line.
I'd like to ask Brother Charles Brandon if you mind giving thanks for the food.
Our blessed God, our Father to Thee with Thanksgiving.
Behold the Fire and the Wood
Address—D. Rule
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We'll begin our time together this afternoon with our God.
By singing together #111.
By thee, O God, invited we look unto the sun. We're 111.
I feel God.
Right.
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Our God, we're here this afternoon, together before thee.
With thy word to be opened before us.
And we do desire our God that each one of us here this afternoon would.
See glory and beauty in beholding thy Son.
And we ask our God that there would be the practical result.
In our daily lives for Thy glory.
We look to Thee to give us collective understanding and appreciation.
For what thou would have to say to us.
We seek Thy blessing, and we ask for it in the name of our.
My son, our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
In my parents home.
In the living room we had a very nice fireplace.
And it was fairly often that on a Friday night.
Or a Saturday night, we would have a fire in the fireplace.
And as a boy, I found it fascinating, and I still do as an adult.
To watch a fire.
Used to lie on the living room floor with my brothers.
And we'd sometimes lie on our stomach with our faces toward the fire, propped up on our elbows with.
Our chin in our hands, and justice stare at the fire.
And from the childhood.
Having the word of God brought before me, I suppose the most common.
Common reference to fire that I knew about in the Bible was the Lake of Fire.
But Ayrton used to wonder why fire could be so destructive.
As it is, we all know about forest fires. I'm sure we've seen I on the way down here, I saw a house that had been consumed by fire.
And completely destroyed just.
Nothing left of it.
But at the same time staring into the fire at home and since.
I've often found fire comforting.
Warming.
Beneficial.
Peaceful, even.
And in the last couple of days.
I believe the Lord has brought before my soul an answer.
So that perhaps curious question of a lifetime of why can fire at times seem and be so destructive.
And at the same time or at other times, fire is so warming and comforting.
And benefit to the soul.
Going to look this afternoon.
Sometimes having a responsibility like this.
Lemoyne Smith has come up to me a couple of times that.
Saint Louis Conference and, and he said what should we call it so we could have something to put down on the tapes?
And I guess this afternoon I'd like to think of it as the words that Abraham said to his son be behold the fire.
And the wood. Let's turn 1St to get a sense of what Scripture speaks of when it brings fire before us.
In Hebrews chapter 12.
Hebrews chapter 12 I'd like to read begin with two verses.
Because I believe these two verses really give us the major thoughts from God as to what we can get from the word in the scriptures fire. The first one is in Hebrews chapter 12 and the last verse it says.
Our God is a consuming fire.
Our God is a consuming fire. Now turn over before we comment on it to 1St Corinthians chapter 3.
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First Corinthians, chapter 3.
And verse 13.
Every man's work.
Shall be made manifest for the day. Shall declare it, because it shall be revealed.
By fire.
And the fire shall try every man's work.
Of what sort it is.
We know our God tells us concerning Himself that He is a consuming.
Fire. And that's one of the things that the Word of God brings before us when we read about fire.
It consumes.
And it's important for us to want to know about it because God speaks of himself in that way as being a consuming fire.
But the other verse that we read is also interesting because God is telling us that fire.
Reveals.
What something is?
It tries it.
It manifests it.
It proves it.
And so we might say that.
God speaks to us a fire as that which.
Reveals, manifests, or proves something.
And if needed, consumes it.
I want to say right at the beginning.
Everything about you.
All that you are and all that you do.
In this life.
Is to be tried by fire.
Everything.
And in fact, all things in the creation that pass through this world.
Are tested.
Proved and as needs be.
Consumed.
By fire.
Turn with me now to.
Genesis.
Chapter 22.
We'll read a little bit of the story of Abraham and Isaac because.
As you at this point expect.
It's going to bring fire before us.
And so in Genesis chapter 22 and verse.
Two, it says, And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah.
And offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains, which I will tell thee of.
And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his *** and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son.
And clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up.
And went unto the place of which God had told him.
And on the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place.
Afar off.
And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the *** while I and the lad will go Yonder and worship, and come again to you.
And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son.
And he took the fire in his hand and the knife, and they went, both of them.
Together.
I believe it's very instructive here.
To see what the father has in his hand.
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And what the sun carries.
The Father has, as they go up that mountain, Moriah.
He has a knife in one hand and he has fire in the other.
This chapter is a picture.
Of particularly God's side, the Father's side.
Of the sacrifice of his son at Calvary.
And they're on their way, the father and the son to Calvary.
And the father carries the knife.
That is going to be used to slay the sacrifice.
The father carries the fire.
That is going to.
On which the sacrifice is to be burnt.
We can read words like this and I hope in our hearts we think about it a little bit.
We'll think about it, perhaps, and gather more into it for eternity.
But it's about what God felt.
As he went with his son together to that cross.
Where the knife was to be used to slay.
The sacrifice.
And where the consuming fire?
Of God's judgment.
Was to be applied to the sacrifice.
Will never fully comprehend or estimate in our souls.
What it meant to God the Father.
To go with his son to that place.
Having in his hands the night and the fire.
I'm going to make a couple of applications of the wood.
Thankfully enough, we don't get our doctrine from applications that we shouldn't.
Applications are illustrations of truth that we learn elsewhere.
And because of that, we can make different applications of particular illustrations in the scripture.
Perhaps they're not always the primary one.
But yet there's liberty of the Spirit of God to make use of them.
And this afternoon I would like to apply the wood.
That the Lord Jesus carried as the Son, as his humanity.
The father plaved the wood.
The Father placed the wood upon the sun.
And the son carried it.
It was a tremendous thing for the Son of God.
To receive the body prepared for him by the Father.
But he receives it, and he receives all that is associated with such.
As a son carrying it in this world in which we live.
He enters into a relationship of obedience.
And it's touched my soul and meditating on it.
This way.
You and I have at times limited capacity.
To feel what other people are going through.
If we have passed through something ourselves, we are able sometimes to express our feelings and show compassion to another who is passing through a similar circumstance of life.
Just mentioning before lunch to somebody that.
We're not another brother. We're not very suited to properly express to a sister what it's like to go through childbirth.
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You've never been there.
But one sister can express it to another that's been through it with feeling and understanding.
But it was a tremendous thing.
For a holy person, the Lord Jesus Christ in humanity.
To pass through a world spoiled by sin.
Because the Lord Jesus, as he lived here as a man.
Felt.
As none other could feel.
With no diminishing of it, with no selfishness in it.
When he saw a blind man.
When he saw a leper.
His heart.
Went out. His compassions went out.
We can see people like that and if we knew them, we feel it, but we pass them over and over again on the street or in circumstances of life and we feel for it a little bit, but it's easy to pass on and enjoy our own meal and so on.
But the one who bore the wood?
As a son in this world.
Surely if born our sorrows.
And carried our griefs.
He entered into the sorrows and the griefs.
Of others in a way that cannot be measured.
In the intensity of the feeling in his own soul.
I just want to say touches my heart and I believe makes a worship for free eternity.
He bears the wood forever.
He bears wood forever.
He shall forever.
Be close to us.
In his humanity.
Entering in fully with us into the circumstances that we are in forever.
He who could go out free, who could put aside.
That body.
But no, he won't.
I'll go with you.
And it's the father.
That lays it upon the Son.
When we.
Go over the Son makes the question in verse 7.
He says, Abraham spake unto Abraham, Isaac spake unto Abraham his father. And he said, My father. And he said, Here am I my son. And he said, Behold the fire in the wood, But where's the lamb or burnt offering? Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb or burnt offering. So they went, both of them together, and they came to the place which God had told him of. And Abraham built an altar there, and.
Abraham laid the wood.
In order.
And bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar on the wood.
The wood and the sacrifices that we'll look at in Leviticus.
For that which consumed.
The offering.
And the Lord Jesus.
Had to.
Stand before God if He was to be our sacrifice as man.
He had to bear it as a man.
And on the other side of it, it's what we were.
That was such an awful thing that the Fire had to consume it.
And we see in the sin offering it ends up as ashes, and they're carried out.
Good for nothing anymore.
But the fire tried it. The fire revealed what it was.
And the fire consumed it.
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But the Lord Jesus.
Two things that seem to me in my own soul to be the fuel.
Of the fire punish the wood.
And the others? The fats, which we'll notice a little later.
Now let's turn over to Leviticus chapter one.
Leviticus, chapter one.
Verse 2.
Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto the Lord, you shall bring your offering of the cattle.
Even of the herd and of the flock, if his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish.
He shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the Tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord, And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him, and he shall kill the Bullock before the Lord. And the priest, Aaron's son shall bring the blood, and sprinkle the blood round about upon the altar that is by the door of the Tabernacle.
Of the congregation, and he shall slay the burnt offering and cut it into pieces.
And the sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire.
Upon the altar, and lay the wood in order upon the fire. And the priest, Aaron's son, shall lay the parts, the head, and the fat in order upon the wood, that is on the fire, which is upon the altar.
But his inwards and his legs shall be washed with water, and the priest shall burn all.
On the altar to be a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire.
Of a sweet savor unto the Lord.
That's where I find the comfort of watching a fire.
When God's Son.
Voluntarily presents himself as an offering to God.
And the fire is applied to it.
It reveals what the sacrifice is.
It proves.
To the heart of God, by the fire that he is what the sacrifice is.
And as that fire is applied to that sacrifice.
For God there is a Savior, a sweet smell.
It is pleasant.
Is refreshing.
Satisfying to his own heart.
A sweet savor.
Unto the Lord, But it's the application of the fire that brings it out.
And it's the heart of God that receives the results back to his own soul of the fire that he puts.
To the sacrifice.
We'll save in this chapter.
By the way, if you will, there's three different examples of this sacrifice that are offered to God, and there's the Bullock, and then there's the sheep and.
There's the turtle dove or young pigeons, and each one of them represents a little different.
Can I say appreciation?
Of what that sacrifice is to God.
The least amount of understanding is expressed in the young pigeons, and with the case of the Bullock everything was offered up. In the case of the pigeons there were some things, the crop and the feathers, that had to be put to the side and carried out where the ashes were. They couldn't be used as part of the offering. And everybody in this room has a little different measure of appreciation.
Or what the work of Christ is to God, and even in our expressions of it, in worship and praise to God, we vary in our capacities.
00:30:07
And in our growth in how we can express ourselves. But whether you're a pigeon offer.
