Michigan Family Camp: 2017
Table of Contents
Happy Christian Homes
Address—Bernie Roossinck
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Well, there's uh.
Still a few people coming in here. Hi, Jonathan.
Sarah OK, so, uh.
Welcome back to the family camp and uh.
It's really, really good to be back again with everybody. And I know a lot of you, but some of you I don't. So I would just say a very, very sincere welcome and that we're very pleased that you're here. And, uh, I hope that, uh, this week will be a week of real encouragement and help for you, each one of us spiritually so.
Let's, uh, begin with singing, uh, hymn #296.
The SIM was sung at uh Becky and I's wedding and it's a a really enjoy this hymn. So 296.
Love thee.
Nsnoise.
OK, this will seem like an odd request, but now I would like for us to sing out of memory. Hopefully there once was a wild little donkey.
Hopefully you'll see how these things line up later. So hopefully we know that selling together.
You didn't have 1/15 dot com and then it's got all that right and it's never been anything.
Wednesday, Thousand 532,000.
12134.
***.
And it is something like Friday, not 5:00 PM. It is like some stuff or like if I am conditions, please come in so I love the light so I can come back on.
00:05:10
Nsnoise.
OK, before I share what's on my heart, let's speak to the Lord in prayer.
Our gracious Heavenly Father, how thankful we are to be here this evening.
And what a joy it is, Father, to be here with so many dear ones that we love and value.
Father, we think of the many, many stations of life that are represented here in this room from the youngest, the young people.
The parents, the moms, the dads, grandpas, grandmas, those that are older. Lord, we just pray that the word of God would encourage our hearts in these last days and that that was give us instruction.
And guidance from thy word that would be suited to the needs. Lord, it's with a great deal of dependence we ask this in Jesus name, Amen.
OK.
So it's good to be with you again.
And I've spoken from this place to you young people, uh, quite a few times and, uh.
Tonight, I'm gonna speak to your parents.
But you're allowed to listen in, because what I have on my heart is happy Christian homes, and I hope that you are part of one of those homes.
And, uh, you may not be mom and Dad yet, but if the Lord carries you may be, and this subject is very wide. There's no way that, uh, I could possibly cover all of it. So I'm gonna just share with you some things that I've been thinking about and enjoying.
And, uh, if I don't mention something that's on your heart, uh.
I would like to talk to you about that, but I know that I won't be able to get to every aspect of happy Christian homes.
But we're going to give it a try and, and I hope that, uh, we can find encouragement together and, uh, that we can.
Share different things. You know, I uh, I am hesitant to take this up because, uh, those of you that know me well know that I have blown it.
More than a couple of times.
Umm, but through the Lord's mercies, we have the right instruction. I'm sure we all know this book, Simon. What book is this? The Bible, God's precious word. And that's what we're going to turn to.
So I would like first to start with the biblical basis for the family.
So let's turn back to the seed plot of the Bible.
That's Genesis Chip, and let's go to Chapter 2.
Just going to read a little bit here just to establish what God's thoughts are about the family.
Genesis 2 verse seven And the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.
Man became a living soul.
And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had sworn.
Now let's drop down to UH-15. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
So let's read verse 18. The Lord God said, notice who this is, who it is that saying this. The Lord God said it is not good that the man should be alone.
I will make and help meet for him.
00:10:03
And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air brought them unto Adam, to see what He would call them. And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
Adam gave names to all the cattle, to the fowl of the air, and to the beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found on help meet for him.
And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh, the rub instead the rug.
And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
Adam said, This is now bone of my bones and flush of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore so a man leave his father and his mother so cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.
OK.
The family is a creation institution. God set up the family.
And he set it up with Adam as the head.
And, uh, in the course of things, there was no help found for Adam. Uh, I used to read it as a helpmeet, but I think it really means a help that is suited, a help that is meat for Adam, a person that was suited for Adam's, uh, company and needs.
So the word say here, he says, it's not good that the man should be alone. I will make a help suited for him. And so the Lord takes the rib out of Adam's side, and he forms Eve.
And, uh, we won't spend a lot of time on this, but it's instructive to notice that, uh, he didn't take Shawn Eve out of his foot, did he?
OK, when you have a wife, you're not to be stomping on your wife. If you have any sense, it's not the way God ordained it to be, right?
You didn't take Eve out of the head either.
He took her out of his side.
And Adam says this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She should be called woman because she was taken out of the man. In the Hebrew the word for man is ish. And Adam says she will be called umm.
Ishish, which is the same word in the feminine form. So here is Adam and Eve together, formed by God, perfectly suited 1 to another, and God brought them together. And this is the basis for the biblical family, OK?
Umm.
Let's turn over to Matthew 19 for something that the word Jesus said when he was here. And this is repeated a number of times in Scripture. And when the Lord repeats things in Scripture, it's because it's important.
Uh, Matthew 19 verse 4.
Part way down. If you're not, read that he which made them at the beginning, made them male and female.
And he said, for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother shall cleave to his wife, and they too, Dwayne, shall be one flesh. Therefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. OK.
In a happy Christian home.
When you get married, especially you young men, there is to be a leaving.
Leaving of your mom and dad.
There is a change. It's as if God would say to you on that day when you're married, OK, I now see you as though as one new entity of society, if you will. You're no longer this, uh, uh, the son of your mom and dad. I see you now as Mr. and Mrs. Rusyn or Mr. and Mrs. Roach. And it's one flush one.
Right. And uh, I would. I just wanna be practical about some of this stuff.
00:15:03
Umm, it troubles me a little bit, uh, when I hear couples say, well, you know, we have his money and we have my money and I pay for the car and he pays for the groceries. And that's not the way scriptures has it. Now I get that there are circumstances where, uh, in mixed homes and in, uh, stepdad stepmom situations, it can't always be that way, but the core thinking is.
The Lord says I view you as one.
You're not two, you're one, and there's to be a leaving.
And so when Tim and Joy gave their daughter to Howard recently, uh, she became part of Howard's family and she's, she's still their daughter, right? But there's a change of role. There's a, there's a switch here and it's important. Think about, uh, the life of Jacob and all of the troubles he had in his family, right? You know, one of the only.
Positive family events that I can think of in his life. There were some, probably the first one was when he left his in laws.
Think about that.
OK. And the complexity of having two wives and then other wives that were slave people to his first wives.
Mess, right? I wonder Jacob had trouble. It's not God's way, so there's to be a leaving of your father and mother in cleaving so.
The Lord could look at Adam and Eve and say it's now Mr. and Mrs. Adam, and they're a new unit in my site, and that's important. OK, let's go to Ephesians.
Chapter 4 We could spend, uh, the entire camp in this chapter, but we're not gonna because I would get uh.
Thrown out the window. Probably because I have failed in a lot of this stuff. Umm, Ephesians four or five. I'm sorry.
Here are some rules that are according to the scriptures.
Verse 22 Why submit yourselves and your own husbands, is unto the Lord.
The husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the Savior of the body.
Therefore, as the search is subject unto Christ, so at the wives be to their own husbands, and everything husbands love your wives, even as Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it.
Then that's a mighty high calling.
Are we doing that where there was?
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it.
Let's go down to, uh, verse 28. So I meant to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it.
Even as the Lord, the Church.
And we see in verse 31 again, there's that same verse in Genesis for the third time for this cause. So a man leave his father and mother.
Umm, OK.
Kim, if you and I are out working in our gardens and you get a big blister on your hand, what do you do with that?
Rub salt on it.
You know, poke it with a sharp stick.
No, not if you have any sense, you don't, right?
But man, look at what it says here.
Uh, no man ever yet hated his own flesh.
Zach Right? Would you stick your hand in a knee grinder? No. Why not?
Because you like your hand, right? OK, that's the way God calls you to treat your wife. Does that make sense?
You know, it says in the first Peter, uh, it talks about the dwelling with our wives according to knowledge, giving honor unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel. A notice meant it does not say weak says weaker. That means we also are weak giving honor unto the wife. That's what we're called to do, man. Now there is an order in God's word. Uh, let's go to 1St Corinthians.
00:20:03
11.
Umm, verse 3. But I would have you know at the head of every man is Christ, the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God. God has created an order and in our culture today, we are told to fight against this, aren't we Shannon? OK, we've had some.
Discussions in our home about uh headship and in.
Yes, yeah, we're being told God's order in the home is repressive and wrong against women and.
But I want to say with all the sincerity that I can, that there is no dishonor in God's order. OK, Christ is the head.
And, uh, the Lord created Adam and he put him in charge of the garden, and then he created Eve. And we have in Ephesians and here again in Corinthians, uh, that the man is the head of the home. Now, I want you to think of this in terms of military rank. OK, So where's the dad? You were in the army. Is there any dishonor in being a major?
No.
Who's higher in rank, the general or the major?
The general is, but there's no dishonor in being, uh, a captain or a corporal under the general. This is God's order. And, uh, I, I really want you, especially you young people to realize there is not, uh, dishonor and, uh, putting down a value of women in the Scripture. It's not the way it's supposed to be.
Umm, in fact, it says.
Can't turn this exactly right now, but umm, it says that the, the women have personal authority in the home, uh, to rule the house. That means, uh, Mr. Bremen, that your wife says I want yellow curtains and you hate yellow curtains.
What are you going to do? You're going to let her have them? Do you have any sense? You are right.
It says the the man is to preside over his household, but the wife has, umm, the, the Greek word is despot. She has personal authority as her, uh, place of authority. So, I mean, your mom says you take your shoes off at the door. It's yes, ma'am, right? That's right. It's the way it should be.
So anyway, that is the biblical basis for family that God had ordained it. It's one man and one woman, which is under tremendous attack in our culture today. Probably you, you Canadians are a little further down this track than we are here in the US, but uh, the state of Michigan honors same sex marriage now. And uh, that's not what the Scripture teaches as the basis for families.
Now I have to take a rabbit trail because there are a lot of people in this room that I value dearly and love dearly that are single.
And I do not want you to feel like you're being left out of something proper and right by not being married.
1St Corinthians 7 The apostle Paul is writing to the Corinthians about some problems that were going on in Corinth. OK, Corinth was a port city. It was an extremely, uh, loose city. There was all kinds of, uh, immorality and debauchery of every kind going on in that city. And I gather that they had written to Paul because he says now concerning the things that you wrote to me.
And then he begins to explain, and one of the things he says in there is that singleness is an honorable option for the Christian. And in that day in Corinth, if you were a single 20 something year old person, you would be looked at as there's something wrong with that person.
In fact, the word Corinthianized is still used in English today.
Look it up after meeting, you'll find that it means given over to total debauchery. That's what Corinthianized means. So the Apostle Paul was saying to them, you know I would, that you could, you were as I am. He's saying it's good, it's OK, it's honorable to be single.
00:25:16
Umm, back to Matthew 19.
This again is the Lord Jesus speaking here, uh, and verse 12.
Verses 11 He said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save to them to whom it is given. For there are some eunuchs which are born, so born from their mother's womb. There are some eunuchs which are made eunuchs of men. And there be some Unix which have made themselves Unix for the kingdom's sake. Either that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
And I want to apply that word unit to a single person tonight. Now turning to Isaiah 56.
Listen to what the Lord says here in verse 3.
Neither let the son of the stranger that have joined himself to the Lord speak, saying, The Lord hath utterly separated me from his people. Neither let the eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry tree. Lord says, don't say that.
For thus saith the Lord unto the eunuchs that keep my Sabbaths, and choose the things that please me.
And take hold of my covenant, even unto them will I give in my house and within my walls a place.
And a name better than of sons and daughters. And I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.
OK. I just want to encourage you that are single.
It's OK, it's honorable. The Lord may provide you a spouse in time, but while you're in this state?
Seek to please the Lord, keep His word, and He will honor you in that.
OK.
Now we're gonna speak to parents for the rest of the time.
Turn to Genesis 18.
This is kind of the Christian foundation for raising children.
Umm, for 17, the Lord said. So I hide from Abraham the thing which I do.
Seeing that Abraham, surely.
Umm, seeing that Abraham so surely become a great mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him. For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment, that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which hath spoken of him.
OK.
Here the Lord says to Abraham or about Abraham, I know him, that he is going to raise his family and command his household and bring up his children to love me. And moms and dads, that is our core purpose as parents is to bring our children into a saving knowledge and a fruitful, useful relationship with the Lord Jesus.
And it's a beautiful thing that the Lord could say about Abraham.
You know, here the Lord was coming down and he was about to execute judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah, and he says, so I hide from him what I'm about to do.
What's the answer? No, I don't think I will. I, I know him that he will raise his family for me. And he goes and they have the sweet communion together and that's a beautiful foundation for the family.
OK, so I'm, we're just going to skip through some of these. There's no order to this. I, uh, and it's by no means a full with some 127.
So I will speak to you young people just for a moment here. So I'm 127 one except the Lord build the house.
They labor in vain that build it. OK, if you're thinking about dating an unsaved person tonight, don't do it.
Uh, it's gonna be as blunt as I can. The best way not to marry an unbeliever is not to date one. Don't do it. Except the Lord build the house. They labor in vain that build it. OK, that was a on the side, but a very important one. OK, verse 3 Low children are a heritage of the Lord.
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And the fruit of the womb is his reward, as arrows are in the hand of a mighty man.
So our children.
So our children of the youth, happy is the man that have his quiver full of them. Now, it's not my purpose to stand here and tell you that you should have 49 children.
OK, don't misread what I'm saying to you, but the scripture says children.
Are inherited of the Lord.
And it is a, it's a marvelous thing. You know, I very, very recently, it seems like I stood in a hospital room and I watched.
My oldest daughter be born.
Tomorrow should be 19.
And I tell you, brethren, I think that's one of the greatest things I've ever done in my life, other than being saved, of course, but in our family to stand there and to.
Hang on to that little person.
And what a joy that was. What a joy.
You know, uh, here it says these children are arrows in the hand of a mighty man. OK, who can I pick on now?
We're gonna call on Mark because I know that you like archery. Mark, when you shoot an arrow, does it just randomly for no reason or what do you or is there a target?
There's a target, right? So.
Umm, maybe later in the week you'll be out there at the archery range. You put that arrow in like this and you're aiming at something and you let that arrow go, and the goal is for that arrow to go out there and hit the target. And moms and dads, our job, our joy really is to prepare our children to send them out into the service.
Of the Lord, to know and love the Lord and to go out into whatever calling the Lord has for them as prepared, as balanced, as mature. You know, I, uh, I, I'm afraid in our society today that we're releasing a flock of psychopaths on the world.
And, and it's true, man, you just watched the news some some night and see what kind of ridiculous behaviors. So I'll just give you a couple of one example that happened in Newaygo County two weeks ago. Two guys got in a fight.
They both pulled guns out, fighting over some meaningless thing. The one guy grabs the other guy, shoots him with his own gun, grabs a chainsaw, saw his head off and his arms and legs. Really.
Where did they learn this stuff? They learned it at home.
That's where they learned it.
The Word of God says not. So you send out those children as a hunter or a mighty man in battle sends out an arrow to do his purpose. OK, we gotta keep moving. Uh, just gotta mention quiver full doesn't mean you have to crank out fifty kids, right? The Lord gives you peace with one or two kids. That's fine. It gives you peace with 16 of them. Do that.
The Lord will bless you as you seek to honor Him and obey His direction.
All right.
Uh.
I just mentioned holding on to my newborn children and I tell you friends, that was a beautiful thing. I wept like a child.
But you know what? You know how long it took me to realize that? This little cuddly bundle of joy.
Was a little thinner.
OK Danny, how much time have you invested in teaching your kids to be bad? Not much right? No, we find in job Chapter 11 it says vain man would be wise though man be born as a wild *** is cold.
That's the nature we have born in sin.
00:35:01
Shape and iniquity, right Romans 5 says by one man sin entered into the world, death by sin so death passed upon all men through all his sins and as parents to have a happy Christian home, it's important for us to recognize very early.
To understand the nature, it's a little Sinner that needs to come to know the Lord Jesus, a Savior, and to have their sins washed away and to yield their life to obey God. We're going to get to obedience here in a minute. So important. If you can't say yes to God or yes to mom and dad, you won't be saying yes to God either.
Think about that, you know.
Uh, sometimes as a dad I say something and I'm going to count the three now about 19 times later.
Stupid, right?
And it's frustrating. Anyway, we'll get to that in a minute, but.
If our kids won't obey at home, they're not going to obey God either. The Lord says do this. I don't think so. I don't want to do that anyway.
First Samuel, Chapter One.
This is a core, absolutely necessary thing. This has to do with Samuel and his mother. You probably know what I'm going to read.
For Samuel 127, Hannah says. For this child, I prayed.
And the Lord hath given me my petition, which I asked of him. Therefore also I have lent him to the Lord. As long as he liveth, he shall be lent to the Lord.
OK moms and dads, we need to be on our knees before the Lord Independence.
There's no amount of reading of self help books or.
You know, umm, try this, try that, get on your knees, open the word of God as Hannah said for this child. I prayed and I remember many a time seeing my parents pray for us.
I, uh, I hope this is OK, Doug and Sue, but I'll mention this that they pray for their family, every single person by name, every day.
So valuable.
Shouldn't be a surprise mom and dad, for your kids to find you on your knees. If it is, we have problems.
For this child I prayed OK.
Umm, let's turn to Proverbs 29.
And verse 18 it says where there is no vision that people fail.
According that exactly right.
Proverbs 29.
Verse 18 Where there is no vision, the people perish.
They either keep it the law, happy as he well, especially to you dads.
It's our responsibility to provide leadership in the home.
And guidance.
And if we cannot have consistency and a vision where there are kids, no, this is what our home is based on. This is what we value, this is what we expect. This is what we do. This is what we allow. If there's no vision, it's confusion.
I find that in my own work too. You know, it's amazing to me how, uh, we can make a decision about changing a piece of equipment or whatever and suddenly everybody in the shop knows that why we did it. Like, oh man, they're about to close the place.
The opposite is true. Making all these conclusions, why did they conclude that because there's no vision, nobody is out there saying, OK guys, this is what we're doing.
This is how what we value, This is why we're doing it. And so especially to you dads, it's not us to provide spiritual leadership in their homes. It's important.
00:40:13
OK Deuteronomy chapter 6.
Yeah, I apologize, brethren, for skipping around so much, but we could spend a long, long time on these topics. Deuteronomy 6.
Uh, verse 4.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is 1 Lord.
By the way, young people, that is one of the verses that the Jewish people stumble on because they don't believe in the Trinity.
But if you study this word, 1 Lord, they find out it's plural, and that's a beautiful thing. But that's an aside anyway. Verse 5 Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine hearts, and with all thy soul, with all thy might. And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart. Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children. So talk of them when thou citizen thine house.
When thou walkest by the way.
When they'll wire us down, when they'll rises up, and thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thy hand. This will be as frontlets between thine eyes. I shall write them upon thee post of my house, and on thy gates.
OK, I read that just to say this.
Happy Christian homes need to be characterized by constant spiritual training.
Constant spiritual training, you know, and, and it doesn't have to be elaborate, you know, we're not sitting in some. How many of you have read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books? Uh, a farmer boy.
When they head to you on Sunday, right, they had to sit on a hard bench and memorize the catechism all day. Remember that That allowed to swing your feet, that allowed to smile. Anyway, that's not the way it should be in our families. This should be a constant thing. I remember having this marvelous times on family trips, playing Bible games. You know, like I read some thinking of a man whose name.
J And you'd have to try to stump the other person by asking them these hard questions about it.
It's, uh, this is part of this, constantly bringing the Scripture and the Lord into things, singing together as families. Umm.
Beautiful times. I think we sang ourselves horse as kids many times. You know, it talks about, uh, having these things on the doorpost of your house. You know, I, I picture a person coming to your home and they get there and they get to the door and the first thing they see is these door posts and there is.
This.
Honoring of the Lord and of his ways and of his claims. First thing they see when they walk into their, you know, it's nice to have text on the wall because we have text on our wall versus on the wall. It's a beautiful thing. We don't have anything at our door post, but I think just spiritually speaking, if I can apply it this way, the first thing that somebody should see when they come into our homes is these people love the Lord.
And that is ingrained in our children.
How about the gates? OK, when you're leaving, out the door. Bye, everybody. I'll come again soon. And out the door. Out through the gate. The last thing you see. There it is again. These people honor and love the Lord, right? Should be all the time. When you're in, when you're out, when you're in the house, in the car.
That's the point I'm making. OK now.
This spiritual teaching, we're not talking about going to, uh, the Golden Corral once a week.
Most of you that are from Michigan, the Golden Corral is a place where somebody like Kyle can go and really pig out, eat a lot.
One time we were there and we were just uh, man, you guys try this that and actually, you know, I feel terrible.
At a huge buffet, right? But anyway, it's not the way it is in spiritual things in the home. Turn to Isaiah 28.
00:45:02
Verse 10.
And I and I would like to encourage, especially those of you that are young in the faith, they're just starting your homes. Maybe. I hope this will be an encouragement for you. Don't have to be, you know, a doctor of divinity when you're 16, but cultivate a love for the Word of God in the home. Listen to what verse 10 says, for a precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line.
Line upon line.
Hear a little and there a little.
Small bites, but constant bites. You know, it's a sad thing if the only spiritual time we have is when we're sitting around the separate table and Oh yeah, we should hand in the calendar first, kids. And you rhyme it up and there's two minutes spent spiritually speaking, and then, uh, alright, we gotta get going, Let's roll. You gotta get your homework done. Clean the ***. It's not the way it should be. It should be here a little.
They're a little lying upon line, precept upon precept, constantly. Small bites all the time.
And it's a sad thing is if our kids view our, uh, efforts to bring the Lord into the home as a, as a disruption, as a, oh, what's, what's, well, there's somebody coming over or what are you? We haven't had the Bible on the table in three weeks. That's a sad thing. Should be a constant practice. So love for the love, a love for the Lord and his word and then bringing that into our homes.
OK.
Talk about boundaries.
Psalm 16.
Verse six says the lines are falling onto me in pleasant places.
Yeah, I have a goodly heritage. These lines that the psalmist is speaking about. If, if, if you will, this is the boundaries. These are the places that we set up in our homes. This is what's acceptable and this is what isn't. And so when our children challenge us on something to say, yes, that is good and right and acceptable or no, that's outside these.
And, you know, seeking to please the Lord and walk in his ways, Those lines are in pleasant places. Now, I I will readily admit to you that there were some lines that we had when we were kids that I didn't agree with.
But I honored them for the most part. I ashamed to say that I didn't a few times. And now that I look back, I am very thankful that my parents had boundaries for us in our in our lives and in our family. Things that we would do and would not do as a family based on convictions that this is right there, this is not right.
Umm, Proverbs 6. I could sing this to you, but I'm not going to because we're running out of time.
Ask me later and I will Proverbs 622 Says, My son, keep thy father's commandments, and forsake not the law of thy mother. When thou goest, it shall lead thee.
When thou sleepest that shall keep thee. And when thou awake us, that shall talk with thee. For the commandment is a lamp, and the law is light, and they're reproof. Some instruction are the ways of life. Those boundaries are important. OK, we need to keep moving. Let's talk about Wet Smith. How many of you have ever stuck your hand in Wet Smith?
All right, so I meant what happens to the handprint?
Stays there forever, right?
OK, Ephesians 6 verse four says Fathers, provoke not your children to anger.
Bring them up, and then there's certain admonition of the Lord.
You know.
I think that I very little realized this, and I wish I would have realized it much earlier in my parenthood days, how I was putting marks in Wet Smith that hardened, and that's the way it is.
Some of those marks were good and some of them were not good.
But think about it, I remember once we went to my grandpa grandma recent house and I was probably 11 or 12 and they had a four Wheeler. Never ridden a four Wheeler before but man I wanted to.
00:50:08
And Grandpa said you can ride the four Wheeler.
I got on it, drove through the mud, which apparently was against the rules, but I didn't know that, and then I hit a tree.
And I felt really bad about it and I went to my grandpa and I showed him exactly what happened and I apologized to him asking for forgive me. He said just go park it in the barn. But a week later he came to me and he grabbed me by the ear and he marched me outside said I am disappointed in the way you lied to me. And man, I, I was shocked.
And that mark went in Smith.
And it hurt.
And we make mistakes like that as parents sometimes. Now there are other things Marks made. And Smith in a youthful heart, they're very good. You know, Danny, I was thinking about the time that you and I went and had a prayer meeting out at Black Beach someplace. Do you remember that? I never forgot that. I can still feel the closeness.
To the Lord that we felt that night.
And that's a Mark Nathan Smith.
So I we're running out of time here, Deb's, especially mom's. Don't provoke your children anger when you discipline and punish your children if the only thing you achieve is to make them mad, we're not doing something right. You know this. So discipline has its root, the word disciple, which means the Comer along besides somebody to put your arms around them, to guide them, to teach them.
Uh, and now don't get me wrong, there's a very definite teaching of punishment also in the scripture, but discipline sometimes we think.
You're going to get disciplined and it need not be the wooden spoon every time. Sometimes it's the arm around the shoulder and shine.
We need to talk about this and to reach the heart and it may come to the point where my dad had a wooden or a wooden leather strap and he was cutting into these long pieces and regenerate. Hey dad, what are you doing? He's you're about to find out.
So we got punishment, but there were many, many, many other times when we got discipleship too, and that's part of the discipline. So I just want to encourage us to think about it that way.
Umm, we just talked about nurture and admonition, and I'm sorry to go so quickly here because we're we're just can't possibly cover this. So some 23 verse two, he leadeth me. Besides, still waters, green pastures. That is the normal.
Uh, environment of contentment that the shepherd would bring the sheep into, and that's the culture that we should have in our homes.
Still waters, green pastures.
OK, admonition, let's talk about the rod.
Proverbs, 1324.
Now I just want to say something before I get into this. I am in no way in favor of parents beating their children.
And abusing them, that's a terrible shame. But I am a believer in using the rod, and this is the place in our culture we're in serious jeopardy, brethren.
In fact in Canada I don't I think it's not even permitted to spank your children. But you know, a small swat on the bottom of a one year old gets way more done than beating an 18 year old with an inch of his life.
It's too late, OK.
I just want to say again, I do not advocate parents beating their children.
But I do think that punishment appropriately, is right and good. Umm, Proverbs 1324 Either Spare at the rod, hated the sun. Think about that, parents. You want your kids to go wild all over the place?
Don't discipline them. That's what you'll get.
Proverbs, 2314.
Thou shalt beat him with the rod and deliver his soul from hell. Think about that.
00:55:02
Again, and that's how I I am not advocating, you know, wailing on your kid in an abusive way, but to save your kid from hell though, given boundaries, give him disciplinary punishment. Umm.
Proverbs, 2915.
The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child blessed to himself bringeth his mother to shame.
OK, now we're just going to talk about Joseph's knees. We're out of time, so I'm just going to tell you about it. Genesis 50 talks about his grandchildren were brought up on Joseph's knees.
So where do you grandparents?
You know your kids come to you. Umm, my kids do this and they come to me. Hey dad, tell us about when you were a kid.
A fun thing to do. We used to love to hear when my dad and mom were kids.
You know, I can picture those little kids back there in Egypt saying, hey, Grandpa Joseph, tell us about the time when you were thrown into the dungeon. He goes, oh, kids, that's a long story, but I'll tell it to you because I want you to know of the goodness of God. And you picture those children brought up on Joseph's knees, that beautiful. I love thinking about that. So let's do that with our kids, too.
All right, Proverbs 2228 says remove not the ancient landmarks.
Which thy father has set.
OK.
There are things set in families, traditions that are good and valuable and important. You know, I think of the times that we went to conferences. My dad used to take this big old gospel bus and we would drive through the marathons and pick up all the young people and then we would drive to Ottawa or Montreal conference. Those are some of the best times, man.
Let's not remove those ancient landmarks.
They're important. And then I would also say this to you, brethren, and I asked myself, am I setting landmarks in my own family's pathway that they can go? You remember when Dad used to do this or that?
Rachel, you remember when we used to play bulldog, right? And mousetrap and all that stuff? Good times, man.
And you bring the Lord into stuff. So let's not remove the ancient landmarks. Last thing in my heart, we are out of time just about. Let's teach our kids to be serving hearted.
So important I long for my daughters to be servant hearted and you think about the Lord in the upper room. So why is the eve of his betrayal and an argument breaks out? Well, I'm going to be greater than you are. No, you're not either right. The last thing the Lord needed to hear was that you know what he said? He said fellas.
If I can say that reverently, I am among you as one that serve.
What an example.
I am among you, a sea of service.
So let's set that, you know, children's hearts be serving hearted. You know, I really appreciate when I see some of you young people that are reaching out and helping with some kids or, you know, doing things that are serving hearted and there's no worry in vacuuming the floor or mopping up somebody spilled spaghetti sauce or whatever. But God values it.
So anyway.
I was going to mention a couple things and then we're out of time, but I'll just mention it briefly. Think about moms and dads, Eli's sons.
They were doing wrong.
Eli permitted them to carry on.
God challenged him on it. We're out of time, so I can't read it. It was a loss. It was a terrible thing.
Let's not be overly permissive, OK? Think about Absalom. Where did Absalom learn that? If you want something, you take it? Where do you think he learned that? He saw it from his father.
Think about that times, yes?
Our kids are gonna do what they see a lot more than what they hear.
OK, last thing, uh, Jacob and Esau, this has to do with favoritism. That's good.
In a happy Christian home, we ought not to have favorites. Yeah, I can picture Isaac Sangisa. Hey, go tell your mother. I want that Denison that I like Rebecca saying to Jay, you go tell your father he knows where the kitchen is. That's not good.
01:00:14
And so just a warning there for that. So anyway, we're out of time. I apologize for ending on a negative note, but happy Christian homes so valuable and rather than there is just vastly more than we just talked about in this topic. So let's.
Close your eyes and thank the Lord.
Your gracious heavenly Father.
We thank thee for thy love for us. We thank thee for so many families here.
Where does we look across all these spaces, how we enjoy and thrill to think about the value and the potential and the worth in Thy service, Our Father, we pray, Lord, that Thou hast bless us indeed and enlarge our coasts. Help us, Lord, give us grace, we need it.
Give us dependence, Lord, we need you.
We pray for each one here, the moms, the dads, the kids, the young people, the grandpas and grandmas. Oh Father, we just cry out today for help and blessing, and we do this with thankful hearts for all thy love for us. The name of the Lord Jesus, Amen.
What's inside
Children—Paul Renaud
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.
Good morning.
My being heard over the out loudspeaker. I can't even tell myself. Anybody hear me?
OK, well it's wonderful to be here. Just like everybody else is saying it is, umm, we used to live here and my family moved to Maine about a year ago. So this is, it's great to be back and umm, hopefully we can enjoy talking about our Lord and Savior a little bit together and sing some songs and tell some stories.
And uh, that's just first, uh, I'm going to read a verse that's kind of the theme of what I have on my heart. So well known verse from First Samuel chapter 16.
First Samuel chapter 16 and verse 7.
But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature, because I have refused him. For the Lord seeth not as man seeth. For man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. Going to read the main part of the verse one more time. For the Lord seeth not as man seeth.
For man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. And then one more verse. It sounds several places.
It's kind of a cover. Matthew Chapter 9.
You can find it in several places, but Matthew Chapter 9 and verse 12 tells us.
They that behold need not a physician, but they that are sick. They that are whole need not a position, but they that are sick. So in other words, you don't go to the doctor for the most part unless you're sick.
So let's pray 1St and then we'll sing some songs.
And dear Lord and Savior, we thank you for, uh, the fellowship we can have together.
You know, we live in a dry, thirsty place and we're in need of spiritual food and water and, uh, just pray that we want to forget that. We want to have our, uh, eyes set on, uh, whatever it is in this beautiful world you've made. So we thank you for the children. Pray that you would preserve and protect them.
And, uh, thank you for your Sunday school time. Amen. So we, we don't have.
Hymnals. So if we're going to sing a few songs, they have to be sort of the ones that we know by heart. OK, So we can't do anything That's that I think is.
That I don't know which could be very different from where you guys are from. So we'll sing a few songs 1St. I have a volunteer. Somebody wants to give out a song.
I saw your your hand first buddy.
Any song like something that's perfect? The only problem I have with Jesus Loves Me is I don't always know which verse is next.
So I'll let I'll let the majority decide, OK.
Yeah.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
No, no, no, no, no.
309 excuse me, about 1323.
Yeah, 2005.
1000.
CRM 897 where I fly to allergy and the width and thyroid cells, but I don't know what I'm looking to get in the sigh and sigh and then come on smile and thigh my heart. It didn't take me to my alarm clock.
00:05:24
530.
2553.
493516.
Blah blah blah. And so no, no, no, no, no.
Blah blah blah blah blah.
Blah blah.
Blah blah and blah blah blah blah blah.
Very good. Let's have one more.
Go ahead.
Perfect, Perfect. The Bible. The Bible.
R.
GENTAGORGANDENDENTENDEN.
YCITEZ. And I'm like, no, I don't know if you're saying that, you're saying no. Do you need help? I don't. I don't. I don't want to do anything.
OK, so we sang about Jesus's love and his all sufficiency, his all knowing power, and we sang about the Bible that tells us all about Jesus, all about Jesus. So again, the verse I read was man Lucas, on the outward appearance, the Lord looketh upon the heart. And they that are whole, umm, need not a physician, but they that are sick. I happen to umm, work as an ER physician and as a physician, umm.
We get to ask people questions that are very private. We get to look at private places, we get to put our hands in all different kinds of places. And it's all with the idea that in order to be well, you need to have difficult questions answered, you need to have everything exposed.
You need to be willing to get well so that the doctor can.
And come up with a proper diagnosis so.
I have a few things from my work that I was going to share with you. A few little stories, umm, as a representation of, of the insides and how doctors get to see the insides. I have a picture of umm, actually, those are my sandals. You see that picture? Those are my sandals. I'm taking a picture of an of a gentleman holding a settlement in the container.
Probably nobody knows what that is.
But that actually was in one of my kids and it came out something that a lot of people here have had removed from their body. That's an appendix. You guys ever heard of the appendix in the right lower quadrant? That's an appendix.
OK, so the first story I want to tell you about, uh, is actually not a patient that I saw, but it's a kind of, a, kind of has cool pictures. So I, I took some pictures of it when I came in for my shift. Umm, it's a man who I think was in his 20s. He came in because he was short of breath, maybe a little bit of chest pain. And the ER physician who saw him, a friend of mine was one of his first shifts. He just graduated from residency. He's an, he's an excellent position. He's very hyper. He's.
He, he, he, he was just like, I know what this is. This is a, this is a blood clot in the lung. So I got to get an IV in him. I got to send him over to the CAT scan.
00:10:04
Well, look at that picture.
What does that look like to you guys? What when a kid? What what that right there. I'll, I'll help you out a little bit. This is the chest.
We can go back to the first one, Zach.
