Michigan Family Camp: 2020
Table of Contents
Fellowship
Address—Bob Thonney
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Doesn't look like we're all here yet, but I think the hour has come so we might as well start.
Since we're not going to sing, I'm going to start with a verse.
I won't tell you where it is, I will let you.
Tell me after I pray where that verse is.
God is faithful.
By whom ye were called.
Unto the fellowship of his son.
Jesus Christ our Lord.
Blessed God our Father, what a privilege to be together.
And to open thy word.
And to read it.
And, uh, listen to divert voice speaking.
Father, we are not sufficient for the task of.
Expounding it properly, but we're so thankful for the presence and power of Thy Holy Spirit.
To make it good to each one according to the need.
We give thanks.
And ask thee for thy direction this hour, in the name of our Lord Jesus, Amen.
Who can tell me where that verse is?
First Corinthians one verse.
Nine, very good. Thank you.
To me, it is the most amazingly wonderful thing.
To think that we have been called.
To walk in fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
The creator of the universe.
God's eternal Son. It just blows my mind to try to comprehend the greatness of this person.
Never had a beginning, always was. Let me tell you, it just doesn't fit in my head.
But I have been called to walk into fellowship. If you're a believer in the Lord Jesus, you have been called to walk in the fellowship of that person.
Amazingly wonderful. I want to say that life really has no meaning until you grasp that and walk in the enjoyment of it.
Is amazingly wonderful. I want to go tonight to 1St John chapter one.
Where we have the question of fellowship address.
Fellowship.
With God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God. I'm going to read the chapter because it's only 10 verses long.
That which was from the beginning.
Which we have heard.
Which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon.
And our hands have handled of the word of life, for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us.
That which we have seen and heard declaring unto you.
That ye also may have fellowship with us.
And truly.
Our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
And these things.
Right we unto you, that your joy may be full.
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Is there anybody here that would like to be unhappy?
Please raise your hands.
Anybody here would like to be really happy, please raise your hand.
Here's the secret.
This thing's right way unto you, that your joy.
May be full.
This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. Reading first John chapter one.
If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie.
And do not the truth.
But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin.
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in US.
There's a word in this chapter that's repeated four times.
I don't know if you noticed it as we read the chapter.
It's the word fellowship.
Mentioned twice in verse 3.
It's mentioned in verse six and then in verse seven. Fellowship, what's that?
I would guess.
That's why a lot of you came here.
To have fellowship.
To enjoy each other.
We call that fellowship.
Some people say fellowship is fellows in the same ship.
But I don't exactly like that because sometimes sailors on one ship, they fight together, and that's not exactly fellowship.
Another word that is like it is communion. If you take the COM off of communion, what do you have? Union? It's being together, it's having the same enjoyments. That's fellowship and I don't know if you noticed that in verse three it says our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
That amazing.
We can have fellowship with God.
And then fellowship with one another. You know where that comes in the chapter.
Verse 7.
Oh.
Fellowship went with another isn't first.
No, it's not first.
It's the last mention of fellowship.
Tim, brother. Tim, I appreciate you as a brother. I enjoy your fellowship. I don't want to tell you you're not first. Sorry.
You're not first somebody else. It's first, you know, We got to get that settled in our minds. It's so important.
To learn to cultivate fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
With God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, I just find that so amazing. You know, I, I find in scripture that those that enjoy that fellowship.
For those who oftentimes were all by themselves, they were all wrong.
You go back to Genesis, you read about a man called Enoch.
And it said he walked with God.
I would guess the reason he walked with God is that he was in fellowship with God.
What would they do walking together? Here's God, and here's Enoch walking together.
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You know what I'm saying? They were doing this talking to you and she had it to each other.
What did they talk about? Well, if you go to the very last epistle of the Bible, you'll find out something that Enoch said. I would guess you must have got it when he was walking with God.
It says, behold, the Lord cometh with 10 thousands of his Saints. Hey, this is before the flood. How did he know about the Lord's coming with?
The myriads of his Saints, how did he know that? Because he walked with God. And I suppose one day God said to Enoch, Enoch, I just want to tell you about one of the most glorious events that's ever going to happen in human history.
The Lord is going to come with the myriads of His Saints, and it's still future for us today.
Isn't that incredible? He didn't have the Bible to know about that.
But it we it wasn't because he walked with God.
I enjoyed the story of a Sunday school girl.
That was talking about Enoch.
And this was her the way she taught. She told the story. She says Enoch was a man that walked with God.
Every day that we're walking together.
In fellowship and one day at the end of the day.
God said the Enoch, Enoch, we've come so far today.
I think you were closer to my house than we are to your house. Why don't you just come home with me?
And that's what happened.
He disappeared.
He went home to the glory he was not because God took amazingly wonderful.
Why does it have to be then that there are people that were kind of alone? And I know some of you in your local meetings maybe feel you're kind of alone. Maybe you do have friends in your meeting. That's great when you do.
I must say some of the young men in my meeting were a great help to me in getting me to go the right direction in my youth.
Abraham was another one. One day he was sitting in the tent door of his tent. He was a wealthy man. He had 318 servants.
Anybody here that has a company with 318 employees?
I really don't think so.
Sorry about that.
But Abraham, there he was, sitting in his tents door in the heat of the day. All of a sudden he lifted up his eyes. Oh, there's three men standing there.
He didn't know, I guess offhand, who they were, so he gets up and runs over to them and invites them to stay not too long when he realizes one of them is the Lord.
And later on we find out that two the two others were angels.
To me, it's amazing. Abraham was ready to have a visit from the Lord, and the Lord wanted to visit with him. I think that's fascinating. You know what? God wants to have your fellowship, You young men up here in the front, young ladies.
God wants your fellowship. To me it is the most amazing thing.
So Abraham.
Prepare the meal.
Did you know that angels eat?
I wouldn't have known that except for that.
And it has made me, ever since I got thinking about it, a little bit conscious that angels appear. You know, never in the Bible do you have that Angels have wings. That's the way they paint them in pictures.
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Seraphims and cherubims have wings, but not I don't think we ever have the record of any Angel having a wing, says they.
Fly because they're spirit beings. But.
They appear as people and there's been certain people I've met up with that afterwards I wondered.
Was that really a person or was that an Angel? Fascinating to think about. I've had people tell me fascinating stories that I don't know. I can't say it was, but I can't say it wasn't either. But it's fascinating to to think about.
So Abraham entertained the Lord and two angels.
Interesting.
It wasn't Sarah that brought out the food and served them. It was Abraham. He served the Lord and those two angels. To me, that's amazingly wonderful to think about. And they got talking and the Lord talked to Abraham about you, what he's going to do.
In connection with Sodom and Gomorrah.
Fascinating. And Abraham starts reasoning with the Lord.
What he says to the Lord, you think he was talking to another human being, but it was to the Lord. And to me that shows that God wants our fellowship. He wants us to talk to Him. He wants us to reason with Him.
Hey, Abraham, uh, Abraham said. It couldn't be that you would destroy the righteous with the wicked. That would never be right.
And so he reasons with the Lord. I find that very fascinating.
What I wanna get to your young people is that God wants to walk in fellowship with us.
And so we have here in this chapter.
The Lord Jesus.
As in verse two, it says that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us. What's eternal life?
Oh, you say that's the life that just goes on and on and on and on and on and never ends well. That's true. The eternal life is something far more than that.
For John chapter 17 and verse 3, this is eternal life, that they might know they the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.
And so eternal life is to know God.
Isn't that amazing?
This.
Puny little human being on this earth can know the eternal God. I find that incredibly wonderful.
And yet, that's the message I find in this chapter.
Just want to go back to verse one. You know there's 4 verses.
In the Bible, however, I should say four books of the Bible that have the beginning in the very first verse.
One of them is Genesis 11. In the beginning was the Word. I'm sorry, that's John 11, Genesis 11. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
John 11 is in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. But notice this is a little bit different, the beginning here that which was from the beginning which we have heard.
Which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon in our hands of handled of the word of life.
This is the beginning of the manifestation of eternal life in this world in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Wonderful to think about Him. So he says in verse one that which we have heard. Have you heard him?
Here we're reading the Word of God. You've heard him.
That which we have seen with our eyes. Have you seen him?
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It says in Hebrews chapter 2.
We see Jesus.
Who has made a little lower than the angels crowned with glory and honor? It's not seen with these eyes in our head, seen with the eyes of faith, because faith is the substance of things not seen.
And so it's become so real to us. It's less if we're looking at them. Lord Jesus is a man, a human being, sitting at the pinnacle of all authority in the glory. And it's that person to which you and I have been called to walk in fellowship with.
I don't know how to try to make it more vivid to you young people and children, older ones too.
To cultivate fellowship with the Lord Jesus.
And then he goes on to say that which we have looked upon. What's the difference between seeing and looking upon?
Seen as maybe just a glass. Yeah, I saw that person on the street today. But when you look upon something, you're looking at it very intensely.
Detailed.
So I say this, don't get looking at me. You know why is the closer you look at me, the more defects you're going to see.
The closer you look at Jesus, the more perfection you're gonna see. I just amazed at how perfect he really was in this world. You know, each person he came in contact with, he showed him who God was. He was a human being, but he was at the same time God manifest in the flesh.
Not wonderful.
That we can walk with him, we can know him.
And so one day.
There was a city to the north of Jerusalem called Samaria.
And a woman is coming out of that city with a water pot.
And as she comes toward the well to fill her water pot, there's a man sitting there.
OK, that's a little strange.
Generally, she didn't see a man sitting there.
Happened to be the Lord Jesus.
His disciples had gone to the city to seek if they could find some food.
And so as she comes up to the well, she wasn't going to talk to him because she thought he was a Jew.
And so she prepares to fill her jar with water.
And that man says to her, give me the drink.
How come you?
As a Jew, as drink of me, I'm a Samaritan. Jews and the Samaritans don't have any relations together.
The Lord, instead of answering her question, he says, if you would know the gift of God and who it was that said to you, give me to drink, you would have asked Him and he would have given you living water.
Living Water. You know what that is? It's a springing well.
Owie.
And after she talks a bit with him, she says, Sir, give me this water.
But you know what? She had a history. It was pretty sad. So the Lord Jesus in his perfect wisdom says, so call your husband and come here. So she says, I don't have a husband.
So Jesus says, yeah, what you said is true, You don't have a husband because you've had five husbands. The one you have right now isn't your husband. You said that right.
Can you imagine how she felt? There's somebody that knows all about me. I can't hide anything from him.
And so they get talking. A little later the disciples come out. She.
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Goes off. She forgot her water pot. That wasn't important anymore. She had met somebody so tremendously interesting. She goes into the city and she says to the men of the city, come see a man that told me everything I ever did. Did he tell her everything she'd ever done? No. He told her a little bit about her married life.
But she realized that he knew everything about her.
And yet she did not feel repulsed. She said come see this man. And they came out of the city and came to see Jesus. I think that is some amazingly wonderful.
Because she has such a history, was she a reject? No.
God is there in that city of Samaritan Samaria and God wants to use you and me too, but we have to learn to cultivate fellowship with the Lord Jesus. Notice what it says at the end of verse one, which our hands have handled. In other words, the apostle John says, you know what, this eternal life got so close to us that I can say our hands handle him we're not talking about.
Not cleverly devised tables. We're talking about you, that true person that came into this world.
And he wants to have fellowship to me. It was amazingly wonderful. And so he says in verse three, notice that which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us. And when he says with us, that's the apostles. He's speaking in the plural. John was an apostle, but there were other apostles that also.
Gave testimony to the Lord Jesus and it says.
Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. So what the apostles wrote down in the Scriptures is written there so that we can enjoy this fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
I want to ask you, how can you and I have fellowship with this person, you know when we get together and I don't know all your names, but I know a few of you guys names and girls names, but uh.
I talked to you a little bit. You talked to me.
That's the way you have fellowship.
So when we read the word of God, it's God speaking to us. When we pray, it's we speaking to God. And that's extremely important. The two things, reading the scriptures and praying, that's the way you have fellowship with him.
I want to ask you how many of you on your own?
Read some of the scriptures every day.
I want to ask you to lift your hand on this one, but I want you to think about it.
If this one is coming to this world with the purpose of having fellowship with us, are you going to say to him, I'm sorry, sorry, today I'm too busy, I don't have any time.
So listen.
To me, that's pretty sad.
I've noticed that generally speaking, I can read a chapter.
Most chapters in less than 5 minutes.
5 minutes, Is that too much? Can't you come up with five minutes?
To listen to him speaking to you, oh, it's such a blessing. I've noticed young men, young ladies that take time and you have to make a decision about it because we live in a busy world that pushes everything out. If you let it. You have to come to a decision to take time.
To listen to God.
Oh, how important that is, the reading of the precious Word of God. I just want to encourage you to read it consecutively. I see some people, they read over here today, tomorrow they read back here, and next day they jump over here. If you want to read and really come to understand the Scriptures, read consecutively, start Matthew 11.
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You just get one chapter market and then come back.
The next time you have time to read and start there and read on, it will help you to understand that.
I don't say this as I trust a boast.
That as something that was a real blessing to me and I was still single. When you get married, you have a lot more responsibilities and you don't have as much time. When I was still single, I decided when I was living in Chicago.
Before I went to work every morning to take one hour get up an hour earlier, Yeah, I couldn't sleep as long as I would have liked to get up an hour earlier to spend 1/2 an hour reading the scriptures, maybe some books about the scriptures, and then another half hour on my knees. Those times with the Lord.
By myself were times of tremendous blessing I.
Do not regret having done it. I want to encourage you to make a decision to take time to read the Scriptures to cultivate that fellowship with the Lord. It is a tremendous blessing. Remember what I said that in verse three is fellowship with the Father and with His Son.
It's not until you get down to verse seven that you have fellowship one with another.
So I'm glad to see you at the meetings wherever you go to meeting.
And sometimes you can't because of.
This quarantine, that's on that.
When you can, it's nice to see you there.
But I want to encourage you to cultivate fellowship with the Lord, with God as Father and the Lord Jesus as Savior. Read your Bible, pray every day. It's going to make your life meaningful.
I've read the this book for many years now.
Lot that I still don't understand.
But you know what? There is more and more that I learned. I want to tell you something. The more that you learn, the more you realize how little you really know.
Wonderful, wonderful to get to know him.
Verse four we've already talked about let's see way to be really happy. But now notice verse 5. This is the message which we have heard of him and declaring to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all.
God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.
What is light?
We got some lights in this room.
Just like making any noise. Can you hear anything there? Is it saying anything?
What in the world do we have that then?
What's that for?
So make AC, isn't it? Without that light you can't see and that's what's so important. God is light and then him is no darkness at all. If you say.
That you have fellowship with God.
You're going to have to have fellowship in the light because God is light and there is nothing you can hide in your light. Sometimes, you know, you try to hide from your parents.
Or try to hide from the brother.
You gotta learn you can have fellowship with God. You can't hide anything. God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. You know in the first chapter of Genesis it said God divided the light from the darkness. You can't mix those two things. They are mutually exclusive.
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Either there's light or there's darkness.
Don't try to mix. This world says, yeah, you're a Christian, I know, but come on, a little bit of this world is not going to hurt you. They'll try to get you to mix the light with the darkness. In the end, you can't do it. Doesn't work.
That leads to disastrous results.
For a lot, he tries to mix the light with the darkness.
And he lost everything he had in his life. Tragic. He was a saved soul, we know from the New Testament. But he lost almost everything tragic. I don't want your life to be that way. God is light and then him is no darkness at all.
But then it goes on to say no, it's verse six how it starts the 1St 3 words of verse six if we say.
1St 3 words of verse 8.
If we say.
1St 3 words of verse 10.
If we say, what's that about?
It's that it's easy to talk.
We can say, yeah, I'm in fellowship with the Lord. Yeah, no problem. I'm in fellowship with the Lord.
So verse six says, if we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie.
Do not the truth.
He puts it in black and white.
Where are you walking?
Oh, it's so important. You're a believer in the Lord Jesus. You've come to know God, really, truly know him. You're in the light. Somebody asked a brother one time what happens when a Christian turns his back on the light?
The answer was the light shines on his back and that's the truth. He was looking away from the light.
Light shows everything you are, so don't try to hide anything in the light. If you want to have fellowship with God, put that out of the out of the picture. Don't try to hide anything, it doesn't work.
So it's interesting.
Verse 10, seven then says, but if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. I think this is so beautiful. If you are walking in fellowship with the Lord and I'm walking in fellowship with the Lord, and we meet up together immediately we're going to feel the warmth of that fellowship.
One with another. It's the result of having fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ individually.
How important this is to enjoy.
You know, I sometimes see young people say I'm in fellowship. What they mean is that they're breaking bread.
But I wonder sometimes if they really are in fellowship. Yeah, they're breaking bread.
And I understand what you mean that you're in fellowship because you are partaking of that one low and of the cup, but.
It comes through walking in fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.
And then there can be fellowship, one with another.
And then it says in the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son cleanses us from all sin. Why does that verse come in there? I thought that was a gospel verse.
John is not talking to and say people here. He's talking to Christians, ones that have been born into the family of God. Why does he give that there?
You know what I've come up with my own meditation is.
That sin is what breaks fellowship with God.
Does the Christian sin?
Yeah, sorry to say.
It's not characteristic of a Christian to send, but sometimes it happens.
And when you send as a Christian, you don't lose your salvation. What you lose is your fellowship with God. Here I am walking with the Lord. Happy fellowship.
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He's right beside me.
Talking to him once in a while in my own heart.
And he gives me assurance of his presence, and come up upon a situation where I tell a little white lie.
Now is there fellowship?
What would you say?
No, you're judging me pretty strongly, aren't you?
It was just a little white lie.
You're exactly right.
No such thing as a little white lie with God. You have the Lord's right beside me still.
But now I've lost fellowship with him.
You know what? I find that so many times when young people.
Send they can't figure out how to get back in fellowship with God.
And they give place to another sin, and another, until they're a long ways off.
So I want to speak about these last few verses of this chapter, verse 8-9 and ten, because they are the ones that tell us how to restore fellowship once we have lost fellowship. Remember, sin is what breaks fellowship with God.
And the only thing that can take away sin is the blood of Jesus Christ.
That's why this comes here, because that's what God has provided, so that you and I can walk in fellowship with God.
Tremendous cost His old lady got his son hanging on that cross, suffering the awful judgment of God for sin, and then giving his life. And that soldier taking the spear and plunging into his side and out for blood and water. There he hangs a dead corpse on the cross.
That's what he paid.
So that I can have fellowship with God, You think I'm going to let?
Sin rob me of fellowship with God now.
I have to confess to you young people and older ones too, that sin sometimes comes into my life even at this age.
In fact, sometimes other ways too.
And I can sense I've lost fellowship with the Lord.
What do you do when that happens? I've seen some young people that are just so totally baffled that they just take off and go in the other direction. They don't even want to talk to their brethren anymore.
A young brother and Olivia who got away from the Lord.
We finally decided to go, two or three of us to visit him in his house.
And, uh, talk to him, see what was hindering him. Because he hardly ever showed up at the meetings anymore.
And he said, what is the problem?
And we asked him.
Did you ever confess what you did to the Lord?
Looking at verse nine, it says if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
So we asked him, Did you ever confess your sin to the Lord?
He put his head down for quite a while, finally said no. I only confessed it to the brother.
No wonder you're not restored to fellowship. It's not first with the brethren, it's first with the Lord, because sin always breaks fellowship with the Lord first of all. Yeah, it might break fellowship with your brethren too, but it's with the Lord first of all.
That was the turning point.
He confessed it to the Lord and he's back in fellowship for many years now, thankful to say, but we got to learn these things. But I just want to point out before we talk anymore about verse 9, want you to see in verse 8 and verse 10, we read the 1St 3 verses of each of these verses 68 and 10. If we say notice verse 8.
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We say that we have no sin. Notice that's sin as talking about the sin nature.
We receive ourselves, and the truth is not in US.
Verse 10 says if we say that we have not sinned, there's the act of sin. We make him a liar and his word is not in this. It's important when we sin not only to recognize the sin we've done.
But who is the guilty party?
That's what we have in verse 8, the guilty party. Where is the guilty party? You know what? When God called Adam to account, you know what Adam said, the woman.
She gave me.
Then when the Lord turned to the woman, you know what she said.
The serpent beguiled me. We always like to blame somebody else, and sometimes there are other people involved in the sin.
But you know what? If you send, you are the guilty party, and that is important to recognize.
I send OK, I am guilty. That's important.
And then verse 10 is what we've done to recognize and now verse 9.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. What's our part? Confess. What does that mean?
Tell the Lord what you did.
Dog beat around the Bush about it. He already knows what you did. Just tell him straight across the board because he knows about it.
Sometimes we like to beat around the Bush.
Remember the story of a young man? I don't know exactly where this happened, but you've gotten into bad company and you got drunk.
He felt so terrible. Afterwards he came to a brother that he had confidence in and said this is what happened to me brother, I don't know what to do.
So the brother pointed out this verse 9. You'll have to confess it to the Lord. If we confess, He's faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
So they both got down on their knees and young man started praying. Oh Lord, I really did a terrible thing. I really dishonored your name.
The older brother said beside him, Tell him what she did. So he starts out again and he just kept on beating around the Bush, not saying exactly what he did. And the brother said again, tell him what you did.
Finally said oh Lord, I got drunk.
Someone knows it, but He wants you to say it. That's confession and that's what's so important. That's our part. And then the Lord's part is what He is, faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. You can't do the clean up job. He's the one that does the clean up job.
He cleanses from all unrighteousness when you confess your sins.
I think it's such an important thing. You're going to walk in fellowship with God. You're going to have to employ what scripture says about it. Just want to say that asking for forgiveness is not what it says in verse 9.
There's so many people that think that they have to continue to ask for forgiveness when they sin.
That's not what it says.
Chapter 2 and verse 12 it says.
I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you. For His name's sake. We have the forgiveness of sins. What He asked for is not that we asked for the forgiveness of sins, that that we confess our sins, that we tell them exactly what we've done.
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It's so important.
And then he forgives. And I want to point out the fact that that forgiveness is not judicial forgiveness.
We have the forgiveness of sins judicially the moment we are. We accept the Lord Jesus as our Savior at the beginning of our Christian lives.
No, this is governmental forgiveness. God has government in his household and he can't let us back into the fellowship until there is confession. That's the forgiveness it's talking about. It's governmental forgiveness.
And not only does He forgive him, but He cleanses us from all unrighteousness. How wonderful it is to know that we have the forgiveness of sins. Ephesians 17 it says, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace.
That's judicial forgiveness and it's speaking about there because the Lord Jesus shed his blood, the price has been paid, and now we have the forgiveness of all our sins. We don't have to ask for that anymore. You know, people sometimes say to me, well, didn't Jesus teach his disciples to pray? Forgive us our sins as we also forgive our debtors?
Remember, that was before Jesus died on the cross. That was before he paid the price of redemption.
And that was proper then, but now that Jesus has died and paid that price, you'll never read from the book of the Acts through the epistles that we should ask for the forgiveness of our sins. I might have to ask a brother to forgive me that I've sinned against, but not God, because we have the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace. Wonderful.
Reality.
But here what we're talking about in our chapter, verse 9, the forgiveness it talks about is governmental forgiveness. I remember one time when I was a boy.
And I have to confess.
I got weapons.
Sometimes almost every day. So, you know, I'm not that great of a guy.
Anyhow, one day when I got my weapon.
My dad said to me, Robert, I always used to call me Robert at home.
I want you to come back to me and tell me you're sorry for what you did.
Wow, that was hard.
That meant I had to confess it was wrong.
And I remember when I did finally come back to my dad and confess it, I cried more than when I got the weapon. It hurts so bad. I have to admit that I was wrong.
I'm so glad I had a dad that taught me that when I was young. It has been a blessing my whole life long.
And I wasn't accepted back into the circle of fatherly fellowship until I did that. That's what we're talking about, he didn't say. You're not my son any longer. No.
You said I want you to do that, and it was only when I did that that he opened his arms and happy fellowship, I could be back in his arms.
Now we're talking about God our Father. We're living in a world of sin, and I know you guys and girls have sinned facing you sometimes when your mom and dad are not around, sometimes when the brother are not around and you're tempted.
I just want to encourage you to cultivate fellowship with God. Just want to say before we close to encourage you again, I like to challenge young people about reading the scriptures.
It was not this last Oaxaca conference in southern Mexico, but I think it was the year before.
00:55:01
We were in a place called La Cumbre.
In southern Mexico.
And at that conference, I think there were about 800 present, but there was a group of young brothers there I got talking with during between the meetings.
I say, I said to them, Do you guys read the scriptures every day?
Yeah, sometimes, I said. What do you mean by sometimes? Well, maybe 2-3 times a week. Oh, I see. I'm glad you read it that much.
I said I'd like to ask you a question.
How often do you eat your meals?
For every day.
Oh, OK, that means then that your, your body is quite a bit more important than your soul. Oh, don't say that, brother, I said, well, you're feeding your soul only two or three times a week. You're feeding your body every single day.
How much time do you take to eat your meals every day?
Came up with a figure somewhere around an hour.
If you find it hard to take 5 minutes to read something of the word of God, Dear young people, let me encourage you to make it a habit of your life. It's important to form good habits, but it's going to take decision on your part. Your mom and dad can tell you to do it, but unless you make that decision yourself, it's just going to be.
Until they're out of the picture, and then you won't do it anymore.
So I want to encourage you to make a decision to seriously get into the scriptures, to read it. Read some of the good books about the scriptures.
You know, when I see people, young brothers that do that, I can tell there's something happening there that's very positive and that makes me so happy to see.
And so I want to encourage that tonight our time is up. So Tim told me it was only 59 minutes, so I got to make sure not to go over.
Let's pray.
Father, thanks for Thy precious word. Make it register in our hearts, Oh Father, the wonder of walking in fellowship with thee, our God and our Father, and with thee, Lord Jesus, bless our time here at this camp.
The days ahead.
Helped dear Kim and Elaine in managing the affairs of the camp.
Father, we pray and give thanks now for the rest of the evening. We committed by hands in the name of the Lord Jesus, Amen.
Our True Enemy
Address—Paul Renaud
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Good evening.
You have your, uh, little block in book with me. Feel free to, uh, read with me.
The first few lines are actually maybe stands as of Him 225.
Mid scenes of confusion and creature complaints. How sweet to the soul is communion with Saints to find out the banquet of mercy. There's room to feel in communion. A foretaste of home, sweet bonds that unite all the children of peace, and thrice bless his Savior.
Whose love cannot cease?
So off the mid trials and dangers we roam with sign we're United and Hastings towards home.
I certainly enjoyed umm, yesterday's ministry from first John to be reminded, uh, that in order to have fellowship with one another, umm, we have to have fellowship first with God and that our sins break that fellowship and need to confess them. It was most blessed truth.
I would like to, uh, borrow from Bob's beginning and read a verse.
But I think my verse is a little easier for people to know where the book in the Bible is that it's found. Umm, I think it's easy enough that I can pick on a young person.
So this is the verse.
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.
What book of the Bible is that from?
Have a volunteer.
Said This is the mask, man in the back, Ephesians. Thank you. Thank you, Ephesians.
Probably when it comes to spiritual warfare, probably the verse that we're all the most familiar with.
But what does it mean? Who are these principalities?
A lot of these powers and how when we're sitting in a room across the table from someone who's flesh and blood.
Who's saying unkind things to you? Who has hurt you in the past and it's hurting you again? Who is disappointed? You. Who has?
Perhaps done something that you really believe is is.
Is hurting.
God's testimony or or how, how, how, how can we say that we wrestle not against flesh and blood?
I certainly won't be able to answer all those questions at all, but I just want to share with you.
Uh, tonight, with the Lord's help, some of the things that I believe God has, uh, revealed, uh, to me recently through especially this, uh, pandemic, this time of.
Unprecedented, uh, worldwide.
Trial.
There's been other things we all know about protests and so on, a lot of unrest.
Umm.
One of my favorite lines from CS Lewis.
And as Chronicles of Narnia is, uh, you're only told your own story. Some of us remember that. So in other words, we can't. We're only told our own story. And that's true. I don't know what your experience has been.
But I do know from God's word that there's no trial that has under that is he set up no trial that we go through that is not common to man. So I would pray, we're going to pray here for God's blessing and and help. I pray that some of these things might be of help. And and there's certainly I pray from God's word and God's word doesn't return void. So that's just give thanks.
Your God, thank you for this privilege to gather together as.
So believers, fellow soldiers.
Amidst intense conflict, Lord.
00:05:02
Umm.
Pray that we would, uh, take your word and apply it and really search it.
Umm.
Pray that if anything that's said is not from your word or that it would fall. We thank you that the power of your word doesn't depend on, uh, well organized speech. It doesn't depend on uh.
Anything but your spirit, and we thank you for this. Amen.
Umm, so first.
I think it's probably a a profit to remind ourselves of some of this background information. Who are these principalities, Powers. Rulers of the darkness of this world? Spiritual wickedness in high places?
Well, so often when we search a subject in the Bible, so often the story goes back to Genesis.
We all know the story of the fall. We know that God created.
The Garden of Eden, uh, for Adam and Eve to be in fellowship with them and, and very quickly the serpent tempted Eve and we know that.
Adam and Eve yielded to that temptation and and sin then started in men, and death passed upon all creation. So let's turn to Genesis chapter 6 briefly.
Just another instance where?
Man's rebellion is magnified. I'm not gonna say much about it, but.
Genesis chapter 6.
And verse one. And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh, yet his days shall be 120 years.
There were giants in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men.
And they bear children to them. The same became mighty men which were of old men of renown. With the benefit of reading Jude verse six and second Peter, I think it's chapter 2, verse four. We know that. I think we we can we can say with confidence these were spiritual beings that came down and corrupted men.
Men with spiritual beings, leading to further and further corruption.
For the rebellion from God.
We know what happens next. We know that there's faithful Noah.
We know that Noah was spared in the flood, and then after that Noah's told to multiply the earth, but what happens?
Is the Tower of Babel young people? I just just for a second want to just briefly, little side note, when I was a young person and even quite a bit of my adult years, these early chapters of Genesis were a hard thing for me. Umm, and perhaps they're hard for you, I don't know.
But I, I have to say, as I've gotten older and studied them, umm, it's been a source of tremendous blessing and I would encourage you not to.
Look at these things and and when they don't appeal to you, what you may call your rational mind, don't dismiss them. This is God's word and this is truth and there's wonderful blessing from it.
But certainly just kind of ignored it when I was a young person because that was easier. So now we have the Tower of Babel, which was always kind of confused by, but there is widespread rebellion. Men decide they're going to make a name for themselves and they build this tower. And God says no. He disperses them. He divides them into.
Nations and at that point in time.
There is no man that's calling upon God or none. I don't I don't read it in scripture.
What happens next?
God calls out Abraham, calls out Abraham, who is Abraham. We can turn to Joshua. We can read that Abraham came from a family that worshipped idols. I don't know that we read that there is anything special about Abraham. God just called him out and God said I'm going to make a great nation from you. From you all nations of the earth will be blessed. And how is that nation formed? Was formed in a miraculous way.
00:10:18
From a barren woman, I think a foreshadowing of what would happen later with the church. He speaks to my soul that way. And then of course.
God calls out Abraham. He makes a nation in a miraculous way.
And we have many chapters of Genesis until that nation actually becomes a great people. But they're in *******. They're in ******* under the Egyptians. The Egyptians really believe that their origin was from.
The ruler having a go, being a God basically and having relations with a God. So let's turn just again, I just said my, my, my desire here is just to show you the intensity of the spiritual warfare that's throughout the Bible that's turned to, uh, Exodus 5.
So Exodus 5.
And we know the same, but I just want to highlight.
The wording here.
Exodus 5 verse one. And afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh, Thus sayeth the Lord God of Israel, let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. And Pharaoh says, Who is the Lord? The words that's used here is I think Yahweh. Yahweh. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly, I'm sorry.
But he's using the unique word for the God of Israel. He says, Who is the Lord? That I shall obey his voice to let Israel go. I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go.
Turn to Exodus 12.
And just a phrase.
The end of verse 12.
Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment. I am the Lord.
These gods of Egypt were not real gods. There's only one God to be worshipped, but these gods of Egypt had real power.
Gods of Egypt.
For lack of a better term, demons as men partnering with spiritual powers.
And then let's turn to Exodus 15.
This is uh.
What was this?
Speaking, Who is like unto thee, O Lord among the gods, who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful, and praises?
Doing wonders that stretches out thy right hand. The earth swallowed them.
Sorry, I was looking for.
Moses, father-in-law.
Uh, here we go.
Looks like it's in chapter 18.
See if I can find it here.
Exodus 18, verse 10.
And Jethro said, Blessed be the Lord who has delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of Pharaoh, who has delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians. Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods. For the thing wherein they dealt proudly, he was above them.
So I'm just, there's so many portions we could turn to.
That talk about spiritual warfare from the very beginning of the Bible.
But we know how this goes. These people that God called out.
00:15:03
They have some triumphs, but they have many, many failures. And eventually, as we read our Old Testament, the prophecies regarding Jesus the Messiah become more and more clear.
Mankind needs to deliver.
That only could be the Son of God.
That's look at loop. We know that when Jesus comes.
Satan tries to destroy him at birth.
Just to pick up our story for the Luke chapter 4.
The temptation scene.
Verse five. And the devil, taking him up as Jesus up into a high mountain, showed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him.
All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them.
Now make sure you understand this phrase, this next part of the sentence, for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will, I give it.
The devil says this is my world.
I have power over all the nations. I can give that power to whomsoever I will.
Just the kind of authority.
The devil has kind of power that he has.
Sometimes, uh.
There's a phrase that is used in the world that kind of captures your imagination. And for me, I kind of adopted into my own phrase. I don't say it too often, I don't think, but I like to say. Then there be fighting words. They know about fighting words and they'll be fighting words. These are fighting words and let's just see how.
Jesus responds.
Let's go to loop 433.
Just a few verses after, and in the synagogue there was a man which had a spirit of an unclean devil, and cried out with a loud voice, saying, Let us alone, what have we to do with thee, Thou Jesus of Nazareth, art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him.
And when the Devil?
Had thrown him in the midst. He came out of him and heard him not.
The New Testament is the first time we see devils being passed out of people only.
God has that kind of authority. Only his Son had that kind of authority. We see this, we turn a little bit further down.
And go to loop Chapter 9, verse one.
He called the 12 disciples together and gave them power and authority over all devils and to cure diseases.
And we can go to chapter 10.
First one.
After these things the Lord appointed over 70 also, and sent them two and two, and then down to verse.
17 And the 70 returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name.
70 I I don't know for sure why there were 70, but some have mentioned that back at that scene, the Tower of Babel, the nations are divided into 70 nations, and perhaps this is representative of of.
Jesus basically saying to Satan, I am here to take back the nations.
And then last reference in, well, almost the last reference in loop Chapter 11.
So she's a speaking verse 20 If I with a finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the Kingdom of God has come upon you. When a strong man arm keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace, but when the stronger than he shall come upon him and overthrow him, he take it from him.
00:20:08
All is armor wherein he trusted and divided the spoils. These are fighting words.
But of course, we know what happens, right?
Later on in loop we can read he's just telling Simon that Satan has desired to have you, that he would sift you like we, but God doesn't allow that. However, Satan enters into Judas.
I think it's the only time we read of Satan himself entering into someone.
And the Lord Jesus the Messiah is crucified, and undoubtedly Satan thinks he's done something.
Very good as far as he is concerned. We can read that in First Corinthians chapter 2. You know this verse, I'm just going to read it. First Corinthians chapter 2.
Seven we speak the wisdom of God and the mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory, which none of the Princess of this world knew, for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Then one last background verse is turned to Revelation chapter 12.
Revelation chapter 12 and verse 7.
The scene in the future in heaven.