Or a Bullock offer.
God's remark about them all is they are a burnt offering.
And they are a sweet saver unto God.
So let us all.
Offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually. Lord, say morning. Yes, but continually.
Giving thanks unto his name, recognizing that the.
Very expressions that we have concerning his son and his work. No lumps in it, no imperfections in it.
The oil is a figure of the Spirit of God, commingled with it in perfection before God. And so we in the Word of God trace the life of our Lord Jesus through this world and.
It's a beautiful thing to our souls.
But it also the memorial of it is burnt.
Upon the fire, and ascends as a sweet savor unto the Lord. It's one of what the scripture calls the burnt sacrifices.
One of the sacrifices that are put to the test of fire to reveal them, and by revealing them, to bring pleasure.
A sweet, a perfume to the heart of God.
It's said, and quite rightly, that.
The Lord Jesus didn't need the temptations in the wilderness.
Because he was holy and perfect, but by those temptations it was a demonstration to us.
Of who he is, and of his worthiness to be the sacrifice on the cross.
In my own heart, though, it goes beyond that.
Because.
God took pleasure.
In the display of what his son is.
And so even in temptation as well as in the expressions of goodness.
And care in his life God looks upon that that can I say testing by fire.
And trying by fire.
And it's, it's a perfume to his heart. It's for him. Turn over to Chapter 3.
And if his oblation be a sacrifice of the peace offering, he shall offer it of the herd, whether it be a male.
For a female.
He shall offer it without blemish before the Lord, and he shall lay his hand upon the head of the offering, and kill it at the door of the Tabernacle of the congregation and Aaron's son's. The priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar round about, and he shall offer the sacrifice of the peace offering, an offering made by fire unto the Lord. The fact that covereth the inwards, and all the fat that is upon the inwards, and the two kidneys and the fat.
That is on them, which is by the flanks and the call above the liver with the kidneys it shall he take away, and Aaron's son shall burn it on the altar upon the burnt sacrifice which is upon the wood that is on the fire.
It is an offering made by fire of a sweet savor unto the Lord. This was an offering that was for God and man both. It was a peace offering. It was a fellowship offering, and there was part of the offering which was for God, and part of the offering which man could partake of in fellowship with his God, and yet it was a burnt offering.
It was that which?
Brings to God's heart and to God's thoughts His Son, bringing man into fellowship with himself. God takes great satisfaction in that He sent His Son into this world not only to save.
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But to bring to himself children.
To have a family for himself.
And with that family, he may have fellowship and his own enjoyment.
Of his son. But in this offering it was a burnt sacrifice. But there was.
The fat Deacon.
In one place it calls it the food of the offering or the fuel for the offering. We know what in a natural way that.
Sometimes I know how much fat there is when my lunch is warmed up in a microwave by how hot it gets.
And it provides energy and heat and.
It others have commented that it was the inner energy of the sun in his devotion and offering him himself to God. And that's for God.
God measures and God appreciates the energy of His own Son that was expressed in His life and was expressed when He went to the cross for you and for God, and offers Himself and endures all that is necessary for your and my acceptance with God in chapter 4.
Just read there a little bit.
Verse Four. And he shall bring the Bullock unto the door of the Tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord, and lay his hand upon the bullock's head.
And kill the Bullock before the Lord.
And.
Verse seven. And the priest shall take put some of the blood upon the horns of the altar of sweet incense before the Lord, which is in the Tabernacle of congregation, and shall pour all the blood of the Bullock at the bottom of the altar of the burnt offering, which is at the door of the Tabernacle of the congregation. He shall take off from it all the fat of the Bullock for the sin offering, the fat that covers the inwards, and all the fat that is upon the N words, and the two kidneys, and the fat that is upon them.
Which is by the flanks, and the call above the liver with the kidneys it he shall take away. And it was taken from off the Bullock of the sacrifice of peace offerings. And the priest shall burn them upon the altar of the burnt offerings. And the skin of the Bullock, and all his flesh with his head, and with his legs and his inwards, and his dung, even the whole Bullock shall he carry forth without the camp unto a clean place.
Where the ashes are poured out and burned him on the wood with fire.
Where the ashes are poured out, shall he be burnt?
When the Lord Jesus was on the cross.
There was a work to be done there.
And in his own person, he does it.
As the fire of God's judgment comes down. But there's an interesting thing.
I don't know any Hebrew at all, but just by what others have remarked that know the language.
Actually, there's two different words for burn that are used.
And one of them is when it says the fire concerning the burnt offering. It's one kind of word.
But the fire that is referred to and expressed here.
That consumes to ashes is a different word.
There is the fire that displays the gold that was our Lord Jesus Christ and is our Lord Jesus Christ. There is the fire that consumes all that is inconsistent with the nature of God.
And it's taken outside. It's removed from God's presence.
And there it remains.
Everybody in this room is going to be and is being tried by fire.
For those of us who have accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior. If I could put it this way, the trial by fire as to our souls.
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Took place.
By our substitute.
We stood before God in Christ.
And he takes our place there, and the fire comes down.
And all that he was made sin for us. That's what we are.
He bore our sins. That's what we've done.
That.
Comes under the fire of God's judgment, and it consumes it.
And removes it from God's sight.
And everyone of us that belonged to the Lord Jesus Christ have been tried by fire, as it were, and in him we passed through it.
And it will never touch us.
Your life.
You're acting in life, I'm acting in life. You're living it day by day.
And your whole life.
Is going to be tried by fire.
Everything you've done, everything you've said.
In this life is going to have the fire triumph.
Everything that is of God in your life will remain for eternity.
And everything that was not of God.
Will be burned, consumed to ashes, removed from God's sight forever.
And we wish it so.
If you stop to think about it, you're thankful for it.
Because.
After the fire has taken its last step, if you will, and destroyed this present heavens and present earth, even this creation will be tried by fire. And after it's exhausted, it consumed it because it's spoiled by sin, everything that remains will be consistent with God.
And there's a consuming fire. There will be nothing more. Can I say even then to consume?
And so God is going to try every sort of life.
And every sort of work, but I say to you this afternoon if you.
Have not been exposed to the fire and the person of the Lord Jesus at the cross. Or in other words, if you're not saved, if you have not accepted the Lord Jesus as your substitute.
As the one who at the cross bore the fire of God's judgment.
Then you must.
Suffer it yourself.
And that's why it calls it the Lake of Fire.
Elsewhere calls it a furnace of fire.
Because.
Lake is confinement, Furnace is confinement, And when you enter into the furnace of fire, of God's wrath, or the lake of God's wrath, you'll never escape it.
It'll be an eternal burning for you.
What an awful thing.
What an awful thing. And yet.
What an awful thing it would be if the Lord chooses to come this afternoon, if God sends Him to take us.
Sheltered by his precious blood, and passed through the fire of God's judgment in him.
Are taken home.
Pure as gold in the sight of God, and you remain.
For certain eternal burning.
Terrible turn with me to chapter 6.
Verse 9.
Leviticus 69 command Aaron and his son saying this is the law of the burnt offering.
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It is the burnt offering, because the burning upon the altar all night until the morning, and the fire of the altar shall be burning on it in it. And the priest shall put on his linen garment, and his linen breeches. He shall put upon his flesh, and take up the ashes which the fire hath consumed with the burnt offering on the altar. And he shall put them beside the altar. And he shall put off his garments, and put on other garments, and carry forth the ashes without the camp unto a clean place.
And the fire upon the altar shall be burning in it.
It shall not or never be put out, and the priest shall burn wood on it every morning, and lay the burnt offering in order upon it, and he shall burn there on the fat of the peace offerings. The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar. It shall never go out.
I think this is God's plan for eternity.
Concerning his son.
That which was necessary to consume.
That which didn't stand, if you will, the test of fire, was burned.
And removed from the sight of God, and remains that way forever.
But the altar of the burnt offering.
On which the fire was placed.
Never goes out.
And God will have an eternal satisfaction, an eternal sweet savor for his nostrils.
From.
His son.
And all that He is, and all that he is, in his humanity as well as in his deity, all that he is as man, as well as what he is as God.
Man so dishonored God by sinning Adam and Eve, our forefathers. It was a terrible disgrace to God that he could provide for his creature everything for his joy and satisfaction and then have him say, I'll listen to Satan.
I'll go my own way.
And yet God says I'm going to have eternal satisfaction in a man.
And all that are his.
And as it were, the fire that reveals what it is will never go out.
It will display it, reveal it, never consume it.
Because it says that we're the gold.
But it will remain before the eye and heart of God, and you and I will, without the distractions of this life and so on, we will enter into it more fully and completely forever.
I would like to look at a couple of scriptures or refer to them at least. Man has fires too.
Not only does God have fire, but man makes fire.
In the Old Testament, sometimes it says God just came right down and produced the fire that burned up the sacrifice. I think in Elijah when there were the false prophets with Elijah. There's a case here in Leviticus where it wasn't that man struck a match and started the fire, but God himself is what he is. He just came down and he ignited the sacrifice by the fire. But man has a tendency to imitate whatever God does. Man tries to imitate it and it's a bad thing to do. And in fact it God has his judgment upon it. And one instance of it here is in.
Leviticus, chapters 9 and 10.
Verse Leviticus Chapter 9 and verse 23.
We'll read a few verses here.
Then Moses and Aaron went into the Tabernacle of the congregation, and came out and blessed the people, and the glory of the Lord appeared unto all the people.
And there came a fire out from before the Lord, and consumed upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat.
Which when all the people saw, they shouted and fell on their knees. As God causes that eternal burning of the fire on the altar, we are going to see it in our souls and it's going to produce the same response one of when the people saw, they shouted and fell on their knees. We're going to shout a song of redemption and praise and fall on our knees and worship even though.
00:50:13
It may be very dim this afternoon in our souls.
Verse 10, Chapter 10 And Nadab and a by Hue, the sons of Aaron took either of them his censor, and put fire therein, and put incense there on, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not, and there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. May the Lord help us, that none of us.
Offer a strange fire even to God.
Made a Bayou. Put aside what God had instructed.
There was an incense that was to be formed exactly according to God's direction, because it spoke of His Son.
And all that he is to God.
And that incense was placed upon the fire and rose up as a savior to God.
But Nate Adam to buy, who had their own ideas about concocting an incense, I think.
And they also had their own way of where they were going to get their fire to present their offering to God.
We must seek God's help and mercy and preserving that we ever and only.