Perfect. OK, that's the chest, right in the middle is the heart OK?
Do you have any idea what's on this side and what's on this side of the heart? Either side of your heart? What? What's there? Anybody know? The lungs, right? Do you have any idea what a lung looks like on a CAT scan?
Yeah, that looks a little bit like a long. That black area right there is Air. This gentleman had something called a pneumothorax, or people know it as a collapsed lung. And not only did he have a pneumothorax, he had a big pneumothorax. You can see Air tracking down. That's his liver. Air was looking for a way to escape and it was tracking down the size of his diaphragm. It was a big pneumothorax and that.
ER physician was fooled because this guy walked into the ER.
And looked a lot better than he should have for a huge pneumothorax. In fact, if you look up here you can actually see that some of his trachea was deviated towards the side of his lung. That lung is maybe a third of its normal size. It's been compressed. So my my friend probably took him out of the scanner. He said we don't need to scan for this.
And brought him over to the umm the room where he put something in him called a chest tube. This is a like a dolls version of a chest tube.
This is teeny. We would only put this in a little kid. So the chest tube that this guy got was was a little smaller than a garden hose.
But I thought I'd pass this one around. Be careful. This one has a little sharp tip, but it's not sharp enough that unless you're really trying hard. So don't, don't hurt your friends. This is a chest tube that goes in little kids to remove air or blood.
When you put a chest tube in somebody like this, or actually pretty much all chastise, but especially this one. I would have loved to have seen this one. It goes.
Like a big release of air. Big release of air.
So this gentleman has something inside him that was surprising. It was surprising. We thought we knew what was the problem, but it was much more severe than expected. And we can all have problems like that inside us that only God knows about.
That are much worse than anybody else realizes. OK, Zach, let's go ahead.
OK, we'll stop. Right? We'll go back. This one, This one is not so dramatic. OK, umm, next one is a, is a guy who came in with abdominal pain. You know what I mean by abdomen? Stomach pain, tummy pain. He had a history of cancer.
And, uh, the cancer was in his, uh, biliary tree, which is part of your gallbladder, came in with abdominal pain. I did some blood work, but I also took a picture and rarely is a picture so easy to understand is this one. So Zach, let's go to the first one.
Uh, yeah, that way.
So there we go. OK, this is when he was feeling well.
This man, because of his cancer right up here, has something called a biliary stent put in them. It's like a straw. They basically had to open up. See right here, this little airfield. Remember I told you black is the air on a CAT scan?
He had a bill airy scent, was to relieve pressure from his gallbladder and I was actually on the next one.
What happened? Can you see guys inside that straw?
Is it all black and airy like it's supposed to be?
Now that's filled with goopy stuff since Hillary scent was clawed. Pretty easy to see on the CAT scan, huh? It's kind of kind of a nice little picture that was just easy to explain. So I'm sorry you guys are not used to seeing CAT scans. Umm, This is the heart. This is uh, man. It's part of his tailbone. This is part of his spine. This is his liver. This is bowels. This is his tummy.
It's a CAT scan, sorry.
Liver, tailbone, spine, bowels, parts up at the top. OK, so that was that was just kind of straightforward. See, what did I put next? Oh, all right. What is this?
00:15:13
Adults, you can raise your hand. What is this thing that we're looking at?
I I'd love to call on you. I just can't imagine, you know the answer. Go ahead, Ernie.
A hard test Very That's that's that's really warm. We call this something in particular. Yes, Sir.
Close. Yes, Sir.
OK, we're going to go to an adult or a or a teenager. Perfect. That's an EKG. EKG. It's a, it's a test we do of the heart to look at the electrical system. In this case, this gentleman came in with chest pain. He was in his 50s. He was sweaty. He said it felt like an elephant sitting on his chest. That's almost like a buzzword for a What do you think he was having?
Heart attack. There's a couple different kinds of heart attacks. What we try to find out with an EKG is whether it's something called an St. elevation myocardial infarction, which is really a fancy way of saying this heart attack or part of the heart is dying, is affecting the whole thickness of the heart.
And the reason why that's important because those people benefit from certain kinds of medicine, and they benefit generally from a heart catheterization where somebody goes in and tries to put a stent, like we saw in that last picture, a scent in his heart. But this was kind of an interesting one. How many leads are on a normal EKG? Does anybody know? I don't know. I was hoping like Lucas Pence was here, but he's not. I'm not Lucas Pence. Lucas, umm, hence what's here.
Anybody do do uh EKG's here?
Anybody. How many leads? 12 How many leads are on this one?
There's three extra leads, 15 that's because it was a little bit different. So the leads I I guess I won't go into exactly where they are, but the ones that you see where it says V1V2V3, you guys can barely see that over here. I'm sorry basically, as we followed as I did the EKG, I had a little hint right here. There was something called St. depression and Long story short, he was having his heart attack in a very.
Different location in the posterior wall.
Where we wouldn't have picked it up unless we had done these extra leads and so the treatment was was very different.
If I if we hadn't figured this out he would have just sat in our ER and then got some medicine and saw the heart doctor later who would have said you guys screwed up.
But fortunately, fortunately we, we found that he had a posterior St. elevation myocardial infarction and he was, uh, given the appropriate treatment. So again.
It's a little bit different, not something we expected, but but, uh, kind of interesting, at least from from my work perspective. I got a couple more here. Uh, OK, this one maybe a little boring, but what are we looking at? Anybody have an idea? Phone Perfect. You know what part of the the bones what what where in the body? You Sir, like perfect. Yeah, this is an E.
OK, anybody see a broken bone?
You see broken bones? You do. I'm guessing you're looking at that one, that broken bone where it looks like a little toothpick sticking out.
Does anybody see another broken bone?
There are two broken bones in this picture. There are two right down in here. Do you see that? It's, it's, it's not the best picture. Don't feel bad if you especially over here, guys, You can barely see a little crack here. Umm.
Somebody like this comes in with ankle pain and the mechanism of injury, the way they hurt themselves is such that there's so much energy. I can't remember the particulars of this one. There's so much energy that you have to do an X-ray a little higher up to find that second fracture. It's kind of hidden. You just kind of need to know that that could happen because what's important is somebody was just a fracture down here. Generally you can put them in a splint.
Make him walk on crutches for two months and they do OK. This person needs surgery because that's an unstable fracture. It won't heal well unless they have, umm, screws put in there.
OK.
All right, a couple more here. Oh.
Go back here, Zach, we're going to lay, we're going to this is one of my kids favorite stories. So, umm, this next picture I was working, I think it was like one or two in the morning or something and the Police Department brought in this guy who was umm.
00:20:05
Umm, yelling and naughty words and just being a problem, a big problem, the police said. We think this guy got caught when he broke into a glass sliding door. He was trying to rob somebody and we think he got caught, but he keeps on telling us he got stabbed.
But he was, he was, he was like he was on. I don't know what he was doing. He was clearly not in his right mind. He was manic. He was psychotic. He was a problem. I looked at where he got caught. He really wouldn't let me even touch it. So we did a picture and I was surprised by what we found. OK, Zach.
This is a picture again a cast can I'll let these people see first. So that's the bladder. These are umm the femurs. Big bones here. This is really a picture of his buttocks. OK, we all have two of them. One side looks a little different. So again, bladder. These are the big bones called the femur. These are the buttocks.
There's something different about one side. You guys see anything?
You see it? You have any idea what that could be?
What's that? A stab, Mark? Oh, yeah, yeah, that is actually the blade of the knife that he was stabbed by.
So that was, that was sort of indisputable proof that he was right, even though it was not in his right mind. He he does, he was definitely stabbed. And I don't know, I don't know the whole story. I don't know what happened. It was not my, it's not my problem to figure it out. But he had to have that removed. But that knife blade broke off and was stuck in his bottom.
So you know, you don't know what you're going to find inside.
Just pause here for a second.
Again, children.
Doctors try to look on the inside, but we don't always figure it out. But God knows exactly what's on the inside of your heart, your appearance. Who knows? You know, one of the fun things about coming to a camp like this for someone like me in their 40s is you get to see people you haven't seen for years and it's really exciting. Umm, when I was, I'll pick on Sebastian when I was 14 or 15, I met him and I don't think I've seen him since. Maybe I saw him once since. It's been just so fun to.
Somebody again, because years go on and and some of the people used to hang around with you don't get to see anymore because maybe they've moved away or maybe they're not not acting like a Christian anymore. So it's so it's so nice to see somebody from your past, but only God knows what's on the inside of your heart.
He doesn't know what's going on in there, whether you're saved or you're not saved or whether you're struggling with some sort of bad thing you're doing, stealing money from your parents, reading bad books, looking at bad pictures, I don't know.
But God does. God does. And just like in medicine, if you want, if you desire to be healed, if you desire for God to work his miracles inside you.
You need to be willing to confess your sin. You need to be willing to be exposed. You need to be willing to.
Suffer pain and embarrassment in order to have your sin addressed. It's really, I say this from my own it's, it's, it's painful, it's painful. But when people come to the doctor, one way I know if they're really sick or not is I asked him if, if can I do a certain test on you and they say do whatever you want.
Do whatever you want. All modesty is gone. All this hurts is gone. Do whatever you want. And that's the way the Lord wants our hearts to be so He can work inside of us.
OK, umm, the next story, we'll wait a second. Zach. The next story is about two men. One is, uh, what people would call a bad guy, and the other is what people would call a good guy. And I want you to try to guess from the pictures which one is the good guy? Which one is the bad guy? OK, go ahead, Zach, let's see the first one. OK, what is this a picture of?
The brain, right? Yeah, Picture of the brain right over here.
Is a break in this gentleman's skull OK? You can see, right? You can right beside it. Barely. You can just point out a little collection. Excuse me, A blood. OK, I had a little epidural hematoma. So right over here, there's the fracture.
00:25:10
There's the.
There's the, uh, the collection of blood. This gentleman had been hit in the head with a hammer. OK All right, next one, Zach.
This is the other guy.
What are we looking at this time? This is a chest X-ray, OK?
You're already guessing who's the bad guy and the good guy. This is a collection of blood.
OK, collection of blood in his.
In his chest wall. He needed one of these chest tubes again. What did the chest tube go, by the way? Oh, good. Oh, you guys are so nice. All right. He needed a big chest tube. Big one, because this guy had been shot.
So the story who Who thinks the first guy is the bad guy? The guy that got the hammer?
It's just a guess.
You want the hammer guy to be the bad guy. Most people want the guy that got shot to be the bad guy, don't they? Well the truth is, is the guy that got shot. So the story was basically the guy that got shot decided to break into someone's house.
It was the mother of the guy who got hit in the head. His mother called him up, that I think somebody's breaking into my house. He came there. He only lived a couple minutes away. He arrived. The guy broke into his house, picked up a hammer, hit him in the head. And well, the guy who got hit in the head decided without now is the time to shoot him. And that's what happened. Both of these people survived. Both of them were OK.
Long term, one guy went to prison.
He survived a gunshot wound in his chest. Yeah.
Yeah, he survived. No, no, he survived.
Uh, I don't, that's a great question. It looks like it. This was actually I, I was involved with the head guy. I wasn't involved with this guy. I just saw the picture. I don't think that's the bullet I was kind of looking at. It doesn't really look like it kind of looks like an entry wound though. Yeah, it kind of looks like where he was probably shot.
OK, I'm going to switch gears for a second. Umm.
It's a verse in the Bible. There's lots of them that say you never know what a day may bring forth. And we know that, right? We don't know what's going to happen in our own lives. Umm.
That go ahead you can show the next picture here that's that's just a picture of my family and for us that's a pretty good picture but this picture.
Was nearly the last picture our family had together because this guy about 30 minutes later and a lot of you know this story, so I'm not going to spend much time on it. This guy was taking a water bottle. You know the kind that they passed out and you're so excited you have and you're like, I have cool, I have a water bottle. He he had screwed off the cap just a little bit and decided to be fun to like squeeze the water bottle and suck on it at the same time.
I guess he's done that before. I guess all my kids maybe have done that and I just haven't paid attention.
As but this time.
The water bottle cap flew off into his throat, down his trachea, or at least partially down his trachea, and suddenly he couldn't breathe. I was, I was there. We just happened to come and get them. Just happened to say it's time to go home. His mom, God gave his mom motherly intuition to say I think he choked and that water bottle cap is in his.
In his trachea.
Umm, I did the Heimlich maneuver. You guys have heard of that? For whatever reason, I don't know, for whatever reason, it didn't work. And then.
Thank God I was able to kind of crawl down his throat with my fingers and just barely touch that Cap turned it and pulled it out. He was, I guess, going blue and I don't know, I was just doing, but it was really scary. I know, I remember.
A spot at which I thought this might not, might not have Simon anymore. And children, I don't. We're having such a good time here. We don't know what a day may bring forth. We all know that. We all have heard of these things. We've all.
Had some experience with them.
We just don't know. And again, only God knows what's in your heart, only God knows. The condition of your soul. Only God knows.
What sin you're living in, only he knows, truly.
00:30:00
OK, just have a couple more stories here.
Umm, just a couple more stories. So the next one, umm, was just from a few days ago I was working.
I'll try not to make this story too.
Umm, this elderly lady got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. Her husband heard noises, she had fallen. He came into the bathroom, there was blood everywhere and she was unresponsive and she came in.
And the chief complaint was that they, they, they found her with blood, like vomiting blood.
But she was unresponsive and acting like somebody who had a stroke, a big, huge stroke in their brain. But I couldn't figure out why. Where, where was this vomiting blood all about? That's, that's weird that, that's, that. I can't quite figure that out. Umm, so we did what we, we do and, and what, what, what we do with somebody like that. She was unresponsive. One of my favorite things to do.
To see if somebody's truly unresponsive.
And it works for all different kinds of conditions, including that they're faking it, which occasionally happens is I just basically put on a glove.
Not a fancy one like this, but I put on a glove or I take AQ tip. I open up their eye and touch it because there's something called a corneal reflex that we all have that goes away when we get really close to death.
Or if you're faking it, most people don't like their eye being touched. So he gets people swatching away and you feel much better about the situation. So this lady had no corneal reflex and I knew we had to put, we had to, we had to secure her airway. We had to make sure because what happens is the brain gets more and more swollen is eventually you can't breathe anymore. So we had to, I had to put a tube in her throat. This is a, again, a little Kitty tube, small one.
This is about the size of that we would use on any of your children. And what we do is we we visualize the airway and then we slip this in and then I fill this balloon or actually the respiratory therapist does so the so the tube doesn't doesn't fall out. But this is a small one. I used a bigger one on her and then we sent her to the CAT scan and pass that around if you want to play with it.
You go to the the picture. Oh I forgot, I went out of order.
Zach, let's go ahead. 3 slides.
I forgot to switch the order, that's what I did. OK, this is the inside of her head.
All that white stuff is blood.
It was really what had happened is she, she'd been so congested, so, uh, the, the, the, the flow of blood in her entire body was so backed up that it was starting to ooze from other places. And the vomiting of blood was not her problem. She had good blood pressure. She had other things that told me the vomiting was not, was not the problem. What was going on was inside her brain. And sometimes what we think is going on with somebody is not what's going on.
In fact, that happens quite often.
Umm, you guys ever read, uh, you guys, whoops. Ever read the Chronicles of Narnia? You ever heard of that? One of my favorite lines in the Chronicles of Narnia is, umm, I might get this a little bit wrong, but he says something like, you're only told your own story. You only know your own story. And I think that's a good thing for us to remember is we can't even our children, even our spouses, especially if I find my spouse. Umm, I don't really.
I don't want to say it that way. So I, what I want to say is sometimes I, I think way too much that I know what's going on and I don't, I mean, we have to act on our best judgment and, and pray to God for, for judgment. But, but this is just an example of what her husband thought was going on, that she was vomiting, but it was true. But really what was going on was inside her brain and it was sad.
And people don't live. People don't survive that. There's another picture.
OK, Zach, we're going to go back to our last story. Go back to the family picture. There we go. All right, our last story. How are we doing with time? We're doing OK. Our last story. Umm.
Is about a, uh, a young woman, she was like 21 and uh, it was around July 4th this year, umm, she was starting to date this guy. And when people start to date, they start to try to, you know, like, like, I don't know, they just try to impress each other, right. So this guy's like, hey, umm, I'm going to teach how to ride a motorcycle.
00:35:00
Yeah, motorcycles. And in Maine we don't have a helmet law. So they decided that, you know, after a beer on July 4th, it was a good time to learn to ride a motorcycle. So we got the call that there's a motorcycle accident. There's two people. The first guy is coming in. He was the one sitting behind and he's complaining about his shoulder. It hurts. And, uh.
I can't remember what else but his complaints didn't sound as bad because they said the second one.
Is unresponsive the second one we're not getting any response out of her and I thought Oh no and they were supposed to be here in just a few minutes so we get the crew together we talk about what we're going to do the first guy comes in he looks OK we talked to him briefly he tells me quickly a little bit about the story he says that I was you know teaching her how to drive a motorcycle we just gone around the corner and I told her we you're getting too close to the side and then we came up to the next corner and she did the same thing but this time it's uh another motorcycle was.
Other way she panicked and off we went and I haven't seen her since she was thrown further ahead so as she comes in.
I'm really happy because as she comes in, I see her and I can see her moving, I can see her talking to the medics and I'm really thankful because I was sure there was going to be a head injury and I was all ready for that. So she comes in on the stretcher and there's two main problems we found. One was that, umm, on one part of her body, her breath sounds weren't exactly clear and the paramedics had noticed this said, uh, sounds like there's a little crackles on one side of her body and then the other thing that she was telling us.
Umm was that sometimes she can move her left foot and sometimes she couldn't and it was kind of weird. She would move it and then 10 minutes later I'd ask her and she couldn't.
And we rolled her over and I touched her back. And as far as I could tell, she wasn't, I wasn't like mashing on her back. I was just kind of touching it. As far as I could tell, it didn't hurt. But that go ahead and show a picture, OK? This is one I don't think you have to be a doctor to appreciate.
So Sir, uh, whoops.
Because they're spying, right guys?
You're fine.
Umm, you guys noticed the curve in the spine there? Yeah, that's not that's not the way God made you. You see right over here.
This is the middle of her spine, her thoracic spine. She must have landed hard somewhere in that area. And Zach, why don't you go ahead and show the next picture too? You can see the middle of her, uh, thoracic spine. I forget which level now. There's pieces there. There's pieces and I kind of think of the, the neurological system like an electric cord. Her electric cord was getting kind of cut off every now and then depending upon whatever.
So sometimes she can move her left foot and sometimes she couldn't. The other important thing, remember I said she had crackles? This is her heart. If we were to go back to some of the previous pictures, we've noticed that in front of the heart is supposed to be air. There's not enough air here. Her chest wall has blood on the left hand side, so.
What I thought was going to happen, we were going to have a brain injury. Her brain was fine, but she had a spinal cord injury and a hemothorax and, uh, the injuries were not what I thought they were. Even though she wasn't wearing a helmet, somehow her head was spared. Umm, this woman eventually learned, did walk out of the hospital with a lamp, but uh, did well.
So.
We're kind of out of time and what I, what I want to say again, children, is what's going on inside.
It's not something only God knows in order to.
Be healed. You really need to be willing to be fully exposed.
Every part of you needs to be willing to to be addressed. And it's painful. And most of the time we try to reserve a little bit. We try to, we try to do the minimum we have to do to be healed, the minimum we have to do to confess our faults or our sins. But that's not not the way God wants us to be. It's not the way even going to the doctor tells us it should be.
Again, if you would go to the doctor and you think you have a problem.
Please be willing to let them touch you anywhere. In fact, sometimes you have to encourage the doctor because you know they're, they're like you. They want privacy and they understand it. Sometimes you have to say, no, I'm I'm going to get into a gown or whatever.
So only God knows what's inside, and he desperately wants to heal you. And He can. He has perfect power to heal you, but you have to be willing to be exposed.
00:40:10
So I think we're out of time. We'll pray.
Dear God, we thank you for these children. We think of our own lives as adults and how many times we've needed to be exposed.
And we?
Just pray for umm, willingness to, uh, umm.
Bow down before you and uh.
As we were reminded yesterday, we're, we're, we're not here to uh, uh, you never asked us to be perfect Christians. You asked us to get to know you and.
The power of your resurrection and. And we, uh, only get to know you by umm.
By being, uh, humble before you and, and, uh, being willing to be exposed. And so we thank you for these children and, uh.
Ask this in your name. Amen.
N.
The Kingdom of Heaven
Address—Josh Stewart
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
OK.
Well, it's time to begin the meeting.
Could we, uh, could we begin by singing the 1St 2 verses of him one 34134?
Which is.
Uh.
Dividend, Sir. There you go and crying.
About it. And we're going to come around and we'll hear you.
9783.
5.
1354 fingers are not here in 5000.
Calm there we go out on the end of the day.
I got a boy. Oh yeah.
Let's pray before we begin.
Our loving God and our Father, we come before thee this evening and we just confess our need of help to be able to present the message that we feel is on our heart to.
In a way that would be understandable and that there would be something from this talk that would be practical as well, that would be a help to us in our everyday lives. And we just give thanks to be able to have the privilege of honoring, of adoring that king who was once rejected. What a privilege. We just give thanks, our Father, in the name of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Well, if we have time at the end of the meeting, we can.
Maybe sing the last two verses of that hymn.
And the subject I would like to speak about tonight is not the easiest subject, but I think it's very informative. I think that it's something that will be a really a big help to many of us here in this room to get a better understanding of the ways of God, of God's purposes, of his plans.
And of the time that we're living in right now. And I also think it will be very practical.
And so the subject I would like to speak on tonight is the Kingdom of Heaven.
So what is the Kingdom of heaven and in order to.
In order to help us be established and what the Kingdom of Heaven is, I have a chart which I will unveil in in just a moment. But before we talk about the Kingdom of Heaven, I think it would be helpful for us to understand that a Kingdom is a kind of a government. Can anyone tell, tell us when was the first government that was established in this world?
Someone just raise your hand, doesn't matter who.
From the Bible, what was the first government established in this world?
Go ahead.
It was it wasn't solved. This is going a little bit a little bit before solved. That was that was a good try. Anyone else?
Umm, it was before Egypt.
Noah That's right. Thank you very much. So when Noah and his family came off the ark, God said to them, whoso sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed. In other words, if person A kills person B, you're to put person A to death. That's serious. That's called capital punishment. And basically that's the principle of government, that evil has to be punished.
And so God had had to judge the earth with a flood, because it says that violence and corruption had filled the earth. People were killing one another and beating one another and ripping each other off.
And it got to such a point that God said, I'm going to wipe the earth clean. And so when no and his family came off the ark, God told him to repopulate the earth. But he wouldn't let them go into the new earth without something new, which was government. And so government was given to restrain evil. And we have governments today, right? If you if you speed and a policeman sees you, he'll pull you over and give you a speeding ticket. And so government is there to restrain evil.
00:05:30
But governments aren't perfect. And we look around and we see governments that have failed, and we have governments now that are passing laws that aren't are morally wrong. And so government hasn't been perfect. Actually, it's failed tremendously. But what we're going to talk about today is a government that is perfect, the Kingdom of heaven, OK?
So when Noah came off the ark, God gave him this government. It failed almost before it began, and I think it's the end of that very Chapter 9.
NOAA planted a vineyard, he made wine, he got drunk and he he couldn't even control his own body. So here you have the head of this government and he he gets drunk. And then the next chapter, chapter 10, we find that there was a man who rose up one of Noah's great grandchildren, or I don't know how many generations it was, and he built an empire. Does anyone know who that man was?
The First Empire. Does anyone know more than remember the name of the man who built it?
Go ahead.
Nimrod That's right. His name means the rebel. He was the first one to openly rebel against Noah's government that God gave to him. And he used slave labor to build his empire. In fact, the Bible says that he became a mighty hunter. He became a tyrant. And he he didn't hunt just animals, but he haunted people. He haunted humans and he used them to build his empire.
And and from what I can tell it not only did he build 1 empire, it says that he built Babel which is.
Would later become Babylon, but he also went out and built Asher which later became a Syria. So 2 great world empires came from that man and he was an evil evil person.
And he brought idolatry into the world, and the whole world became corrupted through that idolatry. And then after a number of years, God called one man out of all of that mess, all of that idolatry. God just picked one man, and he called them out of all of that for himself. Does anyone know who that man was?
Go ahead, Abraham. That's right. And the first words we read of God saying to Abraham are get out, get out. And Abraham did get out. It took him some time and fits and starts, but he eventually got out of all that idolatry and God promised him that there was going to come from him a great nation. Does anyone know what that nation was?
Go ahead, Israel, very good. Well, sure enough, 400 years later, Israel was brought up out of the land of Egypt.
And God said that he would place his name in one of their cities. Does anyone know what city that is?
Go ahead.
Maybe, maybe someone else. Go ahead. Jerusalem. That's right. And the Lord would put His authority in that city. So now we have a special kind of government with the Lord's authority there. Well, Israel, the nation of Israel, did not do what God wanted them to do, and they brought in idolatry, beginning with Solomon. Idolatry came into the Kingdom of Israel, and down through the line of kings we go.
As things become worse and worse and worse, he had to allow the 10 northern tribes, the Kingdom of Israel, to be taken captive by the Assyrians. And then in the southern Kingdom, finally a man sat on the throne who was worse than all the other kings that ever sat on the throne of Judah. And his name was Manasseh. And he was so wicked that God said that's it.
You're finished and I'm going to take my authority away.
From the city of Jerusalem. And he said, I am going to wipe Jerusalem as a man, wipe at the dish. It's going to be completely clean. I'm going to take everything away because of the sin that you have committed. And sure enough, as God said, Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians came down and they wiped Jerusalem as a man wipe with a dish.
00:10:06
And Israel was taken captive and.
God took his government away from Israel and he gave special authority to that empire, to Babylon. So I'm going to, umm, uncover my chart here. And I've asked Zach to put it up on the screen as well because I realized when I got in here that my writing was a little too small. And I also realized that the screen on this side of the room over here is also pretty small. So I apologize, but.
Umm, I hope you can read this but or at least see what I'm trying to tell you about.
But what I want to focus on first of all is that this is a timeline from eternity to eternity, and there's something in the middle. Does anyone know what that is? The center of two eternities? Someone just shouted out the cross. That's right. But what I want to focus on 1St is what we see down here at the bottom. It's an image and it's a A.
Drawing of what we have in Daniel chapter 2.
In Daniel chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar, who was the one that came against Israel and took them captive, had a dream and in that dream he saw a great image and there were five layers in that image and each layer had a different material. The top layer was the head and it was made out of gold and then the chest and arms were made out of silver.
And the belly and thighs were of brass, the legs were of iron, and the feet were iron mixed with clay. And at the end, after he got all the way to the bottom of that image, a great stone comes flying into the scene, crushes the image on its feet, and the whole thing breaks into tiny little pieces, so small that the wind just carries it away. And then that great stone becomes this huge mountain, which I tried to draw here.
No, it's not a volcano.
My wife was wondering where the volcano was in the Bible. It's actually a mountain I'm trying to draw and it fills the whole earth. And then he proceeds in that chapter to give us the interpretation of that dream, and he says as I have drawn here.
Today to Nebuchadnezzar, you Nebuchadnezzar are the head of gold. And so Babylon was that first great holder of power that God gave.
And down through the line, through a series of great empires, that power was passed. First Babylon, then the Medes and Persians, then the Grecians, and finally an empire. See, the first three are actually given to us by name in the book of Daniel. The 4th is described in great detail, but not explicitly named. But we can tell from history that it was the empire of Rome, and Rome held that power.
And so this image describes what we find in the book of Luke is called the Times of the Gentiles. It's not the Jews that hold the power anymore.
That have God's authority, but the Gentiles hold the balance of power. Well. The final and 5th Kingdom is partly iron and partly clay, and a great deal is spoken of in connection with that 5th empire, which is called in prophecy the beast. And I'm not going to go into great detail about prophecy today, it's not my point.
But there has been nothing in this world yet that answers to the description of that fifth empire.
So it is still future OK.
Well, this gravestone is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ, and the great mountain that the stone grows into is His Kingdom. And I just want to read to you that verse. It's Daniel chapter 2.
When he is giving the description of this mountain.
Daniel two and verse 44.
And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a Kingdom which shall never be destroyed.
And the Kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all of these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.
So, so now we have a Kingdom that's not set up by Nebuchadnezzar or Alexander the Great or any of these other guys. It's set up by the God of heaven, the capital of this Kingdom that we're talking about over here, shown by this mountain. It's not in Rome, it's not in Sousa, in Persia. It's not in Athens or in Greece. It's not in the city of Rome. The capital is in heaven. The authority is from.
00:15:13
And that is what we want to talk about today, the Kingdom of heaven.
And so our brother last night spoke about how each one of us is in a family and we have certain responsibilities because we're in families, but we're also in the Kingdom of heaven. And because we're in the Kingdom of heaven, we have certain responsibilities as well.
And I just want to read one more scripture from Daniel that speaks about this wonderful Kingdom. Daniel Chapter 7 and verse 13.
I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before him, and there was given him dominion and glory, and the Kingdom that all people, nations, and languages should serve him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and His Kingdom, that which shall not be destroyed. All of these other kingdoms, the head of gold, the arms of silver, all are going to come to an end. There's going to be a tremendous of series of events that are going to happen, I believe, very shortly after the Lord comes and calls us home.
In which all these kingdoms, all that we see around us, all of the.
The power.
The engineering, the technology, the ideas of the Western world are all going to be smashed to pieces and they're going to be blown away. And the Kingdom is going to be set up by the God of heaven, which is never going to end. And there's many prophecies in the Old Testament that speak about that wonderful Kingdom. So I have, you might not be able to read it, but I have here Old Testament prophecies.
And they jump forward in time over the cross into the future, and they describe the Kingdom, what I'm calling the Kingdom and manifestation. There's going to be a time when it is obvious it is manifest to everyone that this Kingdom is real and it is functioning and it is in power. We don't live in that day yet, do we? We don't.
See before our eyes a Kingdom.
That is in manifestation. So we're going to talk about that in a minute. And you may be looking at this chart and thinking I think there's something missing on that chart, and if you are, that's a good sign because there is something missing. We're going to get to that in a minute. But first I want to just establish that the Old Testament prophecies speak about a coming Kingdom that's going to last for 1000 years. Does anyone know what we often refer to that Kingdom as?
The Millennium. That's right. And the word Millennium is simply the Latin word for.
1000 years well.
The king of that wonderful Kingdom is the Lord Jesus Christ. And there came a moment in time when the king came into this world, and that's what I have shown here with the Star of David. There came a time when the Lord Jesus was born into this world. He was the rightful king. We we sung about him in this verse, the rightful anointed king, and he came.
And was he received? Was he welcomed? Was he offered the throne that he so justly deserved? No, he was rejected.
Well, when the Lord Jesus came, there was a man who came just before him named John the Baptist and he preached, I'm just going to read you the verse. I don't necessarily want you to to turn to it. There's there's a lot of verses I want to read. In those days came John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, repent ye for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. John the Baptist came right here.
Around the time of the Lord and he said the Kingdom of heaven is at hand, which means it's right around the corner.
This glorious Kingdom is right around the corner.
And when the Lord Jesus came, he preached the same thing. He said the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. Jesus sent out his 12 apostles, his 12 disciples, and they said the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. But that message was was rejected. And that that rejection is documented in Matthew's Gospel chapter 8910, especially in 11 and 11:00 and 12:00.
And that message is rejected.
And that's the time that we're living in now. And I have the Lord's rejection color-coded here in orange. There came a time when he was formally rejected by the nation of Israel, I should say, symbolically rejected by the nation of Israel. They formally rejected Him at the cross when they said we will not have this king to reign over us. Well, something very interesting happened in the Lord's teaching and the Lord's ministry when he was rejected.
00:20:29
In Matthew chapter 12, beginning in Matthew chapter 13, he stopped saying the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. He stopped saying the Kingdom of heaven is right around the corner. He changed his words and instead he began to say the Kingdom of heaven is like unto for the Kingdom of heaven will be like and he started to give.
What I have written up here, the 10 similitudes of the Kingdom.
And instead of saying the Kingdom of heaven is at hand, he said, I'm going to tell you what it's going to be like. And part of what the Lord Jesus said about the Kingdom of heaven is that there was going to be evil that was going to be allowed to go on. Now think about this for just a minute. This is a very important point. The Old Testament prophecy Speaking of this thousand year king Kingdom.
Say that evil will be judged every morning, but when Jesus said, the Kingdom of heaven will be liked unto.
And he talked about terrorists, evil persons being brought in and not being removed until the end. How does that fit? How does it fit that the Old Testament prophecies say evils judged every morning, but Jesus said evil is going to be allowed to continue. Well, the answer is that Jesus is teaching that this Kingdom, this thousand year Kingdom is going to be postponed.
It's going to be put on hold for a a period of time.
Does anyone know how long? Approximately rounded to the nearest thousand years. OK.
How long has that Kingdom been postponed, anyone?
No one. It's it's pretty easy. 2000 years. Thank you. And so my chart here is missing something. And So what I want to do is slide this Kingdom off to the right by 2000 years. It took me a little bit to figure this out.
And then I have something I need to put in the middle. I apologize for those who can't really see this. Thanks, Zach. Zach is putting it up on the screen. Umm, and please come and look at it after.
Umm, I think I need to do a little bit of taping.
That'll that'll get us pretty close. And so this period is 2000 years and all during this 2000 years is the time when the king is rejected.
And one thing you're probably gonna ask is that guy's legs just got really long.
And that's, that's true. So basically Rome, the empire of Rome was in power when the Lord Jesus was crucified. In fact, they were the ones that sanctioned his death. It was a Roman death warrant that was issued to the Lord Jesus. Well, the Roman Empire was stayed in power for a great number of years after that, but eventually it broke into pieces. But who is still, generally speaking?
Running the world right now, it is the vestiges, the.
The leftover pieces of that Roman Empire. So I just extended the legs, umm, So hopefully you're not too bothered by that, umm?
One thing I should know is that you see in blue here the Kingdom, but not in manifestation, the Kingdom. Another expression that we use is the Kingdom in mystery. I'm going to talk about what that means in a minute. So the Kingdom and manifestation was postponed, but there came a moment when the Lord Jesus had perfectly completed the work of Calvary and God brought him back to His right hand.
And he said to him.
You sit down at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.
And when he ascended back into heaven, it says a certain man went into a far country to receive for himself a Kingdom and to return. When Jesus ascended back through the clouds into heaven, God gave him a Kingdom, not a Kingdom and manifestation. His enemies have not yet been made his footstool, but he has been given a Kingdom, and he wants those who are in that Kingdom to acknowledge his.
00:25:09
Absolute authority over.
Our lives and over our actions. If you get nothing else from this, understand this, that you are in the Kingdom of heaven. All those who have made a profession of Christ are in the Kingdom of heaven and He is King and He, this is the subject of the Lordship of Christ and he has absolute authority over your life and over my life.