Revelation 12 Seven And there was a war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels and prevailed not neither was their place found anymore in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, the old serpent called the devil and Satan.
Which deceiveth the whole world.
He was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
So I've given you a lot of verses about spiritual warfare and you may say, oh, OK, all right, yeah, they're in there. I I tell you from my recent personal experience, when you start to look for fighting words for spiritual warfare, words in the Bible, they are all over references to conflict and armor and struggle, they're all over the place.
So what does that have to do with you?
What does that have to do with me? What are some practical applications?
When?
I just want to share just a few things. When the umm.
A few weeks into the pandemic, maybe you guys had a similar experience, Umm.
There wasn't a whole lot of places for our family to go, but in Maine the beaches were still open and uh.
We got to go to this beach, one of our favorites. It's called Pop Em. Pop Em is uncharacteristically sandy for me and large. And one unique feature about Popham is that that low tide, there's a sandbar that you can walk about 1/4 of a mile to this very tall.
Rock slash hill mountain, but it's rocky it's it's a tall prepares or whatever the word is 100 feet up in the air or so it's really beautiful. So we went we saw refuge at the beach and it's school closures amidst me and my job not knowing how how much I would be touched by by COVID and and being in charge of some.
Certain certain things that work like like many of you and and umm.
I was feeling really down and sad and overwhelmed and as I was walking towards that rock a phrase came into my mind and it was take me to the rock that is higher than I. And I just kept on repeating that and then it turned into a prayer and I sat up on top of the rock and I repeated it and umm.
00:25:11
I thought it was nice. I, I wanted, I didn't want to be, I want to die, but I wanted to be transported out of the scene. I wanted to, to leave this trial. I went back to my car or home, I can't remember exactly what, but I thought, I'm going to look up where that verse is.
And perhaps all of you know, like I couldn't find it. It's not there. The verses leave me to the rock that is higher than I lead me to the rock. He doesn't transport us from this scene. We know Satan is a defeated foe.
You know that. But He has many things here to show us that we can only learn, and He has many ways to display His glory.
To us many ways for him to be glorified, as Scripture says in these vessels of clay.
One portion that check my time I do have time, 1 portion that jumped out to me and all this is Romans chapter 8.
Well known portion but I think some of his contacts was lost on me.
I trust I have a better understanding of the contacts that start.
Romans, chapter 8.
Umm.
Let's see here.
I reckon where is that verse that is.
Verse 18. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to compete to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in US, skipping down to.
1St 28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.
Skipping down further.
For 31.
What shall we say then to these things? If God before us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justify it. Who do you think Scripture has in mind here, when it says, Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?
You think it's your neighbor down the street.
Does your neighbor have access?
To make a charge to God.
No.
No, but.
You've read that Accuser of the Brethren does the spiritual warfare here. That's in mind in these verses, I believe.
Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died. He rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress, or persecution or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Now verse 36 is the verse that I would just read before the pandemic and not really look up.
Is what it says as it is written for thy sake.
We are killed all the day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
That's a quote from Psalm.
UH-44 if you read Psalm 44.
You'll realize that it goes something like this, the the, the psalmist says. We've heard of your acts of old God. We've heard how wonderful you were to our ancestors.
We're obeying your law. We're seeking you. We know only real power comes from you. But God, we don't feel it. We're we're we're not feeling blessed. We're not feeling your power. We're not feeling your might. Why have you forsaken us? Because we are killed all the day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. This is a Psalm.
Where the psalmist does not feel God's love, what does God say?
In this portion he says He that spared not his own son, but delivered Him up for us all, How shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?
00:30:01
It's easier to say than to practice, but in the midst of times where we do not feel God's love.
We can remind ourselves of this first, see that spared not His own Son, how shall he not freely give us all things? Why would God stop loving us? After all, He's given up for us. What do our feelings have anything to do with it when we can look at what we know from God's Word and be reassured?
With his for His love, His love to us.
And of course, we'll just read again versus, uh, the next verse. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, or any other creature, she'll be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The next portion I'd like to look at I have. I have two more.
Let's go to 2nd Corinthians.
Oh.
2nd Corinthians.
Verse 7.
This is, uh, something I think most all of us know about. We know that the Apostle Paul had a thorn in his flesh.
But what I think, at least for me, was easy to overlook. How did that thorn in his flesh happen?
2nd Corinthians 12 seven Unless I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, it was given to me, a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan, to buffet me last, I should be exalted above measure. What he's saying here is that thorn in the flash, that infirmity which we really don't know what it was.
Was delivered to him by Satan and allowed of God.
This should remind us of Job.
Remind us of.
How God will allow Satan to give us trials?
Satan certainly didn't mean it for Paul's good. I mean, was not Satan's intention. Satan wanted to sift Paul.
The call can look back and say.
That trial was so that I would not be exalted above measure. We'll read on here. He says, For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for the for my strength is made perfect in weakness.
Most gladly, therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, and reproaches, and necessities, and persecutions and distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then am I strong.
So Paul asked God to take this trial away from him. God says My grace is sufficient for thee.
We think of grace as God's unmerited favor, but it can also be thought of as God's attributes, what God has done for us, who God is.
Paul says no, I didn't want this infirmity, but.
God reminded me that His blessings, His benefits, His goodness, all these things.
Or what?
Is my strength, What is my portion?
Just before I get to the last portion.
Maybe, maybe just at your own time we can you can remind yourself of what 2nd Corinthians 4 says.
Just a couple verses.
Well, I'll just read it. Second Corinthians 4, verse 7.
We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the Excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed. We are perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted but not forsaken, cast down but not destroyed, always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest.
00:35:09
In our body.
For we wish live are always delivered unto death for Jesus sake, that the life, life also of Christ might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.
So you may say, and this is, this is very fair. You may say, OK, you've, you've given us a couple examples of a personal distress or conflict.
You gave us an example of of when we feel like we're not hearing anything from God, when he, we feel like he's abandoned us. You've given us an example of physical infirmities and how Paul handled that.
The verse that you read in Ephesians says we wrestle not against flesh and blood.
And you said something about how about that person across the room from you, that person who's hurt you, that person who is spewing things out of their mouth towards you?
What do you do with that one?
Well, I I.
Certainly harder. Umm, I want to just.
Umm.
And.
The mist of some of this tension, umm, that we've all been experiencing, uh.
I had a conversation with a fellow believer that is dear to me about a trial that they were going through, something that we would call in medicine and acute on chronic situation. So in other words, this trial had been going on for quite some time, but it acutely been stirred up, it acutely worsened and it was spilling over and affecting me.
And this conversation we had?
Had to happen.
And going into it, I knew it was going to be emotional.
Umm.
But I didn't Umm.
Expect at the end of the conversation for our relationship to look as terribly shattered as it was. It, it, it, it looked really bad. I I, I thought the things that I said were.
OK. I thought that they were reasonable questions. I thought that what I had to say, I didn't. I didn't realize it was.
It's going to be so poorly received and so hurtful.
Umm, I thought Council and I prayed a lot and.
Young people, if you don't pray from time to time on your knees, do it. It's.
Yeah, just do it with the reason why people in Scripture pray on their knees.
And in the midst of this, God brought before me I, I believe, a portion that was of immense comfort, umm, and instruction. And I don't know if it speaks to you in the same way.
Umm, but I can only speak about my experience and, and this conversation I was having and what I took from this portion in Galatians. So please turn to Galatians chapter 2. And this is really.
Probably by larger burden if you've been sleeping. If you're willing to be awake, Umm.
This is, uh, it's really my, my biggest burden.
And this portion we have the Apostle Paul, who's this, who's this apostleship is being challenged. And he's, he's talking about different things that happened and he talks about a scene of intense spiritual warfare that I don't know that I had really appreciated. But I, I, it's the way I read it. Please tell me if you if you disagree.
Let's go.
To verse 9, he's he's talking about how he was in Antioch. Antioch was kind of the the, the big epicenter of Gentile Christians.
He was in Antioch and when he was in Antioch once came from James, the brother of Jesus. They they said they I don't know, they said they represented him or they said that we're friends of James. But first nine says and when James Oh no, excuse me, verse 12.
00:40:09
I apologize again. Let's start with verse 11.
But when Peter was come to Antioch, I was stood him to the face because he was to be blamed for before that certain came from James heated eat with the Gentiles. But when they were calm, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision. So these ones came from James. They said, you know, we're we're we're friends with James. They wanted to eat with the Gentiles. They were Jewish.
Believers and Peter was influenced by them.
The few verses we have before we can read that, I mean, Paul has been an apostle for at least 14 years. Peter, I don't know, 20. These guys were not new to the faith.
Hmm, so let's read on here.
Since he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision, and the other Jews assembled likewise with him, and so much that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation, So again they're refusing to eat with the Gentiles.
Their actions are influencing the rest of the Jewish believers there in Barnabas, Paul's right hand companion.
Can you imagine? Just stop and think for a second about what's going on here? 20 odd years after Price died, I don't know how long, but quite a bit after Christ died. Think about.
How much? Satan must have thought he had the upper hand here. How?
He probably thought a great schism was coming in the church.
How?
Them not eating with a Gentile believers was undermining the very message of the gospel. Think about.
From a fleshly standpoint, what Paul's emotions must have been? How?
Understandably angry he could have been and upset and disappointed with all of his brother and.
Let's read how Paul handles this.
N.
Verse 14.
But when I saw that they walked not uprightly, according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou being a Jew with us after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compel us, thou, the Gentiles, to live as do the Jews? I know it's a big sentence, but please notice just one sentence, that He.
Instructs personally to Paul here, he says.
I know you weren't separating from them in the past.
How are you doing this?
And then look what he does here.
1St 15.
We who are Jews by nature, and not centers of the Gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even as we believe in Jesus Christ, that he that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law. For by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. But if while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also our found centers, is therefore Christ the minister, ascend God.
Did I look at verse 18? For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor. For I through the law, and dead to the law, that I might live unto God, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live yet in that eye, but Christ liveth in me, 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. I do not.
Frustrate the grace of God, for righteousness came or come by the law. Then Christ is dead in vain. I read the whole thing.
Just to show you how quickly.
It changes to we and then I and how out of context when you read this, if you started at verse 17 or 18, you wouldn't even probably realize this is a rebuke of the apostle Peter.
Just a few things that spoke to me in this.
00:45:00
Also, view comes right at the moment of the incident.
He doesn't wait until the day after. He doesn't.
Wait until the week after.
And all that Paul does in here, to me it speaks of not making any provision for the flash of, of Peter or himself. He doesn't act in a way that allows Peter to respond in a fleshly manner. Or I shouldn't say it doesn't encourage Peter to respond in a fleshly manner. He he, he talks to him right at the moment. There's no disputing of the facts of the situation. There's no.
You know, well, well, they were actually, it was just good to see my friends and and they were actually the the Gentiles were they were close by. They were in the table next to us. And it really wasn't that bad. He there's no disputing of the facts.
He he brings it up right at the time of the offense. He also does not.
Make a party. He doesn't. He doesn't go to other people and and and try to rally a group behind him.
There's no party making.
And his rebuke of Peter. There's no mention of Peter's past failures or offenses. He doesn't say something like Peter. Aren't you the one that denies the Christ or Peter? I heard about what you did last week too. Or Peter? I mean, how many times in my own experience, when?
Uh, a brother offends me or I see something that I think is wrong. I'll tell myself, well, it's just not something to make a big deal of right now.
But then this thing happens again, or this person upsets me again, and when I finally decide to talk about it, I have a whole list of things.
That I want to mention.
There's no mention of Peter's past failures. He's 6 to the offense right in front of him.
I already mentioned in one sentence, he switches to the we he for lack of a better, better way of saying it, he owns this and he he doesn't chastise Peter and say, how could you? Shouldn't you know better?
How do you, the the apostle to the Jews, make such a such a elementary mistake? How could you? He doesn't do that.
We have other times in the Bible where the faithful.
Say something to God, like God. Look at everyone else. I'm so faithful and, and I'm the only one. And God doesn't like that attitude, does he? He doesn't honor that. Umm.
When we identify with the send and and don't elevate ourselves above our brother and that that God blesses the situation.
This rebuke of Peter, at least to my reading, is so fluid that it's really hard to know where it begins and ends. It's so seamless. If you look at other translations, they struggle with where to put the parentheses.
I don't know where the exact words begin and end and the NASD it begins with those. I'm sorry the the phrases I mentioned about Peter and then ends at verse 21 of the translations do it differently.
And then the other thing I, I, I, I feel like spoken to me about this is.
Paul does not try to be the Holy Spirit in Peter's life. He doesn't try to say, Peter, I know you have this problem and you need to work on it. He doesn't say.
Peter, I see this error. Peter I he, he, he likes, he lets God do that if that's needed.
In my conversation that I was having with this fellow believer.
Uh, I realized all my words that I had spoken to this person were about flesh and blood.
Umm.
I allowed a lot of provision for the flesh in my words. I brought up past things that I really couldn't recollect perfectly.
I probably even tried to mention other people's names to influence the conversation.
Umm.
I tried.
In my own subtle, what I thought was subtle way.
00:50:01
To umm, do the the work of the Holy Spirit.
This rebuke of Peter to my reading, Peter basically had two choices. He could have either said yeah, I'm I'm I'm done with the gospel, or he.
Basically, there was nothing in it that he could.
In a fleshly way, strike back at Paul. I mean, what? What can he say to this?
Paul, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a solid rebuke and it's a humble rebuke.
Umm.
To me, I just spoke about wrestling not against flesh and blood. This, the flesh and blood in that room had to have in a natural way, gotten Peter's, uh, sorry, Paul's ire, but but he doesn't respond in that way and I know.
I'm not. I'm not trying to say that, you know, every offense needs to be.
Needs to be dealt with, but umm, like I just just spoke to me as a pattern of how to do this in a in a way that acknowledges the spiritual warfare and doesn't serve the flash.
Well, I'm going to pray.
Dear God, we thank you for your son.
Who has overcome?
The world and Satan and all Satan's foes are defeated.
Lord, we know, uh, that in your wisdom you've left us here.
To uh.
Learn more of your blessed ways.
Uh, we pray that in all times and especially this time of, uh, increased stress where we can observe a lot of things.
Umm, that our brethren do that might get us upset.
Or cause disputation. Lord that we would umm.
Not, I think, room for the flash. And then we wanted umm.
He could get flesh and blood that we would.
Umm, acknowledge our true enemy and that we would, uh, glorify you in this Lord. Your name we pray. Amen.
Session #1
Q&A
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Kind of a tough question.
But I.
I will, uh, look at three different points that we can look at. What is the assembly? What is the oversight? And the other is our parents.
The assembly.
In First Corinthians chapter 14.
In the last verse.
Let all things be done decently and in order.
I don't say that it's in out of order for someone to drink something when they're hot and dry and thirsty and trying to speak or or whatever the situation is.
To me, that's not disrespectful.
But it might be to somebody else.
But I think we need to also.
Think of the oversight in the assembly.
And.
Respect them also.
And then also.
Your father, your mother, might feel that it is disrespectful even though some others may not. But you also fall under the jurisdiction of your parents. And in Ephesians 6 it says children obey your parents.
So.
Although I may not have a problem with somebody having a bottle of water next to them in the meeting, I have one next to me.
Uh, sometimes I need to take a drink.
I don't believe that's disrespectful, but I don't want to offend others who may be thinking is disrespectful.
But if your parents tell you it's not acceptable for you to do it.
It doesn't mean it's right or wrong from the scripture, but it is right or wrong for you. You must obey your parents. So your father has that authority. Your mother has that authority and jurisdiction over over you.
I really can't answer the question more than that. We're not under law.
Umm, we're under Great.
Correct, but I think Bob has something.
For sure I'm at.
Of doing that.
Yes, I'm very simple if you are sorry.
Yeah, everything there is basically and it's on to every further.
I don't have a problem with you having a bottle of water there too.
I understand.
Coffee Day.
Like you said, I don't want to stay down. Rude.
So that's how I keep today about that. This is fine for everything.
And just later on I need to chat through.
35 at the end of the chapter so it could embrace the time.
28,000.
Pretty close because you need me and it's very beautiful verse that I've heard the audience, yes.
But that is wrong.
Embrace.
00:05:08
Play the difference between the Lord's Table versus the Lord's Supper.
And we find the Lord's Table in First Corinthians chapter 10.
And let's look at verse 16 and 17.
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ, The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread and one body, For we are all partakers of that one bread. And it goes on a little bit there, and talking about the couple of the Lord, the couple of devils, verse 21.
Cannot be partakers of the Lord's Table and of the Table of devils.
And so speaking about the Lord's table in this in this section, verse 17, we being many are one bread and Speaking of the fellowship that we have with Christ.
We are all partakers of that one bread. We belong to the body of Christ. Christ is the head of the body and we belong to that body and, and our fellowship that that loaf represents the fellowship we have with the, with the Lord as one body and, uh.
The Lord's table would be the fellowship that we have with Christ, unity and association with Christ. So the Lord's table would be the fellowship, and the Lord's Supper would be in Chapter 11.
Uh, I want to explain one more thing about the Lord's Table. In order to be in the Fellowship of the Lord's Table, there's two things.
There's one thing required. First of all, it's the blood of Jesus Christ. And that's why the cup is mentioned first in the Lord at the Lord's. In the verses about the Lord's table, it talks about the cup. And so the blood is very important because it's the blood that washes our sins away and makes us fit for the presence of the Lord Jesus.
And it's that that which saves us. And so the blood is necessary before.
We can be in the fellowship.
And so that's why the cup is first and the bread is second when it's talking about the fellowship. Well, then when we come to the Lord's Supper, we find that order reversed and we find the umm.
We take the bread 1St and the cup second. Well, why is that? It's because we're remembering the death of the Lord. We're remembering the order in which it happened. And the Lord suffered and died for our sins. He took the wrath and anger of God as he hanged there on the cross. And uh, after that is when the soldier pierced his side with the sword and out came.
Blood and water. And so we remember it in the order in which it happened, and so we're remembering his death.
April, the place where we celebrate the Lord's Supper and the Lord's Supper is what we celebrate at that place. And when you talk about a place, you're not talking about a place, a geographical place necessarily.
You're talking about a place of fellowship like you were mentioning the fellowship of the blood of Christ and the fellowship of all those that have been redeemed by the precious word of Christ and Venice, the fellowship of the body of Christ.
So there's this difference too, between the table and the supper. That's a little connection with the divorce. Table represents the body of Christ. That is all believers joined together.
00:10:02
So it's the widest speeder possible.
But when we say the Lord's table.
It doesn't say Christ pay well, it doesn't say Jesus payable. It's the Lord's table because when you use that term, the Lord, he is the one that has authority.
To say what goes, what does it go, this place, there has to be a recognition of his authority and the respect of his person.
You just can't do anything here. Why? Why can't you let me do that? For that? No, we have to respect his table. We all come up here to the chair. This is standing away in the camp. You laid out some regulations.
I don't know if I would totally make it the same myself, but I respect you brother, so I submit to what you lay down.
So that's the point of the Lord's Table. It's the place where he has authority. I think that's very important because.
Because there are those in.
Other denominations that are real believers in the Lord Jesus. No question about it. Are they members of the body of Christ? Yes, they are.
But sometimes they don't want to simply bow to what Scripture tells that the Lord has set up for us to respect and connection with this table. So when we're talking about the Lord's table, it's the fellowship.
Oh believe it, I know that it doesn't say the Lord's Tables.
The Lord's Tables Singlet.
In other words, in the whole world, there's only one table.
Brother James Hay Hall the years ago and spoke about it like it's a big table. It goes all the way around the world.
Yesterday we broke red at the Lord's Table.
But they were running down in South America, over in Africa that were doing the same. Is it the same table? Yes, the same fellowship. The fellowship of the blood of Christ and the fellowship of the body of Christ, like I say, in connection with the Lord's table. But now that's why it's going low, because there's only one body.
Is important. Never says there's one God, that there's one blood.
And so why is this so important that there's one load?
Because.
There's only one bottle.
I remember one place I was breaking bread and.
The brother and had his own easy to pull off a pretty good check out of bread when they hey there by the time it's gone halfway through but it's needed it was getting close to being done. I don't know what they had in mind to do.
I don't know if I was right, but I stood up and said brother.
Goes over and have them participated yet? They're members of the body too. Please consider them and what's left. We'll all have to partake of this one vote. Importantly 1.
Remember a cough and stuff in Toronto where there was 1200 presidents at the conference?
They had a huge loan. Why? Because it had to make one flow.
That's the testimony we're giving. We're members of one body.
So in the Lord's Supper, there's a difference.
The law does not represent that, but it represents the Lord's physical body. It was mentioned in how he went to the cross, how he suffered, how God's wrath was poured out on him. We remember that that in the Lord's Supper through that difference.
They go together at the Lord's table, The Lord's Supper do it again.
Wonderful privilege to sit down. I honestly think that when we get home, the glory look back, we're going to say there was nothing.
So wonderful that we did in here in this world and sitting down at the Lord's table and partake of the Lord's time.
00:15:56
MMM.
Is it scriptural to use more than One Cup? Brother Bob just mentioning the the cup. The one loaf 1 cup is a scriptural to use more than One Cup.
At the remembrance meeting.
As Brother Bob just mentioned, the one bread.
Represents one body.
With the cup.
Is referring to the.
The the cup in this verse is not speaking about the the vessel that is being used, but rather is what the cup is representing and uh.
We sometimes hear the term a couple of suffering or the Lord Jesus endured a cup of wrath.
Sometimes people say, well, that's not my cup of tea.
They're not talking about a A cup.
But here we have in our verse.
In First Corinthians chapter 10.
1St Corinthians 10 verse 16 says the cup of blessings which we bless.
We give thanks for this cup of blessing, the cup of blessing which we give thanks for. What is a cup of blessing? It represents all the benefits, all the blessings we receive because of the blood of Jesus Christ. We have our sins washed away. We are propitiated through the our sins are propitiated through the blood.
They're taken away, they're moved as far as the east is from the West.
Or were justified through his blood. There's so many blessings that we have through the blood of Jesus Christ and it brings us into fellowship with the Lord Jesus and so.
The cup is not referring to the the the One Cup that we have. They're the vessel. So to have more than One Cup, it just shows the multitude of the blessings of the Lord Jesus that we have through the blood of the Lord Jesus.
Uh, so we've been talking about.
Inverse uh.
16 said the car.
Verse 17 says we the many are one thread or one Bao and one body. We are all articulated to that one breath.
Very clear that one has should be one the breath.
But it never says one shot. That's what we have becauseitsays.com and swing and everything.
But I asked what do you think they did after the day of Pentecost when 3000 were saved and they continued to step back saying the apostles doctrine and fellowship in the breaking of bread and prayers.
I don't think they used One Cup. I think there was men in it. But the point is, is that it represents like Jim said.
00:20:07
Not the recipient that we drink out of, but what we do. You have partakers of that cup, what's in it? The print of the mind. And so we are partakers of that.
Brothers in Bolivia have had that trouble with that perpendicular point in. We have tried to explain to them and sometimes they just put a big recipient and then they they give thanks. They divided out by they did yesterday into the different costs.
And then conferences. They will then use multiple cups but.
Uh, that helps them over that. But they say the Lord Jesus when he fed the 5000.
I often wondered how long it took him to see 5000 people. How many people either feeding here?
100 and 3000 and 30.
Well, almost 45 by 50.
You're 5000.
It's uh.
He divided it to the disciples, He gave it to the disciples, and the disciples to the opportunity to do that.
5000 / 12 how much is that?
Use the calculator's too much? I can't figure it out.
478400 and 17 people were disciple I pretty impressive. I wonder how long that took figuring out that much food and fish and our bread and fish.
With an exactly deluded supper. But it shows that God does things in order. And when there is a multitude, why you use more than one job? I don't think there's any problem with that.
Uh, contrast is what it's below, which has already been mentioned because of this meaning necessary is gone bread, as it says here in our King James translation in First Corinthians 10/17. I don't have any other translation with me, but I think that and Mr. Garner's translation it says.
There one load, is that right?
So.
Uh, it's, I'm, I'm sure the question about.
One Cup is because it's so vital that the the bread is one loaf, but it's.
Oh yeah. The vital thing is the content of it and what that people do, I've got on. Not the best.
With the board table.
That I know some young people. I saw the emblem passing by yesterday.
They say if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus, scriptures where they showed us that.
You are a member of the body of Christ. When we receive the Lord Jesus as our Savior, the Spirit of God comes at this field of our salvation and dwells in our bodies and unites us the same time that the body of Christ.
00:25:08
I thought that was on the table yesterday. Represented you. Whether you departed or didn't partake, it represents you.
And the Lord has asked us to do that until He comes in remembrance of him.
What are you going to say if the Lord comes this week and you've never done that and.
And he says to the judgment seat of Christ, I die to make sure that you could be saved eternally. I ask you to do one thing for me. While you were down there in this world, did you do it?
What are you going to say to him?
You know, I take my place when I was 15 years old.
And it was because the brother challenged us young people in the meeting where I was with that very same question.
I had to squirm.
Because I didn't really have a good answer.
But just think about it. You're represented in that flow if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus. No question about it.
Then you should be partaking of that low and of that cup and remember the.
Just think about it.
It says we are all partakers of that one bread. That word partakers.
And meaning we belong to that one bread, which means you are each one of us are represented. Each believer is represented in that low. That one low Partake also means to eat of it.
And so when the bread comes around on on Lord's Day morning and we're remembering him in his death and we take that bread and we eat that bread, we're identifying with the fact that we belong to Jesus Christ, we belong to the body of Christ, and we are in fellowship and association with the Lord Jesus Christ.
And if that bread goes by and you don't partake?
We're not told what that says, but it does not say that you belong to that law.
So it's just the Lord. He he wants us, he, he loves us, and he reaches out to us and says, do this in remembrance of me. As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord death till he comes.
The Old Testament.
In Second Samuel 9.
We we read in verse seven, and David said unto him, unto Matthew, I fear not, for I will surely show thee kindness for Jonathan my father's sake, and will restore the old land of soul thy father, and thou shalt eat bread at my table continually.
Reminds me of what was in the heart of Mesibocha. This was kindness. And if we, if we realize what the Lord Jesus has done for us, if we think of his word, his person, his why he why he has done, then it flows from the heart to remember him. This as brother Bob was saying, this is what the Lord has asked, Remember Me.
00:30:24
And umm, we are reminded of the story of of Joseph and the cop there.
And it says that you forgot him.
But Mephibosheth, what do you do with this invitation? Do you say well?
I'm accustomed to load a bar. I think I'm fine there.
Or umm, I'll sit at your table, but I don't think I can eat there.
You know when we are at the lower stable.
It is not all, not only just for a little time when we come. It is true that we eat bread at His table, but we are constant to continually at his table and the Lord wants us to remember Him there. And I was just thinking about that story at UMM, the gratitude that my food was chef had towards David. And it is, it is.
A gratitude that falls from on on our in our hearts. And we eat bread.
And we drink, uh, of the wine, remembering him. Umm, well, last, last verse there in second Samuel.
We see that he restored all the lands and all the blessings that Mefiblus has had. But the most precious thing that Mephibosheth remembers afterwards in in Second Samuel is not all the land that David gave him. It was that time where he was able to partake with David at his table. Umm.
Verse 13 So Mephibosheth dwell in Jerusalem, for he did eat continually at the King's table, and was lame on both seats. It was not because he deserved it. It was not because of his capacity.
Or anything like that. The same way we're not. It's not because we deserve to be at this table and eat of the ambulance is because of what he has done for us.
Uh, Queen of England invites us to.
Uh, have supper at the pallets at Buckingham Palace in London and we say, oh, I don't think I have clothes that are good enough for such an occasion. Well, I'll provide you with the clothes then that, that, uh, so that you won't feel badly about that. And so she gives everything that is necessary.
For us to sit down at your table.
We have the invitation and so we go into the, uh, chamber where they have the supper and squeeze the supper in this case. And I walk up to the table and I take the chair and I pull it back into one corner and sit down there and say, I, I don't feel worthy. What is the Queen gonna say?
I gave you everything was necessary so that you could sit down and enjoy fellowship at my favorite.
That's what the Lord has done for us. She's given us everything that is necessary. And so it's important to realize.
The tremendous privilege that it is, at the same time, sometimes people think, why can't you just let us come in and make credit at home and notice?
It's because it's the Lord's Table and that the assembly God has set those in responsibility.
To oversee what's going on and those who come in to breakfast, there are openness in place. They're real believers and they have what they call the Lord's Day and stuff or do.
You think?
There it depends on the elders who can partake and who cannot partake, and that they're very open to let anybody walk off the street and partake.
00:35:04
There are others that are very strict.
And unless you put on a white shirt and a tie and a suit jacket, you don't break grass. That's the regulations in that particular semblance.
It's not so much the question of what Scripture says, the situation of what the elders say. So I think it is important for us to realize when we talk about the Lord's Table, to realize it is the only.
Position that is not sectarian.
And people say wow.
You're taking quite an exclusive position. I stay there, young brother, young sister, That's the conviction I have come to by the scriptures of my own soul. I can make a mistake, and if you think I'm mistaken, I'm willing to listen to you. You can kind of talk to me and show me some scriptures.
I'll listen to you, but I'm not going to go by what you say.
I have to go by what description, she said. I think that's important for us to form our convictions.
By what scripture says again, I say it is the only position that is not sectarian in the whole world.
Oh Lord, faith.
It's a good word on that question. Umm.
I do remember not so long ago, uh, hearing of a group of believers that used to be in fellowship with us and hearing about how they remember the Lord and hearing that they use multiple cups and me quickly thinking, oh, that's awful kind of judging that. And as we've mentioned, umm, you know, the one loaf is the picture that we're given. And there's a reason for the one loaf the, the multiple cups can be.
More of a practical question, but of course we all, uh, do remember that the reason why generally most of us have have used One Cup is because of Matthew, Mark and Luke. When Jesus celebrates or institutes the Lord's Supper, you know, there's One Cup used. And I think we're all, we all enjoy that picture. Umm.
I'll just say that, you know, we don't know the future of how long this germ pandemic, uh, concern is going to be, but they'll probably be a time in your local assembly where, you know, when do we start using One Cup again? And do we continue with this? And then just just, umm, young people, I know at least for, for some of you, they may, may really like multiple cups now and, and just just would ask you to be gracious with.
Your brother and his, umm, filler leaves as we kind of reconsider how to proceed.
We have time for one more question.
The Democrats, the CDC, Bill Gates and the Illuminati are all desperately pushing for one world government.
Question is, is one world government possible before the Millennium?
00:40:19
So we know the beast is going to, uh.
Try to make everybody subservient to him, the Antichrist and the Beast.
And they'll say who can make war against the beast.
But eventually, there there will Bob, won't there be? Umm.
Attacks against the Roman Empire? Or are they all? Are they all going to be subservient? Their own?
Well, look at what it says in Revelation 13. This is talking about the base when you write this up out of the sea.
The fee is the figure of the nation in two months and that's what you see today, tremendous changes and conflicts between nations.
Goodbye.
Waves of politics moved by waves of religion.
Tremendous changes in our world out of this.
Sea of confusion rises of east verse one revelation 13 and I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a neat.
Rise out of the sea. A beast is a.
A bee that has, you know, his eyes toward the earth, he doesn't look up into heaven and never see a cow gazing up at the stars. They're looking at the earth. So this man will have his reference point on earth, not that. And then it describes him. And at the end of verse three, it says this is what?
Uh, Kim was referring to I think.
First they said I saw one of his head as it were wounded to death and his deathly wound was healed.
And all the world wondered after the beach.
I think and it says and they worship the the dragon which gave the power of the United States.
To worship the victim who is likened to the beast who is able to make war with him.
What we understand dramatically.
Yes, that this piece is the revived Roman Empire. That's why it says one of his wounded. It was the same empire when the Lord Jesus gave the first time that was in power and tried to kill him as a little baby.
It was that same empire that gave the order to crucify Jesus under the headship of pilots. On these pilots it would be that same world empire.
Revive and Western Europe is pretty much.
A confused state of affairs right now, but it's out of this confusion that this earthly head is going to arrive with satanic power. And it says all the world wizard after the beast. In other words, I think it will be #1 power.
Interesting. It doesn't seem like the United States figures.
In prophecy, I honestly believe that the Rapture is going to knock knock the United States completely.
I can, sorry, hit this downward, but uh, I could the question says the there's a desperate push for world government. Let's see spirit that is moving in this direction and it's going to result in this peace horizon in Western Europe and he will be evidently.
The number one world power in that day, I don't think there will ever be much a thing as world government.
Overall reserve because there will be others who attacked Israel during the great tribulation, the king of the North and then Gog and Magog at the end of the tribulation period and uh, there will be others too, so that.
00:45:03
To be Roman Empire, even though it may be one of the one power, I don't think they will ever have world government. I don't think it's going to happen.
Got it into the Bush for it and you can see that, uh, they have what they have in, in view, but I, I don't see it as a prophetic picture that described in scripture. That's all I can say on that. Maybe others have something they want to say on that too.
And it is the same desire that man has had for.
Thousands of years. If we look back into the Tower of Fable in Genesis 11, we see there that it was the desire for one world government. Umm, the Lord intervened.
And umm, I don't, I don't see it happening. It will be one world government with the Lord Jesus, of course, but man, that's his, their desire. But apart from God, the same desire that they had in desire of Basel, the same umm, systematic approach, umm, with the bricks rather than stones and so on. Umm, so it is in the heart of man.
But God intervened here.
And he will also intervene in the future when the Lord Jesus will take his rightful place, when umm, there will be a struggle of powers, of course, when the Lord comes, but he will defeat every one of those powers and he will establish his Kingdom.
That's very helpful.
I think you should read some of those verses there, uh.
One everywhere.
Minecraft.
And the whole earth was one language and 1:00 speech, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plane in the land of Shiner, And they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to let us make brick and burn them thoroughly. And they had bricked 4 stone and slime.
Had they for mortar and they said go to let us build us a city.
And it's our the stop may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of man builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they all, they have all one language. And this they begin to do.
And now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined.
To do.
Go to let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth, And they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel, because the Lord that they are confound the language of all the earth. And from then did the Lord scattered them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
Notice the purpose of the power of table is mentioned in verse 4.
Let us make us a name. Man wants a name for himself.
Well, I was living in Chicago a number of years ago that I saw me with the Sears Tower. I think it was still living in the world then. It's 110 stories.
It's since then.
Uh, exceeded by. I guess it went over and.
I forget one of the Europe countries and then Leeds.
You don't pay for probably know what you want it is, but it's a lot hot. So now they have the name. That's what man is constantly struggling for to make us a name, even in religious circles. The most famous preacher in the United States.
Have a name?
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God has not entered here in this world to make us a name. You put us here to glorify His name.
And that's what I got when you came down.
He confused. It ended up in fable confusion what it means.
It's interesting, I understand that the European Union.
Building I can get where it is in Europe.
Was.
Designed somewhat, uh, replicate a famous picture of the dollar table.
And some of these young people know that the better one I'm talking about. But.
It doesn't seem to have any problem in using that format. Again, things are going that same direction may have us came in.
God is not going to let it happen.
Answering the question whether there's one world government, I was just thinking of converting the 1924.
Umm, if I understand this directly, because it's referring to the first part of the tribulation.
Matthew 24, six says ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars.
Yeah, I see that you may not travel for all these things that has come to pass, but the end is not yet. And especially this verse. Her nation shall rise against nation and Kingdom against Kingdom.
Uh, team lead indicates that pretty strongly that there's not going to be a one world government, even if part of the tribulation is going to be.
Different nations or any fighting each other. And yes, it's been explained there's going to be a confederacy arrived in Western Europe that will be together, but clearly it's not a one world government because there's all this going on as well, awards between nations.
Well first 2 verses Umm Zachariah chapter 14, verse 4.
