Michigan Family Camp: 2019
Table of Contents
Savoring the Things That Be of God
Address—Paul Renaud
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Good evening welcome.
It's truly a privilege to be here amongst so many friends and old and new. And it's just, it's just a pleasure. Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. I hope that I pray that what what I believe is on my heart is of some encouragement and help. We're truly, as I look out on the crowd, I feel like we're fellow soldiers here, really just having a break somewhat from the battle. And we're here to.
Really. Discuss.
Our spiritual warfare.
I just want to introduce my topic before praying. I'm going to basically give the whole thing away with.
These two two verses is really the theme of what I have before me. Wasn't very long ago that.
My family and I were in Israel and you are there and you see all these devout Jews who are still, still expecting the Messiah. You read the New Testament and you say, what? What did they miss? What? How did they get it so wrong? What were they looking for? How did Jesus not?
How did they not accept him?
This question.
Led me in some way to study Old Testament prophecy.
To study what was obviously fulfilled and what is still going to be fulfilled and in the process of doing that.
Then leads to New Testament prophecy and I have to admit for I'm 42 for most of my life when I heard the word prophecy it was almost like I just kind of.
Zoned out.
And maybe many of you are already doing that, but I really think there's practical implications here and I.
And the study of this have realized that a lot of my.
Ideas about Westacom were wrong and it's changed the way I look at scripture and I if you haven't been through this process yourself, I hope this is of some help to you so the two verses here you'll recognize Luke 24. This is on the road to Emmaus two of Jesus.
Followers are perplexed. They just saw Jesus crucified. That wasn't what they expected. And they just heard from amongst their own company that he's risen again. That wasn't what they expected and they don't know what to think of it. They're not overjoyed, they're shocked. And Jesus meets them and he says to them, old fools and slow of heart, to believe all that the prophets have spoken.
Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?
And then the other verse is from Matthew where Peter, Jesus asked them, OK, who do you say that I am? And he says, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. That's a wonderful confession of faith.
And then soon after that, Jesus talks about how he's going to be in front of the the chief rulers of the day. They're going to condemn him to death and they're going to crucify him. And Peter says, no, they can't be right. And Jesus rebukes him. You remember, he says, get behind me, Satan.
Floured an offence to me, thou savor is not the things that be of God, but those that be of man.
And that's really the theme of what I have before me. So let's pray.
Dear God.
Again, thank you for the privilege of being together. We pray that.
Words.
That aren't from your word would be.
Corrected and rebuked. And we thank you for your word, for living the day we do where we have your whole word. We have the Spirit inside us, but yet we are men with an old nature that just looks at one's own things and interprets Scripture that way so many times and so we.
Pray that you leave us here both for tonight and the rest of the planned week, that it would be a blessing and encouragement and learning and better understanding and appreciation of all that you've done.
Amen.
Let's turn to Genesis chapter 3. You and I as Christians read the book of Genesis.
And we see so much in there that tells us about the Messiah, about the Lord's Christ. It's just so obvious to us. But it wasn't at all obvious to the Jews, the time of Jesus.
Start in Genesis chapter 3.
Where we have Adam and Eve and the first sin you and I see this is not only.
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When men begin to die. But through what we learn in Romans chapter 5 and one Corinthians 15, we see this as the inherent nature of man. Something that we can't overcome, something that's just part of us, something that begs for redemption, something that begs for deliverance. The Jews didn't see it this way. They never saw it that way. Sin was something that.
Yes, the result of sin was death, but it wasn't an inherent part of.
Who they thought, man, was they really did believe this could be overcome. They didn't see it.
Like we do in Romans chapter 5 or One Corinthians 15.
When we look at verse 15 of chapter 3 of Genesis and says, I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed, it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel, we see that as the first promise of the Messiah. The Jews interpreted the word seed in the plural, not the singular like you and I do through the light of the gospel, and they see this verse.
At most as a promise of continual conflict between Satan.
And mankind or some just see this verse as a story about a woman and a snake.
They don't see what we see.
When men continue to sin and there's a line of Seth that follows God and eventually stops following God and there's just no one in his family and God destroys the world in the in the flood. The Jews really saw that as a time for men to distinguish themselves and their obedience to God. They didn't see that as.
A story about man's deplorable condition.
Abraham we keep on turning in Genesis to Genesis chapter 22.
That story where Abraham offers up Isaac.
It's a story that the Jewish nation can't escape. If you stop and think about it, Jerusalem is founded on that very site.
Where Isaac offered up sorry. Where Abraham offered up Isaac The Jews, though again, in kind of a word place.
A way of interpreting scripture, they say. Look, that word offered can really be interpreted as buying him up.
They basically say God was just challenging Abraham.
He didn't really tell Abraham to sacrifice his son.
They never saw that as a picture of the Messiah. Never.
Really.
It's not until Moses.
When they start to see a promise of the Messiah and you turn to Deuteronomy chapter 18.
And I'm just trying to get through this quickly.
But Deuteronomy chapter 18 is where Moses says I think it's verse 5.
I wasn't planning on turning to this and now I've lost my reference, but Moses says there will be a prophet like me.
And him you will listen to. The Jews were looking for a prophet like Moses to be the Messiah, but they were looking.
At the qualities of Moses, where he had military victories, military might, where Moses did miracles, brought down bread from heaven, that's what they were looking for in Moses. They did not think of Moses as the one who interceded for them on behalf of God. Many times we know the Lord Jesus, like when he talks to Nicodemus, he references.
How the serpent had to be lifted up and the Son of Man will have to be lifted up. That's about Moses, and Moses was providing intercession, if you remember the story the people send.
God.
Their condemnation was to be bitten by the fiery serpent and die.
Guys, remember that. And then there's this strange story about how Moses pleads on their behalf. And then.
Moses is told to make.
A brass, fiery serpent. And they look at it and that's what what allows them to escape that judgment is a picture of the cross. And that's what Jesus is telling Nicodemus when he says that the Son of Man must be lifted up. It's in direct reference to that serpent. And there's the Son of Man, Jesus Christ on the cross was their deserved condemnation. And they have to look up and to Him. And that's how they are delivered from their sins.
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The Jews really just thought of Moses as powerful miracles, not at all about intercession. They even went so far as to win the the Israelites sin by making the calf. They said well.
If they hadn't send, the people would have lived forever and.
They go so far as to say that God caused them to sin. They really, they really didn't get it in their own writings.
David.
David they saw as as a conquering king. They knew that the Messiah would come through the line of David.
They knew that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, but scriptures that the Lord refers to like in Psalm 110 where?
The Lord said to my Lord, sit on my right hand, and three of the gospels he mentions that.
As proof of his deity that never crossed their minds, Scriptures that the Apostle Paul and Peter referred to in the Acts.
It's a Psalm chapter 16 where it says you will not see my holy one to see corruption they again.
They didn't know what to think of that.
So we know the history of.
Israel, I kind of, this is my little outline. I'm going to turn to this. This is my simple, simplified kind of way of thinking about what happens to the Old Testament. We have the Garden of Eden, We have the Satan in the fall, we have Noah. We have Abraham and Israel. Eventually the Kingdom is dispersed.
And.
Power is taken away from Israel. They are under the Gentiles authority.
And the profits start to prophecy about the Messiah and.
Lots of different things are said. Let me just turn to my notes so I don't get off topic. The prophets talk about the Messiah being the second David, the 2nd Melchizedek, a faithful priest. They talk about him being rejected and betrayed. They talk about him coming in weakness on a donkey. They talk about him being a suffering servant and the sacrifice for the sins of Israel. But they also talk about him coming on the clouds in power. They talk about him.
Being a ruler of all nations.
Redeeming Israel from the ******* that they were under.
And.
It's very clear in the New Testament that that's the Messiah they were looking for the one that would.
Deliver them from the surrounding *******.
That was really.
Clearly, what was on their minds.
With that in mind, this turn finally to Luke chapter 4.
The Jews went so far at the time of Jesus, and they actually still some of the ultra Orthodox believe this. They went so far at the time of Jesus to say that OK, if if there was a time when Israel wouldn't sin for one day, the whole nation wouldn't send for one day, then that would usher in the Messiah.
They really were convinced that they left idolatry. This is at the time of Jesus. They said, OK, we've left idolatry. We're worshipping in the temple. We're we're following the law. We're as good as we've ever been.
We're waiting for the Messiah. When is he going to come? That was really the mindset. So Luke chapter 4.
Starting at verse 16.
Oh.
And he came to Nazareth. Nazareth. This is Jesus, where he had been brought up. And as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he had opened the book, he found a place where it was written. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal a broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind.
The set of liberty, them that are bruised to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say to them, This day is the Scripture fulfilled in your ears. And all bear him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which were seated out of his mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph's son? And he said unto them, You will surely say unto me this proverb.
Heal thyself. Whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country. And he said, Verily I say unto you, no prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up, three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land. And unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto SER Repta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. So this is a Gentile woman.
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And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliezer the prophet, and none of them was cleansed saving name in the Syrian. So he gets up, reads texts about the Messiah, but it's about healing the poor, the broken hearted, delivering the captives. And then he goes on to tell them that they're going to reject him and.
That they've rejected all the profits, essentially.
And so when they hear this verse 28 and they were in all in the synagogue, when they heard these things, they were filled with wrath, and rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and let him unto the brow of the hill where on their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong.
That was their response. The words that Jesus said were not at all crowd pleasing.
We are very aware, of course, of the words he said that convicted them of sin.
But he also.
Talked about.
The gospel being preached to the poor and healing the broken hearted, that was not what they were looking for.
If we move to Luke Chapter 7.
We have even John the Baptist, who's confused about the coming Messiah. John the Baptist, of course, preached the baptism of repentance. He said that Israel needed to repent, and there were those who recognized that.
And they they flocked to him. But he also talked about judgment that was coming.
And that appealed to them, that appealed to them. They wanted that judgment.
They wanted things to be set right, right in their own eyes. So John here is lingering in prison. He's in prison because of Herod, who was very evil, came from a very evil family. And John's starting to wonder. So in verse 19 of Chapter 7, John calling unto him, two of his disciples sent them to Jesus saying.
Art thou he that should come, or look we for another?
When the men were come unto him, they said, John Baptist has sent us unto thee, saying, Art thou he that should come?
Or look we for another. And in that same hour he cured many of their infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits, and of the many that were blind, he gave sight.
Then Jesus answering, said unto them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye have heard and seen.
How that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to the poor, the gospel is preached, and blessed is he whoever shall not be offended in me. So again he refers to the same portion that he had gotten up into the synagogue and read. And then verse 23, an important verse for us to not gloss over. He says blessed is he who should not be offended in me. So my words are offensive.
And you're blessed if you're not offended by them.
It's an important thing to realize that his miracles.
Displayed his power and authority.
His words were upsetting.
To them.
In general.
Pretty much all of them were upset at one time or another by his words.
Let's turn to John, John Chapter 9.
John Chapter 9 we have the story of a man who was born blind.
And on the Sabbath day.
Jesus heals him, and the way he heals him is by making.
Clay and putting it on his eyes.
Their own rules that they had set up.
Because they were.
In their own eyes, being ultra righteous, their own rules about work.
According to their feelings, what Jesus did by making the clay violated their own rules, and that was really upsetting to them. So in verse 24.
Of Chapter 9 Then again called they the man that was blind, and said unto him, Give God the praise. We know that this man is a Sinner.
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Now this is the response of the one who was born blind. He answered and said, Whether he be a Sinner or no, I know not. But one thing I know that where as I was blind, now I see. And said they to him again, What did he do to thee? How open he thine eyes? He answered them, I have told you already, and he did not hear. Wherefore would you hear it again? Will he also be his disciples? And they reviled him, and said, Thou art his disciple. We are Moses disciples. We know that God spake unto Moses. As for this fellow, we.
Not from whence he is. The man answered and said unto them, Why herein is a marvelous thing, that ye know not from whence he is, and yet he hath opened my eyes. Now we know that God here is not sinners. But if any man be a worshiper of God, and do with his will, him he heareth. Since the world began, was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind? If this man were not of God, he could do nothing.
So I think this is a very good example of.
Of the miracles that he did.
Being the display of God's approval, we'll see this mention again an axe.
But the words were confusing.
A very good example of this is think is found in John chapter 6.
So in John chapter 6 we have the miracle of the the loaves and the fish when Jesus did this miracle.
I think it's clear from the text that to them it evoked memories of Moses, and again we talked about how Moses was.
To them.
A picture of the Messiah. And that was true. It was definitely true, but they were really emphasizing the miracles. And so John chapter 6, verse 15. This is after Jesus had done this miracle and Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force to make him a king. He departed again into a mountain himself alone. So they were ready to to crown him the king. They were all excited. He was doing this miracle and he vanished, he left.
This was upsetting to them. The next day, 1St 26.
This is what Jesus says to them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, you seek me, not because he saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled. So he's saying, you didn't seek me because the miracles were.
Something that you realized means that I have God's authority, but you just want it to be filled with bread, says labor. Not for the meat which perisheth, but for the meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you, for him hath God the Father sealed.
And then he goes on to say to them some very difficult words later on. There's several places we could we could look at and, and John chapter 6. But let's look at let's start with verse 56.
He says to them, He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me, and I in Him. As a living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. This is that bread which came down from heaven, not as your Father's did eat manna and are dead. He that eateth at this bread shall live forever.
Verse 60, the middle of it, the people say this is a hard saying. Who can hear it?
Jesus says in verse 61, Does this offend you?
Towards the end of this verse 63, the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.
And then in verse 66, from that time, many of his disciples went back and walked no more with him.
So again, they were attracted to the miracles.
But the words were so disturbing that it offended many and they walked away.
I want to just briefly give an illustration about miracles. I think it's my next slide.
How does that project? It's OK, I I work as an ER physician and.
I was a few weeks ago working a particularly busy shift and.
Before you walk in the door, the nurse writes down the chief complaint. And I saw it was the next patient was going to be a 19 year old woman.
And the chief complaint said something like, I'm anxious and I want an ultrasound. She was pregnant, 10 or 11 weeks pregnant. She wanted an ultrasound. And that's why she showed up in my ER in the middle of a busy day with people who were very sick and dying and so on. And I had to go in and see her. I walked in the door.
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Talk to her sister and the patient and she had not sought will be here yet. She was not bleeding. There was nothing emergent about her presentation.
And I politely explained to her I'm sorry, I can't.
This is not a I didn't say this is not a drive by ultrasound service. That's what I felt like saying. I said, I'm sorry, I cannot do this. It's just not appropriate use of resources. I, I know you're, you know, you want to see the baby, but sorry.
I left.
And my mind went on to the next patient. Well, a nurse came up to me and said her sister wants to talk to you. All right.
So I went over to the sister and the sister said, look, she's really anxious, She's really nervous, and she's considering an abortion. And I thought that if she saw a picture of the baby, it would be real to her and she might reconsider it.
Well, that kind of changed things. I couldn't order a formal ultrasound, but I have an ultrasound machine in my department. I was able to take a couple of minutes, and her baby was just about as far along as this picture. I think this is a picture of 11 weeks. Hers was like 10 days, five weeks. I'm sorry, 10 weeks, 5 days by her dates. And it looked like this. You can see a little hand moving around. You can see a heart. You can see baby parts. There's no mistaking that at 10 weeks, this is a baby.
You can call it a fetus if you want, but this is a baby. We had about two minutes.
And then I had to take the ultrasound probe off and that was it.
This to me is somewhat like a miracle, the way miracles were used by God. They showed His approval. They showed His power.
But miracles are not what sustain us. This woman, this ultrasound was there to prick her conscience, was there to make her think, OK, there is a life inside of me.
But that ultrasound wasn't going to sustain her.
It had to be her conscious and these miracles were not going to sustain the people. It was the words that Jesus spoke that had to sustain them.
I can't remember yet if I've read what Peter says. Jesus says unto the 12.
Verse 67 will ye also go away? And Simon Peter answered him, Lord.
To whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life, and we believe and are sure that thou art the Christ. Thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.
We've already read about Peter's response to Jesus saying that he would die and rise again. Peter. Peter wasn't ready for that. None of the disciples were ready for that.
We know the story that when Jesus willingly gave himself up, that everyone forsook Him wasn't what they planned. They had been drawn to Him by His words, but even in the end, things weren't going how they expected.
And so.
Let's go back to the Road to Emmaus, Luke Chapter 7. Luke.
The end of loop.
Chapter 24.
Start with.
Verse.
19.
80 Sorry. And one of them, whose name was Cleopas answering, said unto him, Into Jesus, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass therein these days? And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty indeed, and word before God and all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him. But we trusted that it had been he which would redeem.
Is real. And beside all this, today is the third day since these things were done. Yay. And certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre. And when they found not his body, they came, saying that they had seen also seen a vision of angels which said that He was alive. And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre and found it even as the woman had said. But him they saw not. Then he said unto them, O fools and slow of heart, to believe all that the.
Spoken, Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory, and beginning and beginning at Moses?
And all the prophets he expounded unto them, and all the scriptures, the things concerning himself.
And then later he appears to be 11, he says in verse 36.
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Peace be unto you. He shows him his hands and his feet.
I didn't read what the ones on the road to Emmaus said. They said while he talked to us, by the way, and while he opened us to us, the Scriptures didn't. Our heart burned within us. Now verse 44, Jesus says to them, These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms concerning me.
Then opened he their understanding that they might understand the scriptures.
And said unto them, Thus it is written, And thus it behoove Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day.
And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things.
So again Jesus says to them all things need to be fulfilled, which were written about me by the prophets in Moses. So what is he referring to when he says all things?
The next slide.
It's busy and I'm sorry.
I probably should have trimmed this up a little bit.
I have the heading Colossians 120 where it says he will reconcile all things on the earth and in the heavens.
On the left hand side, I already showed most of that. That's easy for all of us. I think you remember the Garden of Eden and Satan, then Noah and how with Noah that ushered in government where God says now you're going to govern yourselves. They failed miserably. Then we have Abraham and Israel, the Gentiles, and then finally, so the Gentiles are when God gave authority to.
Gentile kings to act on his behalf.
And then finally we just read about how the Messiah came, and as the scripture says, you know, surely they will reference my son. And of course they did not. He was rejected. You and I are now living.
At the end there of the left hand side were part of the church and we've been given the Holy Spirit, which Scripture tells us is the earnest of our expectation. It's like that.
The promise of things to come.
On the right hand side is my very simplified way of thinking about what's next.
I kind of in my head line things up with the left hand side just to kind of remember the order of events. It's not perfect at all, but it makes it easier for me to understand. At the bottom right hand side is when He comes for His own, His second coming, the first resurrection. That's when you and I received a changed body, not a new body. Was easy for us to say a new body was a changed body.
And then we're up with him.
But notice there's a lot that's still to come.
I have lined up with Jesus rejected the Antichrist, which is the one that they choose.
And then Jesus comes with his own, with us. The nations are judged. Israel is restored. Israel becomes prominent again. This is what people at the time of Jesus were hoping for right then. They didn't realize other things had to happen. They didn't pay attention to them.
And then after Israel was restored, that starts the millennial reign, the 1000 years. And I haven't lined up with with government where government was.
Given to men and men failed. It's easy for me to remember to line those up. And then finally Satan is destroyed.
And then we have the eternal state.
I want to read a few verses, a few portions from Acts.
Where we can clearly see that the disciples when it says he opened up the scriptures to them that they understood.
All things we can clearly see where the disciples preach this from the beginning. Acts chapter one.
The beginning of Acts. Jesus is there with them. He promises them the Holy Spirit.
And then in verse six, Acts chapter one, verse six, they say to Jesus in the middle of the verse, wilt thou at this time restore again the Kingdom to Israel? They were waiting for that.
That's what they were wanting. They were anxiously waiting for it. And what does Jesus say to them?
For seven, he says, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power.
He doesn't say it's not going to happen. He says it's not for you to know when this is going to happen. And then in verse 11.
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Since after Jesus goes up, the angels say to his disciples, verse 11, Ye men of Galilee.
Why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This St. Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come, and like manner as ye have seen him.
Go into heaven, they say. He's coming again. That was their expectation right away. He is coming again.
And then in chapter 2, we have the Day of Pentecost.
You remember this. This is where the Holy Spirit comes down in a very powerful way. Verse five tells us that they were dwelling at Jerusalem. Jews, devout men of every nation under heaven. So a great multitude of devout Jews, they were there for the feast of the Pentecost.
They saw men speaking in their own language. Very powerful sign.
It was prophesied in Joel. That's what we have in verse 16 and then in verse 22.
We have Peter talking and this is what he says. He says ye men of Israel hear these words.
Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs.
We were talking about those which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. Ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain, whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be holding of it. And then he talks about how David had.
Prophesied this when he said I believe it was Psalm 110.
And then other psalms about not leaving his holy one to see corruption.
So again tells them, look, I know you didn't expect it, but look at these miracles. Look at the fact, the ultimate fact that Jesus was risen from the dead. And here look, you just saw the Holy Spirit descend on these men.
He says to them.
You thought you were so righteous, and here you took the one who God clearly approved of, and you crucified him.
And so some of them.
Verse 37 says, Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter into the rest of the apostles, Ben and brother, and what shall we do?
Than Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized, everyone of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins.
Verse 39 For the promises unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many.
As the Lord our God shall call.
Chapter 3.
In chapter 3, there's a man who was lame from his mother's womb. He's healed.
And this upsets.
The Pharisees.
Verse 12.
When Peter saw it, he answered unto the people, Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this, or why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk? The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, have glorified His Son Jesus, whom he delivered up and denied him in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let him go. But he denied the Holy One and the just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you.
And killed the Prince of Life, whom God hath raised from the dead, whereof we are all we are witnesses.
And His name, through faith in His name, hath made this man strong whom ye see and know. Yeah, the faith which is by him hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all. And now, brother, and I wot that through ignorance he did it, as did also your rulers. But those things which God before had showed by the mouth of all his prophets that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled. Let me read that again. But those things which God before has showed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath.
Fulfilled. Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.
And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you, whom the heavens must receive, until the times of restitution of all things which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets, since the world began. For Moses truly said unto the Father, As a prophet, shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren like unto me, Him shall ye hear in all things. Whatsoever ye shall say unto you, he shall say unto you. And it shall come to pass that every soul which shall not hear that prophet shall be destroyed from among the people.
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Yay, and all the prophets from Samuel, and those that follow after, as many as have spoken, have likewise foretold of these days. Ye are children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed.
So he tells them again.
You took God's.
Son, I failed to read it in chapter 3, but Peter tells them this one that you crucified, He has made both Lord and Christ. So he is God and he is the Messiah. He's telling the people.
Repentance, remission of sins need to happen first before this time of refreshing, which is what they were looking for. They were looking for when it says the timer refreshing and the restitution of all things. This is what they were looking for. They're looking for Israel to be prominent again. But they totally missed that their sins were a problem. They totally missed the things the prophet said about their hearts being of stone and about.
And constantly rejecting the profits.
OK, that was long winded.
And I promised that I would share with you.
What I realized I have not been paying attention to and it's it's it's like this basically throughout most of my life.
I basically think something like this, I die, I go to heaven, not sure what it'll be like, but God says it's going to be really good. And so that's what I'm waiting for and that's about as far as I've gone.
You know, we, we live in a society where Christians, when someone dies, we generally say, well, they're in heaven now.
What do we mean by that?
What do we mean by that? Are we, if you look at that funny diagram, are we thinking about the eternal state where there's a new heaven and a new earth?
Where there's no more sand? Is that what we're thinking about?
I knew.
That our body was going to be changed.
But.
I very easily would say a new body didn't really care about the distinction and say, well what does it matter?
I'm going to try to be fast. That's an X-ray. This is my illustration of why it matters.
Those of you who are the biggest screen, do you see the fracture?
Can you see it? I don't have my laser pointer, but there's actually two fractures. I want you to look at that X-ray and decide.
To yourselves. How's the alignment?
How well do you think that that fracture is going to heal? How painful does that fracture look to you?
Just kind of answer those questions in your mind. Now I want to show you another X-ray.
How is that alignment?
What kind of treatment do you think that means? Can you put that in a brace? Can you sling that? Can you put a cast on it? Does it look like it hurts?
You can't see this very well on the small screen, but there's a comparison you might have already guessed. This is the same fracture viewed from two different angles.
So if you looked at the first X-ray and described it as good alignment, you know as a fracture of the.
The latter third of the radius and you know the distal all done the line that looks good. You wouldn't have been.
Lying. That's just the information you had. That was your perspective. This X-ray sheds a lot more light on it. You would describe it differently. You would think the treatment would be different. And indeed that fracture needs surgery. It's not going to. You're not going to put that in a sling.
I believe.
There are big implications for what I've been doing most of my life and just thinking about heaven in a very.
Laissez faire sort of way.
Let's quickly turn to Romans chapter 8.
The verse that I've always been pretty always but been very familiar with is Romans chapter 8 verse 22. It says we know the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now looked at that verse and thought, OK, that that means that you know we can see the effects of sin and is really bad and the whole creation is groaning. OK, fine, but I haven't really been paying attention to.
00:45:07
The context. Let's go back to verse 18.
For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in US. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him who has subjected the same in hope. Because the creature itself also shall be delivered for the ******* of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth in travaileth and pain together until now, and not only they, but ourselves also, which had.
First fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption to with the redemption of our body.
This is saying that Creation not only groans in its state, but is looking for the day.
When it's going to be restored?
What, what are some of the implications of that for me? Well, I'm, I'm somebody who honestly just likes to think of creation as it's going to burn up one day and it's disposable and it's for my consumption.
If I realize that God cares about this ruined creation, God cares. God is looking for the day during the Millennium when there will be the restitution, the restoration of all things. It's not going to be perfect, but things are going to change. That's part of God's plan. That's part of what God cares about.
Does that affect the way I look at his earth? I think so. It should. I don't know if it will because I'm pretty. I like my disposable earth.
Remember my next thing here? Oh, I got ahead of myself.
Looking at the clock.
What I want to mention was that what I had traditionally thought of, which is I die and then.
Go to heaven.
When we start to look at scripture and start to notice.
When does Scripture talk about what happens to us right after death, according to.
Brethren far more alert than me. They say there's only really four mentions of that state of things in Scripture. They mentioned the thief on the cross where Jesus says to him, today thou shalt be with me in paradise is kind of a verse that's always confused me. They talk about Steven where Steven says to Jesus, Lord Jesus receive my spirit. And then there's two times where Paul mentions this state. He says to be absent from the body and to be present from with the Lord.
And then he says also for I am in a straight betwixt 2 having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better.
But notice that all of these, that one with the thief on the cross, where it says today thou shalt be with me in paradise. The word that's used is the word that the Jews had been expecting, that the place of the departed soul, the place where yes, you were with God, but you were waiting for what's next.
And that's really the emphasis of all four of those.
Is what's next. What's the head?
OK, let's turn to Acts chapter 17.
I think there's implications in the gospel message for having a wrong view.
Of what's that come at least implications for me when I think about the gospel.
The verse that I want to highlight is Paul is talking to the the Athenians.
They were a very learned bunch, and let's know what he says to them in verse 31 of chapter 17. He says God hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained.
Whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, and that he hath raised him from the dead. And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked.
So he says two things, two of them that I want to point out. He says all the world will be judged, All the world will be judged.
And he also says he will judge the world by the man he has raised from the dead, the Lord Jesus, and when they heard about the resurrection.
Of the dead. They mocked him because the resurrection of the dead that Paul was talking to them about was a bodily resurrection.
A body, not a spiritual resurrection, they believed, and they were Greeks.
They believed in some sort of eternal state of the soul, some sort of like the soul lives on. And we live in a society that a lot of people believe in something of that nature, like the soul kind of lives on, and it's comforting to them.
00:50:01
It's comforting to them to think that some when they die, some part of them keeps on going.
But that's not the resurrection that Paul is talking about. He's talking about a bodily resurrection. Resurrection of the soul is something that's comforting to men because it gives glory to men. It makes them think highly about themselves. But the truth of Scripture is that God is going to change your body. He's going to raise up from dust.
Your body, I don't understand it, but that's the truth of Scripture. And there's going to be a bodily resurrection. You're going to have a change. Glorified body.
It's very different, and I think in the gospel that I have shared, I don't share that because it's so different, but that is the gospel, a bodily resurrection.
And how about this idea that God is going to judge the whole world? Yes, people have to realize the sin in their own heart. But I think generally when I preach the gospel, I emphasize that, and I don't emphasize the judgment of the world. And we live in a society where very few people really feel sin within their own hearts. They generally feel pretty good about themselves. But it's not hard for people to look at the world and see sand. It's not hard for them to look at events in the world and see send.
And it's not hard for some of them who maybe think men are inherently good. It's not hard for them to see the ruin of the world around them. The world is ruined and God cares.
God cares. I have a quote as I was making these slides that kind of jumped out for me from the news and I don't want to.
S kind of one of those quotes here is it's easy to kind of chuckle, but it's really solemn. And it's about the El Paso shootings recently. And this is a quote from the mayor from El Paso.
He says. I haven't been informed by the FBI at all about the individual, except he came from the Dallas area.
I am convinced no one from El Paso would have ever done this. It is not our nature and it is not our culture.
To me, this exemplified what?
State of men as we don't see sin within ourselves, but we see sin around us.
And when we preach the gospel, it's OK to say God cares about all the sin around us. God cares about the suffering, and he's going to make it right. But he's long tearing right now. He's he's, he's waiting for men to repent.
Remember where my next one? Oh, OK. Another implication of realizing all that's ahead, I think is.
Is for when we think about.
The Jews and what they are the criticism of the Messiah right now.
There's a group called Jews for Jesus that you might have heard of. There's also one called Jews for Judaism.
Where they list these things as the reasons why not to accept Jesus. It's kind of an interesting list. This is right from their website. They say Jesus failed as the Messiah because he must be Jewish. He must be a member of the tribe of Judah, a direct bail descendant of King David and King Solomon. He must gather the Jewish people from exile and return them to Israel. He must rebuild the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. He must bring World Peace.
He must influence the entire world to acknowledge and serve one God, they say.
The Messiah was always a political figure.
The portions in the Old Testament that talk about.
Him suffering only applied to the nation of Israel. They weren't about the Messiah. So Isaiah 52 and 53.
And they say a bunch of other stuff, but one of the more interesting things I think they say is they basically say look.
Jesus was a failed Messiah. He didn't do what the Messiah was supposed to accomplish. And his followers came up with a clever, very clever doctrine, starting with original sin. This idea that sin was passed on and and only God could atone for sin. Say it was a very clever doctor and very clever, but it was an inside job basically done by people who felt like the Messiah had failed.
Or or were disappointed because they spent three years with the Messiah and we're we're trying to.
Recover things. I think it's just with that in mind, it's very interesting to think that God used the apostle Paul.
Jew of the Jews, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, one who openly.
Persecuted the Christians. He had nothing to gain.
He was not a loyal follower, he was called by God.
When we read Galatians one he he, he makes that very explicit. He says I am not an apostle of man. I was called by God. I was a Jew of the Jew. I did not do this for human gain.
00:55:03
I would have stayed a Jew, a Pharisee, if I wanted to do this for human gain. It's just that interesting to me.
Point and we can look at all those points that the Jews for Judaism make about the Messiah, and we can say hey.
This will happen one day.
My myself. My next.
Quickly.
There's a pamphlet that I think Mr. Kelly wrote.
That's called 1 sided theology. And in it he talks about predestination and how we can get so into the truth of predestination that you can justify not preaching the gospel. And I think we're familiar with this idea that, you know, we're so in the predestination. Why do you preach the gospel? Well, that's that's wrong. And he talks about the dangers of that, I think in my own heart.
I can get so into my heavenly calling and please listen to me.
So into the heavenly calling that I use it as an excuse or as a way to justify not caring about the suffering around me, as a way to look at fellow Christians who think they need to change the world and that's clearly wrong and that's not going to happen.
But I can be critical of their action.
And forget that my heavenly calling is about not laying up treasure on this earth, but it doesn't give me license to not care about the pain and suffering around me.
I can't just sing a little song in my head. Heaven is my home. I'm a stranger here. I don't care about earth. Heaven is my home.
I'll just take up my.
Topic of the day and whatever I find interesting in the Bible and select and choose what I want to care about. Because I'm just waiting for heaven. Just hanging on for heaven.
When we see all of what God cares about, I don't know how we can do that, how we can just.
Just go on waiting for heaven.
It's a shame.
Done that and.
It's not enough just to be conscious of it, but.
I want to quote in the end here almost the end something that.
Darby says in the Geneva lecture series, and it's a big quote. He says the difficulty people find in the subjects of which we are treating do not arise from the word of God not being simple. This is a lecture series that he gave about prophecy. Says the difficulties are not from the word of God being simple, clear and convincing, but from this that preconceived ideas often rob us of his natural sense. We have habits of thinking apart from Scripture before we know it, then it is we find inconsistencies incompat.
And that which presents itself to us not suspecting that this incompatibility belongs alone to human preconceived opinions. So that's a big long worded way of saying. And basically we go into scripture with our preconceived notions and ideas. One of which for me has been what's in it for me and just read what's in it for me. What is where, where am I in this? And I don't care about the rest of what God cares about and it.
Makes my interpretation of scripture.
Wrong. There are so many Times Now that I'm more conscious of this. So many times I read scripture now and realize.
You know, so many times Scripture talks about what's ahead and it talks about.
The restitution of all things, it talks about. The restoration of Israel, it talks about.
Awaiting our changed bodies.
Doesn't talk about my version of heaven because my version of heaven was wrong.
Finally, we really have time to turn to it, but in second Peter.
Maybe we'll we'll just quickly turn to this will be the end second Peter.
Chapter One.
My last point about.
The effects of paying attention to everything that God cares about. What does Scripture say the effects will be?
Verse two of chapter one Peter says grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. According to according as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that have called us to glory and virtue, whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises. That by these you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
So what he's saying here is when we.
01:00:02
Care about all of his great and precious promises when we.
Are filled with the knowledge of Him that's called us when we become more and more partakers of the divine nature. And then in chapter 3.