Well, I just wanted to show that in green I have in parentheses the church.
You'll notice that the church is not the same thing as the Kingdom. Sometimes we might be talking a little too fast that we might confuse them, but the church is really something different. The Kingdom is something that's on this earth, although it's ruled from heaven, but the church is something that is entirely a heavenly thing. And you'll notice too, that the the church has different start and end dates.
The Kingdom began with the ascension of Christ the Church.
Began on the day of Pentecost. Is that helpful? We can see they actually have different start dates. So they're two different things. The apostle Paul primarily speaks of the Church of God, and that's not what I want to talk about today. That's a wonderful subject. I want to speak about the Kingdom well.
The Old Testament prophecies look far forward to the millennial reign of Christ, but what the Lord Jesus taught about the Kingdom in his lifetime.
Has to do with the time that we live in the Kingdom in mystery. OK, So what I would like to do next is briefly go through.
I'm gonna check my time here.
My time is is half gone. My original aspiration was to go through all of the 10 similitudes, but it's not going to happen. And So what I would really like to focus on is the last four similitudes of the Kingdom of Heaven, because my wife is very helpful in pointing out I need to keep my stuff practical and the last four similitudes.
Are very, very practical for us.
When we want to know what is our responsibility in the Kingdom of heaven, those last four similitudes are paramount. We need to understand them. But I have a disease, and that disease is having to cover the entire subject. So I do want to give just a very brief overview of the first six similitudes before we get to those four.
And as I have shown here, a helpful way to look at the 10 similitudes.
Of the Kingdom of heaven is broken down into three parts, a group of three, another group of three, and then the final four. And the first group has to do with what Satan is trying to accomplish. Satan is is no dummy and he knows that Christ received the Kingdom and he's started from that moment to try to corrupt the Kingdom. And so that is what he is working on in those first three.
Similitudes and he uses man and man's failure to do that.
But then we find in 4-5 and six that God is sovereign and his and his sovereign grace. He is over ruling the efforts of Satan and he is going to have fruit for himself. And we're going to see briefly.
How He is in His sovereignty, bringing blessing in spite of man's failure. And then in the last four we have What is our work? How are we to conduct ourselves in the Kingdom of heaven?
So before I do that, was there any questions on the chart before we get into the similitudes?
Any anyone have any questions, something I can try to explain a little bit better? Go ahead, Barrett.
Old Testament Saints.
Umm, I believe yes, they will be in the Kingdom and manifestation, the millennial Kingdom. There's going to be two compartments in that millennial Kingdom. There's going to be an earthly compartment that is called in Matthew 13, the Kingdom of the Son of Man. And there's a heavenly compartment which is called the Kingdom of their Father because Old Testament Saints have died and have become heavenly Saints by the fact that they have departed this earth.
They're going to be in that heavenly department called the Kingdom of their Father. So they will be and they will not umm, umm, be. They'll be more closely connected with heaven and with where the authority is flowing down from, which is from heaven in that coming Kingdom. But but yes, they will be. And there are verses that would show that, that in the Kingdom of heaven, those are going to come from the east and from the West and sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So they will be there.
00:30:26
Is there anything else I can clear up?
All right, so let's move on to the umm, the 10 similitudes. So we're going to go to Matthew chapter 13, and I want to just read one verse to help us with this.
While we're turning there, does everyone know what a simile is? I learned this in English class in middle school. Assembly is a comparison of two things with the use of the words like or as and. So a parable that's a simile, a comparison between the Kingdom of heaven and and a story that's given to us.
The old fashioned word is similitude, and so that's what it simply is, is a comparison between some.
Figurative description and what the Kingdom of heaven is like. So there are 10 similitudes, but there's another name given to them in verse 11 of Matthew 13.
He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven. And so these 10 similitudes are also can also be called mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven, because there are things about this 2000 years that in which we live that are.
Not easy to understand. And there are things that those in this world, those who do not have faith, don't understand.
That Christ has received the Kingdom, why does he allow evil to continue? Why does he allow evil to continue among Christians? Why? It doesn't make any sense to those without faith. But he has given to us these mysteries so that we can understand them, so they're no longer mysteries to us.
And that's why I believe these are very important. They answer some of those deep questions. But why does God allow evil and those type of things? And is there a silver lining to all of this that is is going on today? And the answer, of course, is yes, Yes, there is. Well.
Matthew chapter 13 starts out with a parable that's called the Parable of the Sower. And you might be wondering, is that a similitude of the Kingdom of heaven? Well, it does not say the Kingdom of heaven.
Is like or as the sower. So it's really not a similitude of the Kingdom of heaven. And I assume everyone here is familiar with the parable of the sower. And it's very important to be, and I'll tell you why it says in Mark's Gospel that the parable of the sower is the key to understanding all parables. Very important that we understand it. But basically, you know how that man went out that sower and he cast his seed four times and it fell into four different types of ground.
And only when it fell into good ground did it produce fruit. Well, I believe that the central thrust of that parable is that the only way that there can be fruit for God is if his word is received into our into our hearts through our conscience. Our heart has to be prepared to receive the Word of God. And when that happens, there can be fruit for God.
And it's given to us in Matthew's Gospel and Mark's Gospel.
And in Luke's gospel, and in each case, there's a little bit of a different emphasis. I could mention that, but we don't have time. But generally speaking, that is, I believe the thrust of that parable is that the Word of God has to be received into a heart that is prepared by God, by the Spirit of God. Just as the girdle of truth is the first piece of the armor, truth practically applied, so the sower is the first parable.
And the key to understanding all parables, if we're going to read this book and we're not going to apply it to ourselves, we're wasting our time. It's the first one. When we read this book, we need to say, this is for me. I need to take what God is saying and apply it to myself, OK.
Well, the first similitude is that of the wheat and the chairs. I have the references written down on the right for you. I'm not going to have time to turn to these. We're just going to be out of time. So the first one is the wheat and the tares, and in that parable, a man.
Seeds in his field and he has some men who are in charge of looking over his field and while he is, while they are sleeping, which they shouldn't be doing, an enemy comes and he sews the seeds of what the King James calls tares. Or it should be in critical translations, Darnell, or as I understand it, ryegrass. So ryegrass, as far as I know.
00:35:21
Maybe someone can tell us better but umm, I'm speaking out here in farm country So what do I know but.
It looks a lot like wheat and it's very, very hard to distinguish, but it's not real. And so this is something that we learn is that in the Kingdom of heaven, not everyone who's in the Kingdom has real, genuine faith.
There are those who are only in the Kingdom by profession. They are baptized to the name of Christ. They call themselves Christians, but they don't have faith.
And how did they get there? Well, it says that men slept. That is, man was responsible and he failed with his responsibility. And Satan came in and he sold these ones. And that's how they're here. But it's part of Satan's plan to corrupt it, and this his, umm, way of corrupting it. Well, when the men see the two growing up, the wheat and the tears, they say to the man who owns the field, do you want us to go and rip out all the tears? That's the logical thing to do.
We we were sleeping.
Uh, an enemy came and sold this. Let us go out and fix the mistake. And he says don't do that because if you go out to pull up the tears, you'll accidentally tear out the wheat as well. You are not capable of distinguishing those who have faith from those who only have a profession. And so if the church if Christianity and Christianity, if we set about to.
Take those who are not real and do away with them. We're going to make errors.
I believe taking a terror or a week out of this, out of the field is, is the idea of removing them from the world because later he says the field is the world. So you might say, Josh, none of us here are thinking about hunting down those who are just making a profession and doing away with them and killing them. You say nobody here is planning to do that.
I realize that, but the Church has done that. They have taken it upon themselves in past centuries to hunt down the terrors and to root them out. And in the dark ages, the Church.
Burned heretics, so-called heretics at the stake and you know what, just as the Lord said, they made some mistakes and many that they burned were those who really had faith they were wheat, they were not terrorists. So it is not our job to.
To take out those who are evil. But this does not mean that in the local assembly we're not responsible to judge evil. I just want to make that point. 1St Corinthians 5 is very clear that God judges those that are without. We'll leave the we'll leave the tears for his judgment, but we are responsible to judge those that are within. Just wanted to make that point. Well, he says at the end of the age.
All this mess is going to be sorted out. First thing that's going to happen is my my harvestman, who he says are the angels are going to go. They're going to round up the tears.
Put them in bundles. Then they're going to take the wheat and gather it into the granary. That's a picture of the rapture. When we're gathered into the granary, those who really have faith. And then I'm going to take the tears and throw them into the fire. That's going to happen at the appearing of Christ.
When he comes and the angels will go through and sever the wicked from among the just one shall be taken for judgment and the other left. So that's the we and the tares one line summary. Satan has brought in evil persons into Christendom, but God is going to sort it all out in the end. OK, the next one is the mustard seed. I'm going to go more quickly. The mustard seed.
Is a tiny little seed that gets planted in the ground.
And it grows into, in this parable, a great tree. Now, I did a little bit of research on mustard seeds, and they do grow into a good size Bush, about 8 or 9 feet tall, which is remarkable growth that one tiny little seed would grow into a Bush, you know, yay tall, I guess a little taller than that. But this one grows into a great tree. This is unnatural growth. This is growth that was not in the mind of God. This is something that happened through man's failure.
Activity this what started out so small grew into what we call Christendom, this overgrown monstrosity. And what happens is the birds of the air come and they find shelter in this great tree. And he tells us elsewhere that the birds of the air are Satan's demons, evil spirits. And So what happened is.
00:40:10
In the in the era of Constantine, back in the three hundreds, late three hundreds.
He eliminated the, the persecution that Christians were going through and he made it, umm, effectively not officially the religion of the Roman Empire. And suddenly it became popular to be a Christian. And so basically a little tiny seed sprang into this huge tree. And what happens when Christianity is popular is that many come in and a lot of things and ideas and.
Come in that are not of God.
So that's the mustard seed. The next one is the HID 11. So this sounds a bit negative. It's because we're talking about what Satan is doing. Well, the next is the HID 11. A woman takes a little pinch of yeast and she hides it in three measures of flour, and yeast grows and it spreads. And that's what happened with this, with these three measures of flour that you started real small because it wasn't taken out. It grew until it spread through the whole thing.
And 11 in the word of God is evil. It speaks of evil. We know that because the apostle Paul says, know ye not? A little leavened leavens the whole lump. And he's talking about evil. He says it twice, once in First Corinthians with regard to moral evil, and once again in Galatians with regard to doctrinal evil. Evil, if it is not judged, spreads like 11. It's got to be taken out.
Well.
That is what Satan has done. He has sown evil doctrine, concerning especially I believe, the person of Christ, and it has spread from one end to the other. How sad. But then we get to the 4th and things take a turn for the better. Here we're talking about God's work and in the force similitude we find that a man is walking past the field.
That perhaps many men have walked by and they've seen nothing.
But just a field. You see a lot of that when you drive through farm country fields. But this man saw what no one else could see, and that was a treasure hidden in the field. And that treasure, I believe, speaks of believers, you and I, who have, I trust, by the grace of God, faith. And he sees us as treasure, and he values us. And he goes, he sees the treasure, he covers it back up so that no one perhaps will see it. And then he goes and sells all that he has that he.
By that treasure, in the same way the Lord sees you, and he sees me and he sees value, you say. But isn't Christendom just a big field full of tears and wheat? And isn't it just this big overgrown tree with evil spirits roosting in the branches? And isn't it just this 11 bucket of flour?
Yes, but there are those who are his treasure and they're hidden in the field and he covers them back up because the time of our manifestation is not until the time of Christ's manifestation. During this time the King is in rejection and so are we. But there's going to come a time when he is going to unveil that treasure that's going to be at His appearing and it says.
That when He will appear, we also will appear with Him in glory. Well, the next one is the Pearl of Great Price.
There's a man who's looking for goodly or beautiful pearls, and he finds one that's just off the charts. It's the most beautiful one he's ever seen. And again he goes sells all that he has that he might buy that Pearl and have it for himself. Well, if the treasure was individual believers, the Pearl is one thing. A treasure can have many small parts, but the Pearl is one.
And I believe that speaks to us of the church.
It's in the Kingdom. It's not the Kingdom itself, but a man. The Lord Jesus Christ has found his Pearl, that one object that completely fills and satisfies his heart, and he has sold all that he might buy it. It says that Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.
And then the the 6th one is that of the the dragnet. And what we have here is a great net, a scheme. It's a huge net that's trawled behind fishing boats and it sweeps down through the ocean and it picks up all kinds of fish and brings in this huge haul of fishes. And it's a picture of the gospel going out into the sea of the Gentiles, the 2000 years and bringing in this huge hall of fishes.
00:45:05
And when they get to the shore, they find that there are lots and lots of good fish. But there's also.
Lots and lots of bad fish. We might say, oh, oh, does that mean we have to throw the whole thing out? But what we have in this is that he has workmen that are on the shore when this Hall of Fishes comes in and they are taking the bad, they're taking the good, I should say, and putting them into baskets, vessels. And so the whole net, the gospel net, that has brought in many into Christianity.
Has brought in some that aren't real.
Kinda like those tears, except more benign, I think than the tears, but they've come in. But it hasn't ruined the whole fishing trip. You might say the gospel going out for 2000 years is not a waste. And the way God is, what God is using is she's using evangelists and he's using shepherds when someone gets saved to come in and help them to be separated from the world, separated from those bad fish to be useful to him. So it's God's sovereignty and each of those.
Things over ruling the activity and work of of Satan. OK so.
Satan's work, God's work, but what about us? What are we to be doing? So the first one I want to look at is the 7th, which is in Matthew 18.
I guess I'm going to have to just give a summary of these four as well. Sorry about that.
Well, Matthew 18 gives us the seven similitude. Peter asks the Lord in verse 21, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Peter under the law would not have to give even 7 times. Peter thought he was being very generous. Should I forgive him seven times? That seems pretty generous. The Lord says until 7 * 70 * 7.
Which is basically an infinite number of forgiveness. If you forgave someone that many times, believe me, it would feel like Infinity. And the Lord is saying here that forgiveness in the Kingdom of heaven needs to be infinite. It needs to be unlimited. We're going to talk about this a little bit more, but basically I don't have time to read it all. He says the Kingdom of heaven is like unto a king, which would take account of his servants, and he has one servant that owes him.
A tremendous debt in today's dollars. I believe the 10,000 talents debt that he owed is something on the order of $60 million.
And at a penny a day, which we find in the next similitude is how much approximately they made a denarius a day. It would take him 1600 lifetimes to pay that back. A tremendous debt, impossible to pay back. The king calls him up and he says have patience with me, I'll pay it back. Was that true? Could he ever pay that debt back? Never in a million years.
Never in 1600 lifetimes he couldn't do it.
Well, the king having compassion, this man didn't even know how bad his debt was, so he forgave him.
And then this man goes out when he finds one of his fellow servants who owes him 100 pence, who owes him 100 days labor. That's a pretty big debt. Three months worth of work.
And he says, give me patient, have patience with me, I'll pay you back. Was that a lie? I don't think so. Three months worth of of wages is something you actually can pay back if you work hard and you save. This is something that's reasonable. It's tiny in comparison with the first step. It's almost nothing. What does he do? It says he takes them by the throat and he cuts off his air supply. So he throttles him.
And he casts him into prison.
Until he should pay everything. So this man had just been forgiven this massive debt and he goes out and finds someone who owes him just a little bit and he throws him into prison. Has no patience and no forgiveness for this one. Well, it works its way back to the king word of this. And he takes that man and he cast him to the tormentors because of what he had done.
And at the end of the chapter the Lord says.
So likewise shall my heavenly Father do unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not everyone, his brother, their trespasses. Well, each one of us owes the King a great debt. We have been forgiven, frankly forgiven, more than we will ever know.
00:50:11
And.
We may have those. We most likely do. Probably everyone does have someone that we know, a fellow believer, someone maybe in our home assembly that has offended us. They are like the 100 pence debtor. They have offended us.
And we make a big deal about those offenses sometimes, don't we? But it's nothing in comparison with the offense that we have offended God.
And what we have here is that the forgiveness that he had given to this man, he takes back, he revokes his forgiveness. Now, let me ask a question here. We've been forgiven our sins so that we can go to heaven and be with the Lord Jesus for all eternity. Is God ever going to revoke his forgiveness? Can we be lost again? No. So it's not talking about that kind of forgiveness. What this is talking about is something called governmental forgiveness.
It's mentioned I counted once, I believe at least as many times.
As eternal forgiveness, which is so that we can go to be with Christ in heaven at least as many times as that is mentioned in the Bible. This is something that's little understood and I can tell you that because I didn't understand it all too well when I was young. But basically it works like this. There's a government of God when you do bad things. He has the prerogative to punish in his government to give us the consequences for our sins, but in His grace.
In the Kingdom of heaven.
He is so gracious that he just forgives those things.
And there are times when there are other principles involved when He will not forgive and He will allow us to suffer those consequences. If you bad mouth to your mom, maybe the next minute you fall down the stairs and break your leg or something like that, that might be the government of God in your life. But generally speaking, how many times have we done things and He has exempted us from that, those consequences. 10,000 talents.
Can you imagine if God allowed all of the consequences governmentally of our sins to fall upon us? We're not talking about.
What the Lord Jesus did on the cross and how we're going to get to heaven and how our security is eternal, no.
What happens is, he says if you don't forgive your brother, if you are unwilling to give that up, that bitterness that you feel towards your brother, your sister, then I am going to revoke my forgiveness, my governmental forgiveness on you, and you'll be cast to the tormentors. And you know, there are Christians today that are living.
In, metaphorically speaking, living in hell, I, I, I hope that's not too strong an expression. They're cast to the tormentors. They're suffering from anxiety, from depression. These are the kind of things that they're not dealt with, can get passed down to generation and generation. We must be willing to forgive one another. God is saying here that my forgiveness and the Kingdom of heaven is unlimited.
But I want yours to be unlimited as well.
It's the foundation of our relationship with Him as grace and forgiveness, and it needs to be there with our brethren. Wow. I'm sorry I'm going to run out of time, but I'll just summarize these last three. In chapter 20, we have the parable of the vineyard. A man goes out to find workers for his vineyard, and he goes out at 6:00 in the morning, and there are some guys who are ready to work.
And they have a contract there which says I'll work a day on your vineyard.
If you give me a penny for the day, denarius for the day, and he signs on the line, he's got a contract, a penny a day. And they go to work. He comes out three hours later at 9:00. He finds some guys who are standing there doing nothing. He says, do you want to work? And they say, Yep, we'll work. And he says no contracts to be signed here. I'll give you what I see at the end of the day. And they say, OK, we'll take that, No contract, I'm going to work. Trusting you that you will pay me. What?
CFET.
And they go to work and he goes out at 12 noon, and he goes out at 3:00 PM, and then he goes out at 5:00 PM, one hour before closing time. And he does the same thing at the end of the day. He calls them in and he pays them off. And he pays the one who came in for only one hour. He only worked one hour in the vineyard. And he pays them a penny. He gives him the same amount that the ones at the beginning of the day had contracted for all the way down through. And he pays them in reverse.
And at the very end, he pays the ones who came in at six PM, 6:00 AM, served for 12 hours, born, as they say, the burden in the heat of the day. And he gives them their penny and they complain and they have a real problem with him because of that. Well, the Lord is teaching that He wants our service for him to be not based on a legal attitude. He doesn't want us to serve with the idea that I'm going to do this much for him.
00:55:28
And he's going to give me a reward. He wants us to serve with the spirit of grace and contentment that I'm going to serve him because I owe everything to him. And even if there's no reward, I'm going to serve him. You know, we speak a lot about the judgment seat of Christ. And it's a wonderful subject. I'm not knocking it at all. But you know, this parable is the.
Is the perfect balance for that subject because sometimes I wonder if we get an idea that we're laboring for a reward, it's not to be our motive. We're not laboring down here so that we can get some reward. It's an encouragement to us. And He will not forget those who serve him, and he will reward those who serve him. But the lesson from this similitude is this, God retains His sovereignty when it comes to giving out reward.
And they're going to be surprises that the judgment seat of Christ. Not surprises because of how much someone worked, but surprises because of the sovereign grace of God. Amazing.
You may have only served one hour he may surprise you he may give you a reward you never deserve dreamed of and it's just because of his sovereign grace. So we're to serve with contentment in the spirit of grace, not looking for reward then the.
9th is the parable of the wedding feast. There's a great deal that we could speak about there, but what I wanted to bring out of that umm.
There's so much there, but is the fact that the king sends He wants to have a wedding feast for his son for the honor of his son.
Is that clock?
Maybe my watch is off. I'm good, OK?
All right, sorry, my watch is really fast.
Umm.
We're not going to, we're not going to go into a lot of detail, but he wants to have a hold the wedding feast for the honor of his son. And it speaks of how God has as his chief purpose the honor of his son.
And so he has already sent invitations out, and he sends his servants to tell those who are invited it's time to come on in. And God had already sent invitations out to the children of Israel, to the Jews. And he sent his servants, John the Baptist and his disciples out. And they said to Israel, they went to the 12 tribes, to the lost sheep of the House of Israel, and they said, it's time to come on in.
The King is ready to serve his feast and they rejected it. We don't want to.
We don't wanna come.
The king is not hindered by that, he says to them.
Go again and tell them that everything's been made ready. They didn't say that the first time, but tell them my oxygen, my fat links have been killed. Everything has been prepared. That speaks of those who went out again to the Jews after the cross. God's preparation had been done. His oxen, his fatlings had been killed at the cross. The work of Christ is complete, and he says all the preparation has been done. Come on in.
This time, they violently reject that.
And they beat and kill some of his servants.
The king responds.
By sending his forces to destroy their city. That's what happened in 70 AD when God sent his forces the Roman army, using them to destroy the city of Jerusalem, because they had rejected those who went out after the day of Pentecost with all the grace, all the signs of the Spirit of God.
He destroyed their city. But you know, even that didn't stop him. Remember, he wants to have a marriage feast for his son. He wants his house full because it's all about his son. That's his objective. And So what does he do? He says go out. Those who were invited were not worthy. Go out into the highways, into the hedges, call them to come in. Those who were not invited, go to places where no invitation ever went and invite them to come in. That my house.
Might be full. And that is what has happened, firstly through the apostle Paul and then down through 2000 years, the gospel has gone out to those who were not invited, those who had no invitation, and they have come in and you know there's going to come a day when his house is going to be full.
01:00:20
What is our portion? What are we to take from this?
We can be used to spread the good news that God wants to have a wedding feast for his son. He's going to have one. We could be like those servants who take the invitations out to those who were not worthy. We can go around to our neighbors, neighbors and our coworkers and and spread that good news. And we need to do it with this thought in mind that it's all about Christ, that God is going to have a full house.
Whether this person accepts or whether they don't.
Because it's all about him. Well, at the end of that parable, there's a man there who has on who did not avail himself of a wedding garment. You know, this king, when he invites these guys in from the highways. I mean, these are homeless people, right? You know, you see them sleeping under the bridges. They don't have a tuxedo. I mean, they don't own a thing.
At the door, he would provide a wedding garment for everyone who would come in and this one man.
He looks at that wedding garment and he says, you know, I think what I've got on is good enough. And he walks right in to a feast that is designed to honor his Son. But by his actions he dishonors him. And there are those who have come professively to the Lord Jesus Christ, refusing to put on the provided garment. They have refused to be washed in the blood of the Lamb.
The king spies him immediately and he goes to him and he says to his servant, to his umm, servants bind him handed foot and cast him into outer darkness. So we're to be taking the gospel out, but we're to remember to that they need to put on their wedding garment. They need to. We can't, we have, we can't preach a bloodless gospel. We have to remember it's the work of Christ that makes us fit for that wedding feast.
Just a side note, the word servant which is used when each of those three times when the servants go out to preach the gospel.
Is different. It's it's the word for slave and it's different than the word servant at the end when the servants bind him hand and foot. We're not going to be used to bind those who reject Christ and cast them into outer darkness. That's going to be for the angels to do. I just see, I think it's beautiful the accuracy of Scripture. You probably knew that we weren't going to be used for that purpose, but I just thought I'd mention it. Matthew 25 is the final similitude of the Kingdom of heaven, and this is the parable.
10 versions and I believe the primary thought that I would like to bring out from this is that as it says in the last verse, verse 13 of the of the parable. Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour we're in. The Son of Man cometh.
That we are to be watching for the Lord's return.
We are to be watching for the Lord's return. Well, in this similitude of the Kingdom, 10 young ladies, virgins, go out to meet the bridegroom.
Again, this is the Kingdom we're talking about. So they're not the bride. We're not talking about the church here, we're talking about the Kingdom. They go to meet the bridegroom, but they aren't the bride. This is the Kingdom. But anyhow, each of them has a light.
And half of them, five of them, did not take any oil with their light. They had some, perhaps some residual oil that was in their lamp or stuff that was in the Wick or whatever, and it was burning, but they had no reserve of oil.
And then they all lay down and fell asleep. Not really a good thing when you're going to meet the bridegroom to fall asleep.
Then a call is heard. Behold, the bridegroom go ye forth to meet him, and they all wake up and then the they find out that some of them had oil and some of them didn't. And then they all go to the, uh, wedding and the bridegroom receives in those who have the oil and he rejects eternally.
Those who do not have the oil well, what does this speak to us of? Well, I believe it has, as I said before, to do with keeping the Lord Jesus Christ before our souls and His soon return.
In the you can say you can see from this parable 4 distinct stages.
In connection with the Kingdom of Heaven during this time of mystery Christendom, 4 distinct stages #1 The 10 virgins with lights go out to meet the bridegroom.
01:05:00
They have a testimony in the early church. They go forth to meet the Lord. They're waiting for the Lord to come. They have a testimony and then time goes on and they sink down and sleep. That's the second stage. The church lost the hope of the Lord's coming. Do you guys know? I, I hope you guys know that for 1700 years or so, the church did not even know.
That the Lord was coming for his Saints.
They knew something of the appearing of Christ, some of them, but you know that for 1700 years, the majority of the 2000 years that the church had lost that hope. That's what we have here. They sunk down and sleep. The call was they're they're their original Commission was to go forth to meet him, be waiting for him, be watching for him. They stopped doing that for 1700 years.
Wow. And then the grace of God.
A call.
Behold the bridegroom going forth to meet him that call.
Sounded out beginning in England in the 1820s and 30s, and sounded out across Europe, across North America, and around the whole world. Behold, the Bridegroom. The Lord is coming again. Go out to meet Him.
Live your lives as if you were coming today, because perhaps today that is the call. Behold the bridegroom. It's not so much an event that our translation says, umm, the old bridegroom cometh, but in critical translations, it's just behold the bridegroom. Go ye forth to meet him while that cry was sounded out.
And the effect was all of those versions arose.
And the whole profession of Christianity woke up.
Those who are real, and even those who are false became aware that the Lord's return was eminent and there was a tremendous, uh, resurgence of gospel work and exhortation to go and buy oil.
It became evident that there were those who were real and those that weren't and it's imperative that we have the oil. Oil in Scripture is the is the type of the Spirit of God or verses to show that.
Well, they're going to buy oil. How sad they're on their way.
They start, but while they're gone, while they leave, the bridegroom comes and they're too late. Finally the bridegroom comes. Well, those four stages, the early church going out to meet the bridegroom. The second stage, they, they all slumbered and slept. The church sank down to the level of this world. The third stage was the recovery of the truth. Behold the bridegroom going out to meet him. And then finally the bridegroom comes.
We're past the third stage. Think of that.
We are past the third stage, the cry. Behold, the bridegroom has already gone out. What does that mean? It means the fourth stage is the only one left. The Lord is coming soon. I I really believe.
Watch therefore, for ye know, neither the day nor the hour, or in the Son of Man cometh in the measure that we have the Lord Jesus Christ before us, and in the measure that we're watching for His soon return. It will have an effect on our lives. It will cause our light to shine again as we go forth to meet Him. Well, we're in the Kingdom of heaven. The King is rejected.
But you and I are called to.
Recognize His absolute authority over our lives. And that's why I want to sing the last two verses of #134 just to call attention to verse four. That coming day when Christ is going to be given His rightful place, when royal robes will invest him, royal splendors will crown his brow. But now, Now before that time.
Christ of God, our souls confess the King and sovereign.
Even now, that's what we're talking about today, owning him as king and sovereign. Even now, let's say the last two verses of 134.
Blind man.
Thy Father's heart is the one that I've done yet and done.
Shall we pray? Loving God and our Father, we just give thanks for this opportunity to have Thy Word open, to have before us the subject of the Kingdom of heaven. We pray that we might be found having that forgiving spirit towards our fellow believers, that we found serving contentedly and with the Spirit of grace for our Lord Jesus Christ. That we might be found preaching the gospel, presenting that invitation to those who are not worthy, that we might be found watching.
Waiting for our Lord's return. May we have these things before us and put them into practice in our lives. In the worthy name of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.
Session #1
Two Miracles & the Crucifixion of Our Lord Jesus
Address—Danny Allan
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Thanks for welcome everyone, uh, to the meeting this evening, especially after a hot day when you're doing lots of running and jumping and playing. I know it's uh, difficult sometimes to stay awake after day like this. Uh, today I can test myself. I did probably too much of that. So, umm, and I also know that, uh, I have six children, as you probably know, and none of them have an attention span that lasts a full 60 minutes, so.
You're probably not going to have 60 minutes, uh, this evening.
But I wonder if we could begin by singing #53 in the appendix. And what I really had in my heart was just the last verse. So if we could sing #53 in the appendix, just the last verse.
Just open with prayer.
Our loving Father and our God, we thank thee tonight for the privilege to have Thy word. We thank Thee that we can open it. And we thank Thee that after a day full of activities that we can have a time of quietness to consider the Lord Jesus, God's well beloved Son and Father, tonight we ask for help. We ask for help for the speaker, and we ask for help for the hearts that would listen.
Let in all things, the Lord Jesus our Savior would be exalted, and if there's any here that do not know the Lord Jesus as Savior our Father, we would just pray.
That through the working of thy Spirit, that they would be drawn to this one, to thy well beloved. We just ask this in his worthy and precious name, the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, Amen.
Well, you can probably tell from the hymn what I had on my heart today. Actually, I had something entirely different until yesterday, a breaking of bread when, uh, it was brought up about the Lord Jesus, uh, or we have peace with God our Father through the Lord Jesus Christ, and we've been reconciled to him through the Lord Jesus.
And so those two thoughts and and conjunction knowing that there was going to be a solar eclipse today.
I would like to begin by turning to Luke chapter 23, and I had in my heart to speak about two miracles that happened in connection with the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus.
Luke, chapter 23.
And verse 44.
And it was about the 6th hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the 9th hour, and the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst.
And if you can turn over, just keep your fingers here because we're going to return there. But if you can turn over to Hebrews chapter one.
Hebrews chapter one and verse one.
God, Who at sundry times, and in divers manners vacant time passed under the Fathers by the Prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by Whom also He made the world, Who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His Person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself.
Purged our sins.
Sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.
I'm not going to read verses 4 through the end of the chapter. It is really the Lord Jesus what it is, uh, it is comparing him to and, and saying how much better he is than the angels. But I'd like to pick up in chapter 2 and verse one. Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the words spoken by angels with steadfast and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompensive reward.
00:05:02
How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?
Maybe we can just turn back to Luke chapter 23 so I had in my heart this evening to speak about.
Two miracles. And I don't know about you, but when I I've I was brought up in a Christian family and I suspect most of the folks here were brought up in a Christian family. And you read stories in the Bible over and over and over again. So often, in fact, that sometimes I think we miss things that are right there in front of our face.
And we'll read a chapter or we'll read verses again for the 526th time. And all of a sudden.
Something new is drawn out of us for us. Uh, drawn out of that verse for us.
And as I was reading and meditating on this, there was two things that struck me in these two verses. And actually these two miracles are recorded in three of the gospels. It's not just Luke. I picked Luke and we're going to turn to the other gospels later on, but I chose it in this, uh, I chose to read it in Luke because they are sequential. Two things. One was, it says about the 6th hour, there was a darkness over all the earth until the 9th hour.
It was the first miracle that wasn't a natural phenomenon. Today we had a solar eclipse, umm, or a partial 1 here I guess, but there wasn't a darkness over the whole earth until the 9th hour. This was a miracle. And if you look at the time in history when this was, I believe the Passover was uh, the first equinox after the first full moon. It's impossible actually to have, uh, an eclipse at that time of the year. But even if it wasn't.
Impossible, let's say.
Stipulate for a moment that it was we were all outside. I was really excited today at 1:00, I thought, OK, I'm going to run down Jonathan Gritton's handing out these solar glasses. I'm going to see the sun pass in front of the the moon pass in front of the sun and I'm going to see the sun being dark. And, and I watched and I watched and I watched. It took an hour and 20 minutes from the when we first saw that little.
Uh, clip on the edge until the sun was mostly covered. An hour and 20 minutes on and an hour and 20 minutes off.
The whole period of time took that long, and here it says the sun was darkened.
From the 6th hour there was a darkness over all the earth until the 9th hour. And so the first miracle I wanted to speak about was this one, the miracle of darkness over the earth.
I don't know whether you have ever.
Experience darkness. I don't I don't know the the the word of God does not see fit to give us the details of whether it was completely pitch black or not. I presume that it was, but I don't want to go ahead of Scripture. But it does say that there was a darkness over all the earth until the 9th hour. And I looked up on my phone this afternoon I was seeing whether there was any other recordings of a darkness over the earth at this time and there was there was a writer in.
Rome that recorded it. There was a writer in Egypt that recorded this same darkness over all the earth.
Uh, until the ninth hour, 3 hours of darkness, and I don't know whether you've experienced pitch blackness that I have.
And it is a very serious and troubling thing, in fact. So I like to go scuba diving sometimes, Umm, and my wife probably smiles at that because I like to scuba dive a lot. UMM and I go cave diving. And when you go cave diving, you can be a mile under the earth and if you turn off your light.
There is pitch blackness. I remember we were doing a dive, uh, in a cave. It was called Vacaha. We were in a little restriction in the person I was with turned off his light. And you know that when someone does that, they want to, to, uh, experience the darkness of The Cave. And so I turned off my light as well.
And it was one time in my life that I can say I was truly, I don't know what the word is, but it spoke to me in a way I, I probably the word was scared. There was nothing wrong, but you couldn't see a single thing. There was a blackness in that cave that I can't emphasize to. You go out on a night like tonight, or you go into your house and you turn off lights. There is still some light.
But it says here that there was.
The and it was about the 6th hour and there was a darkness over all the earth until the 9th hour, pitch blackness. And this was the most unusual time of the day for this to happen. The six hour. If you go, if you look at the Jewish calendar, the hours begin at 6:00 AM and so the 6th hour will be noon. And so from noon until 3:00 there was this.
00:10:24
Darkness over all the earth until the 9th hour. This was a miracle.