It says, And his feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east. The Mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst of toward these, toward the and toward the West. And there shall be a very great Virginia valley, And half of the mountains shall remove toward the north, and half toward the South. And you shall flee to the valley of the mountains, for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Aziel, and you shall flee.
Then we go. The verse that I'm thinking of is verse 9.
And the Lord shall be king over all the earth, and that day there shall be 1 Lord in his name one.
So after the Lord was risen, he left from the Mount of Olives or ascended. Might need some help with that.
But until he returns.
And then I'm gonna need help too. It would be nice to do a little bit on processing. But until he returns back to the Mount of Olives, the remnant here flees to the mountains. There's some more battles, and I think there's one. Russia is one of the last nations that comes into or tries to come into this. Well, they won't be able to Lord or roar out of time, but I don't know. I need some help. I don't know if there's one more battle, but then the Millennium comes in and then the Lord will rule. There's no.
One government before then.
Our time is about up.
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Lord Jesus came into this world.
Is born into this world.
And was rejected.
And I want to bring out something that is future in First Corinthians 15.
Not exactly sure where to start reading here.
We'll begin with verse 23.
But every man in his own order, Christ the first fruits.
Afterward they that are Christ, that is coming.
Then come at the end, when he shall have delivered up the Kingdom to God, even the Father.
When he shall have put down all rule, and all authority, and all power. I was thinking of this verse here. For he must reign until he had put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
For he had put all things under his feet.
And when he said all things are put under him and it's manifest that he is accepted.
Accepted which did put all things under him, then so all things be subject or subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject.
Or, uh, the subject onto the him that put all things under him, that God may be All in all.
Well, I guess what I want to just point out to you young people was, yeah, we look and see all this turmoil and everything that's going on. God is in control.
Umm, nothing is happening is a surprise to God and we do see these pushes being made by political, uh, forces for one world government. You know, the Lord Jesus is coming back at the end of the tribulation. Uh, and when his feet touch the Mount of Olives, I believe it's going to split in half.
And, uh, the Lord will reign. He must reign. It says there in Corinthians. He must reign.
It came the first time they said away with this man, we don't want him, kill him. He's coming back and he will reign. And at the end of that time, uh, he will then turn over the Kingdom back to his father. And I've enjoyed thinking about this. I believe that is so that he can spend the rest of eternity.
Enjoying his bride, which is company with you and I, I believe. But anyway he must reign and.
All of man striving.
God is in control. It's attempting to watch the news or look at, you know, different things on the Internet and be alarmed and wonder, what does this mean? We can be confident God is in control and the Lord Jesus will reign and under his reigning there will be, uh, a blessed time in this world.
In that thousand years. But anyway, I just want to.
Encourage you, don't despair, don't be afraid. God is in control and the Lord Jesus will reign and then at the end of that He will be enjoying eternity with you and I with him there.
Do I reach 1 nothing from him? What him Sure, go ahead #36 in the offended.
We go to meet the Savior, His glorious face, to see what manner of behavior got within. Full of grief. May God illumination guide fire and walk aright that so our preparation be pleasing in His sight. We gladly while the hours till night shall pass away.
01:00:05
And chant with all our powers of blessings of that day to thee, the Lord of glory, we raised the happy tongue, And make thy own bright story the theme of every tongue.
That sinful man endeavors, nor any mortals here could draw like sovereign fever to the sinners, and despair.
Unfold our teams with Glen and UH from the Fall 3 and change our grief and sadness, the songs of joy and praise.
Go to pizza.
We do look forward.
Is that wonderful today? That could take place today?
At any moment now.
We hear that trumpet blast.
You hear thy voice calling.
And to be face to face Lord Jesus for me.
Belfast to be ready for that moment. Gracious Savior, we long when we see the confusion in this world.
And see so much suffering.
That thickness we know there is only one answer to it all, Lord Jesus.
Come thy Kingdom, come look forward to it.
In the meantime, help us.
I'll keep, uh, in all our activities today we pray the name of our Lord Jesus. Father, we ask, Amen.
The Armor of God
Address—Bob Thonney
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
I'm going to read.
Number 42 in the appendix.
Has to do with what we're going to talk about tonight.
Save your lead us by thy power, Save into the promised rest. Choose the path away, whatever seems to be the Lord the best.
Our guide in every peril Watch and keep us night and day else are foolish hearts will wander.
From the straight narrow way, since India is our redemption, salvation full and free. Nothing need our souls disheartened, but forgetfulness of thee not can stay our steady progress More than conquerors we shall be, if our eye, whatever the danger, looks to the and none but the.
This verse especially My presence we are happy. My presence were secure. In my presence all afflictions we can easily endure, In my presence we can conquer.
We can suffer, we can die wandering from Thee. We are feeble. Let it thy love, Lord, keep us an eye. Let's pray. Gracious Father, thanks for another opportunity.
To open and speak from my precious word.
We confess.
How insufficient we are to attack.
Well, we're thankful for the presence and power of Thy Holy Spirit.
And asked that he would have liberty tonight to make thy word go home to our hearts consciousness. Help us Lord, we pray in that wonderful that worthy name of our Lord Jesus, Amen.
I thought last evening, Brother Paul, that you were going to speak on the armor of God.
And so I'm going to speak on it.
That all right. Thank you.
Ephesians chapter 6.
We are in conflict zone.
It's a real thing, young people.
It's nothing to be ignored.
But we need to have God's view of it.
And that way we will not be dominated by fear.
Ephesians chapter 6 and verse 10.
Finally, my brethren.
The strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.
Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to.
Stand against the Wiles of the devil.
Where 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 higher heavenly places.
Wherefore they come to you, the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand.
In the evil day, and having done all 2 stand, stand therefore having your loins heard about with truth.
And having on the breastplate of righteousness.
And your feet shut with the preparation of the gospel of peace.
Above all.
Taking the shield of faith wherewith you shall be able to.
Quench all the fiery darts of the wicked, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Praying always.
With all prayer and supplication in the spirit, and watching there unto with all perseverance and supplication for All Saints, and for me that utterance would be given them to me, that I may open my mouth boldly.
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To make known the mystery of the gospel.
There's seven things to be considered in the armor of God.
I'm going to tell you, young people especially, I'm going to have a test at the end of the meeting. I'm going to ask you to shut your Bibles and the notes you might have taken, and I'm going to ask you to give me what those seven are. I'm going to name them to you right now, first of all.
Loins heard about with truth, secondly.
Having on the breastplate of righteousness, Thirdly.
The shot with the preparation of the gospel of peace.
For taking the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked, 5th Take the helmet of salvation.
Six, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Seven praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching there unto with all perseverance for all sake.
So I'll, I'll test you at the end and I'm going to say this, this is not a assembly meeting. So the sisters can put up their hands to answer too. So don't think you're going to be exempt where you're sitting. I want you to listen. My desire is that you'll remember.
I.
I found it very helpful to go over those things in my own life.
Seven things that are so important in connection with the warfare that none of us can avoid. It's a reality. It's not a warfare of bombs and bullets. It's a spiritual warfare and we have an enemy that wants to knock us down.
I have to say the Sunday school I grew up in, Walla Walla.
I don't think even half of the children and young people that grew up with me are going on for the Lord like they should be.
I hope they're saved. I'm not sure about some of them. Some of them are already passed away in this world.
But it's a real warfare and we have an enemy that doesn't want you guys.
To be reading the scriptures, he's going to put obstacles in the way. And so we want to help you to get these things into your memory. It will be a help and a blessing to you if you can remember that.
So it's a very real warfare. You know, in the Bible we have persons that encounter that warfare too. I'm going to talk a little bit about Daniel.
He was probably LED away captive. I heard the other day a speaker say that perhaps he was 14 or 15 years old when he was taken from the land of Judah and his parents were probably killed.
In the taking of the city of Jerusalem and Daniel 14 or 15, is there any 14 or 15 year olds here? Please raise your hand.
Quite a few.
OK, very good.
What would you think if your parents were killed and you were taken away to a Pagan land like Daniel was?
You think you would have stood like Daniel did. I'm amazed at that young man stood, but it was spiritual warfare, and in his life he had some spiritual disciplines. One of them was praying. He prayed three times a day. He opened as the Jews used to do, the.
The uh, windows to the east, Uh, is that E then?
OK, so that's it, to the east starts. Well, let me see, If it was towards Jerusalem from Babylon, that would have been to the West, wouldn't it? So it was to the West. Anyhow, it's towards Jerusalem. And he prayed three times a day. That was spiritual discipline. The time came when the government of that country where he was said that.
00:10:19
Prohibited to do.
But that was his spiritual discipline and he continued to do it and he ended up in the lions stand. But you know what? I think he had a more peaceful night in the lions den than the king had in his palace.
There in Babylon.
Why was that?
Because he trusted in his guy. Wonderful to think about it.
Daniel in Chapter 9 of Daniel is praying and he's also praying in chapter 10. In Chapter 9, he gets his answer right away.
Chapter 10 It takes three weeks to get his answer.
Why the difference?
Then got here, Yeah, You know what? When the answer came, it came by an Angel to him, and he said, I've come from the Prince of Persia. And now that I'm going, I'm going to go back to the Prince of Greece. It was the time when the Persian Empire was changing to the.
Grecian Empire.
And so.
There was conflict in government circles, and the answer didn't get to him right away.
To me, that's very interesting. We got a country where there's a very.
Real conflict in government circles.
May be aware of it to a certain extent or not, but there's conflict and sometimes those things affect getting the answers to our prayer. Very interesting to think about. I don't understand it all, but I find that extremely interesting to think about.
Anyway, Daniel, persevere.
And he lasted through the Babylonian Empire into the needle Persian Empire.
Pretty interesting, man. He knew what conflict was in your life. I want to say to you young people, I don't know if you like it or not, but you are not going to avoid spiritual conflict in your life. There's just no way that it will happen. You're going to have it.
And if you give way to it, the enemy is going to try to get you down. And I'm going to tell you your life will be a lot harder if you give way to the enemy. It's far better to put on the armor of God and to stand firm. So I'm going to take up these seven points that we've talked about, first of all.
In verse 14, it starts stand therefore having your loins, you're about with truth.
The girdle was something they put around. The soldiers put around their waist a belt of truth. We could say it was a wide belt that was put around there so that they would be strong in warfare. What is it for us?
True, I remember reading one of the early statesman of the United States of America. I think it was Thomas Jefferson who.
Made this comment.
Error needs a strong government to back it.
True will stand alone. That's very true. The truth will stand alone. But it's not just knowing that in your head, young people. It's putting it on. Come on, you know, I know a lot of you people, young people know the truth.
Put it on. Make it practical in your lives. Do it important, that is.
Otherwise, you're not going to be strong. You're going to give away, give away.
To what is not true, and there's a lot of it in the world today, I want to make this statement about the truth.
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The truth.
As we have it, in the Word of God and in the person of the Lord, Jesus is absolute. We live in a world where people try to make it relative. Oh, that's just your idea. I have a different idea. And who's to say if you're right or I'm right?
And they say truth is just relative.
Don't look at me, young people, because sometimes I make mistakes.
I don't want you going making the same mistakes that I do.
Look at the Lord Jesus, because He is the truth. I am the way, the truth and the life. No man cometh to the Father but by me, so he's seeking it in the absolute sense.
Somebody has said either Jesus was delusion.
Or he was a deceiver.
Or it's true, He is the truth and it's absolute sense.
The only answer that makes any sense is that He is the truth in its absolute sense. It also says in John 17, Sanctify them by thy truth. Thy word is true. How wonderful to have a book in our hands that is the truth.
Absolutely.
You think I know it?
All you know what I found? The more you learn of this book, the more you realize how little you really know.
Just keep on learning through all your life. So don't look at me again. I say young people, sometimes we have the tendency to look at somebody older that you admire. I can understand that to a certain extent.
Look at the Lord Jesus, Look at His precious word. You will not be ashamed if you put your trust in the Lord Jesus and His precious word. That's the truth. But put it on. Don't just talk about truth. Make it practical in your life. How important that is.
The second one is.
That same 14th verse.
Having on the breastplate of righteousness.
That's what covered the breast of the soldier and that was a very important piece because there were arrows flying in warfare.
And there were darts and there were Spears. And if you had the breastplate on, why it would just hit against that and fall to the ground.
Wouldn't do any damage.
What is the breastplate of righteousness?
To me this is practical, righteous.
It is what Paul talks to a young man about in First Timothy chapter one.
Maintaining faith and a good conscience.
Maintain a good conscience.
You know, the apostle Paul said.
And one of his discourses.
Here in Do I exercise myself to have always a conscience void of offense toward God and toward man? He doesn't say I always have a good conscience, no.
I exercise myself.
If Paul makes some mistakes, yeah.
One time, he was told.
Buy some brethren by the Spirit not to go to Jerusalem. And he went anyhow.
But he recognized it afterwards. You know what? What conscience is. I hope you understand what conscience is. It's what man got in the Garden of Eden when he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God had given them that Garden of Eden, a beautiful garden with all sorts of fruit.
Everything that was good to eat. And he gave them one restriction.
00:20:00
Not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
And so one day.
Eve starts talking to the serpent, which is a figure of Satan.
And.
The serpent puts a question to her, puts a doubt in her mind.
Did God really say not to eat of that tree?
And Eve answered, Satan, if you look at it closely, she made two mistakes in her aunt in what she said to say she said that.
That, umm, we could not either any tree if we could eat of any tree of the garden, but the tree that is in the midst of the garden.
Do you have the knowledge of good and evil wasn't in the midst of the garden. It was the tree of life that was in the midst of the garden. That was one mistake. Sometimes, you know, we quote Scripture and we quote it because we're not very well acquainted with it. We make mistakes.
And then she says he said that we should not touch it nor eat of it. I've never said you couldn't touch it. You did say it shouldn't either. So ** *** made two mistakes.
And then the enemy says a direct lie. You will not surely die. And so she looked at that route, and she took it. There was Adam beside her, watching.
Or take it and the eating of that fruit.
You know, the scripture says that Eve was deceived, but Adam wasn't deceived. And that's why Adam is the responsible head of a fallen race, because he ate knowing that he was doing it in direct disobedience to God.
Then what happened? Then they were ashamed that they were naked, they didn't have any clothes on and.
They tried to cover themselves up with fig leaves. You're, I don't know if there's any fig trees around here, but we had big trees down in Bolivia. Let me tell you, they don't make very good material to make a, uh, some piece of clothes with. They rip real easy.
Then they hit behind the trees of the garden, and God came down and said, Adam, where are you?
And he says, I heard thy voice, and I was afraid.
Did you eat of the tree that I told you not to eat?
And Adam blames his wife.
That's the tendency we all have to blame somebody else, the woman.
And when the Lord turns to the woman, she said, the serpent, that's just the way we operate. We tend to blend, blend somebody else. When you're guilty, don't blame anybody else but that using finger right here.
That's the way to do it. So they got what is called conscience.
You take CON the rest of that word. Conscience is science for knowledge with knowledge before they were innocent means without knowledge of good and evil. So every single human being has a conscience.
That scripture talks to us about an evil conscience it talks about.
A umm.
Good conscience talks about a pure conscience talks about a conscience seared with a hot iron. I just want to say to you young people, this is your breastplate. Maintain a good conscience before God. We live before him. Yeah, sometimes you can hide stuff from your parents and from your brethren.
But there is an I see. There's an all seen God.
That sees every single thing you ever do.
You know, I found it sometimes.
A little child.
In his home, he knows he's not supposed to touch a certain base on a table, and he goes up to that table and he knows he's not supposed to touch it, and he's tempted to touch it, and he looks around to see if his mom's watching. Why does he do that? That's his conscience work.
00:25:04
So conscience is a very real thing to maintain a good conscience. That's the breastplate of righteousness. We're living in a sin filled world and I want to encourage you young people and older ones too, to exercise yourself to have always a conscience void of offense toward God.
And toward men.
Remember.
Joseph in the Old Testament.
He had a pretty rough life.
When he was.
17 or so.
His brothers sold them as a slave to Egypt. I can't imagine what that must have meant to him, his ten brothers.
They sold him as a slave to Egypt. So he goes down and he's bought by the captain of the guard and he's working in the captain's house and he's so faithful because he's conscious of God in his life, that he's soon over the whole captain of the guards house. But there's a problem there.
The captain's wife wants him to commit sin.
Wants him to go to bed with her.
And day by day she said something to him about it. And finally there was a day when it was just she and him in the house, and she grabbed a hold of his clothes.
You know what he had said to her? He said, how can I do this great sin against God?
He lived before the eye of God.
You're young people, I want to encourage you.
To keep yourself pure in this world.
Of sexuality.
And liber umm, people take liberties.
And think that they have the right to do so.
Keep yourself here, it costs Joseph.
And he ended up in prison.
You might have said, come on, Joseph, just go ahead and do it. Get it over with.
Nobody will ever know. Your family is a long ways away, he says. How can I do this great sin against God?
And you maintain himself faithful sexually. I don't think Joseph would have ever come to the throne of Egypt like he did.
If he had submitted to that temptation.
Young people, keep yourself sure it's worthwhile. I was a young person, I grew up in an 18I struggled with those issues.
But the Lord helped me to keep myself here. I'm so thankful.
When I got married to my wife that I could save.
I am a virgin, I haven't gotten out of line as to my sexuality.
It's a very real thing. God has made sexuality to be used within the bonds of marriage. It's like a river running in its banks. What a beautiful thing it is, what a useful thing it is. But if that river becomes too big and it overflows, it bounds, it does a lot of damage.
And I see so many young people.
Messing their lives up.
Don't do it, it's not worthwhile. Keep yourself here, young men. Be careful of your habits, especially around young women, young sisters.
Help by covering yourself up properly.
This world has learned.
If the woman will uncover herself as much as possible, it stimulates men as they look at.
That is a temptation that you should not give.
Keep yourself here. The Lord help you. That's my desire for you. It's worth while struggling, fighting the good fight of faith, to have a good conscience before God. Paul talks to Timothy several times about that. A good conscience. I just want to say that's the breastplate of righteousness. It is very important.
00:30:28
#3 having your feet shut with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Notice it doesn't say having your feet shod with the gospel of peace with the preparation of the gospel of peace. In other words, the way you watch prepares the way to give the message of the gospel of peace.
Sometimes people have said.
The way you act, speak so loud I can't hear what you say.
If you don't walk properly as a Christian, you're not going to find yourself at liberty to give the gospel of peace. So stop and think about this part of the armor.
The shoes, the.
D shot with the preparation.
Of the gospel of peace. The Lord help us in this young people.
Now the next one noticed. It says above all, this is the central piece of armor. This is number 4. So there's three before it and three after.
Above all, this is very important, taking the shield of faith, wherewith he shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
Remember the shield generally, I suppose the soldier learned to hold the sword in his right hand, and he had the shield on his left arm, and he was pulling it up and down to catch the arrows or the darts that were coming here. It says to quench the fiery darts of the wicked.
What are those darts?
Their doubts. Satan wants you to doubt God. That's exactly what he did to Eve and made her fall.
I say sometimes young people, if you have doubts about me, I can understand you.
You have doubts about other people in the meeting? Maybe I can understand.
Never ever admit a doubt about God or His Word.
Because that comes directly from Satan. That's the way he wants to get you down.
And so if a dark a doubt gets in those fiery darts, and the shield of faith goes down, and another one and another one, that soldier is going down in the battle.
Don't let it happen. What is the shield of faith?
Implicit trust in God. God is faithful and God cannot change.
You know what?
There's something that we do that God cannot do. It's a lie.
So when he says something, you can trust him. And there's so much in this Bible, you know what? I read it. I don't really understand that awful well, but I trust it. There's people that trust their minds and they use God.
Somebody has said we should use our minds, but we should trust God implicitly. Trust Him without question. Let me read you a verse.
In Proverbs chapter 3 that I very well known verse but I find it so beautiful.
Proverbs, chapter 3.
And verse five and six.
Trust in the Lord.
With.
How much?
How much of my heart?
Did you get it?
00:35:02
Did you see that word?
How much of your heart?
I'll ask you again.
All your heart.
You know, sometimes when I think of my trust in the Lord, I have to recognize.
There's little pockets of doubt here and there in my heart.
Don't let that happen.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart.
And then it says.
And lean not to thine own understanding.
I love the way it reads in the Spanish, the old version of the Spanish says.
Yeah, the the hill back on soda to Corazon in noise three days into proprio Prudencia and the way it says don't lean is the word for the stirrups on a horse, on the saddle of a horse. You know what happens when you're.
On a horse and you maybe start getting lopsided, you put your weight on the stirrups to rectify yourself. That's a natural response.
Do you have understanding?
I hope you do have some. You have some, don't you, Bernie?
Huh.
A little.
I hope you use your understanding that you got.
But don't put your weight on those understanding you have trust in the Lord with all your heart. To me, that has been such a comfort to me.
Because sometimes I think I understand a thing pretty well and I kind of put my weight on my understanding of the thing.
Don't do that. Use your understanding. God has given you understanding. Use it.
But trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding. Want to read a verse in the 14th chapter of Proverbs as well before we go away from Proverbs?
Proverbs 14, verse 26.
In the fear of the Lord.
Is strong confidence.
And his children shall have a place of refuge. If you walk in the fear of the Lord, the result is going to be strong confidence. I love that.
You know you have an illustration of it in David.
He was a shepherd boy. I don't know how old he was when he came to see his brothers.
When Goliath was out there showing himself.
Says Umm Saul asked who is this youth?
Maybe 1718 perhaps, I don't know for sure, but he was in Europe. But there's one thing that David had was strong confidence.
And talking to his brothers and then talking to others, he finally comes to talk to Saul the king.
And he says I will go.
And so it says you can't go, you just a youth. And he's a man of war from his youth.
But he says I was in the countryside and there was a Lion King and there was a bear and they took a lamb out of the block and I went after him.
And grabbed that line by his beard that to me shows it was must have been a African lion because I don't think other lions have beards. Do they? Tell me about it if I if I'm wrong about that but took him by his beard.
Pretty confident young man and hit him and killed him.
Wow, that's impressive to me. I don't know if I would have the courage to do that. But he proved the Lord when nobody else was watching except the Lord. And so here's now the time to encounter the giant. And he goes down. Saul finally accepts the fact that he's going to go down and fight that giant. And he goes down. He tries out Saul's armor and he says, I haven't proved this.
00:40:07
And he left it in the heat there.
And he gets his staff and his shepherd's bag and his sling and five smooth stones, and he goes down beneath the giant. Imagine one side of the valley, here comes David, down this year. Other side, here's Goliath, almost 10 feet tall.
All covered with armor. Even has an armor bearer up in front to help protect him.
And Goliath sees David and he says, you think I'm a dog, that you send me this little guy.
And David says, you come to me with a sword and a spear. I come to you in the name of Jehovah, the God of Israel, whom you have defied. This day I will take your head from off of you.
The battle is not over yet, David. You better. You better fight it before you start talking like that. No, there is a confidence there that was incredible. And the fear of the Lord is strong confidence. That's that shield of faith. Make sure to get that in place. That's so important. Well, you know the results of that story.
David had five stones. It only took one.
Knocked Goliath on his face and he took the life spoon sword.
And finish the job. And here comes David back from the valley of Elah with the giant sword in one hand and the giant's head in the other. What a victory. How in the world he do that? You know what? It wasn't for David a matter of David versus Goliath. It was a matter of God versus Goliath. David had all confidence.
How the bottle would come out in the end.
That's the shield of faith. That's the strong confidence. Again, I say, you can doubt me, young people.
You can dial other people too, but never admit a doubt about God and His Word. That's the shield of faith. OK, let's go on because our guns run in and we want to take the test.
The next one is the Helmet of Salvation. The helmet, of course, was something that went over the.
Head, it was.
About the thoughts, you're thinking patterns, how important to have them, right?
I'm going to read a verse out of the our hymn book that to me describes what the Helmet of Salvation is. It's hymn #16 in the appendix. You want to look it up? I found this such a blessing to think about the very last verse.
Of 16 in the appendix.
For every tribulation, for every sore distress in Christ, I have full salvation.
Sure help and quiet rest, No Fear of force prevailing. I triumph, Lord in thee, O Jesus, friend unfailing, how dear art thou to me. It's the knowledge that in Christ we have a salvation that is complete.
And even though we are down here in the middle of the battle, our God will see us through it all. In Christ we have full salvation, sure help, and quiet rest.
The next piece of the armor is offensive armor.
And the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
That was what the Lord Jesus used with the devil in the temptations. You know the Lord Jesus was tempted for 40 days, 40 nights.
Early severe tempting. We only have 3 recorded temptation, but in each one of those 3 recorded temptations, the Lord responded to the devil. It is written He used the word of God, a verse from the Bible. He didn't reason with the devil.
00:45:03
Don't reason with the devil, quote the word of God. I remember as a young person.
Wrestling about the issue of my salvation and the devil would come to me and say you think you're saved, Come on, look, the way you've acted, you're not saved.
And I learned just to go back to the Word of God and say Scripture says whosoever.
They leave it in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. On that verse I raised the shield of faith, and the devil could go no longer.
I used the Sword of the Spirit.
Is another temptation that I have had is when things go pretty negative in life, things don't always go the way we think they ought to go.
They go pretty heavy sometimes and the devil comes and says you think God's for you, look what's happened. Come on, be reasonable. All these things are against you.
But you have to go back to scripture and scripture says if God before us who can be against us. So don't reason with the demo.
Quote Scripture. That's just what the Lord Jesus said and one of the temptations the devil used the scripture.
If you look at it carefully, he didn't quote it completely. He quoted only a part of it. And the Lord Jesus said it is written again in another place. Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. And so the devil was defeated and he takes off. He leaves him. The devil realizes he cannot stand before that sword of the Spirit.
Now there's one more thing.
Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for All Saints. Prayer, supplication.
Prayer is more of a general.
Expression.
Supplication is more intense.
God wants us to be intense about our relationship with.
Him Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to pray?
You know, I don't find prayer easy. I find it hard.
I have disciplined myself to get up in the middle of the night, one or two in the morning.
And to pray.
I know a lot of brethren, not only in North America but in South America.
It's about all over the place. It's a battle.
And it's not about pleasing yourself in this life, young people. Discipline yourself, Deny yourself. The Lord Jesus said if any man come after me, let him deny himself. Take up his cross and follow me. You're willing to deny yourself.
Oh, just turn over and leave another hour, OK?
You're going to find that you won't have power in your spiritual life.
Praying always, with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit.
Watching there unto. In other words, God is going to come through. I've seen some amazingly wonderful answers to prayer.
God wants to answer our prayers.
It's through prayer that we have fellowship with him.
And it's not that we're asking him to do something he doesn't want to do it some we're asking him something that he does want to do.
But he wants fellowship with us in that way.
That's a very important part of the Armor of God, so I'll go over it once more before I do the task #1.
Having your loins skirt about with true number 23 heat shot with the preparation of the Gospel of peace #4 Above all, taking the shield of faith #5.
00:50:03
Having the helmet of salvation number six, the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God #7.
Praying always, please shut your bibles, please turn off your machines and check your notes. OK, who can tell me #1?
Very good #2.
Very good.
#3.
Very good #4.
Very good #5 you already had one, so I'll take somebody else.
That's number six, Number five.
Helmet of Salvation? And then what was it you said?
OK, that's number six and #7 we didn't have any girls yet. How about that girl way back there?
OK, very good.
OK, I guess you passed the test, but if I ask that same tomorrow morning, I hope you'll remember them too. Let's pray.
Gracious Father, thanks for thy precious word.
Help each one of these dear young people and older ones too.
The battle is strong.
And our desire is to see them go on, not to give away to the enemy. Help us, Lord, we confess we're not sufficient in ourselves. It's only in Thy power that we can stand. So we ask thy blessing on the rest of this day, commending ourselves in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Session #2
Q&A
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Then they don't really know what it means. And when they say believers baptism, that is just, uh, I can explain more later, but believers baptism is you have to prove that you're a believer before you can be baptized. Umm, you have to have a date that you were saved. You have to have a good living life.
Evidence that you are saved and then someone will decide whether or not.
You can be baptized as a believer, and so neither one is really scriptural. So we need to discuss what baptism is. It is Christian baptism and when we're baptized, we're put onto Christian ground. I want to look at a verse in Galatians chapter 3.
I know this all may be confusing but.
People come up with little names for.
What they don't like about the other people.
Galatians 3, verse 27.
Let's start at verse 26. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
And so baptism it puts on.
Christ, whether you're saved or you're not saved, if you're baptized, you have put on perhaps can we say like a uniform. You have put on price.
People see you now as a Christian.
If you're a Muslim and you get baptized whether you're saved or not, you're called a Christian.
If you're a Jew and you get baptized as Christian baptism, you are no longer a Jew. You're a Christian. Doesn't matter if you're saved or not, you're a Christian. It doesn't mean you're saved, but it means you are a follower of Christ. Because you have taken Christian baptism, you haven't taken household baptism, you haven't taken believers baptism. There is only one baptism.
It's Christian baptism and so when as many of you have been baptized into Christ.
Have put on price.
I want to I want to give a little history of.
Baptism at the 1St, when the church was first established in the Acts.
The believers, the head of the household, would baptize everyone in their house. It didn't matter if you were a servant, a relative, grandparent, children, if you lived in that household, the head of the household would make sure everyone in that house was baptized. We read a little bit about Lydia. She grew up. She lived in a an idolatrous city.
She got saved. There's no mention of any faith of anyone else in her household. It was Lydia who was saved and she wanted everyone in her household to be on Christian ground. She wanted to testimony to the world.
And a testimony to her family. And so she had baptized everybody in her house because if you were going to live in her house, you were going to act like a Christian. Because she had a testimony. Now being the head of the household, she had a testimony to to portray to the world. And then at some point, maybe with the Catholics, when they began to develop in the year 300 or so.
Somewhere along the line in the many years past.
They developed the idea to baptize infants.
And they said that the babies would be saved, they'd go to heaven if they were baptized. We all know that's false, but that was that is widely practiced even today. So then there are other groups that decided that any unbeliever who is baptized would go to heaven, and that also is false.
And so many years later.
00:05:02
There were the Baptists and the open brethren and, uh, they disagreed with this false practice, which was good, and but they added their own ideas and they took this privilege of authority away from the heads of the households and they developed a doctrine that they called believers baptism.
And they said that salvation and a godly life is required by a person before they could be baptized.
And so that sounds good, but it's not taught in Scripture. Remember I passed over Acts chapter 8, verse 37. I'll, I'll read that one now.
And Philip said.
For Acts 837 And Philip said, If you believe with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And so this verse was added by the translators. Most of the most of the OR none of the old manuscripts, the original manuscripts have that verse in it, but it was added.
By the King James, Uh, umm.
The translators I I don't know why.
So neither household nor believer's baptism is really scriptural. So the Bible teaches Christian baptism. And when you are baptized, as I said earlier, you are identified as a Christian whether you're saved or not. If you've been baptized, you are.
Considered to be a Christian in India.
People are afraid to be baptized. And so with the Christians, when they're baptized, immediately they are setting themselves apart from Hinduism and the many gods of Hindu and uh, they are persecuted, they're kicked out of their houses, they are burned, they're killed. And because they have taken on Christian baptism, because Christian baptism.
You are considered to be a Christian whether you're saved or not.
But if you are saved.
This is an interesting point if you are saved and you cannot be called a Christian unless you have been baptized.
Baptism puts Christ on you like we read in Galatians 3 verse 27. So if you are here today and you have not been baptized, you might be saved, but technically you can't be considered a Christian unless you have put on Christ through baptism. So there's a few thoughts about the history of baptism.
OK.
I'd like to come back. Uh, umm.
Oh, really? To get No, You know that so many of us were baptized with the unique phrase to baptize it. Yeah.
Therefore we are baptized with Him, buried with him by baptism into death. The life as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father. Even so, we also should walk and do the surprise.
When you're baptized.
Going down into the water.
It's like the old journey that's going into death.
And coming up out of the water as just like Christ with grace from the dead, you're reenacting, if you will, that.
00:10:01
Griffin's life of Christ and the new Bernie, the old Bernie is dead. He looked down into the water for new Bernie comes up and walk and units of life. Uh, and there's him this message. It's kind of like putting her on a price. I, some of you will remember last year maybe, or the year before when we took this up a little bit, uh, Mr. Christensen.
Had given an example that I'll I'll repeat because I found it helpful.
And that is to think of baptism as uh.
Under new management.
That is the old sinful, uh, self is dead to be reckoned to be dead, and that you're now, umm, along the price under his authority, uh.
The new life walking and newness of life. And so, uh, you're not saved by being baptized, but it's really pronouncing I belong to Christ, I think. And you mentioned putting out a uniform. So I will use a sports analogy, uh, a Detroit Tiger player with where a Detroit Tiger jersey and everybody would know if he plays for the Tigers.
And so you wouldn't get a Chicago, uh.
A white sock or a red sock to wear? Or, uh.
God I miss God. Woke up and put out a.
Saint Louis Cardinals Jersey would you? That would be considered to be my sports people bless me so.
But it's the the point I'm trying to make is umm.
You were identifying who you belong to. Umm.
And that's what this fascism is about, is that being saved? You know, the thief on the cross couldn't be baptized, but the Lord said to him, today you'll be with me in paradise. And so this is different than having your sins washed away. This is a public, uh, reenactment, if I can use that term. Uh, the old Bernie goes down into death and the new Bernie comes up.
Uh, under the ownership of the workings.
Is that is that right or is my phone?
The converse is.
You're a Sprint in 10.
About.
Household.
Uh, it's not talking about Christian baptism.
It says in verse one. Moreover, brethren, I would not that he should be ignorant now, that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea.
Remember when the children initially came out of Egypt?
Barrow suggested you leave your children here in Egypt and you that are adults can go worship the Lord.
Also said no, we're going. All of us are going.
And so they all were baptized.
At the most, this is my Christian bathroom. This is baptism. The most because baptism is identification. It's been mentioned we identify with the Lord Jesus in his death, and we do it in that way, Baptism.
Before the children of Israel left the land of Egypt and went through the Red Sea, they were identified as slaves of Egypt under the power and authority of Pharaoh.
After they went through the waters of baptism in the Red Sea, they were identified with Moses.
Now they were no longer slaves of Egypt.
So it's helpful to understand that baptism is identification. It's interesting what Tim was mentioning. I understand that in Orthodox Jewish families, if a person.
00:15:01
Professes faith in the Lord Jesus. Nothing is too serious in that family, but it's when that person is baptized, they will actually often hold a funeral service for that person. That person is died as far as they're concerned.
So that's what baptism is. It's identification with the Lord Jesus and his death. He died for me.
We don't actually die, but we identify in that way with the Lord Jesus. He died for me. Now I identify with Him and his death.
And that's important. And so here in First Corinthians 10.
You look at that.
When, uh, they were baptized with their infants and their mother's arms.
Yeah.
For their households, yeah.
And so.
He identified with Moses in that way. Now in Christian baptism, like Jim was mentioning in the book of the Acts, you have not only.
A Lydia. But let's go back to Acts chapter 16.
And look at the Philippian jailer.
A little later in that same chapter.
Verse 31 That verse that we use so much in the gospel, they said believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved and thy house.
They speak unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that word is now. And he took down that same hour of the night, and washed their stripes, and was baptized, He and all his strangely.
I'm gonna read the next verse in Mr. Darby's translation because I think it makes it a little clear.
Verse 34.
And having brought him into his house, he laid the table for them.
And rejoice with all his house comma, having believed in God, and having believed is really referenced to Him.
The jet. So the point was, the important point was together that household was baptized and the whole household was included in that. It doesn't mean necessarily that the whole household is safe.
Salvation is an individual thing and you're going to have to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ yourself. You come to of age to be saved, but you are in a sphere that God recognizes that has been.
Put under the authority of recognizing the Lord Jesus as an authority. And so Christian parents bring up their children.