Present to God his Son, not a son of our own making.
Not a Christ of our own imagination. Not a work for God.
That we dream up.
But only that which God has planned and done in His Son. May the Lord help us.
Preserve us from the sin of Nadab and the Bahu in forming their own as that we're offering to God that spoke of his Son.
Let's turn over to a fire of man.
Comforting one to us in Daniel.
Where Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are placed in the fire.
This is a fire of man.
God uses fire, He is fire consuming fire, and he consumes things.
And sometimes man creates a fire to consume you.
If you belong to the Lord Jesus and all the time is producing fire of his own making in order to destroy things.
And here is a man that has his own fire to destroy those who do not bow down before him.
And so.
Umm Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego here in chapter 6.
Sorry, it's not Daniel Six. What is it?
Thank you Chapter 3.
Chapter 3 and.
He says to them in verse 15 Now if you be ready, at which time you hear the sound of the coronet, the flute, the harp, the sackbut, and so on, he says, Ye shall worship.
But if not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of the burning fiery furnace. And who is that? God shall deliver you out of my hands.
And so they give answer to the king, and he gets mad. He.
Said well, God is able to deliver us, but if not, we're not going to bow.
And so he's full of fury in verse 19, and he puts them into the fire. He commands in verse 19 that the.
Should heat this furnace seven times more than it should be heated.
He takes His most mighty man in verse 20 and uses them to cast the men into the furnace.
And verse 21 These men are bound in their coats and so on. They're cast in.
Verse 22 Because the commandment was so urgent of the king, and he was so.
Mad that he and the fire that he had created was so exceeding hot that the flame slew the very soldiers that had placed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in it. And verse 23 they fall down, bound into the midst of the furnace.
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And then Nebuchadnezzar is sitting there, I guess watching it happen, and he looks in and he says, well we put three men in and now there appear to be 4 there.
Verse 25 I see four men loose walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt.
And the 4th is of the.
Like the Son of God.
And Shadrach himself comes near to the mouth of the burning fiery furnace, and spake, and to them tells them to come forth. They do in verse 27. And it says the Princess and governors and captains.
Of the King's counselors being gathered together, saw these men upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was an hair of their head singed, neither were their coach changed, or the smell of fire had passed over them.
And verse.
28 says.
They have yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor worship any God except the true God.
Let's take comfort in that. No fire of man.
Can in any way touch?
The soul, and if God chooses, the body even of one of his own.
Man may create his fire to consume.
But God is the one who is able to preserve, no matter if it's heated 7 times, no matter if the very fire that man prepares consumes himself in the process.
God is with His own in every fire through which they may pass to preserve, to go through it with them, so that in the end result.
There's not even the smell of it.
That can touch those who were sown. And so it shall be with anyone in this room that passes through the fire of tribulation or the fire of God's hand through man's opposition to himself.
Eternity will reveal.
That it could not consume.
I'd like to warn you about another fire, Peter, unfortunately.
When he was following the Lord Jesus and I admire Peter.
Even in this part of his life. But when Peter went into the courtyard of the high priest's house when the Lord Jesus had been taken there on the night before his crucifixion, it was a cold night.
And Peter felt the cold of the night, and while he was seeking to be with or near the Lord Jesus.
It says he warmed himself by the fire, the fire that the soldiers and others in the house had kindled to keep warm on that cold night.
Brethren, may the Lord help us. Sometimes the night is cold.
But let's not seek out.
The warmth of the world's fires.
It's harmful to the soul and it robs the believer of his courage.
To speak and live for the Lord Jesus.
Well, I'd just like to again say in closing.
Behold the fire and the wood.
May the Lord give us to see, as it were, the fire applied to our Lord Jesus Christ as man and his life and his death.
And to rejoice in it.
And to be thankful.
As we are soon to be with Him and enjoy it perfectly and forever, let's just pray.
Our God and Father, we.
Are thankful that Thou was willing to carry the knife.
01:00:00
And the fire.
We thank you, Lord Jesus, for carrying the wood.
Right to.
The top of the mountain.
And being the lamb of God's providing.
Oh Lord Jesus, we just desire to have it more, have a central point place in our hearts and our lives.
That our daily life might reflect.
The warmth of that fire.
And to live to Lord Jesus with the realization.
But everything that doesn't pass the test of God's trying fire.
Will have to be removed forever.
That we won't have to be always like Job had to be, and yet help us to get there as Job did.
That we would be able to say.
I have heard of thee by the hearing of the year, but now mine I see at thee, and I abhor myself and repent.
And dust.
And ashes.
Those ashes we know our God, which reminds us of all that is of the flesh that.
Has to be consumed.
So we just ask for blessing this afternoon on our souls.
Gideon
Address—D. Gorgas
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.
Begin our meeting tonight, this afternoon with 190 three 193.
100 hymn #193.
Jesus, my Savior.
The one.
My Lords here.
After singing words like that, it's only appropriate that we should confess our dependence on the Lord for the time we have together.
Our God and our Father. What a privilege to be.
Gathered together.
As we are these two days for.
Something of refreshment for our souls and encouragement.
We own the darkness of the days, Father. We realize that, perhaps not as we should, but we do realize it.
It's a darkness that can be felt.
In our God we would seek grace to go on in that.
Very time in such a way.
As to give glory and honor.
Into thy beloved Son.
As we open thy word this afternoon, we ask thee to.
For a blessing upon us.
Encourage our heart. Strengthen us.
If there's some discouraged soul that perhaps.
Needs encouragement that the words spoken might be used.
That will help both speaker and hearer to open hearts to what thou dost have to say.
We ask you to our God, in the precious name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
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Let's turn to the 6th chapter of Judges.
The 6th chapter of Judges.
Let's make this introductory remark before I read that.
Years ago.
I was very much helped by reading a little book by Doctor Rozier, Meditations on Judges.
And he makes this remark on the difference between the.
Warfare in Joshua and in Judges.
And perhaps it will be a helpful remark to others.
Warfare in Joshua is to bring the people into the good.
Of what God has for them.
In judges, it's to deliver them from the consequences of their failure.
Perhaps that remark will help someone else, as it did me in reading Doctor Rozier's delightful little book. And if you haven't read that, young people, oh, I just suggest that you avail yourself of it.
Don't print on. Is it still available?
So we should, I should have asked the Mr. books in print over there. John Kaiser. But.
He amazes me and just a side remark that he seems to be like, you know, there's a book called Books and Print that you can get and look up something and there's a walking books in print on Christian things over there. And I appreciate that.
Judges chapter 6 and verse one. And the children and the children of Israel.
Did evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord delivered them into the hand of Midian?
Seven years.
And the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel, and because of the Midianites the children of Israel made them.
The dens which are in the mountains and caves and strongholds.
And so it was when Israel had sown that the Midianites came up, and the Amalekites and the children of the east, even they came up against them.
And they encamped against them and destroyed the increase of the earth.
Until thou come unto Gaza and left no sustenance for Israel.
Neither sheep nor ox, nor ***.
For they came up with their cattle and their tents, and they came as grasshoppers for multitude, for both they and their camels were without number, and they entered into the land to destroy it.
And Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites.
And the children of Israel cried unto the Lord.
And it came to pass when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord because of the Midianites.
That the Lord sent a prophet unto the children of Israel, which said unto them.
Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you forth out of the House of *******.
And I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of all that oppressed you.
And drave them out from before you and gave you their land.
And I said unto you, I am the Lord your God, fear ye not. Fear not the gods of the Emirates, in whose land you dwell. But you have not obeyed my voice.
I just like to pause there for a few minutes.
Just to paint a little picture.
Midian, as I understand it.
Is a picture of strife.
It's a picture of strife in Scripture.
We find that Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord delivered them.
Delivered them notice that into the hand of Midian. Seven years.
Beloved, when strife occurs among the Lord's people.
It sometimes is God's hand upon us.
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For that which we have done, which is evil in his sight.
You're going to notice a little bit here, the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel.
And because of the Midianites, the children of Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains.
Have you ever thought when strife occurred?
Generally among the Lord's people or in your assembly where you are, have you ever thought I'd just like to go make me a little den and get away from it all and hide?
A little stronghold, a little cave somewhere.
That's not God's answer. That's not what he calls us to do. But we can understand it, and I believe as we.
Look about and we think of different ones who have.
Can I use the expression bailed out on the testimony?
It's because they've just been wearied with the strife, They've been discouraged with the strife.
But it's not God's answer.
There's another answer, and we're going to look at that as we go through this chapter a little bit. The Lord willing.
But don't go into a cave. Don't go into a den somewhere. Don't go into some stronghold.
That you might set up to escape.
From the strife.
I don't like strife.
I don't like it.
And you'll see here as we read that it's an impoverishing thing.
It makes the people of God poor.
And there is no food when there is strife.
And as soon as something is sown.
Here come these Midianites again.
And destroy it.
Verse four says that they destroyed the increase of the earth.
We consume sometimes so much energy on strife among ourselves, beloved that.
There is no increase.
That God delights to give his people God wants to give increase.
He wants to give in decrease. He wants to give food.
He was the blessing, the gospel.
But if we get so occupied with the strife among ourselves, there can be no.
Increase.
That very stripe devours.
And ruins the increase that God has purposed for us.
We're into verse, Five says. They entered into the land to destroy it.
To destroy it.
I don't need to tell you, I don't think that.
A very high privilege was mine in 1954 when the Lord.
Gathered me by grace to his precious name.
It's a wonderful place to be the land.
I'm using it as a type of that.
The land that God has given the territory, you might say that God has given.
It was a wonderful privilege.
And my soul benefited from it.
I don't need to give tribute to the people who God knows who they are and he'll give tribute in the coming day to those.
People who helped me over those days, in those days and fed my soul.
I have mentioned that I will mention this, that the first year I was gathered.
Beloved brother Adrian Roach came over to Brooklyn, where I was gathered.
42 Lords days out of a year giving addresses on.
The course of time from eternity to eternity.
What a benefit to my soul that way.
And as those of you who remember Brother Adrian knew that he could pack into one meeting what some of us get into 10 minutes, I mean into two hours, he could. He just spoke quickly, and he covered things very quickly. That wasn't a feast.
But then comes a long strife.
00:15:02
I wasn't gathered 2 years before.
A Dutchman rose up and caused problems and almost upset me from the path.
Mr. Christian.
I said, Where have I come? What have I done?