Now if you in your mind go through the miracles that the Lord Jesus records for us, the Word of God records for us in the Bible.
Most of the miracles that we read about are to glorify the Lord Jesus. It's the healing of the sick. It's the feeding of the 5000. It's the turning of water into wine. All of these are to give attestation to the person of the Lord Jesus and who he was.
But there was no healing here of anyone sick. Well, there was tremendous salvation that came from this. We're going to get to that. But this miracle, there was not any immediate need of the people around. There was simply a darkness over all the earth, and I believe earth. What I have enjoyed on this particular verse is that there was three reasons for this darkness.
The first was that it was a testimony of God to who this person was that was hanging on the cross.
And we know this, if you go down to verse 47, it said now in the centurion saw what was done, He didn't see the second miracle. It says the veil of the temple was rent in the midst. We're going to speak about that as well. He didn't see that miracle. He was standing there at the cross and what he observed was the darkness falling over the earth for three hours. And what does he say? He says certainly this was a righteous man.
And so one of the things that I want to impress upon you that was the result of this miracle is that it gave an attestation. It was God's seal that this.
Man on the cross is the Son of God.
That is incredible to think about.
That God sent his Son down to this earth to be crucified for me and for you. And if there's any young person or any child in this room that is not accepted the Lord Jesus as their Savior, the Lord Jesus, God sent his Son for you and it was in love. And if this is not testament of that, I do not know what is. You know, how many times have we read?
The verse for God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten son. I am almost certain that every single person in this room tonight can quote that verse to me. You know, I was reading that verse. Forgive me. My family has heard me say this many times, but actually let's turn there. John chapter 3 and verse 16.
Because something.
In this verse stood out to me about 18 months ago that I enjoyed.
That had to do with God sending his Son, God giving his seal on this one.
And so I'd like to begin not with verse 16. I would like to begin just with the first part of verse 10. Jesus answered and said unto him, verse 16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.
Something jumped out at me that I had never thought about, and I don't know, maybe you have thought about it, but the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. This whole Bible, of course, is the word of God.
But the words of the Lord Jesus are often recorded in red, and if you have a red letter edition, you'll see that John chapter 63 and verse 16, the words are in red. So Lord Jesus himself spoke those words. And why did this stand out to me in a way that it never had before? It was the Lord Jesus who said this. He said, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. He spoke those words to those around him.
And who would know the father more than the Son?
I've used this example before, but if Jake said Jake is my son, he's sitting here. If he said to you my father loves my mother so much that and he would continue on with that statement, that would mean a whole lot more than if someone else in the room was to say Danny loves Heidi so much that because who would know the heart of the father more than the son who is with him from all eternity?
00:15:00
And why was it that John 316 was at the very beginning of the ministry of the Lord Jesus? It was almost like he couldn't wait to tell people I came down. God loved you so much that he sent me to die for you.
And so this was God's testament, the Lord Jesus.
Himself in uh, chapter 3 and verse 16, he said, God so loved the world that he sent me. And now on the cross of Calvary in three hours of darkness, God gives testament that this is indeed my only begotten son. And so I would submit to you that the first reason for that darkness perhaps is to give glory to this one on the cross. Certainly this was a righteous man.
And so I enjoyed another thought as to why there was darkness over all the land and for three hours. And that was.
That God had to cover or hide from the eyes of man what was going to happen to the Lord Jesus that it was.
So significant that man's eyes could not be witnessed to what was to happen in those three hours of darkness. And you know, it's astonishing to me if you read this chapter, we've read it all many, many times. If you read until this point, there it is extremely detailed. There's not many accounts in the Bible that are as detailed as the hours leading up to these three hours.
And afterwards it is extremely detailed as well.
But for three hours.
There is nothing said about that time. Nothing.
At the end of it, the Lord Jesus Christ with a loud voice we know, and he says, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
But we don't read of anything during those three hours. Now, if you had three hours of darkness and you were an author and you were umm.
The historian at that time, my father, would be disappointed in me.
Josephus, umm Josephus wrote umm, extensively for, for the Romans, the history that occurred. And if that was to happen to Josephus, if that was to happen to almost anyone, if something of that magnitude happened, darkness over all the land for three hours, you would think that there'd be something that they would write about. And yet in Matthew and in Mark and in Luke, we read of nothing except that from the.
Hour. There was a darkness over all the earth until the 9th hour.
I believe that we need to tread carefully.
In trying to say what actually happened during those three hours, I don't know what did, but I do know the words of the Lord Jesus. In John chapter 18 He said the cup which my Father hath given me to drink.
Shall I not drink it? And we read over and over in the Old Testament of the waves and the billows that passed over the Lord Jesus. But we are never given witness in these verses to that. What we are given witness to is His words at the end of it. Not in this book, not in Luke. Let's turn back to Matthew. We'll turn there.
And I want to make a distinction between what we read in Matthew and what we read in the Gospel of Luke as well. Matthew chapter 27.
And verse 45, this is almost an identical account as we have in Mark.
But in Matthew chapter 27 and verse 45 it says now from the 6th hour there was darkness over all the land until the 9th hour.
And about the 9th hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani, that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Some of them that stood there when they heard that said, This man call us for Elias. And straightway one of them ran and took a sponge and filled it with vinegar and put it on a Reed, and gave him to drink. The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him. Jesus when he had cried again with a loud voice.
Sealed it up the ghost and the veil of the temple was rent and twain from the top to the bottom, and the earth dig quake and the rocks rent and it continues on. There is a difference in Matthew and Mark from the Gospel of Luke. I don't know whether you've ever noticed that. I had hadn't noticed that until I actually was looking at that this this week in Matthew and Mark it says that from the 6th hour until the 9th hour there was this darkness and the Lord cries.
00:20:03
Uh, at the end of it, Eli, Eli Lama Sabachthani.
And it goes on. And after all of that occurs and we know the seven things of the Lord Jesus on the cross, it's not my intent to get into them.
There is my God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? I thirst. Umm, there is, uh.
The file and and finally Father into thy hands. Oh sorry, it is finished is the next one. We get that in John and then we get the one that we have in Luke, which is father into thy hands. I commend my spirit. Now here's the distinction between the two in Luke chapter 23. It says the sun was darkened in the veil of the temple was rent in the midst and when Jesus had cried with a loud voice he he said father into thy hands I command my spirit and having said thus, he gave up the ghost. It was dark.
The veil of the temple was rend and then he gave up the ghost. In Matthew and Mark, that is not the order that we have and I do not believe this is a mistake because there are no mistakes in the Word of God. In Matthew and Mark there is 3 hours of darkness. The Lord Jesus cries out, Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani, It doesn't have all of the sayings. It is, it is finished. Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. Then he gives up the ghost, and after that.
Matthew in verse 51 and the same is true in Mark. It says, and behold, the veil of the temple was rent and twain from the top to the bottom.
It speaks of the veil being rent after He dies in Matthew and Mark, but yet it speaks of it before he dies in Luke. And that was one of the things that I wanted to speak about because this darkness that covered all the land for three hours, I believe, is when Jesus bore the judgment for my sins. And I trust that He bore the sins for every person in this room.
I also believe, and I would hesitate to ever say this except that it says it in Corinthians. It says that he was made sin, and I don't.
Even know really.
What that means when I get to heaven, when we get to heaven, I'm sure we will understand in a greater way. But it says that he was made sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. And I believe that that happened in those three hours of darkness.
And so in Luke 23, when it says there was the sun was darkened, it says there from the 6th hour there was darkness over all the earth until the 9th hour and the sun was darkened. And immediately after that time it says and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst. So it brings us to the second miracle. And I believe that these two things are connected because neither of these miracles was feeding a 5000 or healing someone who is blind or someone who is sick or turning water to wine.
This was another miracle that gave Testament God speaks through miracles.
And if he speaks through miracles, it is important that each one of us in this room, myself more than anyone, listen to what it is when He speaks.
He wasn't speaking with words. There was a darkness for three hours, but I believe he was Speaking of judgment. Sorry, that was the third thing I wanted to bring out in connection with the darkness. Darkness has to do with judgment. If you turn back and and time will prevent us from going into detail. But if you turn back to Exodus chapter 10, the very last plague, and I also believe that that is important before the first born was playing was a plague of darkness.
So deep it says, that it could be felt. God spoke to those not only who are around that cross, but all over the world in that darkness. But then he spoke a second time, I believe, after those three hours of darkness, when the veil of the temple was rend, it says in the midst. And in the other gospels, in Matthew and Mark, it says from the top to the bottom.
Now, this wasn't a veil.
Like you have in your house, you probably have curtains in your house. Do you have curtains in your house?
Yes, No, you don't. We have curtains in our house and they're not very thick. If you were pretty well, you'd have to be pretty strong, I suppose, but you could probably go and tear them. They were, they're not they're they're cloth, they're material. And if you would scissors certainly to start it, you could probably rip that curtain in in two. But it's been written that the the veil in the temple was the thickness of a man's hand. This was not just a little cloth separating the holy place.
00:25:01
In the Holy of Holies, this was a veil that separated.
The well, it did separate the holy place from the Holy of Holies, but it was a substantial veil between those two places. It was beautiful. And umm, I, I lived in Israel for a while back in 2007 and many of the people that I worked with were Orthodox Jews. And, and one of them was telling me about the temple. And he said the veil was so thick. He was talking about the, the Herodian Temple, which I guess would be the third temple, but he said.
It was so thick that it took 300 people to hang it. Now I don't know whether that was true or not, but he said that's what they learn in their orthodoxy in, in Judaism at least, that it was so heavy that it took 300 men to hang it. It was a thick, thick veil. Immediately after it says in Luke, the sun was darkened. It says the veil of the temple was rent in the midst. Now we don't have to guess.
What it was that God was trying to say, because it tells us explicitly in Hebrews chapter 10 that veil was what separated man from God through the whole Old Testament.
If you went near God, we know the stories, but if you as it reached out his hands afraid to keep the Tabernacle on the on the cart and he was instantly smitten. The Israelites when they were coming out of the land of Egypt and they were in the desert. If they approached the mountain that God was on the top of they would be struck dead. They could not approach a holy God.
God Himself, I believe, spoke in the rending of that veil from the top to the bottom. We know two things. That was rent in the midst, I believe in the middle, and it was rent from the top to the bottom. It was not done by a man, and I believe that in Luke chapter 23 we have the veil being rent immediately after.
The darkness because it was God's satisfaction with the work.
That the Lord Jesus completed on the cross. If we turn to Isaiah 53. Let's just turn there for a minute. We know these verses very well.
But in Isaiah 53 it says in verse 11 he shall see of the travail of his soul.
And shall be satisfied. I believe that speaking to those hours of darkness, God was satisfied with what the Lord Jesus had done.
And that veil was rent so that we could approach to a holy God through the blood of the Lord Jesus, through the work of the Lord Jesus.
So this is the gospel, and every single person in this room I trust knows and accepts this gospel.
God spoke in the darkness and he spoke in the rent veil, and He spoke through His Son. And so now I would like to turn over to Hebrews chapter one.
Now I have enjoyed this often.
But now for the latter half of the meeting, I said I wasn't going to speak for an hour. The next 20 minutes I would like to speak about what was accomplished on that cross, and I would like to speak to believers rather than those that are lost. God is with sundry times, verse one in divers manners, speaking time passed under the fathers, by the prophets, half in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, verse three, who being the brightness of his glory and the express.
Image of his person. God speaks to us by his Son. He spoke to us on the cross saying this is my son. Darkness over the entire earth. Remember when the the dove came out of the the sky?
The Spirit of God came down and landed on the on the Lord Jesus, and he said, this is my beloved Son and whom I am well pleased. There was only a certain number there, but God spoke to the whole earth when there was darkness.
When that veil was rent in twain, it wasn't speaking perhaps to the whole earth in that they didn't. They might not have seen it, but He spoke to everyone and He is speaking. And it is a responsibility that we have to listen to what it is that God would say to us. The book of Hebrews.
Was written not to the lost, but to those that were Hebrews or Jews who were Christians, I believe. And so when God speaks, when, when we believe, it's Paul, I, I, I believe that wrote the book of Hebrews, but it says when he has in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, he has spoken to you and to me he hasn't.
00:30:18
Just written these verses to sit on a shelf and get dusty. He wants to have.
Communication and to speak with us.
And you know, as young people person growing up.
I have to confess that I didn't have many conversations with the Lord Jesus.
Even though I knew that he had rent the veil and I had access, free and unfettered access, He's still a holy God and we come.
Umm, with reverence into his presence to speak with him. But we have free access to the God of this universe, and yet we spend our time working, playing.
Uh, following the NFL scores if you're in the US, following NHL scores if you're in Canada. We care about things that are.
So short.
In the history of time, but yet it says here that God is speaking unto us by his Son. Are we listening? So what is it that he is speaking to us in saying? Now the reason why I jumped over from Hebrews one versus one to three over to Hebrews 2 is I believe that it really follows on between the two that Hebrews 2 is really a continuation.
Of the manifestation of the Son of God in the Lord Jesus, who being the brightness of His glory, we could turn back to the transfiguration.
Of the Lord Jesus that said his faith. Shawn is the Son, it says in Matthew. And if you read of Paul's account on the road to Damascus, it says it's shown above the brightness of the sun. The Son of God came down to die, to have that darkness fall over us, to speak to us, and how often.
And I'm speaking to myself as much as to the young people here. Do we listen to him?
Let's continue on in chapter 2. Therefore, we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard. What is it that we've heard? It's the message. It is the person of the Lord Jesus.
Verse three. How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?
So my exercise, one of my exercises in reading this was that we often consider those events on the cross of God speaking to us.
As the salvation of being saved. And I trust that everyone here has forgiveness of sins. But I do not believe in verse three that the greatness of this salvation, the greatness of the salvation in those three hours of darkness or the salvation in the rending of the veil had to do with our sins, just with our sins being washed away. If we turn to 2nd Corinthians chapter one, actually let's turn there, Second Corinthians chapter one.
Keep your fingers here. I'd like to come back to Hebrews, but Second Corinthians chapter one and verse.
Ten who delivered us this is Speaking of God from so great a death, that of course is the salvation from our sins and doth deliver in whom we trust that He will yet deliver us. 3 deliverances there, the deliverance from our sins, the current deliverance that we have each day, and the future deliverance that we will have.
Well, God is speaking to you and I and I believe that in the eclipse that we have today.
That God is still speaking to us.
And he wants to have that conversation. He wants us to recognize the greatness of the salvation that was accomplished on the cross. Because it wasn't just.
Our sins being washed away in the blood of the Lord Jesus. Yes that is true, but it was also the deliverance that we have.
Each day from the power of Satan, we read yesterday morning in Colossians chapter one that we've been delivered from the power of Satan and from the power of this world. We are delivered each and every day. How much do we appreciate that in the greatness of the salvation, the Lord Jesus is our great high priest. We have that in the question and answer this morning today for us.
The greatness of that salvation is not limited.
To just God speaking to us and saying, OK, you're saved and it's done. In fact, I don't know.
Of anyone in the New Testament, and I'll probably be corrected after the meeting on this, but who gave a personal testimony and said that I was saved and done and said that in a past tense. Now I know it says believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, but I believe that we are being saved every day and we don't even realize it.
00:35:22
In Romans, uh, sorry, it's not Romans chapter one. Well, it is Romans chapter one. I I'm horrible at quoting verses, but I I was reading through the Bible this.
Probably makes me a uh.
Bad person. I don't know, I, I wanted to read through the Bible, not just in King James Version. So I've been reading through it in New King James Version and NASB and other translations and I was struck in umm, in other translations about the verse. Uh, where is it here? Uh, it is.
The cross is foolishness. Umm.
The preaching lacrosse verse 16 No, that's not.
I can't put my finger on it. I apologize.
1St Corinthians 1. Thank you.
In First Corinthians chapter one, yes, verse 18 for the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness unto us which are saved. And I was struck that in numerous translations it says those that are being saved, it is the power of God. And so one thing that I want to emphasize to you as believers is that we are being saved each and every day and you may not even realize it.
You know.
I said I like the scuba dive and I dive sometimes with something called a rebreather. Umm and a rebreather is a different kind of system. It, it circulates air rather than exhaling air. So and it scrubs out the carbon dioxide that you exhale. And so in normal scuba diving, you would jump in the water and you'd breathe and you'd exhale and you're saved by the fact that you have air in your tank.
And having air in your tank is a you need to have air in your tank. It's a very good thing where you don't come up and but if you check beforehand that you have air in your tank, you are saved by virtue of the fact that you have sufficient gas in your tank to breathe. But in a rebreather, it's a little bit different. You jump in the water.
And it continuously circulates through that rebreather. And as you exhale, it circulates it around and you breathe it in again. And so where you are being saved through that whole dive and if for any moment it stops working.
Then you will instantly die. In fact, this is not instantly, but within within a minute, probably you would black out. In fact, this is probably not the story to tell, but two years ago I was 100 miles out on the ocean diving a wreck, the Andrea Doria umm, and I jumped in the water and almost everyone on that diving that wreck was diving rebreather. It's a very deep, uh, wreck and uh.
I jumped in with my with my buddy and we jumped in and I passed someone on the line who was decompressing.
He was 20 feet from the surface. He'd he'd done at least an hour dive because he was on his decompression. He was on the last stop. I swim by him. I give him the OK, he gives me the OK back and I keep going on the dive. I come back up out of the water and you know what the first thing I said, Well, the first thing I put my head out of the water and I see a Coast Guard plane flying over the boat. Now when you're 100 miles out to the in the ocean and you see a Coast Guard plane fly over the boat at 50 feet off the water.
It's not a pleasant feeling.
And he was on a rebreather.
That man was never found, but his rebreather stopped, we believe. We don't know for certain, but it stopped working.
He was dependent on a system to keep him alive. You are dependent on a system to keep you alive, and that is the Lord Jesus, God, in whose hands thy breath is. But it's not just our lives. It is the daily provision that we have deliverance from this world that is included here in the greatness of this salvation. Also included in the greatness of this salvation is the hope that we have of being delivered.
From all the problems around us. And you know what? I'm afraid that I do too often.
And I look around and I hope it's not true of the people in this room, but it says, how shall we escape if we neglect? It doesn't say if we reject. It says if we neglect. You know, neglecting is not rejecting. It's simply putting it off. Oh, you know, I'll, I'll do it later.
00:40:00
And I'm afraid that many times in my life I get busy with work, I get busy with the things around me. I have six children, they keep me busy. I get caught up in that. And I neglect the greatness of the salvation, not the salvation of sins, the salvation that I have each day, the salvation that I look forward to. Christ the Lord Jesus is our salvation. David says in Psalms chapter 27, he says the Lord is my life and my salvation.
If we neglect the Lord Jesus in our daily lives. If I neglect the Lord Jesus in our daily lives.
Then I will not.
Escape One other aspect of neglect that I'd like to touch on.
And this has to do with our responsibility. It brings dishonor, I believe, when we neglect the grace of God that is poured out on us.
I'm a parent and I have six children that you've probably seen running around without shoes on and dirty and they're screaming in the line for food. And when they behave in that way, when they're running around with dirty feet and dirty shirts and and things, it doesn't reflect on my children. They're three years old. That's what they do. They play in the dirt. You know what that reflects on?
And I know this because I think about it often. It reflects on me as a parent when my children who I provided for or I should be providing for, are neglecting the provisions that I have given. And so I believe there is a responsibility associated with the salvation that the Lord Jesus provides as well. He gives us all things richly to enjoy. My God shall supply all your need. And so when we go around.
Saying oh I'm so discouraged or my life is miserable or I don't know what to do about this.
We are neglecting, I believe, that it can bring dishonor on the Lord when we are not turning to Him for the salvation that He offers every single day.
For every single decision that we have to make when we neglect that.
And now I want to speak on the first part of this verse. I went backwards because the salvation on the cross in that darkness, and in the rending of the veil in God speaking to us by his Son, If we neglect that, it says, how shall we escape?
Now this verse is often given in the Gospel, but it was not written.
To unbelievers it was written to Christians who were umm, coming out of Judaism, who were Hebrews.
And so if they were believers, how could it be that it would say, how shall we escape? Does that mean you can be saved and lost again? No. What was it that they were escaping from? And this is the most solemn thing about this verse, I believe at all entirely is what was it that they were escaping from? They were escaping from Judaism.
They were escaping from traditions and what I would like to submit to you and to myself and to every person in this room.
Is that when we neglect the person of the Lord Jesus if we don't wake up every morning and want to speak to him? Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?
We don't have a conversation with him in the same way that we have with.
The people who are sitting next to us in the room, then we are neglecting the greatness of our salvation. And if we neglect that, I do not, I believe that Christianity or I don't want to say Christianity, that we will not escape and I don't. I'm probably going to get in trouble for saying this, so I'm sorry in advance.
But we will not escape the meeting just being a religion. It's just something that you do. You go to meeting on Thursday because that's what you're supposed to do. You got a meeting on Lord's Day morning to break bread because that's what you're supposed to do. And that is just tradition.
And I don't want to belittle tradition. Tradition is important, but we will not escape that in our lives.
If we neglect the person of the Lord Jesus, the Lord is my light in my salvation. And so on that cross God sends his Son. For God so loved the world that he sent me 3 hours of darkness. God speaks. I'm going to rend the veil to give you access, and we care about our job. Now I'm not saying that's not important.
But there is nothing more real.
There is nothing more important in your life than the greatness of the salvation, not just in the salvation from sins, but the salvation that we have each day in the relationship with the Lord Jesus and the salvation, the hope that we have of being taken to heaven. You know, I was married 15 years ago, and what would you think of me if I went? Heidi's going to shoot me afterwards for all these stories.
00:45:24
But what would you think of me if I went up and said my vows and I said, you know, I.
We'll love this woman for the rest of my life. And then I walked away and that was it. It was a one time thing. Marriage was one and done. And that is how we often treat salvation. It's we're saved, we're good. But that will not give us the escape from the traditions that function through all Judaism. And so how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? Let's turn back and read one more time.
In Hebrews one and verse 3.
His Son, who, being the brightness of His glory in the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down.
On the right hand of the Majesty on High, let's just commend ourselves.
Our loving Father and our God.
We thank thee for the reminder today.
Of the greatness of thy salvation when the sun was hidden.
We think in the small measure that we can of that cup which the Lord Jesus emptied on that cross of Calvary, when He became our life and our salvation, and that veil being rent to give us access. Our Father to Thee. We pray that each one here, if they are not saved, that they would recognize.
The unlimited love of a Heavenly Father. We pray for those of us that are believers and have.
Enjoy this, that it would not just be something that happened once, but our Father that we would recognize the relationship that we've been brought into with the Son of God who gave himself for us. We pray that this wouldn't just be words that we speak at meeting, but it would be evident in our lives each and every day. Until we hear that show and we're called home to be with our Savior for all eternity, we just ask this.
In his alone worthy.
And his precious name, the name of thy Son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Session #2
Gideon's Two Sons
Address—Stephen Rule
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Let's let's begin this evening with just the first stanza, a #150. This is the first stance of a #150.
Add on my heart earlier today.
And uh, brother happened to mention it during the day and said we normally stand for this one. So I guess we'll do the normal just stand, we'll sing the first stands only of #150.
Umm, I'm doing a lot. I'm going to have a while.
Let's pray.
Your Lord Jesus, we just do ask. And, uh, minutes do we have together here now that we would each have a clearer sense of the greatness and, uh, deeper desire, Lord Jesus, to live in a way that's pleasing to thee. We do ask it. 9:00 AM Martesa, Amen.
Turn with me for just a phrase from Revelation 5.
Revelation chapter 5. Just a phrase from toward the beginning of verse 12.
Worthy. It's a lamb that was slain.
I don't mean to mislead you by the opening hymn and the opening verse. I want to explain why we sang that to him for a moment and why this phrase from the verse when I woke up this morning. It's been bothering me the last few days that there was something missing from the message I believe the Lord's put on my heart and the first thought I had this morning when my alarm went off. Was this phrase from this verse worthy?
Is the Lamb that was slain. I think that's the missing piece of context for the message of the Lord's laid on my heart this evening to share with each one of you.
And it's a word of warning and a word of warning. The word of warning comes first. And I felt that that particular verse sets the proper context for a word of warning that is necessary for my own soul and I believe, necessary for various ones here. I have no idea who the examples I wish to give this evening are personal ones, but the word of warning.
I believe is one for perhaps many that are here.
But we wanna end on that note. There's a word of warming as well. The proper attitude. So would you turn with me to the message that's on my heart and judges Chapter 8?
At least we'll begin there.
With just two verses.
Such as chapter 8 and verse 22. This is after Gideon's wonderful victory over Midian the Lord. It works. And Gideon's heart raised him up as his deliverer for his people. He worked. He brought out his faith. He'd acted in faith in the power of God. There'd been a wonderful deliverance for Israel.
And this follows on verse 22 of chapter 8 of Judges.
Then the men of Israel said unto Gideon, Rule thou over us, both, thou and thy son, and thy son, son also, for thou hast delivered us from the hand of Midian. And Gideon said unto them, I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you. The Lord shall rule.
Over you wonderful statement, isn't it the Lord?
Shall rule over you. Beautiful expression and a message on my heart is there's nothing wrong with that expression. It's a good one. The Lord shall rule over you.
00:05:15
In fact, got a little stained when I was working with it. Most of you won't be able to read it, but somebody in the front row read that for us, OK?
The Lord shall rule. Beautiful statement, and I put a nice perfume in here. I'd like somebody who considers himself an expert on that to identify it for us. The Lord shall rule anybody here with a decent nose and one of the front couple rows that wants to take a guess what kind of perfume we've got in here? OK, so Savannah, see if you can tell us.
Garlic.
You got it, garlic.
Nothing wrong with the words. There's a problem with the content.
And.
That's my burden. There's nothing wrong with the words that Gideon had. There was a problem with the content for a period of time in his life. Look down to one verse, just a little bit further down, and it says in verse 31, uh, Speaking of, well, maybe I read from 29 for the context. And Jerebell, the son of Joash, that's Gideon went and dwelt in his own house and Gideon had three score.
And ten sons of his body begotten, for he had many wives, and is concubine that was in Shechem. She also bare him a son, whose name he called Abimelech.
You can tell me what abimelech means.
My father is King Abimelech, my father is king, said He said I'm not your king, my son's not your king. My son's son is not your king, but he names this one of his sons. My father is king. I'd like to suggest and at least use it in the application this evening as a representation of a spirit or an attitude that we can have that will affect our personal life, our family life and the assembly life.
And whatever sphere we act in this spirit, it's going to come out as an odor in our life, and it's not a pretty one. My father is king. The words written on the cover. The Lord shall rule. The words hidden in the heart. My father is king.
You know, in Ephesians 5 it gives, I'm sorry, in Ephesians chapter 6, we're given the whole armor of God and it's to protect us against what? Many of you probably have memorized the verses all from the beginning. It's to protect us from what?
So that's a while of the devil, isn't it? The sneaky craftiness of the devil. So I want to give you 2 examples. These are very personal. They directly relate to myself. They're not intended to point a finger at anyone here, but I would ask that you would consider, when you hear them, the application through your own personal life.
Umm, some of you have heard this first example earlier.
But when I was in college, I had a set of things I, I thought and started into training in physics. And then my somewhere in my first year, I wanted to decided the Lord wanted me to become a physics teacher. And one of the reasons for becoming a teacher, as I told the Lord, was that it was a portable skill. Lord could take me anywhere in the world with that skill and.
So if the Lord wanted me to be a missionary someday, then he could use me in that way.
Somewhere further down the road we felt, my wife and I felt the Lord had wanted us for a particular reason and the country of Ecuador, and we lived there for six years toward the end of the time.
There in the fall of 2004, over the Christmas break there, we really had wondering whether the Lord wanted us somewhere else, and so we set aside some time to pray on a Saturday during the Christmas break that I got from school.
And over the course of that, sometimes in major decisions in our life, it's been our habit to read through a book of the Word of God and watch for the Lord's direction in it and read it again if there's a need to read it again, and so on. I'm not suggesting some magical way to know the Lord's mind. That's something the Lord's used in my own life. The Lord gave us the book of Acts to read through, and I was reading through the book of Acts became very clear to me what the Lord's direction was.
00:10:17
When we got to the 10th and 11Th chapter, but I didn't want to hear it.
I did not want the direction the Lord had for me in that 10th or 11Th chapter. So I kept reading to the end of the book, got to the end of the book, was out of time for the Saturday, out of time meditating, thinking through it as you read. Doesn't take that long to read the book of Acts. The Lord say there's other activities, spent more time in the afternoon. I already knew what the Lord's answer was. I didn't want the Lord's answer.
Came to Monday, had Monday off from school, spent time meditating and reading, and finally somewhere during the day.
I threw in the towel and I accepted with Gideon like fleeces the Lord's mind in the matter, and the Lord more than fully, precisely and exactly from Acts 10 and 11 fulfilled to the letter what he laid on my heart, and I ended up a Bible truth publishers. Now I'm ready for the key point.
I would have told you. I would have looked you in the eye and I would have been honest, fully honest that.
I just wanted the Lord's will, and in fact, I had a verse for it. He that put his hand to the plow. Turning back is not worthy of me. I probably misquoted that, but that's the sense of the verse. And the Lord had given a work and I was turning back from that work. So, Lord, you can't take me away from where I am.
We can take scriptures and use them as fig leaves to cover self will. We can take the very word of God and use it in a way to argue with the Lord. And that's what I did after starting work at Bible Truth Publishers. It was probably 9 or 10 months into working there.
Sitting alone in my office feeling 100% incompetent for what I was doing.
Having left a profession that I've done for 14 years and absolutely enjoyed, the Lord brought home to me at least a route that had made me kick against the ****** and refuse what He was directing for multiple days in perhaps some period of time prior to that. And that was that. I loved the profession that I was in. I love teaching. I enjoyed it. It was something that I got up in the morning and creativity. I enjoyed interacting with the students. I like working with them and all of that.
And it was buried in my heart and I didn't know it was there. I did not know it was there. I would have looked you in the eye and said that is not the reason. I'm totally open to what the Lord has, but it would not have been true. And I would suggest that that abimelech attitude was in my heart because what I wanted I was twisting the circumstances around me to get.
And that could do it as the.
Husband in the home with no objection, no scriptural reason why there was anything wrong with that profession or the way it was being carried out or anything like that. There could be the using of it as an excuse for what was really self will. And I would suggest to you that that Abimelech attitude may not be some of you sitting here listening, may not be the voice of the Spirit of God to you in the thing, but there may be that attitude.
That hides what's really going on in the heart. We give you another, shorter example to make the point rather.
Spend a little bit of time, you know, first I said we begin with warning and finish with warming. The pattern in the Word of God, as I understand it, is to refuse the evil and then choose the good. So I don't want to belabor the negative side. I want to begin with a sense of who it is that we need to yield to the worthy one, the Lamb of God. But I want to illustrate again, so the point goes home clearly, I'm not talking about if you're going on with something that's known sin.
That's an obvious thing.
That, the word of God clearly says, is wrong.
That's not what I'm talking about here. If someone is going on with.
Many things drunk in this *********** etcetera, they're clearly condemned in the word of God. I'm not really addressing that this evening. It's not the burden on my heart at least. It's rather the attitude of the heart that takes self and twist the circumstances around to make self the center.
00:15:01
The time perhaps?
I don't know, 7-8 years ago?
When my son was quite a bit younger and was active and wanted to uh.
Sorry, Paul. One thing he asked me was I not tell stories about him.
This one was only in the last half hour I felt I should, so I apologize ahead, Paul.
Love to play, do stuff and I like to read.
So he won the wrestle to get down on the floor and wrestle. And so I'd wrestle about 5 minutes kind of trying to hide it a little bit. I was out of breath and uh, there's no good reason for that. I said OK, now that's, that's enough. I'm tired this evening. Let me read you a story.
And at some point after several weeks or months of this.
I realized that, you know, this is a pattern here. Something's wrong. There's a pattern here and something's wrong. Lord used it to help me pause and reflect and realize that I lacked complete self-discipline. My lifestyle had changed and moving from Ecuador to the United States and I changed from I can give you all kinds of natural reasons why I was significantly.
Lacking in self-discipline and it was affecting my family.
So.
There was need for repentance again and.
Moving forward, better self-discipline so that I could wrestle with Paul now.
He wouldn't ask me to do that.
The point I wanna make is this, it's really easy to have an outside that says the right thing, that's perfectly legitimate and have an inside that has an attitude that's wrong, that's cover for self will. And if you're a father in the home, it's going to affect your wife and your children. If you're a father or have a place of leadership in the assembly, it's going to affect the assembly.
If you're an individual, you're a young person, you don't have the family in the home yet. It'll affect your personal life. But the important thing to recognize is God gives us the details here with Gideon and then in the next chapter, let's turn to it. It gives us the results. I want to read the 1St 5 verses of the next chapter.
Most of them.
First one and Abimelech the son of Jerobe, went to Shechem unto his mother's brethren, and communed with them and with all the family of the House of his mother's father, saying, Speak, I pray you, in the ears of all the men of Shechem, whether it be better, whether it's better for you, either that all the sons of Jerobe, which are three score and 10 persons, reign over you, or that one reign over you. Remember also.
That I'm your bone and your flesh. His mother's brethren spake of him in the ears of all the men of Shechem. All these words.
And their hearts inclined to follow Abimelech, for they said He is our brother. They gave him three score and 10 pieces of silver out of the House of Bail Beerus, wherewith Abimelech hired vain and light persons, which followed him. And he went unto his father's house at Oprah, and slew his brethren, the sons of Jerobeal being 3 score and 10 persons upon one stone. Let's stop there.
What was his appeal for the men of Shechem? This is Abimelech.
That at least in figure or an application I would like to apply My father is king as an attitude that Gideon had in his life at the time when Abimelech was born and apparently through some period of time and it affected this child and he brings an attitude with him and verse two and it says weather is better for you.
Either and he goes on.
He sets before them a motive of what's best for you. What's the best way for you?
Where's God in this calculation? It's not there. It begins with Himself and looks for what's good for Him, and then he offers to the men of Shechem that same motive. Now down to verse 15. This is in the parable that Joseph is speaking. It gets to the point where he's going to speak about.
We'll come to the beautiful part we're skipping over later, but he comes down and he says in verse 15.
00:20:02
The brambles said unto the trees, If in truth you might make king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow, and if not, let fire come out of the Bramble and devour the Cedars of Lebanon.
How many of you have gone on a hot day and looked for shade and the shade of a BlackBerry Bush?
Or Bramble.
Fantastic shade, right?
First class.
You can sit down in the shade of a farm and there's some shade there, right?
And then the sun shifts a little bit and you got to move over a little bit. The parts that got hot is now in the shade again.
And the part that was in the shade is now in the sun. And in a little bit you're uncomfortable and you move again and again and again, and you never are going to be settled.