We won't read all of this. He talks about what's to come. He talks about the new heaven and the new earth. He talks about paying attention to all that the prophets have said. He talks about in verse two paying attention to the commandments of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior. Later on he mentions our beloved brother Paul, but at the very beginning he says in verse one this second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you in both which I stir up your your pure minds by way of remembrance. So the effects.
Of, as far as I can see, the effects of caring about all that God has.
All that God cares about is we're more like his divine nature, and we're stirred up. We're stirred up.
It's not to.
Pursue our own things. Like what? Lord rebukes Peter where he says.
Thou art at what do you say an offense to me you care more about?
The things of men and of God.
All right, let's pray.
Dear God, we thank you for.
This time, thank you for each other. Thank you for most of all for your word and pray that.
But learn more of their ways and apply it and not just behead knowledge and.
Pray for correction.
Your name we pray, man.
Pruning
Children—Tim Wright
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
But.
Good morning.
Who's got a song they like to sing? I unfortunately have the only book here.
Carolina.
36.
That's here, Christ calling, come unto me. Would somebody like to start that for me?
I will give you the rest I will give you.
I will make sure.
I will make you this journey. Come back and get your father.
All right, who's got another song?
46.
In the house and out of doors.
00:05:08
All right, does anybody else have another one?
Anybody else not in my family?
All right, Annie.
52.
All right, I need to see some hands. We're going to sing 52 and then I'm going to say, does anybody else have another song? And then one of you guys raise your hand. It's there's songs one through 104. There's a lot of choices, except we already sang a couple of them, but essentially 100 songs you can choose.
52.
Oh my God.
Hey, does anybody have a song you like to sing? There we go. Never see some hands, even the red sweater.
59.
All right, let's talk about Jesus.
Let's talk about.
It.
Jesus Christ.
Lord.
And shame on the ground.
And wonderful.
Jesus, my God.
We're going to say our verses and if we have some more time after after our talk, maybe we can sing a couple more.
We just thank you for the tremendous blessing of your son and the work that he did for us on the cross and dying and paying the penalty of sin, the penalty of death. And we thank thee for providing us an escape from this penalty. And we pray for the words that are spoken. We just pray that they resonate with the young ones and.
All ones alike. And we just pray for all these things. Amen. All right, we got a verse to say. It's found in John 647. And hopefully I can get a couple more volunteers than I did for singing.
But I'm only going to be able to pick a few of you and then.
Oh, look at that. We got some volunteers. We're only going to be maybe.
Maybe 5 to 10 people, I'll say it first and then we'll.
Dark picking some people.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. John 647.
How about we pick about two people from each of these four groups?
All right, I got a microphone.
Verily, verily, verily, I say unto you.
She who, she who that believeth on the name on me.
Everlasting life.
Have everlasting life John 3174747 pretty good. Anybody else?
00:15:02
We had another volunteer from this row.
You want to be volunteering? Alright, OK. Verily, verily. I shan't. You. He that believes on me has everlasting life. John 647. All right, got to move on. All right.
Fairly, fairly I stand to you. He that believeth in me hath everlasting life drawn 647.
Verily, verily, I say Unsee. Yeah, he that believeth on me shall have everlasting life. John 10663047 All right.
All right, He that believeth on fairly verily I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. John 647.
We'll do all three. Really. Really. I say unto you, he that believeth on me has everlasting life. John 647.
Barely, barely, I sand to you, he.
He that believeth on him hath everlasting life.
John, 647.
Verily, verily, I stand to you. He that believeth on me shall have everlasting life. John 647.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me have everlasting life. John 647.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me has everlasting life. John 647.
Job all right.
All right, our verse here.
Says, Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. John 647 So I want to talk to you kids about something I know a lot about.
And something I don't know a tremendous amount about, but that I am very excited to experience.
I want to talk to you about pruning and how it relates to eternal life. I don't know much about eternal life. I've never experienced it. I've only experienced 34 years of life and some have experienced more and some in the past have experienced tremendous amounts. There was a man who lived to be 900. I don't think I'm going to make it that long.
But maybe I'll make it to 100, so let's talk about pruning.
Does anybody know what pruning is?
No, maybe I've got some kids with some horticulture backgrounds. We might. A couple kids might know. But I'll, I'll explain it to you. We're going to talk about pruning as it pertains to trees.
Pruning as a potential trees is a very important job. It is necessary for the trees health and for the trees vigor and for the trees longevity. So vigor is essentially how well it grows. So this is going to be happy and healthy so as these trees grow.
And develop according to the tendencies that God created them.
They have what God created them back up a little bit as the trees grow according to the way that God created them. We have oak trees, we have Elm trees, we have Maple trees. We have all these different kinds of trees and each of these different species of trees grows a little bit different. The oak trees grow tall and they're broad, and the Elm trees have a tendency to grow narrow and they're kind of vase shaped.
And so.
Each of these different types of trees have different ways of growing, but as these trees grow, they each.
Have a tendency to develop branches on them that are hindrance to their growth.
And that is where the permanent comes in. We usually use.
The 5DS of pruning, when we address a new tree that we want to promote its health, its vigor, and its aesthetics, and those five D's are is there anything dead, anything dying, anything damaged, diseased or undesirable, Those are the 5DS that we typically look at. So everybody knows what a dead branch looks like.
00:20:26
And you want to take that off of the tree so it doesn't.
So it doesn't hurt the tree and anything that looks like it's dying, sometimes you'll see yellowing leaves or part of it is already dead. And so we have to take those off because those will end up.
Hindering the trees growth. And then there's damage. Sometimes we get big branches that get damaged by wind or snow or even lightning strikes and those we have to remove too. And then the last two are diseased and undesirable and diseased are typically caused by.
Where I live in Indiana we had a we could go with insects also.
We had a round of emerald emerald ash borer.
Up here from Michigan came in some packaging crates over in Asia and it came through and it killed all the ash trees.
We also had Dutch Elm disease that it went through and killed most of the Elm trees and there's a few new varieties out, but it killed most of them and that was a disease that wiped out large population of trees. And then there's things that are undesirable and usually those are things that are dictated, at least from my standpoint from a customer, they want these trees to look shapely, so we want to raise the lower.
Piece so that it gets sunlight and open them up so that the wind can blow through them and make them look nice and round. They always like them looking round. Occasionally we have to make them look square, but mostly just round.
And so we take care of these.
These 5DS and it's necessary to cut these off and we use tools when we cut them off so when a tree is very young, we don't do this but this is typically done in tomato plants and bums. You don't typically do it in trees, but.
When they're very, very young, you can do something called pinching, where you just use your fingernail as a tool and you can pinch little branches off because they're still green and soft. You ever pinch the dandelion? That's a.
To blow all the dandelions or seeds around, that's the same concept. You just pinch it with your fingernail. And then as it grows, where we typically start is with a pruner. So I've got.
Some Felco twos.
Great printer. Now what do we use these for? We use these to cut little branches off.
To the tree is small sometimes or the branches that we want to cut off are small and we typically take care of trees that are young with a pruner, a hand pruner, anything probably about the size of my thumb or smaller. Sometimes we get bigger in there if you squeeze really hard, but we got to take branches off. We got to take branches off that tree that that tree spent time growing that, but it was not.
For the trees best interests, and sometimes those we have to.
Get to bigger branches.
And so we, I like this, this is a Zubat. So we use this to cut branches probably from an, from anywhere bigger than my thumb to about two inches. And these are cutting bigger branches that didn't get taken care of when they were younger. They grew up. So now they're a bigger problem. They have a bigger, bigger scar on the side of the tree.
And they cost the tree more in resources to take it off, so we use these.
And sometimes.
These trees don't get taken care of as best as they can, so sometimes we have to climb up in them and we use a.
A chainsaw does that anybody know where the chainsaw is? So this is a climbing saw. We carry this open the trees and so I can cut anything up to about 16 inches or 18 inches.
So when we cut off bigger limbs like this, we're even cutting bigger parts of the tree. I'll go put this on the table because I don't want to carry it. So we cut this even bigger problems, bigger issues with the tree we have to cut.
00:25:10
To take care of the tree's health, to keep it growing well. And sometimes we get into issues of.
I just had to do one. I just had to take care of a tree.
Last couple weeks ago we had a big windstorm came in and the tree got hit and the big, big branch came out of it. It was a big old Maple tree and it was a big red Maple. And so it took the top out and we had to end up taking the whole tree down because of it. And so we used this bigger salt.
So we had to use a little bit bigger of a saw to take care of this. So this is about twice the size of that. And this is not fun to take in a tree. And so we have to use a bigger saw sometimes to take care of these bigger problems that arise because of putting off.
The early pruning that we could have done when it was younger if we it was a bad branch, it grew, it grew poorly and it got too long and it caught the wind and then it broke. So we had to take a big part of the tree out, actually the whole tree. So sometimes we have to use even a bigger so.
But oh, I'm showing my car.
Never guess what's under there.
But once in a while.
We have to takedown a very big tree because there was a big Maple tree. I didn't take it down, but I cut the stump out and it was a very, very big Maple tree. It was a big silver Maple and when it was young, it grew.
Up probably 5 or 6 feet tall. And then it decided it was going to split off into two separate branches. And those two separate branches grew and grew and grew for many, many, many different, many, many years. And it essentially grew 2 separate trees, but with one trunk and where they connected down, where they split off when they were young.
They got rotten and they got too heavy and they became dangerous because they one of those were going to fall and so they chopped it down. And so sometimes you have to even get a, a bigger pruning tool.
So I got a really big SO.
For pruning very big trees and this is not what we take up in a tree unless we were cutting Sequoia down maybe. But so this we can cut down 4 foot Long Branch, 4 foot wide trees or bigger. And so this is for even bigger problems. And if we have to use this, we're not pruning anymore, we're mostly removing.
And so that is.
Most of the tools we use for pruning.
Or taking care of the trees.
And so.
This pruning kind of reminds me of us as people as.
When we I was a child, I started out as a little young sprout.
And my parents, they trained me and they they did a lot of the pinching.
And every day I grew and I grew and I grew, and then I grew up to be a young sapling like some of these kids in the front row.
Yeah, and.
And as we each grew, and as I grew and developed, I grew some tendencies.
I grew. As I grew some tendency, I grew.
As the tendencies that God created me.
I'm a little bit different than than all of you guys and each one of you is a little bit different than the next person. We were each created unique, even more unique than the trees because they have different groups. But we are all individually made and as we grew, as we grow.
I grew.
I had a tendency to do things that were not.
And shall we say, not the best. I made some bad decisions and I didn't.
00:30:05
I didn't always please my mom and dad and sometimes they had to prune me and sometimes I got a spanking. I don't know if any of you kids have ever had to get spanking. Probably not. It looks like a bunch of good kids. But I had to get a spankin and.
These tendencies were harmful to me and.
They are not like the 5DS. I didn't have those problems necessarily. I had something called sin. I had a problem called sin. Does anybody know what sin is? Raise your hand if you know what sin is.
There we go. Few people know what sin is. Well, I'll tell you what sin is and then by the end you should be all be able to raise your hand.
So this sin.
Is a tricky thing. It stems from my old nature, you see.
My old nature comes from way back to a man and a woman called Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were perfect people, and these perfect people, they never sinned.
Until one day they did. And because of that, each one of us has that nature. Each one of us has that tendency to resist the way that God created us to be. He wanted us, each one of us. He has a plan for us. And we all decide at some point, no, I don't want to do that. I want to do it my way. I want to grow over here.
And so sometimes.
We have to get pruned.
And the Bible says that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Even thus some of you didn't raise your hands and didn't know what sin was. Maybe. Maybe you're just shy. But.
The Bible says all have sinned and these sins, these sins need to be pruned just like in my life.
My sins had to be pruned. Each one of you do too, because these sins have a tendency to take over and they will destroy us. And you say destroy us. Are you sure? I'm positive because.
In the Bible it says the sting of death is sin.
Because of these sins, there is death.
Adam and Eve were perfect.
And essentially, if they would have never sinned, they would have just lived on forever, but they sinned. And so the penalty for sin is death. And all of creation suffers because of that. Not just us, but the plants and the animals all affect are affected by that sin. So we all.
Will die, yet it says it is appointed unto men once to die. That's in Hebrews 9.
And so we will all die, and we will all have to pay the penalty for our sins.
While we can improve our lives down here, we can.
Sort of judge these sins, so to speak. We can take these.
Sins and say you know what I told the live, but I'm not going to tell another lie. You know that'll help you out a lot. Telling the truth will help you out. You will it'll help your life. It'll give you a good projection on your life. Not becoming jealous of something. Jealousy is you can't stand against jealousy and if you become jealous and you let it get a root of bitterness.
You can, it'll ruin you and you can judge that but.
No matter of being able to judge it, you can't get away from the death and you can't get away from the penalty of sin. You can judge that sin in your life and you can improve your life, but you still will die and you still have to pay the penalty for that sin.
But so how do we get these sins removed? Well and the Bible says believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. So we have to believe on the Lord Jesus.
And we can be saved from the penalty of these sins because He is our Creator and He is our pruner, sure to speak. And we have to submit these sins to Him so that he can shape us and he can prune them away and He can pay for the penalty of those. See, He sent his Son Jesus to die on the cross.
00:35:21
In John 316 it says For God so loved the world.
That He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. So while we may never experience everlasting life down here because of the effects of sin, we have the promise that we can experience it if we ask the Lord Jesus.
To wash our sins away, we ask Him to save us.
From our sins.
And we also need to remember that we don't want to put that off until it's too late.
Sometimes.
We put it off too late and we have to take out this big saw here and it was, we had to cut the tree down. It was too late for that tree. It was too late to save it. It was broke, fell down. We couldn't save it. We had to cut it down. And there's many people in this world that.
They won't.
By choice, or sometimes they don't even know that they are sinners.
And they?
Have to pay. They grow up and they pay the effects of those sins and they have to. They get cut down.
So remember, it's not too late today to ask the Lord to save you.
All right, let's see what time it is. Got about 5 to 10 minutes.
Do I have any ambitious volunteers for some songs?
See 345 hands. That's pretty good.
May.
11.
00:40:41
Do one more.
All right.
#9 that's a good one.
I need some help.
All right, we have a breaking of bread at 10:45. Do you have any special announcements or anything anybody needs to know?
What?
Lord, just thank you for the many blessings that you've given to us. We thank you for this opportunity to.
Speak to the kids, we teach them about you and the work you did and how. It's not too late to ask.
For your forgiveness and for your salvation. And we pray that we can keep this afresh in our hearts as we.
Have breaking the bread and remembrance of you and we pray that we can keep the.
Busy thoughts of the week and of our lives on hold as we remember this important work and we thanks for all these things. Name Sanji. Amen.
ALL
Gospel—Don Mackewich
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Well, good evening and welcome to the Gospel meeting.
It's good to see you, it's good to be here. How's everyone doing? Did you have a good day today?
Enjoy being able to play outside, able to go swimming. How about the ones who are playing capture the flag? Did you have fun? Yeah, good. Well, we're excited to be able to present the gospel tonight. It's a wonderful, wonderful message. It can change your life. And we are so glad that you can be here tonight. I'd like to begin with #47.
In the back of the song book.
It says God in mercy.
Sent his Son to a world by sin undone, Jesus Christ was crucified.
Twas for sinners Jesus died #47 in the back of the book.
God in.
Jesus Christ.
Was crucified.
Why was it and she's a son.
Oh my God.
Shining in the sailor's face.
God makes sense.
Oh my God. God is my God.
00:05:34
We'll go ahead and sing another one, but first let's pray. We'll ask the Lord's help. We can't do this in our own strength. Lord Jesus, we are so thankful that we can be here at this Michigan family camp. We've had a wonderful day.
And now as we closeout the day.
And as we open up thy precious word.
We pray that we would have listening ears, that the hearts of the ones in this room would be touched.
That they would see how much you love them and care about them.
And desire their sole salvation. We pray tonight that there would be ones in this room or ones listening to this recording who would repent and put their faith and trust in you. And we ask this in the name and in the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Before we sing another one, we just again want to welcome everyone. Thank you for being here. We hope that you are having a fun and enjoyable time here at Michigan Family Camp. For those who are from out of state or visiting from other countries, welcome. We hope that you're enjoying the beautiful state of Michigan. We went over this last year, but it's a good reminder when you're in the state of Michigan, you can look at your hand. So go ahead and take your right hand.
Because remember from geography class that Michigan is like a thumb, right?
And if you put your finger towards the left side of your hand, maybe about an inch up from your wrist.
It's about where we are right now. It's around the West side of Michigan, kind of in beside the Assemblies of Grand Rapids and Fremont.
And then for the geography, on the other side of the state of Michigan, we have the assemblies of Richmond and Dundee. Richmond north of Detroit and Dundee is South of Detroit. So just your basic geography. If you're not sure where you're at or if your teacher asks you when you go back to school either later this month or next month, and you're talking about the fun and incredible things that you did, you can say I was at Michigan family camp. And you can even point and show your teacher where you are.
And just like last year, go ahead and take a quick look at your thumb.
And yes, remember that you are somebody special. God loves you.
Just adding a little bit of humor. We do. We do speak correctly here in Michigan, but I just wanted to put that out there. We do tend to roll our teas though and turn them into D's. For example, Detroit, the side of the state where we are from, is known as the Motor City because we make a lot of vehicles. Chances are some of the vehicles that are in the parking lot were made right here in the state of Michigan. And again, the word motor is spelled MOTOR. But we take those TS and we roll it and we say the Motor City.
OK. So if you say the Motor City, you're saying it correctly. Just a little bit of geography, just trying to connect with the ones that I'm speaking with.
We're going to sing song #15 but before we do it, I want to provide a little context of why I've chosen this song.
And the reason why I've chosen this song is tonight I'm going to speak about one word.
And it's a word that even a three-year old or a four year old will be able to understand.
And even spell. And that's the word all.
ALL and you might be thinking that is a strange topic for a gospel meeting, but I think by the end of this meeting, you guys are going to be excited. You're going to see that the scriptures are full of it, full of the word all and it just creates a very simple and a very clear gospel message. And in fact, I would even expect that as camp goes on this week.
You're going to notice verses that you hear in this room or down in Vacation Bible school that have that word all and you're going to start making connections and it's going to be just an incredible week. So our theme for tonight is going to be all. I'm going to explain it and expound upon it in the gospel.
I have three goals. Number one, I want to keep it simple #2 I want to keep it accurate.
00:10:02
And #3 I want to be audible. If you have a hard time hearing me in the back or if my voice starts to drift, just give me a signal like this that let's me know I need to turn it up. OK? Can we all do that song #15 It says all that we were, our sins, our guilt, our death was all our own.
All that we are.
We owe to Thee, thou God of grace alone. Verse three says all that we are as Saints on earth, all that we hope to be when Jesus comes and glory dawns. We owe it all to thee. The good news is this message that I'm going to share with you tonight is for all the people.
In this room, it's for all the people who are listening to this recording. It is for everyone. So you're going to be aware that the word all is going to have synonyms like whosoever, everyone. I'm going to try to keep it to all tonight, but just keep that in mind. If you're sitting here thinking now why am I here? Why did my parents bring me to this meeting tonight?
It's because the message that we're going to share with you.
Is for you. I'm speaking to you tonight #15.
All that.
We are. We all dream.
I give my Christmas.
How we are the same time?
All right, we hope you'll be.
When I am Jesus songs that.
Already I want to invite all of you to open your Bibles if you have a Bible.
To a Second Peter, chapter 3.
If you're using an electronic device, it invites you to click on your Bible app to Second Peter chapter 3 and verse 9.
And if you can't read, I encourage all of you to listen, OK?
This is my desire for you tonight. This is God's desire to you tonight. And if you were to come up and talk to Tim and Elaine and ask them their desire for this meeting tonight, it would, I believe it could be summed up in this verse here, second Peter chapter 3 and verse 9.
Second, Peter chapter 3 and verse 9 says the Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness, but his long-suffering to us. Word here it is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Did you guys see that word all? Go ahead and take your finger and put it on the word all.
We're not here to entertain you tonight. I do try to. I do plan to be engaging and I want to keep your attention.
We're here tonight to share the life giving message that God loves you and that he sent his Son Jesus to die for you and that you can have your sins forgiven and this message is for all. Our desire is that each and every person in this room who hears this gospel message.
00:15:10
If they have not done so already, would accept the Lord Jesus as their Savior tonight.
There's a lot of young people here and it's just a joy to see you here. Thank you for coming.
A lot of teenagers here in this room too. It's just so good to see you. Thank you for coming. Lots of dads and moms, uncles and aunts, grandpas and grandmas. Just so good to be together. And it's our desire is that not one person would perish, but that all would come to repentance. So as we begin tonight, as we think about that word all.
I want you to know that you're not here by accident. You're not here by randomness.
You're not here by chance, you have a creator.
And I have a creator. And who is that creator?
It's OK to talk, that creator is God. Let's turn to John chapter one.
And we're going to read verse 3.
John, Chapter one.
And verse 3.
Says all things were made.
By him and without him was not anything made.
That was made and I'm going to read another verse in Hebrews. You don't have to turn to it.
In Hebrews chapter one and verse two it says, God 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 worlds, who, being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his Person, listen to this, 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.
Tonight is we're in this room. Nobody here is here by accident.
Last night, Paul showed a picture of an unborn child, 10 weeks in the mother's womb. He referred to that as a miracle. It is a precious gift, the gift of life. None of you are here by accident. All of you were created by God. And we want to begin with that, that each one of us has a creator. Nobody is here by accident.
You guys see that beautiful sunset last night?
Wasn't that, yes, Wasn't that stunning?
My daughter is hoping we see another one tonight. Who made that?
God, that wasn't the result of a Big Bang. That wasn't the result of evolution. That was God giving you and I a beautiful sunset last night. Did anybody see part of the rainbow this morning over the water?
Yes, that wasn't an accident. That was God giving us a beautiful rainbow this morning.
The beautiful state that we're in, the fresh water that we have, that's a gift from God. Your health is a gift from God. The animals that you see, Michigan, our state bird is the Robin. So if you see the Robin while you're here, that's our state bird. Ohio, the state bird is the cardinal. So if you see the Cardinals up here too, those are some of the the birds. Those were all made by God. What's the, I'm not sure what's the providential bird of Ontario?
Is it the ****?
The Raptor, I'm not sure, but anyway, the birds that we have, those are all created by God. The planets last night, did anyone see the moon?
Yes, the moon was out there. Anybody see a star? Yes, those were created by God.
All things were made by Him. So as I'm speaking to you tonight, you have a Creator who loves you and who cares about you.
Sometimes young people, sometimes children don't realize.
Or they might think that nobody cares about me, nobody loves me.
And that's a real feeling for some people. Some children don't know who their fathers are.
00:20:01
Most know who their mothers are, but probably some don't. But we want you to know that tonight there is a God who loves you.
Who cares about you more than anybody else in this room? And we want to tell you about Him and his love for you. But as we sang, God is also a God of light. God is light, and God is also holy. So in the Scriptures, not only are we going to find that He loves us, but He's going to tell us stuff and we're going to have a choice.
We can choose to listen to what he says, listen with our ears.
Or we can choose to say, you know what? I'm going to ignore that. I'm going to think I'm wiser than Scripture.
I'm going to think I'm smarter than scripture. I'm going to think I'm more sophisticated in scripture. I go to school. Whatever your thought is, I don't want you to think like that. Because as we share the good news with you, we share it in love, OK? What I'm going to share with you now is going to be some some part of the Scripture that makes us feel uncomfortable. Perhaps it's something that you don't want to hear, but I need to share it with you, OK. But I'll give you a little bit.
Example before I do that.
I hope if you are a dentist, just please bear with me. You guys do a great work, but going to the dentist is not my favorite thing. I'd rather go to the Dairy Queen instead, okay?
But I go to the dentist about twice a year. OK, twice a month was a mistake, twice a year OK. And this is the truth when I see the hygienist.
I really hope that I've got it down now, but I hope that she doesn't do X-rays. And why do you think I hope that she doesn't do X-rays?
I know it's funny, but the X-rays are very revealing. They get in and they can see and show things that the hygienist sometimes misses or might miss. Okay. And as we open up the Scriptures, this reminds me of a verse in Hebrews that says all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Let's go ahead and turn to that verse real quick.
Sorry I don't listen in my notes right now.
Hebrews, chapter 4.
And we're going to read verse 13. So when I go to the dentist, if they're going to do X-rays, there's a good chance that if they see something, it's going to show up on those X-rays. And when it comes to our soles, we want to make sure that we're very clear as far as what God sees.
As I look around here, you guys look nice, you look sharp, kind of get a chance to see what the fashions are and what my students are going to be wearing when they come back to school.
But God it says in Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 13.
No, that's not the right verse.
Yes, it is. I'm sorry, Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 13, it says neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight. But what's the next word?
All things are naked and open unto the eyes of him which whom we have to do so as we open up the scripture and we find out what God sees in us. Please don't say I'm not going to listen to that part. I want you to skip over that. I need to share it because.
If I don't share it, then when I talk about the good news of Christ death for you, it's not going to make sense. So when God sees us, he sees us and he sees everything, doesn't He? And for the children, you guys are going to be learning the verse and vacation Bible school tomorrow. For the Lord seeth not as man seeth for the Lord look, man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart and first Samuel 16 seven. So you're going to get more of that tomorrow.
So anyway, when I go to the dentist.
They take the X-rays and they can either say, Yep, I see a cavity, or the good news is, no, you don't have any cavities, OK.
The X-rays don't make mistakes. When Paul was showing us those pictures that he had last night of ones who'd come into the emergency room, the X-rays tell the story, don't they? People have a chance to say yes, it's that's what's wrong. And then the next thing when the next things they're going to say is what doctor, can you help me get better? Dentist, can you fix the cavity? Can you fix the problem? So what do you think the problem is that we have?
00:25:02
It's sin.
Let's turn to Romans chapter 3.
Romans chapter 3 and verse 23 it says.
For all have sinned and come short.
Of the glory of God. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of the God.
We don't want to hear that, do we? We don't like somebody telling us there's something wrong with us. We don't like getting negative feedback from people, do We don't like it when your boss says, Don, you're not doing a good job of teaching or whatever the situation is. We don't like getting the negative feedback. But God is giving this instruction to us in love because it's true.
Because it's true. And I don't want anyone in this room to gloss over and say, oh, I don't want to listen to that. I get it. I know we'd rather have somebody walk by and say you are intelligent, you are smart, you are going to accomplish great things, your clothes look nice, your future is bright. We like hearing that, don't we? We like hearing the positives. But I need to express the negative first.
There is going to be a remedy for that and that's the good news. But we have to get into that, that all have sinned.
And in verse 12 we read therefore, wherefore as by sorry.
Romans chapter 5 and verse 12. Wherefore as by one man Sinner entered into the world, and death by sin, so death passed upon, say it altogether all men, for that all have sinned.
Things get passed down through the families, don't they? The good looks, Yep. The nice personalities. Other things get passed down. Gray hair runs in the rural side of the family.
Some families it's baldness, some families it's hard issues.
Whatever it is, things get passed down from one generation to the next. And sin does too, goes all the way back to Adam and Eve. So none of us can say I'm not a Sinner. No one can say that doesn't apply to me. We've just gone over it, that.
All have sinned.
All have sinned. What is so serious about sin? Why would God tell us that?
Let's think about that. And before we answer that question, what would you think if my dentist knew I had a problem with my tooth, knew that I had a cavity and said, you know what? I'm not going to, I'm not going to tell Don that he has a cavity. I'm just going to say, hey, thanks for coming in, you're a good customer. I'll see you in six months. What's going to happen to that cavity?
Is it going to go away on its own? No. It's probably going to grow, probably going to start to cause me a little bit of pain, start to annoy me a little bit. If it's not treated, the whole tooth is probably going to have to be eventually come out. Is the is the dentist doing me a favor if he doesn't tell me that?
He's not doing me a favor. If I had a cavity right now in my mouth, nobody here at camp would know, but you would know. I'm sorry, if you had a cavity right now and you didn't tell anybody, people wouldn't know, but you would know. And God wants to give us the truth right away too. Sometimes it's not easy to hear that news, but there's good news coming. One other example, we were just finished up a vacation Bible school and just things went very well. We had a good turn out.
After Vacation Bible school on Monday, we took our Big 15 passenger van in. It was making some.
Jerking motions when we would accelerate and I was talking to my brother, he thought it might be something electrical or maybe get a tune up. And we took it in and they looked at it and then I got a phone call that says, Mr. Mackwich, you need to come up here.
Your van is not safe to drive, it's rusted underneath.
That's not news I wanted to hear, but they were concerned about children who would be in it. They were concerned about me, and so they gave me the bad news. It's rusted underneath. It's not safe to drive. What would you think if the mechanics overlook that? Put the oil change. Did the oil change fix the acceleration problem?
And then we're driving down the freeway.
00:30:00
And we have a serious accident.
You would say that's negligence. They should have told you.
And God loves you too much because, like that cavity, what happens when sin is not dealt with?
Well, we know the Bible tells us that the wages of sin is what death. Romans 623 The Bible tells us that the soul that sinneth, it shall.
Help me out the soul that sinneth it shall die Ezekiel 18 four the Bible says in Hebrews Chapter 9 verse 27 after death the judgment ooh it's a good thing that we're hearing about it because.
Does anybody here want to die in their sins?
Did you know that if you die in your sins, boys and girls, please listen if you die in your sins.
You cannot go to heaven.
I'll say that again because it's very simple, but it's very true and very important if you die in your sins.
You cannot go into heaven.
Do you know what that means?
That means that you won't be able to see your parents again.
If they're believers, do you know what that means? It means you won't be able to see your grandparents.
Do you know what that means? That means that you will go to hell.
That's serious.
It's not a joke. Sin is serious. I've said it before, it's like a poopy diaper. It's awful. God can't have it in His presence. He doesn't want it in his presence, and he doesn't want you to go another day, another hour in your sins.
Do you want to go another day, another hour in your sins?
Would you like to put your head on your pillow tonight knowing.
That if something were to happen to you and you were to die, you would not go to heaven.
That if you were to die tonight in your sins.
You would go to hell.
It's serious. Your sins have separated you from God.
Serious, but there's good news.
There's good news.
What is the good news? The good news is that God loves you and that he sent his Son, the Lord Jesus.
Into this world.
And Jesus came into this world, and Jesus lived a perfect life.
And Jesus went to Calvary's cross.
What happened there? Let's turn to John chapter 19.
Sorry, I know where the book of John is, just having a hard time getting through the book of Acts right now.
Sometimes happens.
John, Chapter 19.
And verse 28.
After this, Jesus, knowing that, what's the next word? All things were now accomplished, that the Scriptures might be fulfilled. Seth, I thirst. Now there was said a vessel full of vinegar, and they filled the sponge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished, and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost. Verse 32.
Then came the soldiers and break the legs of the 1St and of the other, which was crucified with him.
But when they came to Jesus and saw that He was dead already, they break not his legs, but one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water, and he that saw it bear record in his record is true.
And he knoweth that he saith true that she might believe.
Jesus came into this world.
Because He loved you and He was obedient to the Father.
And he went to Calvary's cross and died for you and for me. He died as a substitute. He died for anyone who had put their faith and trust in him, anyone who would repent of their sins and put their faith and trust in them. And that goes for you tonight.
00:35:01
And after he died, one of those soldiers came and thrust that spear in his side, and the blood and water came out. And we know the good news. The good news is what the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from.
All sin.
All sin. Did you hear that?
All your sins can be forgiven tonight. You can walk out of this room a save boy, a saved girl, a saved teenager, a saved adult. Because Jesus paid it all on Calvary's cross. He finished the work, a work that we couldn't do ourselves. He finished it all. He paid it all. And the good news is tonight is the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son cleanseth us.
From all sin, nobody in this room can say I've done so many bad things that I can't be forgiven. If you're thinking that it's wrong, the good news is tonight all your sins can be forgiven. You can have peace with God. You don't have to walk around camp this week with that load of sin, that guilt on your back, on your mind, so to speak, that can be forgiven.
You don't have to put your head on your pillow tonight wondering how if the Lord Jesus comes tonight?
I'm not ready. I'm not going to go to heaven tonight. You can accept them as your savior and you can have the best night's sleep you've ever had.
That emptiness in your heart.
That can be filled tonight. Allow me to speak to the teenagers real quick. And the older ones.
If you are trying to find happiness apart from God.
You will not find it in this world. And I just want to encourage you. If you're not believing me, if you're not sure, look at the life of Solomon.
It's a wonderful book for young people to read. This world will not satisfy your heart.
Can we turn to it real quick? I don't want to take up too much time, but in the book of Ecclesiastes.
So if I'm speaking to some of the bigger ones here tonight who have not accepted the Lord Jesus as your Savior.
If you're playing games thinking.
I'm going to find happiness.
Yeah, I grew up in a Christian home, but it's not for me. Read the book of Ecclesiastes.
And in particular, just quickly.
Take off my Glasses, chapter 2.
Just real quick, this is for the older ones here. The younger ones probably have not got this far in life, but if you are thinking that you're going to find happiness apart from God, it will not work. Ecclesiastes chapter 2 and verse nine it says so I was great and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me, and whatsoever my eyes desired, I kept not from them.
I withheld not my heart from any joy.
For my heart rejoiced in all my labor, and this was the portion of all my labor. Then I looked on all the works. Notice this word all keeps coming up, that my hands had rod, and on the labor that I had labored to do, and behold.
All was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no prophet under the sun. So tonight, if you are trying to do it on your own, if you are trying to make a successful life apart from Jesus.
Just read the book of Ecclesiastes. It will not work. That void in your heart will not go away. You say, oh, I'm going to try to fill it by making a lot of money. That's not going to work well. I'm going to find a cute girl. I'm going to find a handsome guy, and life will be happy every happily ever after. It's not going to work well. I'm going to start a company now. I'm going to be the best.
Whatever, and it's not going to work.
You need Jesus. You need Jesus tonight.
So we've established the fact that all have sinned. We've established the fact that God loves you. He sent his Son the Lord Jesus, to die on the cross for you. We've established the fact that the blood of Jesus cleanseth us from all sin.