I thank God for men who studied my feet in those days.
Guilford Christensen, Mr. Kohler.
They were help to me to get through that time.
And some of you young people I'm sure have been discouraged with other things which have come up.
Because Satan never rests as soon as there is a sowing.
The Midianites come to try to destroy it.
Verse six says in Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites.
And then it says, The children of Israel cried unto the Lord.
Ah, that's the answer.
To cry to the Lord in those circumstances, to look to him.
To seek from him a remedy, a help, Lord, deliver his help us.
A couple of years ago I was talking to some brothers from an assembly where they were having a problem and they said we're just not equal to it. I said good, good.
Now the Lord can work if you get down and acknowledge that to him that you can't handle it.
That's that's the thing we need to do is to get on our knees, cry to the Lord. Now how does the Lord answer? This is remarkable because.
I think if you read this carefully you will see.
That this is a prophet with an unusual message.
We think of a prophet as one who comes and predicts something.
One who encourages.
But this is the ministry of a prophet where he simply lays out for them.
The.
Sin of which they were guilty because sometimes we don't know it.
We don't realize that. We don't recognize it. We don't understand what's wrong.
And the Lord raises up. By the way, a prophet is one who speaks for another.
In this case, it was speaking for God.
A spokesperson.
We use the word sometimes in Spanish portables.
Somebody who speaks who?
Gives a message on behalf of another. Now listen to this message.
The Lord sent a prophet unto the children of Israel. Now remember, they had cried unto the Lord because they were impoverished.
And they were discouraged and there was number food.
And they are crying to the Lord for an answer.
The Lord says to him This says the Lord God of Israel, Verse eight, I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you forth out of the House of *******.
That's not.
In itself.
An encouraging word is simply a statement of what God did, isn't it?
God says I did this for you.
I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, out of the hand of all that oppressed you, and drive you out from before, drive them out from before you, and gave you their land.
And I said unto you, I am the Lord your God, Fear not the gods of the Amorites.
In whose land you dwell.
Which you have not obeyed my voice.
End of prophetic message.
Isn't there any cheerful aspect to his prophetic message? None at all. God wants that message to lie in their consciences and hearts.
He wants them to be exercised by it.
00:20:01
He wants them to feel what they had done.
That little expression in Tevers 10 Fear ye not. The gods of the Amorites is one that ought to exercise us. Beloved we we dwell in a land where there are many strange gods.
I'm not talking about images now.
But people deify.
Sports figures, Music figures.
Ambitions.
Success.
God says.
Not.
I'm the Lord your God.
And he says, you haven't obeyed my voice, you haven't obeyed my voice.
When I just ask each one of us to be honest before the Lord here this afternoon, is there some God of the Amorites that we have?
Allowed to capture our affections and our thoughts.
Is there something the Lord is saying to us?
And then the Prophet goes away. Wait, prophet, don't go away? Do you have something to say that would encourage us?
That's all those words they gave me for today and he went away.
Now I want to ask you this.
Do you think after praying to the Lord and crying to him about their condition?
And this prophet comes and delivers this message and he goes away. Do you think that they were greatly encouraged?
Do you think they said, oh, this is just the thing to encourage our heart?
I don't think so.
As I read that.
It exercises me, and I trust it does YouTube, beloved, we have not heard the Lord's voice.
He has benefited us so much.
He has given us so much.
He's come in on our behalf so much.
What have we done? We've not obeyed his voice.
We've been fearing the gods of the Amorites, among whom we dwell.
Now let's read a little more verse 11.
And there came an Angel of the Lord, and sat under an oak which is which was in Oprah, that pertained unto Joash the obvious right.
And his son Gideon.
Page turned here. Will continue.
His son Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress to hide it from the Midianites.
Here's a young man.
In a home.
Where there was idolatry, believe it or not.
And he's exercised.
He says. I want some wheat and I don't want the Midianites to get that wheat.
And so he threshes it.
To hide it from the Midianites. But he wants it for himself.
Maybe you're here this afternoon and you take that same position as Gideon. I hope you do. I want something for my soul. I don't care what strife has done to impoverish us as a people.
I want something for myself.
Do you know that the Angel of the Lord and I may I say this?
Nothing new. Most commentators will tell you this. That the Angel of the Lord here.
Is the Lord himself.
The Lord himself and what is he doing? He just sits down.
Under an oak and watches Gideon as to what he's doing.
When you take your Bible and you go off into a place and say, Lord, I want something for myself from those scriptures. I need something to go on. I don't want the MIDI unites to get this Lord and you know where he did it.
By the wine press. What does the winepress bring before us? I'd like to suggest that it brings before his self judgment.
00:25:05
Self judgment. What an ideal place to thresh wheat.
Not physically.
But what a what a place that God can come in and bless this man.
Place of self judgment.
And I want to encourage you that when you take time to get into the presence of the Lord and you want something for yourself and you say, I don't care what strife there is, what problems there are among the Lords people, I need something for myself.
And I'm going to get off by myself and get it. There's one who's watching you.
And he's going to preserve you in that position.
I think it's very touching that the Angel of the Lord was there. Did Gideon know he was there? Not immediately, not immediately.
The Angel seems to be just quietly watching him.
Doesn't that encourage your heart that the Lord is watching you when you take time to get into His presence?
And thresh some wheat.
Now you folks out here in this country understand threshing weeds a lot better than this fellow would ever understand it. I worked on a farm, but it was a dairy farm, and we didn't thresh any wheat.
But may I just say that I believe it was an exercise to get something for himself.
From the word, in spite of the enemy's attack.
Young people I know. It hasn't been easy. I've sat in the middle of some of this conflict and.
I lower my head. I think I've been part of it sometimes too.
That's not an atmosphere in which we can foster growth among the young people, but I'm here this afternoon to try to encourage you to get out there in the winepress and take what you get and thresh it out before the Lord, and be encouraged that the Lord himself notices it.
Quite a few years ago, he was sitting on the veranda of our sister Matilda.
Garcia's house down in Cabrera.
In the Dominican Republic.
And I was out there early in the morning with my Bible, reading something and enjoying the presence of the Lord and communion with him.
And here comes along the street.
Our young sister, Rosa Maria, she's now Rosa Maria, hey Johnny Hayes, wife.
Young girl, I think she was 17/16/17 at the time.
Bible under her arm covering.
In her hand. She didn't know I was sitting there. I said, Oh, Rosa, where are you coming from?
Oh, I've just been down at the beach with some other young people and we've been just getting something from the word for ourselves. I almost cried.
From joy to think of this dear sister taking time early in the morning to go down on the beach there in Cabrera and open up the word and find out something for herself.
Now who was watching her? Well, **** Gorgett's store when she came out the street to come in the house.
There was one down on the beach. I'm sure watching those young people doing that, that's the Lord himself and he cares.
Now look at verse 12. And the Angel of the Lord, I believe again that's the Lord appeared unto him.
Now he reveals himself, He's there. And he said unto them unto him, The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor, mighty man of valor, hiding in the winepress.
Threshing a little wheat so that the Midianites don't get it.
He's a mighty man of valor, Yes, the Lord says so. Doesn't he?
Gideon said unto him, O my Lord, if the Lord be with us.
Now I want to notice something here. This is one of those places where singular and plural are interesting.
The Lord had said unto him, The Lord is with whom thee?
00:30:03
You personally, Gideon?
You lose that if you don't have that, but I don't want to make a big point about that. Is just a helpful thing as you read the word and notice that that he was talking to Gideon individually. The Lord is with thee and Gideon then takes his place with the people of God. He says if the Lord be with us.
He doesn't take his place apart from the people of God if the Lord be with us.
Why is all this befallen us? Why did all this happen to us?
Dear young people, have you ever raised that question? I know this is not an address, particularly to young people, but you're always on my heart.
You're always on my heart.
Some of you participated in what's called the YP Forum, and I oh, I value reading what you write. I love it. I just enjoy it.
And I'm always thankful when I see.
Some just putting out something encouraging for each other. A lot of things have happened over the last years, haven't they?
Don't think it's just the last few years either. I told you that two years after I was gathered.
I almost got my foot pushed off.
By a Dutchman.
No, no, no national offense intended. I'm sure there are Dutch people here. Might take offense at that, but.
I was. I was nearly pushed off.
Why is this all happened to us if the Lord is with us?
And where be all his miracles, which our fathers told us of?
Where are all the things that were so wonderful that I learned as a boy or as a girl?
And I don't see it now.
What's happening? What's happened?
Didn't the Lord bring us up from Egypt? But now the Lord hath forsaken us. Do you ever get that feeling The Lord has forsaken us? He really hasn't, I'll tell you that He hasn't forsaken us.
He hasn't forsaken us.
He's ready to step in and help.
But I believe right now he's looking for individual devotion to him. That's why I picked that him in the beginning. Jesus, my savior, Thou art ours. No, Thou art mine. Thou art mine. Thou art mine.
It's a very individual hymn.
But now the Lord hath forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites. It's a good thing to recognize.
The hand of the Lord in what happens.
Not be discouraged by it, not be turned aside by it, but to recognize the hand of the Lord in it.
God is speaking to us.
He has been speaking to us.
Verse 14 And the Lord looked upon him. Isn't that wonderful? The Lord looked on him.
The Lord looked on him.
I just enjoy that so much, the Lord just looking at this man and says to him.
Go in this.
Thy might.
Thy might? What had he confessed?
The utter ruin of things. I want to tell you this.
I think.
I don't think I'm alone in this exercise either.
I believe, beloved brethren, that there isn't the recognition on the part of us, all of us, of the utter ruin and failure of that which God has delivered into our hands.
Well, we talk about it as a doctrine.
We talk about it as a doctrine, the ruin of the Church. Have you felt it? Have I felt it? Have you understood? Have I understood how very badly we failed in the carrying out of the truth that God has given to us?
00:35:05
I'm not talking about people that went out from fellowship with us. I'm talking about ourselves.
Ourselves.
We have failed, but I want to tell you this if you do own that.
The Lord is going to look on you and tell you to go in that strength. What strength?
The strength of the recognition of the utter failure.
That we have in walking in the path that the Lord has called us to.
I could weep sometimes, and I know others have told me they have wept about it.
When I hear expressions that sound as if we're unconscious of that failure.
That we are the people.
Where a broken, ruined testimony.
And if we're testimony to anything, beloved brethren other than the Lord's name itself, where testimony to the ruin of whatever God puts in man's hands.