That's the world's wisdom. That's the attitude of Abimelech wisdom. When things are twisted around self and when we're resting in the shadow of what the world offers, you get a little bit of comfort for a little while that works out a little bit better, and then something else.
Is out of whack. So you shift over a little bit and find a little bit more wisdom from the world and a little bit more wisdom from.
Abimelech attitude, my father's king, something here for self. What's better for you? And now it's a little more comfortable.
So circumstances change a little bit and you're always on the move. Get settled. Beautiful, fantastic. It's great.
Almost let me shift again.
That's the message that Jotham brought to Abimelech. Now I'm going to assume, in the interest of time, that most here know the story, so I'm going to tell it very, very quickly. Abimelech goes out, There's a process he made. There's a prophecy, verse 20. Maybe I should read just verse 20. But if not, let fire come out from Abimelech and devour the Menischechem.
And the House of Millow and that fire come out from the men of Shechem.
And from the House of Millow and Devour Abimelech, and the prophet Jotham runs away.
There it is. There's the end of the Abimelech attitude. My father is king. It's all about me. Not all about me on the surface, but all about me under the surface.
And so the end of it is there's the prophecy. It's going to be mutual self destruction. Abimelech, with your attitude, the men of Shechem who would say what's best for us, what's in it for us? And it's going to be mutual and total destruction for both sides.
And that's how it works out. Go through the chapter and there's an evil spirit that comes along, etcetera. We won't go through all of that, but I do want to note one thing before we turn to the positive side. That's on my heart and that's toward the bottom. And umm.
See if I can find the verse here toward the end of the chapter.
Vevolek goes to Phoebez. He's breaking his vengeance on those that have turned on him. And it says verse 51, Judges 9, Verse 51. But there was a strong tower within the city, and thither fled all the men and women, and all they of the city, and shut it to them, and got them up to the top of the tower. And Abimelech came under the tower and fought against it, and went hard onto the door of the tower to burn it with fire, and a certain woman.
Got a piece of the millstone upon a Vivek's head.
And all to break his skull. And he called hastily unto the young man, his armor bearer, and said unto him, Draw thy sword, and slay me That night that men say not of me. A woman slew him. This young man thrust him through, and he died.
Draw thy sword and slay me, that men say not of me. A woman slew him.
You remember when this gets quoted?
You remember when this incident happened one more time in the Word of God? It's incredible, really the the precision of it is amazing. This comes up one more time.
00:25:00
When Joab is sending his message back to David.
He sends a little message about Abimelech.
And he sends that message back. And it's pretty obvious from the passage in Second Samuel 11 That it was standard operating practice in the War College of Israel, the West Point of the Kingdom of Israel, to recount this story of Abimelech. When you're attacking a city, you don't go up to the wall, because when you do, no word about the sword of the young man, exactly what Abimelech didn't want to happen.
Remember that woman that dropped a piece of the millstone on Abimelech's head? Don't do it.
Because it'll happen to you.
What does Abimelech get from his selfish attitude? Absolutely nothing.
But there's more. More in the beauty of Scripture. You know, David.
What was his sin that Nathan reproved him for?
But Nathan approved him for adultery.
So Nathan approved reprove him for murder.
No.
It reproved him for an abuse of power.
A lack of care for those little sheep that weren't as care. You know where that spirit is, The attitude of Abimelech. You know what the Spirit of God brings to David, who had the history could have turned to. He brings to him this story right here, that attitude that had been buried in his heart. And you can trace it out. It's not my purpose tonight to do it. You can go back and look, trace the thread all the way back, back past.
In Samuel 11, past the end of the prior chapter, all the way back to the when he became king at the beginning, and you'll see that there was that spirit of beginning to be a Canaanite king.
The twisted stuff around what he wanted and not what the sheep that were under his care, what God wanted them to have. If you have the care of a home, if you have care in the assembly, if you have care for friends that you have a spiritual understanding and care for, it has to be carried out.
In the spirit not of Abimelech, but of the other son of Gideon.
I skipped the good part. I wanted to come to that last. I wanted to put the warning behind us.
But if there's something the Lord lays on your conscience, then the warning can stay there. But I want to move to the positive side of the message I skipped. There were seventy sons of Gideon, but two were named.
We spent the first half of the meeting tonight on Abimelech. My father is king. Who's the other son?
I skipped them.
And what does Joseph mean?
What does Jotham mean?
The Lord is perfect.
The Lord is perfect.
I'd like to spend the rest of our time together on that attitude. But before we step into it, if your conscience is convicted about something, or if you look back across your life, I want you to notice one more thing before we step into the Jotham's side of what Lord's laid on my heart this evening.
Jotham the Lord is perfect. Comes where? In the 70 person birth order? 71 if you want to count Abimelech. I don't think he's in the list of the 70. Where does Joseph come in that birth order?
Go ahead.
Last.
He's the baby.
I want to suggest if you're sitting in the room tonight and you're 80 years old, you're not too old to have a baby.
Baby Joseph.
The attitude every single day that's left to you in your life and every single day that's left to me in my life, that what the Lord does in my life.
In the little things. The traffic lights, the spilled milk, the oops tear in the pair of pants on up to the big things. A serious health crisis, the difficult personal relationships.
00:30:00
The problems that are in the assembly, even from the smallest to the greatest, the Lord works in each one of our hearts. That spirit of Jotham, the Lord is perfect. What He is doing is going to work for good. There will be no change in the doctrine, but I've got another envelope here. Still says the Lord shall rule the exact same words.
Would you help me again, Savannah?
Could be I asked my wife for a cheap perfume that she didn't care about.
So this name of this brand is cheap perfume that she didn't care about. What matters is that it's perfume. It's got a nice smell, pleasant anyway. Maybe it's not your favorite. It's not garlic.
Same doctrine.
Same words, totally different attitude on the inside.
Set the context for Joseph. I want you to turn back with me to Deuteronomy Chapter 11.
I'm gonna make an application.
It's all an app. The whole evening is an application with the Lord laid on my heart. Uh, but in Deuteronomy Chapter 11 and verse 10, I'm going to read from verse 10 to 14. Watch carefully what the Lord.
Is setting his people up for the end of the land, for the land without goest in to possess it is not as the land of Egypt from when she came out where thou sowest thy seed and watered it.
With ifoot. That's a garden of herbs. I'm gonna pause right there. How many of you have seen?
A picture of agriculture in Egypt.
Unfortunately, there he is. I was hoping you'd be here yet.
Where does the water come from, Jim?
Denial.
They get their lovely crops not from the rain from heaven, but from irrigation, from the Nile. Now I understand and I looked up different things on this particular water. Sit with thy foot. And there's all kinds of different pictures you'll find if you go looking for how they do their irrigation. But one of them, I believe, applies to this verse, and that is there was a kind of.
Egyptian Stairmaster and it was attached to a water wheel.
And you get on your Egyptian stairmaster and you do your thing and the water wheel works and it hurts the water from the Nile into the irrigation channel. The key part here is that it required effort to keep the thing going.
It requires human effort to bring the water, to bring the crop, and that's what they're leaving. They're leaving a place where their human effort was going to bring them.
Into a place of fruitfulness. And here's where the Lord is bringing them. Verse 11. But the land, whither ego to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and brink of water, of the rain of heaven.
Now who are you dependent on? You children of Israel that are about to leave your land? Who are you dependent on? Now? Is it that good hard effort to bring blessing to my family?
And the next morning on the Stairmaster again to get a little bit more water because it's going to run out if I don't.
No, this land drinks water from the reign of heaven. You're going to have to depend on me for the blessing, and I'm going to bring it. Now I'm making the application here to us as believers. So I'm going to leave out the last little part of this section because they were under a responsibility to get that blessing. Verse 12A Land which the Lord thy God cares for. The eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it from the.
Beginning of the year, even until the end of the year. The Lord is perfect. Who's got his eyes on your family?
Who's got his eyes on your assembly? Who's got his eyes on your personal life?
He's watching from heaven with a delight and a desire to bring that reign of heaven, to bring the blessing that it would be the delight of his heart to bring.
And then they're brought on the ground of responsibility. Now I want to turn and not take that subject up too much further. Turn to Nehemiah Chapter 9. Before we come back to Jotham. We'll get back to him and Judges 9. But I want to read one verse from Nehemiah nine first.
00:35:15
In my 9 actually 2 verses.
Agreed to versus 24 and 25.
So the children went in and possessed the land. I'm sorry. Umm, yeah. So the children went in and possessed the land, and thou subdued them before them, the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, and gave us them into their hands with their kings and the people of the land, that they might do with them as they would. And they took. Now there are seven things here I want you to watch, three of them in particular.
There are seven things, though, and there's some fascinating details in the other four that we're not going to cover. So if you want to go back on your own, you can really enjoy some of the other details, but here they are.
Umm.
Strong cities and a fat land and possessed houses full of all goods. Wells, digged vineyards. Now watch these three vineyards and all of yards and fruit trees in abundance.
What brings them in?
I'm going to.
Pause here for a brief aside.
I hope you enjoy it.
They got strong cities. I wasn't gonna comment on it. Remember, strong cities was one of the gifts. We were talking about this at the lunch table earlier today. How many cities in the land of Canaan were burned when they entered the land?
Can you name any?
Name one.
Jericho was burned, right?
That little insignificant nothing AI was burned. There's only one more hat sore.
And the Lord brought them into the land. He brought them in and away. That never happened before that in history, hasn't happened since. And it's an excuse that archaeologists will use today to say, oh, we don't believe that there was some Canaanite invasion. There was kind of a Canaanite infusion.
Because in the burn layers, well, there's a burn layer in Jericho, they're about the right spot. There's a burn layer in Hatthord about the right spot. We can't find AI, but other than that.
There are no burned cities in the land of Israel.
And they took strong cities.
Or that everything ready for them ahead of time.
It was already move in and enjoy my goodness and I'll keep it going with the rain from heaven. And you know, I'd like to apply that to each one of us.
In Christianity, leaving out, since we're making the application here, that part in Deuteronomy that carried their own responsibility and taking it over and applying it to us as believers.
A home.
That's given to you by God. Let's move in. Ready, isn't it doesn't need any sprucing up and fixing. It's ready to go. Everything has been provided. But I just want you to notice Now we're going to turn back to Joseph and his prophecy. Those last three things that depended on the reign of heaven. What were they?
They were the vineyards, the olive yards and the fruit trees. Now let's go back to Judges 9.
So I just Chapter 9.
And.
Verse 6.
I'm sorry, I want to go forward verse 7.
Chiltham's the youngest son of Gideon, and we gave his name, meaning the Lord is perfect. Verse seven. And when they told it to Joseph, that is the slaughter of all his brothers, he went stood on the top of Mount Gerizim.
Mount Gerizim is a mountain, a blessing. It's where when they entered the land of Israel, they were due. 6 tribes stand on that mountain and pronounce the blessing. And on the other mountain, mountain Ebo, there were six that were going to stand and pronounce cursing. Those two mountains look right down on Shechem, the home of Abimelech.
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Now there's one son left.
Or is he gonna stand?
It's got a curse to pronounce. The last verse of the chapter calls it a curse. It was a curse. It's got one mountain to stand on. Where is he going to stand? Perhaps you feel kind of alone. Perhaps everything where you're from is totally messed up. Perhaps in your life it feels like it's a mess at the moment. Or in your assembly, it feels like it's a mess at the moment. Where does he choose to stand? Stand on the mountain of blessing.
And he calls out three figures that were God's blessing for them in the land. Let's look at them. They all relate to Israel. We won't take them up in that context. Verse 8.
The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them, And they said unto the olive tree, Reign now over us.
But the olive tree said unto them, Listen carefully. It's the same phrase every single time. Watch what the olive tree says. Should I leave?
Should I leave my fatness wherewith by me they honor God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees.
The next one and the tree is said to the fig tree. Come, thou reign over us and the fig tree.
Said unto them, Should I forsake this exact same word, the exact same word in the Hebrew? So I'm going to read it as Should I leave? Mr. Darby translates it that way. Should I leave my sweetness and my good fruit and go to be promoted over the trees?
Then said the trees under the vine, come thou, and reign over us.
And the vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine, which cheareth God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?
I want to apply these three things. They're all figures of Israel. They're all used throughout the Word of God as figures of Israel. But I'd like to make the application here. The olive tree is where the olive oil comes from, and that oil is a clear picture throughout the Word of God. It's already been mentioned once in this time together to figure the Spirit of God, we're going to take up the olive tree and look at it briefly as God's provision for us in His Holy Spirit given to us. The 2nd is.
Of the fig tree, they got fruit trees in abundance. This one is the specific fruit tree, the fig tree, and the fig tree. I'd like to apply assembly fruit for God, the fruit of the Spirit, the Spirit comes first, fruit for God and the fruit of the Spirit, and the third in the vine.
Gives its meaning right there. It says should I leave my wine? Which cheereth God and man? I think it's a figure of joy.
And so we've got the three the Spirit of God, fruit for God, and joy.
Now let me suggest this to you, applying it at the moment to families. If the attitude of the father and the mother in everything and what's hidden in the little things and in the big things of life is the Lord is perfect.
His provision for this family is absolutely right. It's full and it's complete. So let's go to him for that provision and our need.
The child will have in their life clear evidence of the power of the Spirit of God.
Joy and the character of Christ, the fruit that God would look for, the character of his Son. If the child sees those three things and temptation comes, where are they going to stand? Are they going to stand on the mountain of cursing? Are they going to stand on the mountain of blessing and say, should I leave this provision that God's given to me? And if in your heart you're taken up with God's provision.
The power of His Spirit to bring in what's needed in your life.
The character of Christ that He wants to form in your heart and the joy that He gives to you. If those things fill my heart and they flow out in my attitude, it may not be that there's anything on the outside, the doctrine that needs to change, but the child will say, we'll say in our own heart, and it will be evident in our assembly that the Lord is perfect.
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And the simple answer to the call to leave the coming reign.
To be the King, To have a place for self. The answer would be, how could I leave this? God's given me what's perfect. He's given me exactly what I need. How could I leave what he's given to me?
Let's take them out briefly.
I want to take two expressions that get used often, and I've almost exclusively heard them, at least in public meetings, applied to public meetings. But that's not the context. I don't believe in the Word of God. They are for every single day of your life.
You may never have spoken in the public meeting.
Because the word of God says not to for you.
So these verses apply absolutely to you every single day of your life. Let's turn to the first in a season, chapter four. They relate to the Spirit of God.
Ephesians chapter 4, verse 30.
And grieve not.
The Holy Spirit of God.
The standard way in which I've heard this used in public meetings is 100% absolutely accurate and good. And that is, if I'm allowing sin in my life, the Spirit will be hindered in using me in a public meeting to speak for Him.
I wanna give you a personal application of what it means to grieve the spirit that has nothing to do with the assembly. And again, I'm gonna pull something from my personal life.
Very unlikely that it'll touch your conscience, but it touches mine and I ask you to take it and apply it in your own life.
I'm going to give you an analogy, a framework to think of it first, and then I'll give you the example.
In the mornings, generally most days of the week, I get the breakfast going. Those of you commenting on my, uh, culinary skills cutting up fruit know that, uh, what I'm about to say is not a profession of any grandeur in the kitchen, because you've already seen the opposite and commented on it rightly. But here's the point. I get a kettle going for hot water, for something that Renee needs to use in her cooking later on.
I turn it up on high and when the kettle starts to make its whistling sound, I turn it down to low, and when she's ready to do her thing with the, uh, hot water, it's just a simple matter of turning it back up and within 5 seconds it's boiling again. I've gotten it just below the boiling point and it's sitting there.
Now also when I get up in the morning.
My habit to begin my day with the word of God in prayer and later on move to other things.
My personal Bible reading on my laptop at home and.
That part is not the relevant part. The relevant part is the laptop is sitting on my lap and it's great to pull in ministry and add it and look at look at it along with my personal reading and so on. But toward the end of that, somewhere along in that personal reading, a thought may hop into my head and I go to the browser and I pull up the ministry and another thought may hop into my head and I go up and pull up a little bit of technology news.
I kind of abandoned the news last August when it got so.
That's I don't wanna divert there. The point is I get diverted from where I'm supposed to go.
Should have been about 10 minutes, but maybe it's 20 or 25 or whatever and now I'm in a hurry and I'm also irritated. I've got the kettle on. Not quite on boil, but I've cranked it up.
I've gone after things. Not evil things, not the kind of things where I would be embarrassed to have you pull up my browser history and go digging around and hunting with forensics and find out what was there. I'm talking about legitimate things.
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But whatsoever is not a faith of sin, and instead of the 10 minutes I needed, I spent 25 and somewhere inside my constant new all the way along the way and it's on simmer.
And I'm cruising into the bathroom for my morning shower, and I'm cruising, hustling back out to the kitchen, and some crazy person is in the way. So back out and around through the dining room to put a few things on the table, and they're still in the way. And every little thing is now a vexation. What's the problem?
Is the person standing in the aisle in the kitchen? No.
As I've given in to myself, I've grieved the spirit. It cranked that vexation level up just below the boil. And now when somebody does something.
What do they do that for? Whether it comes out of my mouth, it comes out of my face. Thankfully, you know, maybe my back is turned and nobody else sees it. That's grieving the spirit that keeps from having.
The fullness of the power of the Spirit of God now in in our life. Now turn to one more. It's a balancing one. You know where I'm headed, It's First Thessalonians 5.
Look at the context again. This is general applies to every moment of every life, everyday life. I'm going to give you a figure before we read the verse in First Thessalonians 5, some of you are already looking at it.
When we were first married, and still to this day, almost every dinner time there are candles on our table. Now they're the four cent tea light ones from IKEA. They used to be these paper candles. That doesn't matter.
I was fresh out of college and physics and you know, it's just fun to experiment with things. So dip my finger in the water glass and a little drop of water on the candle. You know what happens when you put just a little drop of water in the candle?
Not much.
So especially with those tea light ones, you put another little drop and another little drop and then another little drop. You know what happens? It gets mixed in with that melted wax, It comes up that Wick and all of a sudden there's no more fuel there and it sputters out.
Got that image in your mind? Now let's read these verses. 1St Thessalonians 5, verse 16. Rejoice evermore.
Pray without ceasing, we heard this morning. Don't give up on the matter we're praying about in everything. Give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. Isn't that beautiful? The candles flaming real nice.
Burning brightly.
Now the Lord wants you to, in His grace and in His.
Love and in the power of His spirit.
Speak to a straying brother or sister.
That's painful, that's messy, that's uh.
And we begin to cherry pick versus to build a wall of defense for why we shouldn't do it. What are we doing? We're putting little drops of water there that quench the spirit. That verse 19 says quench, not the spirit.
The Spirit's a massive, wonderful, fantastic subject. Let me give you 3 portions to look at and I'm not going to turn to them.
Those three things you can look at are we've read one verse already here in the time together in Hebrews 10, Spirit's wonderful and bringing an assurance of salvation. One of the beautiful things that God would bring an assurance of salvation is a wonderful broad topic. You can look into it. You can see that in Hebrews 10. We've got another one and that's in First Corinthians 6 and in many other places where the Spirit of God is the power of holiness.
And that too, is going to bring wonderful fruit in our life. And the third?
Beautiful one. We'll just read very briefly the verse It's in, umm, Romans chapter 8.
And.
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Verse 26.
Likewise the Spirit also helped with our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
Don't have time to develop it? Enjoy it on your own. I want to give you 2 quick thoughts on the fruit.
Four things on Joy and I'll list them.
But the fruit probably didn't notice but back in Jotham's prophecy.
He didn't say who the fruit was for.
The olive tree was forgotten man. The vine was forgotten man. The fruit just is.
I wanna suggest to you this thought the Lord in Matthew 21. He comes to the fig tree and he's in hunger. He's hungry. When he comes to that fig tree, he goes looking for something to eat and there's nothing there.
I want to suggest to you this thought.
When the Lord comes and looks over your life from today, he's hungry.
Wants to see the character. God wants to see the character of his son reflected.
In your life today.
So in the baby spilled the milk, when somebody was rude to you, when you tripped and fell and banged your knee, when the circumstances, in other words, weren't agreeable, what came out? No one was there. Nobody else thought. But if what came out was that fruit of the spirit.
Was that patience? Was that joy? Was that spirit of love?
And the Lord found fruit on your fig tree.
I want to suggest to you, is it nothing? The world will call that nothing. Nobody saw it. You didn't put it in your diary. You didn't add it to your blog.
But if the Son of God could come down and taste the fruit produced by the Spirit in your life today.
And he could say that's delicious. That's the flavor we have in heaven. Is that nothing?
Is that nothing?
Finish with four joys. 4 joys. Let's just give you the verses.
They're all beautiful.
1St is in John chapter 15 verse 11.
I have to meditate on them on your own.
Sum 15, verse 11 These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. Talking about obedience in verse 10. So there's the joy of obedience.
There's a joy of obedience. I'm gonna say this four times as I read the verses. That's all we have time for. God wants your joy to be full. He gives you right here to have your joy full. Obedience is one way to find joy. You can sit under the shadow of the Bramble and look for joy, and you'll get patches of shade, but it'll never fill you.
The fullness of joy is just that. It's the fullness of joy. Second one.
In chapter 16 and verse 24.
The Lord was leaving his disciples. He was going to go away. They couldn't come to Him and ask for things. They couldn't come to Him and ask for the money to pay the tribute tax or whatever it was. And so they come to Him and they say, Lord, the Lord prepares them. Verse 24 Hitherto have He asked nothing in my name? Ask and you shall receive, that your joy may be full.
To say there's that privilege of prayer and access.
And there's joy that's full there. The next chapter, chapter 17 and verse 13. And now come I to thee. And these things I speak in the world that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. The context is the Lord is taking his own in their hearing and he's setting them down in his place before the Father. He's going to go.
He's going to leave them in his place of relationship to the father. There's that joy in relationship and he's setting them down in that place and he's going to go away. And I have to say to you, and if I tried to meditate on these last four.
01:00:02
It's like a circuit breaker and mine trips it 50 amps or something.
I can't get my heart around that spot. Can you get your heart around that spot? Maybe you've got a bigger circuit breaker, but it might. It's just I can't.
You've been set down in perfect relationship.
With the Father in Christ, place here on earth the last one First John four. First John one.
Verse 4.
This is another one.
My circuit breaker is not big enough for it. I hope yours is.
After presenting.
Well, I'll read verse three and four. Let's just see that readeth. I'm sorry, I'm in revelation. No wonder it didn't make sense. Verses three and four in first John one that which we have seen and heard declare unto you that ye also may have fellowship with us and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. Verse four and these things right we unto you.
That your joy may be full. You've been brought into a place where you get to sit down with the Son of God, with the Father, and enjoy the same things together. You know what this you look, I watch young people, various young people that go and they look for a place where they can sit down, or at least they belong to the edge of a group where they feel like they belong.
God has taken you and he's made you and he's put you in a place.
Where you're sitting down, not on the edge of a group, but with the father and with the son, enjoying the exact same things. If that's the odor of your heart, it's going to take care of everything else. Let me finish with those words. Jotham was #70.
Never too late to say the Lord is perfect. Let's thank him, dear Lord Jesus.
Just ask that by the power of thy spirit.
We will be done with the things that put ourselves 1St and that we would sit and that we would enjoy, and we'd be thankful for the fullness of hypervision for us. We thank the Lord Jesus in thy name, Amen.
Session #3
Intercession
Address—Manuel Adames
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.
To start with, a word of prayer.
Forgotten, our Father, we thank Thee for the opportunity we have.
To be here today and.
Umm, talk about the things that pertain to the.
The Lord Jesus and his work for us, not only on the cross, but what he does.
Today, in interceding for us, we ask Father help as we open Thy word and receiving it.
In UMM making this UMM also.
Uh, practical for us for a walk down here that we may apply these things to our lives. Father, we ask in the name of thy Son, the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior, Amen.
We sing the 1St 2 verses of #28.
I'm afraid I'm very beautiful. I'm not in this blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Look at the time here.
What I have in my heart this afternoon, tonight.
It's with regards to what the Lord Jesus does for us, interceding for us, and umm.
Why does he need to intercede for us?
I was thinking of Exodus chapter 17 as just as an introduction.
And verse 8.
Then came Amalek and fought with Israel in referendum and mostly said unto Joshua chooses out men and go out fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand. So Joshua did as Moses had said to him and fought with Amalek and Moses and Aaron and her went up to the top of the hill.
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And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed.
And when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses's hands were heavy, and they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat thereon, and Aaron and her stayed up his hands, the one on the one side.
And the other on the other side. And his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.
And Joshua is confident. Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword and so on.
I know that we know this scriptures very well.
And we have heard.
Applications to this before and I would just like to remind us of these things.
Umm, we know that Amalek symbolizes the flesh in US.
And I'm gonna let if we read.
Umm, believers in Deuteronomy 25 that says how Amalek attacked umm, the people of Israel and it was it attacked the weak ones, the ones that were scattered and.
Umm, that's what the the flesh, how the flesh works in US. And if we read before this happened here, there was a murmuring of the people of God.
Umm, it was the time when Moses took the rod of God and and and stroked the rock and they threw him out water. But before that the people of Israel were complaining.
Saying, is the Lord among us or not?
So I was thinking of just this portion. Here is an introduction of what I have in my heart about UMM Moses interceding for the people of God so that they could overcome Amalek.
And there were two men with Moses, one was Aaron and the other one was her. And it just reminds us of the Lord's interceding for us. We know that the Lord is our high priest as Aaron is, uh, it was a high priest. And we know that her, uh, could simplify the Lord Jesus as an, as our advocate.
And those are the scriptures that I wanted to go to.
Uh, first, uh, Hebrews chapter.
7.
Talking about the two aspects of the Lord Jesus.
In his intercession for us and The thing is that we.
No, that we cannot save ourselves. That is clear to us. We know that we need a Savior and that the Lord Jesus is our Savior. We forget that we cannot keep ourselves either.
And umm, that's why we need the Lord Jesus interceding for us in these two aspects.
As priests and as our advocate.
And the first portion we'll read is him as our priest in Hebrews Chapter 7.
Verse 23.
And they truly were many priests, because they were not, they were not suffered to continue by reason of death, but this man, because he continued for a continued error as an unchangeable priesthood, wherefore he's able also to save them to the uttermost that comes that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.
For such a high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.
Made higher than the heavens, who needeth not daily as those high priests, to OfferUp sacrifice first for his own sins, and then for the peoples. For this he did once when he offered up himself.
He's able to save them to the uttermost that common unto God by him.
Seeing he ever liveth to make in procession for them, so we're saved by his death.
But we are we are also saved by his life.
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If the Lord did not intercede for us, we would fail miserably. The only way that we can keep ourselves, that we are kept is because of the intercession of the Lord Jesus.
We are not kept, uh, through our own, our own means and we will see that in a little bit.
Uh, and we'll read a little bit in Luke chapter 22 about, umm, what happened to Peter and how he fell.
But the Lord Jesus is always interested in for us, so he again 2 aspects.
He is our high priest, interceding for us so that we do not fall.
He is our advocate.
So if we do fall, if we do send, it's our advocate then and we'll talk about that a little bit later.
But first, as a high priest.
We have umm, another portion of that in Hebrews chapter 4.
Hebrews 4 and verse 14.
Seeing then that we have a great high priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not a high Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace.
That we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
So we have that the Lord Jesus is always interceding for us all the time.
He's at the right hand of God and he's he's a priest to God interceding so that I do not fall, so that you do not fall.
And he's a priest that is also sympathizing with our weakness and our infirmities. He knows our frame and he knows what we're made of, but he does not sympathize with with our sin.
But because He is umm, our High Priest, we can come to Him and we can take advantage of that. And he says, let us therefore come boldly into the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. So what do we find in the throne of grace? Those two things.
We find mercy and we find grace. What is the difference between mercy and grace?
In this con, in this context.
We can be assured that we will always get an answer in the throne of grace, always, because we have a faithful high priest there. And when we approach God and we approach him, umm, in the throne of grace, we will find an answer. We will get an answer. It will be either mercy or it will be grace.
So to make a definition of both, we know that mercy.
In this concept, in this context is going through its difficulty. And then the Lord has mercy and takes us out of it. He has mercy. He, he lets us be in the difficulty for a time, but He takes us out of the difficulty.
But to find grace is to give us the strength to go through it all the way. And we see that in the Apostle Paul, he he asked for mercy. He says, take away from me this sickness.
He has something that we are not sure what it was.
Umm, but he asked the Lord three times to take it away from him. So he was asking for mercy. The Lord says to him, my grace is sufficient for you. So he gave him grace. He, he did get an answer. And we can always get an answer. So many times we think that mercy is better than grace because that's what we typically ask for because we don't want to go through the difficulty.
We want the Lord to take us out of it.
So the lower many times is pleased that we go through the difficulty is through the valley of death.
And he will give us the power to and the grace to go through it and be over commerce. And overcomer is not only one that is someone that has learned from the difficulty, somebody that has benefited from the trials he has gone through.
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And, umm.
We are sure again to find grace there and to find mercy.
So we have umm, a great for High Priest at the right hand of God interceding for us so that we would not fail, do we? Is there umm, a chance then that we could fail?
Yes, there is. So does that mean that the Lord does not intercede for us always?
Is we can be sure that it is not on His side, the problem it is on our side. Why is the Lord not interceding for us sometimes so that we would not fail?
That's the other aspect of it, and before we go to the side of the advocacy of the Lord.
Let's just turn to Luke chapter 22.
Sometimes our hearts are not in the right place. We sometimes lose the feeling of weakness and dependency on the Lord, and then He may allow us to fall because of that, because we are, we are not no longer dependent on Him. There may be pride in our hearts or there may be something else. We may feel better than others and the Lord may allow us to fall into.
Into sin, not because He wants us to, but because His.
Is the only way that we can understand that we are dependent on him. In John chapter 15, the Lord Jesus says that he is divine. We are the branches. He says that we can do nothing without him. Sometimes we think well, we can do little without him. That's that's sometimes what's in our mind, but we can't do nothing. Sometimes we we think that well, the Lord does his side and we do our side.
It's not that, because without the Lord we can't do nothing.
Without dependency of the Lord we can do absolutely nothing. And it's interesting that in John 15 it doesn't say that we produce any fruit. It doesn't say that that we produce fruit in in John 15. What does it say?
That we bear fruit. There's a difference, a big difference between varying fruit and producing fruit, because producing fruit gives us the idea that we are, that the fruit is coming from us. We are only the branches. And the Lord is pleased to show fruit in our lives. And we see the fruit in the branches and we we could say, oh, look at that branch.
Has so much fruit, but it doesn't come from the branch. You cut the branch and that's the end of it. It comes from the vine. And if we forget that we're dependent on the Lord, we may think that the fruit is coming from us.
And it's not coming from us, it's coming from him. So as long as we're in communion with him, the fruit will be the result of our communion is umm, and if we're, if we're walking in the spirit is the result of that and it will be seen in our lives. If we're walking in the flesh, it will be also seen in our lives. In First Corinthians 5, it talks about a man drunken with wine.
And the Word of God compares that to being filled with this period in contrast.
Because a man that is drunken with wine, when he talks, you know that he that he is drunken with wine because of the way he talks. And when he walks, you know that he is drunken with wine because of the way he walks. And it it is similar in us. If we're filled with the spirit, the way we talk and the way we and the way we walk will be manifest to others. But it is not.
War. It is fruit. It is the result of being in communion with the Lord.
That will show to others that fruit, but it is not a work that originates from ourselves.
So sometimes there is something in our heart and look 22 That the Lord needs to allow a fall in our in our hearts. And the first thing that we read, umm, in this segment in verse 24, Luke 22 and verse 24.
And there was also a strife among them. Which of them should be accounted?
00:20:00
The greatest?
Before that, and I think a brother mentioned this on one of umm, a couple of days ago.
The lawyer introduces the Passover introduces, I'm sorry, the his Supper.
Umm, and that's in verse 19 and in verse 21 he says, but behold, the hand of him that betrayeth me is with me on the table, and the Lord is showing how his he must suffer. And the Lord is showing umm.
What?
All the different, all the different aspects of the bread and the wine and so on, and what that typifies and they do not understand and they are looking at themselves instead of looking at the Lord.
And the Lord says, God, Behold, the hand of him that betrayeth me is with me on the table. And truly the Son of man goeth as he was determined, but woe unto that man by whom he is betrayed. So they began to inquire about two things, and I'm not sure how they put those two things together, or why it was in their mind but two things. One was, one was. And they began to inquire among themselves which of them it was that should do this thing.
So they start asking. So who would do such a thing?
So they looked at themselves and said I I would never do anything like that. Must be another person.
And Northeast next version says, and there was also the strife among them. Which of them should be accounted the greatest? So I would never do such a thing. And sometimes when we're believers, we think that we're not capable of certain things. We know that Judas was not a believer. And I'm not implying that a believer could do that. But I'm saying what I'm saying is that we think that we as believers are not capable of.
Certain things. And if it happens that we do certain things, then we are, umm, more concerned about thinking, oh, I can't believe that it that, umm, a person such as I have done an evil thing like this because we're not looking at the Lord yet. That's not repentance.
Repentance is judging ourselves before the Lord is changing our thinking, changing our mind. But it needs, there needs to be judgment of ourselves. But me thinking that I am not capable of doing such a thing. And now I am umm, embarrassed because umm.
Umm, what are what Are people going to think that I have done this thing? Is that repentance? That's not repentance.
And they began to inquire among themselves which of them it was that should do this thing.
And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest. And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercised lordship over them, and they that exercise authority over them are called benefactors. But you shall not be so. But he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he that is chief, as he that does serve. For whether is greater He that seedeth at meat, or he that service? Is not he that seated that meat, but I.
I am among you. I see that server. So the other thing that could, umm, take us away from the communion of the Lord is pride. We think something of ourselves first. We think, oh, I'm not capable of doing that.
And we may also thank, oh, I am so close to the Lord that I must be among the greatest of the Lords.
And the Lord says that the greatest among us should be as the younger, and he's at his chief as he that serves. And he says, I am among you as he that serves. The Lord Jesus came to us serving.
And He does want us to be great in His, umm, in His Kingdom, if we could call it that way. But it needs to be according to His mind. The greatness. The greatness in the Lord is, is service.
If we want to be great, we need to serve our brethren.
And then in verse 31 is the portion I wanted to charge on Simon Peter.
And the Lord said Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has desire to have you.
That he may sift you as wheat.
00:25:04
Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has desired to have you, and Satan does desire to have us. He wants to shift us.
And umm, it doesn't say in, umm, this you in it means it's plural. It doesn't say Satan has desire to have thee. It says Satan has desire to have you. That's cruel. It means that Satan did not not only wanted Peter, he wanted all of them.
But I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not, and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.
So here we have the intercession of the Lord Peter had lost.