It's time to make a decision.
The gospel message isn't a message to just listen to and then think, Now that was good, what's next on the agenda?
The gospel message is not a complicated message. It's a message that changes your life because.
It's a person who changes your life, but you need to make a decision tonight.
In fact, you need to do what your parents have done.
00:40:01
What have they done?
They have accepted the Lord Jesus as your Savior, as their Savior.
You need to do what your grandparents have done. If they're believers, they've accepted the Lord Jesus as their Savior.
OK, you need to do what Tim and Elaine have done.
They've accepted the Lord Jesus as their savior. Did you know that you can't get to heaven just because your parents are Christians?
Did you know that you can't get to heaven just because?
Your grandparents are Christians.
You have to make that decision tonight. The gospel goes out to everyone. Whosoever will may come.
Are you ready to make that decision?
I would encourage you, if you are ready to make that decision, we can do that now.
If not, I want you to talk with your dad and mom tonight.
Don't play games sometimes said if you fake it you won't make it. They would have. They would enjoy nothing more than for you to be truthful.
And honest with them.
Be real to say Dad, mom.
I've been pretending.
But I'm not ready.
You probably thought I was a Christian, and maybe I've told you I was.
But you know what? I'm not, but I want to be.
I want to have my sins forgiven. I tell you what, they'll be happy to pray with you. I'll tell you what. There'll be joy in heaven tonight over one Sinner that repents. It's not a game. Your sins will not go away on your own. We sing a song in Sunday school. Wait no longer. Sin grows stronger.
Come today.
What does it look like to come to the Lord Jesus? What does it look like to have them forgive you of your sins?
Those are good questions.
Did you know right where you are you could bow your head, Right where you are you could bow your head and simply say Lord Jesus?
I am a Sinner.
I believe you died for me. Please save me. Please come into my heart and wash my sins away.
Lord, save me.
You put it in your own words, just like you would be talking to myself, just like you would be talking to your parents.
Lord save me, please wash away my sins. And He will do that. And it would be His joy to do that. He's not mad at you. He wants to save you. He sent His Son to die on the cross for you. So I ask you this question as we start to wrap things up.
Are you ready?
To make the most important.
And best decision you will ever make.
Are you ready to make the most important and best decision you will ever make?
What is that decision? That decision is to accept the Lord Jesus as your Savior.
Before we close, I'm just going to give us about 30 seconds or so. I want you to bow your heads.
If you know the Lord Jesus as your Savior, if you would just be in earnest.
As far as praying right now?
And tonight, if you're sitting here or if you're listening to this podcast on a podcast or on the Internet and you've not accepted the Lord Jesus as your Savior.
Let's do that tonight. Your parents have done that. Your grandparents, we believe, have done that.
And now it's time for you to bow your head right here in this room.
And make the most important and best decision you'll ever make, and that is right now, to accept the Lord Jesus into your heart.
Go.
00:45:05
All right, I'm going to close with a poem and then we'll sing a song.
If you have any questions about what we said tonight, if it's not clear, please talk with your parents.
Please talk with someone that you know as a Christian. Again, I had three things. Number one, as we wanted this to be simple, we wanted it to be accurate and I wanted it to be audible so that you can hear it. You are responsible. You can't walk out these doors, can't go out those doors and say I don't know how to get to heaven. You can't say the gospel is not for me, it is for you. You are responsible.
When we travel.
As a father of three children, if we stop at a rest area or stop at a restaurant to get food, I want to make sure that everybody is back in the vehicle before we continue on our trip. Your parents probably do the same thing, right? They don't want to leave anybody behind at McDonald's or Taco Bell.
They don't like having to find out five minutes after they've left that you've left your shoes at the play area, at McDonald's or other things too. But most importantly, they want to make sure that they have you right. They don't want to get 1/2 hour down the road and say, oh, where's Caleb? Oh, where's Jewel? Oh, we left her in the bathroom. No, we want to make sure that we have all our children and as a father and as your parents.
Would they be able to say there's a poem that I like? It's called Are All the Children?
In some of you have probably heard it, it has that word all in it.
It says when I'm alone, I often think of an old house on the hill.
Of a big yard hedged in roses, where we ran and played at will and when the night time brought us home.
Hushing our merry Din mother would look around and ask, are all the children in?
Well, it's been many a year now and the old house on the hill.
No longer has my mother's care and the yard. It is so still.
But if I listen, I can hear it all, no matter how long it's been.
I seem to hear my mother ask.
Are all the children in?
And I wonder when the curtain falls on that last earthly day, when we say goodbye to all of this, to our pain and work and play.
When we step across the river where Mother so long has been.
Will we hear a mask as Mother did?
Are all the children in?
Like to close by singing #332?
Verse three it says. Verse two it says, just as I was.
Poor, wretched blind.
Site riches. Healing of the mind, Yeah.
All I need in thee to find, O Lamb of God, I come.
Andy Crosby, who wrote this song, she didn't have money. She was blind. She couldn't even see.
Yet the light of the Gospel shone through her heart. She realized that Jesus loved her.
She put her faith and trust in him and she wrote this song and tonight, regardless of your situation.
Regardless of what you've done, regardless of your past, God loves you and salvation is offered to each and every single person in this room. Would you stand with me and sing 332?
Just as.
Shall we close with prayer?
Lord Jesus, it is our desire.
That not one person in this room. Not one person here at the Michigan family camp.
Would be missing in heaven. It's our desire that all the children.
Would be there, all the teenagers, all the adults. We pray that Thy Holy Spirit would work in the hearts of each one here, that they would see their need of You and that they would repent and put their faith and trust in Thee. That they would wait no longer, sin grow stronger. They would come tonight. We ask this in the name and in the power of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Session #1
How God Views Our Bodies
Address—Steve 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.
Good evening.
Like to.
Start it have someone start for us him and the Little Flock hymn book. But so you know where to turn, I'd like to I'd like to sing tonight together to begin our meeting and really to introduce the topic a a hymn by a brother who's what was 5 feet tall.
Great big hook nose, head way too big for his body, yellow skin, scars all over and little Gray eyes.
You're confused because there's 22 of them so I'll pick the one for you #283.
Our Manchester.
We come back.
Was and for God and Dawn.
Of our Christ.
Of Christ, our God.
The same thing.
That I saw.
With Siren.
By Siren.
Together.
Great time.
Let's pray.
Dear Lord Jesus, as we open up my word this evening, just ask that.
My truth would penetrate deep into our hearts, our minds, our souls.
And that we would as a result, Lord Jesus, bring great glory to Thee. We ask that it would be the effect of effect of our time together. We present it to the Lord Jesus. With this request and Thy name we pray. Amen.
00:05:08
Subject on my heart this evening isn't really the content of the hymn. It's what I began with, and that was the body of Isaac Watts. Now that's not my subject. It's the body, and not the body of Christ, which is so often and so wonderfully taken up.
But the human body, the one you're sitting in here tonight, and it's not just your physical body. I'm completely incompetent to take that up. Doctor Paul on Saturday night would do a much better job. I'm not competent with that, but I want to take up the subject of how God views your body. We look at one another and we form all kinds of thoughts and impressions and in fact, have all kinds of ideas that we pick up all over the place.
What the body is and.
I think it's important that we look at what God says the body is. It's a vast subject. There are two main reasons why I've meditated some on this subject over the last year or more here and there. One of which was my mom is she got Alzheimer's and approached.
Her heavenly home.
And the other was a matter in our assembly. But the subject of the body is huge. It touches all kinds of areas.
There's gender issues, abortion, there's drunkenness, there's gluttony, many, many things that touch the body.
Yet is thinking on the subject, reflecting on it, I think we have ideas that we unconsciously import from the world as to what the body is.
And what it's for?
But to introduce how we got there, I want to go on a bit of a digression. It wasn't in my thoughts until this afternoon, but based on several conversations over the last couple days.
Want to start here in Romans 1 to show where we got, where we got, how we got where we are, and then move from there to sort of a core principle that applies to all of these issues that touch the body, what God created the body for, and why it's important.
But how do we get here? How did we get with these confused ideas?
Romans chapter one I want to quickly step through.
Three little.
Well, three major steps downward, three major steps downward, and we won't go through them at all in detail. So that's not the subject. The subject is how do we get fooled into our wrong ideas about the body. Now look very quickly if we can, and verse 20.
Verse 23 this is man who knew God and wasn't thankful. Verse 23 changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like too corruptible man and there are consequences. So man started in his relationship with God, God the Creator here and man's here, and God the Creator in a special and unique relationship.
Man, but man is not happy with it that way. And so in the verse we just read, man in his own wisdom thinks he can bring God to his own level. He changes him into the glory of the uncorrupted God, into the image made like to corruptible man and then it continues. It involves idolatry, but focus on this part. He's taking God from his unique relationship with man, God the creator man and he's.
If you want to use an analogy from driving.
He's crawled from the back seat into the passenger seat in front.
What's the consequence? Three times in this passage, Mr. Darby's translation is consistent. Twice in the King James. They use a little different, but it uses a little different language. Later verse 24, God gave them up. What to the natural consequence of what man did? It's the natural result from a unique and special relationship. What does He give man up to? Any old relationship on par.
Fornication. That's the first step in the use of the body, that unique and special relationship where God created a body and a special purpose. And in the first step down, God gave them up to the natural consequence.
And it's fornication.
The next step down, we're not going to take these in detail, but in verse 25.
00:10:05
Who changed the truth?
Of God into a lie, and worshiped and served the creature more.
Then the creator if you want a visual image for it. Now you've got man saying I'm relegating the creator to the back seat.
Still in the picture.
But now I'm driving the vehicle. That's what man says. God gives man over to the natural consequence, but where? In the body? And then comes homosexuality past the and and the kindred thought. It's not the natural use and it's a judgment that it's a result. It's a natural result of God giving up unto vile affections and so on.
Why no longer just?
A non unique relationship. Now it's man with the idea of what the creation order ought to be. Third step man goes further, never satisfied. Likewise, also I'm sorry, verse 28 and even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. God gave them King James's over translation has the same phrase gave them up.
To reprobate mind and then there are 21 Things from there to the end of the chapter, and we won't go through them but in the analogy.
Man's left in his own mind. Man's left and God's no longer in the vehicle, not even there, not in the picture, not retained in the mind. And what's the result? God's left out now, the first time the body can be used in a natural relationship in an unnatural and not unique way.
When God was demoted to the back seat, if you will, the relationship, some form of relationship is still there, but it's now used in the language of Scripture.
To change the natural use.
Now that God is removed from the picture, God is God, God is light, and God is love is removed, and the 21 Things that come at the end are the result.
God of light and love removed the natural consequences.
Our moral anarchy. So in that context, we're maybe not fully there in this culture and in this country and in Canada where the majority of those that aren't from the US are here tonight are from. But in the Western world, let's say we are largely moving into our part way into this third.
Step and so as we.
Walk about and go about our daily life. Little phrases you hear, the things you hear are coming from mouths and minds that have largely or are in the process of removing God from the equation so He has nothing to say to our body now.
I'm going to read 2 verses. We won't take them up, but I'm going to read them. And I'll confess to you, until as little as a year ago, this is how I thought through them, not how I read them.
But how I thought about them, just ask yourself as you read them if maybe you were thinking about them that same way.
As well. The first one is in First Peter chapter 2.
And verse 24.
I'll read it the way my mind unconsciously edited the thought first. Peter 2 verse 24 Who his own self bear our sins on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live under righteousness, By whose stripes you are healed.
Whose own self bear our sins?
Next 3 words. Do we really need those?
In his own body.
His own body it's vital. It's vital to the understanding of what God created the body for one more to read how.
This I'll confess for myself. Maybe no one, maybe everyone else here gave them their proper emphasis, but I suspect not.
In fact, I know not because I've had conversations with a few in Second Corinthians chapter 4 and verse 10.
00:15:21
And again, I'll read it not as I've read it in the past, but as I've unconsciously thought it in the past.
Always bearing about in the mind the dying of the Lord Jesus.
That the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our lives.
That's not what it says.
It's not what it says, and there's a very good reason why it doesn't say it that way. Says bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.
Just one more analogy, and then I want to go to the core of the subject, the way God views the body.
And I'm sorry I don't have a better analogy for this, so I'm going to tell you at the beginning.
And the analogy I'm about to use in no way mean to equate my father with the devil.
But the analogy is this. When I was a child, I had a mild interest in chess for a while, at least a couple of years. There I would kind of casually play with a little electronic machine and.
Learned a little bit of chess. I bought a couple books and I learned a few games and then I challenged my father to a chess match.
And it didn't go real well.
And so I did a little bit more, practiced a little bit more, and I tried again.
And once again, this exact same kind of thing happened. I get focused in on and I had this strategy and I knew that if I moved this piece here and then I moved that piece there, then I got this piece over to here, then I'd have them in the trap, completely forgetting that he got to move in between each of mine.
And by the time I was ready, I had one more move and I've got them. I look over and I'm nearly in checkmate or some disaster was about to happen.
Want to use that as a figurative way of thinking? Don't play chess with the devil.
Don't approach these topics in man's wisdom with someone far more intelligent than you are, where I am or any of us are. Approach it from the Word of God and the way the Word of God expresses what these things are and why they're important. And so when we take up the body, if you're going to approach and discuss it with somebody else, you're a mixture of.
Serotonin and oxytocin and dopamine and adrenaline and if you get everything all aligned properly, you can have a great life.
And it boils down somewhat to that in man's view, because as soon as God is removed from the equation, then if you can increase your dopamine levels, hey, why not?
And here's how you can do it. In fact, there's all kinds of ways of doing it. And then, oh, that's a problem because.
Getting all kinds of trouble when we overdo this dopamine thing all the time. So here's how to get more oxytocin instead of dopamine, and you'll feel a lot better. And here's how to live your life to do it this way. And in every aspect of it, the body is treated as though it's this. And it is. It's an incredible creation of God. I don't mean to demean that at all. I'm trying to get the focus on the core. But what does God see your body as? How does he look at it?
And here I would suggest it's essential that you begin.
That we begin with the Lord Jesus Himself. It provides the core. So let's go through 4 scriptures that give the core of what the body is in God's sight. Why we have it. And then as you read through the Word of God and as you look for it, keep your eyes open and look how many times the body is mentioned. There's many men. And by the way, as you look, it's not just the body.
It's vessel sometimes is used in in the sense of that physical body. Flesh is sometimes used in the sense of that physical body. Watch for it.
It's pretty beautiful, really, to think of what God designed.
You to be.
An incredible thing. So let's look at 4 verses that establish what God sees that body as.
00:20:00
The first of them I think we need to start with and Luke chapter 2.
It's a vast subject. There are many other places you could turn.
She'll enjoy them on your own in the future.
I'm just going to read 5 verses here.
Luke chapter 2, verse 10.
And the Angel said unto them, Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings, great joy.
Which shall be to all people, for unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the babe wrapped and swaddling clothes, lying in a Manger. And suddenly there was with the Angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts, praising God and saying.
Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace.
Goodwill toward man.
Then the Lord Jesus.
Come walking up to.
Abraham's 10th door.
Didn't he have dinner with him?
Didn't he pronounce on the food that it was tender and good?
So why are the angels here at this particular moment?
In such awe about what God has just done.
If you were to look at, if we had the time to look at it in First Timothy 3, you'll see that the angels.
Saw their creator manifest expressed. Why was there such awe here at this moment? Didn't he see him back then?
Because this was the moment that the Lord Jesus Christ took.
That body.
That body glorified is now in heaven, but it's one continuous thought and it's here at this moment. I believe that the the the beauty of what a body is was first perfectly expressed.
But let's go to how that body is used. Actually 2 verses to show it.
The first in Hebrews.
Chapter 10.
With chapter 10 and verse 5.
Wherefore when he cometh into the world, it's the Lord Jesus.
He saith sacrifice and offering. No, it's not, but a body as thou prepared me. It's quoting from the Psalm and in the Psalm it's expressed a little bit differently. The Psalm, it says my nearest hast thou digged. But when it got translated into Greek shortly before the Lord's time and.
From which it's quoted here. In the book of Hebrews it was translated in this way.
A body hast thou prepared me?
Because the essence.
Of the body of the Lord Jesus was to hear the voice of his Father every single moment of every single day, and to express in that body the glory of God. And so the two thoughts are equated between the Psalm and here that the Lord Jesus ears were digged in the Hebrew, a body prepared here as it's translated into Greek and then into our English.
Because the essence.
Of Christ taking a body was to perfectly express who God is.
And to share it with us.
He took a body so that you and I would know who God is. It would express it perfectly. Yes, He came to die. There's more to it, I guess, but in the aspect of it that's on my heart tonight, it's He took a body so that he could perfectly express who God is and bring him glory and the definition of what your body and mind is.
Is the same. We'll get to it in a moment, but one more verse that I think is precious related to the Lord and to His body.
00:25:02
Again, as in first again, one that I've often skimmed through. It's in First Corinthians 11.
1St Corinthians 11.
Verse 24.
The last part of the verse, second-half of the verse. This is my body.
And I'll read it from there. And Mr. Darby's translation, This is my body, which is for you.
Isn't that beautiful?
Isn't that beautiful? Lord Jesus body was first and foremost to express the glory of God.
To express it here in this world, imperfection and beauty. But here I think there's a second, second thought. This is my body.
Which is for you.
That beautiful the Lord Jesus took a body that He will have now glorified forever.
For you and I.
Now the 4th and final verse that I think is the core of the how we are to look at the body, not through man's set of lenses, not through man's way of doing his medical science. That's valuable. I don't want to take anything away from proper medical science when I'm talking here, but what I want to focus on is what is, what is the basic foundational core that everything else has to be interpreted based on.
And it's based on this, our creator.
Universe to perfectly glorify God and to bring us into a place of blessing.
Now watch the connection with the next verse, First Corinthians chapter 6.
There's many beautiful verses here.
It's hard to skip past something like our body being the temple of the Holy Ghost, but I want to, I want to go on for the focus here to the 20th verse, First Corinthians 6, and verse 20.
This is our side.
You're bought with a price.
Where therefore as a result.
Glorify.
God in your body.
There's our side. We were given a body by God, and the root principle of it is to put him on display, to put his glory on display.
Going to bring this out a little later and perhaps I will in more detail, but perhaps you're thinking.
That seems a little one sided. I want to give you an analogy.
In business, there are many large corporations that have for many years now tried to maximize quarterly profits, and in their maximizing their quarterly profits, they try to make as much money as they possibly can in the short term.
And sometimes that means they have to sacrifice their vision. Sometimes that means they have to sacrifice their people.
And so if the books don't balance very nicely and they're publicly traded corporation, they can cleanly remove 2000 people from the bottom line.
What they find overtime is that they maximize the short term and lose in the long term and the companies just in the natural analogy of it that focus in on the people and the vision of the company end up with in the long run a much greater profits.
When we look at these things, when we look at what the body is for, designed and created for the glory of God.
If we don't get to it later, there are verses to show it. It doesn't mean that all natural pleasures get lopped off.
It doesn't mean that there's no room for nature. It doesn't mean who created dopamine and oxytocin and all the other stuff in the 1St place. It has a purpose, but it's a byproduct and it's an end result and it's an extra that comes when the focus is in the right place. Satan has tried to lie to you and to me from the beginning, from the garden to say God's holding back the good stuff.
Go get it now. That's been his life in the garden, and it remains his lie to this moment.
00:30:05
And so he would say to you with your body, here's the good stuff. And he has all kinds of wares to sell.
And so if you want the cheap, trashy good stuff, he'll get you into all kinds of things that will ruin your body in the short term. And if you're into the better stuff, he'll have you use your body in a wonderful way for your own glory and pleasure, all the way to the end of your life in a socially acceptable way.
And as long as there's no room for the glory of God, it's a pretty decent objective. But when we put the glory of God and its expression in our body first in the right place, Lord fills in all the other. He doesn't forget it. So let's go to a practical expression of it.
It's one thing to say a beautiful expression such as glorify God in your body. I'd like to illustrate it in this way. Turn to Psalm 139.
I'm gonna read several verses here, but you hang on to just one word.
Read 4 verses here. They're beautiful.
I want you to notice one word out of them.
Where thou hast possessed my reins, thou hast covered me in my mother's womb.
I will praise Thee, reading from verse 13 to verse 16, verse 14. I will praise Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are Thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well, my substance was not hid from Thee when I was made in secret and curiously wrought. Hang on to that word, curiously wrought. It's very important.
In the lower lowest parts of the earth, thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect.
And in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned.
When as yet there was none of them.
That word curiously wrought. It's like needlework or embroidery.
It's only used in one other section of scripture. This is the only quote outside one other book of the scripture, and the only use of that word outside one other book of scripture and then that other book of scripture. It's used repeatedly for at least four different things.
Those four things are, and bear with me, maybe I should.
Maybe I should see a show of hands. It's been 35 years as my account earlier. It's my best guess. It's been 35 years since anyone in the assembly where I come from has ever spoken on the in any kind of detail other than passing reference at an entire meeting on the figures that are in the Tabernacle. And I know this might be regional because I know her brother Norman Berry from.
The Maritimes used to love that subject and he's the last person I heard give an address on it 35 years ago.
So maybe in your area you hear about it all the time. So show me your hand if you've had within the last three years heard a talk on the Tabernacle.
OK, so we got about.
20% maybe I'll give you a little bit more detail, maybe less than I was going to everyone of the other references to this needlework and embroidery occur with parts of the Tabernacle, the hangings that were at the door where you enter the court so quickly for the 80% that haven't had it and refreshed in their mind in the last.
The last three or four years.
We've got the hangings of the cord around the edge and then the Tavern the.
Building there. Then you enter it and you've got the brazen altar and the labor, and then you come to the Tabernacle, and there's the hanging at the entry to the Holy Place, and then there's the veil at the entry to the inner chamber. The holiest of all. Where was the ark? And of those different materials, the girdle of the High priest uses this word.
The hanging for the door where you enter the Tabernacle courtyard.
Uses this word the hanging for the entry into the.
Tabernacle itself into the Holy of Holies uses this word, and the coverings over that Tabernacle use this word. The veil uses a slightly different one, but it contains the same four colors that each of the others do.
The Veil.
00:35:01
That's so beautifully given to us in the chapter. We've already been in Hebrews 10. Somebody quote that verse for me.
The veil is a representation according to Hebrews Tenov.
As flesh.
Lord Jesus.
And that body given in death on the cross, was the entry to the presence of God.
And the material on that veil, it had a cherubim. The other ones that I named didn't, but that veil contained 4 colors. Let's turn to Exodus chapter.
26 I believe.
We'll just cover.
The four colors there.
So bear with me, those of you who have had this refreshed in the past, I want to go over them for the rest of us. And Exodus chapter 26, I'm going to read verses 31 to 36.
And thou shalt make a veil of blue and purple and scarlet.
And fine twine linen of cunning work with cherry bims shall it be made.
Thou shalt hang it upon 4 pillars of shittimwood overlaid with gold. Their hooks shall be of gold upon the four sockets of silver. Thou shalt hang up the veil under the tatches that thou mayst bring in thither within the veil the Ark of the Testimony, and the Veil shall divide unto you between the Holy Place and the Most Holy. Thou shall put the mercy seat upon the Ark of the Testimony in the Most Holy Place. I shall set the table.
With out the veil and the Candlestick over against the table on the side of the Tabernacle and toward the South. And thou shalt put the table on the north side.
And thou shalt make an hanging for the door of the tent of Here we go again.
Blue, purple, scarlet, and fine twine linen rot with needlework. It's the same word as curiously wrought.
I'd suggest to you at least an application. Your body has been curiously wrought by God. This hanging represents Christ as well that we just read it represents Christ in grace being presented to the world and as four colors in it and it's curiously rod. I believe it represents Christ in his body just like the veil, Christ in his body being presented in grace to the world.
And your body and mind is curiously wrought the same way for the same purpose. So let's go through those four colors and apply them. Just I'll give you 4 quick applications of the four colors because they represent what our body is for. It's for a display of the glory of God. And I want to make an application of each of these four colors. You can make your own. You need to make your own. I need to make far more of my own than these four. But this is just to give you a little flavor.
For it so that it can be expressed in your life, the glory of God. The first one is blue, and I'll give you the the four meanings quickly, at least as I understand them. The blue represents the heavenly origin of the Lord Jesus, and I'm going to apply it to blessing in a moment. The purple represents him as the Son of Man, the one with universal dominion, the Lord of Lords and the King of kings. The scarlet represents him as the Son of David.
The one with the right to reign over his earthly people and the fine twine linen. Our business, as Mr. Darby's translation has it, represents him in His purity and in His Holiness. So that's great. You know, you could, could, and maybe you did. It would probably be a good idea. Jot them down and double check them later. See if there's other thoughts on the subject and other applications of it. Please do, and it's nice to have. Maybe you want to stick it in a little piece of paper and put it over there in your Tabernacle file.
Or for those of you who already have one, just enjoy the symbols again. But how do they relate to displaying God's glory in our bodies? Let me give you a personal example. I'm going to skip down to the purple 1St.
It's very fresh in my mind.
Purple is the Lord in his universal dominion, the Son of Man reigning over the whole world, whole universe, really all over the whole universe in the coming day.
Doesn't he have universal dominion now?
Doesn't he have that wonderful right to reign at the moment?
00:40:00
Multiple times more than I care to admit in the last year and a half, the Lord has tested me on this following point.
So maybe I saw it in the rearview mirror a little quicker this time. But about a week and a half ago we we lived set the stage so you can understand this purple. We live on a dead end St. now where we move to accommodate my my parents about a year ago.
Live on the dead end St. and at the end of that dead end St. there's an empty land that the forest preserve owns and they call it part of one of their forest preserves and they mow trails in that forest preserve. A couple weeks ago we noticed that hanging on one of the trees there was one of these cameras, motion sensitive cameras and it was a little disconcerting. My wife walks on those trails all the time loves the loves being out in God's creation and enjoying it. The birds and the bees and the butterflies and all the.
The sunsets, it's beautiful, She was a little concerned about.
Who might have put a camera hanging on that post there. And so there had been a forest preserve truck parked there a little while earlier. Not only that, there had been a forest preserve vehicle with giant mower on the back end of it that came by a couple months ago, sat at the end of the dead end St. that we're on for about an hour and left.
Mower never left the back deck of the trailer. It just sat there for an hour and then turned around and went the other way apparently.
That camera was hung on that tree.
To catch the neighbor that had the audacity to take out his mower and use his own gas in his own mower to mow the trails that the forest preserve hadn't mowed.
And so as I reflect on that, well, I pulled thistles in my own garden. My thoughts were churning. I forgot all about this purple. I forgot all about who has the right to reign over everything. And in my thoughts were how incredibly unjust and ridiculous and impossible these people were to choose to do something that was so detrimental to my family and.
Oh yeah.
The powers that be are ordained of God.
There's a power higher than them, and he's put them in place for good. Romans 13 one.
And so instead of calling up the number on the new sign posted in front of the path, do not mow with a phone number below it.
With a nice little extra edge in the voice.
I was able to thank the Lord for whatever good He wants to bring.
Out of that, I don't know what it is, and I won't pretend to necessarily be naturally pleased with whatever it is in the short term.
But if my voice had been lifted up in anger against the injustice in this world.
Because I had been hurt, my body would not have been displaying.
The purple.
It would not have been recognizing the Son of Man who is over everything, including the Forest Preserve of DuPage County.
Everything he has universal dominion, it's in his hands. He works it for good. And the way we use our body, our mouths in this case, will express the glory of God in those ways. The first in the four colors is blue and.
This can be applied in a lot of ways. I'd like to apply it just in one way in which we can see and enjoy.
Blessing that comes down from above, I probably should turn for a blessing for Christians. Heavenly coming down from heaven, I should probably turn to Ephesians 1.
And read those and turn to one that's a little more of an application, but yet very personal. And it's in Deuteronomy.
I'd like to apply this verse in a certain way to sing God's blessing in our life.
Deuteronomy chapter.
33.
In verse 27.
The eternal God is thy refuge.
00:45:00
And underneath are they ever lasting arms.
I wouldn't trade for a minute the experience that I had on April 25, together with eight others in the room with my mom as she entered the Lord's presence. We had the opportunity for a couple hours ahead of time to sing hymns.
We're looking at a body that reached the end of its natural life lying on our left side, just oxygen in her nose at that point, probably more for our Peace of Mind than anything else. In fact, at that moment, I don't know, maybe it was gone and eventually those breaths became more shallow.
A little more gradual, a little more time between each one until watching carefully at 11:21 PM.
I had this image in my mind.
There was a plane and it had been circling for landing for, in my eyes, five years.
Coming in and coming in, coming in, it was making its final approach.
And 11:21 on April 25.
Mom touched down in the everlasting arms.
They were always there.
But they took her home.
They took her to the blue home, the heavenly home, Not her body yet. I got zipped up in a bag, carried out on a Gurney and put in the ground.
As an aside.
God bought that body. I'm not going to get to that point at the end, and I know it. God bought that body.
God had paid the price of redemption for that body.
Nothing that's his is going to be left behind. He's taking it with them.
There's a blessing in our lives and looking at what God gives.
If we see what comes from his hand of love, His delight to bless, we're seeing the blue and we're expressing it in our life with our mouth, with our hands, with our actions. We're expressing our recognition that our God is blessing God and even in the things of life that to the world are naturally speaking might seem like tremendous loss or tremendous gain when we see them in the light of what?
Our God is the third one, the scarlet.
Is the king of, king of, I'm sorry, king of Israel, king the son of David, if you will. And in looking at that, you can apply it in a lot of different ways, the scarlet and you can apply it in a lot of different ways, but it can be applied also in a sense of God being faithful. There's so much in the book of Romans that takes and incidentally, the book of Romans.
Has.
The second most quotes from the Old Testament in the New Testament, the only book with more.
It was Matthew, but Matthew has 28 chapters, so if you want the density of quotes per chapter, you're going to get more in Romans.
And it shows that faithfulness of that righteous God.
And all his faithful absolutely consistent with himself ways from the beginning until now. And he covers it over and over over again in that book. He's a faithful God. And in chapters 9:10 and 11:00, he shows his faithfulness and his dealings with his people, Israel, and bringing in the Gentiles and then bringing Israel back into blessing so that he can be consistent with his promises. So I'd like to apply this scarlet as God being faithful to himself.
Purposes in our lives so turn to just one of many verses.
Philippians chapter one.
Philippians chapter one. I'm going to read it from Mr. Darby's translation, verse 6.
Having confidence of this very thing that he.
Who has begun in you? A good work will complete it.
Unto Jesus Christ day.
He who has begun in you a good work will complete it unto Jesus Christ Day.
00:50:03
What he starts, he finishes, and I would just suggest to you that the Scarlet can be on display in your life if you're in the middle of a situation. Perhaps it involves someone in your assembly, perhaps it involves a child or another loved one.
Your heart has gone out in that situation, and it's gone out in prayer. It's presented that cause to God over and over again.
And perhaps in your heart is constantly churning your feelings related to that subject.
I'd encourage you that there will be Scarlet on display in your life.
If in your thoughts you bring in who that person is to the Lord.
You bring into your thoughts the Lord's love for that person. You bring into your thoughts His faithfulness and working His purposes for absolute good in that life. And as you pray and as you express yourself to one another, and as you act in those circumstances, you're putting on display the glory of God by recognizing Him in your life as that faithful one.
The 4th and final is the business, or the white linen, the fine linen.
Displaying holiness. 1 Corinthians 6 would be a great example, wouldn't it, of where we can display holiness. But I want to go to a different one, very different one that touches my conscience. And Luke chapter 12.
Luke, chapter 12.
And beginning with verse 36, I'm not going to read the whole portion.
Just a little bit of it.
And ye yourselves, I'm sorry.
I turned into the I turned you to the wrong chapter, Luke Chapter 7.
And verse 36.
And one of the Pharisees desired him, that is Jesus, that he would eat with him.
And he went into the Pharisees house and sat down to me. Behold, a woman in the city, which was a Sinner when she knew that Jesus sat at me in the Pharisees house, brought an alabaster box of ointment. And the story continues. Lovely story.
A little further down in it in verse 39.
Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spake within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him, for she is a Sinner.
Jesus answering, said unto him, Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee, He said, Master, say on, And the Lord continues.
There's a situation maybe you've been in.
There's a social situation, the Lord comes into it, and as the passage continues, we could see it, but we know the story. I think he was insulted.
Wasn't met with common courtesy. It wasn't met with common.
Common care of the day.
He doesn't say a word. Not a word, not one.
The woman comes in. She pours out on him an expression of her love for him.
She's criticized, not even vocally. She's criticized in the man's mind. Perhaps it expressed itself in his face, I don't know. The scriptures do not say, but it simply says he spake within himself.
What does the Lord do? He defends her. Isn't that beautiful?
Isn't that beautiful? Not a single word.
When it dealt with himself, except when he needed to reach his conscience later. But at the moment of the act, not a single word, the moment one of his own was touched, he was there to speak up for them.
Isn't that beautiful? Have you been in this situation or another? One of the Lord's own is being shredded with words.
I've been cut down.
Being spoken poorly about.
And because of the nice social feeling.
Kept your mouth shut?
I know I have.
00:55:00
But were the proper expression to be made?
That properly protects the one who may not even be there. Here was a woman who couldn't defend herself. The Lord spoke up for her. He spoke up for her and kept that perfect robe of purity. Nothing about that social situation guided him in the wrong direction so that he kind of stepped back and didn't say something that would make it uncomfortable.
Yet not a word.
To change the situation when it was his own honor as a man here in the book of Luke.
The white row.
There's a lot more I'd like to read one verse that kind of creates a summary.
And then a conclusion.
Coming back to this effect, 2 verses I guess from First Timothy turn to First Timothy chapter 3 I referenced but did not quote.
First Timothy 3 and verse 16.
And.
Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness or piety.
You know that word occurs more in this epistle than in the rest of the Word of God put together. It's an important theme in the book, and it's presented here as a great mystery. The world doesn't see it.