If you don't like that.
The Lord isn't going to be able to bless you, but if you're willing to take that position.
And with the people of God, identify yourself with that ruin.
Identify yourself with the ruin.
Some years back there was an assembly I like to visit regularly.
But there was a tendency in the reading meetings to say out there in Christendom.
They did this or they did that.
Oh, it used to get me upset.
And I don't think very many times I let it go by without saying we are Christendom.
We're part of it.
We're part of it. The ruin of Christendom is our ruining.
We don't say out there and Christendom, the only way you and I can get out of Christendom, by the way.
Is to deny Christianity. Do we want to do that?
You want to apostatize from the faith? Then you can get out of Christendom. I don't think any of us want to do that. We are part of it. We're part of the ruin. We're part of the shame. And the Lord lets us feel that shame. And if we don't feel it, He may have to deliver us more into the hands of Midian.
Until we feel it and own it to him.
Golden this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianite.
Have you ever longed to save the Lord's people from the strife that they?
Are plagued with.
Have you ever longed to, oh, I wish I could just deliver the Lord's people from that striving that is going on.
Go in the mate of taking your place as part of a ruined testimony.
And the Lord will use you, he says. Have I not sent thee?
Have I not sent thee? You know, I want to say that there's nothing more encouraging to my soul.
In this chapter than that last expression, Have not I sent thee?
Have not I sent thee?
God sent that dear young man.
Verse 15 He said unto him, O my Lord, wherewith?
Shall I save Israel again? There's a humbling there. There's a.
A real recognition that we don't have anything. If you have ambitions and say, well, you know I'm going to deliver the Lord's people.
He's not ready to use you. He can't use you.
But if you take the place of that Gideon takes here, I believe the Lord can.
And will use you.
Wherewith shall I save Israel? Behold, my family is poor in Manasseh.
And I'm the least in my father's house.
From the least one in my father's house.
How does the Lord respond to that?
The Lord said unto him, Surely surely notice that I will be with thee.
Do we want any more than that?
00:40:00
Is there anything we need more than that than for the Lord to say, I'll be with you, I'll be with you.
And if there's a young person or an older one here that is sick of strife.
And humbled by the repetitive failure of the Lord's people.
To maintain that which he has given into our hands and is willing to take his place.
Before God in that way.
The Lord says, Surely I will be with thee.
And thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man.
Verse 17 And he said unto him, If now I have found grace in thy sight, notice that if I have found grace in thy sight, he doesn't show you if I'm better than the others, if I have found grace in thy sight.
Then show me a sign that thou talkest with me.
Depart not hence I pray thee, until I come unto thee, and bring forth my present, and set it before thee. And he said, I will tarry until thou come again. And Gideon went in, and made ready a kid an unleavened cakes of an Eevee of flour.
The flesh he put in a basket, and he put the broth in a pot, and he brought it out unto him under the oak.
And presented it.
The sign that the Lord was with him.
Involved his bringing something to the Lord.
Have you brought something to the Lord? I trust you did this morning. I trust all of us did as we were here.
What? This is individual here, isn't it? It's not the collective side of it. He brought something that he brought out of the house for the Lord.
And he says, Will you wait until I bring it?
What Grace? The Lord says. I'll wait. I'll wait. I'll wait.
Verse 20 And the Angel of God said unto him, Take the flesh.
And the unleavened cakes, and lay them upon the rock, and pour out the broth. And he did so.
Then the Angel of the Lord put forth the end of the staff that was in his hand, and touched the flesh and the unleavened cakes, and there rose up fire out of the rock.
My brother Don was speaking about fire yesterday. The scripture came to mind and I'm going to be interested after the meeting to get some light from him on that on this passage, but.
There is no doubt in my mind that that was a direct.
Responds of God to the exercise of Gideon to bring something to the Lord.
Have you thought about that, bringing something to the Lord? Are you always thinking about what the Lord is bringing to you?
There's an exercise here to bring something to the Lord. Oh, can we do that in spite of?
In spite of all the ruin and failure, yes we can.
And he takes his staff and he touches it, and fire comes up out of the rock.
And consume the flesh and the unleavened cakes.
Then the Angel of the Lord departed out of his sight.
And when Gideon perceived that he was an Angel of the Lord or the Angel of the Lord.
That is the Lord in an angelic presence.
He said, Alas, O Lord God, for because I have seen an Angel of the Lord face to face.
And the Lord now speaks to him directly, not in an angelic form. The Lord said unto him.
Peace be unto thee, Fear not, thou shalt not die.
Are we truly exercised as to what it is to?
Be in the Lord's presence.
That's something that strikes me here is that Gideon has a sense of what it is.
To be in the Lord's presence.
It's a solemn thing.
The attention was called to that verse over there on the wall that I guess comes from the meeting room in in Lawrenceville. I think I remember seeing it there the last time I came with Mr. Grennetti to Lawrenceville. God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the Saints and to be hired in reverence of all them that are about him.
00:45:19
Did you have a sense this morning that we were in the Lord's presence?
There are times when I.
Don't have a sense of that and I.
May lean over and say something to someone that does not need it.
Not necessary. We're in the Lord's presence.
And Gideon says, Alas, I've been in the Lord's presence, I've seen him face to face.
I think it's sweet that the Lord answers him, and says, Peace be unto you, you shall not die.
God isn't looking for you. I caught you. I caught you in that mistake that you made. I caught you in that moment of not recognizing the presence of the Lord.
And I'm going to slay you for that.
What a wrong idea of the Lord that we serve.
That's not his way. His way is peace, isn't it? He had blessing for this young man.
Have you ever been discouraged, young fellow or young girl, because you've done something that you?
You know it wasn't pleasing to the Lord and you say, Oh my, I'm, I'm ruined. I can't be. I'm finished. I can't be used anymore by the Lord.
One of the most encouraging verses to me in the scriptures is the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time.
The word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time. Jonah 3/1.
Would you use a man like Jonah again?
Would you use him? Would you use John Mark again? Would you use Simon Peter if you were arranging things?
An utter failure.
But take courage. Peace.
Be to thee.
You won't die. The Lord isn't out. He'd like you to recognize what isn't right and own it before him, but he certainly isn't out to kill you.
There's a nice sense of that in the 13th chapter of Judges, where.
Manoa says that we're in trouble, we're going to die. Finally recognizes they had seen the Lord.
And his wife answers it beautifully. She says. If the Lord intended to kill us, would He have given us all these wonderful things and and spoken to us and given us such promises as He's given us?
Thank God for wives that.
That straighten us out on things sometimes like that. It's wonderful, isn't it? Brother David have wives like that. I appreciate that.
Then Gideon built an altar there unto the Lord, and called it Jehovah.
Shalom.
And to this day it is yet an Oprah of the ABS rights. Maybe some of you young folks are puzzled. Older ones too. By those expressions where it says it is there until this day, and maybe you make a trip to the Holy Land, you can't find it.
You think what happened? Well, remember that this book, as other books in scripture, were edited by and brought into scripture by under inspiration by most of them, by Ezra the Prophet.
And Ezra as his comment, it's still there.
But I want to put that in a spiritual way.
To this day.
We have the testimony Jehovah Shalom, the Lord of Peace.
The Lord of peace, isn't that wonderful?
With all this strife and all the difficulty that he faced.
He builds an altar and he calls it Jehovah Shalom. He knew where peace was.
Well, the times about gone, but I just want to notice one other thing.
Two other things. First of all, there was an there was an idol in his father's.
00:50:06
Property.
And he went out, and with energy he got rid of it.
He got rid of it.
I say this to parents. If we have some idols and our children get at them and get rid of them, don't resent it. Thank the Lord for it.
It touches my heart that when the people were going to get Gideon and Real, they were going to really get him for this. Now that he had destroyed his father comes out and says let Bale plead for himself.
He stands by his son in that respect.
Maybe there's something in your household that isn't according to scripture, your parents household that isn't according to scripture.
Take courage that your faithfulness may encourage your parents. I can testify that on many things.
On many things.
In the years.
Of raising children, and especially since they were raised.
Their exercises have exercised me.
Their exercises have gotten to my conscience and heart.
And I can testify then and say let babe plead if he has something to say.
To stand by your children in their exercises before the Lord.
It's a wonderful thing. It'll encourage them too. Now the last thing I want to notice is over in the.
7th chapter.
Verse 5.
Gideon is preparing to go, and he has a large amount of troops with him.
Is about to meet Midian and deal with them.
So the Lord says I got to test them first. You know, I'm not going to just take all of them because the people are too many, There's too many. God doesn't kneel in numbers in large numbers. Man loves to talk about large numbers. Why we had 50,000 men in the stadium doing this or that and the other thing or whatever.
God isn't impressed with that.
God's victories are won by small numbers that are devoted to Him and faithful to Him.
Verse 5 So he brought down the people under the water, and the Lord said unto Gideon, Everyone that lapeth of the water with his tongue as a dog lapeth him, shalt thou sit by himself. Likewise everyone that boweth down upon his knees to drink. Now the difference in how they did it was very important, and I never understood this. For years and years and years I thought that getting down and lapping was to put your head down in the water and and lap it up the way a dog laps in.
But I really believe the Lord helped me to see that it was.
Some who were in such a hurry to get at the battle.
To get out the work that the Lord had given them. To do that they reached their hand down in the water.
And on the way, the others said, let's get down and on their knees and drink.
Now water is important. It's an important thing to have water.
I want to tell you this.
What's important is the battle.
What's important is to be ready to do the Lord's will.
To be at his disposal and these 300 men who simply scooped the water up and lapped it like a dog would lap some water. The Lord says they're the ones I'm going to be yours, said all the others aside.
I'll leave you to think about that as to what application the Lord may bring to your heart and conscience about it.
I'd like to close with hymn #312.
312.
And I'm going to use a tune. And please, umm, I think you know the tune, but sometimes when I start this tune it gets diverted to a different one.
00:55:03
So listen to me through the first line at least, and then join in if you will. You can all join in of course.
Later on, Almighty Lord lead on to victory.
And courage by Thy blessed word, with joy we follow.
We follow Thee, our guide Who did salvation bring?
We fall.
No.
Jehovah Shalom.
Pray gracious God our Father.
We have a lot of confessing to do.
We cried to you, father, because of the.
Strife that has come in, that has impoverished us, and we own it, and we own the verdict of the Prophet that came.
To Israel.