In the uh.
In the in the Spanish I was reading.
And uh, Ephesians chapter 4, uh, six is what I'm thinking of.
In verse four, bring them up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord, in other words.
They are to be brought up as Christians.
Parents don't say, well, you haven't made a profession of Christ yet. We can't make them, uh, obey the Lord. Yes, you can because they are in this chair that God recognizes where the head of the House of is a responsibility. And so there is our responsibility to bring them up as if they were just, even though they may not have made their profession of faith yet.
That is, so they're still under that headship while they're under their father's house.
But under their father's roof, I should say.
So it's it's an important principle in Scripture. Umm.
Perhaps one of the first UH mentions of it is in Genesis chapter.
Umm.
Chapter 7 I think it is.
Connection with the flood.
00:20:02
Verse one The Lord said unto Noah, Come thou.
In all thy house into the ark.
For thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.
He doesn't say, I've seen all your children righteous. Now he says, Thee have I seen righteous now? Go over to the book of Hebrews Chapter 11 and verse 6.
Just notice this first my face. Noah being warned of God, of things not seen as yet.
Moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house. By the way, he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by being.
Look at that verse. Is there any mention of the faith of Noah's sons and their wives?
Not really.
I didn't believe they had faith because they were adults and they walked into that art on their own.
But the point is, is that they were part of a household and God recognizes that inscription. Very interesting, important principle.
Might just mention one other thing. Uh, what uh, Ken was mentioning Uh, go back to Acts chapter 8 again.
Where Philip goes down to Samaria.
In verse 5, and preach Christ unto them.
And many believe there's uh.
12.
But when they believe Philip preaching the glass, the things concerning the glass, the Kingdom of God in the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized lost men and women.
Then Simon. He was the sorcerer.
Himself believed also, and when he was baptized he continued with Philip and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs which were done.
I went. The apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God. They sent unto him Peter and John.
Verse 18 And when Simon saw that through the lane, on the hands of the apostles, the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money. They give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hand he may receive the Holy Ghost.
But Peter said unto him, Thymine, perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money. Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter, for thy heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God. Perhaps the thought of thy heart may be forgiven before I perceive the thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity.
Simon said as he believed he was baptized as he said.
Doesn't look like it. I don't think so.
That's what he says in verse 24. Then answered Simon and said pray yeast the Lord for me. He couldn't even pray for himself.
So it shows that baptism in itself does not say.
I'm in faith when he believed was not a real thing.
Only God knows that.
But Peter discerned that because of the question he asked, Give me this, I'll give you some money. Give me this power.
That's not characteristic of a real comedian.
How much? How much on?
Probation is the rot.
Stop.
Sometimes we believe that every, every time is talking about salvation in the Bible. It's talking about salvation of the soul. Whereas in March 16 it says he does, does not believe so we can.
But umm, we do see in first Peter Three that baptism saves. That's what Peter says the baptism says.
But in what sense does it say does it save the soul? Either clarifies that umm, I'll be proceeder three first.
Verse 20.
It's sometime we're disobedient when one the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah while the ark was preparing for a few that his eight souls were saved.
By water.
Was it not the ark that they know of anything? Yeah, but Peter is saying here that the water save, no.
So they weren't saved by water. So what is Peter referring to? It's not saying it's not talking about faith. It's talking about judgment.
We, uh, we've heard that baptism talks about identification and also it is a change of fear.
No, I've changed spheres through the waters of the Flood. One sphere.
It was.
Under the violence of the people, under the fear of the people, and so on the same as the people of Israel crossing the rest seat, they changed fears too. On one side they were under Pharaoh and slaves of Egypt on the other side that were under the guidance of Moses. Noah on one side was under the influence of the world and under the fear of the violence that there was prior to the flood.
On the other side, it was to umm.
Be under the the government of God and so that's why Peter says the baptism that.
There might be here where unto in fact it says the baptism that can respond to this.
Ah, the light figure to the waters of the flood, not to the ark. The ark is a type of phase in the Lord Jesus Christ. Optimism is not a type of the art. Baptism is a type, is a figure. It's a light figure of the waters of the flock. And that water's just changed Noah from once a year to the other. And that system does the same for us if we go back to March 16.
Verse 15 and 16.
Send it to them, go into all the world and please the gospel to every creature without believers and this upside shall be saved, but I need I believe it's not shall be damned. So there is salvation that's eternal salvation and that's only for believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. There is a.
Umm, salvation from, from the, the things down here the Lord says to the his, umm, the apostles pleased the gospel in that, in that way in the Acts, because they were somehow associated to a nation that had united reward and they were going to be umm, partakers of the judgement of the Lord in that sense. Umm, but they needed to decide to separate or disagree, associate yourself from that nation.
00:30:07
Through bathroom and.
We see here that.
Umm, bypass and save in that sense. That person does not save in the sense of eternal salvation.
That's a good one. You guys are distinguished between.
Was saved from the judgment of God upon sin and what saves from the government of God, like you say, the and let's go back to Acts chapter 2 because I think that's a good point to bring out here. He's speaking to the Jewish people like Peter was in his epistle.
And notice how he puts it in the end of chapter 2 of Acts.
He's preaching the gospel. He ends his preaching in verse 36.
Verse 37 They are pricked in their hearts, and they say to Peter and the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what shall we do not on August this? Verse 38 Then Peter said unto them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ.
For the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, you'll be able to receive their initial sins. They have to be baptized. They couldn't get remission of sins without them.
Because they were associated with a guilty nation that had crucified their Messiah when terrible crime that the nation of Israel still lies under the guilt of that crime. And so they have to be baptized to be able to be saved to receive the gift of the holy Holy Spirit. So in that sense that doesn't say.
Governmentally, not judicially.
But now look at the first uh, that corresponds with that that Paul tells about in his testimony and Acts chapter 22.
Acts Chapter 22 and.
He's telling about his getting saved and what Ananias said to him.
What do you want to do? And it says in verse 16.
Now why there is thou arise and be baptized, and wash away thy sins.
So this last year's moisture waste in.
Governmentally, it took them out of the position where God's government was over that nation and he identified him with the Lord Jesus. Then he was free from that. In that sense, not judicially, but governmentally. I hope that's clear because.
It's a lot of confused, a lot of confusion on this issue. I just say rather than we need to. There's a lot of feeling about this issue. And since I've been brought up, I've seen brothers that I respect highly on both sides of this issue and.
Feel pretty strongly about it.
We're not gathered to the question of baptism. We're gathered on the ground that there is one body, and if every true believer is part of that one body.
So some people were asked one time in a public meeting, uh, what do you hold on household baptism?
He said. I hold my tongue.
So let's not make it an issue to divide it. We need to use Christian grace.
And go along with our budget even though they may not see it like we gave them. So I think that's important.
I'd like to have a new example.
That might be helpful. Take off your mask, brother.
Umm, I've had education in dentistry.
But if I went and set up the practice today in my own state and so forth, everything is proper, I'd be arrested and probably get it.
00:35:09
I might have the license, I might have the medication, but I do not have the license.
So I can show diploma and I can show representation that that I'm qualified.
But I can't do it.
This.
And so we've been talking about taking on the character of.
In that size and price and so forth.
But they're not doing the allergies there.
That's what it's called, diploma.
That I'm working.
So that isn't so I really have a sort of salvation and quite nicely about the reduces and expanded.
Version of yourself SO.
Any other help you're trying to do that Some of these things are representation.
Somebody said you are uh.
Uh, necessary.
But if I don't have the license, I'm not encrypted in terms of I've got two days and born again and have accepted Jesus come.
And we're bringing in a poster and I wouldn't have something.
And.
For the next question, does anybody have final comments on the subject?
OK. The next question.
In faith and physically controlled my thoughts and actions.
I don't understand how he attacks me and how to defend myself.
Second part of the question, can I be possessed by a demon if I am saved?
First John, chapter 4.
First John chapter 4 and verse four year of God's little children and have overcome them because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.
This is a comforting verse because we know that Satan cannot touch our soul.
We know from Joe he can touch our bodies.
We know, Satan, you can use the world and the flesh.
Who hacked us?
I've often wondered how much Satan can physically control my thoughts and my actions.
But I think he uses a different means of using things that we allow in our lives.
To, uh, control us.
And he can put things in our way that will will, umm, tempt us and lure us.
They can hear our prayers if we pray them out loud.
He has his demons everywhere.
And they can hear you.
00:40:01
What you say they can see what you do.
And they can, uh, bring things to pass in your life that can guide and guide you or influence you. And so we need to be very careful what we allow in our lives. There's a lot of things in this world that defile us intellectually. The devil attacks us intellectually.
And.
That's part of our minds, and he can use the flesh in the world to attack our minds and put thoughts in our heads.
And use those things against us and.
So readers see that it's in the world and that that is in you that he that is in the world, he cannot touch your soul, but he can touch your body and he cannot take you away from God. He is greater God is greater than Satan. Every time the Lord Jesus and Satan are have a a conflict, the Lord Jesus always.
And we find the end of Revelation. Jesus is the winner.
But I think you agree again when you should say that they cannot touch even our bodies unless the Lord allows it, specifically because we are redeemed by that precious blood. You cost so tremendously that if Satan is going to touch you, he's got to get special permission from God.
One of the cases job he did touch Joe first of all taking away his family.
That is, uh, all his possessions and then second he touched his body and he was had terrible boils all over his body.
But it was with a specific purpose and God made the limit. He said OK you can touch his body but don't take away his life. So if God is does allow for you to touch it, God is doing it with a specific purpose for our own good and blessing. Never forget that. There's a verse in First Corinthians 6 that.
Want to read?
In verse UH 19.
It's talking about here in this chapter about the sin of fornication.
Sexual.
Sin verse 19 says what?
Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which you have of God, and ye are not your own.
The Holy Spirit dwells in the body of a believer.
Tremendous truth to think about it.
And so I do not believe that last part of that question, that a demon can possess a real believer.
That part of belongs to him, and the Holy Spirit that he dwells there is incongruous that a demon could at the same time dwell there. I don't think that will ever happen.
But he can, like it was saying, he can bring unclean thoughts. So be careful when you're on the Internet, young people, what you're watching. Don't fill your mind with garbage.
Heat the filter up.
And don't let those things get into your mind that Satan can use. Satan has a lot of experience, 6000 years of experience of how to tempt people and get them to fall.
Can't read your mind. I don't think you can control your thoughts either. You're the one that is are responsible for controlling your thoughts. It can affect you by putting *********** in front of you.
And there's so many other things in this world, and so we need to be careful what we allow in our lives, and that's why we recommend so highly.
To read the scriptures. I remember a brother saying to us young people when I was young.
00:45:04
Read Scripture. Read it until you don't think your own thoughts, You think God's thoughts.
I really enjoyed that and if you are filled with God's thoughts.
They can start when they come around, They're not gonna have too much play.
You have a glass of water and it's full.
You can't pour anything more into it because it's already full.
And so keep it full of the Word of God. That will be a blessing to you.
I think our question on baptism is tied into this question too. You know, we tend to think that we can either serve God or we can serve ourselves, and then some people get carried away and serve Satan and worship him. But the truth of the Scripture is that not only are we born in our sins and under the curse of our sins, but we're born into Satan's Kingdom. Umm, we read.
You know, umm, the other night in Luke where Satan says umm, we find it again.
Uh, Luke chapter 4?
Satan says.
Inverse uh.
6.
All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them, for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will I give it. This world is Satan's. Umm, we can read enrollments about man's rebellion and how God gave them up and gave them up and gave them up. Umm, we can turn to Deuteronomy 32.
Where you know the scene.
The Tower of Babel is in view.
You just read from Deuteronomy 32.
Verse 7.
Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations. Ask thy father, and he will show thee thy elders, and they will tell thee. When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance. This inheritance language is used a lot in the Bible. So the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance. When he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel, for the Lord's portion is his people. Jacob is a lot of his inheritance.
And so on. Umm, we can turn to umm.
There's so many portions here.
But uh, when, when the apostle Paul is describing to Agrippa his conversion in in Acts chapter 27.
Exacts chapter 27.
Oh, I'm sorry, it's 26.
For 16 But rise and stand upon their feet. For I have appeared unto them for this purpose, to make the administer and a witness both of the things which thou hast seen, and of those things and the which I will appear unto thee, delivering thee from the people and from the Gentiles, into whom now I send. Need open their eyes and determine them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of their sins and inheritance among them, which are sanctified by faith. That is in me.
And then Colossians.
There's multiple places we can turn.
But Colossians chapter one, giving thanks unto the Father, which has made us need to be partakers of the inheritance of the Saints and light, who have delivered us from the power of darkness and have translated us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, and whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. So we're born into Satan's world. The inheritance in Satan's world is to enjoy the pleasures of this world for a season and then to have eternal damnation. But we're we're in when we're in Christ.
For a new creature, we're in inheritance of his Kingdom. Umm, he's in US where? Where the Scripture says we're in Christ. And you know, once we're in Christ, we can't be possessed by a demon. Umm, but he doesn't give up on the warfare, umm.
00:50:06
But we've been translated into the Kingdom of His dear Son, and baptism is, as we've been mentioning, our declaration of being in His Kingdom, now under His domain.
Umm.
Yeah.
Correlation between our subject of baptism and our subject now.
I'm thinking again of 1St Corinthians 10 that was given.
We read that all we're about. We're baptized unto Moses.
In the cloud and in the sea.
To see how they did not leave the children behind and they did not wait until the children were adults to cross over and it was it was their decision to take them to the other side.
It's interesting. Umm, as a brother mentioned before.
About, uh, believing, it says in verse five, God with many of them. God was not wealthy.
With many of them, God with God will be. So yeah, baptism delivers. Umm.
Children that are that are that are raised in Christian homes are saved in the in the general sense are are regarded from many things are protected I should say, and there are many evils that are avoided by being raised in a Christian home.
But everyone of us needs to be saved by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ and umm.
Satan does not stop the fight against her because we're believers, but it is a different thing when someone is not a believer. It is, uh, governed, umm, by statement. In that sense, it makes, it makes me, umm, makes me think of that, uh, demon process man that went to meet the Lord lesion.
And we see the end of the Lord, uh, allowed in those, uh, swine was they went to the.
It went through the through the Cliff and that point to the end of the person that is lived their lives without umm, believing in the Lord Jesus. The end is the nation.
But uh, a person that is born or raised in a Christian home has, has umm, certain benefits, but that person needs to believe in the Lord. They can still will fight. Umm, we'll, we'll do as much as we can to make us fall and to be a bad testimony for the Lord. But if we fill ourselves, like our brother Bob was saying, if we fill ourselves with the things of the Lord.
It's a little is, is is the Lord are everything everything They're not alive. Does he still alive? It doesn't mean that we are without. We don't make mistakes or there's no sin in our heart. There should be repentance and there should be, umm, self judgment. If we do act in self judgment and continually in our lives, we're not we will not give occasions to Satan. We fill ourselves with the word of God.
Then it says that through the word of God we can overcome the weakest 1.
7.
That I think it's important in connection with children being baptized.
By believing parents.
First Corinthians Chapter 7 and verse.
Ortiz, He's talking about the case of a.
Uh, one of the couple is.
And perhaps the other is not. But notice what it says in verse 14, verse 13714 For the undulating husband is sanctified by the light.
How is he sanctified?
By her face.
And the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband who is a believer.
Uh, she thinks if I buy his face.
Else were your children unclean?
00:55:00
But now are they fully?
How can the children be holy? They haven't believed in the Lord themselves.
By the faith of the believing parent or parents.
That's an important point, is to show that on background work there are parents and I say Catholic infants. Baptism does not.
Necessa necessity think it's done because it is a right of the Catholic system.
But when a Christian parent baptizes their children, they do it.
They're necessary that those parents or parents have faith on that ground. It's done because the children are holy.
By the face of the believing parents or parents.
Wanna leave that? Think about it.
I scared you're more horrifying and.
So we're open, you are anti surrounding trials and we're ready to save this world.
But the second part of the question is I don't understand how to get that myself.
Yes, absolutely, 10% ourselves.
And.
The product 4 or 15 tests.
Quit it's not quiet ready on it and passed away.
So yeah, we have two cases that we brought before us by taking anywhere in this world. And there's certain things that we cannot avoid, but there are many things that we can't go on to. Some examples that still prep one music or things on the Internet, things that we have to give the access to. We have great struggles with it, like you find yourself.
I can't tell myself, well, avoid it, you know, take it away.
Got you. Bye, bye.
Yes, Daniel comes on as well. There's nothing he could do. He was taking that dude. Well, that's a situation, so I don't know.
01:00:04
200,000 We're gonna come reminder description and what I think so here in the description where you know, you have to go to school, you have to go to school, You have a fluid I said or not you're gonna be presenting with the school also that might come up on the patient. We have scriptures memorized like those ones in Corinthians.
How's that, uh, prepare? And then the third would be a little bit lesson on the third one. That's the same application. Umm, it is someone that we got saved. Is there a different date? If you find themselves in the division where they did not know that what they're doing currently, we're talking that they're having right now is in fact, it's been a long.
And we have a good night. Defend yourself by getting out now and you know right now whether they're relationship that you're in or whether it be a place that you visit or.
Take care of it right away and stop it right now.
That way, so there are ways that we defend ourselves and product that we are.
Let me go and prepare rather than all all of a sudden you're in a situation and situation and fix it that way. It works that way.
Find them.
I, uh, remember advice given to us young people when I was younger.
And about our thoughts, controlling our thoughts and they, because I have the experience even to this day, and I'm sitting down at the Lord's table to remember the Lord in these most awful paths coming to my mind.
I think it's because of our flash, you know?
And it's we, we have to recognize that. I say, hey, your dad, you're playing.
But somebody said this and this was a help to me as a young person.
Says you can't keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can't keep them from making nests in your hair.
And that was a help for me.
Can't keep the stock from women through your mind, but you are responsible for not giving them a place in your mind.
Dispatch them, fill them with scripture, fill your mind with scripture, replace it. I wanted to encourage. Another thing is.
Sing good Christian songs. It's it's a it's a blessing.
I, uh, was impressed. Uh, a brother that had a tremendous influence on my life was Eric Smith. You've probably heard of him Most, uh, some of you know, know him, some of the older ones.
But he said there was an old brother in his time that used to pray. Lord, help me not to die a wicked old man.
They can't really impress me because I used to look at the older brothers and said man, it must might even be nice to get up. At that age you don't have any more struggle with the flesh.
That is not true.
God bless you still there. And so as long as you're alive, you got to be on your guy.
I guess our time is up. One last comment. The hardest. The sequel. The sequel above all things, and desperately wicked.
We don't know the depths of witness that come from our hearts and that's why it's good to keep, uh, and Bob was saying to keep our hearts filled with the things of Christ. Even then, those thoughts are still in the back of our minds and our hearts and they can come up at any time like the Bob says that the remembrance of the meeting. These thoughts come to our, our minds and in March after seven, verse 21.
01:05:03
It says for from within, out of the heart of man.
Proceed evil thoughts and so it we can't blame Satan for everything we Satan can can control our our atmosphere, our our environment, and he can force things through that environment. But we need to be careful what we allow in our lives and in our hearts, because it will come out as our time is out if if this question has not been fully answered.
Please put an addendum in the UH question box.
Satan's Devices
Address—Manuel Adames
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Can everybody hear me well?
Good evening.
Before we start, I'd like to ask the Lord for help.
The blessed God and our Father, we thank Thee for thy love towards us and send in thine only Son, the Lord Jesus.
To rescue us from sin and to ring us up through relationship with the to the place of sons and daughters, to the to the very very position of thy.
Beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The head of the new race.
We thank the old God and our Father for.
Umm, by provisions.
In.
Our wrestle against, uh, the enemy, the enemy of our souls, our enemy. We thank the Father because it is not in our own strength that we are overcoming, but in the strength that, uh, that does provide. We ask you, Father, for like help as we open thy word. We ask for help, uh, for the Speaker.
We I confess our Father, our feebleness, we trust that Thy word may reach each one of our hearts. We pray, Father, in the name that is, that is above every name, the name of our Lord and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
What I have in my heart has a lot to do with what we have been discussing.
In the last few days, actually this morning and also, umm, in the last few days, uh, brother Paul spoke about.
Spiritual warfare.
Brother Bob, uh, talked about Ephesians 6, the armor of God against spiritual warfare.
And, umm, I'd like to talk a little bit about.
Some of what we discussed this morning.
Satan's UMM services and.
What he wants to do with each one of his own. And we have some examples in the Word of God. And I was thinking in umm, Daniel chapter one, it is a chapter that we know well, but I'd like to go a little bit on that.
Over that for the benefit of of the young people as well as the older ones.
Daniel, Chapter one.
And I'll just read the first few verses.
In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, came the bucket Nazar, king of Babylon, unto Jerusalem.
And besieged it. And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah, into his hand with part of the vessels of the House of God, which he carried into the land of Shiner to the House of his God. And he brought the vessels into the treasure House of his God. And the king speak unto Ashman as Ashman as the master of his Unox.
That he should bring certain of the children of Israel and of the King's seed, and of the Princess children in whom was no blemish.
But well favored and skillful in all wisdom, and cunning, and knowledge, and understanding science, and such as that ability in them to stand in the King's palace, and whom they might teach the learning and the song of the Chaldeans. And the king appointed them a daily provision of the King's meat, and of the wine which he drank, so nourishing them three years.
But at the end, they're all they might stand before the king.
So let's read it up to that point.
So this morning we were talking about.
There was a question about Satan controlling our lives.
The possibility of that controlling our thoughts, our actions.
And what can we do to fight?
Or to defend ourselves, rather. That was the question.
I was thinking of this chapter and how it typifies what Satan is trying to do to the young people.
00:05:01
At that time and today, the Book of Necessary is a type of Satan. It's a figure of Satan in this chapter.
And we see how he took control of Jerusalem and he took of the young people there.
Because why the young people? Because the young people are a target for him. He does not want young ones to follow the Lord. He's an enemy of the Lord. And anything that is the Lord, he wants to attack. He wants young people to live a life without a testimony for the Lord.
And so he did that.
And if we, if we look at these things as, as a figure of this, umm, things, it could be of benefit to us.
But it says the Lord gave the way I came, King of Judah, into his hand.
It's not umm system is not more powerful than the Lord. The Lord is more powerful than him. We need not to forget that.
So the Lord sometimes allows umm.
The presence of Satan.
The activity of Satan in our lives so that we understand that everything is of him, that we should be dependent on him. Satan asked the asked for the disciples. He didn't only ask for Peter, he asked for all of them. The Lord says I have prayed for you, I have prayed for thee.
And umm, so the lower inter fees for us, he's interceding so that we do not fail.
But Peter?
UMM became proud, thinking that he loved the Lord more than anyone of his, any of his disciples, and the Lord allowed this fall in his life.
And it says verse two. And the Lord gave Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hand with part of the vessels of the House of God. The vessel is something that you use for a purpose.
And this vessel were were for the House of God.
For the king of Babylon wanted this vessel for his house, for the House of his daughter. And that's what Satan wants from you. He wants to.
Umm, they use that. You could be for the Lord. He wants to use you for his purposes, not for the lower purposes. He's an enemy. He's contrary to God. And it's interesting that it says.
Which he carried into the land of China.
And that is interesting to me, the land of China. And one of the first mentions is not the first mention of the land of China. It's in Genesis.
I believe it's Genesis 11.
Genesis 11.
Says on the holder was one language and 1:00 speech.
And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plane in the land of China, and they dwelt there.
They dwelt there, the land of China. We see later on that they built, it says in verse three. And they said one to another, go, go to let us make brick and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone and slime, a day for mortar. And they say, go to let us build out the city and a tower.
The stop may reason to heaven, and let us make us a name, that we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men build it, and so on.
But what was interesting to me was the land of China. This land was the first land where there was a city established where multiple cities by one man. If we go to the prior chapter.
Chapter 10 of Genesis.
Verse 9. Verse 8.
And Kush begat Nimrod. He began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Wherefore it is said, even as Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord, the beginning of his Kingdom was Fable, and Eric and a cat, and in the land of China.
00:10:07
So this land, in this land of China, it was the first time after the flood that men gathered in complete rebellion against God.
Is the opposition against God, and it is the type of the world. That's what the world does. Is an opposition to God.
The God of this world and the Prince of this world is Satan, and Satan wants to go contrary to God all the time.
And he let this man, Nimrod to build a city in this, in the land of China.
The land of China talks to us about that. People that don't want to be subject to God, they want to have their own ideas.
And they put away God in their lives.
And this was the same land in which the children of Israel were taken to the land of China.
And it's interesting that it says they dwelt there. So it the tower available, I don't imagine happened right away. It's not that they went, they found a plane and said, oh, let's build the Tower of Babel here.
It has to be available before the tower was going to be built.
It has to be cities before that. So you see, it goes slowly towards the rebellion of God. Rebelling against God is not obvious right away. We may think that the people of the world are not that rebellious. We may think that when we talk to them, they say, well, I, I believe in God. But you know, I, I don't go, I don't do this. I don't go to church or they, they, they give their own idea.
What it is to believe in God, but they don't believe in God. So it happened. It says they dwell there and then it was obvious that they came up with the idea of bricks rather than stone. God built with tones, man built with bricks. If you know bricks are our umm, they're built with, with the with the mold. So you put.
Umm, in such a way that a brick is the same as the other brick because they all follow the same pattern. It's systematic.
And that's what the world is. It's a it's a system. It's a system to make you to be conformed to it. The Lord says be not conformed to this world or be transformed. Be not conformed.
This water takes the shape of the bottle, and if we are conformed to the world, we will take the shape of the world. The world wants us to take its shape, and that's exactly what the Nesser the King wanted to do here.
He wanted to establish a system so that the people of Israel would be umm, would they would take away their focus, their inheritance, so that they would be focusing on the things of his Kingdom and forget about the things of the Lord. That was his purpose. That is the same purpose of stating today He wants to take away your joy.
In the Lord He wants to take away your.
Testimony he wants to take away everything that is of the Lord in you so that you would serve his purposes instead of the purposes of God and we see various things that he does at least six things here that the Buccaneers doing to take away the young people from from Israel the the lineage of the Princess.
To serve him.
And it says the first one is.
And he speak unto Ashpen as the master of his eunuch.
You know a eunuch could not have children and they were put in the House of the unit and they had a master unit. So the first thing that Satan wants to do is take away the fruitfulness from you any that you do not give any fruit for the Lord.
And it says.
That he should bring certain of the children of Israel and of the King's seed, and of the Princess children in whom was no blemish, but well favored. They were good looking, skillful in all wisdom and cunning and knowledge and understanding science.
And so I just had ability in them.
And whom they might teach the learning and the song of the Chaldeans. So the next thing that he does.
00:15:06
Is.
Bring children where there is no blemish. So good looking and intelligent. And those are things that the Lord gives us. Umm, there are brothers are very intelligent, their sisters are very intelligent. Their brothers are very handsome. Sisters are very beautiful.
These are good things, but know that Satan wants to use those things.
To his advantage. So be careful with that. Satan wants to use your intelligence and your umm, the fact that you were well favored to bring things in of the world to you and to attract you to the things of the world. So be careful.
It says and such as had ability in them to stand in the King's palaces. That was his purpose. His purpose was not so that all they could be, umm, better for the land of Israel when they go back.
There was no going back in his mind. It was all for his palace and whom they might teach the learning and the song of the Chaldeans. Another thing that he did to them was change their tongue, change, change their language.
When Umm.
When we come to the Lord, the Lord asked us to to umm, we, we, we bring certain speech from the world.
That we recognize from the word of God that is not umm, it's not umm, suitable for a Christian. There. There are certain words that the world uses that we do not use because they are corrupt. But Satan wants to turn us back. He wants us to use the same words that the word the world uses. He wants us to use the same language. And that's why.
Umm, the Lord the the king of Umm of Babylon did with them. Do you remember Umm the case of Peter Umm they started talking to Peter and they said your speech.
Makes you manifest, it gives you out, is what they're saying. Your speech gives you out. And umm, Peter then started talking differently, and I do understand he was Vega, Lillian, I do understand that he had a different accent and so on. But I believe it was more than just that. It says your speech gives you out.
And then he started, umm, talking in a different way.
So that they would believe that he was did not know the Lord. And we sometimes, umm, could do that.
And it says that he wanted to change first their location, so he moved them away from the families, from probably a brother, umm, Bob was saying probably their parents mostly got killed, umm, but they took them away umm, to another place, to the place of China, The place where?
There was rebellion and opposition against God, the place where everybody would do anything that they wanted in term in in regards to.
The the things that God requested and they did not re regard anything that got requested and they changed their location. And many times Satan does that. He wants to put you away from your family. He wants you to be separated from your family. And sometimes we are living in the same house with our with our parents, but we are way in the sense that there is no interaction.
And there is no communion there. And that's what Satan wants. He presents the worldly friends as as if they were friends but and tries to separate children from their parents. And that's that's what he does.
And then he change tries to change their language. And then verse five. And the king appointed a daily provision of the King's meat and of the wine which he drank.
So not only did he change the language.
We also wanted to change the diet. Isn't that exactly what Satan wants to do with you? Also, isn't that why he does with all this?
Electronics and and and things that he presents to you to change your diet so that you do not taste you do not you don't have any any umm, appetite for the word of God.
00:20:10
You know, in the in the wilderness, umm, the children of Israel receive the mana. Mana was the name that they gave.
So the bread that came from heaven, and they asked, when they saw it, they asked what is it? They didn't know what it was. And that's why I told Mana. And Mana tasted like what somebody can help. What did manna taste like?
What was that again?
Wafers and honey. Wafers and honey. That's the sweet flavor.
But there's another part that says that it tasted like oil. Why is that?
Yeah. So they grounded, they changed it. They did a lot of things with it because they were not happy with it.
And that's what happens when we we're not happy with the Saints of the Lord. We try to change it to accommodate our own desires, our own and, umm, intellectuality and so on. And it loses its flavor, does not taste like wafers and honey anymore. It tastes like new oil. And the lower wants us to have a flavor for his saying, for his personal, for the person of the Lord.
They you cannot desire the onions and the garlic and all that from Egypt and and have a taste for the man at the same time.
That's a strong flavor, but it does not provide what the mana provides. That's what the Lord wants us today. He wants us to have that delic, delicate flavor in our spiritual umm, palette. We could call it that and taste of the Lord Jesus, not only about the word of God. Sometimes when, when we ask what is the man, that type of what we say is, is the type of the word of God.
The Lord says in John that I am.
The bread that came from heaven is more than the word of God. It's him. The word of God is, is, uh, talks about him. It's not a religion in the Southeast in, in that we should follow or just the knowing a lot about scripture and on. It's a relationship. It's a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
And umm, Satan does not want that.
He he wants religion, he just doesn't want love for the Lord Jesus.
And going back it says.
In verse umm verse 5 again.
So in the middle of the verse, so nourishing them three years, nursing them three years. Why three years?
Because they can notes that he will umm, the deliver that is solid that is.
Has been enjoying the things of the Lord that has been in the word. He cannot take that away in one day, but he's going to do it slowly. He's going to slowly bring the things of the world to you. The first thing is to change the location. He wants to separate you from communion, from all, from others.
Then he wants to change.
The name.
Umm.
Verse.
He wants to change the name in verse six, but before that in verse four, children at home was no blemish but well favored.
And scale for and always #7 was umm where he changes the name.
So he changes the location, he brings them in and he tries to change the language, the way they speak. He changes their umm, their diet, and he wants to change their names in verse six and seven. Why the name?
Because we have we identify ourselves as believers and we we If we identify ourselves as believers, then the world knows who we belong to.
And with names such as Hananiah, Misael, Azariah, Daniel, when somebody asked somebody on the street, Umm Hannah and I on the street, what is your name? And he said Han. And I said, oh, he's a Jew. So they would immediately know that he was coming from, from Israel. But they changed it so that they, they looked as if they were from Babylon. And that's what Satan wants. He doesn't want you to testify.
00:25:22
To say who you are, it says well, because you live inside. If that's fine because you live inside, you don't have, you don't, that's that's OK. Just don't say it.
But the lower wants us to say to testify for him. Remember Joseph of Arimathea? And he was afraid he was a disciple. But internally he was afraid to say I am a disciple. But when he saw the Lord crucified, it took courage.
And he came out and said, and clearly he let people know that he was a disciple, and he took the body of the Lord and put it in A and a tomb that was, that was his own, his own tomb.
And we have so a change of name there. I didn't want to take umm all the time and in this chapter just saying what Satan wants to do with us. But I also wanted to cover what is what is the what is that something that we could do?
To counteract his attack. We had a lot of that yesterday.
When Brother Bob was talking about the Armor of God.
Umm, but it is a UMM, it is a war and it is a true warfare that Satan has against us. He has a plan for each one of us. He wants to destroy the testimony. He cannot take away your salvation. The Lord UMM has given you your salvation. It is only through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But Satan can take away your testimony, and that's why he does. Umm.
In in First Corinthians 3.
It talks about someone that is saved as by fire and we'll just go there for a moment.
2nd.
Somebody can help me out with that scripture?
What was that 15?
Yeah, thank you brother. 1St Corinthians 3, verse 15.
If any, well I'll read umm.
Verse 15. If any man's word shall be burned, he shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved, yes, so as by fire.
Are you not that you're the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?
If any man's word shall be burnt, if any man works shall be burned, he shall suffer loss. So we don't want to live our lives.
Like this man, there's three men mentioned here in this chapter and two of them are believers. One is the one that builds that is a good builder. The other one is a bad one and it says.
That he shall suffer loss. So we want to be that man when, when our life is over and this life is very short. When our life is over. Do you want to be like that person that has just lived a life?
Umm, that is has been wasted. That's let let let the Lord not that happen to us and umm.
Going back to Daniel again, I just wanted to point a few things that Daniel had that we could take advantage of.
00:30:06
Verse eight of chapter one.
But Daniel purpose in his heart that he would not defile himself with a portion of the King's meat, nor with the wine which he drank.
Daniel purpose in his heart.
It is the desire of the Lord that each one of us would be like Daniel in this sense.
We should have exercises the Lord the Lord Jesus, umm.
Is the one that saves us. But we should all have exercises. Daniel purposing is hard that he would not defile himself with a portion of the King's meat, nor with the wine which he drank.
I had some scriptures also in regards to our exercises.
I was thinking of First Timothy chapter 4.
For a few months before and verse 7, but refused profane and all wives fables an exercise thyself rather unto godliness.
Refuse profane and all wives fables, and exercise myself rather unto godliness.
For bodily exercise profit as little, but godliness is profitable unto all things.
So these were things that that Daniel had Daniel purposes in his heart not to defile himself.
He wanted to have a godly life and you could think of Daniel and in the scenario where he lived, it was more difficult, I believe than any of us here. You see the young people today and you know, they say, well, there's a lot of pressure, There's a lot of peer pressure. Umm, the, the people that they associate themselves with are doing.
Certain things and they yield onto those things and we see that Daniel was in a in a bad situation. He was away from home. He could have come up with many excuses. He could have come up with the with the excuse that oh, we are.
We're captive. What can we do? Umm, we are, we are subject to the Kingdom of Babylon. Why can't we do? There's nothing we could do but he purposing his heart and the Lord rewarded the purpose of his heart. You could say well.
It's different difficult times. It's not like the times my parents live. This is there is more temptations now and you could imagine how Daniel.
Live in what sort of temptations? In a in a scenario where there was nothing in his favor, absolutely nothing. He didn't have a parent to guide him. He was surrounded by companions, and this companion is the majority of them. They were just following what they were told.
All these things that the scene of Babylon wanted to do, they said, OK, we have. We have no choice, we'll do it.
For Daniel purpose thing is hard not to be filed himself and it's because he wanted to live a godly life. Godly is not a synonym of sin.
One I believe leads to the other, but they're not synonym. What is an ungodly person? Somebody can help me out? What is? What is it to be ungodly?