Something he he said BA. Basically it comes out on the next verse. What was in the heart of Peter? He he had participated in verse 24 on that tribe. Who would be the greatest? He had participated on verse 23, inquired who would do such a thing? Who would do this thing?
And.
The Lord is interceding for Peter before he falls is interceding for him. And that's the portion that I wanted to talk about on the other side of things, about the advocacy of the Lord for us.
Advocate. An advocate is not exactly a lawyer.
Because the lawyer you call when you get in trouble and you then you you contact the lawyer and then he comes and and defends you.
Let's read a little bit about that. Live in our place and look 22.
And 1St, uh, first John.
Chapter 2.
First John Two says my little children.
These things write eye onto you, that ye sin not.
And if any man see and we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
So we read that the priest was with God, the priest to God. Now this is with the Father.
We would think it it should be the other way around, but it's not. And it's because, umm, we're, we're, we're think, well, shouldn't it be that it would be with the father that we haven't failed yet and the Lord is interceding for us so that we not, we do not fall, we do not fail, but after we have fall failed, it doesn't say an advocate with God.
Because the Lord Jesus has paid for our sins and we do not need an advocate with God.
We need an advocate with the father.
Because that relationship never ends. Union with the Lord can never be broken, but communion with the Lord can be broken very easily.
And he says we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. So an advocate is so that he may bring us back into communion and communion with the father. And we, we mentioned, uh, John chapter 15, the Lord is divine. The father is the husband man and the father does, does work in us so that we.
Would produce. We would bear more fruit.
Umm, again, the food comes from the Lord Jesus and we just bury it?
If we're in communion with him.
But here we have we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, my little children, these things write down to you that yeast and not it's not the Lord's will that we send. It's not in his purpose that we send. And when we do, we need to. That's why we need to judge ourselves in confession of our sins. But before confession, what comes repentance.
We need to repent, judge ourselves.
And then in chapter one of John, of first John, I'm sorry.
Verse nine it says if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we confess our sins, when do we get an advocate when we confess our sins?
00:30:11
When do we get an advocate?
Says here.
Fe verse one of verse one of chapter 2.
If any man send, we have an advocate.
If any man's sin, we have an advocate. It doesn't. The Lord's purpose is not that we sin, but if any man's sin, we have an advocate.
So he starts interceding for us so that we come back to him because otherwise we would never come back. We're saved by grace. We're we, we were in, in trespasses and cents. We were enemies when we were saved. We were, we were lost in our condition and he saved us. We could not do nothing to save ourselves in the same manner we can do nothing to keep ourselves. We're talking about the side of God. We do have responsibilities.
But it is him that keeps us. If we're in communion with him, we will not fail. If we're not in communion with him, we will certainly fail.
So we have an advocate immediately it says if one sent, we have an advocate. Why? Because the Lord Jesus wants to bring us back to him. And that's what he does with Peter.
So in chapter 22, he prays for him before he falls. He knows he's going to fall and Peter doesn't even realize that. And verse 33 of chapter 22 of Look.
And the lawyer doesn't pray and he's still interceding. He's just not interceding the same way he normally does. He would be interceding for us so that we do not, we do not fail.
That within our fall interest in.
But here he's he's stopped interceding that way, but yet he's still interested. As a priest, he continually intercedes for us. He never stops as an advocate. He intercedes when if we send.
It's not the purpose of God that we do sin.
But he's praying for him, and he's not praying that he does not fail, but he says, But I pray for thee, that thy faith fail not. And when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren. So he had to be converted. Our heart can be turned from the Lord, and he needs to be converted back. And we can see here that Peter was a believer and his heart had to be converted.
And and and this case we can be converted more than once, may the Lord.
Umm, every time we need to be converted, we need to charge ourselves. But we sometimes need to be converted more than once. Doesn't mean that we're saved more than once. That's not what I'm trying to say. But our hearts may be drifted and they need to come back to the place where they drifted from.
And it says here.
In verse Umm 33 And he said unto him, Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison and to death. And he said, I tell thee, Peter the Cox shall not crow this day. Before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me.
And the and Peter denies that.
And he said unto them, And so on. Umm verse.
Verse 60. Uh, verse 54.
Then took they him and led him and brought him into the high priest house and Peter followed as far off. So first starts with pride.
Umm Also, he trusted in himself. He thought that he could keep himself.
He also thought that he loved the Lord more than any of the others. Because when the Lord restores Peter, he, the Lord, asked him, Do you love me more than these? So that was what Peter was implying. Even if all these deny you, I will never deny you.
00:35:02
But Peter starts following afar off, and that's an indication that we're not going well. It starts with the heart and then it it we show it in our walk.
And, umm.
Just a brief note on on Samsung, for example, remember Samsung when he was, uh, following?
His own heart and pursuing this girl that was not the Lord.
He asked his parents to go down with him and they, they, they told him, isn't there a woman from your own people? From my own people? And he said, no, that's the one I like. So they went down with him, with him. And as if you remember, there were three things that Nazarite should not do. Anybody remember what those three things were?
Do you remember?
Couldn't cut his hair. The other two.
Couldn't drink wine and or anything from the vine or even eat the grapes or the OR the kernels or or the Hawks, anything from the vine they could not drink. And what was the third one?
Couldn't touch a dead body.
And just briefly, I'll talk about those three things.
The the one the first one that you mentioned was the air. It talks about submission to the to the face of the Lord, to the Lord. It means that you are dependent on the Lord. Umm the not eating anything from the vine talks about the joy of this world.
Drinking strong drink talks about intoxicating pleasures of sin and touching a dead body and besides that there was also.
A command for all Israelites that they wouldn't touch the body or or umm.
The body from an unclean animal. And we see that Samsung does those three things. He goes down to Team Nash and the first thing that he does, and this is what came to my mind, he goes through the vineyards of Teamnet and it doesn't say that he ate the grape.
But that happens to us when we're walking carelessly, and Samsung was a young man at that point, and he wanted to prove a point to his parents.
His parents had raised him as a Nazarite, apart from, from things that uh, would contaminate him, and he was rebellious, uh, against those things. He didn't want to follow the things that his parents, he probably thought they were too strict or too, uh, they were, they were not, umm.
They were, umm, a little bit, uh, outdated probably in his mind. And he says a little bit of great, what does what, what wrong is it to walk through the vineyards of Timnath? Why does he take them through there? Because he wants to break the principles that his parents taught him. And he starts going there and he goes one way and they go another way.
And we don't know if he ate the grapes or if he didn't eat the grapes, but it happens when a person is walking, uh, in a path that's not the Lord. He does things. He gets very close to the edge.
And that is not a good thing to do.
There was a, there is a story of a man that umm wanted to have umm a driver for his carriage, horse carriage for his daughters to be in and he wanted to hire a young man. And he, he actually interviewed 3 young men and the first one told him, he asked him, well how close can you go to an edge be before the horses fall?
He says well I can go and I'm, I'm not, umm, I'm not sure I remember the story exactly how it was so I'm paraphrasing. But he says well I can go 1M.
From the edge says, OK, so he goes to the second one. He says, how close can you go to to the edge of uh, uh, the recipes before the horses fall and says, well, I can go 2 feet.
And he asked the third one, how close can you go? And he he answered, I don't go close to any ages, Sir.
00:40:02
And umm, so he was, he was hired because he was, and he was in flirting with danger. And if we're going to flirt with sin, we're going to fall. And that's what Samsung started to do. So he went through the team to the, through the vineyards of Teamnet. And then he goes back and he kills the lion. The Lord is telling him don't, don't proceed, Samsung. He kills the lion with the spirit, with the power of the Spirit of God. And when he.
He eats honey out of the carcass and honey talks about the sweetness of this life. But sweetness, umm in the carcass of the lion was sinned because a a Nazarite or any Israelite should should not have touched a dead body of an unclean animal. And he did. He didn't care, he just grabbed the honey. There was nothing wrong with the honey, but it was wrong to eat it from the carcass of the lion.
And then eventually he does lose, umm, he does lose his hair, as you know, and also umm.
You know those on those three things, he failed.
And in the case of Peter, he did something similar here he starts following the Lord from a distance.
And he's probably thinking in himself saying well, I am do doing better than the others. The others have fled. I am the one following here. There's there's another disciple that went in, but besides us too, the others have left and I'm following the Lord from a distance, but I'm in bet in a better position than the others.
And that's not a good, umm, state of heart.
When we compare ourselves to others, that's not a good state of heart.
If we're following the Lord, we should follow the Lord.
But if you notice is following a far off at a distance.
And then when they had kindle the fire in the midst of the hall and we're set set down together, Peter sat down among them.
In another umm, gospel, it says that he stood with them and then here we see them, we see him, umm, sitting down with them. Remember that? Uh, uh, it says in Psalm, I think it's Psalm chapter one.
Psalms chapter one says Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. So we see all those three things and it is biceps. He was first walking, then standing, then sitting, and that's how we fall.
A Christian does not fall over a night. It doesn't mean that it could not. He could not fall overnight in terms of time. I'm talking about in terms of process. It could be fairly quick, but it's a series of steps.
1St we have, we need to have a heart that's not dependent on the Lord. As soon as we have that and we do not judge it.
Then we start following the Lord from a distance.
And then we're walk. We're walking with those that are enemies of the Lord, and our companions influence us.
And I'll, I'll just go a little bit, umm, to the passage and hey guys, chapter 2 to show that.
So Haga chapter 2.
Verse 10 and there's two questions here.
And I'd like us to think about these two questions.
Says In the 4th and 20th day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius came the word of the Lord by Hagar the prophet, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Ask now the priest concerning the law, saying, If one bear holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and with his skirt to touch bread, or Polish, or wine, or oil, or any meat, shall it be holy?
So here's here's someone in the skirt of his garment. He has holy meat, holy flesh.
00:45:09
And with the skirt of his garment, he touches any of those food types of food. Will it be holy? And what is the answer?
In the Old Testament it says that whatever the holy flesh touches is holy.
What is the holy Flash touching?
The skirt.
So the holy flash is touching the skirt. So the question is not what, umm, if the holy flesh is going to touch any of those food. The question is if the skirt touches the skirt that's touching the holy flesh touches any of those foods, will that, will those things be holy? And what is the answer?
And the police answered and said no.
It will not be holy. Those things will not be holy. What does that mean? Who is what is the holy flash of type of is the type of the Lord Jesus. The skirt would be a type of us or someone in communion with the Lord Jesus. So if someone in communion with the Lord Jesus and I have by association I, I am an association with that person, will that make me holy?
Just by association.
The answer is no.
What does it mean then, that we need to have direct relationships with the Lord? That we need to be touching the Holy Flash directly? That we need to have communion with the Lord directly in order for our walk to show that? But there's another question.
Then said, hey guy, if one that is unclean by a dead body such any of these, shall it be unclean? So it's a similar question. So someone goes and touches a dead body and then I touched that person, will I be unclean?
It's similar. I'm not touching the dead body, I'm just touching the person that touched the dead body. Will I be uncle? Will I be unclean?
What does it say?
Says yes, it shall be unclean.
And the point is that by association we're not wholly by association. Of course we can influence our brothers and sisters, and they can influence us for good. That's not what I'm saying. But there needs to be a re, a direct relationship with the Lord. But by association, I can become unclean.
Even if I'm not touching the dead body, if I by association I'm in communion with someone that is touching a dead body by association it says it shall be unclean.
Then answer he got and said, so is these people and so is this nation before me.
So just one a couple of more comments just to to finish that going back to look 22.
What Peter went through he denied the Lord and it was umm.
It was a horrible thing that he felt when he realized that, but the way he realized it was this after he denies the Lord terribly swearing and that he does not know him.
It says in verse verse 60 it says, and Peter said, man, I know not what thou sayest. And immediately while he hath faked the **** through. And the Lord turned and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him before the **** crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And Peter went out and wept bitterly.
So, uh, my umm.
My burden tonight is that we should walk as as we ought to.
But if we are not, if we're not walking as we ought to, may the Lord help us to repent and come and come back to him. And the Word of God plays a role in that and the advocacy of the Lord in turning us back to him. And we see that the Lord intercedes for Peter before he falls. And in this case, not so not to, umm, not so that he doesn't fall.
00:50:13
But to so that he his faith would not fail, so that he would come back to him, and that he would be umm honoring to the Lord again. If we have failed, may the Lord help us repent, convert in our hearts, repent.
Umm, we see that the Lord is turning Peter back to him. The Lord turned and looked upon Peter. And Peter remember the word of the Lord, how he had sent unto him before the **** crow. Thou shall deny me thrice. And Peter went out and wept bitterly.
The weeping bitterly is part of it, but that is not repentance.
That's part of it and it should be manifested that we are very sorry for what we have done, but repentance is charging our actions and it's a continuous thing.
Umm, it says that the Lord is.
Or I'm trying to I'm trying to quote but I I'll have to paraphrase.
That the Lord is is happy when there is a repentance Sinner. Sinner that repenteth is in press intense. It's the Sinner that repenteth. It's not in the past tense. So we are we are we need to have a continuous umm.
Exercise on those things. It doesn't mean that we are going to, umm, live our lives thinking about what we have done. We should live our lives happily after we have, uh, confessed our sins and have been restored to the Lord. So we should be in that state, in the state of repentance, knowing that those things that brought us down, umm, are not pleasing to the Lord, are defiling.
And we should be in that, In that umm.
Fate of repentance, Uh, continually.
But just to finish in, in a positive note, we do have, uh, an interceptor, umm, and there's two aspects of it. And going back, uh, to our thought in Exodus 17 when Moses was lifting up his arms.
His arms got tired.
And, uh, an error has to hold his hand so that Israel could prevail. We have a high priest that does not get tired. We have a high priest that is all always interested in for us. And we have a high priest that we can benefit from going and going to the throne of grace. And that's something that we could be exercised about.
In, in, in that aspect of things, in the, a aspect of advocacy we're in, if we're in a state, uh, we have fallen into sin. He has to bring us back.
But in his priesthood we could, we could always take advantage of it and go to the throne of grace and be before Him independence. And He will preserve us. May the Lord help us that it be so. We finished singing those two verses of uh #28.
Closing Prayer.
Our God and our Father, we thank thee for the Lord Jesus Christ.
As we have heard yesterday being read in song, he is worthy.
We ask that our lives may.
That we may walk in our lives as is placed into him because he is worthy.
Father, we confess that many times we drift in our hearts and our minds.
And we ask that thou may keep us.
And that we may come always to the throne of grace, looking for mercy and grace in our walks, uh, for our walk down here.
And Father, we do know that we we, we have an advocate. We asked Father that.
Umm, there may be, uh, self judgment in our lives that so that we do not drift from the so that we do not walk away from the we ask Father to keep us in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Session #4
Training Up a Child
Address—Tim Ruga
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Good evening everyone.
Could we start the meeting tonight with him 209?
Our times are in thy hand, and I'd like to just sing the 1St 3 verses of this hymn 209.
Our times are in thine hands.
So I don't know what you're taking.
And it's just perfectly easy because it's not the time I don't get together.
Pray our God and our Father, we thank Thee that at the end of another day we can come together and to consider some part of Thy truth from Thy word, and we pray that that would help.
As we open my word tonight, that would help with the speaker that would speak instead of him and that that would help with each one of the hearers too.
That thy voice should be heard and any thoughts expressed that are not for myself, that they would fall by the wayside. Well, we just pray for blessing, for encouragement, for help for each one here and commit this time to the asking it in the name of the Lord Jesus, Amen.
Let's turn to Hebrews chapter 12.
Hebrews 12.
And verse 5.
And justice starting in the middle of the verse. My son despised not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor fate, when thou art rebuked of him for whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he received.
Now just we'll just read only that far tonight. I have in my heart to speak on the subject of the discipline of children and this subject is on my heart maybe a little bit of a continuation from what Brother Bernie brought before I think about four days ago now some we're still have been with us since then.
Others didn't hear that at all, but it won't be a repeat. Uh, this burden is on my heart because this is a family camp. There are many families here.
And not only are there many families, but I see a great many young people. And in God's time you may before long have a family yourself. And in that family God perhaps will give you children.
Charges from himself to raise for him. And that's an awesome responsibility. And so I want to speak a little bit about that and what I understand from the Word of God as regards the raising, in particular the discipline of children.
Now I say so with the recognition of my own failure. I have not done this.
As I ought to have, and I'm not speaking from myself. But along the way I have learned a few things and seen a few things in the scripture, and my intent tonight is to pass on hopefully some of what.
00:05:01
The word of God says in this subject and our failure is never an excuse. I realized also if a perfect person had to get up and speak on any subject like this, then no one ever would speak on a subject like this because we fail so much in the raising of children. So I'm just going to say that in the beginning and also stress that God who gives the responsibility of raising children.
Parents is the one who gave a perfect instruction manual on it. And so whatever I say or don't say here tonight, the responsibility doesn't end with these words, but it continues on with you as parents or you when you become parents, to go back to the Word of God and see what God himself tells you from his word. And so at the beginning of this meeting, I want to take up some principles and then I want to go on to some practical.
Aspects of this subject.
And the first thing we have right here, and what we read, he says, whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth.
That word love is perhaps the foundational concept when it comes to the family.
Without love, there will be no true discipline in the family. You need to have love in order to have a proper family with discipline. And I'm gonna say the other way around as well.
And discipline without love is nothing more than child abuse.
And that's very serious. And so this is a fundamental concept when it comes to the subject of discipline in the in the family is that there has to be love. There has to be love from the parents to the children. And I'm saying it that way because do not try to seek love from the children. Your job is to be a parent. The children will love as you do what is right before the Lord. So that's number one. Now the next principle I want to try to establish is that.
When it comes to parenting and discipline of children, there are in the Christian life at least two connected ideas that we need to get a hold of, and they are faith and obedience. They go together in Christianity. And I just want to lay that out for a minute because I think it's a really, really important fundamental concept for us to understand.
Faith and obedience go together in the Word of God. Sometimes we forget that, but let's go to Romans chapter 10 and just see that.
Romans 10.
And verse 16 this is brought out in the negative, but it still gives the principle. It says that they have not all obeyed the gospel and so on.
There is such a thing as obeying the gospel, and you go to Romans chapter one, you find that the apostle Paul speaks about the obedience of the faith. Go to Acts chapter 6 is another example. You'll find there a great number of the priests were obedient to the faith. And so when we trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior, it's not just that we believe on him, but we call Him Lord, and there's an obedience that goes with it.
It's a fundamental element to Christianity, and it's also a fundamental element to.
The raising and discipline of children in the family. I'm going to go more to the side of obedience, but I just want to establish that these things go together. And it's not just that it's faith and obedience, but the Word of God brings out this further concept with regard to both.
And that is, that is to be implicit.
Faith and implicit obedience, and we need that because his parents will be a lot of these things that we don't understand and maybe we don't know why they're doing it, where do to do it, but we are to understand or see what God says and we are to believe him and obey him. And implicit means that you don't question it. God has said it, therefore I believe it and I will do it.
Very important. Let's see about the faith first. Well, we can just.
Refer to it. We, we won't turn there, but if you were to go to John chapter 20, I think we all know the story about what Thomas said about the Lord Jesus. And when the Lord Jesus came there after Thomas's words, he says Thomas, because thou hast seen, thou hast believed, but blessed are they which have not seen and yet have believed. That's what the Lord is looking for.
00:10:03
To see and get evidence for faith and believe is still something God in His grace will accept.
And Thomas has accepted, thank the Lord. But that's not what he desires. He wants us to take things without evidence simply because he says them, and to lay hold of them and believe them.
And it's the same with obedience. And to see that, perhaps the best example I can think of is in Hebrews Chapter 11.
Hebrews 11, verse 8.
Says by faith Abraham when he was called.
To go out into a place which he should have to receive for an inheritance, obeyed. And he went out not knowing whither he went. Very important. It's not a matter of when, of what, whether or not we understand. It's a matter of whether or not God has said it. And Abraham went out and he did it. We're talking about this the other day. Have been reminded about this since we've been here.
I'll walk down that path at night and I get down to the corner and as I'm going along with some of the light comes on. Oh, that's really nice. Now I always can see where I'm going and I get to the end of that light and what happens next? Haven't we all experience it? Right, The next light goes on. That's great. That is what, four or five of them in a row?
It's not the point to see the end of the path when we start. God wants us to simply go out in faith and obedience and act on what He has said and He will give always what is needed for the next step. And.
That is an important concept to get a hold of when we talk about the discipline of children and raising children in a family, because not only.
Are we to act in that kind of faith and obedience? But we need to train our children to do it as well.
Now I wanna just bring out another concept and that is, and this is maybe more in reaction to things that I've heard particularly from young people, that obedience is not legality. Oftentimes these things get confused and say so and so is strict. They're legal. That doesn't equate. It doesn't follow non sequiturs, we say in logic.
Obedience is correct. It's from God. Legality is a principle of.
Doing something to gain merit before God. And that's always wrong. We have grace versus the law in Scripture, but we don't have grace versus obedience in Scripture. Very important to get a hold of that in our own personal lives. And when it comes to this subject, let's go to 2nd Corinthians chapter 10 for a moment.
2nd Corinthians 10, verse 5.
Says.
And casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exhausted itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.
And that last part there, bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. This is what we're called to do in our Christian life. Our thoughts even are to be brought into the obedience of Christ. It doesn't mean that we should never understand anything. And we're going to take that up further.
In connection with children as well. But the first thing is implicit obedience. That's what God wants from us. Now let me just try to illustrate it for a moment by an example. Let's suppose we have a parent here and this parent has a child. We'll call the child Johnny, just common name. And the child Johnny walks over here and the parents says Johnny, come here and Johnny.
Ignores the pair and keeps on going.
And the parents just gives a little bit of an embarrassed laugh to the ones around them, goes and picks up Johnny and carries Johnny back. Now we have another parent, another Johnny. The parents does the same thing since Johnny come here. Johnny just ignores and keeps going. And that parent goes and takes Johnny and gives discipline, whatever that may be.
What's the difference? You might say, well, the one was showing grace and the other ones being strict and legal. I don't believe so.
The one who was actually training the child to be disobedient in the way of rebellion and the other one was teaching obedience and the issues are very great for the one they were selling there. Something that would go on a course of misery not only for the parent and those around, but for the child for many years to come.
00:15:18
Potentially that's what that is, if the parent doesn't change what they're doing.
For the other one, there's the training of the child that brings peace and harmony to the parents, those around and the child themselves, hopefully for years to come. An immense difference. The things that we're talking about here tonight are not light matters. They're huge. And parents, I have to say this.
With some sorrow in my heart, you only have one chance at this. You can't go back and do it again.
You've got to get it right from the word of God.
And so you need to take it seriously, very seriously. The training of children. There are many of us here who are older and we've made a lot of mistakes. And the Lord is very gracious, I have to say that. But we can't excuse our mistakes. And you won't be able to either if you haven't had children yet or if your children are young, you still have time. You can raise them for the Lord and in accordance with His word. Now let's go over to Ephesians chapter 6. And I just want to.
Something about the well known verse first verse there.
Season 6 and verse one.
Says children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
We often talk about mail and who should read who's mail, and when it comes to the husband and wife, that the husband should read his web mail and the wife should read her mail and not get mixed up about that. And that's very good. When it comes to this case, you can read the children's mail if you're a parent. We're gonna come to that. This is telling the children what to do, but this is also telling the parents what the children have to do.
And notice what it says, Children, obey your appearance in the Lord, as many children here. That verse is for you, but I'm not talking to you tonight. But insofar as God is talking to you through His Word, listen.
What does it say next?
For this is right, I'll come back to that in a minute, But first it says in the Lord. And so parents, very important to your Christian parents, do not require your child to do something that is not in the Lord. Anything illegal, anything against the word of God, if you require that of your child, God is going to hold you accountable for that. So assuming that what you're asking is in the Lord.
This is what your child is required to do. And what does it say?
Does it say obey the parent because it's a good idea or it seems right? Or it seems like, uh, that would be the better way to go Or you understand it doesn't say any of those things actually, just simply says it is right. And that goes along with implicit obedience or obedience without questioning, That's what God.
Wants from the children and God also requires that the parents.
Bring up their children to do this. This is not just mail for the children. We're going to see that in a minute. I trust with the Lord's help.
We wanna give an example first though.
I researched this and I could never find out for sure if this story was true, but it was told in a number of periodicals around the 1880s.
Of a man who was a switchman on a railroad, and I'm sure some of you have heard this story before, but it's vivid of what happened. His job was to switch the track so when the trains were coming, they would be switching to the proper places and so that they wouldn't hit each other. And he had to stay at his post. And it came a certain day when his child was there.
I don't know his name, perhaps Johnny, but the child was there and he was.
On the track and on the wrong track and the train was coming and the child didn't see the train coming and so the man had to stay where he was because another train was coming. He had to switch that track. And so this train was bearing down on Johnny right behind him and there was no way to go to him. So the father simply said lie down.
And that child, having been trained to obey without question, immediately laid right down on the ties between the rails and the train thundered right over top of them. Johnny's life.
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Was safe that day because he learned implicit obedience.
That's what I'm talking about.
That's one example. That was a life or death example.
I don't know if it was true, but I do know this one was true.
And this one comes from my wife's family.
Back when.
Uh, maybe she was a baby.
The, their family was in, uh, the city of Toronto. They were on a busy St. and, and the light turned so that all the cars stopped and along the streets that they wanted to cross. And so they crossed in front of all those cars and they got to the other side and the light was in just about to turn so those cars could go again. And my father-in-law looked and he saw that my wife's oldest sister, Esther, was still over on the other side.
And she had seen them by that time, and she was getting ready to come to them.
And the cars were just about to go and he shouted, Esther, stay there.
And she stayed.
Thank the Lord she didn't come. She obeyed what she was told and she stayed where she was and all those cars went fine and after they went five and he went back and got her. That story I know is true. But the point is this is a kind of obedience that we need to teach our children. It's very important to have asked, what do you mean?
Or to say, I'll come over there and then you can explain why I shouldn't come.
Or anything else might have been deadly, and certainly would be in that first case if such a thing happened.
We can't go on raising our children as if these things don't matter. If we do, our children will end up and of course of self will and disobedience. Now, I don't mean to say that their whole lives they're just to obey without questioning anything. I I think actually they should.
But I do believe that parents have a responsibility as soon as children get old enough to start teaching them why. Very important. We don't keep our children in ignorance. We need to teach them why. And God does that with us as soon as we're able to understand. He is there to teach us everything about why. And He doesn't intend for us to just only go on an ignorant obedience, but He desires that from us. He desires that we would do like Abraham, who went out not knowing whether he went.
And where does God put us? Just look at that in first Peter chapter one.
First Peter one and verse.
Uh, for the sake of time, we'll just take a part of the verse here. Verse 14 is obedient children not fashioning yourselves according to the former, lost in your ignorance. It's just part of a sentence, but it's enough. You can see that God has made us and called us to be obedient children. He wants us to obey, but He hasn't left us in the former ignorance. He teaches us what He wants us to know.
And as we go on, we learn more and more about his ways, and we learn more and more.
About the reason why he wants us to do these things. And that's important for us as parents too. As our children get older, we need to tell them why, but that's never the reason for obedience. That's so that they will know for themselves and that they can act intelligently in their own lives. Now enough of the principles. I wanna go on to who and we're gonna start with the fathers. And I'd like to go right back to verse. I believe that brother Bernie Al already mentioned.
About Abraham and Genesis chapter 18.
Genesis 18.
And again, we'll just take part of this for time.
God says in verse 19 about Abraham again.
For I know him that he will command his children in his household after him.
And they shall keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgment. And so the examples, Abraham, he's the father, is responsible.
No question that fathers have primary responsibility for children in the family that God has given to us.
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But what I really like about this verse is it shows something important. It says I know him.
That he will command his children after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgment. It's not only that this should be done.
But the verse also shows that it can be done. Sometimes it seems like there's a despair with parents to say well.
It just seems hopeless to raise my children for the Lord.
And certainly it seems very hard at times to do that. And yet God has said it can be done and he charges us to do it. We're not going to turn there, uh, at least at the moment. But in Ephesians chapter 6 and verse four, we well know the verse there as well about the Father's raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We're told to do that, and God would not tell us to do it if we couldn't do it.
Let's go over and see a New Testament example, First Timothy, chapter 3.
And this is talking about the bishops or overseers, elders in the assembly. But as has often been mentioned for these verses, what it says of the overseer really is what ought to be true of every believer, every father, certainly.
And it certainly must be true of an elder, but it's an example for all of us and just to skip most of this, but look at verse four says that he must be one that rule it while his own house having his children in subjection with all gravity for from the unknown, not how to rule his own house shall shall he take care of the Church of God.
And so we see first of all that he rules or he conducts, I think is the other way. That can be his own house. But look what it says next. He has his children in subjection.
God requires that the Christian father have his children in subjection. This is not just left up to them. When it comes to the wife, God tells her to submit. The husband is never told to have any part in that. That's her mail. But when it comes to the children, the father is told that he has to have them in subjection.
Therefore, you are required to teach that kind of obedience.
To your children, your father, it's important that is for you.
And then it goes on to add the additional part about why it's important and how. Then that goes on into the assembly. But God requires that this first be done in the household. And that's the primary responsibility that He gives us to our fathers. Whatever other responsibility there may be from others, the first thing is what God says to the Father. Now let's look.
At what it says to father and mother in Proverbs.
Proverbs, chapter one.
And verse eight, it says, My son here the instruction of thy father.
And forsake not the law of thy mother. It should be the teaching, I think, of thy mother. And so here we not only have instruction from the father, but teaching from the mother. And this is so important. The father is to bring up the child and the nurture and admonition of the Lord. So the mother has this responsibility to also, uh, raise the children and teach them. And you find all through Proverbs that it's in the way of the Lord as well.
No question about it. And for the first five years of life minimum, the mother has almost sole responsibility of those children. The father is often away working or with other responsibilities, and they're there with the mother and mothers. You have a tremendous responsibility before God, an awesome responsibility, and He will help you with this. But in that responsibility, it's vital that you understand that for your children.
One of the things that we've had before us is that they be taught this unquestioning.
Obedience.
And you mothers are part of that team that has to teach them that the father shirts his responsibility. You will bear the sorrow along with him, and so you must share that responsibility.
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Now there's another point that I want to mention. Perhaps it was a principle that I didn't go over in the beginning. And that is why this is so important. And the wisdom of this world is, say, what are you talking about?
Discipline and implicit obedience. That sounds like really harsh to speak that way, very negative. And indeed, that's what the world says. But the reason why the world says that is because the world is in rebellion about what God has said about the nature of man. And when we get married and we have children and one day the Lord blesses us with a child, and that child comes out and you hold that child for the first time in your hands.
And what you see there, you see this beautiful little Angel.
And that's all you're saying, right?
And you're not thinking at all that there's an evil thing inside of that. It's not an Angel, but there's a demon in there. It's not a demon really. And I don't mean to say that, but, well, let's see what God says. OK, Let's go to Psalm 58.
Lord willing, I'm about to be a grandpa and I'm not going to see it that way.
But what God says is true, and if we don't listen to it, there's going to be great harm, not only for the child, but many others.
Psalm 58, verse three says the wicked are strange from the womb. They go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. And you go on and you read this passage, you find this is someone who goes on to a life of absolute wickedness. You say, well, that's not what we're talking about. And I'm going to say yes, it is.
The old nature is the old nature and it's no different in the person this is chapters talking about from what it is in me. And when I was born, that old nature was there. And that little cute little child that is born has that old nature, and that old nature wants to come out right away as soon as they can. And this is what the word of God says. He takes Hitler. Was he speaking lies as soon as he was born?
Well, you say I don't. He couldn't until he was able to talk. Well, we see what God is saying here. Really.
That old nature wants to express itself as soon as it's able, and it's just as vile in any one of us as any other bad person we can think of. And it's true of that little child. And to deny it and say, no, it's not a good person, and all we have to do is encourage it and give it opportunity and help it express itself. And all the good will come out is to say that God hasn't told us the truth about human nature.
The world denies this principle and they get it wrong.
But we don't have an excuse before God. We have to get it right. And Christian parents and those who are going to be one day, you only have one chance.
When your children are gone, when they're growing up, it's too late.
So listen to God on these subjects. Psalm 51 David says, Behold, I was shaping in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.
That's the truth about how we are formed and how it is that we're born. That's every one of us. And that's that child too. And that is why child training is so important. There's evil that wants to come out of there. It's built right into the fallen nature of man. And God has given us as Christian parents this instruction in His Word to train children so that they might.
Be for himself. Ultimately, that can only happen when they get saved.
But as the Christian father and mother, you do not wait till your child gets saved to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We're going to see this further as we go on. Let's go on and just to see a little bit more about what God considers to be this sin of disobedience. And I want to do that because we often overlook it or take it too lightly with disobedience is.
All by itself, our subject, our basic subject, and and this child discipline is obedience.
Let's go to First Samuel, chapter 15.
First Samuel 15.
And.
Verse 22 we're just going to take a part of this for a time. The uh, Samuel says to Saul here just the end of verse 22. Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice and to hearken than the fat of Rams for rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness or self will.
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Is as iniquity and idolatry.
So what is the opposite of?
Obedience.
God says it's rebellion and self will, and then just to make it further clear, he says what that's like and he likens it to umm, witchcraft and iniquity and idolatry.
Do I think of it that way? Honestly, I don't.
I have a hard time thinking of it like that. I don't know how many people do. If you do, you're ahead. But it doesn't matter how we think of it. Actually doesn't matter at all. What matters is how God thinks of it. And this is what God has said. And disobedience is no light matter.
And God says it's a very serious issue and one that if we take it lightly and say, oh, Johnny, you know, he's just having a hard day.
Let me just go pick them up and ignore what he just said. What was he doing right there? Just simply disobeying and no big deal? No, it's rebellion and by letting it go, maybe you don't deal with everything every time.
By by letting that go and not addressing it and just allowing these things to continue on, what are we doing? We're teaching rebellion. And that's a very serious thing because it never stops there. It goes on and on and on. But the first time, this is how God sees it. And that leads me to the next part of my subject, which is banking.
It's a bit uncomfortable. I did not like spankings when I was little and I got plenty of them.
But it's important, and the world does not accept that anymore either. In fact, it's getting more and more difficult to do it in our society. But Christian, father and mother, it's important and you must do it. I wanna show you that from the Word of God. Let's go to Proverbs chapter 13.
Father Bernie brought out some of these verses a couple of nights ago.
But we need to go there again.
Proverbs 13.
And verse 24 says he that spareth his rod hateth his son, but he that loveth him chasteneth him the time. Now we have this word love again, don't we? We started out with that in our meeting. And I, I just want to bring that up because when you think about the subject and what I've said so far tonight.
If you had to say negative, positive, what would you say? I think he's probably saying negative, right? And yet God really says that these things.
Which seemed to us as negative and certainly are hard things. He calls it loving.