Applies to us. We have not obeyed thy voice. Thou hast given us such privileges.
Now, Father, we thank thee that thou hast raised up an example for us in this.
Man Gideon.
Gideon who?
In his.
Weakness, nevertheless determined to have something for himself.
Father grant that there might be many Gideons in this audience today.
That will stir our hearts that in self judgment we might get something for our souls out of Thy truth.
And walk in it.
That we might take our place with the people of God in the confession of failure.
And that thou will lead us on to victory.
In the very weakness that we confess before thee.
Bless thy word to each one. We pray in the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Job 38
Gospel—D. Whitaker
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Good evening.
Could we sing together hymn #23 on this little white hymn sheet?
We sang it once today. What a beautiful time that was, sitting in the presence of the Lord Jesus.
Singing this hymn, behold, behold the Lamb of God, on the cross, on the cross.
For us he shed his precious blood on the cross. On the cross. Oh, here the overwhelming cry. Eli Lama Sabachthani.
Draw near and see the Savior die on the cross. On the cross.
#23.
Evil, evil.
Tomorrow.
Jesus Christ is in the grass and I just love.
Oh.
I'm at the restaurant.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
Let you go.
To the water and the sun and he's going to have you go to aggregate in my heart.
Kuala Lumpur.
I don't give a.
So we ask God's help for the meeting before us.
Gracious Father, we look to thee now.
Independence.
And submission to thee.
We have before us this wonderful gospel message, and Thou hast seen fit to leave it in the hands of Thy people, Thy servants, to proclaim it.
And our Father, we feel our weakness here tonight, but we realize that there's no weakness in this precious book which we hold in our hands.
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It is that wonderful message from above, that glorious gospel.
Of the blessed God found in the Lord Jesus Christ. O precious Savior, we thank thee for Calvary. We marvel as we look back at that.
That the occasion there on the cross, Lord Jesus, where thou has yield up that precious holy life, but just for the unjust to bring us to God. And so help us now. We cry to thee, Father, for help and we ask thee for each heart here tonight. Perhaps there's someone that has not heard the gospel message. Help it to be clear.
Help us to be instructed by that in Thy word and help us to realize our deep need before the our God. And help us to realize too that Lord Jesus, Thou hast made the way whereby for rebellious man can be brought into eternal blessing. So we thank Thee, Father, we just bless Thee for all Thy kindnesses to us these last two days also. And help us now we pray in Jesus name, Amen.
There's a prayer meeting held on the other side of the lunchroom in the library.
And while the brothers were praying, I thought to myself, this is a public high school and I wonder.
If there's a Bible on the shelf.
So I waited till the prayers were over and I started looking. I looked under.
Oh, different headings. You have autobiographies and you have biographies and you have.
Histories, no doubt. There's psychology and there's.
Mythology. There's fiction and there's nonfiction. And so just before the meeting this evening, I slipped back in there because I did find the Bible. I was afraid I wasn't going to find one. I just want to say that brother Ruben Ruga was preaching to about 1000 children in a certain country.
And he was preaching this glorious gospel that we expect to proclaim here in the next hour.
And he was shouting it out to these little children that was translated into that foreign language called.
To cure.
I'm sorry, Timbuka and.
After the message was over with.
The principal of the school said. Now this is a Muslim country, the principal of the school said.
You, the children, want to tell you that.
You're welcome to come back, come back and bring us the words of God anytime.
Please come back. And then the staff at that school said you have brought us the words of God. You come back anytime.
Now if these same words that brother Reuben was speaking were preached in.
A school system here in this country, they would be ushered out the door as far as I know.
I meant that worked for me was dealing with a Muslim man.
There in Kirkland, WA and he this.
Muslim was pumping, running the gas station and he filled his car with gas and his brother Mark went in there and he gave him a gospel tract and started talking to him about the Lord Jesus.
In this Muslim man, said Demarc. He says, well I'm from a Muslim country, a year from a Christian country. Mark said this isn't a Christian country. The Muslim said yes, we're living in a Christian country here. I'm from a Muslim company. Mark said no, this is not a Christian country. He said yes, it is a Christian country. Mark said, I'll prove it to you. Watch this, Here comes the perfect stranger through the door. He says, listen to this. He says, excuse me, Sir, He said, did you read your Bible?
And talk to God in prayer this morning. Speak with Christ in prayer.
He says, what are you talking about? He turned away from that man, he said. That's what I mean. This is not a Christian country.
I thought that was very interesting and I've used that illustration before.
So I pulled the Bible out of that without anybody's permission, and I will have to put it back.
Now, tonight.
If it was your job to put this Bible back.
Under what heading would you put it?
Would you put it under?
Psychology or sociology Biography.
Or would you put it under fiction?
00:10:02
It's your job and it has to be categorized correctly.
What heading Science. Anthropology.
Where would you put it?
If I were to give this book to you, teenager.
Someone in their 20s, someone in the university, where would you place this book? In that library on the other side of that kitchen.
I know where it came from. I have to put it back there, but if it's your job to put it back, where would you put it?
Well, we know there's some folks that would put it under fiction. We know that, don't we?
And then some people, well, I just opened it once and I read a verse that says, I will restore to you the years that the locusts have eaten.
Would you put that under plants and animals?
Something to think about. Set that here so it doesn't slide down.
The Gospel.
I would like to just take a moment. We're going to speak of it, I think three times in this.
Message tonight, and let's start with First Corinthians.
Chapter 15. I'd like to speak about the Gospel in the beginning.
In the middle and at the end, I'd like to present to you the Lord Jesus Christ and all of his glory.
And it says here, moreover, brethren, verse one.
Excuse me, First Corinthians 15.
Now, most of us in here are brethren tonight.
And I would just like to say.
That.
Apostle Paul here by inspiration, says, brethren, you can listen to the gospel too.
Moreover, brethren, it's OK to preach to the assembly. I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also you have received, and wherein ye stand, by which also ye are saved, if you keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain, For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received.
How that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures?
And that he was buried. And that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.
And there's more here. These are facts. These are facts that we need.
God has looked down from the height of his sanctuary down into this world and he's seen this poor place covered with sin. He looks down upon it and what does he see? He sees a cemetery 25,000 miles around it. A cemetery.
It's the land of the dead.
An astronaut or rather man that studies astronomy with these powerful telescopes and they have Hubble telescope now that reaches out into space, very Clearview. And they've discovered now galaxies that are 1,000,000, maybe trillions of light years apart.
That, and he very melancholy said this.
Is it true that?
We're all alone.
All alone.
In this vast universe.
And I might add to that.
We're dying, dying.
Death has come in. Sin has come in rather.
And then there's death, and the wages of sin is death. That's the minimum wage.
Death talk a lot about minimum wage nowadays.
But oh, think of a lifetime of sin.
A lifetime of rebellion. I stand in awe sometimes and I watch men on the brink of eternity. Their years are filled up and they take that precious name of Christ in vain. It means nothing to them. Not only that, but they intersperse it with a filthiest words they can find aren't even in the dictionary.
For the chick O'Brien after men got done using the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:15:01
In vain a Recon picture right now in the front of a car. He's sitting there that put up on a bumper.
He looked over to that man. He said, you know, you've just spoken about my very, very best friend, the Lord Jesus Christ.
He said if I said something unkind about your mother to this man, he said that would hurt, wouldn't it?
He said you've spoken about my Savior and that hurts. I love him. He saved my soul.
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved in my house.
Is appointed unto man once to die, and after this judgment.
Judgment. And so we're going to talk a little bit about this this evening.
In this gospel that's presented in these first three or four verses here of 1 Corinthians 15, we find some facts.
One of them is he was delivered up.
He died for our sins, He was buried, and he rose again the third day.
According to the scriptures.
How does the Gospel? And so we have here. This can be amplified upon, but it can't be more blessed than this.
And then it says he was seen of above 500 brethren at once when I go to a conference.
I like to think about that. I see some conferences we got hundreds and hundreds of dear brother, and it's my desire as we get together and look into the Scriptures and enjoy fellowship that we might over 500 brothers at once see the Lord Jesus and that way.
Well.
I would like you please to turn to Proverbs chapter 8.
I probably will read quite a bit of scripture this evening.
And I expect we'll be speaking perhaps mostly out of the book of Job.
And we'll be reading in several different places, but let's start, please, with Proverbs chapter 8.
Before we do, I'll just mention this to a lot of us have children that have been in school universities.
High school, junior high, and I would just like to say this, that looking at the Scriptures, the little that I have, I find in here is the university. God's word is the university. As we look at the book of Proverbs, I think you'll see.
God, oh, he delights to reveal his secret to his servants, the prophets, and no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.
Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?
Well, we'll go to it later. There's a Psalm 25 speaks about the secret of the Lord is with them that fear him. Well, here God in his wisdom, He says, I'm going to tell you some things, I'm going to tell you some things. And then later on in the Scriptures, I'm going to reveal it to you and I'm going to take away all the question Marks and I'm going to put a period there and you'll see it clearly. But now let's go please to Proverbs chapter 8.
And verse 20.
Verse 19. My fruit is better than gold gave them fine gold in my revenue than choice silver. I lead in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of judgment, that I may cause those that love me to inherit substance. I will fill their treasury. The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I was set up from everlasting from the beginning, wherever the earth was.
When there were no depths, I was brought forth. When there were no fountains abounding with water, before the mountains were settled before the hills, was I brought forth. While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When He prepared the heavens, I was there. When He set a compass upon the face of the depth, When He established the clouds above, when He strengthened the fountains of the deep, when He gave to the sea his decree that the water should not pass his commandments, when He appointed the foundations of the earth.
Then I was by him as one brought up with him. I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him, rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth, And my delights were with the sons of men.
00:20:00
Now you don't need to turn this.
Chapter up here something about wisdom and the first part Oh yes Proverbs chapter 17 the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and so we have God instructing man here I think of men you know sometimes they.
When their umbilical cord is cut, it isn't long and they're on their mother's milk.
And then they put a pacifier in their mouth. They get a little bit older. Then a little milk bottle holds about 8 oz. Got to warm that milk, you know, so it can take it. And then that child gets older and he gets in school and he gets in a pencil in his mouth. He's got an eraser on the end of it in case he makes some mistakes.
And then he goes off to college and he spends a few years there and he comes out, somebody places upon him the title of A, a doctor of this, doctor of that. And now he goes out into this world and he looks out through somebody else's telescope and he says.