What is that mystery?
God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit.
Scene of angels preached unto the gentiles believed on in the world received.
Up into glory begins with Christ.
Taking a body come in the flesh.
Christ taking a body and it ends with Christ in glory. A glorified body goes from the one to the other. That was the display of the glory of God in a man. Godliness isn't a set of procedures. Check, check, check, check, Godly next one. It's not it. It's living each moment of the life.
In reference to our God in every circumstance of our life, it is in essence doing what God does here in the person of the Son, displaying God beautifully.
In the world, the next chapter, one verse.
Chapter 4.
And verse 8.
Finally, exercise profit of little or for a little time but godliness.
Is profitable unto all things, having promised of the life that now is, and of that which is to come, if we use our body in the way it was designed to express the glory of the God who bought it.
There's no loss. There's no loss at all. There's gain in every circumstance and the life that now is.
And then that which is to come.
Like to.
Read one last verse.
Romans chapter 2 verses together. One last passage. Romans chapter 12.
Verses one and two.
Romans 12 verses one and two IBC Chew. Therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God.
Or the compassion of God for all that is shown you. All that has shown me.
That you present your bodies.
To present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, and be not conformed to this world.
But be transformed by the renewing of your mind, transformed as the present tense.
Present in the first verse is a tense. In the Greek that means do it once and be done with it.
But the transforming is a daily thing if our thoughts.
And our minds have been formed about the body, unconsciously, loosely, carelessly.
And by the world around us. And we use our body for our own personal pleasure and not for God in His glory. Then it is a process of transforming that mind. But the result will be to bring greater glory to the One who bought it, the one who paid to redeem it, and the one who won't leave it behind. Let's pray.
01:00:21
Dear Lord Jesus, we just do ask that each one of us would glorify thee in our body, and we thank Thee, Lord Jesus.
Without immense work. And all of thou has done in my body all that thou has done for us, and we thank thee, and we glorify thee, and we pray in thy name, Lord Jesus, Amen.
Session #2
Unity of the Spirit
Address—Tim Roach
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
And let's start by seeing hymn #150.
The first verse.
Thou art the Everlasting Word, the Father's only son.
God manifest, God seen and heard, the heavens, beloved. 1 Worthy, O Lamb of God, art thou that every need to thee should bow?
Seeing the first verse of 150.
Thou art thee.
Son.
Of God and first God see it and pray, I have to be loved and upon.
In the most perfectly expressed, the father's self doth shine.
Fullness of Godhead to the blessed, eternally divine image of the infinite unseen, whose being none can know. Brightness of light no eye hath seen God's love revealed below the higher mysteries of Thy fame the creatures grasp. Transcend the Father only Thy blessed name of Son can comprehend.
Yet loving.
The honor.
300 and 1.
Where we are planning on God.
Flow.
Every day to every day.
Let's ask the Lord's help our God and Father. We give thanks for this time. We can come together to sing about the very person of the Lord, Jesus Christ and Father. We just ask for help this evening, as we consider the subject we have before us, we ask that it might be of benefit and value to all. Who in the audience we just commit this time to you, Father. In Jesus name we pray.
Amen. If we go to 1St Corinthians chapter 12.
As I look around the room, I see a great potential for the future of the Assembly.
You're sitting here in this room, both men, young men and young women, and your assembly needs to have godly young men and women, but for you to endure into the future, to be a part of the assembly.
For years to come it will be good for you to have an understanding of the unity of the Spirit, and that's my subject for tonight. I just have a few thoughts to share on the unity of the Spirit in First Corinthians chapter 12 and verse 12. For as the body is 1 and hath many members, and all the members of that one body being many, are one body, so also is Christ.
00:05:24
For by 1 Spirit are we all baptized into one body, and have been made all made to drink.
Into one's spirit. Let's go back in our minds and think about the day of Pentecost.
God, the Spirit of God, formed all believers into one body, and God did this by the by the Holy Spirit. On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit of God formed one group. He calls the one body. He calls it the one body and the attention. The intention of the Spirit of God on that day was to have all believers together in one fellowship. And so we know that God did not make.
Many denominations or independent fellowships, and there is unity.
Of the spirit.
In the one body.
All assemblies in all places.
They needed to function together as one body.
And that is what we try to do when we gather to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Let's look at First Corinthians chapter one.
First Corinthians chapter one and verse 2.
Unto the Church of God, which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus.
Called to be Saints.
With whom?
With all that, in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Both theirs and ours, so this is not limited to the local assembly meetings.
The fellowship includes all assemblies in every place and there can be no independency.
When the assembly is gathered together for worship and ministry.
Paul tells the Christians in Ephesus, he says you've got to work hard to keep that unity of the Spirit in the fellowship of the Saints. And so in First Corinthians one, there were different opinions.
In that assembly, that could have caused divisions in the church. And let's look at verse 11.
1St Corinthians 111.
Somebody was telling, talking to Paul, and it says, it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them, which are of the House of Chloe, that there are contentions among you. Now this I say, that every one of you saith.
I am Paul and I have Apolis and I have Cephas and I have Christ.
You see here in this assembly there was contention and there was a seed of denominations and division right there at the beginning of the church, and the seed of independency there was starting to grow in the church. But in But Paul asks in verse 13, he says, is Christ divided?
Oh, we know the answer is no. Christ is not divided. The Spirit of God put all believers into one fellowship. He put them together into one fellowship. And the same spirit of God gathers all believers to Christ. And that same spirit of God leads all believers to speak the same thing and to practice the same thing according I believe to the apostles doctrine. Look at verse 10.
Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing.
Remember, he is not just speaking to the assembly in Corinth.
He is speaking to all believers in every place, and that includes you. Paul is speaking to you.
And to me that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you.
But that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.
Keeping the unity of the spirit.
Is not having everybody in one group agreeing together because they might agree on something that's wrong and something which disagrees with the word of God. And so that's not the unity we're talking of. The Spirit of God wants us to be together in agreement with the apostles doctrine that we find in God's word.
00:10:00
And the desire of the Spirit of God is to unite Christians together into one fellowship with all believers in every place that call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Spirit of God does not want to have autonomous branches of the Christian Church that are operating independently from one another.
We say that we gather on the ground of one body, and I believe that means that we gather on the basis that God has instituted only one fellowship for believers to gather together.
And I believe that is how we that we try to practice and the moment that there are two or more groups that are in separate fellowships.
The unity that the Spirit of God had formed on the day of Pentecost.
Is Dishonored.
We cannot break the unity of the spirit.
We either function in it or we don't. Let's look at Ephesians chapter 4.
We will read the 1St.
Starting to start at verse one.
Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith you are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering and forbearing one another in love.
Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Scripture shows us that there is only one fellowship for believers.
And we should endeavor to practice according to that truth to that fact.
You know there are more than 40,000 registered Christian group fellowships.
That are independent from each other, and some of them meet very similarly to the way that we do, and many of them say that they are gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ the same as we do.
That is not the unity of the Spirit the Spirit of God gathers together.
He doesn't gather independently and so when we think about this.
It can all be very confusing to us because if there are 40,000 independent fellowship groups.
How do you find one fellowship of believers that answers to God's will?
That meets the requirements of the unity of the spirit.
You know if you went to a different group each and every Sunday.
To 40,000 individual independent groups, it would, if my math is correct, it would take you approximately. It would take you 769 years to find the right place, the right one.
And so church hopping is not the answer.
If there are two groups that are similar and they seem to say the same things.
And they do the same things, and they both say they are gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
How do we figure out if one of those two fellowships is approved according to the Spirit of God?
To the unity of the spirit.
Well, one thing you can do is to look at the history.
Of the group you are considering.
And you can look at all the divisions of the church in in in the history and try to trace out the right one. But you need to be careful because history can be very biased and very confusing.
History is helpful, but I believe that the Spirit of God is the answer.
It does not matter where in the world you are. It does not matter to what teaching you have been exposed to, and it doesn't matter if you have been raised in the assembly. It will take prayer. It will take the word of God. It will take a step of faith to be guided by the Spirit of God.
And the Spirit of God will guide you through the word of God to find that which is approved.
Of God if you take a step of faith.
The spirit of God. He'll have liberty to teach you more.
And if you learn more, you might need to take another step of faith.
I meet with the ones, the Christians that I fellowship with because I believe this is where the spirit of God.
Has directed me according to how I understand the word of God.
00:15:01
And how I understand the apostles doctrine, but I can't prove to you that this fellowship of Christians.
Where the Spirit is that this fellowship of Christians is where the Spirit of God gathers Christians to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I can't prove that to you, but I believe it is that which is approved of God. And so I took a step, and I trust that I took that step in faith.
And although I believe this to be true.
I cannot dictate to you that this is where you should gather.
With other Christians, it might be true what I'm telling you, but you need to take your own step of faith.
The Spirit of God does not gather to a certain place.
And he does not gather to a certain doctrine.
Or to a certain principle, the spirit of God gathers believers to a certain person.
And that person is the Lord Jesus Christ.
However, the word of God is very specific as to.
And when we look in the apostles doctrine, it's very specific as to how we should meet together as an assembly.
In the unity of the spirit.
The early Brethren in Acts chapter 2 and verse 42 it says they continued.
In the apostles doctrine.
For Christians who are gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus today, we also should continue.
In the apostles doctrine and fellowship.
The Apostles doctrine is the teaching that they wrote to us in the scriptures and for us to have fellowship with the apostles.
Is to practice their teachings that are written that we find written in the word of God.
The unity of the Spirit includes believers.
In every place, and it includes them to be in the same fellowship.
And those believers who are gathered in the unity of the Spirit will speak the same fundamental doctrines.
And they will agree with Scripture, and they have the same mind as Christ.
And they have the same judgment from the word of God.
And they're led by the Spirit of God.
When they function as an assembly.
That's how it should be. And in the unity of the Spirit, assemblies are connected together in one fellowship.
And what happens in one assembly effects each and every other assembly.
That is gathered in that same fellow in the fellowship.
Whatever happens in one assembly is accepted.
As from the Lord by every other assembly.
Let me say that again.
And I'm sure you know this because if you're gathered in your assembly and you come here to the camp, we're going to receive you because we're connected with the.
Assembly gathered to the Lord's name in Grand Rapids. And so if we're connected in that way in the same fellowship, we're going to receive you, because what has been done in your assembly and has been approved in your assembly, we accept that in our assembly.
And it's accepted in every other assembly. And that is why every action or decision made by an assembly gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ needs to be carefully done according to the scriptures.
Otherwise.
There will be confusion in many assemblies.
In First Corinthians, let's look at First Corinthians 14.
1St Corinthians 14 in the last verse verse 40.
Let all things be done decently and in order, not in confusion, but decently and in order. And when issues in an assembly disrupt and confuse other assemblies, there needs to be self examination by each overseer in the assembly where the issues have been allowed to fester and cause confusion. Look at First Corinthians Chapter 11.
00:20:10
Verse 28 and 29.
Verse 28. But let the man we're speaking about an overseer here. Let an overseer examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup.
I'm applying this verse to an overseer.
For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body, It's necessary for us to examine ourselves. And when we find cause of bitterness and we find cause of division and confusion in our hearts, it needs to be judged. So the overseers are directly accountable to God for how they conduct the oversight of the assembly. Look at Hebrews 13, verse 17.
Hebrews 13 verse 17.
Obey them that have the rule over you and submit yourselves.
For they watch for your souls as they that must give account.
That they may do it with joy and not with grief, for that is unprofitable for you.
If the oversight honestly reviews their actions.
And their attitudes. And they find that the confusion is a result of their failure.
This needs to be confessed and rectified. Look what it says in James 5.
James, Chapter 5.
And verse 16.
Confess your faults one to another and pray one for another that you may be healed. The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. I know these verses are written about physically sick individuals, but I'm going to apply it to spiritually sick individuals. Each overseer is an individual who needs to be subject to Christ and His Word, and if an overseer has caused offense to someone, they may need to humble themselves.
Look at Matthew Chapter 5.
Matthew chapter 5 and let's go down to verse 23.
Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there remember us that thy brother has aught against thee.
Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way first be reconciled to thy brother.
And then come and offer thy gift.
The function of the oversight.
Needs to be obedient to the word of God.
And remember that the authority of the assembly belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ, the authority.
Of the assembly does not belong to one or two brothers of the oversight.
And as to the rest of us in the assembly?
We need to be subject to the actions or the decisions that are made by the assembly.
Because the Lord Jesus is the authority of the assembly.
To reject the authority of the assembly.
Is to reject the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We might reason in our minds, Oh, that wasn't the assembly. You were just being subject subject to that one brother, or you're being subject to those brothers.
We all have just as much to say as those guys. They are not the assembly.
You know, sometimes issues in an assembly.
Are very difficult.
And the oversight feels tremendous weight from the responsibility.
Of certain decisions that need to be made and different issues that need to be dealt with.
And the overseers they are recommending to the assembly actions.
And solutions.
And these actions and solutions that they recommend are things that they believe are right according to their understanding of the Word of God.
00:25:06
But you know, I am no different from you when I see things, different from the oversight. Sometimes my flesh gets active and I'm tempted to talk to others against the capabilities of the oversight. It's not really good.
But I must admit that sometimes.
I guess it's pride.
That comes in and I think that my way is better, but I need to stop and I need to remember that the Spirit of God has worked in the hearts of those brothers.
Who are the overseers? He's worked in their hearts over a period of time to develop them into overseers.
And he has given them a care and a concern for the word of God.
And he's given them an understanding of the principles on which we are gathered.
And he's given them a desire to maintain order in the House of God.
And in the sphere of the local assembly.
The oversight recommends to the assembly actions that they believe are correct.
And in agreement with the word of God.
And because the Spirit of God has made them an overseer, they have certain responsibilities in the assembly to which I need to be subject.
And when they recommend an action for the assembly.
Our responsibility as being a part of the assembly or even being part of another assembly in the same fellowship that is gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And there at the Lord's table. And they are gathered unto the name of the Lord Jesus. Our responsibility is to obey them that have the oversight, and to submit to their judgment, and to esteem them very highly and be at peace among yourselves. Let's go to 1St Thessalonians, Chapter 5.
I tell you, it's not an easy thing to be an overseer.
There's a great responsibility with that.
And they have many decisions to make.
And it's not always the best decision that other people might think it is, but it might be according to the word of God.
Verse 12 I Thessalonians 5 And we beseech you, brethren, to know them, which labor among you?
And are over you in the Lord, and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love for their works sake, and be at peace among yourselves.
If we consider ourselves as just being in compliance.
To some brothers.
There will be confusion.
God has instituted order in the assembly, and if I am not subject to God's order and authority in the assembly, there's going to be confusion.
Let's go to Colossians chapter 2.
And verse 19.
Colossians 2 verse 19 and not holding the head.
From which all the body, by joints and bands having nourishment, ministered and knit together.
Increases with the increase of God.
If we reject the requirement of being subject to the authority of the Lord Jesus in the assembly, and we continue on as if an action was just done in the authority of man and we are not holding the head.
This can only lead to rebellion.
And to railing and to rejection.
Of the oversight.
And confusion will be the result because we were not subject.
To God's order which he has established in the assembly.
Again, I will repeat that verse that we had in One Corinthians 14 and verse 40.
Let all things be done decently and in order.
00:30:07
Although we may think that things are in confusion.
The Lord Jesus his son over his house and he knows what is going on.
1St Corinthians 5.
I think I got the wrong reference.
Two Corinthians 5.
Two Corinthians 5 and verse 10.
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that everyone may receive the things done in his body.
According to that he hath done whether it be good or bad.
And so we see that both the oversight and the others.
In the assembly, we will each need to answer to the Lord Jesus Christ.
As to how we conducted ourselves in a time of confusion in the assembly.
There is one body.
There is one spirit.
Endeavor to keep the unity of the spirit.
Whatsoever is bound or loosed on earth, is bound or loosed in heaven.
The authority of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ is in the midst of the assembly that is gathered unto his name.
Those who function in the unity of the Spirit.
They do not practice their worship.
According to a fellowship that certain men set up independent on their own.
And neither do they meet independently without the blessing of an already existing assembly.
Nothing. Nothing should be done independently.
Of the assembly.
Or of the oversight. Independent of the oversight of an assembly, you don't just start up an assembly according to your own will and desire.
You know, I used to work for McDonald's restaurants as a manager, and I learned how everything worked.
But I could not go and start up my own restaurant and call it McDonald's unless I got approval and authorization from the corporate McDonald's and I had paid the franchise fee and I followed all the rules and regulations.
No business in North America. They have largely subjected themselves.
To operating by Christian principles.
But now in the Assembly, we don't have franchise fees and we don't have regulations, nor do we have a corporate headquarters.
But we do have God's order.
And we find God's order in His Word, and we have the apostles, doctrine and fellowship.
A group of Christians.
They cannot just decide they're going to start their own assembly.
Without the approval.
And the fellowship of and the connection with.
That which the Spirit of God had already established. And this is just a basic principle that we find in Scripture in God's house.
We can find this principle of fellowship among assemblies all through.
The New Testament Scriptures.
And God does not condone any form of independency.
In Acts Chapter 11, Peter explains how and why he went to eat.
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And fellowship with the Gentiles in Cornelius house and how he preached the gospel to them and how he connect and how God connected them to the fellowship.
Of the body of Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit.
No group of Christians in Scripture started their own assembly independent from the commendation and the fellowship of an apostle or of an assembly that had already been established.
A new assembly was always brought into fellowship in the Unity.
Of the spirit, let's look at Acts Chapter 8.
Acts chapter 8 start at verse five. Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ unto them.
And the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did. Verse 8.
And there was great joy in that city, verse 12. But when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the Kingdom of God in the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.
Down to verse 14.
Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God.
They sent unto them Peter and John, who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost.
For as yet he was fallen upon none of them. Only they were baptized in the name.
Of the Lord Jesus then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost. This group of believers in Samaria was not recognized by the Spirit of God in the unity of the Spirit until they were identified with the Christians that were already established in the fellowship which began on the day of Pentecost.
There needed to be the approval of and the connection with that which God had already established, and I would suggest that Philip was an evangelist, and as such he did not have the authority of the Lord to start assemblies the way perhaps an apostle.
Or an already established assembly could where there were two or three gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus.
By the Spirit of God, with the Lord in their midst.
And so the assembly in Jerusalem, they sent apostles. They sent Peter and John with authority so the Samaritan believers could receive the Holy Spirit. And these Samaritans were recognized by the Holy Spirit of God to be added together to the fellowship that had been established back on that day of Pentecost. And so there is no independency whatsoever. Peter didn't act independent from everybody else.
He worked in conjunction with the Spirit of God, and as an apostle he had the authority there, Peter and John.
And so these Christians.
These new Christians, they were sanctified in Christ Jesus.
And they were called to be Saints with all that in every place call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I have no authority to assume the name of McDonald's.
For a personal restaurant.
The Samaritans had no authority to assume the name or Jesus Christ as their authority to be in fellowship with those gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. There needed to be the approval of and the connection to the one fellowship that was already in existence.
And that was clearly the work of the Spirit of God.
And I believe it's a simple principle that we adhere to even unto this day. We had an incident that was very challenging, that was challenging this, this very principle in Malawi. One man decided he was going to start an assembly in his own house, so he would not have to walk 15 minutes to the assembly down to the meeting room. But the local assembly did not sanction this idea as there were some concerns.
About this individual, some issues that concerned them, and so the man.
And the ones who went with him, they were given space to repent.
00:40:05
However, like in heretic, he constrains some other.
Others from some nearby assemblies to join him.
And he was remonstrated with by several brothers from several different assemblies.
For several months but to no avail.
They were admonished to return to the local assembly. But this man rebelled against the authority of the assembly and against the authority of the Lord Jesus, and he began to speak bad things.
About certain brothers.
First Corinthians chapter One, verse 9.
God is faithful by whom you recalled unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ.
Our Lord, the fellowship of the body of Christ, belongs to Jesus Christ.
The verse also says that Jesus Christ is our Lord and that means He is the boss. He is the one who makes the rules. He is the one who has given us simple instructions in the apostles doctrine in the word of God for us to function as the local assembly gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus.
And in the unity of the spirit.
The believers in one assembly of Saints.
Is in the same fellowship with assemblies in other locations who are gathered by the Spirit of God unto the name.
Of the Lord Jesus Christ. And they all practice the same way, and each and every assembly are all connected.
To Christ, and they are connected with each other.
And there's no organization that has been established by man.
It's all the work of the spirit of God. It's the unity of the Spirit. It's not the unity of man.
The Apostle Paul. He visited the assemblies of the church in many locations.
And according to the unity of the Spirit, Paul taught the same doctrines and practices in each and every assembly of the church as he traveled around. And the many gatherings of believers at the beginning of the church, they were in the same fellowship.
There was only one fellowship, and this was all according to the unity of the Spirit.
Let's look at Ephesians 4 Three again. We have it up on the board and this is the verse we've been talking about all evening.
Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
It takes spiritual energy and diligence and effort and humility and meekness and love in order for us to keep the unity of the Spirit.
The one body of Christ includes all believers that are living at this present time.
On the earth.
Many different churches, many believers in them. But this does not mean that we go to a different church fellowship each Sunday to acknowledge that every Christian is a part.
Of the body of Christ.
The fellowship of the Lord's table belongs to the Lord Jesus.
It belongs to Jesus Christ, and he is Lord, and we are required to be obedient to the will.
Of the Lord Jesus.
Christians should practice on the basis that there is only one fellowship.
For Christians.
The scriptures present only one fellowship, and so we need to act as best as we can as one body.
In fellowship with those that we are gathered with, the Spirit of God has gathered us with.
And it is necessary for us to practice as if we are in the one fellowship that the Spirit of God has established according to what we find in the scriptures.
If we practice these principles as if we are just one of many groups who are trying to do the right thing.
We begin to deny the very principle upon which we gather.
We see that we say that we gather together on the basis that there is one body.
Or one fellowship.
But the scriptures cannot condone any group to practice.
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As if they are one of many groups that Jesus would accept as a testimony.
Of the one body.
Maybe I'm a little simple.
But I cannot understand how God could condone 2 or more fellowships.
When Scripture teaches that there is only one.
Scripture teaches that Christ is not divided.
Jesus prayed to the Father just before he went to the cross in John. Let's look at that in John 17.
John 17 down in verse 21.
Verse 21.
That they all may be one, as thou father art in me, and I and thee, that they also may be one in US, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
The desire of the Lord Jesus is that we believers would be one in testimony to the world.
But when the world looks at the church, what do they see? They see confusion. They see 40,000 divisions.
The Church is not a testimony of one to the world.
But yet each believer is called and required to be Saints with all that in every place call on the name of the Lord Jesus.
Of Jesus Christ our Lord.
You know in Acts, back in Acts chapter 2 verse 47, it says and the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.
The Lord in this verse is the Spirit of God.
And the Spirit of God added new believers together to the church that was already in existence.
That had begun on the day of Pentecost, he added. The new believers together.
The Church.
Is the body of Christ and I believe the term body infers all believers together.
In one fellowship.
One body.
The church in this verse is the fellowship that had begun on the day of Pentecost.
And when new believers and when people were newly saved, the spirit of God did not tell them to go to the Church of their choice.
He did not tell them to go to A to start their own church.
He did not tell them to go to a Bible believing church, they were added.
To the body of Christ, to the one fellowship that had begun on the day of Pentecost. And God had one fellowship for all believers. And when someone was saved, the spirit of God had added them to the one fellowship. And so we are told.
To keep this unity of the spirit.
Back in First Corinthians 11.
In verse 19 we mentioned earlier a man in Malawi.
Who was in heretic?
Still is.
One Corinthians 11, verse 19.
For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest.
Among you.
Heresy is when a person or persons, they form a party of believers against the assembly.
And they may promote an issue.
Or a doctrine, or they may promote themselves.
And they defend themselves and they try to get others to accept their position.
Or their teaching.
And they try to garner support for their agenda.
The Spirit of God does not ask us to manufacture unity.
We either keep the unity of the spirit.
Or we don't?
And the unity of the Spirit wants us all to be gathered together in that one fellowship.
You may find two groups of believers who say they are gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But they are not impractical fellowship together with each other and you listen to both of their presentations and they both sound right. And So what are you supposed to do?
00:50:07
When the people of Berea when they heard the teachings of Paul and Silas.
They hadn't heard the word of God quite like that before, and so they weren't quite sure what they should do, and so they went to the scriptures to make sure that what they heard agreed in accordance with the word of God. Let's look at that in Acts chapter 17.
Acts chapter 17 and down in verse 11.
These were more noble than those in Thessalonica.
In that they received the word with all readiness of mind and searched the scriptures daily.
Whether those things were so.
We need to be careful that we don't look at the people involved.
Because our hearts might be attracted to one person because he's more personable and more likable than that other guy.
But we need to be careful that we don't follow persons.
We need to prayerfully look at scripture.
And find out what is the Spirit of God telling you. The Spirit of God gathers us according to the word of God.
And in the unity of the spirit, let's sing hymn #327.
And I'll read verse 5.
And soon shall come that glorious day when seated on thy throne.
Thou shalt to Wandering World's display that we with thee are one.
So could someone start this please 327?
For our sake.
Our lives from.
God.
Bring our Son blessed and blessed.
I like it in this this hymn that in the first verse it says Lord Jesus we are one.
We are there is one body, there's truth. We are one and the body is one with Christ. But at the end of the the human verse 5 thou shalt to wandering world's display that we with the R1. At that time time when the Lord Jesus comes back the world will see that all the believers are together. They are one with Christ.
Are we have perhaps not done a very good job of being that witness of one to the world?
But in that day, the world will know, and they will see that we are one.
With Christ, let's pray our God and Father, we give thanks. For the Lord Jesus, we give thanks for the Spirit of God, we give thanks that we've been brought into the fellowship of the body of Christ. And we just ask that we would be able to live and and function circumspectly and and to and to.
Be at peace with one, with another. We just ask for help and justice. Trust that some of these thoughts have been helpful for each one of us. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
Session #3
Learning the Word of God
Address—Tim Ruga
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Good afternoon, everyone. Good evening, I should say, and welcome to the meeting.
I'd like to start by singing #268.
268.
Salvation.
We need thy shadow. We are by the cloud of high prospecting.
Thy grace.
Sorrow, thy grace.
Our and the Lord.
Desert straight.
Or light for our night. I shouldn't be.
Ordered and greater our way.
Smoke out from danger.
Second to last line of verse one. This is our strength, Thy grace, our rule, Thy word. The second verse, Lord, by thy word and spirit lead. We shall not in the desert stray. And this is my topic tonight to speak on the word of God. So let's pray. Our God and our Father, we thank Thee for this time that we can be together. We thank thee for the liberty.
We thank thee for the ability as well.
That so many could be here and that we could not just enjoy fellowship with one another, but that we can come to hear.
What thou would say to us? So we pray that Thou would open each one of our hearts and our minds to speak her as well, that we would hear Thy voice this evening. We commit this time to Thee and give Thee our thanks in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
So the Word of God is for all of us. I'm conscious as I begin this meeting that there are two and only two kinds of people in this room, those who are lost and those who are saved.
And if you're lost, meaning of course, that you don't yet know the Lord Jesus as your Savior, then the Word of God is for you too. And I'd like to just start by looking at a verse, if we can go to first Peter chapter one.
And justice. Look at a verse there.
First Peter one verse 23, it says being born again, not of corruptible sea, but of incorruptible by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. And so it is this word of God that we're going to speak about tonight that has the power, the ability by the Spirit of God to give you life.
And your whole life can be changed. You can come.
To know your sins forgiven before God, and you can have a life that will last forever. Because this word is God's word. And God is faithful and he tells us the truth and he tells us about our need, that we're sinners, lost and guilty. And yet this same word tells us that God sent his Son into this world to be the Savior of sinners. And so.
There's just one word out of all this word that can give you life.
And there's another and another. There's many of them, but one in particular that we know so well. John 316 For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life. That is enough to give you life forever. The Word goes on here, verse 24 for all flesh.
00:05:09
He says grass and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth the flower.
Falleth away.
That's our lives.
But the word of the Lord endureth forever, and this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you. And so we start there. And if there's anyone yet who doesn't know the Lord Jesus as your Savior, I just urge you to stop right now and to make that choice to believe on him. But for the remainder of this meeting, my intention is to go on and speak to believers. And I want to take up the word of God first in terms of.
Its importance?
And then I want to take up two thoughts that the Lord Jesus expressed.
Both expressed as a warning. Take heed how you hear.
Take heed what you hear. And then at the end of this meeting, I'd like to go on and just give a few tips for studying.
The Word, I've written them down here in a paper and I'll just go through this, some of my experience and I'll try to share that with you to hopefully be a bit helpful. So you can think of this also as a bit of a working session, not just an exhortation. So first of all, as to the importance of the Word of God, if we just go down, I want to look at a verse in Psalm 138.
And see something that God.
Says about it.
Psalm 138 and verse 2. Near the end of the verse it says Thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name.
Rather striking verse. The name of God speaks of all that God is, and it says that He's put His word above that. He's magnified it above that. Why? Because without having that sure word from God as to who He is, and the unchangeable word from God as to who He is and what He is.
We would never know him, we would never have any relationship with him. And so He's put His word in that place and He's given it to us so that we might know him. And this is so important that when he sent his Son into the world, his son came in here. It's the word of God, the perfect expression of all that God was. And he went around and he perfectly did.
What was the will of God his Father? And every word he spoke was that will of God.
They came to him one day and they said, who are you? He said, I am absolutely that which I say unto you. Every word that he spoke was a perfect expression of what he was and his person. There was nothing that was different. So it's very important when he come to the Word of God that we understand that it expresses God himself and it expresses.
What God's mind is and his will for everyone of us, it's important. It's vitally important, and we'll talk more about that. But you know, when the Lord Jesus began his ministry, he quoted a verse from Deuteronomy chapter eight, said in Matthew chapter four, he spoke to this devil at the temptation. He said man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word.
That proceeds from the mouth of God.
Or to put that in the positive for you and me right now, man shall live.
By every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
Have you ever thought about that for yourself?
I have, and I fall far short of it. The Lord didn't, and He's our example. He's our life.
And that's given to us to do as well, to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And what is that? It's what we have right here in the written Word of God. This is given to us to live by, not just to be saved by, but this book is for you and me as believers to live our whole lives by.
And so it's vitally important, you know, it's taken up in terms of the negative in the lives of believers. And I just want to refer to this briefly if you were to go to.
First Corinthians chapter 3, in the beginning of that chapter, and look, you would see words written to Gentiles and they had grown, they had gifts. There was a lot that they were doing, but they were babies.
00:10:05
And it said that there was a time when they should have been ready for strong meat from this word of God, but they weren't. They were only able to take milk like a baby. If you go to the end of Hebrews chapter 5, do you find a similar portion written to Jews? It was another thing that caused the difficulty, but the result was the same. They had gone on.
And they hadn't gotten to that place where they were able to take in the Word of God and know it.
And really be strong in it and have it like strong meat. They were still babies. And that's the negative side. God presents that as well, and he exhorts us by it not to get that way. And this is my burden here tonight because I've been at the camp for a few days now and it's very obvious there's a lot of young people here.
You're at the beginning of your Christian journey. You haven't yet made the mistake of ignoring the Word of God so much that you're going to get into this spot, but you might, and I don't want you to. You don't have to make that mistake. You don't have to go down that road. Now. I just want to say one more thing on a little on the negative side, but to encourage.
While you have that time not to go down that road, and if it's anyone yet older, you don't have to keep going down that road, any of us we can take up with the word of God.
Right now where we are and we can find blessing from it. Let's turn over to Luke chapter 16.
Luke 16 and we'll start at verse one, the chapter the passage here is speaking about.
A steward. And the steward is one who works for someone else, and he's responsible to take care of the goods of his master and to safeguard those goods and increase them as he has the ability to do it. And according to what we're talking about in our subject tonight, we are stewards. We have a master. Our master is the Lord, and He's given to us His word. He's given His word to us.
As something that we are to hold for Him, not just hold it, but to increase in it so that we might use it for Him, not only in our own lives, but also as He directs, to be able to be a help and a blessing to others. So every one of us who is a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, who owns that He is Lord, we are stewards.
It says in verse one. And he said also unto his disciples.
There was a certain rich man which had a steward, and the same was accused unto him, that he had wasted his goods. And he called him and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? Give an account of thy stewardship, for thou mayest be no longer steward. Then the steward said within himself.
What shall I do? For my Lord taketh away from me?
The stewardship, I cannot dig, to beg. I am ashamed. Now this story goes on, but I don't want to continue. I want to take up just as part of this story to where this man fails in this responsibility.
And I want to apply to the subject so that we don't fail in the same way. And I submit to you that the reason why this man failed was because of what he says in the last verse that we read. He says I cannot dig and to beg. I'm ashamed. Perhaps if he had learned to dig, and perhaps if he hadn't been ashamed to beg earlier, he could have held onto his master's goods or safeguarded them or kept them and increased them.
In a way that would have been suitable to.
His relationship to his master. But he didn't do that.
In our application, what does this mean when it comes to the Word of God? There's two ways that we can take it in and increase by it. I want us to dig and we want to talk about that tonight, to get into the Word of God and to dig it out for ourselves. But you may say I'm not so good at digging. OK, that's OK. Then beg. Others have dug.
Go ahead and beg. There's nothing wrong with that. Better yet, dig and beg. They'll be exhorting that right to the end, to the meeting tonight. Get all you can, it doesn't matter how, for those who have dugout the Word of God, these precious truths from God's Book, and they presented them to us in such a wonderful way. Go ahead, get it, Get all you can, and then go on yourself and dig all you can on your own and buy those two things.
00:15:15
Watch and see if you can't be a good steward for the Lord and that what she's committed to you.
Now I want to go on to the next part of the topic.
I said the Lord presented to exhortations. The first one is found a little earlier in chapter 8 of this book.
We'll look at it there.
Take here heed how he hear Luke 8.
And that is the 18th verse. But if you were to go back to the beginning of the chapter, you see that the Lord is talking about.
A parable here of a sower that went out and sowed.