It's really a positive thing, in spite of how difficult it seems. And so it says here that he that beareth his rod hates his son. The world says you cannot put a hand on that child. And I'm gonna say I'm gonna repeat this again. If you put a hand on your child and it's not done out of love, that is pure child abuse. Don't ever do that.
All discipline must be conducted with love and it has to be under control. And really Christian parents, I don't have the time to go into everything with spanking. Maybe somebody have a whole meeting on that, but, uh.
I know it's really good if you can just stop and be completely under control and explain to the child why it is that you have to do what you're doing.
And then show them that love, pray with them, and then administer this banking very hard. Maybe then go back and spend more time with them. The Lord will guide in those things. I'm not gonna be prescriptive about them, but what it says here is if you don't, thank you, hate.
And who will agree with that in the world? But Christians? Whoever you are, unmarried or parent, this is not my word. This is God's word. If you don't spank your child ever, you hate them.
And if you do.
You love them, not just if you do, but loving them will thank them. And then it says this little word the time.
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This we're talking about in Dorothy in a, in a reading not long ago. And a couple of thoughts were brought out that I really appreciated. The first one was that it could mean promptly. And I think that's important. You let something go on and on and on and the child almost thinks, well, I can do it. And then you go and discipline them. It's confusing. And plus you've had all kinds of grief.
There's no reason to let that happen. In fact, maybe you don't even have to spank. Maybe you just have to speak a word. But do it early and it never even has to get to the point of the spanking. But.
Whatever it is, take care of it early. Here it is a rod they're chasing, it says here.
Whether it's a rod or something else, but certainly to chasten the child and do it early before the thing gets out of control. Very important. Another thought that was expressed is be diligent. Don't give up in it. Keep on going until you get through. Sometimes there's a half hearted attempt at it or almost no attempt and the child makes a pretense that, uh, that you know, the sorrow part of it and just to get.
Anything further and now I got away with murder on that one, you know, No, we need to be discerning and take care of that matter and do it right. Another thought that's expressed is to do it early in life.
Don't wait until the child is old before you try to discipline them. Don't wait until you can reason with them before you try to start to discipline them. And I'm not going to say more about that at the moment, but we're going to come back at the end to an example of that might give some guidance.
Word of God does not say an age, but it certainly gives guidance. Let's go on to Proverbs chapter Umm 22.
1St 15 says foolishness or folly is found in the heart of a trial, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him. And then just over in 23 verse 13 says, withhold not correction from the child poor thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die, thou shalt beat him with the rod and shalt deliver his soul from hell obviously.
Spirit of God had already taken up the part about loving and none of this is done in in anger.
Or haste. This needs to be done in a controlled, loving manner. But the verses show how serious it is. God says the one that beateth his child and does this, and he's not talking about beating the tar out of the kid, talking about taking a switch or something and spanking that child in a way that doesn't do any serious bodily harm but teaches the child a serious lesson.
Out of love.
And.
What does God say about it? He says it saved him from umm, delivers his soul from hell. Shield the pit of the grave. That's what God says. It's serious. We can't just go by this and say you know what? Spanking is optional, it doesn't matter.
Or if we do, we may find our children go off into a terrible end.
This is God's word. Don't look at me, don't look at others. But again, read this for yourself and consider what God has said. I'm not gonna go on about that, but I wanna go on about the next subject with parents, and that would be authority and all of these things with obedience and what we're doing there is this also this matter of authority. And it's an important subject because God.
Not only gave you or will give you.
If He does the children, but He gives you authority along with the responsibility that comes with those children. And I'll just say this from personal experience. When I was very, very young, I did not know the Lord, but I learned pretty early in life who my father was and I learned with some very hard correction at times.
That he had authority and that he was boss and he didn't apologize for that. And I.
Learn not to.
Umm, to question that issue. And it was important. And you know, early in life, I didn't struggle with that. He was my father. He had authority. And in my little world, in my little mind, he was Lord.
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I didn't know the Lord. I only knew my father and his authority. A little later I got older, I understood more. I came to know about the Lord, and I had no trouble submitting to his authority. I had already learned it. And then I got older and I went to school and there was an authority there. And I got older yet again, and I went to work and there was an authority there. And even before that there was authorities on the road and there were authorities all over the place.
And I had no trouble with that. I had learned it when I was a little.
Child. And if my father hadn't taught me that lesson, it would have been a bad thing for me.
Parent, you need to teach that lesson to your children and it will be an important lesson for the rest of their life. Let's go to Ephesians chapter 6.
And skipping past the children, we're going all the way to when these children grow up and they get a job.
In verse five it says servants be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh with fear and trembling and singleness of your heart is unto Christ, not with I service as men pleasers, but as the servants of Christ doing the will of God. This is what it says here. This is really interesting from the head.
Is doing the will of God from the heart?
Parents, you need to teach your children to implicitly obey. You need to teach them authority. You need to exercise your authority when they're old enough. You need to teach them about the Lord and His authority so that when they get to this point in their life, they can take a job and they can know that they are doing whatever they're doing and respecting that authority that the Lord has put over them, but they're ultimately doing.
For him, and they're obeying him, not because they agree with it.
And now I'm talking about somebody my age, not because I agree with it, but I'm doing it from the heart as unto the Lord, because it's an authority that He put there.
Very very important lesson and now at my age is not the time to learn it.
And it's not the child's fault if you don't teach it to them.
As parents, we will answer to the Lord if we don't teach these things to our children. Very important. Another thing that's important.
Is to teach the children that our word is true, that we mean what we say. Nothing more fatal than to tell our children to do something and they don't do it. And we say, oh, well, Johnny, come here. Johnny walks away. I just go pick Johnny up. What have I also taught Johnny besides rebellion?
They taught Johnny that my word does not matter. I don't mean what I say. I say come here. Johnny didn't come here and there was no consequence. Didn't matter.
Let's go to Matthew chapter 5.
Matthew 5 and verse 37. But let your communication be yay, yay, nay, nay, for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
It is so important in every aspect of our life that we mean what we say, but nowhere more important parents and those who are gonna be parents than when it comes to your children. And by the way, don't be telling your children every little thing.
Putting on things that don't matter so that you feel really bad to follow up on it all over the place, actually say that, which is important. And once you've said it, follow up on it and make sure you carry through. Otherwise a child will think, oh, it doesn't matter. I'll just go do whatever I want. And you know, I've seen cases where there are parents who say all kinds of things to their children and children don't listen to a word and they crawl all over the parent and the parents all harried and.
When you talk to that parent sometimes and you can tell they think that they're being meek and lowly and gracious and all of this, and it's not bad at all. The parents really shirking the responsibility that God gave them. And they're bringing up that child in a way that's going to harm that child very greatly and possibly many more besides. And so keeping our word is very, very important.
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And all these things tend toward rebellion. Just one other issue I want to address about that.
This is sometimes difficult for us as people because we say, who am I? Why should I exercise? Because I'm stronger than the child. I can beat on the child and do whatever I want. Sometimes people think like that, right? And it's true. We are stronger than the child that we could go beat on a child, which is evil.
Anyone who does that is evil. That's pure abuse.
The issue isn't who we are. The issue is the one who gave us authority. God gave us the children. God, along with the children, gave us the authority. And the children need to understand when they're old enough, that the authority comes from Him. Before the children understand that, we need to understand that the authority comes from Him, and we act on His authority, but we carry.
All these things that He says in His word, according to His authority, we are nothing. Let's just get over that right at the beginning. As Christians, we are nothing. But when God gives us responsibility and He gives us authority, He is expecting that we will act on that, and one day we will answer to Him for what we did with that responsibility and that authority. Now let's go over to Second Timothy chapter 3.
Just a few more things.
Second Timothy. Well, I'm just going to refer to this Second Timothy chapter 3.
Speaks about the way the in the second verse, the things that will be in christened them in the last day and it speaks about what will happen in that time will be disobedience to parents. We really already talked about this, that this is what God sees as a great evil within the Christian profession in the last day, disobedience to parents and that is coming in all around us. I say this because just to warrant, even though it's coming in, there's no reason for us to do it.
Ourselves we can be obedient to the Lord, but I do want to go to the example of of Samuel for a moment, and there are many things here to spend quite a bit of time on.
We won't, Umm.
In First Samuel chapter 3, we find it's a bad example Eli's sons, and because he had not restrained them, it says the Lord was going to execute judgment not only on his sons, but on Eli. Very serious.
But in First Samuel, I just want to go back to verses that have already been read in these meetings.
But look at a couple other points with them. First Samuel chapter one and verse 24 says about Hannah Samuel's mother. When she had weaned him, she took him up with her with three bullocks and so on. She went up to where Eli was to the House of the Lord. And there she says in verse 27 to Eli, she says, For this child I prayed, and the Lord hath given me.
My petition which I asked of him.
Therefore also I have lent him to the Lord. As long as he liveth, he shall be lent to the Lord. And he, Samuel, I take it, worship the Lord there.
Now Samuel didn't know who the Lord was really. He hardly knew anything. Later on, we see by chapter 3, he'll find out who the Lord is, and he'll do that worship intelligently. But he was a young boy. How old was he? I don't know. It doesn't tell us how old he was, but it does say it was when he was leaned. After he's done nursing, perhaps it's a little later in those days, but when he was done work nursing, he was taken by his mother up to the House of the Lord, and he was left there.
How could that be? How could you do that?
This is a child who could be left in a place and expected to obey. And when you read about Samuel, as you go on in the next chapters, you find out that he was an obedient little boy. By the time he was weaned, his mother and his father no doubt had taught him this implicit obedience. So I'm not gonna put a a date or an age on when this lesson has to be taught to our children.
But the Spirit of God does. It gives enough of a clue here that we know it's not when the child gets older and understands everything. Samuel did not understand everything. He didn't know yet who the Lord was, and yet he had learned to be.
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Obedient, perfectly obedient. What he was doing. Some people say, well, that's Samuel. And some people do really well with their children. But my children are different. You ever hear that? You know, I I've got children. There's just no way that'll work.
It's not really true, really. It's not the children who are different, it's the parents who are different. And as parents we need to get a hold of that. The word of God applies to all of us. I've seen parents.
With children that were very difficult to control. And I've seen those same children in the hands of others, babysitter, grandparents, whoever, for extended periods of time, acting good as gold. Why?
Because those others than their parents had a word and they knew that they meant what they said. And even though they hardly had any controller authority over them being other than their parents, now they're acting completely different than how they act with their parents. The problem if there's a problem in their families will be with us as parents. And it's why we need to take these principles to heart before God.
And we need to learn, we need to teach our children that we mean what we say.
This is in so many ways. I'm gonna give another example. It's a a personal one again.
When I was very young.
I was.
Umm, still. Well, I was just my father. I could talk and I could certainly understand what he was saying. And I don't remember what the issue was, but he told me I had to do something and I didn't like it. And so I started to cry. Not a a big cry, I was, it was a protest. I was whining, that's what it was. And I was going on and whining and whining.
And he waited a little bit. He knew what it was from the start, but he waited till he knew for sure that that's what I was doing and there was nothing wrong.
And he said this to me, and I'm telling you this because I was old enough to understand what I was doing, and I was old enough that I can still remember what he said. So our children are pretty smart sometimes, but if they're too young, you can't do what my father did here. I wasn't that young. He said this. He said you stopped crying.
Or I'm going to give you something to cry about.
Now guess what happened? That crime stopped immediately and he didn't have that problem any longer.
And if I kept going, there's no question and there wasn't any question in my mind, then what would have happened? I would certainly have been crying, and with good reason. And that's what we need to do with our words and our children. And believe me, that will yield a lot of happiness in our families. It sounds harsh sometimes it sounds cruel. It sounds like misery. It's not.
The miseries on the other side when these things go on unchecked and the happy families are those who are disciplined as executed carefully and promptly and where it's needed. And in those homes, I've noticed that the discipline actually is very rare because it's hardly ever needed. But when it is needed, it's done in a manner that's appropriate and then the home is happy again.
One more thing.
That is.
Taking your children to a camp like this, or to meeting when they're unruly does not satisfy what Ephesians 64 says about Father's Raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
There's a lot more to raising children and discipline of children than that.
And we need to do it carefully and diligently at home. And I'm gonna suggest.
It's very, very important that we all have a family Bible reading. Don't try to train your children all about sitting still and meeting and meeting. Do it at home. And by the way, you a Christian family, you have a Bible reading.
If not, I'll ask you again, are you a Christian family? Remember what Bernie read to us from Ephesians, umm, from Deuteronomy chapter 6 about that need to bring the Word of God, be diligently before our children. We need to have the Word of God out and read every day and our children need to be trained as we do that. They need to learn to sit still in the family Bible reading and learn that that's the time of respect. That's the time when we are considering.
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What God has to say from His Word and when our children learn the lesson there, believe me, it's a lot less struggle when we get to meeting, when there's a lot of other people around to disturb. Take care of it at home and it'll be much better then. And so these are just some practical thoughts.
That have come to me. I'm just much more that could be set aside, but I just want to end on one note. We won't turn back to it, but a little further down in the chapter where we started in Hebrews Chapter 11.
It says.
No chastening, for the present seemeth joyous but grievous.
But afterwards it yielded the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby.
And that's for us who are older. But the children and the whole family will get the peaceable fruit of righteousness if there's proper loving scriptural discipline and obedience that's enforced in the home. May the Lord help us because these are precious charges that He's put into our hands to raise for Him. And there's a great reward and benefit at the end if we can bring them up for His glory.
Let's just close this prayer. Our God and our Father, we thank Thee that we know a perfect Father.
That Thy way with us is perfect, that I love toward us is perfect. We thank Thee for all the way that's always LED us and brought us. But we think too of the responsibilities that doubt us. Give it to us in life. And for all that we as parents and others who will yet be parents here, have as responsibility before they, we pray for help.
We are weak, Father, we fail so often. We pray that thou would overrule when we do fail, and yet work to Thy glory.
We pray that that would help us to act according to Thy word, and we pray that there might be much blessing as a result to continue to commit ourselves to the and thank you for this time that we had together. In the name of the Lord Jesus, Amen.
Session #5
Servanthood
Address—Shawn Allan
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.
Good evening everybody.
I'd just like to open up our meeting this evening by singing him number 88, number 88.
That I heard uh, I wasn't there, but I heard the meeting of vessel conference. I heard this tune sung and I, I really enjoyed it. So I hope I can start it properly and I just like to sing the 1St 4 standards of this hymn 88.
Oh bless.
Is gonna get it run is I love some but somebody else better started but that's the tune. I think you know which one I mean.
It was a good day, I don't know how long. I have a lot of money. I'm sorry. Laughing like a lot of money.
Graham and Dave.
Call Gregory. I don't have something else. But then, oh, you're good friend. You're doing a different salon and everything.
Thank you very much. Thank you for calling Microsoft.
Grand Theft Auto producing Crowns. I don't know how long I'm going to consider it, but I'm sorry, I'm going to go over there. Oh, 499.
Well, that, that actually wasn't the tomb, but I enjoyed it a great deal, so now I'm gonna have to listen to this meeting and learn it afterwards. Thank you, I appreciated that. Let's just, uh, let's just pray.
Lord Jesus, we come before thee tonight and we express our great need of help for this hour.
Let us know the needs of each and every person here this evening.
We do not know them nearly so well.
And we just pray that God's word.
And the one of which every page in God's Word speaks.
Would be would minister to the needs of the hearers tonight?
We just give thanks for this day that has been provided for us, also the fellowship, the service.
The good weather.
And we acknowledge that all these blessings come from.
Thy bountiful hands. We just ask these things and give thanks in the name of the Lord Jesus, Amen.
I have in my heart this evening to speak of.
A verse that has been mentioned a few times already at the camp.
I'd just like to turn to a briefly in Luke chapter 22.
And the 27th verse of Luke chapter 22.
For weather is greater, he that sitteth at meets, or he that serveth is not he that sitteth and meets.
This expression in particular, but I am among you as he.
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That service.
I'm among you as he that serveth.
You know, when we first drove into the the camp, It's our first time coming here.
I so appreciated that somebody came up to us almost the moment we went to the main lodge over here.
Greeted us with a hug.
Big smile on their face.
Gave us a tour of the facilities here.
This particular person or person would have been very, very tired because they had been serving for several days.
But they went out of their way to make us feel at home.
And there are many here at the camp.
Some young people.
There's a girl here, I won't name her, very kind to some of our family.
Was an active service.
And, you know, all of our lives have been touched.
In one way or another, by the kindness and the service of others.
It's not my desire tonight to preach about how we do such a poor job of being servants. It's really my heart's desire this evening to put before you.
The perfect example? The one service who should occupy our gaze. 1 servants who should occupy our gaze each and every day.
And with the Lord's help, we're going to go through a chapter in the Gospel of Mark and examine a day in the life of the Lord Jesus. But before I do that, I'd like to turn to that very familiar.
Passage, Philippians. Chapter 2.
And we're going to start with.
The fourth verse.
Look, not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.
Let this mind be in you.
Which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of his servants.
And was made in the likeness of men.
And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death.
Even the death of the cross.
Wherefore God also have highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
It wasn't my intention to.
Speak of the gospel this evening, but this afternoon the Lord put it on my heart.
That there are many, many people in this room tonight and we don't know whether they're all the Lords.
And this passage of the Lord.
Coming down into this world as a servant and going to Calvary's cross beautifully illustrates the Gospel.
And I just want to challenge everybody in this room tonight and ask this question.
As a result of the Lord Jesus coming down into this world as a servant, obeying his Father's will and going to Calvary's cross, God also has highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name and every knee. Every knee will bow and confess to Jesus Christ is Lord.
You can only do that in this life or the one to come.
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And my question to you tonight.
I ask it of you children, but perhaps there's adults too.
Have you?
Confess Jesus as your Lord.
If you don't do it in this life.
There will come that day when it will not be a question.
Of whether you can do that, you will file the knee and confess Jesus as Lord and that will be a sad and a tragic time.
Again I ask this question, is Jesus your Lord?
The Lord Jesus shed his blood on Calvary's cross.
And I long and hope that nobody in this room.
Has put off that question of accepting the Lord Jesus as their Lord. If thou shalt confess with thy mouth, Jesus is Lord, and shall believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
You know.
What's really on my heart this evening in connection with the subject?
Is the fact that we live in a world.
Full of needs.
Full of need.
Assemblies.
If they're small assemblies, they're lonely.
The young people struggle with fellowship.
The parents struggle with discouragement if there's large assemblies.
There's difficulties too.
If you're parents, you struggle with your children and what to do and how to do it. And we had a very helpful word last night.
Your mother's you struggle with exhaustion.
If your father's you struggle with how to handle the pressures of work.
We struggle with how to manage our time properly, we struggle with health issues. There's sin in this world and the needs are enormous and immense.
You know, just in a couple of days at my work, I.
I was astonished to find out that four people in the group that I look after.
Have mental challenges. One in particular, he was sitting in my office and he said to me that he was married to an Aboriginal lady. No, he wasn't married to her, he was living with her.
And the family had drug problems and alcohol problems, and they kept asking him for part of his paycheck to cover off the needs to satisfy those desires. And one of the members of the family had moved into the house.
And their mayor, their relationship was falling apart because of the struggle managing this family member there in the house. And he had depression issues. He himself was on medication. His family was broken up. They were divorced.
And then he proceeded to tell me if two other people, two other meteorologists, I'm a meteorologist on medications for similar sorts of things.
I remember sitting on a plane one day and I sat down beside somebody.
And you ask that routine question, how was your day?
And you know, most people say, fine, thank you.
We never know really how their day was, but this lady, she decided to be honest. She said, well really, it was a really terrible day.
My boyfriend was arrested as he stepped onto the plane.
How do you answer that?
This world is full of need and we need servants.
And so I'd like to turn now to the divine example.
In Mark chapter 6.
And we're gonna start reading from.
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Verse 30.
And the apostles gathered themselves together unto Jesus, and told him all things, both what they had done and what they had taught.
And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while. For there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat, and they departed into a desert place by ship privately.
And the people saw them departing, and many knew him, and ran afoot thither out of all cities, and outwent them, and came together unto him. And Jesus, when he came out, saw much people, and was moved with compassion toward them, because they were a sheep, not having a shepherd. And He began to teach them many things.
And when the day was now far spent, his disciples came unto him, and said, This is a desert place.
Now the time is far past. Send them away, that they may go into the country roundabout and into the villages, and buy themselves bread, for they have nothing to eat. He answered and said unto them, Give ye them to eat.
They say unto him, Shall we go and buy 200 penny worth of bread, and give them to eat?
He said unto them, How many loaves have ye go and see? And when they knew, they say five and two fishes. And he commanded them to make all sit down by companies upon the green grass.
And they sat down in ranks by hundreds and by 50s.
And when he had taken the five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and break the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before them. And the two fishes divided he among them all, And they did all eat, and were filled, and they took up 12 baskets full of the fragments of the end of the fishes. And they did eat of the loaves were about 5000 men. And He can straightway constrain his disciples to get into the ship and to go to the other side before under Bethesda, while He sent away the people.
And when he had sent them away, he departed into a mountain to pray. And when evening was come, the ship was in the midst of the sea, and he alone in the land. And he saw them toiling and rowing, for the wind was contrary unto them.
And about the 4th watch of the night He comes unto them walking upon the sea, and would have passed by them. But when they saw Him walking upon the sea, they supposed it had been a spirit, and cried out. And they all saw him, and were troubled. And immediately he talked with them, and said unto them, Be of good cheer it is I be not afraid. And He went up under them into the ship, and the wind ceased, and they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure, and wondered.
And now we'll just skip to verse 53. And when they had passed over, they came into the land of Genesis and drew to the shore.
And when they were come out of the ship straightway, they knew him, and ran through that whole region round about, and began to carry about in beds those that were sick where they heard he was. And whithersoever he entered into villages, or cities, or country, they laid the sick in the streets, and besought him that they might touch, if it were about the border of his garment, and as many as touched him were made whole.
So just like to.
Point something out that has been a real and touching thing to me in this little passage.
I know there are a lot of mothers here tonight.
Who don't get a lot of sleep.
And if you read this account.
It's difficult to know for sure, but it would appear that the Lord Jesus as a man, He we don't know when he started this day.
But it would, you would presume it was in the morning. And he takes his disciples by boat and they go out on the Sea of Galilee and they get to the other side and they're immediately accosted by thousands of people with needs.
And man, there is so much work.
And then there's the feeding of the 5000 and all that was involved in that.
And then as late in the day, and the Lord Jesus personally dismisses all those crowds.
And his day doesn't stop. He goes up into the mountain and he prays late into the night.
And then in the middle of the night.
He sees the disciples struggling out on the water.
There's no nap to be taken, no rest. He goes out on the water.
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Gets into the ship.
And when he gets to the shore, there are the throngs again, waiting for their needs to be met. How long did the Lord Jesus stay awake?
Perhaps he got a nap. We're not told, but it would certainly appear that it could easily have been 36 hours or longer.
And he was a man, and it would have been exhausting.
I share that with you for this reason.
We all go through things in our lives that we find very difficult.
When I first moved to Newfoundland.
There is a time of difficulty.
I was very helpful in considering that the Lord Jesus could understand a little bit.
And what I would like to encourage you in this is simply this. If you know something of exhaustion, and I think there are many in this room tonight who know something of exhaustion, the Lord Jesus felt it.
And he cares, and he's simplified.
And he appreciates it.
He appreciates the labor that you do.
And I'd just like to start with that one little thought.
But there's something else here.
John the Baptist had just been beheaded.
We learn in another gospel, the Gospel of Matthew.
That the Lord Jesus received that news and he departed by ship, there's no mention.
Of his disciples in the Gospel of Matthew in this account.
And I take it.
That the Lord Jesus felt the weight of the fact that the last prophet.
Have been killed by those Jews, by the nation of Israel. He felt the weight of the fact that the cross was before him.
And.
If you could say it reverently, he was troubled in mind. But then you have here in this chapter where he's presented as a servant. His disciples come to him and they say, look what we've done. We went out.
We did as you as you told us. Miracles were performed. We learned these things. We learned those things. We taught these people.
The Lord Jesus doesn't say.
Another time please.
He doesn't say.
Why are you occupied with what you did?
He says come apart, rest a while.
I have been rebuked as a father and I say this to parents now.
Greatly rebuked.
But very often our children do things imperfectly.
Our first instinct is to lecture.
Is it not?
My children have said you're lecturing me, Dad.
And I suppose yes, there's a time and a place for instruction. But here in this chapter, the servants heart didn't say anything like that. The disciples he just simply said come apart and rest a while. And you know what? If you trace this story.
The disciples said we taught, we did these things, and the Lord Jesus, he's going to show them how he taught and what he did. What's the lesson there?
Be an example. The servant's heart is occupied so much less with lecturing and all.
And just being an example of the Lord.
I take that to heart, but I fail greatly in it.
And I think it's so beautiful.
And so the Lord Jesus here, he says, come apart and rest a while. A servant desires rest.
Rest for those that they love.
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You know, we came apart this week. Some have just arrived.
And I think there was a desire in the hearts of some that we come apart and rest a while.
And isn't that beautiful?
And the Lord Jesus here, he took the disciples apart, and he spent time privately with them in the ship.
You know, I think the disciples were expecting that they were going to have perhaps a leisurely time when they got to the shore in the desert place.
But they had their time with the Lord in the ship.
We don't know what the Lord Jesus said to them.
And I say this to you in connection with the fact that the Lord desired that they go apart and rest because they didn't even have time so much as to eat, they were so busy.
Do we not live very busy lives?
Too busy?
I struggle with it. I know you struggle with it.
But brethren, we need time with the Lord.
And he desires that we are apart with him.
And there's always time for that.
You know, I thought about it a little bit in connection with this story.
I don't think that disciples considered that that time in the ship was their time with the Lord, because there was a great interruption when they got to the shores and the multitudes met the Lord.
And you know, again I say to parents, but I say it to us all.
Do we live such structured and busy lives?
That when something comes up that needs to be dealt with, as a servant, we can stop and meet the need.
I think it's beautiful that the Lord Jesus recognized at this time in the ship was a very important time for the disciples.
Maybe you drive to work?
Maybe you're on airplanes. Maybe you drive a tractor.
Maybe you pilot a ship, I don't know. Do you take the time that you get? The precious time that you get?
Could be consumed listening to things that may be enjoyable.
But more profitably could be spent in quiet time with the Lord Jesus. I say that to myself.
And I just leave it with you.
And so they get to the other side, and here come the multitudes. It says the people saw them departing and many knew him, verse 33 and ran afoot. And Jesus when he came out saw much people and was moved with compassion.
Toward them because they were a sheep, not having a shepherd.
The day was interrupted. The crowds were there.
And you know, our children might interrupt us. They might knock on our door in the middle of the night and say, Mommy or Daddy, I need you to come use the washroom. Or perhaps your child stops you as you get home from work and said, come here, I gotta show you something. And here I'm just gonna raise my hand and say, as a father, I fail in this.
The Lord Jesus.
He stopped. He saw immediately the needs.
And he was filled with compassion.
He didn't treat it as an interruption. I don't have time for that. I have other plans today.
And you know, I've been very, very.
Touched his little word compassion, and I'd just like to spend a moment or two upon it.
The Lord Jesus, he steps out of the boat and there are all these crowds.
He doesn't send them away, he mingles with them.
Luke 15, the father, he saw his son Alfarov, and he had compassion, and he ran to his son and he threw his arms around his son, the Good Samaritan. What did he do? He saw that broken, bleeding man on the trail.
And he goes to where he is. He came where he was.
And he bound up the wounds.
You know we don't do enough of that to meet people right where they are.
You know.
One thing I'm not very good at, I don't want to use myself as an example. It's.
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You sit beside a brother in meeting or a sister. Do you know really where they are at?
And do you seek to meet them right where they are?
We don't really know people the way we think we do. We don't know the hurts underneath.
As parents and I have struggled with this, you, you struggle sometimes to know your children. Maybe they're different in personality than you you are or your wife, because your wife is different than you are.
The Lord Jesus, he came to where people were.
You know, in my work, one of the things that I do from time to time is this is a humorous thing. It's not funny exactly, but I train people who plow roads.
Have trained people who plow roads how to use a road weather information system.
And these are truck drivers. They've never worn a suit in their life. I work in the in the business world. I don't go and train them with a suit and tie.
I go to the Depot and I wear jeans and a sweatshirt because they want me to be where they're at. And I definitely don't show up and drink Starbucks coffee when I go there because they drink Tim Horton's coffee.
And I don't go to the out ports of Newfoundland and expect to be served a Mediterranean diet. They eat cod, fish and brews.
You know, sometimes it's just as simple.
As sitting down and getting to know a person and then soon enough you find out the needs.
And that's all I'm going to say about that. But it's a very searching thing. I do believe, brethren, that many of the reasons that we struggle in our assemblies is because we don't come to where our brethren are, really.
That takes time, it takes effort it takes.
A willingness to be exposed a little bit.
But let me ask you in your marriage.
Do you want to have a relationship where you don't really know your spouse? You don't spend the time to get to know them?
You will put up walls because it's not worth it.
To be heard a little bit, maybe.
Come to where people are. Come to people where where people are.
And you know here the Lord Jesus, he looks at them and he sees sheep not having a shepherd.
It's often been said we need shepherds.
Oh, how we need shepherds.
These people.
Didn't have teaching.
They didn't have the word of God.
And the Lord Jesus very graciously.
Begins to teach them.
And you know, I just want to say this, that I am so thankful that there were brethren in my early years who did that.
I vividly remember people coming through the assembly where I grew up in and they stayed for three or four days and there would be paper charts all over the wall on both the Tabernacle about prophecy and Daniel. And they would teach. And you know, these weren't, I remember 1 laboring brother again, I won't name names, but I was very impressed by this. He used to take his driving in his car. I can still, I can still smell the scent of his car.
He didn't drive.
The speed limit in a straight line. I remember driving in his car one day. He started to swerve the car like this on the road. And we were, he was trying to be funny and we as kids were like, wow, this is really fun. He was coming to where we were.
I want to relate to this person, this, this boy who's 12 years old. I'm not a stoic, growing up laboring brother.
And I appreciated that. I'm not saying anybody here is like that, like it is stoic or anything like that. I just say that it was appreciated that he would be like that with us.
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And you know, we don't appreciate teachers in general enough.
We live in a society that doesn't want to be taught anything. They want to be able to go to Google and get the instant answer right away. No teaching. Instead of having somebody carefully take the time to show how to do a piece of fine piece of woodwork, let's have a YouTube video that shows you exactly how to do it. I'm not saying YouTube videos are wrong. I'm all for them. I've used them myself.
But as adults, do we take the time to teach?
Teaching is a beautiful thing.
And our assemblies need teaching.
Our children need teaching. We had it last night, the family Bible reading. Do you teach your children the word of God? If you don't, they're sheep without a shepherd.
It tells us in another gospel, Gospel of Matthew, that the Lord had compassion. Same story, but he says he healed them.
He saw the physical needs of the people.
And he sought to meet those needs.
And I take it perhaps, you know, sickness is the result of the fall. It's a result of the curse.
And you know, goes back to what was said earlier about the fact that people have these broken lives. We all have broken lives because the fall has brought things in. Do we seek to minister to those needs?
The Lord Jesus, He did. He did.
And now it says, When the day was now far spent, his disciples came unto him and said, This is a desert place. Now the time is far past. Send them away, that they may go into the country roundabout and into the villages, and by themselves bread, for they have nothing to eat.
I don't wanna spend a lot of time on this particular story, but here the disciples.
They know the day is long gone and they look at the situation. They say it's impossible that these people can be fed, send them away. What they saw was a hopeless situation and what is on my heart this evening is this in connection with this.
That oftentimes we look at our situations and we say they're hopeless situations.
There's no way the Lord can bless.
It's impossible.
But the Lord Jesus here says in verse 37, give ye them to eat. It's a command. It's a command. Give them to eat. In this connection, I'd just like to reference a verse in the Gospel of John.
One of my favorite verses in the scriptures.
And it's in verse chapter.
Excuse me?
Chapter 14 in the last verse.
But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave me commandments, Even so I do rise. Let us go ahead.
The Lord Jesus had a commandment from his Father. It was to go to Calvary's cross.
And he obeyed it.
What was the result of that obedient act?
Salvation for you and me, blessing for this world. Blessing incomprehensible because the Lord Jesus was willing to obey.
And you know, I'd like to share this thought with you. If your situation looks impossible, the Lord Jesus calls you simply to obey. And if you obey, you can expect there will be blessings.
In what seemingly looks like an impossible situation. And what happened here?
The Lord fed the 5000.
Incomprehensible blessing.
And faith does not look at the impossibilities, it's just simply trust the Lord.
00:40:04
You know, I don't believe that the disciples here really.
Thought this was gonna happen.
But they did follow the Lord's instructions.
And the Lord used the disciples to feed the crowd that day. And that brings me to another thing in connection with servanthood.
That I just I've enjoyed and is this of course the Lord Jesus was the giver of the bread and fishes that multiplied that day.
But he shared the work with his disciples. And you know, sometimes we do something for the Lord and we we don't want to share. We don't want to involve others. And I really, really appreciate it when I see other brethren, they come and they ask a child, will you come help me do this? Or they might invite you to do something, to go give out gospel tracks or something else.
Do we share with others in the work of the Lord?
The Lord Jesus did that, and that's a servant's heart, and the Lord Jesus did that.
And everybody was fed.
And now I just want to turn down to verse.
46.
And when he sent them away, he departed into a mountain to pray.
So here we have the Lord Jesus, and we discover the source.
The source of all that had happened that day?
He was independent upon his father, and he prayed in that mountain.
Do you pray?
Do you pray?
That was the secret. You can't serve the Lord in your own strength at all. It must flow. When we had this beautifully brought out in a couple of the young people's meetings in the last two evenings, we must spend time with the Lord Jesus. We must spend time with the Lord Jesus.
And if we do that?
The result of that communion with him will be a heart that has compassion, that desires to serve, and that reaches out.
And the Lord Jesus, here, he spent the night in prayer.
You know, I think it's very beautiful to see here a few other things in connection with the Lord Jesus and his desire for his disciples to be a part if you turn over and these things are well known, the Gospel of John chapter 18. We know this very well.
When Jesus had spoken these words, He went forth with his disciples over the brook Kedron, where was the garden, to the which He entered, and his disciples, and Judas also, which betrayed him, knew the place. For Jesus off times resorted thither with his disciples.
Jesus often went into that Garden of Gethsemane with his disciples.
He desired to be alone in their company.
In the garden, and He desires that with you and me.
And now I just want to quickly make a few comments and we're almost done in connection with the disciples toiling.
They go out into the ship.
And the rowing and the wind is contrary and they're having a difficult time.
A very difficult time.
And the Lord Jesus, he comes to them, and does he say to them.
Stop being so worried now, he did say we read in another book. Oh ye of little faith. Wherefore did sou doubt?
But here, when they were afraid, what we have in verse 50 is that the Lord Jesus.