Somebody has said that godliness is being like God, not in the sense of.
His essence but in the sense of his umm of how he is morally and ungodliness is the the opposite of that but also is living the life knowing that there is a God living like if there's no God. So the person doesn't have AI mean an external immoral life per southeast.
00:35:07
People, at least don't see it.
He goes to his job, he doesn't umm, hurt anyone in his in his mind he believes he is pretty decent.
But God says and but then he doesn't pay attention to what who God is or has no not has no desire to have any relationship with God. The word of God says he's ungodly.
And, umm.
That Daniel wanted a relationship with God, he wanted to be like him in the in the moral sense and it says here First Timothy 4 refused for paying an old wife's labels and exercise myself rather into godliness. Exercise takes an effort. Umm we may exercise umm.
Physically and it helps us, but it says that the profit profit is little doesn't mean that it doesn't profit at all. It says that it profits only for this time is only for down here.
But godliness?
Profited is profitable onto all things, having promised of this life, of the life that now is and of that which is to come. So that means it's more than just down here. That one is good for down here and it's good for the for the life to come in the sense that we we will, it will continue.
But we must exercise. Exercise spiritually speaking, is having conviction.
And a young person that doesn't have convictions will live a life that is, uh, a life it will, it will have an end that is the disasters. And we need to have convictions.
If we live our lives without conviction, we will have an end, like Samsung for example. Samsung was a young man of faith and we have that in in.
In the New Testament that is is shown to us that he had faith but he lacked conviction.
He was umm, a young man raised in a home that he was, that was a separate home. He was a Nazarite, and they also had an ulcer in that home because the Angel suggested that there would be an altering. He offered umm to the Lord and so on. It was a good home and he was raised with a lot of privileges, like many of us.
And, uh, we talked this morning.
The children are holy. Why? Because it it is a privilege to be raised in a Christian home. It'll it avoids many trouble. Many people are that are not raised in Christian homes and come to the Lord later on. They would they would have wished that they would have been raised in a Christian home because there is a lot of things that are avoided in that home.
And, umm.
But Samsung, he wanted to bring down the convictions of his parents and the first thing that he does after he asked for.
Umm, for that woman, he says, I, I this, this is the woman I like. Take me that one. I'm paraphrasing, but that's what he's saying. He takes his time through the vineyards of cinnamon. And that is interesting that he does that because that's one of the three things.
That, and that's right. To not do was to eat anything from the vine.
He could not eat anything any the the kernels, the horse, the grape, the wine, the liquor. He could not eat anything from the vine. And he takes his parents and you can imagine that, and I say this because there is a lion.
As they go to to meet this girl, there's a lion that comes up.
And only Samsung sees the lion and fights the lion, but they do not, so they must have been going in different paths is what I imagine.
But what I'm trying to say here is that Samsung takes his parents through the vineyard knowing that he's not supposed to eat anything from the vine and knowing that his mother is also was also.
Umm, given that instruction by the Angel, by the Angel of the Lord, and he does that to debilitate, if you want to call it that, the principal from the conviction of his parents, because by doing so he would, he would be very close to the temptation who was bringing him and he and them very close to the temptation.
00:40:20
And it's not clear if Samsung is Samsung ate any of those grades.
Doesn't say any of that, but he was bringing in his parents and himself very close to it. If we're wise, we do not get close to temptation. That's not what Joseph did and umm, that's not what the Lord tells us to do. There's something that we only win by fleeing from, and that is from fornication.
When he talks about fornication, it doesn't say wrestle.
Against fornication or combat or fight so that you could win. Doesn't say that. Says flee, flee fornication.
We do we're known of us is strong in that we we do not flirt with with the things that are going to bring us down and you know a story that is very.
Is known on on too many of us Is that umm, there was a a man and I'm not sure I'm saying the story right.
There was a man that was that wanted to have UMM was interviewing 33 young men to drive his chariot for for his daughter and one of them he asked how close can you get to the Cliff without the horses pulling? And he was very proud of himself and said you know, I could get about a meter distance from the Cliff. No, no issues.
Again, I'm I'm repeating the story. I'm not sure if it's right this way, but this is, umm, the idea. The second one says, well Sir.
I can get it put from that distance and the whole and I can I have full control of the horses. And then the third one says, well, Sir, I do not get close to flip. That's the one of course, that he hired and the the point is that we do not flirt with 10. The Lord says to we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities is is an external.
Fight when it When it comes to the flash, we.
It doesn't fight the flesh. Do not fight the flesh. We consider ourselves dead onto it. That's the only way to win.
When there is a strong master that has dominion over slave.
If it's the slave dies, the master still has all the power, so the slave is dead.
And it says consider yourself dead. So it's not that the flesh is weaker.
The flash is the same and you could ask the older one among us. You could probably ask umm brother umm Bob and sister Barb and they would tell you that the flash is the same but it says consider yourself debt onto it. If I am dead, the flash could have all the power, but I'm dead has no power over that of a dead person.
And that's what the Lord wants with every one of us.
It says in.
Another exercise that we could have is in Acts 24. I believe Brother Bob tries upon upon this before.
Acts 24.
#16.
And again, an exercise, spiritually speaking, is a conviction that we should have and it it takes diligence.
It takes diligence. We will not fall into godliness. It doesn't happen that way. You exercise towards it. You can fall, you can fall into sin, but you don't fall into godliness.
In Acts 2416 and here in do I exercise myself to have always?
A conscience void of offense for God and toward men.
And we we umm, couple that with first team at the chapter one, verse 19.
00:45:12
First you must be 119.
Holding faith and a good conscience, which some have been put away concerning faith, has made shipwreck.
We need faith and a good conscience. Some have been put away concerning faith, have made shipwreck. The apostle Paul says that he exercised to have, umm, a good conscience and actually for a year. And do I exercise myself to have always a good conscience void of offense for God and toward men?
And Brother Bob was talking about conscience.
In Spanish is conscientious with science, with knowledge. That's what I mean.
And.
It and again he also mentioned that we acquired conscience in the Garden of Eden after man sin after we sent and it is necessary to have a clear good conscience. But how do we have a good conscience? The first thing that Daniel did was to have to have a live walk in godliness.
And he also had a good conscience. How do we have a good conscience?
By never sinning.
Confessing. We need to confess our sins, and if we confess our thoughts to the Lord, they don't become action. The problem with us is that we do not confess. We do not when when there is a sin in our lives. If we have an evil thought, we let it come to our minds.
And it goes down to our hearts, and then it keeps going down to our hands and our feet, because then we start doing this thing.
And the Lord does not want us to live a life like that.
Let's confess our sins. If we do that, if we confess, if we do short accounts, and we've heard this many, many times, short accounts. And there's a reason for that, that our older brethren have told us. This short account means that if I confess my thoughts.
Then they will not become actions and the and then it is it gets worse and worse and I get deeper and deeper into it.
The Lord wants us to confess our sins. I have a good conscience. I have a good conscience. Of course, if I leave a godly life, I have a good conscience. But if I if I sin, and we all do.
If I confess my sin, the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin we we are.
We have we live our lives with a good conscience. It's not a good thing to go against the con conscience.
But let's remember, conscience is not our guide. Some people live let their conscience be their guide. And some people, they even say that why do we not let our conscious be our guide? Because we can have a conscience that umm is not enlightened, is not is not in the light. The word of God is the light. But if we're living a life like the children of Israel were when they were transported.
From Israel, from Jerusalem, by the by the king of Babylon.
You're separated from there. You do not have the light of the word of God. You're not no longer feeding from, from the, the same things that you, that you used to eat that you have other things that you're feeding on the wine that he drank and the, and the meat that he ate. And you're, you're being, umm, you're being fed with this thing. Your name has been changed. You're, you're now speaking another language.
And this thing starts changing you and you start behaving like a Babylonian. And that's what happens to us too, as believers. We start behaving like the people of the world. Umm, and there's, there's another umm, example that was put, umm, some time ago also, and we were probably all familiar with it. If you put a frog in a boiling pot.
What will it do?
It's obvious, right? Jumps out.
But what they have done is they have put a frog in.
00:50:03
And look in, in, in water at room temperature. And then they increase, umm, the fire little by little, little by little. And the, the frog star is adjusting and it gets warmer and adjust, gets hot and adjust and it finally boils. They did that. It's a real experiment. And the fraud does that. It adjusts itself until it boils.
And that's what we do, too.
When we are in the presence of evil, we hear, umm, we hear words are defiling.
Some of our of our friends or, or, or neighbors or people we interact with, they start cursing and at first we cringe and then we get used to that and sorry, you know, hearing it all the time, it doesn't affect us as much because we get used to it.
And umm, why do they curse Umm and without any problem when we are present? Because we are.
Like the, the children of, of, of dude, I hear of, of Jerusalem. We are acting like them. We are speaking like them. And they do not feel anymore that light that, umm, manifest everything when we're walking. Well, you know, even people from the world, they even say, oh, I'm sorry.
Because when they have, if they occurred before before us, but when we're not walking well, they do not see a difference.
And that I think that's happened to to many of us.
And then another one, umm, before we finish. We only have 5-4 minutes.
Umm, just wanted to read two more, one in Hebrews 5.
5.
Hebrews 513.
For everyone that uses milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness for his abate, but strongly the longest to them that are of full age. Even those who by reason of use have their senses exercise to discern both good and evil. We know that Daniel exercise godliness, Daniel exercise confession.
He confessed his sin and the sins of his people.
And he also exercised this, he looked deeply into the word. He not only read the word just sporadically and see where you know he would something would fall and and just read that. I'm not saying that that is wrong in itself. What I'm saying is that we should be diligent, exercise ourselves to know what the Lord says.
In his word and then put it in practice. That's how it senses our exercise, not only the basics of of.
Of the principles of the word of God, but grow in it and the the way we grow is walking in the things that we have learned. The PEO, the children of Israel were given all the land, but it says also all the land that they set their food on because it was a practical thing. It's not only here in the head, it's a practical thing.
And then finally, umm, I just went through reading Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 11.
We know that they Daniel also umm.
Read the word of God and even he read Jeremiah, who was a prophet of his own time prior. It was a young, young person when, but it was, uh, from his own time and he knew that that was the word of God and he looked, umm, deeply into that. Hebrews 12.
And verse 11.
Says now no chasing in for the presidency must be joyous but previous.
Nevertheless, afterward it yielded the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.
Exercise thereby and we have we don't have much time but here if umm there are three ways to respond to the difficulties of our lives. Umm, one way is to be like it says in.
00:55:09
I'll I'll read those verses too.
Umm, the prior versus.
Verse 6.
Umm verse five I'm sorry and each and you have forgotten the expectation which he gives unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou are reviewed of him so we could.
Despite the things that the Lord brings to our lives and does not pay attention to them, got no profit from them, we can be faint, we can faint or be discouraged by the things that the Lord allows in our lives.
We can be exercised by those things and we see that Daniel was exercised. We we know that he went through a lot of trials in his life. The last one was he was an old man. You could probably say, but Lord, I have served you all this time and now I'm thrown in the den of lions. How does that make sense?
But he was exercised by it. He did not. He did not despise what the Lord was doing. He did not think.
But it was exercised by there was a we can, we can despise by not taking too hard the things that Laura allows in our lives. We may, umm, experience some bad thing and we could say, well, you know, if that happens to everyone, you know, once in a while it's locked, but.
We could be exercised, and the Lord wants us to be exercised by this thing.
Knowing that he is allowing them for a purpose, it doesn't mean that it's punishment. That's not what I'm saying with because the Lord works in our lives. If we, if there's something that happens to us, we shouldn't take it as, oh, I must have done something bad because the Lord has allowed this in my life. The Lord wants to teach me something. That's that's the thing. And the Lord is allowing these things for a purpose and I should be exercised.
Thanks. Just to summarize, there are four things that Daniel was exercised by and that we should be exercised too. And we have those four things in the in the New Testament, but we see that he will exercise by them and and when we see his life, he was exercise, umm, to walk in, in, in a dog with a godly life.
Umm, he wanted to please the Lord, so he was exercised by that.
Then we know that he was also exercised umm to have a good conscience.
Living a life with a bad conscience is not a good thing. A a Christian that lives with a bad conscience is an unhappy Christian. You cannot have the joy of the Lord. And we can have a good conscience by confessing our sin. And he was exercised to have his senses, his spiritual senses exercised by going into the word of God and being.
Umm, for reading the word of God to be an exercise by it and looking into the word of God and looking deeply into it, not on the the Hebrew believers were were saying only in in the rudiments or the the the basic principles that they had learned that they were not advancing into into, umm other things.
Into, umm, into the.
Although, although.
Benefits and all all the.
The precious things that we have in Christianity, and they were saying we only with those principles. We see many principles of the Word of God in the Gospel. But if we and the Gospels are precious and it talks about the life of the Lord and all the principles are there, but we need also to advance into the epistle and get acquainted with that and finally the things that happen in our lives.
We should be exercised by those things we should not despise and we should not.
Uh, faint, but we should be exercised by those things. There was one, one example just to just to finish our time is up. But there was a brother that, umm had, had been umm, not following the Lord for some time and he was involved in a, in a car accident and a brother visited him and he had, he was that he asked him, you know.
01:00:05
Have you learned anything from from this accident knowing that the brother was not following the Lord?
And his answer was, well, I learned not to drive a small car. So he got nothing from it. He was just thinking about natural things, not thinking about crucial thing. And he was an exercise by the fact that he had had this accident and he wasn't living for the Lord. There's no accident for the thing in in when we walked for the Lord. So our time is awful. Just closing prayer.
I got on our father. We asked you that this exercise is maybe in our lives. We confess, father, that umm.
Many times, uh, the enemy of our souls does influence our lives. We know that umm, it does not have control of our thoughts, but he can bring things in our lives that can make us doubt and like to make us umm walking and fast, but it's not umm.
But it's not a path for a child by by children.
And we just pray, Father, Thou may deliver us, that we may be exercised, and I think, and we may lay hold of Thy provision that are there for us. We have heard before. We just thank you God and our Father, and we pray for the young people and the rest here also of us that may give us friends, that we may be strengthened by Thy word.
And in prayer we just pray. Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus, Amen.
Session #3
Q&A
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.
It's time for the questions.
Is that the first one?
Yeah, that. There we go.
I struggled to forgive someone who has hurt me very deeply. His repentance required before I forgive that person.
In order for reconciliation.
There must be repentance along with forgiveness, and we find that in first John chapter one with the Lord, with with God.
In first John chapter one and verse 9.
And says if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And so.
There's confession, there's repentance, and then the Lord forgives. And when he forgives, then he cleanses us from all unrighteousness that, uh, then reconciliation can come back. We can be restored in fellowship to the Lord and to the, to our brethren.
We know the Lord Jesus was a sin, offering on the cross for sins of ignorance.
But when there's a refusal to apologize and to confess a sin.
Umm, that destroys any hope of reconciliation.
And in the in that case, the level of forgiveness.
Uh, uh, that level of forgiveness cannot be reached.
But we can still forgive.
We might not forgive. We can forgive the person. We can't forgive the act until there's been I, I believe this is correct. We can't forgive the act until there's been repentance and confession. But we can re we can forgive the person. And in that way it will free us from our, our ******* of bitterness that we have against that person.
It's in, uh, Luke chapter 17.
Uh, in verse 3.
And four.
Take heed to yourselves. If thy brother trespass against thee, Ribio Kim, and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day and seven times in a day, turn again to the saying, I repent, thou shalt forgive him.
But what I like to, the way I like to put it, is that you should have forgiveness in your heart at all times, given how much the Lord has forgiven us.
We can't do anything else but have forgiveness in our heart. But you cannot extend that to a person who has not repented himself like you mentioned. Uh, the Lord Jesus on the cross said Father forgive them for they know not what they do. He said that to his Father. He did not say to them to the ones that were found in the nails through his hands.
00:05:01
And so it's important that there be repentance otherwise.
To say I remember.
A young sister who was very troubled by something an individual had done to her.
And she had, uh, received counsel in.
From somebody that she needed to be forgiving to her father, uh, was her father that had done something to her that was very deeply injuring.
And.
She went to her father and said, Father, I forgive you.
And he says you forgive me, I need to forgive you. And so she came away just totally confused.
So I read these verses three and four of chapter 17 and showed that you could have forgiveness in your heart, but unless that person repents, there will be no basis, like you say, of reconciliation and forgiveness. Really, you can't extend it to that person unless they recognize what they've done.
So I think that's an important point.
But we need to have forgiveness in our hearts. And I find that people struggle with that. They feel the hurt of it. But let's go to Matthew chapter 18 because I found this very helpful in my own life as to having a forgiving attitude. Matthew chapter 18.
And we read a few verses here towards the end of the chapter.
It really starts with verse 21 when Peter says and came Peter to him and said, Lord, how OFT shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him till seven times.
Jesus said unto him, I say not unto thee until seven times, but until 70 * 7 four 190 times.
Therefore it says, is the Kingdom of heaven likened unto a servant, a certain king, which would take account of his servants, and when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him which owed him 10,000 talents.
Incalculable amount.
Much as it got to.
His soul and his wife and his children, all that he had, and payments to be made. The servant therefore fell down and worshipped him and said, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. He doesn't seem to have a inkling of how much he owed. He thought he could impatience. If he had patience with him, he could pay at all. He could never pay that amount. Never.
And the Lord of the servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt.
The same servant went out and found one of his fellow servants which owed him 100 pence, a very small amount.
And he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me with thou oest. And his fellow servant fell down at his feet, besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. It's the same thing he had said to the one he owes.
But he would not but went and cast him into prison until he should pay the debt. So when his fellow servants saw what was done, they were very sorry, and came and told unto their Lord all that was done. Then his Lord, after he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all, that, that because thou desirest me should not.
Thou also had compassion on that fellow Cervines, and.
As I had a city on the this Lord was wrought, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him. So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not everyone his brother his their trespasses.
This is not judicial forgiveness.
You too? Yeah.
You will not be forgiven. Remember that. It's governmental forgiveness. It's not judicial forgiveness. Judicial forgiveness is unconditional. When you accept the Lord Jesus as your Savior, you're forgiven all your sins because of what Jesus did on the cross. But what we have here, it's conditional.
00:10:15
It's governmental forgiveness.
So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not everyone his brother, their trespasses. So I think it's very important to have that for giving attitude.
Somebody done something wrong against me?
OK, what am I going to do about it? Hold it in reserve in my heart to get a time to get back at him. That will hurt you more than it will hurt anybody else. Let loose of that resentment. Forgive in your heart. You may not be able to extend that forgiveness to that person that is done that to you until he repents.
But make sure you have a forgiving attitude in your heart. If you don't, you're going to damage your own Christian life. So.
How important it is to let loose of those things.
Others have some comment on it too I'm sure.
Yeah, we talked about the end of heaven, lightning.
Is the Kingdom of heaven but on the earth?
Is the government of God?
Because brother, I was saying it's not eternal. Forgiveness is not the judicial.
It is. It is for down here.
As as we walk down here, the Lord may allow us to read what we saw and there may be a judgment of on our our walk down here.
So the Lord may forgive that.
If we do two things.
One is in first you must be chapter 2.
I'm sorry, first John chapter 2 is what I was thinking.
Let's go chapter one.
We're done. Chapter one and verse 9.
If we confess our chest, the face will adjust the perilous power tent and to bless us from all or ration.
So we we need to confess our sins. This is not talking about, uh, sins so that we can go to heaven.
If you thought about things that we have committed as delivers and the Lord forgives our sins if we confess our sins.
Many times we want others to.
Compasses into us and say, you know I have run you, but relaxing, we do not confess to the Lord.
And the second one would be to forgive from our heart, even to others. Do not forgive. Do not, umm, apologize to us.
And we have some of that in March Chapter 11.
And of course, uh.
It looks 17 we have if.
He comes and says, forgive me, you forgive him.
Some have taken that to to mean, well, if they don't come and say sorry, I don't have to forgive them. But it's a brother, Bob was saying it's extending the forgiveness. It's not about what's in your heart. But in March 11 talks, this is between you and the Lord because it's prayer. That's the question on March 11.
325.
And when he stands training?
Forget.
If you have audit against any that your father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses, that's also conditional man. And we see that in the case of Joe, he says I am vile on he confesses who I is, who he is, but he also has to pray for his friends. That had not been a comfort to him. They had accused him mostly and he probably had something against them.
00:15:03
Because how? How could they?
Say all those things that they said about, but he had to forgive that too. And umm, it is uh, as we're sad, if we to give this sense in our hearts, we're trying to damage them. There will be a root of bitterness in our heart and we won't leave a happy life in the Lord. Umm, did the Lord help us because it is humanly.
Contrary to human nature to forgive this way.
It is umm, born in this.
They have to 18 and it's.
From the heart.
What that really means is that we don't have.
Umm, bitter hard feelings towards that person and umm, but then we can't publicly umm.
Might they embrace them? So we there is a restraint, but yet there has to be there.
Give me that that bitter feeling.
You might say, well how can I do that? How can I when I know what this brother is doing or has done? But just do this. If you have those feelings towards that brother or sister, you pray for him every day and I guarantee you the Lord will change your heart.
You start praying for you.
And it will go away.
I find it very helpful to uh today when.
That's good. That's right. That's when we asked somebody that's done something against this. How many offenses have they committed against this? Maybe quite a few.
But how many sins did God forgive you of?
I don't know how many we've committed in life, but say.
You spend 10 times a day in a year, that's 3650 cents. Multiply that by 10 years. That's 36,500 cents. How many did he forgive you, brother?
All of them.
Or do you say there's certain ones? I'm not going to be able to take the account every single one.
And all that. That's it to me, I say, if you forgive me freely, how can I be resent? Yeah, it's not right what you're doing, but.
They haven't done that much.
You're 10,000 Allen debtors.
In a couple of places. Enjoy what you bought out today.
I guess we could turn to Luke Six first.
Let's start with just Luke 6, verse 27.
But I say unto you, which here love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you. And unto them Him that smiles thee on one sheet, offer also the other. And him that take us away like cloak, forbid not to take thy cloak also.
And then, real quickly, Ephesians.
I just had it earlier.
Yeah, Ephesians chapter 4, verse 32.
And be kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you.
Like you said I I believe that will change your heart and spirit towards that person that might have bereaved you or done something to you. You pray for them and then also that burst in Ephesians.
00:20:05
4A Spirit of kindness 1 to another.
And forgiving one because the Lord has forgiven us much.
But if you kind want to know, that speaks a lot.
Developed for a minute something you said Bob about.
Holding on to hurt and resentment and tearing your life up.
So we don't have time to go into this whole story, so I'm just going to briefly make a few points about.
David SIM with Bathsheba.
David abused his power as king.
And, uh, took a man's wife.
Stoller.
Got her pregnant, murdered her husband, tried to cover it up.
That story is in Second Samuel 11, but I want to point out two other people that were hurt in this terrible situation.
And how they responded differently.
So turn to Second Samuel 11.
Verse 3.
David sent and inquired after the woman.
And one said, Is that this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam?
The waste of Uriah Hitchhik.
Now turn it over to Second Samuel 23.
This is a list of David's mighty men.
And this nano Liam is on the list in verse 34. A lion, the son of a Hippophel, the Gaulinite.
Well, both Ilium and Ahisa Cell no doubt knew the inside story of what had happened.
The Bathsheba and significant.
Hurts and wrong was done, but there are two responses.
The heterosexual response was as Absalom rose to power, he joined up with him and he said the Absalom, I'm your man.
You give me an army right now and I will have him dead before the sun goes down. And he was angry, and rightfully so. What was done to his granddaughter was a terrible wrong.
But he harbored that anger and we understand it naturally, but he was unable to get past it and a HIPAA fill it. We read about him as Davis counselor and my my own familiar friends. And here he says, Absalom, I'll tell you what to do. You take your father's wives and you humiliate them publicly.
00:25:18
So they did.
Publicly shame them in front of everybody. And he says give me the word, I'll have him dead by night.
And uh, we know that Absalom listen to the council of Husiai through the Lord's intervention, no doubt. And uh, which guy said, no, no, no HIPAA fells council was not the right thing for right now, maybe next week or later, but today not good. And immediately hit the fell.
Saddled his *** went home, put his house in order and committed suicide because he knew that his plan was done and that.
When David was restored to be king, he would also be no doubt put to death. And we understand. I understand the deep resentment that I have to sell with be aware his granddaughter was so wrongly treated.
And his son and his grandson in law. But I, I find it very encouraging that it William, we don't read anything about that with him. And here at the end of the time, a Liam is listed as one of David's mighty men. And so I suggest especially to you young people.
Deep.
Hurt is real.
But to respond in the way that a HIPAA responded will basically take you down a path where your fruitfulness and your usefulness will be eaten alive from the inside out. And.
You will also become victim to uh, uh.
Useful, angry, bitter life. And really the only thing you wind up with this stomach ulcers.
So I want to encourage this. I know this is really hard, some hurts are so deep.
But you know what, I wonder if, uh, his, the cell didn't know the repentance that David had and the time, uh, that we read it in some 51 or Psalm 32 where David had it out before the Lord. But anyway, I, I don't want to talk too much, but there are two people in that family that handled it differently. So let's be like a lion and not like a HIPAA.
To me, on this issue, he said forgive. This is not earned.
Maybe we try to do tenants.
Infection. Repentance.
We can't earn.
Forgive me.
God love that he forgave us. We didn't do anything to earn it. We can never deserve forgiveness from God and the person who offended you can never do anything to deserve forgiveness.
Maybe they'll give you flowers or chocolate. They'll give you apologies.
They make, they may. There may even be repentance. There may be promises never to do it again.
But they cannot earn forgiveness. Forgiveness needs to come.
You it needs to come from your soul. It's an act of great. It's like with the Lord. Jesus had to have grace with her to forgive her.
Oh, that's that. That can't do that.
Umm and the other person can cannot do anything about it yet and they cannot pay for the person that.
00:30:00
Has, uh, the power to forgive The Jack is that person. The Lord did God for us. It was a tremendous destiny.
We are umm, able to do that too. But.
Uh, so they call it. So it's also providing, providing.
Our next question.
If my husband is not interested in going to meet him.
Is it OK for the wife to go without them?
There's a verse in First Peter chapter 3.
1.
Likewise, he was the interjection to your own husband.
And if any obey not the word, they also may, without the word, be won by the conversation, or the matter of life of the wise, while they behold your taste conversation coupled with fear.
If your husband, uh.
Demand that you do not go to the meeting.
To be subject to him, and God will honor that.
But if he really doesn't mind, he stays at home.
By that, I believe it would be very good for you to continue to go to the meeting.
Still need to have the fellowship, the Christian fellowship. And so if he allows you and it's a good thing for you to go.
I believe that the Father's responsibility to.
As the verse says, bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
So it's wise for the father to be able to provide an environment for his family to.
To be brought up in Christ under Christian principles. The Father may not have a lot of understanding, He may not be well taught in the Scriptures, but he may love the Lord. He might not know how to present Scripture to you, but it's wise for him to be able to provide.
An atmosphere and environment where you can be brought up in the nurturing, the admonition of the Lord. Sometimes that puts a big responsibility on the wife to, uh, to umm.
00:35:11
Teach the children.
And.
If the Father brings you to the meeting.
That might be the only way he can uh.
Bring you up in the admonition of the Lord, but.
I think it can be both in the home, primarily in the home, but.
I believe it's necessary. It's why to bring the family also to the meeting where they are, where the things that the Father wants to be taught or you know, he does keep our reemphasize in the Bible movie.
That helped reason.
Umm and I just with the question that you asked about husband.
Stanford White Time to go to meetings and you're saying?
Right.
Ephesians chapter 65 and verse.
22.
Why submit yourselves unto your own husband?
As unto the Lord.
No, you have to re remember the order of authority.
That were given in the first print is 11 is that God is the head of Christ. Christ is the head of every man and the man is the head of the woman. That's the order of authority. So when there is an order given.
That directly.
Violate a superior authority command, then we are to always obey.
That the higher authority we have the illustration in the three friends of Daniel in chapter 3 of Daniel that were commanded to bow down.
By the really the sovereign of that Kingdom, the Babylonian Kingdom, to those I to that idol.
And they would not buy them.
Why would they be rebellious? No, they were being submissive to that higher power. And that's what I think comes down to is, is.
And so.
A woman I don't think is violating any specific command. I mean, it says forsake, not the assembling of ourselves together, but I think that she should submit to I knew a case in less than part of the United States.
Where a sister, her husband because of resentment, or the brethren commanded that she should not go community.
She should go again where he was going.
And she asked the brother what she should do and they said submit yourself.
It was very interesting to me to see that that.
Your husband.
Not too long after, got a.
I don't know if it's cancer or what it was, but who was taken out of the way?
Then when he was gone, 232.
What is very unusual situation?
Like of hours.
00:40:01
Umm, there was, uh, a hospital.
She's watching either and I won't give you the application.
The hospital was owned by a person who was.
In the earlier days it was quite a bright blue.
I'll be able to increase one of these four front runners of the proportion.
Well.
Obviously the question was look up the white.
Why did the book?
For that cluster.
Because quite a quite a discussion.
His her interest wasn't coming to me.
And so finally.
I was pretty young, so I would not be at any of the brothers in here or anything.
But umm.
It was.
Friday between her alone.
She was waiting for her husband with different authorities.
And she was.
On one hand, under the authority for Huddersfield, and yet she also recognized the authority thought.
Very faithful to me.
That that issue is kind of like swap but odd things happen.
That's the most unusual.
Mm-hmm. Right as you're right. I think so.
Didn't interfere with the sample matters.
Yeah, he didn't interfere with the family matters.
And she was locked in a hard place showing thing and it wasn't up for doing.
OK, so it's all things come up.
Umm.
You supposed to miss it?
Terms for husband, she's also business, I think the assembly as well.
Even though it's a very bizarre.
Admittedly bizarre situation.
Before we go to the next question.
About this question.
And I have written down here the gist of what what was the advice that was given?
God has given clear direction for life in a situation where the husband is not living according to the Word.
A husband can be gained by your manner of life.
A man will never respond to the preaching, advice, and underhanded remarks of his wife. You can't see his Holy Spirit. However, by living a godly life without trying to fix him on your own, God provides a way for you to reach your husband. You can't fix your husband, only God can.
So pray for him. God delights in your prayers for your husband and desires for you to have a role in his restoration.
As long as that role is recording to God's Word.
We have about 15 minutes remaining. Umm, we'll go to the next question.
Bob talked the other night on the honor of God was very helpful.
Could we please spend a few minutes on the restoration of a believer that has fallen in battle and how God used a restored sin?
I believe that verse that we've already had a couple of times in first John 19 answers how God used.
A fallen believer.
That has been restored.
00:45:03
Maybe you are one who has fallen.
And thank the Lord, you've been restored.
First, John 19 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
God views you as forgiveness.
And you can accept yourself as being forgiven. And you've been justified, and you've been sanctified.
And you have been brought into a fleet where?
You can lose your life in all aspects of Christianity to bring glory to God.
You don't have to sit on the sidelines. You've been forgiven and you can continue on to worship the Lord.
I should have mentioned that.
Good weekend. God mentioned that because there is restoration and I'd like to talk about.
Two people in scripture that had a fall and were restored.
One was.
Same day that that Bernie was talking about and the awful thing he did.
Farrell And when he confessed his sin, when he said to the prophet, who said you're the man?
He didn't try this wiggle out of it. He admitted it, he confessed.
And immediately the prophet said, God has remitted or forgiven your sins.
But because you have made the enemies of the Lord to blasphemy.
The source will never be far from your house. In other words, there are governmental consequences to sin.
That's that's why we believe that the young people to be careful, especially in connection with sexual sin.
What was David an instrument of the Lord after that?
No question about it, he was mightily just took a lower.
The New Testament is called a man after God's own heart.
What a beautiful testing.
So God can use you and you need to.
They and humility because of your fault, but just simply stand for the Lord and when He gives you an opportunity to do something for Him to do it.
So that's a very important illustration.
But the other one I want to talk about is Simon Peter.
Simon Cedar had to fall through, the Lord had told him. Peter.
You're going to deny me three times? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, Lord, I'm going to always be faithful. I'm going to always be faithful. He didn't realize how deceptive the human heart is.
I cannot trust my own heart.
No.
And so.
Peter has not learned that lesson.
And the Lord said I have prayed for the 8th eater. He says Satan has desired to have you, and when he says you it was plural all the disciples he wanted to have.
But then it says I have prayed for AZ feeder.
That's actually fail or not and once restored, strengthen my revenue. So either have to learn the hard way and sometimes that's the way we have to learn because we don't have ears to hear when the Lord speaks to it.
So how important to have tears to hear?
So Peter fell.
You denied the Lord three times.
00:50:01
With oaths and curses that he never knew the man.
Is that possible? Yeah, exactly.
About that, after the Lord rose again, just look at it in Luke chapters 20.
UH-4.
Luke chapter 24 and verse.
Verse 34 when the two that went to Emmaus came back to Jerusalem.
Here was what they found out in verse 34. It says faith the Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon at Simon Peter.
That's the only verse we have to show us that the Lord had a private encounter with Peter.
That we know nothing about. Otherwise, what did they talk about?
That was between the Lord and Peter.
And I re I want to show that, to show that there has to be restoration on a personal, individual way, first of all.
But Peter's sin was a public sin. He denied it before all those that were around him.
And when does the public stand? There has to be a public restoration, and that's what we have in John Chapter 21.
Go there and then. It's so tremendously beautiful how the Lord does.
John 21.
Remember, he's got the message, Sea of Thyria and.
Serve them breakfast.
And then after they had gone.
Verse 15 So when they had died, Jesus said to Simon Peter.
517 Join us. Loveth thou me more than these? He said. I if all the rest you know thee, I won't deny thee. In other words, I love you more than all the rest.
Bye man.
Gonna join us, love us down. Me more than me.
Is that that that PM? Yeah, more than others, that I love me.
To me, that is such a interesting way. He doesn't say Simon Peter, why didn't you deny me? You know, doesn't mention.
Anything about the denial there?
When we fail, brother, it really comes down to that. The Lord wants you to be useful to Him. You're going to have to face that issue.
You say you love the Lord.
Do you really?
Wow, that really gets down to my heart.
It says Lord don't know me. Notice what he says then.
Phoenix Mylap.
Is there anything else that's so precious to the Lord that those lambs.
And yet he puts them into the care of Diamond. He has learned to mistrust himself. He had learned to trust the Lord forcefully.
And so he repeats the question three times.
Verse 16 and verse 17.
Why three times?
Peter United three times.
So here comes the question three times.
And the last time theater was greedy.
And said, Lord, thou N often come out that I like.
You said in the fact you may not appear Lord, that I love you at all, but you know all things and you know I love you.
And I do believe that Peter did love them more, even though you had that fall.
00:55:04
And the Lord says, See my sheep. Oh, what a beautiful thing. Useful.
There's Peter on the Day of Pentecost, preaching to the multitude of 3000 are saved, you say it can be a useful instrument after a fall.
You get into the large presence.
Confess your sins and humble yourself before the Lord can lift you up, no question or not.
But there are consequences.
It is amazing, that theater.
These chapters later, I think it's uh, chapter three or four before the Jewish people.
He says you denied the holy one of the job, not here that you deny the Lord to. How can he say that because he was so fully restored to the Lord and you can put that to their conscience. I think that's amazingly beautiful. I'm wondering yes, God can lift you up, but there are consequences. Dear David was.
Forgiven.
His office in but there were consequences and we lost four of his own sons.
Untimely death.
Yes, so that he would realize even though he was number one authority in the last.
And he had to give him account to God for what he did.
So we have to learn. Sometimes it's heavy what we have to learn.
The Lord help us.
Young people the Lord can restore, but far better if you resist the temptation of the devil and stand firm.
Stand before the devil, kneel before God. That's the way.
Any final comments before he proposed?