I think we all know that parable. And he sowed seeds, right At first those seeds were by the wayside. Then there was on the rock and it was some among thorns and there were some that fell on good ground and the Lord applied that. But he gets down to the 18th 1St and he's talking then to all of us generally, he says.
Take the heed, therefore how you hear, For whosoever hath, to him shall be given.
And whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have.
How do we hear the word of God?
Are we indifferent about it? You know, I've known so many of mine. Acquaintance and.
Sadly, many of us have not spent a lot of time and been rather careless and indifferent with the Word of God.
Yet when it comes to other things, whatever it may be that interests us, we can go on endlessly about it. Take a student who wants to take up a field of study.
They're very diligent with how they do that. They spend the time, they do what is taken so that they can have suitable expertise in their field, so they can go out and do that which they're studying. But when it comes to the Word of God, somehow we tend to be a little bit more careless about it. And why should that be for Christians? This is our book, this is God's book.
Belongs to us, he's committed it to us. And this is not valuable just for right now here in time, but this book.
Has its application and its value forever. Why should we take it any less than any field of study, or any other thing that interests you and me? And so he says here. He says, For whosoever hath to him shall be given. That means you go out and you take it, and you make it your own. The Lord is going to give you more.
But he says, Whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that.
Which he seemeth to have. I don't know if you have heard brethren say that we don't stand still in the things of God.
Probably you've heard that statement. It's a true statement. It comes from this verse. Other verses implied as well.
But you don't remain stale either. You're going on and increasing in the things of God.
Or those things which you have had and gotten in the past. If you're careless and different now, you're losing it.
But you're not standing still, and this first shows that very plainly.
Now, it's not all doom and gloom on that, You know, if we go on careless in our lives, and I can tell you very definitely, I have in seasons of my life that we have a father who loves us too much just to allow us to go, to continue on that way. And so I just want to show you one other thing about that. Let's go to Psalm 119.
You want to know things about the word.
There's no better chapter in the Word to come to than this Psalm. Every verse, I think, except for two, speaks about the Word.
But we'll just look at Psalm 119 and verse.
67.
He says, before I was afflicted I went astray, but now have I kept thy word.
This is what our loving Father does, and I can tell you it's true. In my life, I've talked to quite a few others.
And you get careless, and you're a true child of God. The Father will discipline.
And bring us around so that we not only have a love and concern for His word, but also to keep it in some measure, hopefully a very full measure.
So I just want to present that and say we need to everyone of us hold the word of God of all importance and be very serious about taking it up and studying it. Now take heed how you hear. There are those who say, well, I'm not really responsible for the word of God because I look around and I see so many different views and opinions and.
00:20:24
You know, how can we know for sure?
Therefore, I'm not responsible. It's kind of like an agnostic, you know? But that's the wrong thought entirely. And there's many ways to show that. But one that comes to mind is Hebrews chapter one, the 1St 2 verses. If you take all the words of those verses and boil down to, you'll find this thought there. God hath spoken unto us.
Now he didn't speak unto us with a thought that we wouldn't have any idea what he's saying.
God spoke to us and He intends for us to know what He's saying. And so He's given us the ability to understand. If you're a child of God, then you have the ability to understand the Word of God. Let's just look at another verse right here in Psalm 119.
Go back to verse 18.
Says, Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.
What is this verse? It's a prayer, isn't it?
And that's the number one thing we can do. We can go to the Lord and say, open my eyes. I'm not sure I understand this. Maybe there are different opinions about a verse or a passage. Maybe it's obscure to me right now. Well, we take up the Word of God, not in our intellects, but we take it up in prayer. And this first shows an excellent prayer with which to take up the word of God.
Now it's not just prayer, but God has given to us His Spirit.
We're not going to take the time to turn there, but if we went to John chapter 141516, we would see that the Spirit of God.
Was to be given and now has been given so that we would know and the word of God. He shall teach you all things the Lord says in John 14. I believe his verse 26.
First, John tells us the same thing, that we've got an unction from the Holy One, and he teaches us all things. And so the Spirit of God indwells every believer to teach us the mind of God from His word, and we have no excuse not to know it now.
Just say.
To about we can get in a way that we're not hearing God.
And we talked about that a little bit earlier in Matthew chapter 6. If you remember, as some of you weren't even here, but Matthew 6 and verse 22, it says the light of the body is the eye.
And it says there if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if I be evil, thy body shall be full of darkness. And if the light that is in thee be darkness, and how great is that darkness? What is that speaking about? Next verse goes on to help a little bit. It says no man can serve 2 masters.
Means we've got a master. Our master is Christ, and a single eye is an eye only for Christ, and evil eye is an eye for Christ and someone else. 2 masters, possibly not for Christ at all, but that's probably not true of anyone is a true believer. You have an eye for Christ, but an evil eye that brings in darkness is what I have done in my own life many times.
Want to live for Christ and live for myself at the same time, and you're not going to make progress in the word of God if that's what you do.
I can tell you from painful experience, we need to have a single eye for the Lord Jesus Christ if we're going to understand what God says by His Word. And there's another point in that too. If you want to know what the word of God is saying, then you must understand that it's speaking about that one who is our object, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus said in John chapter 8, he says.
Search the scriptures and them you think you have eternal life. They are they which speak of me.
The Scriptures speak of Christ.
Brother mentioned early already this week.
In the end of Luke how he spoke showed them that in all the scriptures.
How they spoke of himself.
And so the Word of God is about one man, it's about Christ, and we take it up. We need to understand that. Now I just want to go on and look at one more thing.
00:25:03
In Psalm 119 on my Bible over on the same page, verse 59, because take heed how you hear number one, we need to apply the word to ourselves.
We need to have a single eye, yes, but when God chooses something, we need to apply it to ourselves in our own walk in verse 59.
He says, I thought on my ways, and I turned my feet unto thy testimonies.
It had an effect on him first. This is very similar, maybe in thought to John 717, isn't it?
The Lord says.
That if any man.
Will do his will or practice his well, He shall know of the doctrine. And so we need to apply the word of God to our own walk. You can't just go read the Bible and say, yeah, that's what it says and get more and more knowledge and then go do whatever you want and expect that you're going to grow. It's not going to happen. We need to take it and apply it to ourselves first. Now I just see one more verse on that and go to first Timothy.
I'm going to.
First Timothy, chapter 4.
And verse.
16.
Take heed unto thyself. It's the same thing we just looked at. Take heed how you hear.
But he goes on, he says, and unto the doctrine.
Now that's something else.
This leads me to the next part of what I want to speak about here.
Take heed what you hear.
That's what the Lord said in Mark chapter 4, verse 24. Take heed what you hear. Doctrine is a big word. It simply means teaching. But what it means is that we don't take up this word.
In a superficial way.
And I, I don't mean to imply by that, that if it's not by getting into the teaching that it's only superficial. You know, if you go and you read the word of God, just read it through, it will cleanse you. And that's a good thing. But the teaching means that we need to get deeper into it and we need to learn what it means. And so he says here, take heed unto thyself and unto the doctrine.
Continue in them, for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself and them that here thee.
So again, it has effect on ourselves, our Christian lives, but also on all those around us.
Now I just want to look at this.
As take heed what you hear. What is it that we're taking in about the word of God and the first thing is of course it must be always the word of God itself has to be when we study the word of God, don't go study about it first study the word 1St and put it first in our lives and I don't have an exact verse on this, but just as to the.
Importance of it, It impressed me very much what Job says. Well, look at that and Job in chapter 23.
Job 23.
And verse 12, the middle of the verse, he says I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food. Or another translation says I have laid up the words of his mouth more than the purpose of my own heart. Either way, it's the same thought that the word that proceeds from the mouth of God was more important to Job than anything else.
Even the purpose of his own heart. And so we need to take the Word of God and we need to make it first.
And we need to read it first. We need to study it first. If you want to know the doctrine, you go to the Word of God first, and then you take up with other things. Now take heed what you hear.
On the negative side, human wisdom has no place in taking up the Word of God.
And let's just go and look and see where this is touched on in First Corinthians 2.
The Apostle Paul is telling how the Word of God came through him by inspiration in this passage, but then we get how it was passed on to us as well here.
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Beyond inspiration to illumination, that illumination is what brings light into us as we hear the Word of God. And so he says in verse 12. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
That's the apostle receiving the word of God by the Spirit of God and inspiration. He says which things we speak not.
In the words which man's wisdom teacheth, got that? No part of man's wisdom is involved in the Word of God, and we must not bring it there either.
But which the Holy Ghost Spirit teacheth. Comparing spiritual things with spiritual or communicating spiritual things by spiritual means is another way that that could be said. In other words, the Word of God comes to us in the power of the Spirit of God. It doesn't come by human methods of learning, human intellect, human logic, all these ways of explaining things on the human level.
Not the way the Spirit of God works. And we don't want to take up the Word of God that way, or we'll get entirely the wrong idea because God didn't speak that way. Now, another thing I want to say, I'm going to lump a whole bunch of things into one. There's a lot of instruction about the Word of God that isn't good. Take heed what you hear.
And I'm not going to get into detail on that, but I'll pick one thing.
That has been a trouble to the Church all through the centuries and that is that many have taken up with the Church Fathers.
And said a thought like this, that they were closer to the apostles than we are. And so if we really want to know what the apostles meant, then we should go and read the Church Fathers and hear what they said and understand what they understood. Then we'll have the right idea of it.
And I hope you understand that's a really bad idea. But there's a lot of Christians who don't understand that, and they take up with the Church Fathers in exactly that way. What's wrong with that?
It's not the Church fathers that are the interpreters of scripture to us, is it? It's the Holy Spirit of God.
Holy Spirit of God is the one who is given to interpret the living Word of God to you and I. And God uses also gifts.
That He puts among us to be helps as well. The Word of God clearly presents that. But it wasn't the Church fathers. I'll give you one passage. It might be a help to you as it was to me. Let's go to John 21.
John 21.
And this is the passage where the Lord is speaking to Peter, and he had told him to follow him, verse 20.
Then Peter turning about, see, see if the disciple whom Jesus loved following that would be John the writer of this Gospel, right? Which also leaned on his breast, his supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth thee?
Peter, seeing him, saith to Jesus, Lord, And what shall this man do?
Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come. What is that to thee? Follow thou me. That's what the Lord said. How do we know?
Because it's here in the Bible by the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God told us what the Lord said.
But the Spirit of God goes on and says something else here.
Then went this thing abroad among the brethren, that the disciples should not die.
Yet Jesus said not unto him He shall not die, But if I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?
Isn't that interesting?
These were closer than the early Church Fathers.
These were the apostles themselves. They heard the words of the Lord directly and what happened? They got it wrong.
They themselves, the apostles themselves, weren't suitable authorities to interpret the Word of God.
Except insofar as they wrote under the inspiration of the Spirit of God that they could give us the Word of God. It's the only way.
We always have to go back to the exact word of God. We can't look at it through the filter.
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Of someone else we could get maybe some help from one whom the Lord is raised up to be a teacher.
Or a prophet. But to go based on those who were there and their experiences and all those things. And there are many, many books written on that as to what the early church fathers said and taught and believed, where the principles, the teachings, the actions of the early church and whole denominations of Christians act on what they said the early Christians did.
And therefore, that must be what this is speaking about. No, we go back to the source and we allow the Holy Spirit of God to take the Word of God and make it real to each one of us and let us know exactly what He meant by it. Now, I just want to look at those other sources, trusted sources, if you will, in Second Timothy.
Chapter 3.
Second Timothy.
Chapter 3 and verse.
14.
But.
Continue thou.
In the things which always learned, have been assured of knowing of whom thou hast learned them.
And so on there. And so Timothy had learned things and he had gotten them from the apostle Paul. It was a trusted source. There were other sources of information already at that time. Number one, Timothy had the word of God.
And that's in the next verses.
But there was also teaching that had come about the word of God and there was that which was trusted and there was that which wasn't. And we could spend a lot of time going into that and even arguing about what those things are. And I'm not going to do it. I'm going to just suggest if you're not sure what is good help, good ministry on the Word of God, go to some of the older brothers and sisters in your assembly and feel free to talk to me later on or any of the other brothers sisters here.
As to what might be trusted sources, The word of God.
And I'll tell you without any reservation at all from myself, I am very happy with the material Bible Truth Publishers puts out. I can't prove that to you.
But I'm very happy with that. To me is a trusted source. There is a lot of instruction.
Today especially, because that's what we have in the verse just before evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. No doubt there's good things also, but there's more and more of the bad the Word of God said there would be, and we need to be careful. And so there's instruction that caused it to err, and there's a lot of it, and we need to be very careful.
What we hear, take in first the Word of God.
Take it in by the Spirit of God. Leave out the human wisdom. Be very careful.
With those sources that are bad now that's what I had is through principles I wanted to go through.
A list of these study tips that I just.
Listed out on this piece of paper here, and I hope this could be a help if you're just starting out to take up the word of God seriously as a study, that can be a little bit difficult, OK for some of you.
Young men and young women, you maybe have read your Bible a little bit, but at some point you get to the place where you want to know a little bit more and you want to take off the study of the Word of God just a little bit more seriously and hopefully after that a little bit more yet. But it's not overly clear sometimes as to how you should even start. And so I'll just give you a couple of thoughts I have and I hope it might be some help to you.
And first of all, if we can go to First Timothy chapter 4.
I should have just stayed where I was there.
First Timothy 4.
And verse 13.
It says till I come give attendance to reading.
Now this could be the readings as in a reading meeting, but for each one of us, it's reading. And I would suggest number one, maybe what you're already doing, if you're reading through the Bible, that's great. Number one, do that. Read through the Bible and then read through it again. Then read through it again and do it.
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If you have a family, read through the Bible with your family.
Personally read through the Bible. It's very important you get the word of God in order. You see how it was that God gave his word from start to finish. It makes you see you don't become unbalanced and your understanding of the word by only focusing always on one part. We need all of it and so he says give attendance to reading now I would just say.
As another point, get outlines.
If you hear a good outline or if you hear somebody speaking on something and they have an outline.
Get those outlines and this really is in if you just turn over a page for second Timothy chapter one, verse 13, it says hold fast the form. It really should be the outline. If you look in the J&D translation of sound words which I was heard of me in faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus. Those outlines really help. You can build on them like building a house and making A-frame 1St and then you can put everything else on there.
Don't do it that way. It becomes very, very hard to make progress. So get those outlines wherever you can find them, commit them to memory, and then as you're reading through the Word of God, you'll find that it's helpful. It helps you to build, to organize thoughts, and to keep things connected properly.
Another if we just go back to our verse, First Timothy 4 and verse 13 till I come give a tennis to reading, to exhortation. Now this last one to doctrine. We already talked about that doctrine. What is it?
Teaching right?
And the teaching of the Word of God, this is more in depth. And so we want to take the word of God. We want to read through, yes.
But we also want to take the time to study it.
Take a passage and study it. What does that passage mean? Go and do an in-depth study of it so you really get a sense of it yourself.
It'll be a tremendous help to you.
You want to get the meaning.
I have been in places.
I hope I'm not going to hurt anybody by this, but where there have been readings and what has been said at those readings has been a series of nice thoughts.
But the meaning of the passage hasn't come out, and that's a shame, because that's not what God intends. Nice thoughts are good.
If it's a scriptural thought, that's great, and we should always have those where somebody has it in their heart to give it in a meeting. We all enjoy that and that's helpful. But the doctrine, the teaching of the passage is vital. We need to get that. And if it gets to that point in an assembly where we don't have the teaching down through the passage, there's a reason for that. And I'm going to suggest one reason.
It's because we haven't taken the time. I'm talking to the brothers, particularly now because you're the ones who would speak in a meeting like that.
We haven't taken the time in our own readings to say what does this passage mean?
And that means to go and look at the context. What does it mean in the context of the words around it in the verse? What about the paragraph? What is that paragraph talking about? What about the chapter or the section or the book? What's the subject? What's the theme? How does this fit in?
And we need to take the time to figure that out. And if we don't, everything's going to be disjointed.
And I'm going to tell you something too. You who are young get used to doing that. The younger you get used to doing that.
The easier obey you start when you're older. It's always harder when you're young and you're studying.
Make it a habit to say, What does this mean? I just read these words. I got the words, I can read them, but what did it actually mean? What is God trying to say to me in these words? What is he trying to say about Christ? How does this affect my walk?
You need to get into all of that.
Well.
It says take heed to thyself. Oh, that's the next verse, down to the doctrine again. That's the 16th verse, the doctrine. We already read that we need to be very careful with that doctrine to take up with the meaning of it, with what God is saying so that we will know.
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Umm, the next thing I have on my list here.
Is topical study. There's a lot of the word of God that we don't find out laid out right in a chapter.
Like the idea of sanctification. What is that? What are the kinds of sanctity sanctification?
And what does that mean? Where is it found in the Word of God? How is it presented? And that can be a little bit hard. And I'm going to tell you when you're going through and doing an in-depth study, just going through a chapter.
And.
You're trying to understand what that chapter is saying. You come to some of these concepts and they're hard.
Maybe you need to take a little bit of time and go back and look and see what does this word mean, what does this thought mean, this whole subject and go and do a topical study on it. In order to do that you probably want to get maybe some help from a trusted source. I would suggest a very good help is your cross references in your Bible.
Or if you have a Bible program, those cross references tend to be even better.
Or concordance, Get Strong's Concordance and look up the Word, look up the forms of the Word and see what the Word of God is saying about that word in different places. And usually you can get a lot of light on the subject from simply doing that. And so it's a help. And by going through and doing this in your personal reading and learning more and more about these different things, you'll come to understand what the passage is teaching about.
I spoke about the personal reading.
Get a little older. The Lord gives you a wife. You have a family with a wife with a husband. You have children. Before long. Now you're both teaching them. What are you teaching them? Make it a habit. What does the passage mean? Teach the meaning to your children so that they're used to hearing the meaning presented, not just the words. The words are good. If that's all you feel able for, then go ahead and read the words.
Read the Word of God, never skip that, but make it a habit to try to understand it yourself and then to try to pass on that understanding to your children.
And then, to complete my thought from earlier, they will come that day when the Lord may use you, brothers.
In the assembly, to teach in the assembly, and you'll be able to pass on the meaning in the assembly as well. If there's a failure there, it's probably because we have failed to make that a habit in our own personal readings before the Lord to know what it is that He is saying to us in the passage.
It's very important that we do it, every single one of us. Sisters too.
Memorize the Word of God. Psalm 119, verse 11. Thy word have I hid in my heart.
That I might not sin against thee. That's one reason to do it, and it's a very good reason, isn't it? You get the Word of God in your heart, and the Spirit of God is a way of bringing it out just when He needs to. And it's not just to keep us from sin, but it's also for meditation. It's for those times when we're there maybe just sitting and not having anything else going on In the Spirit of God, bring some portion of the Word to us and we can sit there. We can think.
About it tremendously helpful to be able to memorize the word of God and do that when you're young.
Listen to me you younger ones, memorize all you can. You think the memory verse is a trouble?
I did when I was your age. I thought I didn't like it. OK, do it.
When you get my age, it isn't easy. OK, your age, it's pretty easy to memorize a verse and it'll stick with you too. And you get older, it's harder. You can still do it. I can still memorize verses and I need to, and I will keep trying to.
Let's start where you are. Oh, it's such a help. It'll be such a blessing to you as well, if it's such a great head start. You're young, you're, you know, there's a lot of people that say later and they don't have what you have.
They didn't get these things presented to them when they were so young as you guys are.
You can have a tremendous head start in the things of God if you don't let these years go by and not use them in this way.
Well, the meditation is another thing, and if you just turn to in Psalm 119 again.
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In this time, verse 130.
Says the entrance of I Word.
Of thy words giveth light.
The entrance of the Word of God always gives light, but sometimes it seems hard. You read it and you don't know what it says. And so we do the first thing that we talked about, right? We pray, we ask the Lord to show us. We still don't know. Well, you can just lay it aside and you can wait, but you can meditate as well and think about it, maybe leave it and come back to it, think about it again.
Maybe it's a particular hard thing for you and you really want to know, memorize it so we can come back to you anytime.
And then you'll find that there's a time where the word enters and suddenly the light comes in. Oh, it's wonderful. It's a great thing. So meditation is something that perhaps we don't do very much anymore, but we need to simply means to think about the Word of God, Take it into our minds, Mull it over. What is this saying? Think about it in different ways. Ask the Lord, talk to the Lord about it.
And let that light.
Break in and you'll receive a blessing every time from it. Well, another thing I have here on this list, this was one that was important to me. I wrote it down as the hump of understanding or the Hell or the mountain of understanding. OK, and.
Maybe a lot of you are going to relate to this.
You come to the word of God, you've heard a lot of it already now in your life and you think, understand this book, It's hard.
You're talking about going and studying it and learning what this verse, it looks like a mountain to me. I don't know how I can climb that mountain. That's awfully difficult if that's what any of you are thinking. I know it's what I thought, it's what my wife thought, and it's what a lot of people I've talked to have thought.
But here's what that road looks like. I just want to tell you so you know, because we went down it.
You take the time, you start climbing that hill and it's not such a bad hill.
As you go on that hill, you'll find much to enjoy there and there'll be things that you don't understand that first. There's going to be a lot that you don't understand. You're going to take the time and go and maybe figure out a few of those things. At first, it just seems like it's such a you're studying everything and getting almost nowhere.
After a while you notice it's changed a little bit. Now it's making a little bit more sense.
It's surprising sometimes how quickly that comes.
Sometimes maybe it takes a little longer before you get to the next stage. After a while, you realize, you know what? This is making a lot of sense. And this passage, I can see now how it fits together with this passage and now this thought sanctification that really makes sense because of what I read over here and everything's tying together. And some of those topical studies that you did are really fitting well with some of the studies that you did on the chapters in the passages.
And next thing you know, you're just enjoying it. You say, wow, there's nothing like this.
It's tremendous.
Take the time. If that looks like a hill in front of you, climb it. It's not a hard hill. It's not nearly so hard as it's it looks. Satan makes it look unclimbable. It's not.
It's a gentle hill and you will find that you'll get over it before long, and you're going to get into great delight in the Word of God, so keep at it.
Next thing I have is just a suggestion where to start. If you want to do an in depth study I would suggest either the book of John or the book of Romans and definitely both of them and after that go on to others afterwards but get a good understanding of those books.
And you'll find that many, many things tie into the.
Doctrine that it lay it out in those two books. Just a suggestion.
Where to start?
Another suggestion.
Go to the assembly readings.
Go to all of them. Don't miss them. Don't think I got two out of three. That's good. They did pretty good this month. Every other one fairly OK here. No, you're missing important information. The assembly readings, we take up the word of God in order, and when you miss one, you're missing some of the teaching that is given in order. Don't miss it. You don't miss classes in school.
00:55:23
Don't miss the assembly readings. We're taking up the Word of God together in the presence of the Lord, with the Spirit of God is leading we trust.
And we want to hear what he has to say to us collectively. We don't want to miss it.
Don't miss it. Make it a habit of your life to get to those reading meetings.
For other reasons, it should be on the other meetings as well. But for the study of the Word of God, I would say take advantage of everything. If your assembly has a Bible study, don't miss those either. What a tremendous opportunity somebody else is digging. Don't be afraid to beg.
And finally on my list here.
I just shared with you.
Some of the things that came to my mind, but as I look around this room right now.
I see a lot of older brothers and sisters, and these older brothers and sisters have been studying the Word of God for many years and they have a wealth of information that they can help you with.
And so do your parents, more than likely, for most of you here anyway, they love you. They're going to help you. They want you to do well in the things of God, and they'll be glad to share with you some things that have been a help to them. So go ask them, and ask the older brothers and sisters in your assembly, the ones who are here. We love you too. We want to see you do well in the things of God. We want you to continue in God. We don't. You in the word of God.
Say we don't want you to waste these years that you have right now as some of us have wasted them. We want you to use them for the Lord and to be strong in His word. And you know there's One who loves you more than all of us. And I just want to leave you with this thought.
I'll go to James chapter one.
Because that one gives an absolute promise here.
James One.
And verse five, if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally, liberally that means freely and upright. If not, that means he won't.
Reproach you for doing it.
And it shall be given him.
I might be wrong, but I think that's the only unqualified promise in prayer in the Bible.
Of course, we know that anyone who comes to him, he won't cast out, and so I guess that's another one. But for the Christian, you come and you ask the Lord for something, and if it's as well, he doesn't, and it's always for the better. But this is one thing he always gives without exception, exactly the way it's asked. You say, Lord, I need wisdom.
I need wisdom to know how what you're saying here to me through your word. And it says he'll give it.
It shall be given Him. The Lord will give it to you. He loves you more than any of us. He's got a lot more steady tips than I do. So go and ask Him. He'll share with you freely. And He wants your blessing more than we do, but we want it as well. Well, let's close with prayer. Our God and our Father, we thank you so much for Thy word.
We consider for a moment.
Where we would be if we didn't have it.
And utter darkness. And that forever.
But thou hast revealed thyself.
And grace beyond what we can understand.
Through it, we thank you so much.
For the Lord Jesus Christ, we thank Thee for what we have seen in Him and through Him and because of him. We thank Thee for sharing with us all Thy mind revealed in Thy Word, and we help that thou Wert. Hell, we ask that Thou would help us each one, whether we're very young or whether we're older, to take up Thy Word more earnestly for the time that we have left here.
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We ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Session #4
Trusting
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, it's nice to see the Suns come out and such a beautiful evening outside after a cool cloudy day.
So I just like to begin the meeting this evening by singing hymn #230.
230.
Pray and ask Lord's help.
Lord Jesus, we fain would like thee be.
In the topic that is before us this evening, we would so desire to learn from the path that you traced out so perfectly in this world, a life of complete and total dependence upon Thy Father. For every step of every day we pray for help for the hour that is before us, that there might be something for all of us.
From God's Word.
We give thanks that we have this privilege of being together as part of the family of God.
To raise our voices in unison in praise.
We look forward to that day, Lord Jesus.
When we shall do so in the Father's house.
00:05:03
We do commit this hour into thy hands in thy most worthy and precious name, Lord Jesus, Amen.
When Tim asked me to speak at the camp here.
I had been thinking a little bit of the subject of fruit.
That subject is all through the scriptures and it was quite striking to me last week.
And noticing that the very first thing that God said to man was.
In Genesis chapter one, be fruitful and multiply. It's partly on my heart because.
This is a family camp and lots of boys and girls and children as part of families here. The fruit of the womb.
And as I was considering that topic, I came to this verse.
That's on the screen here and really this is the subject that I'd like to speak on tonight.
The subject of trusting.
And in particular of a man in the scripture.
That came before me actually, through the reading of a very helpful.
Book. I would recommend it to every parent here.
To the parents of my grandchildren.
That book is, I would unreservedly say, probably the best book you will ever read when it comes to raising a family.
And in that book, very briefly, there's a mention of somebody in the Scriptures whose name means he trusted.
Or Faithful, and that man's name is Heman.
Heman wrote Psalms 88, a very striking Psalm. It's one of my personal favorites, and I'll come to that in a few minutes. But this was the subject that I had before me, the subject of trusting.
I'd like to start by let's just reading that verse. Read that verse in Jeremiah chapter 17.
You can read it up there, but there's actually a verse that.
Is not up there that I'd like to read in the same passage Jeremiah 17 and verse 5.
Thus saith the Lord, cursed be the man that trusts in man and makes flesh his arm, and whose heart departs from the Lord.
For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh.
But shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land, and not inhabited. Blessed is the man that trusts in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, that spreads out her roots by the river, and shall not see when he comes, but her leaf shall be green.
And shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease.
From yielding fruit.
You know, it's so easy in our lives to put our trust in man.
To put in our trust in man's opinions about raising families, man's opinions about career options.
Man's opinions for how we should spend our time off.
Very difficult and challenging to set aside the opinions of man.
And put our trust in the Lord.
And so I'd like to trace out a family.
The family that gave rise to he man. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly, forgive me if I'm not, but we are quite familiar with this family and there's many lessons to learn from it. And we find the a brief genealogy of this family in First Chronicles chapter six. First Chronicles chapter 6.
And I'd like to read from verse 31.
These are they whom David set over the service of song in the House of the Lord. After that the ark had rest. They ministered before the dwelling piece of the Tabernacle of the congregation was singing, until Solomon had built the House of the Lord in Jerusalem, and then they waited on their office according to their order.
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And these are they that waited with their children of the sons of the Coethites, him and a singer, the son of Joel, the son of Shemolar, should say Samuel, the son of Alcana. And we're just going to stop there. So this is the family.
There's four generations here, and really I'll bring before you today 5 generations. And you know, each one of us in our place here today are part of a genealogy of some type. I'm a father, I'm a son, I'm a grandson, I'm a great grandson. And so there's a great deal of instruction to learn in this.
Family genealogy and what?
Came about to bring forth tremendous fruit for the glory of God.
Through this man human.
I'll tell you right now and then we'll go back and we'll start at the very beginning that he man had a family of 17 children.
14 boys and three girls. A very fruitful family from a from a physical sense, but that family had the privilege.
Of starting the day and closing the day in song to God.
In Solomon's temple.
You can scarcely conceive of such blessing in a family as that.
And it all started with the faithfulness. I'm sure it goes back before this, but I would like to start with the faithfulness of a man called Elkanah.
And we know him as the husband of Hannah. And so we're going to begin with Elkanah.
And how he trusted in God at a time that I believe is not unlike the time that you live in today.
So if you go back to First Samuel chapter one, we learn a little bit about this man Elkanah.
It says in verse one Now there was a certain man of Remath am Xolfum of Mount Ephraim, and his name was Elkanah the son of.
Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zephaniah. He had two wives. The name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other Penina. And Penina had children, but Hannah had no children. And this man went up out of his city yearly to worship and to sacrifice under the Lord of hosts.
In Shiloh, and the two sons of Eli, Hofnei and Finnehas, the priests of the Lord were there.
I'm just going to go over and I'd like to read a verse.
In verse chapter 3 and verse one.
It says.
There the child Samuel ministered unto the Lord before Eli, and the word of the Lord was should say, rare. In those days there was no open vision.
And what I'd like to say now is especially addressed to fathers tonight.
The situation here was not a nice situation.
For families.
When they went up there every year to Shiloh.
Where the Ark of God was, the two sons of Eli Hofnez were there, and they were doing terrible things, disgraceful things, morally and otherwise, so much so that the people in Israel at that time despised offering to God in that place.
And the consequence of that was that the word of God, it's it's revelation to the priesthood of the day, was exceedingly rare. It was a time of real weakness.
But you know, what is so striking about this is that Elkanah goes up faithfully every single year to offer that sacrifice to the Lord in Shiloh. And if you were to go back to Deuteronomy chapter 16, and there's other passages in Deuteronomy that make this very clear, they were told very specifically the Israelites.
00:15:03
That in the place where the Lord would set his name, there they were to go each year to worship.
Elkanah undoubtedly knew that.
And he could look beyond the tremendous failure of that.
Situation and in faithfulness to God, even though there was so little fruit evident, so much weakness in the children in Israel at that time. He would go year by year and he would take his family with him and do that. You know, I believe that's trust in a very real way. He simply was obedient.
To what he knew God had told him to do. There could be no ambiguity about it at all.
And he went up year by year under those circumstances to worship God.
And I think for each of us the application is clear and this has been a help to me in time past in my life. You may be perhaps in a situation in your local assembly or maybe you hold a particular view of the believers that you meet and know so well here and elsewhere, perhaps you view.
Things and you say it's weak. There's nothing there for me. I don't see the Lord evident in the meetings.
But you know this man, Alcana.
He didn't look at all that. I am sure it affected him. He was faithful to God.
Faithful to what he knew, the Scripture said. And he went every year.
And you know, I would just like to encourage you in that.
You know we need.
Those of us who are fathers, especially strong leaders in our homes, people who will decisively.
Act for the Lord, even if things aren't that easy.
And you know, he didn't just go with Hannah. He didn't leave some of the people behind. He went.
Every year and you know it says here in.
In verse Sorry 3.
It says.
I'm sorry I'm just I'm missing here.
Sorry, verse four, it says when the time was that Elkanah offered, he gave to Penina his wife, and to all her sons and her daughters portions, but unto Hannah he gave a worthy portion, for he loved Hannah, but the Lord had shut up her womb. You know what I appreciate about that?
Alcana fed his family from the sacrifice. He offered something to his children. He offered something to his wife. And you know, it's a very good thing for me to take of that which I enjoy of the Lord and share it with my family. There's many ways to practically do that. It could be driving to to Michigan camp. It could be.
At the family Bible reading, which I trust you have made a habit in your home.
It's a very good thing for the man of the house to do that. And Elkanah here, in faithfulness to his family, he fed them, all of them, his wife and his children, and I believe that God honored him for that.
You know, another thing I like in this family is that, and we're skipping ahead here.
But if you go down to.
Verse 25 It says here they slew a Bullock, and brought the child to Eli.
And you know, what I appreciate about this is that that word they there was unity with respect to spiritual matters. I believe in that home.
And so both Hannah, Elena and Elkanah, when they went back up to the temple after that, she had given birth to that boy, Samuel.
Together they slew the Bullock and brought the child to Eli. And you know, I would just encourage those of us again who are married here this evening, that that unity in the things of God is a very important thing.
And we should strive for that as best as we possibly can. We are one flesh after all.
And in the things of God and in spiritual matters in our home, it's important that there be a they.
Now I just like to turn and look a little bit at Hannah, and we know Hannah's story really, really well.
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But you know, one of the things that we're told here is.
That the Lord had shut Hannah's womb so verse six it says her adversary also provoked her sore for to make her fret because the Lord had shut up her womb. You know, very often difficulties come into our life, perhaps to a mother.
Perhaps to a father.
And it's a very difficult thing to go through and.
God has allowed it for a particular reason.
But isn't it so wonderful to see here that through the exercise of soul that Hannah goes through tremendous blessing flows? And I just like to encourage us to notice this, that here it says the Lord shut her womb. The Lord brings a circumstance into our life that is difficult. It's a very good thing to take it as from the Lord and to be encouraged.