Ah, this is where we came from. Be careful this.
Is the answer to that.
These men.
Some of them mean well, but if they're honest, they'll be like some of the greatest men of earth is say we know 110th of what we don't know, 110th of 1% of anything. Wisdom comes from God, and God wants to dispense that wisdom to us tonight and today. Genesis chapter one.
In the beginning, God will stop there.
I have to fill that in with a verse from Job. Thank you for your patience.
Touching the Almighty.
We cannot find him out.
And behold, God is great and we know Him not, neither can the number of his years be searched out.
Genesis chapter one, please.
In the beginning, God.
It's like this God is saying if I don't reveal myself to you, you will be an absolute and utter darkness. There will be not one ray of light.
From you to me or in your understanding, unless I introduce myself to you and implant that light and that intelligence in you. And so it's like God says to man, he says, I'd like to introduce myself to you in the beginning. God. Oh, what a way to start this book. I have a question. Where do you think we should put that book?
That Bible that I have down there, how should we categorize that?
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light, and there was light. God saw the light that it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light day in the darkness. He called night in the evening and the morning were the first day. God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.
And it was so God called a permanent heaven, and the evening and the morning were the second day. Job, chapter 38, please.
I just like to say for a moment here about Job that he was a wonderful man, but he had.
Had a problem. He had an accelerated sense of self importance perhaps.
And it wasn't a good thing. And so God had to speak with him about this, and he used some very interesting things to do it with. He used a lot of animals, and he had lots and lots of questions. And I think that God wanted, God wanted to tell Job some things. As we read down through this, we'll consider this 38th chapter. But we'll notice too, as he presents these things, that there's a question mark after almost every one of them. And one of them, Mr. Job, where were you when I did this? Where were you, Job, when I did that?
00:25:03
And how good this is to think about this?
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?
Gird up now thy loins like a man, for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.
Where was thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Declare, if thou hast understanding, who hath laid the majors thereof, if thou knowest, or who hath stretched the line upon it.
Whereupon are the foundations thereof passenger, who hath laid the cornerstone thereof?
When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.
Or who shut up the sea with doors when it break forth as if it had issued out of the womb.
When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and the thick darkness of swaddling band for it, and break up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, and said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further. And here shall I proud ways be stayed. Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days, And hast thou cause the dayspring to Noah's place, that it might take hold of the ends of the earth, and that the wicked might be shaken out of it?
It is turned as clay to the seal, and they stand as a garment, and from the wicked their light is withholding, and the high arm shall be broken. Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea, or hast thou walked in search of the depth? Have the gates of death been opened unto thee, or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death? Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth? Declare, if thou knowest at all, Where is the way where light dwelleth? And As for darkness?
Where is the place thereof that thou shouldst take it to the bound thereof, and that thou shouldst know the paths to the house thereof? Norstow it, because thou was then born, and because the number of thy days is great. Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow, or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail which I have reserved against the time of trouble, against the day of battle and war? By what way is the light parted which caterer the east wind upon the earth? Who hath divided a water course for the overflowing of waters, or a way for the lightning of Thunder to cause it to rain upon the earth?
Where no man is on the wilderness, where there is no man to satisfy the desolate and waste ground, to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth.
That's where we will stop.
What a strange.
Portion of Scripture.
As we look at this, we find that God is talking to Job. Job, he says you have quite an idea about yourself importance, but I want you to gird on your clothes now like a man, and I'm going to ask you some questions and like I say, as you go down through this, this is something you can't talk about maybe in a Wednesday night reading meeting with regards to.
The truth in that sense. But because it's all question marks now, when the New Testament, the question marks are taken away and we get a clear picture.
Here it's veiled purposely because God has not seen fit at this particular time in this old, old writing here to let some of these glories be known. But let's look into them a little bit. And we don't want to tread where we should not. Of course not.
But these are good questions. Where were you? Man has been given 3 score and tennis by reason of strength 4 score. And we had a brother here that made five score and one marvelous. That's grace, isn't it? I sure enjoyed his company. But here man is given just a few years and then in the 50 I'm going to look at us him. Here it says Jesus from everlasting days.
When he adorned the arch of heaven and built it, thou wast there to order where the sun should rise and Marshall every star. When Ocean's bed was meted out and spread a hoary deep, thou gavest the flood of firm decree.
In its own bounds to keep when hung amid the empty space, the earth was balanced well with joy. Thou sost the mansion where the sons of men should dwell. Jesus from everlasting days.
Thy thoughts upon us Ran Ersin was known ere Adam's dust was fashioned into man.
Oh, we've gone back. We've gone back before Earth's earliest ages. It speaks about Earth with a swaddling band around it. Here, that's what you put on a newborn child.
00:30:05
This wisdom doesn't come from the universities.
Of men.
This wisdom comes from God, and he says to Job.
When I measured out this earth and I stretched the line upon it, where were you all?
Only thought of in God's thoughts from a past eternity.
And then the foundations, because they have a 70 story building going up on top of that. And then what they do with those rods come and then they pour a huge pond of concrete and that's the foundation. They sunk it for stability.
And here the Lord says.
The measures thereof, whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened?
Or who laid that cornerstone? Who sunk the margin says made to sink the cornerstone thereof?
Yes, indeed. Now that's Earth and that's something that is shakable because I stood there.
Actually, I was jacking up an automobile and I was looking underneath that car and things started bouncing around that earthquake. I got up and I ran for the door because I had these huge concrete walls all the way around me.
I got out in the alley and I stood there and I saw the power of God. Things were moving. Not just my little city, not just Seattle, not just the county, not just the state, not just the neighboring states, 30 miles down eastern Western Canada. Things are moving and shaking. Stuff's falling off the wall and things are creaking.
Old men were fearful. What was I doing?
I said Hallelujah. I said this is wonderful. Praise God, I was rejoicing.
Well, I could see the power of God, marvelous power of God.
That evening.
A man, black brother in Christ, came off his shift and he started talking about that earthquake that happened this day.
And he said, you know, men were terrified. If they didn't know Christ as their Savior, they were terrified.
And he says, But if they did know Christ as their Savior, they were saying, praise the Lord.
I said, brother, that's exactly what I was doing, praising the Lord.
But I have something that doesn't move. I have something here that doesn't shake.
This is the word of God, the word of God.
Now I'm gonna have a question for you.
Where under what category would you put that book?
Who shut up the sea with doors and so on.
He made a cloud of thick garment and darkness, the swaddling band for it. He's talking about the earliest days of this earth.
Apparently covered with water.
But he said there's a time when that's going to stop and I'm going to start something new.
God has in his mind a purpose, and that is blessing for this earth upon which we are today, someone has said. I think it's true.
This earth is shaped like a great big teardrop.
Teardrop. We likened it to a big cemetery.
And here we are. We're alone in this.
Vast universe all alone on a dying planet.
I'm not alone.
Not alone.
No, Sir.
When God was shaking that northwestern part of the United States.
I said there he is, there he is.
I talked to him that morning in prayer. Someone said God is dead.
I talked to him. You do too, if you're believer. Not dead, very much alive, very powerful.
Oh, eloquent.
He is so eloquent.
When he speaks. But I just want to say too, that the earthquake has come and gone and.
The buildings, the bricks are swept up and the cars that were crushed were hauled off to the wrecking yard and the people have been patched up. There was 25 or 6 people that went to the hospital and got themselves patched up. Nobody was killed. Nobody was killed. I hear about earthquakes in Afghanistan and Turkey and Indians, so thousands are killed. Why?
00:35:11
Oh, it's the goodness of God to America. The goodness of God to Canada.
Well, we'll go on.
So he has a decreed place for this water that covers the earth. And then he says in verse 11, hitherto shall come, but no further. Was that a time of judgment that covered this world? I'll have to leave that to the Bible scholars.
It seems to be, but then he says no, that's all. Your proud waves are going to be stopped.
And I'm going to bring in some of my purposes here on this earth. There's going to be blessing.
There's going to be blessing. God has a purpose, and that purpose is His Son.
To be blessed and be honored and to be revered in this earth. And I can't understand why sin and death came into this earth. The only thing I can think of is because God needed a black dark backdrop to show forth his love and his power and his might and His Majesty and his wisdom and ruling and guiding. He couldn't have done it. Perhaps otherwise, I don't know.
Then we go down.
Verse 12 Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days? Oh, is he hinting to Job that there's something new coming? God said, Let there be light.
That light is going to be called here the Dayspring. Oh, the Dayspring. That's beautiful.
Thank God.
Sin, the enemy brought in this sin. Sin is death and all this darkness. And now God is talking about a dayspring.
As the days spring from on high visited us.
His name shall be called Emmanuel, Jesus, God manifest among us, manifested in the flesh, that Dayspring from on high has visited us. Does He know His place? Oh, he knows his place. His place was to come down here and do the Father's will at the Father's bidding. And he did completely, thoroughly, wonderfully. He did it to the glory of God the Father.
And I wasn't the main reason he came down here to this world, and you weren't.
No, we had one that would rather.
Die than disobey.
And he did. He went to that cross and he died and he gave up his life. And oh, there's such a blessing in the wake of that, that I'm in that blessing tonight, redeemed by the precious blood of Christ. I love that.
Let's turn now to verse 13 again.
That it might take hold of the ends of the earth. Oh, when that sunshine goes out.
It goes out and it reaches like you find on the 19th Psalm. There's nothing hid from the heat thereof when the sun goes around.
Just no need to turn to it. We know that we loveth the heavens, declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork. Day unto day out of speech, night unto night showeth knowledge. There's no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their words unto the end of the world. In them hath He set a Tabernacle for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strongman to run a race.
Is going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it, and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.
Isn't that wonderful?
Oh, that's wonderful.
Let me I have another hymn I'd like to read here. Well, let's just say it from the palace of his glory. From the palace of His glory came the Lord Himself to seek us. He would have us there above.
Will go on. And so this light, it goes out into this world and it searches out everything.
You know what searches out the wicked? And he's looking. You're looking at one here that was searched out when I was seven years of age.
Poor guilty Sinner.
Stealing pop bottles that weren't mine. They were empty. They were worth 2 cents apiece. I had my little shoe box full of them, perhaps six of them.
I had taken those bottles. They weren't mine. They belonged to a concession.
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And I looked down in that box, I was a 12 cent center and I said to the friend that was helping me steal and by the way, his last name was Grace.