Before we pray here, the last verse, September 27th.
When we see thee as the victim.
Nailed to the accursed tree.
Where our guilt and folly stricken, all our judgment borne by thee.
Lord, we own with hearts adoring.
Thou hast washed us in thy blood. Glory, glory everlasting be to thee, thou Lamb of God.
Let's close in prayer.
Spiritual Lessons from the Farm
Address—Bernie Roossinck
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Are we ready, Steve? OK. Can you guys hear me in the back? All right, welcome.
To Michigan Camp, my name is Bernie. I see a lot of kids and young people in here and that really warms my heart. Umm, a lot of you kids know me as Uncle Bernie, which I like, even though I'm not really your uncle, I kind of am. So, umm, kids, I want to talk especially to you.
Uh, I work in, in agriculture and I work on a lot of farms and over the years I have enjoyed thinking about different things from the farm that can help us in our spiritual lives. So my hope is that we can go through some of these things up here and, uh, we'll have to be quick and you may have questions.
And I would tell you this, kids, I'm going to try to show this stuff closer on this camera that Steve helped me do.
But if you want to see better, you're welcome to come up and look, uh, closer. I don't mind if you come up and stand around me. Is that OK?
Umm, before we start, I feel like I would like to ask God for his help, so let's do that first.
Our loving God and Father, thank you so much for loving us. Thank you, your God and Father, for sending your Son the Lord Jesus Christ into this world.
To die on the cross in my place and take upon himself all of the punishment that belonged to me.
Where does I look at these faces? How we want to have fruitful, happy Christian lives for each one of these young people and boys and girls. We pray for help tonight. We ask that the things that we talk about with the encouraging and helpful in our Christian lives.
Thank you again for the word Jesus and his name. Amen.
All right, first, first I want to read. We're going to have to move quickly here. Umm.
Let's first say I heard this morning from a friend of mine at breakfast.
That told me this was the desire of her heart for her children and grandchildren and I really appreciate it and I want to share it with you. This is X 11/23.
This is Speaking of Barnabas.
It says who when he came, and it seemed the grace of God was glad, and exhorted them all that what purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord. And young people and children, that's our desire. That you would with purpose of heart cleave to the Lord and purpose apart really means that you decide and you go for it.
That you would cleave to the Lord now.
You know, kids, I think a lot of times we sit in meeting and I remember sitting in meeting when I was you your age, Simon, and you hear versus like in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. You heard that before. It's like, oh, that's nice.
And I believed it and I was happy for that. But you know, the older I get, the more I realize that God has put his fingerprint in everything that he has done and there is no.
Uh, accident. There's no, uh, God didn't have to say when he was creating things. Oh man, wish I wouldn't have done that. Everything that he has made has order and unity in it. So a couple of examples before we get into these things. How many of you have heard of Fibonacci?
They don't teach that in math and public school, at least they did in Newfoundland. And I think the reason was they didn't like it because I believe it is the fingerprint, one of the fingerprints of God in creation. I don't have time to explain it, but go look it up. And if you look at the umm spiral on a snail shell.
Or the curve of a wave. Or the shape of the Milky Way.
Or you look at a sunflower and all those seeds are in there. They're in a, uh, perfect spiral that is described mathematically by Fibonacci's cycle.
00:05:03
And when I heard about that, I was in my mid 40s when I heard about that for the first time. I praise the Lord because I see that now. It's like, Lord, that you're showing me. It's your work. You did this.
Umm, couple other, uh, things I want. I wonder if you could tell me why is it that beans girl up a pole from right to left, but peas grew up a pole from left to right and if you switch them around they die?
You know that why? Because that's the way God made it. It's not an accident. It's not random. They don't get up to the first level of the pole and have a little meeting with the internal structure and say, should we go left or right?
No, they know because God made it that way.
Umm, how many of your kids like sweet corn or adults too?
Once you next time eat sweet corn, count up how many rows around corn is always even.
Always, even never ever seen it. I've never rode around. Why?
It's God's fingerprint. That's the way he made it. That's the way it is.
And yes, you can rejoice in that and see these lessons and say the God that died for me.
Made all of that in perfect order, perfect unity. Umm, how about this one? Why is it I'm going to ask you, umm JD, why is it that when things get cold and freeze, everything contracts except for water?
Which expands.
Interesting, huh? You know that if water contracted when it froze, it would sink to the bottom of the ocean and never thaw out, and it wouldn't be long and we would be living in an Ice Age. But God didn't make it that way. Water expands, everything else contracts. Why? Because God made it that way. It's not an accident. OK, now.
We do need to keep moving, so we're going to first thing I want to do is talk about a beautiful example.
Of the Lord Jesus in His death and resurrection. So turn with me to John chapter 12, verse 24.
This is the words of the Lord Jesus. We'll read verse 23 first. Jesus answered them, saying, The hour has come that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, except the corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, and abideth alone.
But if it's, uh, bringing forth much fruit now let's try to show this on the screen a little bit more. I have in this little pack here corn seeds. I can figure out which way to move it. You guys all see that.
Yeah, these are corn seeds. Those of you that know agriculture can tell what genetic supply are they came from and what the herbicide tolerance is, Alex, you know, don't you? What does this mean to you?
Green seeds.
I know I'm putting you on the spot. This tells me that this came from Bayer Genetics and it's Roundup Ready, but that's another story. OK, everyone of these plants that I just dug this out of the field this morning at my house, every one of these plants started with a single seed. OK? The Lord Jesus went into the ground and died.
Except the corn of wheat. That means a seed goes into the ground and dies. It abides alone.
But if it's die, it brings forth much fruit. I think the word is probably talking about wheat. But this example will be the same because they're both grasses. And I can show you this now. I don't know if I can show you this really clearly, but in here in the very middle.
I might have to tap the shop so you can see this.
Yeah, I think I'll just cut it up right in here. This route that I'm moving around here, this is the original seat piece that died. In fact, I'm going to cut this up and show you because this is a beautiful picture of resurrection.
Umm.
We'll use the other plant for roots. We're going to talk about roots here in a minute. This is the first meeting I've ever had with an axe and knife and a sickle in it too. So give me a minute to chop these off. By the way, God made corn kits that they can root at every node. Every one of these bumps is a node. If you want to come up here, you can feel these.
00:10:17
Probably see these little bumps here started the route on these. See that And if the conditions were right, it would root all the way up. It also has been made so that every year, every note can also make an ear. And if you had a little microscope and we dug into here, every one of these nodes has a little tiny here that has the same number of rows around in length that these others have. But anyway, let me get to that middle one.
I'm glad that Doctor Reno is here, but I'll try not to use your services for.
But I'm shopping off. Here is what's called the brace roots. I'll clean this up and when I'm done, sorry.
Because when you go buy a cornfield, I want you to think about the resurrection. OK, that note of roots is gone. The next step is, umm, called the, umm, third node. Then we're going to get to the second node.
I'm trying. I don't want to cut this off and ruin what I'm trying to show you because it's so small.
OK, by the way, every one of these can go as deep as the corn is tall, but I cut most of them off with my shovel now.
Now you can see this a little better. And if you're wondering if you can't see it right, come up and here we go right here.
This.
Is the corn of wheat.
Fell into the ground and died. You guys see that little bump right there?
That reminds me of the Lord Jesus. See that everybody?
See that here? That little bump right there? You want to feel it? That used to be the seat. Still is the seat, but it died. You know what happened here when it died?
It made something.
Made this right here.
I want to see what this is.
Hey, what's this?
Corn and all those corn kernels came from this little tiny one that reminds us of the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus had to die, and when he died and he rose again, you know what? He could bring you to heaven and me to heaven because he paid the price for our sins. Aren't you glad about that? Now, Carrie, you, you take this back to your dad and ask him to count how many rows around there are.
And you tell me, well, if there's even the right number.
Yeah, you can take it back to them and ask them to count them.
I am guessing these are about 18, around by 36 long. That seed brings forth 650 new seeds, new kernels. That's much fruit. I would say. Brethren, you could buy a cornfield. Think about the resurrection. The price be not raised. Their faith is in vain. God has given us practical examples.
In nature that says that's my son and this is my spirit. Happens in week, happens in lots of other crops. You know, I didn't know that when I was a kid, but I'm glad I know it and I want to tell you guys about it. Isn't that beautiful? Except the quart of wheat fall into the ground that abides alone. You guys know that if you were the only person summer in the whole world.
The Lord Jesus would have come and died for just you. What?
How do we know that? It says in relation the Son of God who loved me a singular right and gave himself for me. OK, Isaiah, you want to have one of these years or you take that to your dad, tell him to count it. I want to know if they're even or I'll send these around. You guys check it out, see if I'm right.
OK, now let's talk about roots.
I just chopped a bunch of those roots up and now we're going to go to this one.
Turn to, uh, Ephesians chapter three, I think it is.
Seasons chapter 3 and we'll read verse UH-17.
00:15:03
That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, they ye being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with All Saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ. It's passive knowledge that he might be filled with all the fullness of God.
You know, I know, kids, that you're not made for corn roots.
But I would just say it's important in your life as you grow in your Christian want to put roots down into the soil of Christian living and get rooted and grounded and what really matters to pour the word of God into your heart to. I think somebody mentioned this a couple of different times.
To read the scriptures until your thinking is formed by the scriptures.
You know, we're not going to get into this, and I could do a whole lesson on this. Sometimes the ground gets compacted because Alex drove on it when it was wet with too big of a tractor and the roots can't get down. So they got what's called pancake roots. They just go out flat. Umm.
Another spiritual lesson for another day. There's there's one other thing I want to show you guys about this single route here. Umm, because this is another one of those things in nature that God has made that the roads could take them Malawi and it'd be just as true there as it is here.
And Tim, I'm making a big mess.
And I just cut off the one I wanted. So I'm not going to be able to show you that little route, that first route where that little seat piece is. God has made it so that that length plus 3/4 of an inch everywhere in the world and every corn plant in the world, That's how deep the seed was planted. The plant doesn't lie. Sometimes I.
Talk to farmers that have problems and they're like, oh, it's the seed guy's fault, they're the chemical guy's fault, they're the planner was screwed up or whatever.
So let's take a shovel and see what the plants say. And then you look at it and go, Sir, the problem is you. What do you mean? You planted it way too shallow. We're way too deep. God has made it so that that distance is true in Malawi and it's true in Umm Greenville, MI. That distance plus 3/4 of an inch always doesn't lie because.
God made it that way. OK, let's keep moving.
Umm.
All right, another thing that happened to me this year. You know, a, a, a good friend of mine knows I like sweet corn. He gave me a pack of sweet corn that he told me he got from a new genetic supplier and it was the best sweet corn ever.
So he gave us a whole bag of it and umm, I had my intern break that into little packets or I didn't. One of my employees did. So we handed out these packs of sweet corn seeds and I planted it.
My wife will laugh at this because ** *** knows I'm into details and 30 inch rows.
8 inches apart, all the same depth, by hand, watered it, fertilized it, came up, it looked awesome. Only it wasn't sweet corn.
It was this.
So I looked at the seed and I told the dude I don't look like any sweet or I've ever seen. He goes, oh, but it is. It's new all right.
You know, I think it's in Matthew 7. Let's turn to this. Umm, this is a good lesson for all of us.
That is 7 verse 20. Umm, the Lord says this, Wherefore by you, therefore she shall know them, you know.
Simon Umm, I want a sweet corn. I like sweet corn. You don't get this chubby by that like a sweet corn. And I watered this and I fertilized it and I weeded it and it looked really good. But when it came out of the ground, I said to my wife, it doesn't have to look a sweet corn. Something right here.
And when it got bigger, I thought it's getting way too tall.
Like that's a tall accord. Sweet corn is usually tasseled out right here, right? And usually it has two suckers on it, which means other tiller plants that come up out of the same route. None of it had that. And then the year came out and it was these.
00:20:13
That looks like good sweet corn to you, Summer.
Bye, bye. See what you think. It's not. It's Calcorn. I was really disappointed, but you know what? I wasn't surprised.
Because.
The fruit told me what reality was. And you know, kids, you can tell me Uncle Bernie and tell Mister Roach. You can tell Mom and dad, Grandpa and grandma, different loved ones. Yeah, I'm saved. But you know, kids go good looks on the heart. And sometimes I will tell you this with joy. I see evidence in in your lives that you know and love the Lord Jesus.
And that you are earnestly seeking to follow him. But sometimes I don't, and that makes me a little sad because the fruit tells me. The mouse says, oh, I'm in.
But the actions say now I'm out. So it's a warning for us. By their fruit she shall know them and I knew.
It's too late to change it. This wasn't sweet. This makes really good sandwich, but I didn't want sandwich going. I want a sweet corn, but I didn't get it. Anyway, let's keep moving.
I guess there is one more thing here. How much this is for you? How much gas you think is left in this tank?
Any idea?
OK, As the plant grows, it uses up the space in between these nodes. It stores sugar. See how like A50 and Styrofoamy that is? This is like a fuel cell in a race car and it's empty.
Not holding anything now down here.
That's, that's that way. Look how juicy and, uh, hard that is. There's about this much gas left in the tank. And for that, this time of year that is plenty of nutrient to finish the year. But sometimes I dig up plants and the farmer goes, what do you think is going to happen? I'm like, you're going to die early and finish slow. Like, oh, what do you mean right there, man, you're out of gas.
The plant tells you might seem weird that plants can talk to people, but they kind of do because the Lord made them. And anyway, I know that's kind of uh, for me to say, but.
Yeah, we need to keep moving.
Last year, after camp number of you young people went to Israel and umm, I like woodworking and I really wanted to go to Israel too. I still want to go to Israel. I got a text one day from CNN, she said. Dad, Ren Nazareth.
You guys know who grew up in Nazareth?
Who grew up in Nazareth? So what's it the word Jesus?
And, uh, she sent me a picture of a guy that was woodworking in a little shop there.
Thought about the Good Shepherd. This is a Good Shepherd. This is carved out of olive wood. I'm going to show everybody and then I'll pass it around. So this is the Good Shepherd. He has that sheep up on his shoulders.
So beautiful picture of the Lord Jesus.
OK, somewhere else there with you. I want you to think about the words the Good Shepherd as you pass that around. I'm going to read to you kids from Matthew 18.
You know, I wonder what the Lord made between the age of 0 and 30. The carpenter's son kind of like to make something with the Lord.
And you know what, Simon? I don't think he cut his thumb either.
But you know, you like the word, you know how to use a sign out, don't you? Yeah. The Lord Jesus did something similar to what you and I were doing together. And this is Matthew 18, verse 11. For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost.
I think if a man have 100 sheep.
And one of them begun astray, the thing that leave the 90 and nine, and go into the mountains, seeking that which has gone astray. And if so be that he find it barely, I say unto you, He rejoiceth more of that sheet than of the 90 and nine that went out astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these.
00:25:16
Little ones should perish. You know, kids, the Lord Jesus loves you and.
The Bible teaches us that we're born in sin and shaping in iniquity. I want you to raise your hand if your mom or dad had to teach you how to trip somebody up.
Mine didn't. I already knew how to do that.
Were born in sin shape and iniquity. See these little lamps here? They're so cute, aren't they?
I'll send that each of the lamps, what they're born in sin and shaping and iniquity.
And the Lord Jesus, kids, what else has the Good Shepherd and sought for the washi until he found it? Because I hope that you don't turn your back on the Lord Jesus and say no, I'm not lost. I'm good man, I don't need you.
Where Jesus is seeking for you. So this is part of the lesson of the fire because people have sheep on their farms. So now we're going to do a couple other things about sheep here. Umm, turn to some 23.
I know I'm randomly moving here, but we don't have enough time. I just hope to wet your appetite on these things. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. We'll stop with that. We could really read the wholesome. You know what people that know about sheep will tell you?
Umm.
I can only a perfectly contented sheet.
Wise down.
And a lot of times when I drive by farms and when I check to see the sheep standing here lying down, they're almost always standing. But sometimes they're lying down and you can go. That shoot is content. You know, kids, the Lord there says he maketh me lie down in green pastures. You know what that tells me? The word Jesus's purpose for your life is to put you in that environment.
Where you are happy and content and able to lie down, Now here the sheep are by still waters. Sheep never drink from rough water, and they don't drink dirty water. They drink still clean water.
Umm.
OK, one more thing about sheet.
Is So what these are?
Show this to everybody. This is probably a grass Clipper, but for today it's a sheep shear. Who wants a haircut today? All right, stand up here and let me cut your hair. No, I'm not going to really cut your hair.
I think your mom would be real mad about that. You know it says in umm, Isaiah 53.
Uh, you know, well, let me step back in that in Exodus 12, the Lord is shown out as the, uh, mail of the first year without blemish and without spa. The Passover lamb was to be a male of the first year, no blemish, no spot. Uh, kids in him was no sin. He knew no sin. He did no sin. He was the perfect Lamb of God.
And when John the Baptist was introducing him in John One, he says.
Behold, the Lamb of God is taketh away the sin of the world. Now when you turn to Isaiah 53 you read this.
Umm.
Oh, we, like sheep, have gone astray. We've turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Except the verse I was thinking about. Let me turn to it to get it right.
Isaiah 53.
There in this verse I'm turning to it refers to the Lord as a female she and there's a reason that I want to tell you about OK, he was oppressed. This is verse seven. He was afflicted, yet he opened on his mouth as broad as a lamb to the slaughter.
And this is sheep before her humor system. So he opened it, not his mouth. No, a man that I know that knows about, she told me that's true. If Isaiah would have written, umm, that a female that a male sheep like the Passover lamb was would go to be shared, he would say that's wrong. Every shepherd knows that's wrong.
00:30:24
Because the RAM will fight and buck and push.
And try to get away but the EU as the female doesn't they stand there quietly while they're shears you and you know the the Lord knows that and in this passage in Isaiah it's not talking about the Lamb of God there it's talking about his perfect submission to his father's will to go to the cross without.
Fighting or pushing back and.
We read in different places what the Lord said in John 4 to the woman at the well. My meat. My whole purpose in life is to do the will of him that sent me. And so.
If it's said there in Isaiah that a female sheet was going through, it would be perfectly right, but a ram not so much. Safely and the Lord Jesus.
In his submission to going to the cross with perfect humility and quiet purpose and confidence. OK, now one more thing about sheep and pigs.
See that I got this as a present from Steve's grandmother, Dave's mother-in-law, and I think my brother Benz might be watching this. So Benj.
He hates this pig. He's afraid of it.
OK, now.
Two different natures here.
What does the pig known for? What do you guys tell me? What's a pig's nature?
What is it? I was in the mud. What are you going to say, Mary Ann? Same thing. What do you say, Summer? What's that? Bacon. Who? Yeah, they are known for bacon. And I like bacon.
That's a good answer. Ribs too. Umm, that's pretty funny, I really like that.
Now here's the deal. Things don't sweat, so the only way they can get cool is to roll around in the mud.
It says in Peter.
The dog is returned to his vomit and the South to her wallowing in the mire.
Says that the sheep.
He leadeth me decide the Stillwater, and I think it's in John 10. The sheep go in and out and find pasture. Don't be a pig in your Christian life. It says in Psalms and also in Jeremiah Speaking of the being raised up out of that horrible pit and set my feet upon a rock.
Don't be a pig, kids, even though they do have bacon center.
In your nature, be a sheep. OK, Understand. All right, let's keep moving.
Uh, horses.
Let's turn to some 32.
OK.
OK, I wanna read.
Read from verse 8 and maybe verse nine. I will instruct the and teach the in the way that thou shalt go. I will guide thee with mine.
Be not as the horse or the mule, which have no understanding whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, unless they come near him today, OK.
You know, horses aren't used for farm work much anymore, although that far from this camp, probably within 10 miles of here. There is a lot of Amish communities and I spend my life to work with some of those people and they're really nice folks. And umm, interestingly enough, I have a picture on my phone of umm, an Amish guy.
Working a pretty large field with about 12 Courses.
00:35:00
He has 6 double teams and the next field over was a guy working with a case quad track with a big wide 40 or more foot fielder. And they were running side by side down this road, one-on-one side, one on the other. And I thought to myself, I took the picture of them and I thought to myself, you know, in a lot of ways they both probably look across the way and go. I wish I was like that guy more.
The horse guy is probably thinking, yeah, look what I can get done.
And the director guy is probably thinking, man, there's got to be a simpler life than this. But anyway.
Horses.
Horses are used in Scripture as a symbol of strength and power. But kids, the example I want to give you for horses here is you have to put a bit in a bridle, in a horse's mouth to turn it, to make it do what you want it to do. So if we were going to plow a field or or trail ride or ride a carriage or whatever, they have to have the harness on and the driver is more or less yanking on the horse's lips like this.
We're going this way, we're going that way. And I have a feeling that horses don't find that that funny. Umm, but you know, the word says to you and I, young people, don't be like that.
I will guide you with my eye now. How many of you guys like football?
Probably lots of you. You ever heard, umm, it said that the receiver read the quarterback's eyes? You guys know what that means, Cameron, right? He's looking at the guy with the ball.
And he can anticipate what was going to happen because he was watching his eyes and he could say he's lined up the throw this way, but he's looking over there, the ball is going that way and you can read that person's eyes. The Lord is saying.
Be close to me, watch me, follow me and I'll guide you with my eye. The Lord doesn't want to yank you around with a rope. He wants to say, can I use you? Did The Lord wants to say, Dave, we're going this way and you can in communion and walking with him say Lord, I got it. We're going that way instead of Lord going, hey.
Pretty soon the words like we're going that way, don't be like that. I will guide you with my eye and the only way to do that for the Lord to do that.
Is when we're in close communion with him and to say, OK, Lord, we're at a fork in the road. I need to decide what should I do? And I would also say this to you kids and young people. When you get to a fork in the road, don't let that be the first time that you get on your knees. Umm, say, oh Lord, we haven't spoken in months.
Now I got problems. Fix it for me. That's not allowing the Lord to guide you with this eye, although I know that that tendency is there, especially when you're young.
But I want to encourage you to cultivate.
A, uh, habit of being in communion with the Lord and listening. You know, the Lord might say something to you today as simple as umm.
Help, uh, Simon fix his car.
I had a nice time helping you with your card assignment. I think we have fun together anyway. Yeah, you know, the word might say, hey, umm, you should help this lady carry that stroller over to her car or vacuum the floor or whatever. And as we obey the Lord in little things, then he can start to give you bigger things and bigger things. But don't be like this horse that has to get yanked around.
Because he's not paying attention.
OK, now we're going to talk about cows.
Actually, we're not going to talk about this one.
OK, what comes from cows?
Henry Milk.
This is a, uh, nursing battle. How many of your kids had a bottle this big when you were babies? OK, milk comes from cows. Uh, before we get into milk, though, I want to say this about cows. If you read in Leviticus about the types of food that God's people were to eat. And now I know we're not under law, so I'm going to draw a example for us to follow.
One of the things they could eat was an animal that had.
Uh, cloven hoof Maybe you guys can see this. See those feet are split. Cow has a cloven hoof but also has a room in it. Animal means it has four stomachs. Umm.
00:40:05
Am I going to try to name them right now because I'll lose my train of thought. There's four stomachs. And so this cow will eat grass or forage, corn, hay, whatever, and it goes into that first stomach and then, umm, when that stomach is full, that's called the room. And it's about 55 gallons by the way. It's big. It will lay down and it will bring that back up out of that first stomach and reach you it and then it goes into the next stomach.
And then the next one. And then the next one.
And that is given it's a picture of bringing things in and then bringing them back up and re.
Meditating on them basically. So I like racing. We just had race car races down there, right? One of the big things on farms is RPMS, probably in racing too. My RPMS for you tonight is read, pray, meditate.
Just like this cow would do, right? The grass goes in.
The room and spits it back up. Re choose it back into the omeism and the abomasim and then the reticulum. See, I got them. I wanted to be a vet when I was a kid. That's fascinating. But anyway, umm.
Bee like a cow?
Regurgitate what you brought in by thinking about reading.
And then meditating on God's Word, it will do you good. Then we're going back to the milk.
Where's Rachel? All right, Rachel, do you like sticking your fingers in a cap's mouth? I think you do. You go into a calf line and there's all these rows of hutches and you stick your fingers out like this in there.
Sucking on your hands, it's kind of cool. And then you stick this bottle out like this, you know? And they drink it down, you know, kids.
Turn with me for something about milk here. It's your first Peter 2. There's a progression in your life that we want to see, and milk is the start of it. So let's go to First Peter chapter 2.
And verse two as newborn babes.
Desire the sincere milk of the Word, that ye may grow thereby. If so be that you have tasted that the Lord is gracious. So kids, young people.
Desire the sincere milk of the word, that you may grow thereby. But you know what doesn't stop there? Sometimes it makes me sad when I see young people that are at the same level.
Year after year after year, and it's like they're still on the bottle. It's like, man, you're 20, you're still drinking from your bottle. The Lord is wanting growth and it's such a blessing and an encouragement when you know, we've had this question and answer meetings and the questions that you guys are asking are very good and it allows us to go into the word of God.
And to get growth?
And stronger, stronger, stronger food. Uh, who's the youngest kid in here?
Probably Connor back there in his stroller. What would happen if we slept the steak down in front of him? Would he be able to eat it?
I think Logan, no, he wants.
Weaker food? How about if we gave you a bottle or AT bone? Which one do you want? You want the T-bone spiritually, same thing. So let's get that from Hebrews.
Umm.
Pardon me for using notes here brother. And I get nervous. Hebrews 5.
We have this mentioned the other day. Hebrews 5 uh, verse 12 for when?
For when for the time you ought to be teachers, you have need that one teach you again, which be the first principles of the oracles of God. And it becomes such as that need of milk and that strong meat for everyone that uses milk is unskillful in the word of racist. This squeeze obey but strong meat belonging to them that are of full age, even though.
00:45:03
By reason of use have their senses exercise.
To design both good and evil. OK. All I'm saying is don't stay with this bottle. Grow into strong spiritual needs. And it's such an encouragement to talk with some of you and visit and see that growth continue. It's well worth it. One more thing about milk.
How many of you guys like ice cream?
Umm, you know when, uh, so my wife grew up in a dairy farm and milk cows with dad for a couple of years before I got into agronomy and I enjoyed being out in the barn, especially early in the morning. You go out there and there's a rows of cows and milker was.
Actually, that noise, right And you're going along and milking the cows and.
In that milk house.
Big bulk take big cooler and that milk separates. There's butter fat and there's the white liquid part. You know, oil and water, fat and water. They don't mix. I want to say this to you young people.
There may be.
Times in your Christian experience, maybe in your assemblies where a person or a situation is a bit of a problem for you, is like oil and water doesn't mix.
You know, I I want to encourage you young people, don't allow that to derail your Christian life and experience. So when you go to the store and buy milk, it doesn't separate why? Who knows why?
Well, so homogenized. So here's how it works you we all know that if we mix the oil and water separate immediately.
So what they do when milk is pasteurized to kill the bacteria, it's also heated to a very hot temperature and sprayed through a tiny little nozzle, little bitty orpus AT-5000PSI. And what it does is it breaks those fat, butter fat particles.
Into tiny, tiny little pieces and it stays in suspension and it doesn't come apart.
So what's the lesson, Bernie? This is not, this is not about how to make ice cream. This is about spiritual life. Let's turn it over to you, uh, Ephesians or Philippians? Sorry.
This is not an easy lesson to learn, but it's worth learning. Philippians 2 verse three. Let nothing be done through strife or Vainglory, but in loneliness of mind. Let each esteem other better than themselves. That's not fun all the time. Is it to take the low place?
To step back and.
Submit to something or someone else that maybe bothers you, but it's worth it. The Lord will honor that to take this and umm, esteem others better than yourself. Now who knows what an acronym is?
An acronym. What is it, Allison?
That's a word that means something else. We're going to use an acronym for Joy, JOY, Jesus first.
Others next yourself last. You'll find in your life that will bring you joy. Jesus first, Others next to Southwest. The next time you're eating butter and your mashed potatoes or ice cream, think about steam. Others better than yourself, you'll be happier.
All right. Now we're going to talk about chickens. And this is the best chicken we had in our house, and it even has extendable legs. Thank you, Rachel.
Alright, this is a chicken. Now, I don't know if my friend Dave Murray is will watch this, but I'm going to share a story they told one time that I found to be incredibly encouraging. Let's turn to Psalm 91.
Psalm 91 Before I read this, I want you guys to remember the word Jesus. The scene when the word Jesus came to Jerusalem for the first time.
00:50:09
And he says he looked out over the city and he wept over it. And he said, how often would I have gathered the children under my wings as a hand does, But you would not.
Brethren, that is the position that the Lord wants to put you in. We are in times of tremendous turmoil. It's not an easy Rd.
I'm not afraid.
For what? For many reasons, and this is one of them, so I'm 91.
Uh, verse 3, Surely he will deliver thee from the snare of the Fowler and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. That means helper. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that fly up by day.
Lord says.
I will cover you with my feathers. I really enjoy what Boaz said to Ruth when she was gleaning in his field. She said, it's been fully shown to me how you have honored your mother-in-law and how you've come to take refuge under the wings of Jehovah. Same thing. So the story Dave Burns told this. His dad was in the British Navy in World War 2.
Umm, he was Canadian, but Canada?
When Britain went to Canada, went to work, So Mr. Burns, his name was Morty, was in the Navy and he was stationed off of the coast of England, uh, for a while. And they could row into shore. And he made it his habit periodically to go in there, get off the ship. And he met a new couple there and, uh, visited with them and was asking him about.
The war and stuff. And the old man said, you know, we have two bomb shelters on this island, You want to see him?
Yeah, I'll see him.
So they go into this great big concrete cavern. This is this is the first one, but I don't think this is any good. And so, well, where's the other one? Oh, it's made out of feathers. And he quoted this verse, a bombshell made out of feathers. And umm, you know, umm, the ship, the ship he was on, by the way, was a sister ship to the Hood that the Bismarck sink.
Umm. But anyway, they got moored off of that same place.
And he went in there and the Germans said bomb the whole town, and every house was flat except for that old man's house who had the feather bombshell, you know, young people.
God is for you, and I know this is a weird looking chicken, but just remember, under his feathers take refuge. So that's the lesson from the chicken. Now we're just about out of time here. Let's talk about the yolk. This is a yoke. I shared this here before.
Uh, the top part is made out of piece of cherry from our Buchanan's woods and the bows are made out of oak from my woods. I steam them to bend them.
What's a yoke for? It looks two things together, right? And we would never really do this, but I'll just give you an example.
So these two sheep right here are yoked together, right?
You guys see that it's kind of a odd way to hook 2 sheep together, but this is what the Lord's desire is for. You turn to umm Matthew 11.
Matthew, Chapter 11.
Verse 28.
Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rust unto your souls, for My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.
You know kids, when you're yoked with the Lord Jesus.
Hope I can say this without.
Offending anybody. Let's say this is you and this is the word, your yoke together. The Lord says My yoke is easy, my burden is light, and wherever you're going, you're going with Him.
00:55:08
Think about that. I find that to be so encouraging. The Lord says, Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest.
I want rest in my life. The Lord says I have it. Come to me. You know, young people, Andrew was talking last night about their house burning down from then. This tragedy, it's a huge kick in the gut and you have the word to say.
Take my yoke.
Upon you.
Learn at me the Lord Jesus is in it with you. Don't fight him, walk with him. He loves you. He wants the boss and keep you. All right, we're at a time we're not going to talk about the windmill, but what I would have said was wells. That's another meeting in itself. Umm, we could have talked about weeds for a whole another meeting.
Uh, lots of other things. Wait and tears. We could make trip to the manure pit.
Lot to be learned there. Soil compaction, Alex. There's a cost. Just remember that when you want to get the tractor out one day early. Umm.
EAR pension.
That'll be another topic, but I'll say this to you older brethren these years right here, they're set when the corn is knee high and the rows around their set. And if something stresses them out, they scramble from say, 22 and 18161412. And brethren must be careful not to pinch off.
In early years, either by accident or on purpose.
The fruitfulness for God, for young people, that's a whole nother meeting.
OK, we're out of time and it's been a long day. I really hope this is useful and helpful and interesting. And mostly boys and girls and young people.
I want to remind you we serve a wonderful.
Supremely.
Gracious good God.
Umm, we can go to him with our problems. We can be yoked with him.
All these things that we talked about, they're just examples that says in Corinthians first that which is natural, afterwards that which is spiritual.
You know, I encourage you, when you're driving around, don't be gazing out the window listening to some meaningless radio. Think about what you're looking at. God is in the details. It's a beautiful thing. All right, let's pray.
Blessed God and Father, thank you for loving us. Thank you for Sir, so many wonderful examples of your hands of love and goodness for us toward us.
Blessed God and Father, I pray for each one of these young people and children that they would know you and love you and grow up to be useful and fruitful vessels for you. Racist Father, those of us that are older help us to learn these lessons to to esteem others better than ourselves and to take some of the circumstances of life and.
Umm, be yoked together with you, Blessed Savior, we pray for a blessing upon what has been said.
In Jesus name, Amen.
Forgot about that too, but that's another lesson. If your kids want to know how hay used to be harvested and wheat, maybe how Boaz did it. I'm not the grim Reaper. Umm, I meant to talk about this because this is important at the gospel, but that's another day. If you want to handle it, you're welcome to do it. Sorry, Jim.
Session #4
The Christian's Involvement in Politics
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.
I'd like to read a hymn from the echoes of grace before we begin At the start of the meeting #235 Lift up your heads eternal gates. A glowing dawn shines or ye at Salem's door. The sovereign whales. He is the King of glory. Who is the King of glory? The Great. I am the Lord of hosts. He is the king of glory. The palms of your their branches wave when Judah's sons were singing.
Hosanna Zion shall be saved, their gentle monarch bringing but the sun's light at midday died and Judas matrons wailing lamented loud. The crucified all trace of glory failing, Those gloomy years have rolled away the years of Israel's mourning. The rising sun, the healing ray proclaims the King's returning. Lift up your heads. Eternal gates, transcendent dawns.
Close or ye at Salem's door Messiah waits. He is the King of Glory. Who is the King of Glory? Is Jesus wearing many a crown? He is the King of Glory.
Let's let's pray our God and Father. We give thanks for the Lord Jesus. We give thanks that he is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. And we look forward to the day when He will take his place as the King.
Of this world. Until then, Father, we just ask for help to uh live our lives in a way that would be becoming of Saints that are having our eternal destiny in heaven. We just give thanks and ask for help. This evening in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
I handed out sheets with a lot of the verses that we're gonna go over. I may go rather quickly and so you may not have time to look up the verses. You may if you wish, but uh, I will just move along. There's probably not all the verses on there, but it's a good portion of them so.
We sang about the King of Glory, the Lord Jesus Christ, when he reigns in that millennial day and many people today, many people think that voting.
And political involvement in this world is the Christian's civic duty. But tonight I would like to look at scripture to see when Christians should be involved in politics and when Christians should not be involved in politics. And we know from Scripture, scripture that the Christians fight is against the principalities and the power of the air. And that means that the whole political system is controlled by the demonic forces of evil.
You may have a good president, he might even be a Christian, but the system is corrupted and God is allowing Satan to be the God of this world.
And now more than ever, Satan is making a big effort to control everything in this world with coronavirus and stopping the Christians from meeting together and forcing many of us to use Zoom.
Instead of coming together as God intends for the Church to come together.
We are told to provoke one another to love and good works, but that is difficult to do when we are forsaking the assembling of ourselves together with this COVID confusion. When when we are not physically together our focus is changed from an assembly mindset to have everything focused on me and what is best for me and we are in danger of becoming very self-centered.
You know Satan. He attacks us with all of his Wiles and the all his darts of sadness and loneliness and frustrations and regulations and above all having to wear these masks.
It is a control issue. It is a control issue, perhaps in an attempt in an attempt to change the culture of the world.