In knowing that he can bring great blessing out of it.
You know, another thing that we know so well about dear Hannah here is that she was characterized.
By prayer. By prayer, it says in verse 10 she was in bitterness of soul.
And prayed unto the Lord, and wept sore. And she vowed a vow, and said, O Lord of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the infliction of thine handmaid, and Remember Me, and not forget thine handmaid, but will give unto thine handmaid a man child, then I will give him under the Lord all the days of his life, and there shall no razor come upon his head. Is there prayer in the home?
You know, I'm going to share a little thing exercise. I went through this.
Last couple weeks I was digging through some books at home and came across some pamphlets that had been given to me by.
Actually, my grandfather Donald rule and.
My aunt, I hope she won't mind me saying this. Who's here tonight? She had actually sent this box of pamphlets.
And I took possession of it about a month or so ago, and in that I found a little pamphlet on prayer by Chapter Macintosh.
And I read through that and was deeply exercised about a number of things in that pamphlet, but one of them was prayer.
And in particular the very simple but.
Real fact that we all know about, which is to kneel down in prayer, I believe very often. And Hannah here, we're not told she kneeled, but I'm just sharing. This is something that was an exercise to me.
We often fall into a habit of praying when we drive, which is a good thing to do, and praying as we lie in bed, good thing to do.
And praying when we walk or whatever, but we perhaps neglect to get into the habit of getting down upon our knees in that position before the Lord, which is an expression of.
Understanding who he is and who I am, I'm down at his feet.
In humility before the great God, expressing my dependence before him. That's why I kneel.
And you know, that pamphlet was used for blessing in my life as I realized that I had neglected really to kneel as often as I should. And it's been a help to me. And I just share that Hannah prayed and there was great blessing, as we well know from this story in Hannah's life, you know, chapter 2. And we're just picking at little things as we go through. Here is the prayer of.
And song of praise.
That Hannah wrote and I'd like to suggest that here is the seed of the fruit tree of Hemans family, Hannah.
In response.
And Thanksgiving to God.
For what he did for her.
It was the seed that planted the tree of praise that comes out.
A human's children, you know, if you go through and you read this.
Song. We often read it on Lord's Day morning. How often do we read the verses? Verse six The Lord kills and makes alive. He brings down to the grave and brings up. The Lord makes poor and makes rich. He brings low and lifts up. He raises up the poor out of the dust and lifts up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among Princess, and to make them inherit the throne of glory for the pillars of the earth of the Lords, and he will set the world upon.
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Don't we just love that passage?
You know, if you go through this song that Hannah prayed, you know, I think it really could be summed up in this. With God, all things are possible. With God, all things are possible. She learned that. She learned that out of a barren womb could come forth that child Samuel. And you know, this is what trust is all about.
It's learning that with God all things are possible. You think your situation in life is impossible?
It's not.
You're faced with many choices and situations. Maybe you think there's no girls for me to marry. Maybe you think there's no boys for me to marry. Maybe you think it's going to be awfully difficult if I live a life unmarried. But you know something?
These situations can be turned into tremendous blessing and good in our life and with God all things are possible. He can take your circumstances.
And pour out a blessing greater than you could ever imagine in your life. Remember that.
Remember that.
You know, I'm going to share a little story.
I hesitate to do this, but I think sometimes it's a good thing to.
Share some personal anecdotes from from your life so people understand these things are real.
The earlier this year.
Someone.
Was using one of my vehicles and it ended up being written off in an accident and.
We didn't quite know what to do and.
It's kind of, it's difficult to elaborate on these things, but you know, we live in Newfoundland and 50% of the vehicles there are trucks for good reason. And we ended up recently getting a wood stove and you can buy your wood, but it's better if you can go pick it up in a in a pickup truck. And I never imagined in all of my life I have a pickup truck thought that.
Um, it was impractical, the gas guzzler. Why? Why should I have a pickup truck and.
I was struggling with what to do about a replacement vehicle. We only had one and I realized we needed a second one. And I really didn't want to make a rash decision about how to replace that vehicle. And I really felt like I shouldn't stress about how that vehicle is going to be replaced. You know, Lynn Lynn made a comment to me one day in connection with with a truck and, and I don't think she meant a lot by it, but she was essentially expressing the thought that, you know, it's not something.
Which is right off as a foolish thing to get. And I dismissed it, didn't think anything of it. But I did pray to the Lord that day on the way to the work. And I said, Lord, you know, please show us what to do about a replacement vehicle. I don't want to spend the next two weeks looking and agonizing and which vehicle to buy. I don't have the time for that. And I really feel it's something I should be dependent about. Well, that that evening I come home.
And we're moving our place at and my neighbor, I waved at him, I said hello and he came over.
Cross the lawn and and said can I help you move the playset? And so he helped me move it and as he was helping me move it, he just said to me casually.
Sean, you don't see that truck over there. I'm selling that truck.
And I was flabbergasted. And then he proceeds to tell me that what the price he's asking for it was and it was an extremely reasonable price. 10 year old chef Silverado if you're interested in the details.
I, I just, it was the hand of the Lord. I knew right in that moment that the Lord had had answered the prayer and you know.
It was a very wonderful lesson for me and.
And I know that there are many here who have experienced things like that many times in their life. And I'd like to encourage you that the Lord does do those things. I was just reading a story of Hudson Taylor about 3 weeks ago. Hudson Taylor, you all know his story. He was a missionary to China and you know, he wanted to learn what a life of dependence on the Lord looked like. He had an employer before he went off to China. Who?
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Was very forgetful.
And we'll keep forgetting to pay Hudson Taylor and weeks and weeks and weeks went by where he would not be paid.
And he was deeply exercised that he shouldn't ask his employer to pay him or remind him that he was running out of money. And there was one time where he was down to his very last dollar. I don't know the denomination. At that point in time, it really doesn't matter. And it was needed to buy a little bit of food and then he was going to be completely out of money.
Altogether.
And he ran into a family in the streets of the place where he was at that was very hungry. And they were expressing to him how.
They had nothing. They couldn't feed their children. And Hudson Taylor was feeling the weight of this coin in his pocket getting heavier and heavier and heavier, and he really struggled. He thought, you know, I need this, so I can't feed myself tomorrow and.
My memory is not the best with these kinds of stories, but eventually he surrendered to the Lord in the matter, and he took out that coin and he paid the very last bit of money he had in this whole world and gave it to that family.
And, you know, it was the very next day that his employer called him into the office. And I'm sure you know what happened. He he recognized that he had forgotten to pay Hudson Taylor and things all worked out. And, you know, it's just a really beautiful story that illustrates that with God, all things are possible. What looks impossible is never impossible with God.
Well, I'd just like to go on now.
And take up the subject a little bit further.
I want to talk about Samuel for a moment. So, Samuel.
Was a little boy and he ministered in the temple. And I just want to notice here something. It says in verse 18 of chapter 2, Samuel ministered before the Lord, being a child girded with a linen ephod. And then down in verse 21 it says the child Samuel grew before the Lord. And then it says in verse 26 of the same chapter.
The child Samuel grew on.
And was in favor both with the Lord and also with man. But then you'll notice in chapter 3 and verse seven it says.
Samuel did not yet know the Lord, neither was the word of the Lord yet revealed unto him. And I won't read through that whole story.
But here we find Samuel, and he's serving the Lord in the temple, and it says that he's growing and growing and growing. Isn't that beautiful? You know, there are many, many people in this room who are very various stages of spiritual growth for the Lord.
And it's a wonderful thing to see boys and girls who are younger. I know some of you have developed habits.
To read your Bible at night and to get down on your knees and pray and you're growing in the things of the Lord.
And maybe you make a commitment to memorize your verse, and that is a little thing that you can do as you grow before the Lord.
But you know, it says here Samuel didn't yet know the voice of the Lord, and I would like to make this application.
That there comes a point in our spiritual pathway where all of us have to.
Learn to hear the voice of the Lord in our life. You know Bernie read a verse or quoted a verse yesterday and Song of Solomon chapter 2 The voice.
Of it was the bridegroom, sorry, it was the bride who was Speaking of. I'm going to quote it because I'm not going to get it right. You don't need to turn to this, but the Song of Solomon chapter 2 and it says there.
In verse 8, the voice of my beloved, Behold, he comes leaping upon the mountains.
Skipping upon the hills, you need to learn to hear the voice of the Lord. I'd like to suggest a passage to you in Second Peter, chapter one.
That I have appreciated.
And we're not going to go over the details of this little passage, but I do want to commend it to you for further study.
It says here.
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And it is in the context of faith, it says.
In two Peter chapter one.
In verse five, besides this giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, to knowledge temperance, and to temperance, patience, and to patience godliness, to godliness, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness, charity. For if these things be in you and abound, they make you that you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful. And this is what I was thinking of in the knowledge. And if you look in Mr. Darby's footnotes here, you'll see that it says there the personal.
Recognition of our Lord Jesus Christ, the personal recognition of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's one thing to say I know the Lord Jesus, it's another thing to hear his voice to you individually in your life. Do you personally recognize when He has spoken to you?
Samuel didn't learn that lesson right away, but I would suggest to you that if there's going to be fruit in your life for the Lord.
You need to learn to hear his personal voice to you, personal recognition of his voice to you. And you know, I, I find it very beautiful that if you look at the end of chapter 3.
And verse 19 in connection with Samuel, it says Samuel grew and the Lord was with him.
And did let none of his words fall to the ground. And then it says in verse 21, the Lord appeared again in Shiloh. For the Lord revealed himself to Samuel and Shiloh by the word of the Lord.
Why, and I say this to myself, why is there such weakness? Often in our assemblies we are so quick to point the finger at so and so and say they're the problem, Look at their life. They're not giving me practical ministry.
But isn't it so interesting to see here that the word of God that was rare in these days?
When Samuel learned to hear the voice of the Lord, all of a sudden the word of the Lord began to appear again in Shiloh. Where does?
Change.
In that way come from in our assemblies. It starts with me, it starts with me.
And that is such a deeply searching thing. You know, if you want there to be fruit for the Lord and you are in the assembly or in your family, it starts with you. It starts with you. So important to grow in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus. Well, now I'd like to turn to chapter 8 and look at Samuel's son.
Joel And we're just going to read one verse here.
It says.
It came to pass verse one when Samuel was old, that he made his sons judges over Israel know the name of his first born was Joel and the name of the 2nd Abaya, and they were judges in Beersheba. And his sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre, and took bribes and perverted judgment.
Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together and came to Samuel unto Raima.
And said unto him, Behold, our old, and thy sons walked not on thy ways. Make us a king to judge us.
Like all the nations.
You know, I don't want to say much about Joel. Joel was the wayward son, one of a few wayward sons of Samuel. But I'd like to point out this one mistake here on Samuel's part, that Samuel here, he failed to trust the Lord in connection with the leadership in Israel. He failed. He looked at the situation and said, I'm getting old.
And in terms of a succession plan for myself, I'm going to make my boys judges in Israel.
Were judges needed in Israel? I don't believe so. It was the Lord.
Who desired to be their judge but Samuel? Here he made his boys judges.
I don't believe he sought the mind of the Lord in that decision at all.
And, you know, it was an example of trusting in men. He didn't trust the Lord in that particular thing. And what was the result? His boys. They turned aside from following the Lord.
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Turned after money and other things, Perverted justice, we're told here. And the result was that there was discouragement in Israel. And they said, please give us a king.
And that was the result of Samuel's mistake here. Within connection with his boys, he trusted in men.
You know, I wouldn't want to share one other thing just to go back for a moment that I appreciate in Alcana and Samuel with respect to their children.
Hannah particularly, she told the Lord, I'm going to give my son Samuel back to you.
As soon as he's weaned, Can you imagine how difficult that would be, your only child? You've been barren all those years and you take your only child and you give him away after just a short period of time. She did that and she did it with a good spirit. And you know, I have appreciated in connection with that, that for our children, we often, what we want for them is perhaps to be great in this world.
And to have a career or to get involved in something that perhaps makes me look good somehow.
And we all fall prey to that tendency. I know I certainly do. Do we desire to put our trust in the Lord and say Lord, I want to give my children?
To you. I want to give them back to you. They've been loaned to me. I'm going to give them back to you.
I'd like them to be of service to you, Lord. That should be the desire of all of our hearts. Who our parents here this evening.
Well, you know, I just like to make a suggestion now in connection with Joel. Joel, the wayward son.
He was the father of this man Heman.
And.
I can't help but wonder if.
Psalm 88. And let's just look at that Psalm for a moment.
I'll read the header because it's it's inspired and it's important to the Psalm. A song or Psalm after for the sons of Korah, to the chief musician upon Mahalith, Lianoth Maskell of Hemen, the Ezra height. O Lord God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee. Let my prayer come before thee. Incline thine ear unto my cry, for my soul is full of troubles and my life.
Near under the grave I am counted with them that go down into the pit. I am as a man that has no strength.
Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou remembers no more, And they are cut off from thy hand. And I'd like to just read.
Skipping down to a question that he writes in verse 10.
Wilt thou show wonders to the dead? Shall the dead arise and praise thee, Sila? Shall thy loving kindness be declared in the grave, or thy faithfulness and destruction? You know, I can't help but wonder if this boy, Heman, he grew up with a father who failed him badly.
Who had a very poor reputation in the land of Israel.
Who went after money and not after the things of God? And that was a discouragement to his boy.
Haman And perhaps life was very difficult in that home.
And he cries out to the Lord and the difficulty of the circumstances, and he says.
He says in verse 11, verse 10, Will you show wonders to the dead? Shall the dead arise and praise thee? Selah. Lord, I'm like a dead person. Am I ever going to feel like I can get up and praise You in the circumstances that I am in?
You know, it's possible that this Psalm is an expression of a transformation in humans life that took him from a place of despair and a feeling of abandonment and difficulty in the home and transformed him into a person who had literally, as it were, come back from the dead to praise his God. And it was that which led to such tremendous blessing in that home. You know, I don't know that for sure.
What I do know is that Haman would have lived during the time when Absalom rebelled and his children, too, rebelled against David. And perhaps it was born out of that period of trial. We don't know. This is not what you would normally consider a Psalm or a song at all. You read through this Psalm. There's nothing in it that's positive. It's a, it's a cry of agony. How can this be a song?
00:45:17
But you know, I can't help but think that this one and only song from human is in the scriptures.
Because it was from the depths of this experience that came a change in his life.
That had such a deep and profound impact upon his family. It's just a thought.
We don't know it for sure, but I've wondered it. And you know, I can't help but think, too, that this Psalm is read so often in the breaking of bread.
An expression of the.
Sorrow and the pain that the Lord felt.
As he suffered at Calvary's cross for you and me, I would ask, is there any boy or girl or an adult here?
Who has trivialized that experience of the Lord Jesus and the cross?
And despised it. He went through that for you. And you know when you get ahold of the fact that you're a poor loss Sinner, but Jesus loved you so much that he would go through those agonies for you. What happens? There's a song of praise that arises in your heart. And if you haven't yielded your heart to him, please get down on your knees this evening and say, Lord Jesus, I want to be changed.
I want to be a singer in your court.
Want to call you Lord of my life? If you do that, there will be so much blessing in your life. You know this man human.
He gets his break, as it were in First Chronicles chapter 15, and I just like to look at it. I know our time is nearly gone, but let's just look at what happened here. David desires to bring the Ark of God.
Up to arresting police in Jerusalem.
And it says here.
In verse.
14 So the priests and the Levites sanctified themselves to bring up the ark of the Lord God of Israel, And the children of the Levites bore the ark of God upon their shoulders, with the staves thereof thereon, as Moses commanded, according to the word of the Lord. And David spoke to the chief of the Levites to appoint their brethren to be the singers, with instruments of music, sultries, harps, cymbals, sounding by lifting up with voice with joy, the voice with joy, so the Levites.
Appointed Human, the son of Joel and of his brethren Asaph the son of Berakaya.
And of the sons of Murari, their brethren, Ethan the son of Kushaya.
You know I say this to the young men here.
God perhaps has given you something to do for him, some talent I don't know how many years, Heman.
Went by, perhaps, when he didn't get to exercise his particular and unique gift of musical ability.
But you know, there came this day, what an interesting day when the King David said, I want that man Heman.
To be one of the singers as the ark is brought up to Jerusalem.
Can you just imagine what he felt and you know the Lord is something to do for you?
He's given you something to do for him, some service. That's what the Levites were. They were servants in this, in the, in the, They were the ones who looked after the Tabernacle. They were doorkeepers. There were singers, there were ones who carried things. They all had something to do. But his particular human's particular thing to do in this case was to be a singer. And he did it.
He did it. I believe he did it faithfully. I have no doubt he did it with tremendous joy. I can't imagine what he felt when that day was over.
But you know, it was the start of tremendous blessing for that man. And when you go over there to Chapter 25, First Chronicles.
There you have.
It says.
Verse one of chapter 25. Moreover, David and the captains of the hosts separated the service of the sons.
Of Asaph and if he went and of Jed youth and who should prophecy with harp sultries and with symbols, and the number of the workmen according to their service was And then if you just go down.
00:50:01
To verse four of Haman and these were his boys, the sons of Hemen, and we won't read all their names or difficult names. All these were the sons of him and the king Seer in the words of God to lift up the horn and God gave to him in 14 sons and three daughters. All these were under the hands of their father for song.
In the House of the Lord, you know, if you read through this account carefully, you will discover that.
David, in the very closing days of his life, appointed the service of the House of God under Solomon's reign.
And he specifically appointed that this man Haman and his family would be singers in the courts of the House of God.
And that's exactly what happened. And so we see the fruit from the faithfulness of Elkanah Hannah, culminating in this family of 17 children united in praise to their God. And you know, that's something else. I would just say how beautiful when a family, a family can lift up their voice and praise to God.
Is it true of your home? You know, I don't want this this.
Meeting to be a discouragement to those.
Who? And it happens over and over again. There's many homes where there's difficulties and perhaps a wavered son or daughter. It could happen to me. It could happen to any of us.
But you know, isn't it so wonderful that God in his grace overrules a Joel? Or he overrules?
A mistake like Alcana having two wives.
To bring out such blessing as you see in this family over 4 plus generations.
We serve a God of grace. We cannot see the end of our story right now.
But if you put your trust in the Lord for your family.
For your career, I don't like to speak of careers, but for what you may choose to do as a profession in your life, who you may marry, the day-to-day choices you make, you can be sure that the tree is not going to cease from yielding fruit. And this story is such a beautiful illustration of that. We can all take so much encouragement from that. Hannah means grace.
Haman means faithfulness. Faithfulness he trusted. I thought it would be good.
To close with the hymn that we all know and enjoy so well. And I thought it'd be good to stand up and sing it.
256.
Praise the Savior.
You can tell how much we owe him.
Like we love the stranger to him.
All we have and all.
She's a spirit life in the charm to us.
Before.
Conflicts and unjust nothing.
Could send my big alarms us while we trust me.
To thyself and show me living.
Tell me.
How to receive Rain destroyed me?
And we shall.
00:55:32
Just thank the Lord.
Our God and Father.
We love to think of the day that's coming when.
We will all be singers.
United in that.
Song of Praise Revelation chapter 5.
Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.
And Lord Jesus.
Thou art so worthy.
In this world of discouragement and challenges, we pray that we will prove you.
That we will learn to trust you and hear your voice in our lives. That we will come to a deeper appreciation that we.
Serve a God of grace who desires to bless and will bless that abundantly.
We give thanks for.
The blessing of this camp.
And we give thanks to that. You've put it on the hearts of so many in connection with it to work so hard.
To give us these days of enjoyment. We pray that you will bless them for that.
And so we just commit the rest of our evening.
And our time here to you, should we not hear the shout first?
And we do pray, too, for our families.
That we would be faithful with our children, their spouses, with each other in the family of God to encourage and to build up. And so we just ask these things in the name of the Lord Jesus, Amen.
Session #5
Satan's Devices
Address—Rob House
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.
While we wait for the rest of the people to arrive, if there are anybody.
Else it's coming. Let's sing together 149.
Lord Jesus, we remember the travail of thy soul, when through thy Love's deep pity, the waves did o'er thee roll.
And then in the last verse, from sin, the world, and Satan, we are ransomed by thy blood.
And here would walk as strangers alive with thee to God.
Somebody could start that place.
For help from our Lord Jesus.
Lord Jesus, I come to Thee tonight and I seek help from myself.
And pray for help by thy Spirit to be able to express.
The thoughts I have on my mind.
And I pray that there will be a blessing to everybody who is listening, from the young to the old, and that it will be useful to them in their Christian lives. Lord Jesus, if there is somebody listening tonight.
Who hasn't accepted thee as their Lord and Savior that they would do so because?
They're outside of what we're going to talk about tonight. Lord Jesus, we just ask for Thy blessing, for Thy help, power, and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
00:05:05
The verse I have up on the screen is lest Satan should get an advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his his devices.
Devices is an interesting word. It's a, it's the way he thinks, it's his schemes, it's his plotting. And I was thinking about that a while back and.
I realized they couldn't really identify what his schemes are, what his plots were, what his strategies were, and spent some time thinking about it and.
Tonight you might get to hear a little bit about that, but.
To give you some background.
A few years back, when I was a little bit younger, some of you might know my nephew Kevin. Kevin House.
We were after a hockey game in the winter time in Ottawa and for whatever reason I decided I was going to teach him how how you would take a person like Kevin and flip him over your back and land him in the snow.
Now, Kevin's a pretty strong lad, but I'm bigger than he is. I figured it wouldn't be too much problem.
And I told him what was going to happen and I proceeded to demonstrate. And as I started the twist to put him over my back, he stepped in front of me and gave a yank and I landed in the snow and he was standing there looking at me. And I said hey. He said, well, I didn't want to land in the snow.
Well, part of the reason why I wanted to talk about not being ignorant of Satan's devices.
Is that we're in a conflict and we'll be talking about that tonight and having 1/2 an idea of what he's up to and what he's doing. I think it's useful. And some of the things I'm going to talk about I have found personally very useful in my own life in trying to live a successful life as a Christian, as a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ.
So the first thing.
That I want to talk about the word Satan, just who he is. Let's turn to John chapter 8.
And verse 44 Satan is the name of the devil.
John 844 The Lord Jesus tells us about the devil.
Indirectly.
Ye are of your father, the devil, the lusts of your father ye will do.
He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.
When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it.
Our brother Stephen Ruhl mentioned something about the devil. So the devil has two weapons. Anybody remember what those two weapons were?
Thank you.
And they're in this verse violence.
He was a murderer and corruption.
He is a liar and the father of it, so remember that that's fundamentally true about the devil's nature.
Who he is, you know how God is like, and God is love.
Well, Satan is liar and Satan is murderer, and that's violence and corruption.
So.
This is the.
Situation that we're in, this is the enemy of our souls. Let's turn to Ephesians chapter 6.
And we'll read verse 12 and you'll see why my story about Kevin was appropriate.
Ephesians 6, verse 12.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world.
Against spiritual wickedness in high places. And the keyword that I wanted to pay attention to here is wrestle.
I know there are some of you in this room that know how to wrestle. I know there's one of you at least that said when he was much younger is exceedingly good wrestler and.
00:10:05
I never chose to get into a wrestling match with him because I figured it would be extremely humiliating.
But if you look at what comes in, the rest of this chapter talks about the whole armor of God.
And there's a kind of fighting, I think it's mixed martial arts.
And that's.
You know, interesting. There's another kind of fighting called boxing.
And boxing used to be really violent and so.
Lord Queensberry, I believe, put some rules in place to make it civilized. But more recently people have decided that the old kind of boxing was better and they improved it and they call it mixed martial arts. So it's a very, very violent contest, very, very violent wrestling, probably like what the Apostle Paul knew about.
Maybe even a little bit worse, Not sure.
But.
I have a question for you. Even in mixed martial arts.
If you've ever watched any of that.
Have you ever seen anybody arrive at mixed martial arts with a helmet on?
A sword breastplate shield.
Armed with a sword, ready to wrestle. That's what we're called on in Ephesians chapter 6.
So what kind of war are we in? If you think mixed martial arts UFC is violent and it is, and brutal and that they come very close to killing each other, it is.
But.
What we're in, in this spiritual warfare, this struggle with Satan, is far more severe and far more extreme and has far longer consequences than anything, any fighting that ever happened in Greek in the Olympics back in 400.
BC any other fighting that's gone on like that?
This is very strong, very powerful, and when you're wrestling, if you have an idea of what the other person's strategy is and approach.
Then you have a better chance in the fight with them. So I've described Satan a little bit, and now I want to talk a little bit about ourselves, because it takes two to be in a struggle. And when we go through this, I hope we'll have time to learn that there's actually more than two in this struggle that we're in. And.
Let's look at Romans Chapter 7.
And right now I have to take a little stop before I start in Romans Chapter 7.
And I got to explain to you.
That what we're starting on really only applies to people who believe that Jesus Christ.
Died for their sins and that God raised them from the dead according to the scriptures.
Because.
I'm going to be talking a little bit about this conflict. So you may say and you may realize I don't really have too much of a conflict.
And that may be because you don't know Jesus Christ as your own personal Lord and Savior.
And you don't have what we're going to be talking about. So Romans Chapter 7, verse 17.
Actually, to make it more understandable, start at verse 16. If then I do that, which I would not.
I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
This is talking about somebody that actually has a struggle because they know something good to do and they want to do it, but they don't.
They do the wrong thing, they do the bad thing, all right.
Now, if you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, you probably don't even have any incentive to do.
The right thing you just want to do the bad thing if you don't have any life at all.
I mean, yes, you have natural life, you're breathing, air is going in and out. You ate your supper, your heart's beating. But before God, no life, no reaction, nothing.
00:15:03
All right, so you can listen and you can find out what your saved brother or your saved sister has so your saved parents have inside them. You're very welcome to listen because it can be yours simply by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. But be assured that the wages of sin is death.
And that after death is the judgment, and that God has created.
A lake of fire for those who.
Don't know the Lord Jesus as their savior? So it's important that you know the Lord Jesus as your Savior.
And so the problem is in verse 17, it says sin dwelleth in me. And that's one of the first things I'm going to talk about is sin. Not sins as in the bad things I do, but sin as in I was born in sin and shape and iniquity. In other words, I have something unique that when there's an opportunity to do something.
That I want to do if it's contrary to what God wants, contrary to what my parents want.
Contrary to what the teachers at school want. Guess what?
I want to do it.
May not be everything, but there will be certain things that that sin in you wants to do.
Just wants to do it.
Now, what this person discovered is that when he wanted to do something good.
Couldn't do it. So now we're going to turn to chapter 6 and verse 11.
And this is for Christians, because if you're not a Christian, you can't do this.
Chapter 6, verse 11 Says likewise. Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin.
But alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
This, of all things tonight, to listen to and hear and understand this is probably the thing that's been most useful to me as a Christian to get an understanding of what this means. So.
In January of this year my father died and he went to be with the Lord.
And some of the people in this room came and they visited at the wake where my father's body was and.
No, these are smarties, right?
And.
They make a nice noise if I took these if my father's body was lying here.
And I took them over top of my father's head.
What do you think he'd do?
Anybody know what he do? Nothing.
That's right, he'd do nothing. And if I say Dad, you want some smarties, what would he say?
Nothing. Nothing, right?
When you get up out of the casket and go get the Smarties. If I put them down when I wasn't looking, No. Why not? Because he's dead.
It says you reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin.
Now let's put it this way.
Inside me, from the time I was born, there's this thing called sin.
And now I'm expected to consider myself dead to this sin.
What did my father do if he's dead and I offered him smarties?
Nothing. So when sin offers me an opportunity to do something bad.
Steal a cookie.
How do I respond?
Nothing.
Don't answer, don't agree, Nothing.
But you know, Sin is very much alive, and he jumps up and down and he screams for attention and I know that.
Because even this morning, sin in me was telling me what a great job I was going to do.
Talking tonight.
And you know, I could have spent a long time arguing with myself. That was inappropriate thing to be thinking.
Confessing it to the Lord and trying to make it go away and sin would have been quite happy to have that argument with me.
And I did one round and then I realized this is wrong.
I'm going to be talking tonight about not responding to sin, so I better not do it.
00:20:02
Just ignore it. Sin came back with another tab, he said. Well, OK, if you're not going to be great, then you're going to be a total failure.
But I figured out what was going on and I decided to just play dead. No response. And thank the Lord you only tried again once in the afternoon on that front. I'm sure he's tried other things throughout the day, but that was the one I went through today that I had to experience and I hope it helps for me to say that now.
Let's turn over to.
One Corinthians, chapter 5.
Sorry, Two Corinthians 5.
And verse 17 There's something else in me other than just sin.
And this is where I'm talking about.
What Christians have that if you're not saved, you don't have?
Says therefore first Second Corinthians 5 verse 17. Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.
New creation.
God, when you accept Jesus as your own personal Lord and Savior.
Puts a new life inside you.
All right, And if you're listening this morning, you heard somebody talk about psychology and psychology doesn't know what to do with anything other than a sin nature.
So we have this nature in here that is from God. It's the life of Christ inside us.
And that is an incredible thing that we have. Now let's turn to Galatians 2.
And verse 20. Can somebody quote me the last part of the verse?
The Son of God who?
Right loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 220. But the part I want to talk about is the first part.
You got to pay close attention to what this verse says. Listen to all the eyes in it.
I am crucified.
With Christ.
If you're crucified, what happened to you?
What happened to the Lord Jesus Christ when he was crucified? Was he dead?
Right, he was dead.
But you know what the next words say. Nevertheless, I live.
How can you be dead and alive?
Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me now. That's what I was talking about.
And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. So inside us I have this in nature.
I have the life of Christ. There's a part of Maine that makes decisions, and that's what this verse is talking about.
That part's job is to respond to the Lord Jesus Christ and say yes.
And to totally ignore sin, all right.
So let's turn over.
To First John chapter 4.
First John chapter 4 and verse 4.
Year of God little children, and have overcome them, because greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.
If you're not a believer, this is something else you don't have.
When you know Christ died for your sins.
That you have that new life inside you. That you're seated in Christ.
God sends his Holy Spirit.
Right down to live inside you, your body becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit of God.
That's an incredible thing. So I'm a pretty full person. I got sin in me. That old thing that came for free when I was born and doesn't do anything good at all. I got the life of Christ in me. I've got the Holy Spirit of God in me, and I've got that decision maker in me.
00:25:02
So if I can put it this way, those are kind of the teams. They're Satan in all his.
Demons trying to do his work.
And then in me there's sin.
And there's the Lord Jesus got his life inside me. I've got the Holy Spirit inside me.
Those are kind of the two teams, if I can put it that way.
So the next verse I'd like to turn back to is Romans chapter 8.
And verse one.
There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.
And skip to verse 2 for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus have made me free from the law of sin and death.
So that Spirit of God inside me means that there's no condemnation.
I am free to live in Christ.
And that's what the key is to this wrestling.
To understanding that that when sin makes a suggestion, I can totally ignore it.
And say I am dead to it. And yes, Sin is screaming and yelling that I ought to do something that's really, really bad.
And we may touch on some of those things later if we have time.
But.
I can say no, I am living in Christ, I am a new creature and I don't want any of that. And my right response is I am dead to anything sin suggests.
Suggest all at once. I'm ignoring it. What's the response of a dead person? Do nothing?
Don't even say hi. No response.
All right.
Let's.
Set the stage here.
Let's turn to 1St John Chapter 2.
Because the devil has a system that he uses.
It's referred to in one of the questions earlier this week.
About the world.
First John chapter 2 and verse 16.
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
Is not of the Father, but is of the world. So remember those three things.
The loss of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
We've had the devil's weapons, violence and corruption, 2 weapons, and now he has this system, this machine, if I can put it this way, that he's using.
And it's got three parts to it, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
All right.
Now one last thing just before we go on and talk about that a little bit more, James chapter one, verse 17.
Every good and every perfect gift.
Cometh down is from above, and cometh down from the father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
Where do good gifts come from? They come from God.
Don't try and take them early. Don't try and get them from the devil.
Because what's the devil?
A liar.
He never delivers on his promises. So let's take a few minutes and let's think about some of these cases, OK?
Sometimes you go on, and I had the opportunity this week to see some highlights out of mixed martial arts.
Fascinating struggles. What I want to do is go to.
00:30:00
Some Old Testament stories and look at some of those spiritual battles that happened and some New Testament.
But because I don't have a lot of time left, I'm just going to tell you the stories. I think you know them. If you don't know them, you can look them up on your own after first one is Adam and Eve. Anybody not know the story of Adam and Eve? OK.
They're in the garden. Eve is walking through the garden. One day there's a snake and the snake says.
Hey.
Has God said he shall not eat of any of the trees?
That was Satan.
What was he doing? OK, so now we're talking about what he's doing.
Taking the truth and he twisted it.
Because what had God said? You remember what God said? Don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That's what God said. That's what he told Adam. Don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So Satan puts out this God said don't eat of any of the trees.
And Eve said well.
Not quite, she said.
Don't eat.
Of the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil, and don't touch it.
You remember what Stephen rule, brother Steven said.
The other night about the devil. Don't play chess with the devil.
Because he's brilliant. And what's one of his weapons?
Corruption. He's a liar.
What he does now is he takes that little bit of word and justice. Picture this. OK Eve, you just said that if you touch that fruit, God said don't do it. Bad things are going to happen. You'll die. Well, Eve didn't know what dying meant.
Never seen it in her life before.
And all she had to do was go over and touch that fruit. And you know what she just proved?
That God didn't mean what he said, right? Because she didn't die, Because she just touched the fruit and she didn't die. Is that what happened? I don't know for sure.
But she had to touch the fruit in order to take a bite.
And when the devil proved that what he was saying was true, that she could touch it and not die, nothing happened. Nothing changed.
You see, he was right.
But she had added just a little bit to what God said, and the devil very, very, very quickly used it to prove that God was wrong.
Was God wrong? No, because as soon as Eve took that bite, crunch.
Too late. And then Adam came along and he, on purpose, ate more just like her.
And that's why you and I all have a sin nature because of that.
You think about it and what it says there.