I said to him, I forget his first name now. I said I'm afraid.
What are you afraid of? I said.
Had that box shoebox full of 6/6 of these two cent bottles. I said empty bottles.
Pop bottles.
So that I'm afraid, he said. Why are you afraid? I said. I'm not saved.
He said you're not saved. I said I'm not saved. Well, he said you want to get saved.
I said yes I do. I want to get saved. Well, he said let's pray. I said don't know what to pray. He said you pray and you say what I say. He was a couple years older and so there was one poor guilty Sinner leading another poor guilty Sinner to Christ. Strange sight.
12 cents Center What about you tonight?
Well, the light reached in.
Verse 15 And from the wicked their light is withholding, and the high arms shall be broken.
Now verse 16, hast thou entered into the springs of the sea, or hast thou walked in search of the depth God came down on the person of Christ?
Some 102 Perhaps? Let's see.
If we can find that verse, it says.
For he hath looked down from the height of his sanctuary. From heaven did the Lord behold the earth.
To hear the groaning of the prisoner, to loose those that are appointed to death.
Ah, did he come down and search?
Of the depth, oh how deep man has gotten into his sins. He's not a 12 cent Sinner.
That's an awful thing.
One sin in God's sight is more horrible than 10,000 sins.
My site.
No, he came down and he looked. He searched this and over. You know what? He found not one righteous soul anywhere.
All of us have turned aside. We're like sheep that have gone astray. And I'll tell you if you look at it this way, think of a a mother sheep.
Expecting a little lamb?
Strayed from the fold out in the fields.
Down the valleys.
Gone, lost beyond reach.
And while that mom of sheep's out there, she gives birth to that little baby sheep, that lamb, that lamb is born lost.
Here we are.
Could it be a little boy, a little girl, that the gospel preacher has one hand and.
A praying mommy or daddy has the other hand.
And the Spirit of God is saying to you tonight.
That conference is over. That's the one you promised me. You get saved at.
And you're not saved tonight and the time is half gone and three quarters gone is slipping by so quickly.
Yes, an eternity will begin.
And that's it. That's it.
Oh, for 17 Job, have the gates of death been open unto thee, or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death?
Now we come to the cross.
O cross of Christ, O glorious tree, what place can be compared with thee where God's own Son was crucified?
Was there for us. A ransom died there from his head.
His hands, his feet.
Sorrow and love flowed, mingled down. Did there such love and sorrow meteor thorns composed so rich a crown?
Look at those beautiful 4 gospels.
Matthew his head.
What did they do with it?
They crowned it with a crown of thorns, that king of all kings.
And then he comes Mark as a servant. That's his hands.
What did they do with those hands? They bound those hands.
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And they let a cross of wood.
That's Matthew as kingship.
Mark his service. Luke, son of man, What did they do with those feet?
God walking down here as a man.
They took those blessed feet and they.
They struck out in deadly intent.
And they ran those bikes.
There were spikes through his feet.
There's another gospel.
There's another wound.
A soldier with a spear.
Pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood.
And water.
Now set blood maketh atonement for the soul.
There, from his head, his hands and his feet.
And there from that side, that water and blood flowed forth.
What category would you put that Bible under?
We go on.
Have the gates of death done open unto thee. They haven't been open unto me.
Because Jesus went through those gates of death.
Has thou perceived the breadth of the earth? This gospel has gone out. Oh, it's full of hell, like a river.
It's here tonight. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
If you take your place as a godless, wretched Sinner like me, we'll go through those courts together, into those courts together.
Then it says.
Where is the way where light dwelleth?
Oh, the Lord Jesus came a light into this world. He dwelled here for 33 years.
And As for darkness, where is the place thereof? Oh, he pointed to that. You can find out where the Lake of Fire is as darkness.
If you take it to the boundary of, you'll find that in Two Peter 24.
Let's look at second Peter 24.
For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness.
To be reserved unto judgment.
Well, it speaks in other places about darkness.
There's no light there. This is the time for light now. The Word of God is the light. He's the light of the world, the Lord Jesus.
Then it says, Hast thou entered into the treasures? Verse 22 Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow?
There's all question marks behind these things I'm asking you, do you know what it is tonight to have a good conscience before God? He gives out good consciences for those that trust Him and know Him.
Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.
Isn't that beautiful?
Isaiah 118. Come now.
Let us reason together, saith the Lord.
Though your sins be as scarlet.
They shall be as white as snow, though they be red like Crimson. They shall be as wool, and he goes on to say, whiter than snow.
Oh, the peace.
The peace that comes.
Many souls have lived their whole life with a bad conscience.
But he's able to take and Washington every stain of sin away.
Then it says the treasures of the hail. What a strange thing to say.
Treasures.
You know that in judgment God is going to be glorified.
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What if you were part of that scene?
Where he got glory.
For sending.
A wicked soul out into eternal night and darkness.
Under the judgment of God.
But look, it talks about hail here. Revelation 1621.
And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent.
And men blasphemy God because of the plague of the hail, for the plague thereof was exceeding great.
That's something to think about.
The Lord says, which I have this hail I have reserved against the time of trouble.
Yes, there's a time of trouble coming. It's called the time of Jacob's trouble.
And there'll be no time like it four or before or after.
Now we go down, we have to go through a lot of these in a hurry.
Verse 24.
By what way is the light parted?
Where is the light gone?
Oh, ye are the light of the world, it says now.
And.
We were talking about the Rapture. Where are those that bore the light? Where are they gone? Oh, they've gone to that House of light above.
Now, E Wind upon the Earth, you look at the scripture, more than one book, it talks about the east wind. What is it?
It's judgment.
Judgment. That's the only thing that's left for this country. That's the only thing that's left for you, Sinner. If you reject the grace of God, there's nothing left for you but judgment.
Who has divided a water course for the overflowing of waters, or a way for the lightning of Thunder?
Oh, there's something new coming in here.
Lightning and Thunder. I can't explain that, but there's something coming in verse 26.
To cause it to rain upon the earth where no man is, oh, there are lots of men are going to be wiped off the face of this earth.
In this time of Jacob's trouble.
When the Lord is going to come in for reign on this earth and there's going to be blessing.
There's going to be wonderful blessing. Look at it what it says here.
And the wilderness.
To satisfy the desolate and the waste ground.
That caused the blood of the tender herb to spring forth.
We're talking about Earth now. Lady came into the business because I deal with lots and lots of chemicals.
She said to me, where do you dispose of this? Where do you dispose of that?
Where do you put this? And so on fill out this form here. On and on, on and on we went.
She was a grandmotherly type and I thought I would talk to her, I said. Now I have a question for you, ma'am.
If we bring a gallon of oil out of the earth.
Not just for interest sake. Turn with me please. You wonder if the Bible is up to date.
I think I can find it.
Yes, no need to turn it up. Deuteronomy 33.
19 in the last sentence says treasures hidden in the sand.
Interesting, isn't it, that vast oil reservoir over there that we're so dependent upon?
God tells us treasures hidden in the sand.
Well, anyway, this lady.
She was distressed about the ecological.
Depletement or whatever you want to call it in this world, in this country.
And I tried to go along with her. Finally, I said to her, I said, ma'am, let me ask you a question. If we bring a gallon of oil out of the earth, I said, if it doesn't get put right back to where it was before, it goes out and it. Yeah, she said, I know. And I said, now what about your grandchildren in this world you're living in?
And how it's going downhill.
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And she said, yes, I know we're destroying the earth. And a tear came to her eye.
Well, we'll leave that there, it says here to satisfy the desolate and the waste ground.
Oh, it says, he shall come down like showers on the new moon grass, joy and hope like flowers spring up where he doth pass before him on the mountains shall peace, the hell go righteousness and fountains hill to valley flow.
This whole story for Earth has got a wonderful change in direction here.
The Lord Jesus has not yet taken His position as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, blessed and only potentate.
He's been in the shadows since the time they said we will not have this man to reign over us.
And he had to say, now is the judgment of this world.
He's let man go on. You might say, on this leash that he's on. In which direction has it taken him?
Why? They say if you get more education, the better off you'll be. My in laws live right next to the University of Washington. The closer you get, the darker it gets and the dirtier it gets.
Morally and other ways.
As a matter of fact, I will take a few moments to talk about this.
You turn with me, please, to job.
Chapter 36.
If you were to look at the papers out our way, you would see a great concern.
For.
The health of the young people there.
And they're dying young.
Because of their evil ways.
Young people.
This is God's wisdom.
What category would you place that book under that I have down there?
It says in verse 14.
They die in their youth.
And I'm going to read from the margin. Their life is among the sodomites.
Say, wait a minute, we're back in the book of job. We're way back.
Way back, you can't get further back than the book of Job.
Is it up to date? It says.
They'd die in their youth. Their life is among the sodomites. Isaiah chapter 3.
Please.
God is faithful.
It says here are we reading the front page of the Seattle Times today?
Isaiah 39. The show of their countenance doth witness against them.
And they declare their sin. That means they're proud of it.
As Sodom.
They hide it not. Woe unto their soul.
This book is not out of date. We're reading from articles that are thousands of years old. God is faithful. God will judge.
Back to the 37th, 38th chapter again.
They said prophetically of the Lord Jesus.
When shall he die, his name perish? When shall he die and his name perish?
Oh, it says in Psalm 72.
Let's read that. That's just as refreshing as it can be in my soul.
His name?
Verse chapter 72.
Verse 6.
He shall come down like rain upon the moon grass, and showers that water the earth.
Oh, you say mowing grass is beautiful. It is. But you know something?
A terrible, violent thing had to happen to get that grass mown.
Judgment. Judgment. He's going to overturn this Earth.
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Overturn, overturn. And he's got to mow this grass of this earth. Men are like grass, you know?
But he's going to bring in the showers that route out of a dry ground. It flourished.
What will that route be like out of a moist ground? Beautiful. Let's look at this.
In his days, verse seven, Shall the righteous flourish, and the abundance of peace, so long as the moon endureth?
He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from river unto the ends of the earth.
Oh, His name is going to be exalted, and it's going to be extolled, and it's going to be very high. And men shall, kings of the earth, shall bring their glory and honor unto Him. Finally, Where do you fit in all this, young man?
Young woman, older person.
Where do you fit in this? Have you already been part of that Mone grass? Have you been part of that judgment that swept through the hail?
Refuge of lies won't do it.
Kings of the Earth.
So on fall down before him.
The Coming of the Lord