I saw a cartoon the other day and a dog was sitting in the driver's seat of a car and the dog was looking out the window and he saw people walking down the street wearing masks and the dog said all these humans wearing muzzles, who did they bite?
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Well, we have been humiliated into a place of a dog wearing a muzzle, but that's OK because we can submit to the governor of the state in the honor of Christ Jesus our Lord. We know that Satan is behind all these demonic controls throughout the whole world, and we Christians, we need to live in this world that is controlled by demonic forces.
And in order for us to maintain our godly testimony, it is important for us Christians to have on the armor of God. We've still we've spoken much about the armor of God and the spiritual warfare that we have the last few days, but we need to be ready for the spiritual battle that we are about to experience in this country. And let's I want to read some verses in Ephesians chapter 6. We'll begin at verse 11.
Put on the whole armor of God.
That you may be able to stand against the Wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and against powers, and against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
We Christians are fighting a battle today against the spiritual wickedness in high places, and this spiritual wickedness is permeating the whole of society. Verse 13.
Take unto you the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand in the evil day, and having done all to stand.
I want to look forward to the Church's place in the Millennium. And when we look at the reign of Christ during the Millennium, we find that the Church should enter into politics and at that time we will reign with Christ, Christ the King. And if we turn to Revelation chapter 21, and we start reading at verse 9 and read up to verse about verse five of chapter 22.
You will understand that these verses explain all about the great city, the holy Jerusalem and the city in these verses represent the church. During the Millennium. We the church, we will have political involvement, if I could say it that way. We will have political involvement with administrative responsibility over this earth during the Kingdom reign of Christ.
Revelation 21 and verse 12 and this verses. These verses are describing the church in the Millennium and the city described here in verse 12 had a Great Wall and high and had 12 gates, and at the 12 gates 12 angels and the names written thereon, which are the names of the 12 tribes of the children of Israel.
Again, the city represents the church. During the Millennium. The city has a high wall. It's got 12 gates around it and 12 angels at each of the gates.
You know, with billions of people being born during the Millennium, every baby that is born is a Sinner.
And many people will grow up to be the enemies of Christ during the Millennium, and they will know that they need to be obedient to the king of Kings. So they will pretend. They will pretend to be good.
There will still be sin. There will still be enemies during the Millennium. And so the great city, the Holy Jerusalem, is seen with a high wall, and the wall around the city means that the church is protected.
And we are separate from the world.
The wall will keep out all sin, it will keep out all sinners, and it will keep out everything that is not of God.
Nothing unholy will enter the city.
And we the Church, We are the city, and we the Church are kept pure for Christ.
No one can infiltrate the church, the city it's protected in. First Corinthians chapter 15.
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First Corinthians, chapter 15. These verses tell us that Jesus Christ will reign until all of these enemies have been destroyed at the end of the 1000 year reign of Christ and in 1St 25 of Ver. Of First Corinthians 15.
For he must reign till he has put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
The verse we read in Revelation chapter 21, verse 12 is about the angels and the gates. The 12 angels at the 12 gates represent many of the angels of God and the angels. They wait outside the gates to do whatever we whatever service that we, the church, ask them to do or tell them to do. And so if you remember in First Corinthians chapter 6 and verse 3.
It says we will judge angels, and I believe this is the time when we will be sending the angels to earth because we will be reigning from heaven and we will have, we will each have authority over certain cities of the world. And then you remember back to Jacob's ladder in the book of Genesis chapter 28, the angels were going up and down the ladder between Jerusalem on earth.
And the church which is in the new Jerusalem in heaven. And so I believe the angels will be going up and down between new Jerusalem and heaven and Jerusalem on earth, and they will be doing our bidding. Then there was an example in Luke chapter 19 and verse 2012 to 27. You can read that one on your own. But in Luke 1912 to 27 it shows us that we the individual believers.
Who belong to the Church. We will each have a certain amount of responsibility and authority in the government of this world, and we will be, uh, have that authority under the administration of Christ the King during the Millennium.
And the amount of responsibility that is given to you will be directly connected to the amount of your faithfulness to Christ now in this present time during this dispensation of the Church.
Let's go to verse 18 of Revelation 21.
Verse 18 And the building of the wall of it was of Jasper, and the city was pure gold like unto clear glass. And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones.
When we look at the holy city that represents the church during the Millennium, the gold and the precious stones in the wall, they don't have any glory of their own.
The beauty of the precious stones is a result of the light shining on them and the stone's ability to reflect the light, and so each stone represents each believer, you.
Me and all the Christian Saints, each stone in that wall has its own qualities of color and beauty.
And for an example.
You are one person.
And there is nobody else like you in the whole world. And I believe this verse shows us that each St. of God will have his own character and his own qualities in heaven. And so I believe that we will be identifiable and we will know each other.
And then the clear glass in the verse. The clear glass of the city refers to the righteousness that will be shown to the world by the church.
And God wants the world to see the glory and the beauty and the righteousness of His Saints in verse 10, Revelation 21, verse 10. And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God.
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This verse is about the Church in heaven during the Millennium.
And we are again called in this verse the great city, the holy Jerusalem. And now I want to look at the gates of the city in verse 21.
And the 12 gates were 12 Pearls. Every several gate was of 1 Pearl.
And so the pearls here in verse 21, they remind us of the big value the church is to Christ.
In Matthew chapter 13.
Verse 45 and 46 It says, The Kingdom of heaven is like unto A merchant man seeking goodly pearls, who, when he had found one Pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.
The merchant man is the Lord Jesus. He sold all that he had so he could buy that Pearl that had a big price, and that Pearl represents the church.
Christ loved the church and gave himself for it, and he paid for the church with his own life. And God wants the world to know how valuable the church is to Jesus Christ. In the middle of verse 21, it says the street of the city was pure gold.
The city has a street of pure gold. A street is where you buy and you sell and you visit people. And this makes me to think that we will be able to visit and to communicate with other Saints when we are in heaven.
And the gold represents God, the divine things of God. And I believe our conversations on the street will, uh, on the streets of gold will always give honor to the Lord Jesus. It will honor God. And there will be nothing in the city that will bring dishonor to God.
Sin sinners, they will not be able to come into the city.
And the gates of the city will always be open so that the nations can bring their glory and their honor to the city.
But they cannot come into the city.
The only ones permitted into the city are those people of faith who have their names written in the Lamb's book of life and the glory and the honor. It's not for the city, it is not for the church, But the glory and the honor is for the one who stays in the city, and that whole that is the Holy One of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. And to him belongs all the glory, He alone.
Is worthy to receive all the praise and the honor and the worship and down in verse.
23 Revelation 21 Verse 23.
And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it. And the Lamb is the light thereof. And the nations shall walk by its light. And the kings of the earth bring their glory to it. Notice not into it, but to it.
And its gates shall not be shut at all by day, for night shall not be there.
And they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations to it, and there shall in no way enter into it anything that defiles neither whatsoever, works, abomination, or makes a lie, but they who are written in the Lamb's book of Life.
During the Millennium, the holy city, the church, will be a witness to the nation.
Of knowledge and righteousness and truth.
And the nations of the earth will walk in the light of this city. And this means that they will be instructed how they should live according to righteousness and according to truth when they are back in their own country. And so in Isaiah chapter 2 and verse two and three, these verses will explain about how the nations will come to Jerusalem so they can learn the ways of God. Isaiah chapter 2, verse two and three.
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And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all the nations shall flow unto it.
That means that many people from all the other countries will come to Jerusalem, and verse 3 And many people shall go and say, come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the House of God, the God of Jacob, And he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths, For out of Zion shall go forth the law.
And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And so the nations, they will bring money and food and honor and worship to the city of Jerusalem here on earth in the land of Israel. And all of this blessing will be left there on earth in honor of Christ the King.
But Christ the King will be in the heavenly city, in the new Jerusalem, in heaven.
And when the nations come to give honor to the king in Israel, Israel will instruct them how they should live properly when they go back to their own country. And Christ will reign in righteousness. And the people in the nations of the world will be told how to live in a righteous way according to the the law of Jehovah. And many, many will have a desire to know the truth God.
In that day.
The Church.
The Holy City will display righteousness and truth to the world, and the church in that day will be a witness of one.
In all its perfection, and in that day there will be no failure as the churches witness of one as there is today in the world.
Aversion, second Timothy chapter 4.
Second Timothy 4 verse 8.
Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day, and not to me only, but on to but unto them also that love is appearing.
The Lord Jesus has a crown of righteousness for you, and it is an award for you so that you can reign with him during the millennial reign of Christ.
We should not think that we need to get involved in the world of politics now.
We can wait until that day when we rain with Christ and we will reign with Christ in righteousness and will be reigning from heaven, not here on earth. Today is neither the time nor the place for the Christian to get involved in the government of this world, in the politics of this world. There's a brother in in Malawi, his name is Christopher.
And Christopher is from an assembly there, and he is one of the poorest of the poor. And in that village where he lives, there's two sides to the family and each tribe.
Li lives one on each side of the highway, the of the road, and someone from the other family was the village headman. He was the chief, and when the chief dies, the head man, the chieftainship, reverts to the other side of the family.
And so at one point the head man died and the village leaders, they came to Brother Christopher and they asked him to be the village head. Christopher thought about it and he refused. And he said, I don't want to rain now. I will wait to rain with Christ.
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Well, the neighbors and the relatives from the other side of the village, they became angry at his decision and they burned Christopher's house and they chased him out of the village and they also burned 16 other houses.
From Christopher's side of the family now everybody from both sides of the family were against Christopher. Christopher suffered for righteousness sake.
We are in an evil day right now, and so, like Christopher, we should stay out of this evil world of politics.
The Bible talks about the people of this world in a very bad connotation. He calls them the children of the wicked one. He calls them the children of disobedience, and he calls them the children of the world. And God does not want us to get mixed up in any part of that.
The hearts and the minds of the worldlings are always against God.
And God even warns his people not to get involved in the system of politics, in the system of this world. And God does not want us to interfere with God's strategies that he has planned for this world. And he does not want us to get involved with things that we Christians have no business getting involved in.
I want to look at a verse in Isaiah chapter 45.
And I want us to remember this verse as we try to deal with all the political pressures that surround us in society today, and you, the society today. Even many Christians, they say you need to get out and vote, and they insist that your civic duty and other Christians may reproach you because of your dispensational understanding of God's dealings.
In this world. But they will not understand why you refuse to vote, and they will reproach you. You will be reproached by other people in this world. I want you to remember this verse in Isaiah 45, Nine, It says. Woe unto him that strives with his maker. Let the patcher strive with the potsherds of the earth.
In other words.
Leave the political world to the people of the world as they try to control the system of the world without God. We need to leave the politics to the worldlings.
Some covenants ideological Christians, They are trying to control the world with Judaistic principles, and God has not authorized them to do that.
God wants us to come out from among them and be separate. He wants us to be separate from the system of this world. God wants you to be his servant for his purposes. And in Second Corinthians chapter 6.
And verse 17.
Wherefore come out from among them, and be separate, says the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you, and will be a father unto you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.
According to these verses, if you are enjoying your relationship with God as your Father, you will not want to get involved in the in trying to change the system of this world.
We Christians are not of this world. We are the children of God. We have no home. We have no rights in this world. We are citizens of heaven. We are not citizens of this world.
And the Lord Jesus said to his disciples, He said, My Kingdom is not of this world, not yet. There is coming a day when Christ will reign as king of kings and Lord of Lords over this earth, But not yet. We must be patient. We must wait his time. And then when Christ is ready to rule, when he is ready to reign over this earth, we will be a part of his government, and we will reign with him.
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Over this earth and when it is time for us to become in and and that that is the time when we should become involved in the politics of this world.
And so I ask a question.
Is it God's will for Christians to vote in 2020?
I know there are some very passionate issues at stake in this election.
But you know God does not tell. Christians do not vote.
But what does God say? First of all, God never tells the Christian to get involved in the world or the system of this world in any way.
We live in a time when Christ was rejected and we need to accept that fact. And we need to realize that we cannot change the world's demise through political involvement in John Chapter 15 and verse 19.
It says if you were of the world, the world would love his own. But because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
We need to look at the whole picture from eternity to eternity. If we understand God's dispensational dealings with man, we know that we are strangers in this world.
When we release, when we read Philippians chapter 3 and verse 20, we understand that we Christians are citizens of heaven.
And the only way, excuse me, the only way a Christian could vote in a free society in this world is to ignore the dispensational truth of God's word.
And then in Galatians chapter 6 for one more verse on this issue, Galatians chapter 6 and verse 14.
But God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world. Oh we see that the cross separates the Christian from the world. We are separate from the world because of the cross of Jesus Christ and the Lord Jesus sanctified himself for the sake of the believers whom the Father had given.
To his Son, Jesus Christ. How did Jesus sanctify himself?
Sanctified means to be set apart for a certain purpose. And the Lord Jesus set himself apart to do the will of the Father, and he went to the cross as a sacrifice for our sin. And he was crucified outside the gate of the city of Jerusalem, which is the capital.
Of the Jewish religion, sometimes it's called the camp and there is another point of sanctification by Jesus. He was outside the gate. Jesus was separate from sinners. He was separate from the world of the Jewish religion. And in John John 17 and verse 19 we see in this verse.
Says, and for their sakes, This is the Lord Jesus praying through the Father. And he says, for their sakes, that's you and me, his disciples. For their sakes, I sanctify myself that they also might be sanctified through the truth.
The Lord Jesus was set apart from the world by going back to the glory in the Father's house in heaven, and that's where he is now. And in this manner he was sanctified for our sakes, and He set himself apart from the system of this world. And just like Jesus says in this verse, I sanctify myself that they also might be sanctified through the truth. So the Lord Jesus he wants.
You to be sanctified also, to be set apart from this world by the truth that we have in His word.
We also should be sanctified and set apart from the world by the cross of Jesus Christ, and we should be separated through the truth of God's Word.
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Jesus also was separated, was sanctified by keeping himself separated from the political Kingdom. And when the Lord Jesus was was rejected as King of the Jews, he made it very clear that he and his disciples were separate, were sanctified, were set apart and separate from the political system of this world. Let's look at John 18, verse 36.
John 18 verse 36.
My Kingdom is not of this world. If my Kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews? But now is my Kingdom not from here? According to this verse, Christians should not get involved in this world system of politics and government. We are not of this world and we should not try to change this world.
You know, there are two schools of thought about Christians political involvement within the sphere of the Great House of Christianity.
The two schools of thought are Covenant and Dispensational. First, I'll talk about the Covenant, the Covenant, Covenant ideas of theology. And this idea is that Christians should get involved in politics and they should get involved in the military and and if they get involved in order to make this world a better place. And they think that when this world reaches a certain high moral level and standard that the Messiah.
Will step out of heaven into a world that is ready to receive the Messiah, and for the Messiah to reign, and the world will receive him with joy. This is the covenant ideas, and they believe that the Church will replace Israel and the Church will be inheriting the earth and the church will live on the earth and the church will receive all the promises that belong to Israel.
This is a similar idea to what Jehovah's Witness believe.
And the Hindus and Islam, they are all looking for a Messiah to rescue the world.
And this is the same Satanic sentiment that Hollywood and the movie industry is trying to promote. They are looking for a superhero to come from somewhere to rescue the world. And they want to rescue the world from Christians. And to rescue the world from Jews and from overpopulation and from climate change and from eating meat.
The movie industry does not have it all together, but they're super heroes. Will go by astral, travel to some higher plane of existence to communicate with his dead ancestors and he will come back to earth to promote peace and one world government system. This is what is being promoted in many of the movies in the world today.
That idea that is reflected by the movies, that is the great hope of many people for this world. But you know, Israel is also preparing for their Messiah to come. But they're not waiting for the Lord Jesus. They've rejected Jesus. They don't want Jesus.
They set away with this man. We don't want him crucify him. Well, who's going to answer to the Messiah for all of these people? Well, I believe the Beast and the Antichrist will answer to all of these entities as their superhero and their Messiah. You see, Satan is very clever. He is setting this all up in the world today. And the beast and the Antichrist, they will set up their Kingdom and many people with these beliefs will begin to worship the beast.
And the Antichrist and many of these people who are not true believers.
They will think that this is our Messiah, this is our superhero, and many, many false Christians and Jews will apostatize and they will turn away from God. They will turn away from Christ, and they will take the mark of the beast, and in their process they will sell their souls to the devil.
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In today's Society of COVID confusion, we see that people are believing A delusion. They don't want to believe that there is a sovereign God.
They don't want anything that represents righteousness, and for this 'cause God has given them up to their vile affections, and so they have become deluded.
You realize that in the United States of America, the population is about 330 million.
A week or so ago, I think there are approximately 5 million people who were suggested to have had to have or have had COVID-19, and as many as 160,000 people in the USA are thought to have died from this plague.
And the percentage of death in the United States is about .05%.
Only.
Not 5%, not .5%, but .0.
5% have been thought to have died from this plague.
That minute amount of death has caused an economy stopping fear and panic in this world. And this has happened all over the world. I tell you, people are deluded. It is. It is wise for us to have caution, and that's OK. But it is not OK to live in fear. We are to live by faith, not by fear.
I know that if the worst thing that can happen to a believer who dies of any cause is for him to go to be with Christ.
Which is far better.
And if that's the worst thing?
We have to fear.
In death, then, we really have nothing to fear about that.
However, we are told in Scripture, do not tempt the Lord your God. We live by faith, but we don't live by foolishness.
But Can you imagine in the tribulation when one, and I say just one plague will kill 25% of the population of the world?
Right now we have .05%, but this is 25% of the population of the world will die from 1 plague.
Can you imagine the strong delusion people will need to have in order to believe that there is no absolute God with total sovereignty? Who is the intelligent designer? They will believe a strong delusion in order to act as if there is no God.
2nd Thessalonians, Chapter 2, verse 11.
For this 'cause God shall send them a strong delusion, and they that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned, who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
The 2nd way to look at the political position of the Christian in this world is dispensational theology. And this second way of looking. The 2nd way of Christian thinking understands that the world is degrading. We're not getting better, it's degrading. And the morality of this world is getting worse and worse. In Second Timothy 3 and verse 12. Yeah, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.
But evil men, and we can see this today. Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. You know, when God can wait no longer. And when this world's morality goes down, and the false religions get worse and worse, and they become so, uh, corrupt and so repugnant to God, Christ will come to take his true church, the bride of Christ, to be with him in heaven. And some people call that the rapture. And we look forward to the rapture.
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And following the Rapture, the Bible teaches that there will be a time of seven years of tribulation on this world.
And after seven years of having the wrath of God falling on this world of wicked sinners, Christ will return to this world to destroy all the unbelievers and to send them to hell and to lock up Satan in the bottomless pit and then set up his Kingdom. Jesus Christ is the true Messiah.
And then he will reign in righteousness and peace. Christ is the King of Peace, and according to this dispensational truth, the Christian should not get involved in the politics of this world.
I know there's many Christians who think both of these two perspectives.
The Covenant theories and the Dispensational truth. They think that both of these sound good, and many Christians somehow have a belief that is mixed up between the two systems of thought. And you can find Christians mixed up on the scale anywhere at all between these two systems of Covenant and Dispensational thinking in Ephesians Chapter 2.
Ephesians chapter 2 and verse four and verse 6. But God verse six has raised us up together.
And made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. This Is Us even right now. We are raised up above the world, and God sees us already seated in the heavenly sphere. We have heavenly responsibilities even now as we live on earth.
Our focus is on heavenly things, not on earthly things. We should not be involved in political things, because political things are earthly things. Colossians, Chapter 3.
And verse two, it says, set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth, for you are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God.
God has given the United States of America a temporary reprieve, and we are thankful that the spirit of God is busy restraining the extent of the evil in the heart of man. And meanwhile, we Christians, we can see the evil growing and we want to do something about it because it burdens our hearts so and it is easy to get emotionally affected. And we want to vote and we want to protest and we want to demand our rights.
But these verses we have read are very clear that our emotions and our passions and our involvement should not be mixed up in the system of this world. And so, in light of the things we have spoken about tonight, I ask another question. Is it good for a Christian to go into the world?
And our first instinct is to say no.
But Mark, Chapter 16 and verse 15 says go into the world, go into all the world and preach the gospel. And so we should be going into the world, not to change the world, but to eat with the Republicans. And I'm sorry the Republicans and sinners.
We we should be going into the world to preach the gospel and.
And uh, I want to refer to some verses that tell us some things that we Christians can do in this world. We don't have to turn to them. I'm not sure if they're on your papers, but in First Timothy Chapter 2, it says pray for the government. In First Peter chapter 2, it says submit to the government and honor the king or the president or the governor. Second Peter chapter 2 Says it's unjust.
That people speak evil of government. And So what is the Christian's responsibility in this world? Preach, pray, submit, and don't speak badly about the president. It's not always easy to do or not do. But I want to make another point. I have known Christians that are either very liberal and socialistic in their political passions, and I've known other Christians.
Who are very conservative and capitalistic in their political passions. And both groups of Christians are getting ready to vote and they're getting ready and to be involved to change the world. But neither philosophy is godly.
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God has spoken to us through his Son Jesus Christ and another verse in John 17, verse 20 and 21. The Lord Jesus prayed for his believers. He says he prayed for them, which shall believe on me that they all may be one in.
US, you know, democracy is the complete antithesis of the Lord's Prayer in these verses, that they may be one in US.
Democracy divides the people.
First Corinthians chapter one and verse 10.
Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you'd be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.
How can Christians have the same mind and the same judgment when they get mixed up in the politics of democracy?
I can't for verse 11, for it has been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the House of Chloe, that there are contentions among you.
I have seen some very harsh words from Christians against other Christians who have different political passions than they have. And I say politics leads to contentions in the church.
Verse 12 Now this I say that everyone of you says I'm appalled. I have a I'm of Apollos, and I have Cephas and I have Christ.
It happens. Democracy divides. And when democracy invades the church, what is the result? Division. I'm appalled. I'm of Apollos. I'm a Baptist. I am Catholic. I am of Trump. I'm of Biden. Is Christ divided? The obvious answer is no. Christ is not divided, and neither should the Christians. We have taken Christ on ourselves. Christ is in US. Why do we want to divide what we have in Christ by getting involved in this world?
So what can you do now in this world to honor God?
We should not just sit around Biden our time.
Until the rapture.
Our time and our service should be guided by truth. Where are we going to find truth in the word of God? First, John chapter 2 and verse 17. The world passes away and the lust thereof. But he that does the will of God abides forever.
Our instruction is to do the will of God, and what is the will of God for you?
And for me, God does not ask us to fix this world.
God says edify the church, encourage the church, exhort the church, preach the Word. And when we preach the Word, he does not give us parameters as to where we should preach the Word. He says Go into all the world and preach the gospel.
And if you can't do that, what can you do?
Maybe. Maybe you feel useless or you feel guilty because you're not able to.
Because you are not out going out and preaching the gospel on the street, or you're not. You feel like you're not doing anything valuable for Christ, and so you decide to vote or to join a protest against some civil injustice in an attempt to change the world for Christ.
We like to feel like we're doing something, but wait, I want you to think that there are things that you can do and you are probably already doing some of these things.
And you can support the ones who do go out and share the gospel and encourage the Saints, the Lord told your shepherd, my sheep. You can be encouraging one another. You know your brethren, They need to be strengthened. They need to be lifted up. They need to be shepherded. Be a positive spiritual help to your friends. My sheep are not of this world, but shepherd my sheep. And so that's something that we can do for the Lord.
00:55:11
And the Word of God also instructs us to pray for the government and for the authorities of this world. Pray for them, but don't join them.
These are just some of the things that you can do for Christ.
And until the Lord comes, let us live our daily lives for the good of that day when Christ shall receive his place of honor and we will reign with him, and then we can get involved in the politics of this world. In closing, I want to read a hymn again from the Echoes of Grace.
#188.
Our Lord is now rejected and by the world disowned by the many still neglected and by the few enthroned. But soon he'll come in glory. The hour is drawing nigh, for the crowning day is coming by and by.
The heavens shall glow a splendor, but brighter far than they. The Saints shall shine in glory, as Christ shall them array. The beauty of the Savior shall dazzle every eye in the crowning day that's coming by and by.
Let all that look for hasten the coming joyful day by earnest consecration to walk the narrow way, by gathering in the lost ones, for whom our Lord to die, for the crowning day that's coming.
Buy and buy all the crowning day is coming, is coming by and by. When our Lord shall come in power and glory from on high. Oh the glorious sight will gladden each waiting watchful eye. In the crowning day that's coming by and by. Let's pray.
Our God and Father, we give thanks for the prospect of the coming of the Lord to take us up to be with him in heaven, and we look forward to the prospect of coming back with the Lord Jesus.
In all his glory to reign over this world, we look forward to that Father, and we just ask that until then we can remain faithful and so that we can be a help and to be with the Lord as He reigns in this world. We just give thanks. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
Session #5
Q&A
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How do we accept that the biblical Canon containing 66 books?
Has the entire revealed word of God? Is it simply by faith? Or should I read other Gnostic books or Catholic books that did not make it into our Bible to see for myself if they are consistent with the truth?
We know that there, we know that there are other, uh, books of James quoted from the book of Enoch. We don't have the book of Enoch in our, in our Bibles. And so the question is, what about these other books? Are they part of the word of God that just forgot, been forgotten? Or maybe why did they not get included?
Umm.
I don't know, umm, it's the ones who uh, decided that was early or way back.
Very early on, after, after the, uh, couple 100 years or so, maybe after the Lord went back to heaven, umm, after the apostles passed on. But the books that we have, they all flow together very well. They all agree with each other and.
I don't know much about the, uh, the biblical cannon, I just know the 66 books that we have. But I'm sure some others have have read more about this and understand a little better, so I'll turn it over to anyone else who has something to add to this.
Regarding the Old Testament, when Jesus was here on earth, our current Old Testament was already the exact same set of books that you have in your Bible right now was already. That was what all the Jews considered as the inspired Old Testament right then when Jesus was alive.
You can read about this from history if you'd like. Umm.
Josephus writes clearly that it was universally accepted by all the Jewish rabbis, the same books that we have right now, umm, that was the word of God. And Jesus is here and that's what he read from and that's what he quoted from, and he never added anything else to it. So I think that for me at least, helps to see that our Old Testament.
Is is the inspired Word of God regarding the New Testament, There's two verses that I found helpful in thinking about this question for myself.
They don't. I'm not suggesting these verses provide an answer to this question. I'm more suggesting that they're helpful in in thinking about this question. Umm, one is in second Peter.
Second Peter 3.
Verse 15 I'll start halfway through the verse. Even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given unto him, hath written unto you, as also in all his Epistles, speaking in them of these things in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable rest. And this is the key part, as they do also the other Scriptures unto their own destruction.
So very shortly after umm.
The Lord had returned to heaven when Peter wrote this already. It's very clear that both he and in speaking to many others that the epistles of Paul were considered, umm, the inspired word of God. And it's just a helpful to see that a verse in our New Testament refers to other books in the New Testament as as the word of God, and the other verse is in first Timothy chapter 5.
First Timothy 518 it says for the Scripture Say it, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that trendeth out the corn.
That's a quote from Deuteronomy, and the labor is worthy of his reward. That's a quote from Luke. If you have a margin, you can see Luke 10, seven. So there you can see that Paul, when he was writing this, it was already universally accepted by the church that Luke was the inspired word of God. So we have a reference to the epistles and a reference to the Gospels, and I've also found it helpful to think about that.
00:05:19
In the Gospels, there's two that are written by, if I get this correct, umm, disciples. That would be Matthew and John. And there's two that were written by you might say companions of apostles, and that would be Mark and Luke and Paul referred to 1 written by a companion. And if you want, you can read about the history of how the early church eventually.
Agreed to an established Canon for the New Testament, and it was.
I think the the question says is it by simple faith and I think the answer to that is yes.
I can accept by simple faith and suggest hopefully we can all that did God do correct in leaving us with the word of God? I think he did. But you can read about it and see how the early Christians, umm, they did apply some principles in the books that they umm felt were inspired word of God. And one of those principles was one it had to be either written by an apostle.
Or a very close companion of an apostle. And this person Timothy is what they based that on. Because Luke was a very close companion of Paul and other epistles that weren't written by an apostle. So maybe James or umm, Jude, I might not have them all, but those are all close companions of apostles. And that was the principle they applied. And then they also applied umm, another principles was umm.
Does it contain you know?
Key truth that we need to, to live our Christian lives. And again, I'm not saying that there's a formula that they use. There's no formula that, you know, put these tests to it and OK, therefore it's in our Bible. But they did follow principles. But in the end, I think it was God that directed it. And I think the answer is yes. By simple faith. Do we trust that all these years later God left us with the word of God? Did he somehow not direct things that something would be left out or something would be put in that's not correct all these years?
I'd like to turn a couple verses first in Colossians chapter 2, chapter one, verse 25.
This wherefore I am made minister. This is Paul according to the dispensation of God.
Which is given to me for you to fulfill or complete the word of God. Paul's epistles were to complete the Word of God. We know that umm Revelation the Book of Revelation was written after chronologically, but it was no new true. It was true umm Perhaps we have more details as to.
Umm.
The truth but not new. So we we know that.
All bills are completed the word of God. We also have another verse.
And in Isaiah chapter 40.
In verse eight it says the grass withereth and the flower fadeth away, but the word of God shall stand forever. Umm.
God, God is a maintainer of his own word and throughout the ages he has always had his word. And it's not man that maintaining it himself and it shall stand forever. And so there was in the New Testament there there were inspired men that had, but it was all in God's design.
And he?
Continues to maintain his word.
And it will be held forever.
They would like to suggest that maybe there's something.
Just like you did with E. You're missing something. But it wasn't. We have in our hands the word of God complete.
He is the maintainer of it.
00:10:31
Just one other point about the second part of the question here about this other plastic.
Let me see. Catholic books I'm not exactly sure about.
I've got the volume. I gather that plastic book she probably had in mind, uh.
I think we've heard of the of the Gospel of Judas, one that I've heard of.
That people have tried to introduce that, that made it into the, uh, Canada subscription that we have. The Catholic books are called the Apocrypha book and they are covering, I believe, the period of time from the independent guy to Christ. Uh, but interestingly ended up pointed out this last day that we talked about this question.
The Lord didn't quote any of them.
And, and looking through those books, there are direct attrition, historical attrition, things that happened in the secular course of time that had predicted the, uh, books that we do have in Canada Scripture so.
I would suggest that.
Uh, because the board didn't represent it either. Didn't disciple or anybody else.
Yeah, personally, I would rather see you young people spend your time and you want to watch as a future and that's you take upon yourself.
Ask of being a forensic investigator of maybe God live Dave's that same would like to put that in their mind. Hey there, this is something here uh.
That's what those other dastic books of the Catholic books are. And then one of the reasons I, I believe I can, we can encourage you, uh.
Our next question.
If I'm fearful to do something.
That God has asked me to do. Is it selfish or unfaithful to ask for strength from God?
First of all, I'd like to look at a verse from James chapter one.
There's several versions here in James chapter one.
And verse 5.
If God has asked me to do something.
I think it's a blessing.
That he's given us instructions so we know what to do and maybe we don't really understand what God wants from us and we're maybe fearful about it.
But in verse five, if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God. They give it to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith Nothing, nothing wavering.
For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
And so it's a blessing when the Lord asked us to do something and we understand that the Lord has asked us to do that thing. It is not selfish to ask the Lord for strength or wisdom or courage to do what he's asked us to do. And so I, I encourage you, if, if you understand God wants you to do something, don't be afraid to ask for strength.
00:15:12
To, uh, to do that job that he's given you. He wants you to depend on him.
He cares for you. There's that verse in first Peter 5, verse seven, casting all your care on him because he cares for you. And some of that care that we have, that anxiety, that fear.
Comes from when we go to serve him.
Just having a direction of how to serve it's.
That can cause fear because we need to learn to trust the Lord to be able to do what He's asked us to do. And it takes faith to do what He asked us to do. And we need the strength, the grace, the courage, we need the wisdom, whatever it takes to do what He's asked us to. So I don't believe at all that is is selfish to ask for.
Strength from God.
God is asking to do something. There's another doctor that there's like.
And, umm, very much worthwhile to pray about. Or like food or something. Excuse me?
To have a little.
God can put something in our bath or in our thoughts and.
It's not unusual.
For there to be a waiting period. And so in terms of of asking umm, I think it's umm good to have a kind of sometimes go a little slowly, but one of the things to ask for is timing, umm, next week, maybe a better time than tomorrow.
Umm, if you're speaking with someone or, uh, have something to share or whatever.
And, and that's an important factor. And I just throw that in there, uh, because we, we don't want us, we don't want to necessarily say, well, God has told me to do it, so I'm just going to run out and do it.
There might be some other nuances, some, umm, other little things the Lord might want to share with us before we, umm, actually embark on the project.
Share a thought on someone in the Old Testament who was afraid to do what God asked him to do and I think received real help from God. But when he went and asked God for help, he didn't do it in the right way and he had to learn a lesson. And I think we can learn a lesson from it. So the person is Gideon and we all know the story in Judges.
And the the famous part of the story about the fleece.
So Gideon and Judges 636, you can see that he was afraid to do what God had asked him. Gideon said unto God, If thou wilt save Israel by manhand, as thou hast said, He wasn't sure. He didn't have confidence. He was fearful. What was the mistake that Gideon made? He decided the terms by which God needed to put the confidence in him. He said, God, this is how I want you to.
Help me out you do this with the fleece and then there's the whole story there where I'll put in verse 37. I'll put the fleas of all on the floor and if they do be on the fleece only and it be dry upon all the earth beside. Then shall I know that that will save Israel by my hand as though I said so he said God, this is how I want you to give me courage. I I'm going to decide it's on it's going to be on my terms. Did God answer him yes he did.
Did it work? It didn't. God was Gideon was still afraid. He goes back and.
And we know he switches it around at the police and he still, he still doesn't have the confidence, he's still afraid. And he goes back and says, well, God, please do it again the other way around. And God is very gracious to him. And he does what Gideon asked, did it work? I don't think so. And again, the problem was that Gideon came to God on his terms instead of going to God and said, you know what I need, I'm here.
00:20:15
All you provide what I need from you.
And now you go over and see where that happens in the next chapter, and you see that it's God coming to Gideon on God's terms instead of on Gideon's terms in Chapter 7, verse nine. And it came to pass the same night that the Lord said unto him, Arise, get thee down under the host, for I have delivered it into thy hand. God comes to Gideon on his terms. And Gideon, I have a plan to overcome your fear and give you confidence. And we know the story of how he sneaks down into the.
And he hears of the Midianites having this dream of the piece of bread coming down the hill and crashing the tent, and how it spoke of Gideon defeating them. And that is what gave Gideon the confidence and the courage that he needs. And you can see it and down in Chapter 7, verse 15. And it was so when Gideon heard the telling of the dream, the interpretation there of that he worshipped and returned in the host of Israel and said, arise.
For the Lord hath delivered into your hand the host of Midian, as soon as.
God's plan for how to give you the encourage was revealed. He instantly had the courage he needed to go out and do what the Lord had for him to do. And I think the lesson is that sometimes we come to God in prayer with our own terms and conditions, and we can't do that. We have to come and say, God, you know what I need, I'm here. I'm your willing servant. And you, you show me what I need. And God did that with Gideon, and that's when he had the courage to do what God.
I told him to do.
The other person who was careful point out is Jeremiah. Jeremiah, chapter one.
Five that says, I have sanctified thee, I have ordained thee a prophet unto the nation. That's what the Lord says to him, His response says.
Oh Lord God, behold, I cannot speak, for I am a child.
This is what the Lord said. And the Lord said unto me, Say not I'm a child, for thou shalt go to all that I shall then leave whithersoever I command thee. Thou shalt speak thee not afraid of their faith, or I am with thee to deliver thee. Thank the Lord, There's the key, he says now.
Jeremiah, you might be careful.