I'll just take it so I get it. I'll just quickly look in Genesis chapter 3.
So I get it exactly right what was put in front of Eve.
Eve looked at it.
And she saw it was good for food, the lust of the flesh.
Pleasant to the eyes, the lust of the eyes, and a treated desired to make one wise the pride of life.
There's his system and he's trying out the prototype on Eve, and it worked perfectly. And when Adam and Eve sinned like that, they just lost the first major battle, spiritual battle. They gave over the whole of the Garden, the control of the earth, all their future happiness.
And their life.
Forfeited it, lost it all for what?
A little bit of disobedience, trying to get something that Satan had suggested God was holding back.
See all the lies Satan told.
In just a few short sentences. He is incredibly deceitful, wasn't he? So think about that.
There you have how Satan was working.
He very carefully changed some of God's words.
00:35:02
He worked on Eve, added to them, used it to demonstrate how God was wrong, and then sucked her in. He didn't tell Eve any of the fine print, that she'd get kicked out of the garden, that her kids would be miserable, that one of them would murder the other one, that the whole rest of human history would be absolute disaster. Wars, Rumors of wars.
Disease, hunger, brutality, all that.
Did he say anything about that? Not a single thing, right? Remember that? That's how the devil works.
He shows you the pretty face.
And doesn't show you any of the problems.
It's not fair, is it?
And remember that he's a liar. He's after violence. He's after corruption.
That's what his nature is and he surely doesn't fight fair. How old do you think he has to be before he starts picking on little kids?
First chance he gets, he's going to start picking on little kids. Now let's take another example in the Gospel of Luke.
This is another battle.
Luke chapter 4, You know this story. Jesus went into the wilderness and he spent 40 days in the wilderness. He was fasting.
40 days. I have managed to fast for four hours. I know other brothers in this room have lasted much much longer than I have.
I have 4 hours. I was very ready to eat 40 days. I can't imagine how hungry you'd be. The devil showed up and he said to Jesus, see those stones? If you're the Son of God, turn them the bread, you know that's the lust of the flesh.
If you could have bread just like that, would you do it? And you're starving, hungry.
But if the price for the Lord Jesus was to go against his Father's will, the answer was no. But he responded with the Word of God.
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.
So this is another thing with the devil. OK, He never quits.
He lost the first round. He doesn't quit.
So what's he do? He takes the Lord Jesus up on top of a high mountain and he puts on a display form like none of us has ever seen.
He showed him everything there was to see in the whole Roman Empire, showed him everything in Greek. Anybody ever been in Greece, looked at all the old runes, fantastic things they were doing, looked at Nebuchadnezzar's hanging gardens, gone to India, seen all the things they have there, seen China. Well, in a moment of time, the devil showed the Lord Jesus all of that. And he says, you know Jesus.
All that can be yours.
If you fall down and worship me.
What did the Lord Jesus say?
Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God.
And him only shalt thou serve. You know, you think about that. That was things to see.
First the lust of the flesh, now he's tried the lust of the eyes.
Did it work with Jesus? No. How did Jesus respond with the word of God?
And then, like I said, the devil doesn't quit too easy. And then he took him to the top of the temple.
And he said, If you're the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence. For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee.
And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou shalt dash thy foot against the stone.
You know, you just think of how famous Jesus would have been if he jumped off the highest point on the.
Temple and as he came shooting to the ground just went smooth landing because the angels caught him.
He could have been the news of Jerusalem.
What did the Lord Jesus say? Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Now think about what the devil was doing there.
He was quoting from Psalm 91 on your own. You can go look it up.
It's another one of the devil's favorite tricks. Take just part of the scripture and quote it out of context.
The part where he stopped is fascinating.
00:40:01
Because he's talking about where the Lord Jesus is going to trample the devil right into the ground. No wonder he stopped there, right?
Like we had this morning. The story of prophecy, the end of it is.
In two words, Jesus wins. I like that this morning well.
Let's take a look at another bow from the Old Testament Joseph.
He had a hard life.
We're praying for the family that their son's been kidnapped. It's absolutely tragic. And that in itself is got to be a satanic Attack Attack. Those people have got to need tremendous amount of spiritual prayer for what they're going through. Just to think of what the devil's feeding to their sin nature and trying to get them to respond to what an incredible challenge that they're facing. But.
Joseph was kidnapped and sold by his own brothers.
Goes to Potiphar's house, starts to do better and Potiphar's wife.
Decides that she wants him for her own man. And what does Joseph do?
He takes advantage of something that God's promised us, that when there's going to be a temptation.
That he'll provide a way of escape. You can look it up.
God will provide a way of escape.
So Joseph left his coat and he fled. He ran. And you know what? He ended up in jail. But that's a spiritual victory.
Yes, he ended up in jail.
But God made sure he ended up ruling right under Pharaoh, the whole land of Egypt.
So if you want to think about that one as a contest, the spiritual wrestling match, by fleeing, Joseph managed to win. But what was it that was put in front of him? Everything that's put in front of so much of us, You know, that idea of a woman presented to a man.
Lost whatever it might be. What was Josephs reaction? He fled. There's the lust of the eyes. Now let's take another man from the Old Testament, David.
Very similar situation, but David was not a captive. He was not forced to work in the situation he was in. He was the king. And David created opportunity for himself by staying home instead of going out to war, made himself a little bit idle. And there's some lessons that we can learn about that too, that we can create opportunities for the sin to get out of control.
David went up for a walk on the roof. Cool. The night happened to see a lady having a bath.
Now he had a way of escape right there. He could have turned his eyes away, gone back downstairs. He didn't. David decided to watch the show. And.
Then it got worse.
And.
He had her brought right into his house and he got her pregnant.
That was a major spiritual loss for King David.
You think that's bad? You know the rest of the story. He had her husband murdered.
No.
Who won those that round? Corruption.
Committing adultery, murder, violence.
Who is David responding to? Satan, right?
He lost. So what was David not doing, not taking the way of escape?
Not confessing his sins and what Satan was doing was just taking circumstances and putting them there.
And David responded to them.
Now let's think about another one. David, later on in his reign, was busy running his Kingdom and.
Satan provoked him.
To count the people.
That one, to me, is fascinating.
To me, it's related to not just the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh, but this one is sort of like the pride of life.
I don't exactly know how Satan did it, but it's fascinating because I'm sure David didn't have a conversation with the devil and the devil said to him, please count the people. I want you to. Because if the devil showed up like that, David would have probably figured out, you know, this is probably not a good idea. But somehow the devil planted the idea and I don't know what it might be.
00:45:07
But one thing I do want to point out from this is that not every thought that comes into your mind is you're responsible for the devil can use sin in circumstances to make suggestions to you.
And as a Christian, you don't have to accept them.
How do you respond to sin?
Playing dead. Consider yourself dead to sin while David didn't, he responded.
So David lost another one.
Let's another battle that David lost a spiritual loss.
Well, another one that's close to home is Job.
And it's relevant to us with what's happening in Mexico with this boy that was kidnapped because job one morning had a messenger come.
Messenger said all your cattle have been stolen.
All your another one came said all your camels had been stolen.
And then the last one came and said the house that your kids were in collapsed and they're all dead.
Tragedy after tragedy after tragedy.
Think about it if your job how you respond.
I know what would be coming up by my sin nature would be saying I'd be pretty mad at God for letting all that happen in one day.
My responsibility is to react like a dead man to that. And how did Job respond?
The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. That's an incredible spiritual victory. You know the patience of Job.
God responded and rewarded Job with.
More than he ever had before and replaced his children.
And I think that gives them a double count of children because I'm sure with a father like Job, his children would probably be in heaven.
When we get there, I'm hoping we see Joel.
His wife.
Twenty children.
Well, one more I want to talk to you about because we're talking about how Satan works. That last one was an example of how.
Satan can work physically in our lives to try and create circumstances to create discouragement.
And.
Cause strife and trouble in our lives.
The last one I wanted to talk about from an Old Testament examples was Daniel.
Daniel started praying one day.
He prayed for 21 days. That's three weeks.
In three weeks.
Messenger came from God and told me your prayer has been heard and the reason I couldn't get to you is because the king of.
Persia has been getting in the way. King of Persia is a demon.
He was hindering that Angel from getting there. And what I'm saying is that the reason why we need the armor of God is because that fight is incredibly brutal and incredibly strong and incredibly real, even though we can't see it. You can't go watch those spiritual fights.
On YouTube they are absolutely real and of more consequence than anything you can watch.
On YouTube.
So.
Daniel persevered in prayer, he got his answer and I think as we look at these, we see how Satan's worked.
And we can see some of the techniques he uses, how he uses violence and corruption, and he works through the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.
Now think about it for yourselves. You know, I got introduced to *********** when I was in grade 2.
By one of the other kids in my class.
Just the initial idea of it. Was it fair to pick on a 7 year old kid and start putting those ideas into my head?
No, but my sin nature was responding to him. I wasn't even saved then.
00:50:02
And it scarred me.
It caused problems. Didn't I know when I was getting those ideas fed into my head?
What I was going to be in for?
No, I didn't. Does the devil played fair? No. But he's in the corruption, he's in the lying.
He's in the violence.
That's what he's trying to do. So you think about it, *********** where does it lead?
You know how David went from one sin to another sin to another sin? This is why we got to say.
Consider yourself dead to sin, and when sin makes a suggestion, ignore it completely.
If you're like me when I was seven and you don't even have a new life, you can't ignore it because it's all you've got.
But if your faith and trust is in Jesus Christ, you have the life of Christ, you have the Holy Spirit, you can ignore it. And I speak to Christians, that's the path of blessing. You can honestly just totally ignore sin. That's the suggestion.
Not for me. So what comes after ***********? Sex outside of marriage?
Horrible thing.
Horrible, horrible, horrible thing.
Destroys any future purity and things that were our value and just.
Wipes The devil doesn't tell you that doesn't tell you you might get a sexually transmitted disease.
No, that's not part of the contract. He just lets you have that for free. Part of his corruption. And then maybe the girl gets pregnant. Most of those, a lot of those situations, the guy disappears. So what are you going to do?
You all know what the advice is of this world today. Get an abortion.
And that's the devil talking. Think about it.
What do they call a baby?
That our sister Mary had. For the last nine months she's been talking about the baby that's inside her.
But when they want to.
Have an abortion. What are they talking about? They don't talk about the baby, they talk about the fetus.
Because nobody in their right mind would kill a baby.
But a fetus? What's that?
Just take it out.
So you see the demo has taken and justice like he did to Eve twisted the words right, shuffled gods, and so he just changed the words from baby to fetus and problem goes away. But does it? No, because after the abortion you can't change the fact that it was a baby in there and that mother will end up with depression.
Potentially.
Wondering what was it, what could it have been? If there are complications from the abortion and she could never have children, she may regret that. The only child she ever had an opportunity to have. And it just goes on and on. That corruption and the violence that Satan wants to do, it just feeds, just like David's example. So the advice and the learning from that is when sin suggests something.
Play dead.
Reckon yourself dead. Don't respond even the smallest little thing, because the devil just takes a wedge and he dries it in and farther and bigger and bigger and bigger. And just like it starts with something little, it turns into something huge and it's out of control and you're in serious trouble. You can read about that. I think it's Psalm 19 at the end.
Well.
I want to talk about what the devil does with evolution. You know how?
He twisted Eve's words around. He loves to do that with evolution too.
Likes to take the record that God put in creation and explain how God can't even be there.
But he's lying.
And he says you're a fool to believe in God.
And you know, there's people in your colleges, in your high schools and your universities who have dedicated purposes to make you not believe in God.
If you know that, that's what they're there for and that's what they're up to when they start undermining your faith.
Recognize it as that's exactly what the devil is doing. Think about this, all right? You believe in God.
In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. OK, Now what does your scientist, pH. D from school believe if he's an evolutionist? OK, he believes that there was a Big Bang.
00:55:06
He can't tell you what caused The Big Bang. He has no idea.
And what's the difference between him, between him believing in a Big Bang?
And you believe in what God said, that he spoke and it happened.
None is there.
Well.
They'll take you, they'll make you question, they'll ask the unbelieving questions, the questions like we had this morning about why did God allow evil in the 1St place? How can God be good if he loves sin?
So like we said this morning, don't go down that path where the devil is trying to take you down, where he's saying, hath God said?
Is God good?
Believe that God is good and that he rewards those that come to Him. Now let's think for a second a little bit about the way the devil works.
Some of you who are a little older may have seen beer ads.
Think hard. Have you ever seen a beer ad where the guy that's drinking the beer?
His eyes are all bloodshot.
His hair is a mess, He's filthy. Half his teeth are missing.
And he's lying on a bench with the beer spilled all over him.
No, you haven't, right?
They always they're having a party, beautiful girls are around, handsome men, everything's fantastic, everybody's happy. Go and read in Proverbs 23 what alcohol does to people. That is the devil's false advertising.
Because the scripture tells us exactly what we all know. If you follow that course and you lose control, which is what the devil is after, and he's telling you lies, you'll end up.
Seeking more and more and more and more. Totally out of control.
Spending all your family's wealth and I picked alcohol could have done the same thing with drugs. Any kind of addiction can drive you there. Well, there's a couple more. There's a dirty side of the broad path that leads to destruction and there's a clean side. And the Christians can get on The Dirty side or the clean side of that same Rd. by listening to sin and not reckoning yourself dead to it.
One of them is First Timothy chapter 6 and verse 9.
And it says.
They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and to many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.
The devil tells you a lie that money brings happiness.
That success brings happiness. It's not true. Added earlier last night. I think at the same.
The only person who can satisfy your heart is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Well, sometimes you look around and you see the wicked prospering.
If you go and look at Psalm 73, you'll see a man that was suffering from that. How come the wicked people are doing so well?
And I'm having these problems.
Well, that man went into the sanctuary of the Lord and the presence of God, and he understood what the end was.
What the Devil's game was how the Devil was taking those wicked people straight to hell.
How he was destroying them and that set him free and it helps.
To understand where that game plan is going. One last thing that I want to share with you with respect to this, and I think it's quite a fascinating thing to think about.
We have a trump card in the contest.
We have the Lord Jesus Christ to God's right hand in heaven.
Interceding for us every single day.
It's like tag team wrestling where you can reach out and tag the Supreme Person and he's on your side. Ask him for help.
01:00:01
We need to lean on each other. The Roman army, when they fought together, were far more powerful.
Than when they stood alone.
We need each other and then we have the fact that sometimes we fall.
And in a fighting match, it's over once you're pinned. But in this spiritual contest?
It doesn't end until you're dead and the Lord Jesus.
By coming to Him, confessing your sin, we have an advocate with the Father.
Jesus Christ, the righteous, He can set you free again, always. You can go from Him.
So you can tag in with the Lord Jesus and get out from whatever holds the devil's got you in.
No matter how bad that choke is, know how bad or how hard the pin is, the Lord Jesus Christ can always.
Set you free.
So we've been redeemed from sin, the world, and Satan. We've been set free.
By the precious blood of Jesus Christ, let's pray.
Our gracious God and Father, thank you for the gift of thy Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Pray for help.
To put into practice reckoning ourselves dead to sin. We thank Thee for the gift of the Holy Spirit inside each believer. We thank You for the life we have in Christ. We thank you for the Lord Jesus interceding for us in His alone, precious and worthy name. Amen.
Session #6
Jesus Christ in the New Testament
Address—Mark 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.
Maybe we could just get started this evening by singing 42 in the appendix.
I enjoyed this song when it was given out earlier this week, and it's extremely applicable to what I had on my heart. The last verse particularly was what had been given out earlier. And there's parts of that verse that I actually naturally retract from a little bit when it says we can suffer, we can die, but the message in it.
Very much encompasses what I'd like to speak about this evening.
And maybe we could just sing this hymn together.
Savior.
Just ask the Lord for his help.
Our God and Father, we just come before thee this evening.
And we just, we thank thee for the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior.
The one who gave his life for us to give us life.
So that we can enjoy a week together as we've been able to be here at this camp.
To enjoy fellowship with one another, to share the Lord Jesus with one another, to have happy times. Lord Jesus, we just would thank Thee for this. We just would pray this evening as Thy word is opened.
We just would pray that Thy Spirit would have liberty and they would reach into the hearts of.
The speaker and everyone here in that it would bring fruit.
For your glory, Lord Jesus, we just would ask for Thy help that all that is said be honoring to Thee, and we just would thank Thee that we have a privilege to meet in this way and this have Thy word open, and we ask this all in Jesus name, Amen.
00:05:14
What I wanted to talk about this evening, I'm just going to start by.
Telling something that affected me for it was just a few weeks ago I was.
Just browsing the news and.
Google News on my phone, which I realized can be a horrible waste of time, but I noticed an article that said prominent Christian leader.
Is getting divorced and.
I looked at it. It was Joshua Harris who some of you may know. He wrote two books, A Kiss, Dating Goodbye and Boy Meets Girl.
And that book has probably had more of an impact on the assembly than just about any secular book. That aside by someone outside the assembly than any that I can think of in my age category, even up until this day. And, you know, I it, it hit me like a ton of bricks to to see that he had been brought up in a fundamental Christian family and homeschooled.
And you know, my immediate response was it must have been his wife.
And I don't say that.
Callously at all. That was my thought. I went on and.
Did a little bit of research on it and his wife had decided that she felt a little bit repressed, perhaps for the way that she lived. He had been a pastor at a large church for 12 years.
And I sort of chalked it up to difficulties between the two of them and then a few days later.
And the news mocked Christianity by saying I kissed marriage goodbye. And about a week later.
An article came out that said he had denounced Christianity entirely and it was mocking Christianity by saying like his Christianity goodbye.
And I, I'm just going to read you what he wrote. And I, and I, this meeting is going to start on a little bit of a sober note. I trust it will not end up there at all.
This is what he wrote, and it's just so searching to me, it said. I've undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus. The popular phrase for this is deconstruction. A biblical phrase is falling away.
By all measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian. Many people tell me that there's a different way to practice faith, and I want to remain open to this, but I'm not there now.
And I just, I didn't know what to think. You know, there's probably been 20 or 30 articles written on it since.
And you know I the easy thing for me to say. Well, he wasn't.
In the assembly.
On the way down here I was reading an article and.
Again the news, the Lord's blasphemy, Another Christian.
Worship leader. He's a worship leader from Hillsong who wrote the song He reigns.
Basically having lost his faith in Christianity, and this is what he wrote, this is Marty Simpson, he says.
He told the paper that he's struggling with many parts of the belief system that seems so incoherent with common human morality. This is a direct attack of Satan. I believe, as per what Rob spoke on this is if most of humankind had a choice, would we not rid the world of the scourge of cancer or sickness or disease? Why doesn't God do such a thing? Of course there's an answer to this question, but the majority of a typical Christian's life is not spent.
Considering these things, he said, questions such as these remain in the two hard basket.
And he also said, how many preachers fail? Many. No one talks about it. How many miracles happen?
Not many. No one talks about it. Why is the Bible full of contradiction? No one talks about it. How can God?
Beloved yet send 4 billion people to a place all because they don't believe and it goes on. You know, it really sobered me to read these and you know, I thought well.
Popular Christianity, The songs I don't have much depth.
They just didn't really didn't have a grounding in the word of God. And you know, I was talking about this with someone and they said there's a camp similar to this one, a little bit smaller one that's going on right now or this summer. Last 10 years, 100 people have gone, 30 people are no longer in the meeting or following the Lord. And they had actually counted. I, I hadn't even discussed it with them, But that's, and you know, I grew up going to the Bill of Solis camp in Newfoundland.
00:10:12
And if I was to look at that.
The number of my peers, they're following the Lord in it. I again, I shudder to even say these things. My heart aches. It's touched.
My family, my.
Assembly my closest friends growing up, you know a few of the cases that I was considering. Very often person comes to a very difficult situation in their life.
And.
They're faced to make a choice and sometimes they just throw everything.
And so I just thinking about what?
Went wrong and there's a couple of verses that I can point about because what I want to talk about this evening is very simply the Lord Jesus. I actually find it very difficult thing to talk about because everyone here knows about them.
And yet.
He is the answer to this question. So first I'd like to just read a verse in Jude.
With respect to.
To this that struck me just in considering.
This this is Jude chapter one.
There's only one chapter of course, verse 21.
Says there, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
And then down verse 24, and this is what I want to particularly point out.
There is one person who is able to keep us from falling now unto Him.
That is able to keep you from falling and present you.
Faultless before the presence of His glory, with exceeding joy. To the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.
The simplistic.
Message this evening is do you have a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ? Are you leaning on Him every day?
And trust him because he is the only one who can keep you from falling. You know, I don't think probably.
Those. By all intents and purposes, I don't think you could say that either of those two people were saved. I don't know for sure.
The Lord knows that and I'll let him judge. But you know, this world is going in a direction where we are under the direct attack of Satan in popular culture today.
To the point where if you are a Christian.
It is completely incompatible with what society thinks is even right. And you know that is going to not make our lives if the Lord doesn't come, which of course is what we're looking for any easier.
But I just wanted to talk about the Lord Jesus this evening.
Because the situation today is not a whole lot different than it was.
Before, you know, sometimes we get to the point in our life where we don't understand, and there's things in my life that I don't understand.
Why things are in a certain for a particular question?
But I do know that I've seen what the Lord has done for me and if I look at His word, there's ample evidence and I can just say.
Lord to Himself go. So I'd like to turn to do another verse that just really struck me in connection with the streets in John chapter 6.
The Lord was in Capernaum, which was one of the primary places he taught during the 3 1/2 years of his ministry, just a little town. They all would have known him. And he started speaking on some very, very difficult things that they didn't understand. And you know what a bunch of people did? They just stopped following him. You know, I think as we get closer to Lord's return, there may be things that we just don't understand, but we can believe.
Word of God, we can believe Lord Jesus Christ and I just very struck by the wording of this passage specific to the topic that we're talking about. I have to watch my time.
00:15:03
Let's just read in John 6.
And.
Verse 56 So I want to read the verse that was one of the things they were struggling with.
I'm not going to explain it, you can ask others. But it says He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me, and I in Him. As the Father has sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. This is that bread which came down from heaven, not as your Father's did eat man, and are dead. He that eateth of this bread shall live forever. These things said He in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum.
Many, therefore, of his disciples, when they had heard this, said This is a hard saying.
Who can hear it?
When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, And this phrase struck me.
Does this offend you? I don't know that I've ever heard a time in my life where people are offended by.
So many things.
And these people were offended by what the Lord had said about eating His flesh and drinking his blood. And I can understand that being a difficult thing for them to comprehend.
But I just want to go down in Peter's response is what really strikes me in this passage.
We'll reach start reading in verse 66. It says from that time many of the disciples went back and walked no more with him.
Then Jesus said unto the 12 will ye also?
Go away.
Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go?
Thou hast the words of eternal life.
Here he came to a point.
He recognized that the Lord had the words of eternal life. He wasn't going to turn away from him even though he didn't necessarily understand these things. We know the disciples didn't understand a lot of things until they were the Holy Spirit was given. And I just very struck by that in this passage. There may be things that we don't understand, but if we look, and what I want to talk about tonight is if we look, we can be amazed.
At the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, even though we may not understand everything, we can be absolutely.
Amazed.
Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life, and we believe in our sure that thou art the Christ.
The Son of the living God.
Well, that's an introduction to sort of what I would like to speak about this evening.
And what I want to talk about was the Lord Jesus in the New Testament.
Recognizing the Lord is the only source.
Of us being able.
To be kept, you know.
I appreciated what was said earlier this week about the prayer. Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law. We can pray and ask the Lord to just open up our eyes to see beauty in the Lord, and he, I believe will will do that.
You know, as I mentioned earlier, I, I only have a few slides, not, not a lot here. I, this is not something I prepared for this meeting, but I had prepared a while back and never actually did anything with it. But, you know, today there's a failure of the church and the attacks of the enemy. That's what Robert spoke about.
And Satan, like he did in the Garden of Eden, and like he is, he's a liar and a murderer.
He's questioning absolutely everything.
To undermine our faith.
And I have a few of the things, and there may be some mistakes in this because I just added it this afternoon, But it says, doesn't the Bible fail with modern science? He's trying to say, I, yeah, the first few chapters, Genesis. No, no, you just can't trust the whole Bible. He's also trying to say, you really telling me that there's only one way to get to heaven? What about the rest of the world who believes other things?
He's also saying, shouldn't love override everything else? How could it? It's the same question. Is that what Marty wrote? How can a God of love have sent 4 billion people to hell?
Isn't being good enough? Of course good is by mansion. I'm not going to answer these questions. There are answers to everyone of them in the word of God.
But this is his attack. How can isn't the Bible full of bigotry and hatred? You look at the Old Testament. Isn't God a hateful God? How could they kill all the Canaanites?
Isn't Jesus just a good person? Is Jesus really coming back? It's a full frontal attack on Christianity, you know?
00:20:12
I had listened to a meeting that I enjoyed on Jesus in the Old Testament.
And I've been going through with my Sunday School class in Rio Ferry, a little haphazardly, but just to give an outline of the books of the New Testament.
And I had been thinking, OK, I've given sort of the key verse and thought of each one of the books of the New Testament. But I hadn't looked at the big picture of the New Testament. And it had been on my heart to look at it. And there's a lot of parallels, you know, where does the if the Lord had, if Jesus, if, if no one in this room knew the Lord Jesus and we were at the end of the Old Testament, you know, it would have been.
A very difficult time if you were a Jew and had the word of God.
Not terribly unlike it is for us now, you know, the Adam and Eve had failed in the garden and eaten the fruit when they shouldn't have. Innocence had failed. God had given mankind a conscience. And when he looked down in Noah's day and it was only evil and he destroyed the world, you know, after the flood, he said to Noah that.
That someone killed someone and they should also be killed. There was a form of government introduced and that failed.
Then he hand picks a man, Abraham, and gives him a specific promise.
And Abraham has trouble waiting for the promise and fails in that. And then he promises a whole nation, Israel, blessings if they keep the law and they fail. And that that's where the Old Testament ends. And if I just, I made a few notes here and if you compare a little bit of the notes here, it's not that different from where we are at the end of the day of grace. And I'm not going to go into dispensations. I know Tim has spoken on this before and that's not my intent, but just to.
About what it would be like if the Lord was not here.
At the end of the Old Testament, God's chosen people had turned from the Lord in Hosea.
Jose he labels them not my people, you know, the government which Israel had controlled the under Solomon particularly had had control over much of the world had been handed over to the Gentiles. So.
The government was no longer under the control that a person who knew the word of God would have thought. You know, only a few people remained at the place of the Lord's choosing.
There had been a promise of a Messiah that was hidden, sort of, in all these writings, and he hadn't come.
And in the book of Ezekiel, there was a promise of this new temple that was going to be beautiful and the Lord was going to be there and it was going to be wonderful. That hadn't happened. The end of Malachi, it ends with the threat of a curse.
What would it have been like to live at that time before the Lord?
Came.
And you know, we're living at the end of the day of grace. And what is it like to live at this time?
If we ignore.
The Lord.
It's a searching thing to consider, you know.
These things shouldn't be particularly new to me at all. But you know, I thought, you know what, I'm just going to step back from the New Testament a little bit. And, you know, it blows me away is the entire New Testament from Matthew 11 to the end of Revelation.
We talked about yesterday it being prophecy, being summed up as Jesus wins.
The New Testament you can almost summarize in one word, Jesus.
You know it's.
It's so easy for us to lose our focus on the Lord Jesus. I think of the man of Transfiguration. They wanted to build 3 temples.
They should have only been seeing Jesus only. And I just want to point out a few things that struck me.
How does the New Testament start?
First verse of Matthew and I know that the order of the books is not necessarily inspired, but.
The answer to all of the problems of the Old Testament.
We're going to be revealed in a single man, the Lord Jesus Christ.
And the Holy Spirit gives just and I use a contemporary like a mic drop.
00:25:05
To say this is the promised Messiah that fulfills everything of the Old Testament. I'm just going to go through the books of the New Testament and point out what I've enjoyed. And you are Matthew 11. What does it say? The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David. I promised David that his descendants would sit on the throne. This is the person Jesus Christ, the son of Abraham I.
Abraham, that he would have seized as the sand of the shore, and the stars of heaven. This is the man.
In the book of Matthew he takes incredible.
Pains.
Not pains. He shows us the Lord as the answer to the Jews as the Messiah.
You know, if you're in a royal lineage, I'm a Canadian so maybe it's Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles William and handed down through George it it gives the the what is needed to know that Jesus is the Messiah.
According to the promise to David was that he was of the royal lineage and it just spells it out for you and says you want traces, It's there. I will go right back from Abraham all the way down to the Lord Jesus. If you have any interest in knowing whether Jesus is the answer, it is there. And by the way.
Verse 21 That she shall bring for the Son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus, and he shall save his people from their sins.
In Matthew.
He goes through and presents to us.
The Lord Jesus is the rejected Messiah, giving us the detail as a king.
You know, I can't talk about this mountain of learning I couldn't even begin to go into.
The books the the four gospels and tell you all the details of these things. They can be dugout and learned one at a time, but they're there.
Well, this, the genealogy is one of the very clear ones to me and one that I've enjoyed. But there it is. The Holy Spirit is showing us that Jesus is the Messiah. He's going to save his people from their sins. You go to Mark the next book.
And actually, so that's how the Word of God starts. I'm going to, I'm a little off track. You go to the end of the Bible or end of the New Testament. Where does it say? And I think Revelation very clearly is the end of the New Testament.
Is Jesus the focal point? Absolutely. Revelation 22, verse 20.
Even so, come Lord Jesus, the grace.
Of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. It starts with the Lord. It ends with the Lord. You know even in those the first verse and the last verse you have grace in both both verses. David is a beautiful.
A model of grace, Abraham is a beautiful model of faith.
David's son, who the Lord referred to.
Is, is Solomon in all of his wisdom and glory, and Abraham's son is Isaac, which is a picture of the cross. Yeah, the Lord's, you have all, even the cross. You have the Lord's coming of grace just in these 222 verses at the start of the end of the New Testament. And you know, if you, it's not just Matthew and Revelation, if you were to go through, and I didn't even really necessarily think about this, if you go through every book of the New Testament.
You'll notice that almost every single one of them references the Lord Jesus Christ in the first verse of the book, and very often in the last verse of the book. He is very clearly.
The central focal point, and if you think that the fact that God's desire is to glorify the Lord, it helps us understand it a little bit. But to me, it's an incredible thing just to know that. I mean, if you go to Mark, let's just turn to Mark one.
What does it say there? The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it is written in the prophets. Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before the you know the interesting thing in an all four gospel, the talks with John the Baptist, whose job was to say the Messiah is coming. His job was to prepare the way. This is the person who is the answer to all of the problems of the Old Testament.
He's here, you know, that's a in Mark. He's portrayed as the.
Perfect servant.
And.
00:30:00
Answers to prophecy in the Old Testament references to servant in the old you know, in America servant has no genealogy if I.
Came to work on a farm down here as a or. That's not a good example. If I was a servant to somebody anywhere, you don't necessarily expect like I'm not expected to trace my genealogies in the same way that Prince Charles would at all I'm just.
The Lord didn't highlight his genealogy in this book, but he's the perfect fulfillment of that perfect servant in the book of Mark. And we can see it there. And again, the Lord is the focal point, the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is written and it just goes through of how he was a perfect servant in that book. You know, you go to Luke where he's pictured as the Son of man.
And the Lord isn't in the in the first verses of Luke, He's not.
Necessarily his name isn't mentioned, but but he he specifically talks about it says for as much as many have taken in hand to set forth in order the declaration of those things which are most assuredly believed among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word. It seemed good to me, having had a perfect understanding of all things from the very first to right under the in order. Most excellent Theophilus, if you go to.
It's crystal clear that he was giving an outline of the Lord Jesus in the book of Luke.
And in the book of Luke as a perfect man, you have the genealogy through his mother, which of course.
In Matthew, it's his legal father. In Luke it's his.
His mother.
Through man biologically you know it's an incredible to see how God presents the Lord Jesus to us in John and you know the world Satan just attacks us is Jesus really God He's just a good man. We're taking this up and and I I know these are things that aren't new to anybody here. First verse of John.
The purpose of John is to present the Lord Jesus as the Son of God.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. And then later on it says, And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory. The glory is of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
John says, Behold the Lamb of God. He presents the Son of God to the world.
The entire focus of these four books, Matthew answers the questions of the Jews in terms of him being a Messiah and fulfilling so many of those prophecies. Actually, all four of the books do, but.
Hear the Lord God shows us from 4 different angles. This is the person that is the answer to all of the problems. And you know the same thing is true even today.
Unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and present you.
Unstained. It is the Lord Jesus Christ and you know, we need to dig into these things.
To really come to an appreciation from, you know, when I had originally put this together.
I was looking at it just from an overview of the New Testament, but then when I stepped back and said what's a whole New Testament about and realized it's the Lord Jesus Christ. Every single book you can take and look at it from the perspective of who the Lord is. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John very clearly present the Lord in in different ways, you know?
So in the Old Testament they followed the 10 commandments and the law.
So how does Jesus affect everything? Well.
The central event of the Lord's life that happens at the end of the Gospel.
Gospels is his death and resurrection. The fact that the Lord Jesus Christ is alive changes absolutely everything. It means when you have a difficulty in your life like Sean spoke about.
If you're human and maybe.
Your your father hasn't necessarily gone out. You can cry out to the Lord and he will. He's alive. You're not talking to a wall. You're not just reading a book. He is a living person and without the resurrection.
Our faith is in vain. You can read 1St Corinthians 15 to see absolutely crucial the Lord is alive. If you look at the other the other religions of the world, they don't speak of a risen living person who you can spend time with every day, who you can read their word, you can speak with them. The resurrection is absolutely critical. You know one of the verses and I that I appreciated with respect to the reservation if you go to ox.
00:35:21
Is the book after the gospels and it presents basically how.
The work of the Lord changes things. So the Old Testament and it just gives the history of it and you know, that's important to understand just.
And so you have different things.