It says he said to them, Be of good cheer. It is. I be not afraid.
You know what I love about that? The Lord Jesus encouraged them. He encouraged them to encourage one another.
You know, there's a beautiful verse that we know well, and let's just turn to Isaiah 42.
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Well known versus.
Behold, my servants.
Verse One Whom I uphold my elect, and whom my soul delighteth. I have put my spirit upon him. He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor 'cause his voice to be heard in the streets. And this is what I was thinking of. A bruised Reed shall he not break?
And the smoking flax, shall he not quench?
He shall bring forth judgment under truth. What's a bruised Reed? It's something that's very, very fragile.
Sometimes we're fragile.
You think shouting at somebody and telling them to get into shape, it's gonna help them be strong?
Behold, my servants, a bruised Reed he will not break.
What's a smoking Reed? I like to think of it this way. You make a fire.
And in Newfoundland, it can be very difficult to make a fire because it's windy all the time. You can see the smoke blowing, but it's not Catching Fire. And what do you do? You go down and you cup your hands and you blow and you try and get it to burst into flame. It's very delicate thing to do. You're trying not to make the fire go out. Do we encourage one another so that the fire doesn't go out?
Well done.
You did a good job. I was really encouraged by what you did. Thank you. How was your day today?
The Lord Jesus we had that verse be a kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another even as.
Tired even God is even God is Christ. Sake hath forgiven you.
Isn't that beautiful?
Isn't that beautiful? The Lord Jesus here.
He sought to encourage. We have a very similar expression, the apostle Paul.
In prison.
Enact and we know that he had failed quite a bit.
In the days leading up to where he was put into that dungeon, faithful Paul, the Lord doesn't come to him and say Paul.
Why did you lose your temper?
He says, Paul, be a good cheer, be a good cheer. We need to encourage one another.
And so those are the thoughts that I I had this evening in connection with being a servant that the Lord Jesus, if you trace out this chapter.
Did you ever think about the fact 5000 men might have been 15,000 people?
What it would have been like we get tired out in crowds of 200, sometimes in crowds of 50.
There was easily 10,000 people in this situation and the Lord Jesus.
Sought to help in every way he could.
He sought to spend time alone with his disciples. He sought to encourage them. He sought to be the perfect example.
In teaching and in doing, he labored. And you know, there's a verse in connection with that that I have enjoyed in Luke.
I'm sorry, the Gospel of John, Let's just turn to it if I can find it.
I think it's John chapter 5.
Yes, John. Chapter 5.
In verse 16 it says, therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus and sought to slay him because he had done these things on the Sabbath day. But Jesus answered them, My Father works hitherto and I work. What was the Lord Jesus saying?
It's not the Sabbath in this world. There's sin in this world.
And until that day comes of rest, perfect rest, there's work to be done.
And so I'd like to close by going back to Philippians Chapter 2. You really don't need to turn to because we know it so well.
00:50:05
Look, not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.
Do we look on the things of others?
The Lord Jesus is our example.
Let's not look on our own things, but on the things of others. Let's do that in our marriages and our families, in the assembly, in a dying, broken, hurting world.
And the Lord Jesus sets the perfect example of that for us. Let's just close by singing the last four verses of that hymn.
88.
I'll let someone else start it.
Just in singing that I couldn't help but think we should read in closing Exodus chapter 20.
One Exodus 21.
Verse two. If thou buy a Hebrew servant six years, he shall serve, and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself. If he were married, then his wife.
Should go out with them. His master have given him a wife, and she had borne him sons or daughters. The wife and her children. She'll be your masters, and he'll go by himself. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife and my children, I will not go out free, Then his master shall bring him unto the judges.
He shall also bring him to the door or under the doorpost.
And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl.
And he shall serve him forever.
And I couldn't help, even as I read that, thinking of a verse that Mister Sikora quoted to me today in Luke chapter 12.
We'll close with this verse.
Verse 37.
Blessed are those servants whom the Lord, when he cometh, shall find watching. Verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meet, and will come forth and serve them. Just pray.
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Lord Jesus.
How can we possibly thank thee?
For what that was done for us.
We just pray, Lord Jesus, that as our vision is filled.
With gratitude.
For what has been done?
For those who are so wholly and completely undeserving.
That we might, in turn desire to.
Serve to help others.
Do not look on our own things, but on the things of others.
And tonight, Lord Jesus, we would just give thanks also for the many examples that we have in our lives of those who served, and give thanks for all that has been done for us here at this camp, the many who have labored ceaselessly.
Well, I'm long and late into the night in order that we could have this time apart.
And we give thanks for them.
We give thanks above all for the Lord Jesus our Savior. In his name we pray. Amen.
Session #6
The Love of Christ Constrains Us
Address—Jim Hyland
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
I'd like to start the meeting this evening with 171. He bids us come his voice we know, and boldly on the waters go to him, our God and Lord. We walk on life's tempestuously, for he who died to set us free have called us with His word 171.
Umm.
Oh, he's pretty often Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Blah.
MMM.
Let's ask God's help and blessing our blessed God and Father. We're so very thankful tonight for thy beloved Son, the Lord Jesus. And we thank Thee for that one who has not only become our Savior, saved us from the just penalty of our guilt, saved us from a lost eternity, but we're thankful for that one who's living for us, that one who's preserving us all along the path of faith and service. And now, as we take by living Word and open it once again, we pray.
That Christ might be ministered to us in the power of the Spirit, that there might be that which would exercise us, refresh us, encourage us, edify us, perhaps even correct or admonish, whatever the need might be. Our God and Father. We pray that that need might be met from thy living word in the power of the Spirit. So we only have no might of ourselves, but we look to Thee for help and blessing, asking it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and for his glory.
00:05:06
Amen. Turn with me please to the 14th chapter of the book of Matthew.
Matthew, chapter 14 and we'll begin reading at verse 22.
And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship and to go before him unto the other side.
Well, he sent the multitudes away, and when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray.
And when the evening was come, he was there alone. But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves, for the wind was contrary. And in the 4th watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea.
And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying it is a spirit.
And they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer.
It is I be not afraid. And Peter answered him, and said, Lord, if it be thou bid me come unto thee on the water. And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water to go to Jesus.
But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid, and beginning to sink. He cried, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore did thou doubt?
And when they were come into the ship, the wind ceased. Then they that were in the ship came and worshipped him, saying of a truth, Thou art the Son of God. Now just hold your finger here. We're going to come right back to this portion. They want to read 2 Old Testament portions, the first one in Psalm 107.
Psalm 107.
Beginning at verse 23.
They that go down to the sea, and ships that do business in great waters. These see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep, for he commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind which lifteth up the waves thereof.
They mount up to the heavens. They go down again to the depths. Their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit's end. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm so that the waves thereof are still. Then they are glad because they be quiet. So he bringeth them onto their desired haven, and one more portion in Isaiah.
Chapter 43.
Isaiah Chapter 43.
And verse one.
But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed the. O Israel, fear not, for I have redeemed thee. I have called thee by thy name. Thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the rivers they shall not overflow thee. Well last night Brother Sean gave me the subject and the incident in the this gospel that I'd like to take up. He didn't know that he was going to do that.
But in being exercised as to what I should take up this evening, I really didn't know what the Lord would have until last night. And then it was confirmed this morning by one of the questions that was asked and answered. And so the Lord works in different ways. And I trust that it has been a work of the Spirit of God to bring this subject before our hearts because, you know, we've had a wonderful time here at this camp. It's been a little Oasis in the wilderness journey.
It's wonderful to be together with those of like precious faith, to get away from the daily grind of work. And yet we're anticipating if the Lord leaves us here leaving in a day or so, and we're going to go back to that which we left behind, and you children and young people are going to start school again. Many are going to go back to work and to other activities. These little Oasis don't last very long on the path of faith and service.
00:10:02
And we're going to go back to where the rubber meets the road. We're going to go back to where our Christianity is really going to be put to the test, where faith is going to be tested time and time again.
If the Lord leaves us here, and I've enjoyed in a very practical way this little incident that we read of.
In the life of the Lord Jesus. Now, before I bring out what is particularly on my heart in connection with this story.
I would just say that Matthew's Gospel is the gospel that is most Jewish in its character. It has the most Old Testament quotes, and it is the gospel that is most dispensational in its character. And in this chapter there is a dispensational picture that I think is very helpful for us to get a hold of in the incident before, as has been pointed out, we have what we often refer to.
As the feeding of the 5000 where the Lord Jesus used the disciples to distribute those few loaves and fishes.
To the multitudes. But you know, if we were to go to John's gospel, we would find that after he fed the multitude, they desired to come and to force him to be king because of the loaves and fishes.
I mean, wouldn't it be wonderful to have a king who could sit thousands of people down and without any effort, take a few loaves and fishes and feed them? And I suppose they thought too, this would be the right man to break the yoke of Rome and to bring them into freedom in that way. But it was all the wrong reason and the wrong motive. That's not why the Lord Jesus wanted them to desire him to be their king.
And so we find that he disappears from them, and he goes up on the mountain to pray. And so the feeding of the 5000 is a picture of his desire to bless his earthly people, Israel. But they reject him, and he goes up on the mountain. It's a picture of where he is now. Later on, too, we have a little prophetic picture with the disciples in the ship, which is so often in in the Gospels, a picture of the Jewish remnant in the coming day.
When they finally recognized the Lord Jesus as their rightful king and the only one who can calm the waves and bring them into blessing. And if we were to read the end of the chapter, we would find that when the storm ceases, they come over into the land of Genesrit, which means the garden of the Prince and those that are brought to him are perfectly made whole. It's a picture of a millennial scene in a coming day when there's going to be tremendous blessing.
For that nation and for the whole world. But that's not what I have on my heart this evening. I want to go through these verses and make some very practical applications for you and for me. Because while Scripture may have a certain meaning and context and perhaps a prophetic and dispensational character, there's always a present application. And there's a practical, there's some practical things in this, this portion.
That I trust, brethren, will encourage us, whether a child here, whether you're a young person, whether you're raising a family or like some of us, a little further along in the path of faith and service. And so we find, as this scene opens, the Lord Jesus is on the mountain praying. But before he does that, he constrains his disciples to get into a ship and to go to the other side.
For our purposes, we'll take it up in what it says in Corinthians. The love of Christ constraineth us.
And I trust, brethren, that as a result of our being here this week or whatever few days we've been, you've been privileged to be here.
I trust that our hearts have gone out more to the person of Christ. We've taken up many things in these meetings, but it has no effect to the heart that isn't attracted to the person of Christ. It's the love of Christ that constrains us. And here we find the disciples acting under the constraint of the Lord Jesus, and in obedience to His word, they get into this ship to go to the other side.
You know, if our hearts are affected, then our feet are going to follow. Sometimes when we talk about obedience to Christ, people think, oh, it's a hard thing, but it tells us in another place. If a man loved me, he will keep my words. My commandments are not grievous when the heart is involved. A request has the power of a command. It's not a difficult thing. And so they get into this ship and it tells us, I think it's in Mark's Gospel.
00:15:21
That they were going to go over to the other side, to a place called Bethsaida.
Because Bethsaida is the place of fruit, I don't pay particular attention to names and their meanings as they appear in the word of God, but there are a few that have grabbed my attention and this is one of them.
And I just want to apply it in this way. When the heart is engaged and there's obedience to the word of the Lord, and we are in the plot path and place where he desires us to be, then we are There is going to be fruit in our Christian life, and that's what he desires from you and from me. He wants there to be fruit in our lives. Fruit is really the expression of Christ in our lives, and there can only be that expression.
That fruit as say, in the measure in which our hearts are engaged, and there's obedience in the path of faith and service. And so he dismisses the multitude, and he goes up on the mountain to pray.
It's a picture of where the Lord Jesus is now. The Lord Jesus has gone on high to fill all things.
Because Christianity links us with the man in the glory. That's one of the things that is unique to Christianity. I remember some years ago some of you were there being at a Bible conference where the question was raised, what is Christianity and how can we sum up Christianity? And someone said Christianity can be summed up in one word, Christ. But that needs explanation.
Because it's not Christ in the relationship that the disciples had with Him on earth, nor is it Christ in the relationship that his earthly people, the Jews, will yet have with him in the coming day.
No, it's Christ where he is. Now henceforth know we no man after the flesh.
For though we knew Christ after the flesh, henceforth know we him no more.
Christ. We are linked with Christ now by the Spirit of God, where he is now.
Someone has said Christianity starts the other side of the cloud. You remember after the Lord Jesus had remained on earth after his resurrection long enough to give complete and ample testimony to his own that he had bodily risen from the dead. A moment came when at at outside Bethany on the Mount of Olives, he lifted up his hands and blessed the disciples. His feet left planet Earth.
And it says the cloud received him out of their sight, and they saw him no more. And then on the day of Pentecost, the Spirit was was sent down to link those believers not only together into the Church of God, but to link them with their head, the glorified man at the right hand of God in heaven. And, oh brethren, we need to get a hold of this in our soul. We're linked with a glorified man.
And as the Lord Jesus was there on the mountain, what was he doing? He was praying.
And I know our brother brought this before us the other evening, but I'd just like to echo some of the things that were brought out.
Because there, the Lord Jesus is praying for you and for me every hour of every day. I find that a tremendous concept to get a hold of in our souls. We think of the privilege of prayer in our own lives, so we can pray concerning our own needs and difficulties. We can pray concerning the needs of our family. We can pray for one another, as we are so often exhorted to do. But isn't it wonderful to think that there's one who's praying for us?
One who's interceding for us every moment of every day. You know, sometimes I'm not aware of my own needs. I forget to pray for the needs of my family or others. But there's one who knows our every need and he doesn't forget to pray for his own. What a resource we have. But again, I want to just make a few comments in connection with the two offices that the Lord Jesus is fulfilling in heaven for us now.
As praying for us, because this was brought out the other evening. He's there first of all, as our high priest.
00:20:04
Now again, as we had the other evening, it's illustrated by type in the 17th chapter of Exodus.
Because there we find that the children of Israel in the wilderness were faced by a very real enemy, Amalek. An Amalek is a picture to us in the Old Testament of Satan's working on the flesh. I say that because Esau was a grandson, or Amalek was a grandson of Esau, and Esau was a man who sold his birthright for momentary gratification.
And it was Amalek that the children of Israel faced in the wilderness. It's the work of the enemy to hinder our walk with God through this wilderness world, and he does it by working on the flesh.
But we find that the secret of their victory that day was that quiet, hidden work that was going on on the mountain nearby.
Because Moses, a picture of the Lord Jesus, went up and sat down on the mountain.
And Aaron and her came and stayed up his hands till the going down of the sun.
Now I think we see very quickly that Aaron, on the one hand, is a picture of the high priestly work of the Lord.
Now I realized that at that point Aaron hadn't been officially put into the priesthood. But I think we see the picture very clearly. And if we I can just summarize again what was brought out the other evening, the high priestly work of the Lord Jesus is to preserve us in the path of faith and service. It's to keep us from falling. And it tells us in Hebrews he has a continual priesthood. It's not. Or as you know, if you notice your margin.
It's not one that passes from one to another. You know, from the time I was nine years old till I was about 4045, perhaps I had the same doctor and he finally retired and I had to start all over again. It was frustrating and maybe you've experienced it. Maybe you've had someone that's helped you in business, you've had a lawyer or a consultant, and all of a sudden they retire. And you say that person knew us from the ground up and now we had to start all over.
But you never have to start all over with the Lord Jesus. As our High priest, He has a continual priesthood. He knew me before I was born. I was chosen in him before the foundation of the world. He knows my family background, He knows my down sittings and my uprisings. And he's living to make intercession for me, to preserve me in the path of faith and service. And then we have, on the other hand, a man named her.
Now we often say, and and rightly so, as was brought out already this week, that her pictures to us the advocacy of Christ. Why do we say that? Well, again, His name. I believe the meaning of his name is significant because her means purity and he's a picture of the Lord Jesus as the Advocate in the aspect of what it says. In First John, we have an advocate with the Father. I want you to notice this.
Jesus Christ the righteous. And so if His high priestly work is to preserve me.
Then his advocacy is to restore me when I sin, when I fail. But he's a righteous advocate, because when I sin, it's just as if the Lord Jesus in the presence of the Father says I paid for that sin. There's no compromise in my forgiveness. The sin has been paid for, and I have a righteous advocate. This might be a very feeble illustration, but suppose I go against society and I'm brought up to the judge.
And I'm a good talker. I get a good lawyer. He might let me go, but if I'm really guilty, he's not a righteous judge. But if the judge says now, Jim, I know you're guilty and the penalty is thus and so but I'm going to pay the penalty so you can go free. Now he's a righteous judge because the claims of society have been met. And notice too that it's an advocate with the father. Now. His high priestly work, as it is taken up at length in the book of Hebrews, is with God.
Because when it's with God, it's power, and it's the power to preserve me in the path of faith and service.
But his advocacy is with the father, because that's relationship and I know some of you young people, when you go to school or work, you're bombarded by Christian friends and other fellowships who are taught.
00:25:05
That if you sin, you can lose your salvation. But to me that verse in First John is one of the Clearest verses.
As to eternal security, if it said we have an advocate with God, we might well wonder if the relationship is broken. But it's an advocate with the Father, showing that when I sin, in no way is the relationship broken, but I do have to do with my Father. And so we have that advocacy. But let me just say this too before we pass on. I believe in the measure in which we avail ourselves of His high priestly work.
We won't need his advocacy. And the Lord had said to Peter too, I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not. And if Peter had only availed himself of that resource, he never would have denied the Lord three times with oaths and curses. Thank God Peter was a real disciple, a real believer, and there was restoration for him. And so we have this resource, the Lord Jesus praying for us at the right hand of God.
Now, if we were to go to another gospel, there's an interesting comment there. I think it's already been brought out.
But that we don't have in this gospel. That to me is so very precious, because as the Lord Jesus was there on the mountain praying, Mark's Gospel tells us he saw them toiling and rowing.
Maybe there's someone here this evening and you say no one knows what I'm going through. It's OK to take these things up from the word of God, but you don't understand. I'm toiling and rowing in my life. Maybe there's someone here and you're having inward struggles. Personally, you're toiling and rowing. Maybe there's family situations sometimes. The assembly. I have no doubt there's brethren here tonight who are burdened as they think of having to go back to the little assembly that they came from.
And you're toiling and rowing and you say nobody knows we can't share it with anyone. There's one look up. There's one tonight who sees you toiling and rowing. He knows all about it and he's praying for you. And more than that, he not only sympathizes with what you're going through, he empathizes. He, in the days of feeble flesh, poured out his cries and tears.
And though ascended feels afresh what every member bears, it says we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.
And I want you to notice this that was in all points tempted like as we are yet without sin. Do you realize there's nothing that we pass through in the path of faith and service that the Lord Jesus as a man hasn't felt himself? You know, the Lord Jesus knew what it was to be a child growing up in this world. He knew what it was to be a young person. He knew what it was to be a misunderstood. He could say Reproach has broken my heart.
You know what it was to be weary, to be thirsty, to be hungry, to suffer physically. Could say all my bones are out of joint.
He felt those things as a man. And as I just quoted, though, he's ascended at the right hand of God, he's the same man. And so he not only is with us in the trials, he not only sympathizes, but he empathizes. We like to have someone with us in a trial, but isn't it more wonderful to have someone who's been through a similar circumstance? You say that person knows what I'm going through. They understand the pain of my heart and soul.
And so the Lord Jesus was there on the mountain, and he was alone. Now again, just to take this a little bit out of context of the.
Picture we have here, you ever feel alone? You know, sometimes I felt alone. I felt alone in a crowd. The Lord Jesus, you know, it says on another occasion. And he being alone, his disciples were with him.
I find that a very interesting statement. Those that were closest to him in his public ministry were surrounding him, and yet he felt alone, alone in his exercise before the Lord. And sometimes we feel that way, don't we? We feel alone. Loneliness is a very real thing. But you know, he has said I will never leave thee nor forsake thee. We never really alone if we're walking in the conscious sense.
Of the Lord's presence with us. Well, then we find that the ship is now in the midst of the sea. And it's interesting because these disciples might have thought, well, have we really come the right way? Is this really where the Lord wants us? There's a storm, The wind is contrary. But they had come there under the loving constraint of the Lord Jesus. They had come there in acting in obedience to His word.
00:30:26
It's similar to again in the 17th of Exodus, when the children of Israel came to refer them, there was number water for them to drink.
But it says they came there by the commandment of the Lord. They didn't miss the mind of the Lord in coming to refit them. They come there under His direction. And I believe what we learned from this is that sometimes the Lord brings us to certain points in our lives to test our faith and to prove his faithfulness. And I believe that's why he had brought them to this point here and allowed this storm.
And so we find that the wind. Notice the end of verse 24. The wind was contrary. Now we're going to come back to this wind later on. But I believe this wind we can apply in connection with what it says in Ephesians Chapter 2, The Prince of the Power of the Air. There is a contrary wind arrayed against us in this incident. In John's Gospel it calls us it a great wind. And we have a great enemy. Thank God we have one who's more powerful than the enemy.
Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. We have one whose all powerful, but let's not underestimate that contrary wind, the Prince of the power of the air, and we'll come back to this in a few moments. Well then we find in verse 25 he comes to them in the 4th watch of the night. Now as I said earlier, Matthew is the gospel that is most Jewish in its character.
And there are things in Matthew's Gospel that are unique to Matthew that you don't get in any of the other four Gospels. And it's very significant, I believe, to notice that the Jews had three watches, the Gentiles had four. And in the gospel that is most Jewish in its character, he uses the Gentile reckoning of time. Brethren, we're in the 4th watch now. The 4th watch for the Gentiles was the last watch just before the dawn.
Brethren, can we doubt that we're just at the end of this dispensation, that the dawn is about to break? The Lord Jesus is about to come. Let's take heart. Let's take courage. I'm not going to underestimate the waves in your life and mine. I'm not going to underestimate the contrary or the great wind that is arrayed against us. But as a brother many years ago on the Canadian in the Canadian Maritimes told me. Remember Jim?
Two things. The darkest part of the night is just before the dawn.
And when a mariner is in a ship, he can tell when he's getting close to land because the water will all of a sudden become rougher.
Is the night dark morally and spiritually in this world? Are the waves high circumstantially in our lives? Oh brethren, let's take heart. Let's not be discouraged. Let's realize that we're in the 4th watch. The Lord Jesus is about to come. Well, we find then that the Lord Jesus goes to them walking on the water because again, for our purposes tonight, not only do we have one who's on high praying for us.
Living for us as our high priest and advocate. But we have one who comes to us on the sea of life, one who walks with us again. He could say to the disciples at the end of this gospel. And lo, I am with you always, even under the end of the age. I want to say this because you know, we need to pray and think about things intelligently. And sometimes I hear and I understand what we mean.
Sometimes I hear us pray and ask the Lord to be with us. I don't believe we need to ask the Lord to be with us as much as we need to pray that we would be walking in a way that we would enjoy and discern His presence with us. So we would walk in the conscious sense of the One who's with us, the one who in Hebrew says I will never leave the nor forsake thee. He's always there, whether we're conscious of His presence or not.
And we find that when the disciples lookout and see the Lord Jesus, they didn't discern who it was walking on the water.
00:35:05
And what was the result? They were troubled and I have to can only speak from my own experience.
As I have gone through the storms of life, sometimes I have been troubled and afraid. Why? Because I haven't recognized the Lord Jesus there in the storm with me. But notice what has happened. And brethren, if we get nothing else out of this little talk this evening, I want us to get these next couple of points. Because we find that as they look out and they're troubled, immediately the Lord Jesus speaks to them.
And he calms their fear. And I want to notice what he says in verse 27.
First he says, be of good cheer. Now you often have that expression in Scripture. We find if we were to go back, I think it's to the 9th chapter. There was a man sick of the palsy, and the Lord healed him. But before he healed him, he said, be of good cheer thy sins, be forgiven thee. Wasn't that greater than being healed of his physical malady, the comfort and cheer that must have brought to the man's soul?
And so some of us here look back over many years, Some look back over a few years, maybe even just a few days. But what cheer to our souls when our we realized our sins were forgiven based on the work of the Lord Jesus in John 16, the Lord Jesus before he left the disciples to go to the cross, he said in the world ye shall have tribulation. He didn't promise them it was all going to be smooth sailing. But he said be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.
Paul was encouraged at a difficult time in his life to be of good cheer.
And later on, when he was in the ship, and the ship was about to be wrecked and broken up, why he took that cheer that he had received from the Lord. And he stood in the midst of those that were in the ship, and he encouraged them to be of good cheer. And I like what it says in that 27th of acts that says Then were they all of good cheer? Brethren, isn't that what we need today? We need to be encouraged in our own souls so we can encourage one another. We don't have to look today for things to discourage. There's plenty on every hand.
But what we do need to do is focus on those things that encourage to to, to encourage us to put courage in. And we need courage in. We get it first of all from the Lord, and then to pass that on to our brothers and sisters. That's what we need to build one another up to encourage. I don't mean we ignore those things that need to exercise us. And sometimes things need to be taken up and discussed and dealt with for the Lord's glory. I understand that.
But I say we need to focus on those things that encourage and encourage one another. In the Lord, David encouraged himself in the Lord. Then he went down and encouraged his mighty men that were with him. And there was a great victory in connection with Ziklag that day. But now I want to notice these next 3 words.
If we can just get a hold of these next three words, brethren, I believe it will carry us through on the sea of life as we go through the storms that the Lord allows, he says. To them it is.
I Are you going through some storm in your life? Does the the enemy seem arrayed against you? Just stop and listen over the roar of circumstances.
Over the roar of the wind and the waves, hear the Lord Jesus say.
It is I.
I've brought you here. I've allowed the storm, but I'm here with you. I'm above the storm. I'm in control.
It is I to my own soul. These are the most precious words of this holy a whole circumstance, this whole story. It is I. And then he said, be not afraid. How could he say such a thing?
His presence it is I be not afraid. We read in Isaiah chapter 43, where he says, fear not, for I am with thee. I have called thee by thy name. I have redeemed thee. Can anything change that? Rather not for a moment. Then he says when you pass through the waters, I'm with you. The floods, the rivers aren't going to overflow you. That's the promise we can hold on to.
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And so he says, it is I be not afraid. And then we have Peter. Dear beloved Peter. You know, we so often shake our heads at Peter. Poor Peter. And Peter had lessons to learn. But I want to encourage you, when you take up the life of Peter, to look beyond the things that Peter said and did. Sometimes Peter spoke before he thought. Sometimes it perhaps would have been better for him to sit in wandering silence and learn.
But Peter did love the Lord. He styled himself as the disciple who loved Jesus, not the disciple whom Jesus loved. And he had lessons to learn, I will grant you.
But I love this incident in Peter because here Peter looks out and he sees he recognizes who it is.
And he says, Lord, if that's really you out there, I don't want to be in the ship, and you out there, Peter says, And I covered it for my own soul. Lord, bid me come unto thee on the water. Peter wanted to be closer to the Lord. Oh, I realized he had a lesson to learn. And the Lord sought so graciously to teach his disciple this lesson. But he says, Lord, I want more of your company.
Is that really what you and I want? More of the Lord's company? And you say, how could Peter dare to step down out of the boat onto the water? One word, brethren, Come. Peter learned that not only did he want the Lord's company, but the Lord wanted his company. And that's what the Lord wants. He wants to walk us, to walk on the sea of life, hand in hand.
With himself, one word come, and Peter steps down out of the boat, not to go away from the Lord Jesus. Jonah, in contrast, went and got in a boat to flee from the presence of the Lord. Peter stepped out of a boat to go to Jesus, and he stepped out and he walked on the water to go to Jesus. That's what it says, brother. He walked on the water.
Peter, I believe, learned by practical experience a lesson that all the other disciples, though they observed, did not learn in the same way. Peter learned that not only was the Lord Jesus above the storm, not only could the Lord Jesus walk on the water, but he could walk on the water in company with the Lord Jesus as well. And we sang, the wave is firm as rock.
And so Peter walked on the water to go to Jesus. But now I want to notice this wind again.
In verse 30. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid and beginning to think. You know, we often say, I've said it myself. When Peter saw the waves, he began to think. But that is not what Scripture says. And in the other two gospels, where it's mentioned, you have the same expression or similar. It was not when he saw the waves that he began to sink, It was when he saw the wind. What do we learn from that? Now remember what we said about the wind?
It's a picture to us of that the enemy, the Prince of the power of the air, that force that is arrayed against us. And if you and I get our eyes on that contrary wind, if we get occupied with the power of the enemy, we're going to sink on the sea of life as well. We're no, we're no match for the enemy. And so when he saw the wind, he began to sink. But thank God he knew where to cry. He cried out. Lord.
Save me. You know, salvation is taken up in different ways in the scripture. Usually when we think of it, perhaps, or at least in its initial phase, we think of the salvation of our souls. And certainly that's the beginning when we come to know the Lord Jesus is our Savior. We're saved from our sins, save from hell, and save for heaven. But salvation is taken up in other ways. There's a salvation that the believer is still waiting for.
The salvation of our bodies, that's what it means when it says now is our salvation nearer than when we believe we're waiting for that. And uh, perhaps this evening that's going to take place when the Lord gives the shout. But in between there's a salvation that is very real and ongoing, and that, as we've alluded to earlier, is the preservation of the believer on the sea of life. Again, I think our brother referred to the verse in Romans the other night where we're saved by his life.
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We're saved from hell for by his death, but we're saved or preserved in the path of faith by his present intercessory life for us now. And so Peter cried out. Lord save me, we say poor Peter. But Peter knew where to turn and maybe there's someone here and you say I've really failed and I'm thinking on the sea of life. Oh, just cry out. Because the preserving grace of God and the restoring grace of God are as limitless as his saving grace that has saved us from our sins and from hell. That grace is sufficient.
And we find here the Lord was right there. Immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and justice picture it, brethren, Peter and the Lord Jesus walking hand in hand back to the ship.
You know, Peter learned that day again, that night again by experience, that he could no more walk on the water when it was smooth than when it was rough, apart from dependence on the Lord. And you and I are no more, are no more able for the smooth days on the sea of life than we are from the for the rough days on the sea of life. We need that constant dependence. But then notice what it says.
In verse 3432, now Peter got a rebuke, it's true. And then in verse 32 it says And when they were come into the ship, I want you to notice this again about the wind, the wind. Now if we were to go to the incident in the end of Mark 4 where the Lord Jesus was asleep in the boat and they cried out, Lord save us. It says there that he arose and rebuked the wind.
And the waves. And there was a great calm. But there's nothing about a great calm here. It simply says the wind ceased. And any of us who've been out on a body of water in a storm know that when the wind dies down, it doesn't mean the swell stops. It takes time for the swell to die down. And So what do we learn from this? We learn that as far as that contrary wind, the Lord has that all in control.
That's all in His control, but he doesn't promise to take all the waves out of your life and mine. But what he does promise is that we can rise above the storm. And no matter how high the waves of circumstance are in your life and mine, we can walk on the water with Jesus. But I'm not going to stand here and tell you that if you trust the Lord and walk with him, that it's going to be all smooth sailing.
That is not what we are promised in the Christian life. Someone has said we are not promised smooth sailing, but we are promised a safe landing. And so that's why I read and we really won't go back to it for the sake of time. But that's why I read in the 107th Psalm, because there we find he speaks of the storm and they that go down to the sea, they observe the power and the wisdom of the Lord.
And how would we, if we didn't go through the storms of life? How would we, uh, experience the wisdom and power of the Lord in our lives? We've experienced it in those adverse circumstances. And so he speaks of that storm there, but then he says He bringeth them into their desired haven. You know, he had promised the disciples on this occasion that they were going to go to the other side.
And he has given us assurance that we are going to reach the other side. And Brother Nice again, I suggest that we're in the 4th Watch now that just a few more waves, a few more blasts of the enemy, a few more blasts of the contrary wind, and we're going to be brought into our desired haven. And there's going to be no storms there. We're not going to experience the things that we do now, the privilege of walking on the sea of life and experiencing the power of the Lord Jesus.
Now is something that is only given to us now. We're going to sit down in his presence another day. It's going to be calm and peaceful. But oh how, how we're going to look back and marvel at his ways. We're going to wonder that we didn't have more faith, that we weren't more like Peter who said bid me come unto thee on the water. Now just notice verse 33 what it says. And when they were coming to the and when they were in and I'm sorry then they that were in the ship came and worshiped him saying.
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Of a truth thou art the Son of God. You know there was real testimony here again a little contrast in the con, the other incident where the Lord was asleep in the boat. He rose and rebuked the wind and the waves. A a demonstration of his power over creation. They marveled, saying, what manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him? But that's not what happened here.
When they saw the power of one of their own to walk on the water with Jesus.
It produced worship. They came and worshiped saying of a truth. Thou art the Son of God. And I can say in my own experience, that as I have observed dear brothers and sisters in Christ, who have gone through waves of circumstance that I've never been called on to pass through in my experience, and as I have seen their quiet testimony and seeing their their faith as they have risen above the storm with the Lord Jesus.
It has produced worship in my own soul, and that's what it did when they saw the power of one of their own to walk on the water with Jesus, they didn't say what manner of man is this, they said.
This is truly, this is of a truth. Thou art the son of God. O brethren, may this be true in your life and mine. We've taken up this incident so very quickly tonight, but I trust that it will increase, strengthen our faith to just go on. I'm not going to promise you that you're going to go home and find that just because we've been here and enjoyed these things. But things are going to be smoother when you get home. No, the enemy. We're not going to be done with the enemy.
This side of heaven. We're not going to be over the waves of life this side of heaven. But I can promise you, on the authority of God's word, that there's one that's greater than every storm and every blast of the enemy, and one who can carry us through. I'd like to sing in Closing 290 Why those fears. Behold, as Jesus holds the helm and guides the ship, Spread the sails and catch the breezes.
Sent to waft us through the deep 290 if someone complete started.
Call.
Nsnoise.
Nsnoise.
Pray our God and Father. We're thankful for that happy shore that we are hoping to land on perhaps this very night. We look forward to that time when the storms of life are over and we are beyond the blasts of the enemy. But in the meantime, we thank thee for the encouragement of a little portion like this. We pray that those things that we have taken up tonight might refresh and encourage us and strengthen us to go on.
The few moments that are left here. So we ask thy blessing on the rest of our evening together, thanking me for all thy love and mercy. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Q&A #1 1. Presence of Lord v. leading of the Spirit 2. Biblical value vs Love for the sinner 3. Pray without ceasing. 4. The Lord can repent Part 1
Q&A #2 1. Lord can Repent Continued, 2. When a believer commits suicide, 3. Scriptural view of Slavery, 4. Worship lead of the Spirit
Q&A #3 1. Contentment, 2. Old English vs Modern, 3. Lying to Protect, 4. Is lack of Generosity a lack of faith