In the book, the Book of Acts, and I'm not going to go into them, the Lord promises his return. The Lord's brightest form, the gospel of the Lord spreads out in the three missionary journeys. It talks about the transition from the law to grace and the assemblies. With the Lord's presence established, the Lord Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection changed absolutely.
Everything and it didn't just affect Jerusalem, it spread out to the whole world. And that includes the very fact that we can meet in this room tonight. And so here in this book, we're we're told in the first four books of the New Testament who the Lord is. In this book we're told how the history of how it impacted everything and how the word of God spread throughout the world. And that's absolutely necessary. And there's wonderful things, you know, as we understand the framework as it was mentioned earlier this week.
We can dig into these things and enjoy them a little bit more.
And so you have the book of Acts that does that if you go on to the next book.
Romans, you know.
I was struck.
I know there's some young people going to Israel shortly. I was there with my daughter over March break this year and at the Garden Tomb there was a.
Is a verse mounted in tiles and it said.
And I hadn't even really noticed the verse.
Although I knew it was there, but it said and it's so applicable to the, it said Jesus, sorry.
Jesus Christ and then it goes, this is Romans one verse three and it skips a couple sections which I never thought of. In this way Jesus Christ declared to be the Son of God with power.
By the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
With power.
By the resurrection of the dead, the United verse just struck me the resurrection. Here we have a book. What does this book do? It says it explains to us what we need to be do to be we need to do to be saved. And you know that's a question of this world that everyone.
Needs to consider this problem that ran all the way from Genesis through to Malachi. What's the solution to it? Well, Roman spells it out in a beautiful way. It gives the gospel you know if you go later on in the verse and notice by the way, the Lord is the focal point of that verse in Romans one verse three. But if you go and this verse was mentioned earlier this week.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believe us.
To the Jew 1St, and also to the Greek.
The gospel of who? The gospel of Christ. It's all about the Lord Jesus. The whole book of Romans.
Is presenting the Lord Jesus. It takes a stay on that path of all of sin. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, and then if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shall believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
Coined the Roman Rd. but it gives that little path of this is how to be saved.
It's all because of the Lord Jesus Christ and it spells it out, not just.
In a superficial way.
To the point where you may say, well ask Jesus to come into your heart and that's not not complete. You need to it goes through it in a very systematic and detailed way to help us to understand.
How what the Lord did and how it deals with the effect of sin and how we can accept Him as our Savior and what the effect of that should be on our life.
And how the Holy Spirit helps us to have power to do what we couldn't do previously.
You know, it's all about the Lord, but it explains that needed salvation that was needed from Genesis all the way to the end of Malachi just so that we can understand it. So you have four books that tell us who the Lord is, a book that tells how the Lord impacted history, a book that says this is what you need to do to be saved. And now you get into the Gospels.
00:40:25
In the first, in the next, the next books are letters to.
Assemblies or the bride and body of Christ and you know everyone has an aspect where.
It gives us incredible teaching and again, in almost every case points to the Lord and you want to know how we should meet as believers. Corinthians gives that to us in a beautiful way. It deals with difficulties that were hopping in an assembly to help explain how things should be done, but it really helps answer those questions.
That we would have on that, you know, you go to Galatians, we've been talking about legalism.
And bringing the law in when it shouldn't. You know Galatians is a book that.
In relation to legalism in general is a very good book to read and to think about because what had happened was.
Some of the Jews were saying, well, we need to keep this part of the law. It's OK to have Christianity and.
They were adding to, but the problem with that was was it was attacking what the Lord Jesus had actually done. It says in Galatians one it says I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel.
Considering.
Legalism and want to come in in Galatia, they needed to look at the Lord and the.
Gospel of the grace of God and to look at it in that context and to add to what the Lord had done is that finished work on the cross was a very, very, very serious thing and I realized that not all.
Legalism is is in that format, but.
Just wonderful to recognize that here you have a book that's dealing with the very questions we've been talking about and it's all about.
The person of the Lord Jesus Christ and not, not straying from the grace of the gospel that's in there. You know, you go to Ephesians.
And what do you have in Ephesians?
Ephesians one is probably taken up more than any other chapter.
I've heard of Indiana reading meetings at conferences, and it's not necessarily a bad thing, but those blessings that we're given as believers?
Our wonderful things that need to be defended with the armor of God at the end of that book.
But you know that those blessings if you go to Ephesians 1.
Where do they come from?
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all.
Spiritual blessings in heavenly places.
In Christ.
In Christ.
It's all because of the Lord Jesus Christ that we have those blessings.
You know, I can't go into these because obviously we can go on all day, but anyone of these and I'm not even particularly, it's just been helpful to me to get these this framework in my head to realize that the Lord is the central tenet of every book of the New Testament. So Ephesians, our blessings are in Christ. You know, Philippians, what do you have in Philippians? You know, I, I love Philippians. It's practical Christianity.
You have in every book a different aspect.
You have Jesus as our goal. You have Jesus, our example. Jesus is our, Christ is our, I should say, Christ and Christ is our life. He's presented as a different. The Lord has presented to us practically in every single book or every single chapter of Philippians. He's to be our joy, our example and our joy and what Christianity looks like. And it's presented in a very practical way by a man who's in prison. But it's all again, it's all about.
Jesus Christ, how can we deal with the difficulties? It's a beautiful book to look at from that perspective. You go to Colossians and you know, Colossians deals a little bit and I don't, again, I don't profess to have as even as clear an understanding as I should in some things. It deals with people who were steaming some days over other days. But you know what? The focal point or one of the verses I love in the first chapter of Colossians is on my parents wall.
00:45:00
The theme of their marriage.
Then in all things he might have the preeminence.
No holiday, it's a person he deserves the preeminent place. You have some of the greatest truth about the Lord Jesus in the book of Colossians that it pleased and I'll read it as I just don't want to get it wrong.
It pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell.
It pleased the Father that the fullness of the God hedge dwelling. You know, I I another passage I was thinking about our focal point needing to be the Lord Jesus Christ. You know when the Lord was baptized. You have the Trinity, the Father saying this is my beloved son and whom I'm well pleased, the Holy Spirit coming down and the Lord there. This is.
The person.
That the Godhead wants to glorify. You know, I hesitate even saying these things for fear that I'll get mixed up and saying them technically correctly. But the Lord is the central.
The central point that he wants to glorify so in Colossians and you know, you get to the book of Thessalonians.
What's in Thessalonians, and this is so important, in the Old Testament, they were looking for the Messiah. What are we looking for?
We're looking for the Lord's return, The hope that we have in the Lord's He's going to give the shout and he's going to call us home.
Is in every single chapter.
Of Thessalonians.
That hope, which is the Lord Jesus, and you know, that's one of the things that keeps us, as it said in Jude is, is to look forward to that hope of the Lord coming.
Remarkable to me just to think about that a little bit again.
It's the Lord we're looking for. He's the focal point of that book. You go to Timothy and you know Timothy deals with the assembly or the body price in order and disorder. It's in first and 2nd. And in Titus you see setting right and bringing to order the the assembly button Christ by. And I'm not going to go into the detail of that, but again, this has to do with the fact that as believers, we are part of the variety of Christ. We're part of his body.
And the encouragement that the Holy Spirit is giving us through these books to individuals is a tremendous thing to consider.
And very humbling and searching the second looks, of course, give us things before the return of the Lord and near the end of the lives of of some of the of of these. And it's just it's beautiful to me to consider that you know, Philemon, we have.
And I was in going through this and just thinking about it, I was thinking, well, how is Philemon have to do?
With the Lord, but you know it's the grace of the Lord that had to be shown there towards that slave that ran away in that book and it was beautiful. Do you mean you just read the 1St chapter says Paul the prisoner of Jesus Christ. The Lord has mentioned Timothy our brother, undefined, Lehman, our dearly beloved and fellow of laborer, and Afia and Archipelas our fellow soldier. The church has grace be unto you and peace.
From God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Again, beautiful to see that in that book, you know, you go on to Hebrews if you were a Jew and all of these things had changed.
It would be very helpful to have it explained to you as to OK So what about the law in the Old Testament? What does the Holy Spirit do? It talks about how the Lord fulfills and answers all of the things.
That are in the Old Testament and you know, first chapter of Bruce any point I pointed this out and it probably came from somewhere else, but Jesus is greater than the prophets in the first chapter and he's greater than the angels in the second chapter and he's greater than Moses in the third chapter and he's greater than Joshua in the 4th chapter and it goes on through the book greater than Aaron. He's the complete fulfillment. The focal point of Hebrew is to say Jesus is the answer to everything you had in the Old Testament.
Explain to you.
So that you can follow it. Beautiful to see that.
James again, I was one that I struggled with a little bit just to think about, you know, I just read the 1St.
Few verses of the Book of James.
00:50:01
And it struck me, says James, the servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the 12 tribes which are scattered abroad. My brethren, all joy when you fall into divers temptations. Knowing this, at the tribe of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that you may be perfect in entire, wanting nothing. You know it is the faith.
Evidence of faith in the Lord in that book that is shown by our works.
You know, for a while they didn't necessarily think that James should be part of the Canon of the New Testament, but they recognized later on that it should be. But, you know, the evidence of our faith in the Lord Jesus is shown by works in our life. It's beautiful to see that, you know?
Peter, again, I don't know these things very well, but you see suffering a lot in Peter. You see the Lords coming with reference to the Jews, more the appearing and how it had to do. In that respect, suffering is addressed, which is something that we don't. But you know who leads the suffering.
It's the Lord himself. Just if you go to first, Peter.
Chapter one it says searching what or what manner of time the spirit of Christ.
Which in them did signify when it testified beforehand of the sufferings.
Of Christ in the glory that should follow. So although it takes up suffering from a human perspective.
It was the suffering of Christ and the glory that followed that is brought before you know it. Again, the Lord is the central point and I know again this is nothing new. And in first John you see core Christianity and 2nd John you see the seriousness of of taking away from the person of the Lord. And in 3rd John divisive Christians. In Jude we already talked about the Lord is the safeguard in every one of these books from Matthew.
Through revelation, the Lord is presented to us. We need to spend time reading it, considering it, spending time in his presence. And then you have and I again, I appreciate it so much, which was said prophecy. It's that Jesus wins.
You just read the first few verses of of Revelation is all about the Lord, the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto Him to show unto His servants the things which must sortly come to pass.
And he sent and signified it by his Angel unto his servant John, who bare record of the word of God and the testimony.
And of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all the things that he saw. Blessed is he that read it.
And they adhere at the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein for the for the time is at hand.
The whole Book of Revelation. And again, none of these things are new.
It's all about the Lord.
Why did these things strike me just in going through them again just to consider?
How easy it is for us to lose. Get our eyes off the Lord.
But this whole New Testament, the whole Old Testament points to him. The whole New Testament shows us who he is and all about him. And we need to just look to him and spend time in his presence and you know.
The final verse that I would like to read just before we sing, you know, Tim gave us an outline of the Book of Revelation 1000 times better than I could ever do it. But the end of the church on earth before the scene opens in heaven in chapter 4.
What struck me there?
Was You've laid us here at the last church.
There they think that they're rich and increase with goods and they're not. But what does the end of that? Just those last few verses in terms of our need to be dependent on the Lord, to listen to him, to hear him like Samuel who heard the word of the Lord through his word and spending time in his presence. What does it say? Revelation 3, verse 20.
Behold, I stand at the door.
And knock.
If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come into him, and will Sup with him, and he with me. You're supping with the Lord.
You're in a very safe place.
Just as that hymn we opened up with.
I will Sup with him, and he with me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit in my throne, even as I also overcame and sat down at the right, sat down with my Father in his throne. He that hath an ear, let him hear with the Spirit saith.
00:55:11
Unto the churches.
Maybe we could just close by singing 309.
Somebody could start that.
What do you have nowhere else to?
Bring no sanction.
Every.
Thing.
Me now bring.
He's closing prayer.
Our God and Father.
We just come before thee, and we just would thank thee for the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior.
We acknowledge how often our eyes.
Lose their focus on you, Lord Jesus, and turn to this thing, the things of this world.
And the enemy seeks to attack us. Lord Jesus, help us.
To just see thy beauty, so perfectly given to us by the Holy Spirit in the Word of God, help us to each value it, to dig into it, to climb that mountain that was talked about earlier, and to enjoy it.
Lord Jesus, that thou might be our sanctuary. Just pray for each one in this room.
It will be kept, O Lord Jesus, my power is not limited and thou art able just pray for Thy blessing on the balance of this time here to be profitable and that we be an encouragement in Lord Jesus that we would see.
We just asked this in the name of the Lord Jesus, Amen.
David
Children—Mark Gorgas
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Good morning, everyone.
It's time for the Sunday squad. I've been looking forward to singing the kids songs with you guys, you know, and we're up in the front of the hymn sing and playing the guitar and looking out on all the faces. I love to look around and see who's enjoying singing. I, I love to sing and I love to sing about the Lord Jesus and with his people. And I love to look and see your smiling faces and see you guys that you know the words to the songs. So I hope you know the words to the songs this morning because we have one hymn book to share for all of us, but we're going to sing.
Out of this book, and if you guys can remember songs that you'd like to sing, just raise your hand. So does anyone have a song that they'd like to start with?
A number. Sorry I don't know a lot of your names, but what would you like to sing?
#15.
It's brave, Gideon.
Brave Gideon had 300 men.
A great one to start with. Who else has a song that they would like? Yes.
#2.
A little child.
Is anybody here three or four? Raise your hand if you're three or four. Anybody 3.
Four or seven or some something in between. We have. You're seven. Yeah. I like singing that because it reminds us all that no one is too young to come to the Lord Jesus. You're old enough to come to the Lord Jesus.
Tier 3. Yeah. You're old enough to come to the Lord Jesus, and he wants you to come to him. The door is open for everyone. All right. Who else has one?
Yes.
Number 88.
There once.
00:05:00
OK, before we go on, let's pray. Let's look to the Lord for help. Our loving God and our Father, we thank you so much for the Lord Jesus. We thank you that we know that he was your Son and that you sent him to die. Lord Jesus, we thank you so much for allowing your hands to be nailed to that cross and taking our sin upon you. And we look to you for this little time we have for the children set aside.
We've so enjoyed being together as believers.
And we long for each one of these children to know you, Lord Jesus, as their own personal Savior, to have that faith.
And we pray that you would lead them to salvation this morning if they do not know you. We think of this song we have just sung and think of how our wills are so set against you and Lord Jesus. You can make even the vilest, even the one who is set most stubbornly against you. You can change the heart. And so we look to you for this. We ask these things in Jesus name. Amen. OK, we'll keep singing for a little bit. Who hasn't given one out that would? We haven't gotten any from over here.
Would anyone like one?
Claire, you always have one.
You have one.
#7.
And his name shall be.
How many of you learned the verse this week and would like to say it with or without help? We can help you.
Just a few, OK, maybe when we get there you guys will want to say it's it's easy.
And it means a lot. OK, anyone over here have one?
You have a song you'd like to sing?
#29.
Genesis, Exodus, Levi.
Chronicles.
Of Sun I take care of my take care of my life.
You might find this a little bit funny. I was thinking as we sang that song, you know what song I probably sing the most?
In meeting, I usually sing in my head, but in a lot of meetings someone gives out a reference to a book of the Bible and I have to sing this song. I sing about 3 words usually in my head and it helps me find the passage. Raise your hand. Does anyone else do that? I sing this song a lot, so I'm glad you guys are learning. It's very helpful. All right, who else has another one? Yes.
Close it.
#8.
00:10:04
It's angry words, so let them never. Could someone help me start that please?
Raise your hand if you can tell me what fellowship is.
Is that a hard word? We use it a lot.
Someone try at least Yes. What do you think fellowship is? Hold on, let me get.
I'm going to get you the microphone if you don't mind.
What is fellowship?
To talk about God, Yeah. We enjoy fellowship together. Does anyone else have an answer? And we talk about God and the Lord Jesus, Cassandra.
Being together, being together. We do enjoy fellowship when we're together. What is the fellowship that this song is talking about? Who can help me out?
It said happy fellowship is broken.
By a single angry word. Now we do have fellowship together through the Lord Jesus, and if we say an angry word to each other, we might break that fellowship. But what is this talking about? What do you think, Logan? You had your hand up happiness. No, I think it's talking about the relationship that we enjoy with the Father, through the Son and with the Son and.
I think of that line often.
That a single angry word can break that fellowship. He is always faithful, but we are not, and we let things come into our lives. Sometimes it's an angry word. Sometimes it's just an angry thought. Sometimes it's just a wicked thought.
And fellowship is easily broken, that relationship we have with him.
We're still his children, He still loves us. But our hearts, when we take pleasure in sin, our hearts become cold and we have to deal with those things before fellowship is restored, right?
So we need to keep that in mind as we go about our days. Just very, very little things will make us grow cold and out of fellowship with the Lord. OK, another song. Cassandra 39.
I am so glad.
I say this is the dearest, that Jesus loves me. I am so glad that you are so sweet. Jesus loves me. Jesus spots me.
I am so glad that she felt so deep.
Beautiful. Let's do one more before we go into the verse. We have someone down here. You gave one out already. Anyone that didn't give one out, yes.
46.
In the house and out.
OK, I think Mr. Roach told us that the verse is in John chapter 10, verse 11. Does that match what any of you learned? Raise your hand if you learned that verse. John 1011. Great. OK, I'm going to read it to you.
This is the Lord Jesus speaking. He says I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. John 1011. So hopefully we have a few volunteers to say the verse. Raise your hand if you'd like to say it. OK, we'll start right here. John 1011.
The Good Shepherd The Good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. John 1011. Very good.
I am the Good Shepherd, the Good Shepherd who giveth his life for all the sheep.
On John, John 10. John 1011.
John, 1011.
I'm a Good Shepherd, a Good Shepherd.
Give it, give it his love for the sheep. John 1011. Very good. It's his life that he gives for the sheep.
Like to say it?
John John 1011 and the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd given it.
00:20:04
Very good.
John 1011 I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.
Pass it right there.
On the good Sabbath, the good supper gives life for the steep. John 1011. Perfect, thank you. You look like you'd like to say it.
John, can I?
10/11/10.
I am.
Johnnie Lynn I am and the Good Shepherd, the Good Shepherd, the shepherd shepherd, the Good Shepherd giveth. The Good Shepherd giveth life. Life for the sheep or sheep very good. And what else must say it?
OK, anyone over here?
Feeling brave?
I am the Good Shepherd. He gives his life for the sheep. John 1011. Thank you.
I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. John turn 11.
John 1011. I'm the Good Shepherd, The Good Shepherd give us his life for the sheep. John 1011.
Thank you.
Should I say it?
John 1011 I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. John 1011 Very good.
John 1011. I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. John, 1011.
John 1011 I am the Good Shepherd, the Good Shepherd giveth his life where the sheep. John 1011. John 1011 I am the Good Shepherd that give his life for the shape done. John 1011. OK you guys did great. Is there anyone else that's not in the front row that would like to say it okay?
Would you like to? Are you just being volunteered? OK, we can let the volunteer do it.
Would you like to OK a good sport?
I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd give his life for the sheep. John Tenilla.
I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. John, 1011.
Pass it right, That's OK.
I am the Good Shepherd.
A good ship.
Give him life.
Or the sheep. John 1011. Very good. Anyone else?
Oh, we have a few more. OK.
And then you can pass it right back when you're done with it.
John, 1011.
I am the Good Shepherd.
The Good Shepherd.
Give us his wife for the sheep.
John, 1011.
I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. John, 1011.
Thank you. Did we miss anyone?
I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. John, 1011.
I am.
Good to separate.
Because the bird.
Give him his legs.
For the sea, John.
1011, perfect. Thank you.
OK, anyone else? That was great. I loved hearing you guys say that. I think everyone in here loved hearing you say that. And the Lord Jesus, he's the one who said those words, and he loved hearing you say that.
So we know as the Lord Jesus who said those words, but who is the Good Shepherd?
Who's the Good Shepherd? There are a lot of shepherds in this world.
And a lot of them are good at what they do. But who is the Good Shepherd? Clara, the Lord Jesus, He was the Good Shepherd.
00:25:07
You know, when I think of shepherds, I don't know very many, but I've come to know one pretty well, and he's in the Bible. Can anyone think of a shepherd besides the Lord Jesus in the Bible?
Yes, David, Yeah.
And David loved his sheep and he did a lot for his sheep. He had actual sheep.
In the wilderness that he took care of, and there was a time when a lion came against his sheep, there's a time a bear came against his sheep, and he rose up with his own hands.
In the might of the Lord the power was from the Lord, and he slew that lion and that bear with his own hands.
I was thinking about.
Some of the words that David wrote.
In Psalm 23.
He was a very Good Shepherd, but David also was a bad shepherd at times. Not only did he lead his sheep.
The kind that had wool. But he led his people in the wilderness and he was a Good Shepherd at times.
And you know what one of the things that a shepherd has to do is he has to keep his sheep out of danger.
And sometimes he was a bad shepherd, and he didn't keep his people out of danger.
And he and he didn't stay before the Lord at all times, and he made mistakes. But I was thinking of in Psalm 23 of this shepherd, it says, yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. This was David, he was comforted by the Lord.
When he was in the valley of death, when he was chased.
In the wilderness, when he was in dark places, when he had no friends, he felt the Lord.
Comforting him, and he felt the Lord by him, and he felt the Lord correcting him for the things that he had done wrong.
But our verse is not about David. It was our verse about who remembers who's our verse? The Good Shepherd? Who's it about?
The Lord Jesus. Our verse is about the Lord Jesus. He was the Good Shepherd.
David got out of Communion.
And the fellowship was not there at times in his life.
Because of the his own sins.
But God comforted him and drew him back and brought him back into a place of blessing.
You know the Good Shepherd, Where did his life end? Where did Jesus life end? He gave his life for the sheep. Where was it? On the cross of Calvary.
There was something very, very important that happened there.
I saw some of the kids, I think in the Sunday school lesson yesterday. You had a crown of thorns, right? Think back to that crown of thorns placed on His blessed head.
And think of the humiliation of that crown of thorns.
Here's the Good Shepherd.
He cared for his sheep all the way through his life. He showed only love and kindness to the sheep and he walked in truth. He was always obedient to his father. He always did the will of his father.
There came a time.
The whole cross experience and that leading up to it was agonizing, but there came a time on the cross.
When you could say the Lord Jesus, he came.
To the valley of the shadow of death.
David wrote those words, but I think of the time on the cross, there were three hours. What happened those three hours? What happened to the sun?
Who can help me out? What happened to the Sun? Someone else? You all know the answer, yes?
Was it light out or dark? It was dark. The Lord Jesus was on the cross. It was dark.
The shadow of death.
Had come across everything, but across his own mind and across his whole being, came the weight of sin.
And since my sins, and if you've put your trust in the Lord Jesus, you can say your sins too.
But the difference?
00:30:01
Between what happened with David and what happened with the Lord Jesus, David was the one.
Who had failed, and yet he was the one. When he was in the dark valley, he was comforted.
Who do you think comforted the Lord Jesus when He was there on the cross in those dark hours?
Do you think he found someone to take pity?
Do you think someone came and comforted him or brought him a glass of water to quench his thirst?
Or just put a hand on his shoulder. Or.
Just interceded for him.
Stood up for him, Raised up their voice for him.
The answer is no.
The Lord Jesus had sin placed upon him.
And.
He looked for someone to take pity, someone that could sympathize, and he would cry out from the depths of his agony as those waves rolled over him. And there was none to take pity. There was no one. Can you imagine being somewhere where you felt just the weight of everything upon you, and you were separated from your mother and your father, your friends?
And you wanted someone to just understand what you were going through, at the least.
You wanted to be taken out of it, but no one could even look at you and say I understand what you're going through.
The Lord Jesus on the cross of Calvary in those hours of darkness, with that crown of thorns on his head.
The weight of my sin upon him there was number one that could understand what he was going through, and when he cried out, no one answered.
Can you imagine in darkness and you cry out? No one answered.
The Lord Jesus was not comforted one bit, and He could not be comforted one bit at the end of it.
He would cry out, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why did you leave me all alone? But there's a very, very specific reason. It's because he was bearing the punishment of sin. And so that's why he said, I give my life for the sheep. At the end of that, he gave up his life. His blood was shed when he gave up his own life.
And because of what he did.
On the cross, because of who he is and where he went and what he did. Now he can say I gave my life for you. I've given my life for you.
And it's yours to take. If you're lost in sin, you don't have.
His life. You don't enjoy the things of the Lord. Maybe you enjoy being at a camp like this because.
You're with your friends, but then when we sit down to talk about the Lord Jesus, you turn everything off because you don't have his life. You only have your own, which is wretched. It's no good if you don't have the Lord Jesus's life. You are on the road to darkness.
OK, at the end of life, if you get to the end of your life or the Lord Jesus comes and he calls away his believers before the end of your life.
Then you will experience darkness.
Then you will experience what it feels like to be all alone.
To not see.
To be in terrible pain that doesn't end and you'll experience.
What it feels like to go through the valley of darkness.
All by yourself.
That's what the Lord Jesus did for you so that you wouldn't have to do that.
And all you have to do.
Is you have to realize that you're a Sinner.
You have to realize that you don't want what God has for you and that you cannot do it.
You cannot be good on your own. You have to realize that. You have to realize that you've sinned and then you need to just come to the Lord Jesus. Think back to that time on the cross where He paid for sin, for your sins. Admit that it was for your sins and ask the Lord Jesus with His blood to wash away your sins and then gone forever.
So you won't have to experience what separation from God feels like.
That's for you to do. I can't do it. The person next to you can't do it. Your mom, your dad, your brother, your sister, they can't do it for you. You have to ask the Lord Jesus to wash away those sins.
00:35:07
Now I did have on my heart another little message.
Concerning the other shepherd that we spoke about, you can turn to First Samuel.
We have.
Do we have 10 minutes left, Tim? OK.
We have a little bit of time left. I've been thinking about how we're coming to the end of this camp. Conferences, camps, time together with believers. They're always refreshing.
And what I have to say is for you children and older ones too, who know the Lord Jesus.
Think of the life of David.
A shepherd boy raised.
Knowing how to take care of sheep and not only knowing how to take care of them, but caring for them. He had a heart that was tender and he had a heart that went after God and after God's things and he feared the Lord and he had confidence in him. We heard about some of the things that David did when he was taking care of his sheep, and everyone knows the story in first Samuel chapter 17, when David was called up from taking care of the sheep and he came out to where?
There was a battle that was going on, and there was a champion who stood up above everyone, and he defied them and defied the army of the living God. And David came out and he was appalled that no one would stand up to this giant. And he had confidence in the Lord. He stood up to the giant and he went, and he took that stone and he slang it into the head of Goliath, and he fell down and cut off his head with his own sword.
David was a champion before that happened. David was anointed.
To be king, he was going to be king someday in Israel.
And the Lord had chosen him. The Lord wanted David to be king, and he was going to make sure that that happened. But the people, they had chosen, someone else we heard about, they had chosen Saul. And that man did not have faith as we know it.
And he was not after God's own heart, but he was there was something that he was very stubbornly after.
What was Saul very stubbornly after he wouldn't give up on, You know, Logan, What did Saul wanted to do?
Paul, he wanted to kill David. He wanted to destroy David. And so every chance he got he would try to take his spear and he wanted to just throw it right through David. He wanted to end his life. He hated him.
And so David spent a lot of time running from SAW.
Was David capable of taking Saul's life? He was.
But he was a man who waited on the Lord, and so he was waiting for the right time, not to take Saul's life, but for the right time to be king. And he knew that the Lord would allow that. We read in Proverbs that even the King's heart is in God's hand.
And every breath that we have is in his hand and he allows everything.
Of everything allows it all. So he knew that one day he would be king, and as he ran away from Saul, there are at least two times we had a chance. He could have taken Saul's life very easily and quietly from him. That he did not very honorably did not, and waited patiently.
In chapter 26 of First Samuel, we read about one of those times, and I'm not going to read through the details because we just have a few minutes remaining. David spared Saul's life again. And the reason I have this next chapter on my heart is because right now, maybe everyone's experiencing a little bit of a high point in their spiritual life. You've come apart from whatever.
Weights you might have had back at home.
Maybe even sin and you're apart from it and you're enjoying being with the Lord's people. You're enjoying.
The things in His Word, because you are a Christian and you delight in those things. But now?
In a couple hours, many of us will leave, and by tomorrow we'll all be gone.
From this place and we'll be back home.
And we're going to go back to our lives.
I've seen this in my own life, that you can go from the highest point to the lowest point faster than you can imagine.
And we doubt that to be true sometimes, and we lose our sense of dependence on the Lord.
00:40:02
So I want to speak to everyone that's here now. When we go home tomorrow, we go back to our routines.
Be dependent on the Lord this man David chapter 27 of first Samuel verse one, it says David said in his heart, I shall now perish. I'm going to die by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape into the land of the Philistines and Saul shall despair of me to seek me anymore in any coast of Israel. So shall I escape out of his hand. If we had time, we turn to some of the Psalms and see that.
He knew where his confidence should be, and he had placed his confidence in the Lord, and he knew where refuge and safety were. They were in the Lord. He knew those things very, very intimately. He knew them very much to be true. It wasn't that he was faking it. And yet somehow he loses sight of that and he says this man Saul, who I've spared his life many times, his heart is in the Lord's hand. He then says, Saul's going to take my life and I have nowhere better to go than to the Philistines.
Has anyone in this room ever been in that position?
You're a Christian and maybe you're in school, work, wherever it might be, and suddenly you've lost sight of the Lord and you think that there's nowhere better for me to go than to go and hide in the world. I've done that.
It's very easy to do.
And it makes a fool of ourselves and brings shame to the Lord.
And it brings hurt and disaster in our lives.
You know Saul found out that David went to Gath.
Where Goliath was from. Think about that. And that's where he was hiding.
And we read that Saul gave up chasing David. You know what the enemy of your soul wants you to do.
Give up on doing things like this. He wants you to give up on following the Lord.
And you might feel a sense of ease, if you're willing to do that, from his attacks, if he gets you where he wants you. You may feel a little different sense of security, but it's a false sense of security. And you start to go to sleep. We read that David was there for 16 months.
He was even given his own city for his family to hide out in.
We know some of the very, very low places that David made it to in his life, and maybe we Passover this one. Sometimes David think about it. And his hundreds of men, they left those places in the wilderness where the Lord was keeping them in safety in a cave. And he came and hid in a city given to him by a Philistine king, and he brought his family there and his mighty men, and he placed them there.
And this was actually the second visit that David had made there the first time.
When he came, they didn't even believe him. They knew who David was. This was the one who they had sung in the streets that he had killed 10s of thousands. They knew who this man was and they didn't trust him. If you're a believer, you've you've.
Put up a flag in this world that you're a believer and if you want to retreat from the Lorde things now and you want to go back into the world, you may seek a place there, but you don't have a place there. And so David, he has to, he acts like he's insane when he goes back there. Just he wants to prove to them that he's not who he is and it's not believed. And the things we sometimes go to as believers in the world.
Are far worse than what people in the world might do because we we know the life that we have and then we have to despise it. And we go to extremes that are awful. And in this case here, David hears that the Philistines are going out to battle. You know who they're going out to battle with?
Does anyone know Paul?
With the Israelites and David, you know what he did, this mighty man of God, he gets in line right behind the Philistines, and he says, I'm going to go out to battle against the Israelites. And they don't even trust him to go. And the king wants him to go. And the other men wisely say, do you know who this David is?
And they insist that he not go.
Here a man of God.
Used so strongly and mightily for the Lord, a man who had a heart to go after God.
Standing behind the Philistines to go to battle with them against the Lord's people.
Now don't put yourself too far from that.
00:45:03
Because when we get away from the Lord, we're willing to go against his people.
The Lord intervened. He does that in our lives sometimes when we're his. He works with us. He doesn't give up. And so David is not allowed to go into battle against the Israelites. The Lord spares him from that awfulness. He had been sparing Saul's life all those years and it was going to be taken. And he allows David not to be part in any of that.
David goes back to a city, Ziklag, where his.
Family was and where the families of all his men were. And you know what they find there? This city where he had taken refuge had been burned, and they find it empty.
And desolate. And all his loved ones gone. You know, if you continue in sin.
As a believer, if you get away from the Lord and you continue in that path, you're going to find the Lord is going to wake you up to what you're doing. At some point you're going to find sorrow and David.
Had was so discouraged, You know what? The men who had followed him faithfully in the wilderness, what they wanted to do with David at that point. They wanted to kill him. They wanted to stone him.
And we read there that David at that low point in his life, in spite of his failure.
He didn't continue to run away from the Lord. It says that David encouraged himself in the Lord. I want to encourage each of you. You know the Lord Jesus and you know how precious he is, and you may have wandered from him. You may be far off. You may have gone somewhere where you're with the enemy right now, but.
The Lord is never content to leave us there, and we need to go back all the way to the beginning.
And you may find their heartache and sorrow, and you may find things that bring you to tears and to your knees.
But there, encourage yourself and the Lord. The things you know of Him now, go back to them. You may not even enjoy them at first, but go back to them. Encourage yourself and the Lord. We're out of time, but we find that David, he goes and he recovers. All that had been taken away.
All the things that and all the people that were taken out of that city, the Lord gives back to him, and I won't hesitate to think that.
There were results from that sin that he had to deal with, you know, a family that's been kidnapped. I think there's long lasting effects. But he didn't recover all. We read that David too, he made sure that when he had recovered all that he shared the spoils with all the people.
If you're away from the Lord, don't. Don't be tricked by Satan to think that there's no way back. It starts sometimes when we're just very young. A little child of three or four or seven can come to the Lord Jesus, but a little child of three or four or seven can start on a path away from the Lord Jesus, too. Don't go down that path. If you have go back to the Lord Jesus. Go back to the Good Shepherd.
Consider that He gave his life for you, and when you've recovered, what the Lord gives back to you.
Be willing to share it with others. I'll just look to the Lord.
Father, we thank you so much for your faithfulness. We think of our weakness and being able to share what is in our heart, but we do trust and commit things into Thy care. We just pray that there would be blessing from your word. We ask in Jesus name, Amen.