But he says I first of all, I have sent the that's very important. And then it says I will be with me. The Lord is going to help us and carry it through. We may have fear and trepidation to go forward, but if we have his direction, he is not going to deserve it in time of need.
I'd like to look at a verse.
In Hebrews chapter 4, verse 16.
Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 16. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
So we come to the throne of grace. We're looking for strength to do what the Lord has asked us to do.
And what do we, what do we do with the throne of grace?
We pray, we ask for grace and we receive mercy and grace to help in time of need. So we, we, I think it's, it's a very appropriate to pray for strength. That's what grace is, strength to meet the challenge of the day, strength to, uh, do that which the Lord has asked us to do. And so the Lord asked us to do it. We ask him for the grace to do it.
00:25:23
He's very happy to give us the grace to do it because he's asked us to do it.
And so he's encouraged, he, we are encouraged when the Lord gives us the grace that we need, the strength to be able to serve him.
And I believe.
Prayer and asking the Lord for strength to do what He's asked us to do. I don't believe that is faithless unfaithfulness. I don't think it's selfishness, but I think it shows dependence on the Lord because we can't do these things ourselves, so we need the Lord's help. It's more selfish to not ask the Lord for help, to think that I can do it on my own. But we need His help in all of these things.
Just, uh, just an example of that. Another example from the book of Judges.
Uh, Samson?
In Chapter 16 of Judges.
Umm Sampson had his had his hair cut off.
An inverse.
UMM 20 it says, And she said, the Philistines be upon the Sampson, And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as out of his times before, and shake myself. And he was not that the Lord was departed from him.
So he tried to do this in his own strength. He didn't depend on the Lord and his hair was cut off, so he didn't have strength. And then.
Umm, down in verse.
28 This is when Samson is in the House of the Philistines.
Says And Samson called unto the Lord, and said, Oh Lord God, Remember Me, I pray thee, and strengthen me. I pray thee only this once, O God, then I may be at once avenge of the Philistines for my two eyes. And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon the house, upon which the house stood in on which it was born up. And you know the rest. He umm, he pulls it down, but.
The first time he did not ask the Lord for strength. The second time he did.
Uh, it was his faith there the second time that gave him the victory.
Hi.
Your next question.
With the world becoming more violent, is it appropriate to consider more drastic methods of protecting one's family?
I assume what's being asked is OK to carry guns to protect your family or other drastic methods similar to that. There's a verse in Exodus chapter 22.
And verse two and three.
If a thief be found breaking up.
And be smitten that he died. There shall no blood be shed for him.
If the sun be risen upon him, there shall be blood shed for him, for he should make full restitution. If he have nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft.
So if a thief comes in the night in this verse, they were permitted to kill him.
00:30:04
To shed his blood, but if it was daylight.
Then they could not.
Shed his blood and if they did there would have to be a punishment for that.
Now go to Luke Chapter 11.
That was under the law.
Now in Luke 11.
In verse 21.
When a strongman armed, keeps his palace, his goods are in peace.
Upon him and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armor, wherein he trusted and divided his spoils.
And so the strongman, he protects his palace, he protects his house. Sometimes even when you have the means to protect yourself, a stronger person will come and he will take everything you have, even if you have some sort of protection.
Now go to Matthew 26.
And this is when Peter was defending the Lord, and I believe he's probably defending himself too. Matthew 26, verse 52.
Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place, for all they that take with the sword, for all they that take the sword, shall perish with the sword.
So if you are going to tangle with with the guns or with the sword.
There's a good chance it's going to come back on you.
And then in Matthew chapter 5.
Verse 38.
You have heard that it has been said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you that you resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
So these are all different approaches to dealing with the violence in the society and the violence is increasing in the society in which we Live Today.
And it takes space and trust dependence on the Lord for any one of these options.
Alright, I'll tell you.
The market is prepared to get the title, but maybe you know the world.
Good evening, his father.
00:35:18
Ability to do that.
I'm looking at another similar version of 127.
Says acceptable, Lord build the house, they labor to make them build it, and that's a templeboard. Need to see the loss of weight is one thing.
Washington usually are.
Well, except the lower team of your house.
Oh.
I don't know if that works, that shouldn't be honored, but.
They have to get the order.
There was some unrest. This is back in the 60s.
Back in the 60s in Oakland, CA.
Uh, there's a lot of unrest in the city for a while and uh, my dad has been in World War 2 and he had been a forward, umm, observer and, uh, radio man. So it's pretty dangerous position. But anyway, so we're working in the garage one Saturday and the dad.
If we were attacked, would you?
Uh, fire on someone? He had some of the arms from from the war. He was able to take them. Adam and his closet somewhere.
And he looked at me and said.
I would never shoot a person.
Well, I was impressed he'd been in a war.
But he was. It was very sobering to him, I guess. But again, that's just a anecdotal story, but umm.
Uh, I, I heard that, listen to that and, uh.
Uh, I think that that was a very wise thing and probably a wise concept for all of us.
So do you know deadly harm to anyone?
00:40:27
In the story of UH creation and Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter 2, verse 22.
Verse 21 And the Lord God caused the deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which the which the Lord God had taken from man, he made a woman, and brought her unto the man.
And Adam said, This is now my bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.
And so I, I've always said that, uh.
The Lord took the bone from under Adam's arm.
And it's close to his heart where he can love her, and it's under his arms where he can. With his arms he can provide for her, and with his arms he can protect her. And so God has given us a responsibility, ability to protect our families and to protect our wives. He doesn't say how we should do it, but he says we need to protect our families.
And to, to, and in, in the Ephesians he says, to love your wife.
Even as Christ gave himself for the church and loved the Church. And so we are to protect our families.
If you if someone breaks into your home and starts beating your wife.
I don't think the Lord expects us just to sit there and and and wait it out.
With there's a responsibility for protection.
The last question for today.
Hebrews 10/24.
How do I practically live out this verse? Let's look at Hebrews 10, verse 24.
Before and let's consider provoke unto love and to good works. But I want to connect that with verse 25. Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another, and so much more as you see the day approaching.
You go back to verse 22.
Says let us draw near. With a true heart, we're to draw near to God.
And in verse 24 and 25, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, we are to draw near to one another.
And verse 24 let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works. And so the question is practically, how do I live out this verse of provoking unto love and to good works?
I'll share a couple ways this versus spoke to me about what it means practically.
The interesting part of this verse that made me think is the use of the word provoke, because generally we think of that in a bad context. It's a bad thing to provoke someone. What does provoke mean? It means to initiate a strong reaction or response in someone.
00:45:10
Says to revoke unto love and to good works.
I doubt I'm the only one here who has been in this situation. Or maybe you're in a group. I've been there as a young person and there's a suggestion to do something. I'm not going to mention specifics or watch something or listen to something.
And in the group, there's one person that has the courage to say, well, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that. I I'm not sure that would be honoring to God.
If you've been in that situation, did you feel provoked?
I sure have it doesn't. It doesn't. The initial response is, oh, that that speaks to me.
Ouch. But they were provoking to good works, and it took courage. How about provoking unto love? And again, these are just practical examples. I think it can be applied in a lot more ways than this. But the question was, how do I live this out practically? Perhaps, maybe it's in a group, or maybe just two people, and you're speaking about someone else and speaking in a way that's critical.
About their faults. And it's not really for the benefit or blessing of you or the person or people you're speaking to or the person you're speaking about.
You're just being a bit critical. And I have that tendency. I'm sure I'm not the only one. And then someone else has the courage to. Maybe they don't tell you you shouldn't be talking about that, but they just say, well, this is something about that person that I appreciate and I value that makes me feel a little bit provoked. Oh, that person was provoking me unto love because it's a reminder that they were the ones, really.
Playing the character of Christ, not me. And it can be a little bit provoking to have someone, uh, have the courage to, to speak up in that way.
Four and 25. The reason I read 25 along with 24 is because in the in the word here they are connected together the thought and.
When a person is forsaking the assembly, they're not coming to the meetings. They're not, umm, being around other Christians. They can get cold in their soul. If I can use that term, they can. They can become cold and, and they can drift away from, from the Lord and they need to be encouraged.
And so they need to be provoked unto love and good works.
To go to them and reach out to them and, and what, why are you missing meetings? What, what's, what's happened in your life? What's wrong? And I know it's not an easy thing to go and ask someone that because people don't like to be pointed out like that, but it's something that we can do to try to encourage them to go on.
To live their life for the Lord. To be in happy communion with their fellow Saints.
And so when they start forsaking the assembling of themselves together, we need to exhort one another, and we need to provoke them unto love and to good works. And as William has alluded to.
Sometimes just a small word, sometimes an act on our part can help provoke others to do the same.
00:50:25
Turn to loop chapter 10.
Story of the Good Samaritan.
We often apply this to the work pieces, and rightfully so.
I gotta read all this, so I wanna point out what this person did. Here's this guy in the ditch.
Die.
Verse 33 Is there a smeared Nancy? 30 came where he was.
He saw me at the passing on him.
Brethren.
You might have provoked someone to love and good works.
Need them where they're at.
Coordinates. Yeah. This American man could sit there on the disc bank and out of that guy. Hey, man, you gotta get out of there. You're in trouble.
He went where he was, you know.
I would confess to you that it's a lot easier not to do that.
If I can, I'm busy. I didn't even like the situation.
It's that might fall. I wasn't involved in how this person got there.
So I'm just gonna keep moving.
Is that how we're good at provocative levels?
He had compassionate him, went to him, bound up his wound, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own Deep brought him to an innocent parable.
You have to borrow what he departed. He took out two pets.
Gave them to the host instead of they had to take care of them. Whatever they'll spend this morning, when I come again I will be crazy.
You know, uh.
The chance of a smarter man get his money back probably 3 weeks ago.
Gave it, if you will, his award. I, uh, you know, I think all of us had the experience. Maybe you, uh, come up with intersection and there's somebody at the corner asking for money, homeless e-mail, whatever.
And part of my tendency, my own heart has been Eddie's gonna go by about what, Whiskey, anyway, I'm not gonna be able to.
The other one spoke to me when they had sent their.
I lost you. Talked for a minute and gave him a few thoughts.
Pour out yourself and modeling what the word Jesus would do, not just for somebody to tell it out, somebody in this room.
Right today could use.
For 5 minutes of your time.
At one stable when everybody else needs to find out.
00:55:20
Jason beholding him.
You know you wanna be a healthy friend. Love them.
Glad I would teach you.
But.
Jesus interacted with this young man and he didn't say, dude, I'm busy.
What if you leave it with the word because you love that person, look at him through the eyes and will hurt him and see.
I have noticed.
Over this week.
That people are that haven't seen each other for quite a while, are provoking one another until love and the good works.
A lot of interaction going on between.
Brothers and sisters in Christ here this week, if you didn't come, you wouldn't be able to be involved in that. And when you don't go to the assembly meetings.
You're not able to interact with your brothers and sisters and to provoke unto love, and I've noticed that on the Zoom meetings.
It's a nice way that we can get together, but we're not together physically, and we're not there to encourage and support one another, to provoke them unto love and to good works. And Satan knows this probably better than anybody. He's been in the business for many years, and he knows that if he can isolate Christians.
He can stop all the love and the good works. And so we need to find ways where we can reach out to our brethren, our sisters in Christ, reach out to them.
I know if they're in a nursing home, you can't even go to the nursing home and Satan has them isolated there and it may be for a good medical reason, but it's still goes against our nature, which has been instilled in us.
By God. And so God wants us to be together. And so he says, don't forsake the assembling of yourselves together. And so if we are not able to come together in the assembly, in the meeting, then we need to find ways to reach out to people, to visit them, to encourage them and to build one another up in the most holy faith.
Satan also knows that.
The power of the assembly and the authority is when they come together in the name of the Lord Jesus. And if he can stop us from coming together in the name of the Lord Jesus under the guise of COVID, he's gained a victory and he can and he's can discourage. So let let's, let's be diligent to reach out and to be kind one to another.
And and to do what we can to provoke one another and to love and to good works.
I guess our time is up.
Just read one uh verse from 276 before we pray. Guide us. Oh thou gracious Savior, pilgrims through this barren land. We are weak, but thou art mighty. Hold us with thy powerful hand. Red of heaven, red of heaven, feed us now and evermore.
Right. Dear Lord, we thank you once again for this time over your word. We thank you for your precious words. So carefully preserve umm.
Thank you for the Bible.
Think of, uh, it's difficult questions like, uh, action of our family and we'd be exercised, uh, by your word, all the while acknowledging that the only protection, only surety we have is, uh, from you. We, uh, we provoke one another towards allowing good works and recognizing our only, uh, true enemy, uh.
Is.
Satan in this world system that, uh, he has so cleverly, uh, continually, uh, used to.
Disrupts, uh, your things into, uh, trying to discourage, uh, us, uh, in this earthly path. We thank you for our inheritance in the heavenlies.
Victory uh, it's already been won and we have uh, that blessed hope. So we pray for continued safety today and thank you for this kind of fellowship and then.
Doctrine and Godliness
Address—William Hayhoe Jr.
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 everyone.
Normally when you stand up and start a meeting, you have the chance to suggest to him this thing, and you can even pick a long one to give a chance for the nerves to settle and the heart rate to slow down. We can't do that tonight, but thankfully we can still pray and ask the Lord's help, so let's do that.
Our God and Father.
We thank you for the time we've had here at the camp and that we have been able to do this despite the current umm, difficulties. And we ask for your help now as we would look into the word of God and trust that what would be said with honor the Lord Jesus and would it help to each one here and that each of us would be able to go home with a renewed desire to.
Honor our Savior who loved us and gave himself for us. And we asked this and where they impressed his name of Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Night, I would like to speak to you about subject.
And see if the pointer is not working again.
Let's see, there we go. Now it's working.
Of doctrine and godliness.
Now I will tell you that if I was sitting in the chair out there as a young person or as a married person and someone got up here and started off by saying I'm going to talk about doctrine and godliness.
The thought inside my head would have resembled something equivalent to a rolling of the eyes. Maybe I would have even rolled them externally and if the speaker have to be noticed, taking all the confidence right out of the way at the start. And I would have thought something like why can't we have something practical?
Well, I am if you're thinking that I understand, I can relate and I would assure you that we are going to get practical and speaking for how some of these things is spoken to me on my own life, so practical that I could use the expression it hurts.
So I'll just go through a quick outline of what we're going to look at.
And talk a little bit about why this subject, what drew my attention to it, and why it's important. We're going to talk about some misconceptions that perhaps some of us have about these two subjects. We're going to talk about what real doctrine and godliness is. We're going to look at the secret to godliness. And lastly, some things that can inhibit doctrine and godliness.
So perhaps, umm, the reason that I would have rolled my eyes at hearing a subject like this, I'm sure for me at least, perhaps it is for you as well, would be because I have.
Some misconceptions about UMM doctrine, and I've got my slides out of order here, so I'll I'll skip one ahead here. So in the weeks before the camp, I've spoken to several young people.
And older people and also at the camp and ask them what they thought doctrine was and what kind of what do you associate with the subject to see if anyone else maybe has some of the same misconceptions that I had. And these are some of the some of the feedback that I got several people, the 1St 2 words out of their mouth. What do you think about doctrine? Not practical, sometimes with emphasis.
And some other people said umm.
You know, it's more complex things in the Bible, you might say more high level truths, things like prophecy, maybe assembly order, umm, things like that. Or some people said things hard to understand. And if that's you, please don't feel bad. Even Peter thought some of the things that Paul was teaching were hard to understand. So Peter could relate to you and I'll go backwards.
Now it's jumping too on There we go. So now I'm going to share what drew my attention to this subject and it was in studying first Timothy and I'd like to read first Timothy chapter one, verse 5.
It says now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and it was a good conscience and a faith on vain. What Paul is saying here to Timothy is the end goal or the purpose of the charge.
Or the commandment that I've given to you here in First Timothy, the end goal is that there might be charity or divine love out of a pure heart and a good conscience and a faith on fame. And I think any of us that have believed in the Lord Jesus, that would be the desire for our lives, that there would be divine love that would flow out of a pure heart and a good conscience and faith and fame. That's what we would want for us and for those around us.
00:05:17
So that was called end goal. You could say that was his purpose. That's what he wanted to see. And So what was this commandment or this charge that he gave to Timothy to accomplish this end goal? It's a few verses before and verse three. I'll read the whole verse as I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some, that they teach no other doctrine.
I've got to say that if I was writing to someone and my end goal in writing to them was that there would be divine love expressed in their life out of a pure heart, a good conscience, faith and fame.
I don't think the charge that I would give them, what would come to mind would be to teach no other doctrine. But that is what Paul said it gave to Timothy. And I think the reason for that might be some of these misconceptions that we have about doctrine. So let's talk about what doctrine really is.
At the most simple, basic level, doctrine just means teaching. And if we might, when we use doctrine in the context of the Bible, it means the teaching of the Bible.
From Genesis to Revelation, everything that's in there.
Says all Scripture is profitable for doctrine. It's not a certain set of higher level, more complex things like we perhaps sometimes think of it. And to give some examples of that, the first time the word doctrine is mentioned in the New Testament, it's at the end of the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus got done giving that famous sermon and the IT says that people were astonished at his doctrine.
We'll go through what he talked about there in his doctrine. It's all intensely practical things. There's a big focus on reality in the heart as opposed to hypocrisy. There's subjects like not worrying. It's very practical thing. And that was doctrine. You turn over to the act and you see how the preaching of the gospel in the early days here was referred to. It's referred to as doctrine. So doctrine includes the preaching of the gospel. Doctrine is the entire teaching of the Bible, not a certain set of higher level truth.
Now, one of the things that the Bible repeatedly emphasizes about doctrine is that it should be characterized by feeding Christ through our souls again and again and again. It's not an intellectual exercise in knowledge. It's learning to know Christ. And I'd like to go through a list of verses. I'm going to go through these pretty fast. If you're a person that likes to take notes, umm, I can send you the slides after and you can have the left so.
Create. I count all things but lost for the Excellency of the knowledge, Knowledge of what Christ Jesus my Lord, or what Jesus himself said. Search the Scriptures, or you might say, study the teaching of the Scriptures, the doctrine of the Scriptures. They are they which testify of me, Christ, and having Him fed to our souls. That is what should characterize doctrine. Go through a few more.
Ephesians 415 speaking the truth, and love may grow up into Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.
So speaking the truth, there's the doctrine. What's the purpose that we might grow up into him?
Ephesians 413 Until we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge. Knowledge of what? Of rigid intellectual, How to give an explanation of certain doctrines of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of prey.
Look at another one, umm, referring to the Lord Jesus again he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. The subject of the whole Bible, the teaching of the whole Bible is about Christ. Another verse who this is referring to, umm, leaders in the church, the offices, elders and deacons, says, Who have spoken unto you the word of God? There's doctrine.
Whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation? Well, what was the end of, you might say, the goal of their life? What was it?
Jesus Christ the same yesterday, day and forever. And this is the last one in this list that I'm going to go through here. The last slide, Ephesians 420 and 21 it says but you have not so learned Christ. If so be that you have heard him and have been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus. So it's found in the Lord Jesus and then lastly in Colossians 2.
00:10:05
That their hearts might be knit together in love and then to.
I can't read it on the one down there so got my computer here and I'm just going to Scroll down to it.
That their hearts might be knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, was especially that last part that I was thinking there. Does it read? In whom are hid all the wisdom and knowledge? No, it's the treasures. You want to get the goodness, the value out of the Scriptures, you have to study them or preach them with Christ in view.
And then now I'd like to look at a verse in our chapter regarding this subject.
This is first Timothy chapter one and verse four. We've already read verse three and verse 5. Now let's look at verse 4. I'm going to read the end of verse three again so we get the context. So Paul is charged with that thou might discharge them, that they teach no other doctrine, neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies which minister questions. I'm going to read this incorrectly on purpose. He doesn't say.
Rather than doctrine instead.
He describes what should characterize the doctrine. He qualifies it and he this is what he says rather than godly edifying which is in faith. So do so the that expression there godly edifying which is in faith is what should characterize doctrine. And I'd like to say it needs to characterize the giving of doctrine and it needs to characterize.
Receiving of doctrine. So let's let's talk about perhaps the giving and the word edifying. If I or in a family setting that could be a mother or father or an assembly setting, whatever it is, if I'm in a place of giving doctrine, do I have a goal as a goal to feed Christ to my soul? What to the soul of my listeners? What is what edifies us? This Christ, He said I am the bread of life. Do I have that in view?
Or am I just, umm, explaining what I know about the Bible and I'm not seeking to feed Christ to my listeners? What about godly? Sometimes I might.
Speak about doctrine in a Christ centered way. But I might be speak trying to speak to your old. Appeal to your old nature instead of your new nature. I might be trying to appeal only to your feelings and how I'm presenting instead of speaking in a God reference manner. How about in faith? Am I seeking to speak to the heart or is it again more of a intellectual exercise? Am I speaking to the heart and I think in faith?
Also captures the thought that what I'm speaking there should be a.
It should be lived out in my life and believed. So doctrine must be both presented in this manner and received. So if I'm in the position of receiving doctrine, and whether that's a meeting, whether that's in my own personal reading, studying something, or just reading the Scriptures, whether it's in the family setting, whatever it is, is my desire to be fed Christ or do I just want to learn things and know facts and get some good advice? Do I want to know Christ better?
If that's not how I'm receiving doctrine, it's not going to benefit me. How about godly? Which nature am I wanting what's being said to speak to? Am I wanting something that's going to appeal to my nature and what I want to hear, or am I willing for it to be for it to appeal to my new nature? How about in faith? Am I willing to live out what I hear?
Am I willing to listen to with my heart or is it, Or am I listening from, uh, intellectual?
Umm, I just want to learn to be able to explain this so I can have this knowledge. Am I willing to listen with my heart? And I think often when there is a problem with doctrine, it comes down to one of three things. There can be something wrong with the substance of the doctrine. It can be not according to the scriptures. And that's not something so much, umm, on my heart talk about tonight. But those two things we just talked about there, there can be a problem with the giving of the doctrine. It can be given with the.
Motors aiming for the wrong, not for the hard and in an intellectual manner. It can come from a a perspective of not living out what I'm talking about in my own life or there can be a problem in the receiving of the doctrine. I could just be wanting to hear something that I want to hear and not be willing to listen to what God might have for me to hear. So it's something for us all to think about. Are we willing to both give and receive in the in these three characteristics?
00:15:15
Edifying, which is in faith.
Now, I'd just like to quickly share what drew my attention in studying first Timothy to the subject of godliness. So there's two things. Two times in Timothy where Timothy uses the expression, this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation. So it's always bringing emphasis. What are you saying? Pay attention. This is really important. And the first was also in first Timothy. Chapter one is verse 15 is the verse you probably all know.
First Timothy 1:15 This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation.
That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. That one for myself makes sense. There's the gospel, there's the saving of my soul. That is that's important. That's a faithful saying worthy of all acceptation. You don't accept that you don't know the Lord Jesus as your Savior and you're headed to a lost eternity. I I get why he would want to bring emphasis to that one.
It's interesting. It's also the last part of whom I am chief, and it doesn't say I was chief, it says I am.
All you did is great importance from never to forget that just to left to himself without Christ. He was nothing but the chief of sinners. And that's just as true for me and you and we. And it's very important to remember. How about the second time in Timothy where the expression of faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation was used?
Statement #2 is in First Timothy 4 verse 8.
We've already had this verse at the camp. It says for bodily exercise profiteth little, but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come. And then verse 9 says, referring back to verse 8. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation. Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promised of the life that now is.
In the fact which is to come.
Those two statements in in first Timothy were emphasized as of great importance. So me and reading this, OK, godliness is something really important and that got me thinking about godliness. And now I'd like to talk about the misconceptions about godliness. So just like I did with doctrine, I've talked to a number of people over the last few weeks, including at camp and ask them what do you think godliness means?
What do you associate with me? Tell me your thoughts on it. It's very interesting. Had a lot of conversations and one constant theme throughout almost all of the conversations was.
I think I know that godliness means something that is pleasing to God or living with reference to God, but I know I tend to think about godliness or use the word in referring to what I see in other people and what they see in me instead of it being with reference to God. That was a common theme throughout all the conversations. And then another interesting thing that came out of it was many people said, well.
Holiness, but no one says love and I thought that was interesting and we'll talk about that more later. And a number of people said, I think myself or others, we tend to associate godliness with an outward standard to live up to. You might say a checklist. Here's the checklist. And if I can check off all the boxes, then I'm living godly and the Scripture refers to it. This is a form of godliness and second Timothy 3 verse five. And there I would just.
Sad that I don't think there's anyone that's got a checklist in their Bible or in their bedroom where they say, well, these are the things that have got to be godly. It's a subconscious thing. It's something we do in our subconscious and we have to examine these things for ourselves to see if we're thinking about godliness in some terms of in some terms of, umm, a list of things that I've got to keep right in my life in order to be godly.
So let's talk about what godliness actually is. And I thought it was encouraging and talking to many people that even though people would say, I think I often think about it in the wrong sense, and I use the word and perhaps the partly the wrong sense, most people give a really good answer in that it was living with reference to God or living in a way that would please God.
And for myself, I wouldn't suggest this versus the only definition for godliness, but.
I think it can be thought of as a very good definition for godliness in what the Lord Jesus could say and how he lived his life. In John 829 he said I do always those things that please my Father always. He always lived with reference to what would please God and I would suggest you that that is what it means. Godliness means it's always living.
00:20:25
With reference to what would please God and not me. Now I'd like to tie that into the verse that we already read in First Timothy chapter one.
Where it said the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart and of a good conscience and a faith on fame. Because I think this verse is also speaking about godliness a little bit. We're going to see that the Bible constantly connects doctrine with godliness. 1 produces the other. And here we already noticed that.
Paul's charge was to teach another doctrine, and the end result was to be charity out of a pure heart and of a good conscience and a faith on fame. So I already talked about that the definition of godliness is living with reference to God and what would please him. But in that verse that we just read, where does godliness start? Does it start with an outward checklist of things that I should do to be godliness?
No, all three of those things.
A pure heart and a good conscience and faith on fame, those are all inside. You might look at my life and it might look like everything's good. And there's been times in my life when people, perhaps not my wife, but other people could look at my life and say, yeah, things seem good. Things weren't good. It starts inside, it starts.
In a pure heart and good conscience and a faith in pain, and those are all things that are with reference to God.
I just, uh, little comment here that may be helpful to some of you in thinking about this subject. I realized that in our language, sometimes when we don't understand a word, we start using a different word or word in its place. And I think this is almost what's happened with godliness. We think of it so much in the outward terms that we don't often use that word, but we often speak about practical Christianity.
And I would suggest to you that.
When we say practical Christianity, we really mean godliness. We just not stop using the word because perhaps we don't realize what it means. We've so gone off the track into thinking about it and outward things and instead of what's pleasing to God and what He would like that we started using a different word. It's just the thought that I had and think about this subject and you may find it helpful.
So now I'd like to talk about what Paul presented to Timothy as the secret to godliness, and it's in chapter 3, the last verse of chapter 3, verse 16. I'll read it.
Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit scene of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received that into glory.
Now if we just read that verse and it's not quickly apparent to you how this all ties into what we're talking about, I can relate. This first might seem when you first read it, a little bit abstract, could I say, and hard to understand what the meaning is. And I would suggest to you that the meaning of the verse is the secret, the godliness is found in the Lord Jesus and feeding on Him.
And to try and communicate, umm, that a little bit more. I'd like to think about this first, a little bit more.
So there's six things that are listed in this verse and I'm just going to pick names, if that's OK, and go through the six umm, and ask you whether they refer to the Lord Jesus as a man when he was on here on earth or not. So we'll start with the first one. God may be the easiest one.
God was manifest in the flesh. So let's see the Cameron is that referring to Jesus as a man?
Yeah.
Good. How about the next one? Justified in the spirit?
I don't know. This is an assembly meeting, so I can ask a girl too. Let's see. What would you say, Caroline? Is that referring to Jesus as a man?
Yeah, she's nodding her head. Put her on the spot. All right, How about the next one? Dean of Angels? Let's see. Hard to see one people from up here. I know. Uh, Dave, what would you say? Is that referring to Jesus as a man?
00:25:17
Yeah, OK, now I'm going to intentionally skip the next two on purpose and go to the next one. I'll answer this to myself. Received up into glory. And I think we can all realize that that one is referring to the end of Jesus life on earth as a man. He was received back up into glory. And I intentionally skip to the kind of put in the middle of this list, this list of six things that starts with Jesus when he was born into this world and ends when.
Jesus was received back to glory, and those four all referred to Jesus as a man. But then there's two others.
#4 says preached unto the Gentile. Who did that? Did Jesus do that as a man? No, he preached the Jews. There was a few Gentiles that reached up in general. That was not done by Jesus as a man. And the result of that preaching was the fifth one believed on in the world. Who did that? Who preached the Gentile?
Should still be preaching to the Gentiles today.
Believers did. So something that believers did is inserted in this description of the Lord Jesus as a man that starts with his birth and ends with his sending back to heaven and just put in the middle. And it's almost like I believe the Bible is saying that you feed on Christ and his life and what he has done for us and all that He is.
The fruit of your life is going to be, it's going to be the life of Christ lived out to the world just as it was.
When Jesus was here, I, I hope I'm not sure I can communicate this very well. I I hope that's clear. It's there's this description of the life of Jesus and something that believers has done is put right in the middle and it's like Paul was telling him it's a secret to godliness is for you to feed on Christ and to know him better. If that happens, Christ life is going to be lived out in your life.
It's the secret. The godliness is to feed on Christ.
And to be in him.
So now I would like to go and and talk a little bit about why I believe these two subjects are so important. So let's start go back to doctrine. Why is doctrine so important? And I was suggesting answer to you is because it leads to godliness and you could almost say they're inseparable.
One follows the other. And therefore you could also say in the way we talk these days, doctrine and practical Christianity go together. The one is the result of the other. They're inseparable. And if you're sitting there thinking, umm, I get it. I've been there. I thought many times that doctrine is something over here, practical Christianity is over here. And I've heard being I said that one was all doctrine and it's not practical. And I would suggest you that they go together.
What would separately, what did we say with the primary characteristic as presented inscription of doctrine feeding on Christ. What's the secret to godliness feeding on Christ. They go together, but we must remember that it it's doctrine that is godly edifying in faith. It's not something intellectual. It's not knowing the Bible. In fact, it's it's going into the word seeking to be edified. It's preaching the word seeking to edify souls it's receiving.
Faith with the desire to live out what we've learned.
It's it's real doctrine that produces godliness and I'd like to look at.
A number of verses. If you're not convinced and you think that wow, that's quite the concept and thoughts that I've had a number of verses that would speak to this. I'm going to go through these very quickly. Again, there's a lot of them. First Timothy 6, verse 3, the doctrine which is according to godliness.
Titus 11 The acknowledging of the truth, which is after godliness, that they may adorn, adorn as the actions, the living out the doctrine of God our Savior in all things.
Now we're going to go over to Hebrews 5. Strong me. Or you might say deeper doctrine belongs to them that are of full age. Even those who by reason of use, left to living it out, have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.
00:30:04
Or we can go to Titus two and speak now the things which become sound doctrine. You go to Titus Two and and read the things which become sound doctrine. It's a very intensely practical list of instructions to fathers and children and mothers. It's a very practical list.
Now Hebrews 13, verse 7, umm, this, we already read this one. I'm going to go through it again. Who have spoken unto you the word of God. So there's the doctrine whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation. Conversation here means their manner of life or their practical living. They go together. John 15, verse seven. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you.
You shall ask what you will, and it shall be done unto you. This verse.
I think shows again what we're talking about in in the godly edifying, which is in faith. It's not if you know my word, if you abide in me and my word abide in you. If we're looking into the word of God to have our souls fed of Christ and we have the willingness to live out what we learn, then what does it say? You shall ask what you will and it shall be done to you. Remember when you're talking about that verse about the secret to godliness.
It's something that believers did, is put.
Right inside this book ended picture of the Lord's life. It's right together and here it's the same thought. The thought isn't that I can ask whatever I want and I'm going to get it If I study doctrine. The thought is that if I am feeding on Christ and I am feeding on the word of God with the the faith to live out what I learned my my desires, my will is going to, you might say, merge with the Lord's will. They're going to be one and the same.
Christ is going to be lived out in me.
You keep jumping two slides here on this clicker all right, some other verses this you might say is more from the the negative side of things. First Corinthians 1533. It says be not deceived evil communications, we might say bad doctrine, corrupt good manners so.
Your maybe the doctrine is of a bad substance. It's going to have effect on your your life. Maybe if the doctrine isn't of a bad substance, but you're looking into it, seeking to feed your own intentions and opinions.
Well, I would suggest that that too could have a bad effect in your life. Or we could look at observations that people made of the Lord when He was on earth. Luke 432 Says they were astonished at his doctrine, for His word was with power.
They connected His teaching with His actions. It was like they were one and the same when they looked at the Lord Jesus.
And I was just it's an interesting study. You can do it on your own. You can go through every book in the New Testament. I haven't tried with the Old Testament. Maybe it's their true. And you'll find that connection very clearly in every single book that feeding on good doctrine and and remember in faith, it's an edifying character. It's not a knowledge exercise. It's feeding on Christ. It leads to practical Christianity, or we could say godliness. Go to the little epistle of second John, third John, Jude by Lehman, you'll.
Sit there in every single book.
So that's that's doctrine, why doctrine is important because it's in separately connected with godliness. Why is godliness so important? And I believe the answer to that is that it leads to the enjoyment of eternal life. We already read this first. I I put it up there again. Godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise of life that now is and of that which is to come. We probably often heard that Jesus did not just die to save our souls, He died to save our.
5:00 so that we could live a life in relationship with him and bearing fruit for him. And godliness is what leads in to that. It says godliness is profitable and all things having the promise of life that now is that which is to come. So one day we're all going to be enjoying eternal life in heaven, but we can enjoy it right now. And if I live a life of with reference every day to what would please God and every day the desires of my heart is what would please my Savior.
That is going to lead me into the enjoyment of eternal life right now on this earth. And I would suggest that the thought that I enjoyed from considering this verse is that we often perhaps think of godliness and why it pleases God is if I'm choosing in my life to do things well, it's the things I'm doing that please God. And that's true. I think that's true, but from this first I think that deeper reason that godliness pleases God is that living.
00:35:08
Reference to him I am getting to know him better and that is the deepest reason that it pleases him it's why he created us it's why he sent his son to die for us so that he might have relationship with us. The very first meeting we had here at camp by Bob, I know some of you weren't there, he talked for quite a bit about God's desire to have relationship with you. Why is godliness important it is if you live your life with reference to what please God is going to lead you into a.
Enjoyment of that eternal life or deeper relationship with the Lord Jesus. Another way that we could think about this is that doctrine and godliness both lead to, umm, a deeper relationship with the Lord Jesus. It's both by feeding on Christ through the Word and by living out practically what we what the word of God speaks to us when we're feeding on it, or godliness, both of those things.
Bring us closer to the Lord Jesus in relationship with Him.
And I'm jumping two forward and two back. There we go. All right, so now I'd like to go through very quickly a list of some things. And this is not an exhaustive list that could get in the way of doctrine or godliness. So the first one is not living out what I already know. And I'll read this verse again. We already had it. Strong meat belonged to them that are of full age, even those who.
Reason of use has their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.
There is a lot of basic teaching in the Word of God that we all know in our head. Are we living it out? If we're not living it out, the stronger meat as it expresses here isn't going to mean anything to us.
Honor your parents. That's a very basic doctrine. You live it out.
He that forsake not all that He has cannot be my disciple. That's a very basic doctrine. Do I live it out? It's a very important question. Perhaps sometimes when we hear things and I can't relate to that, and that didn't mean anything to me and that wasn't practical, maybe this would be a reason. Am I living out? But I already know.
So.
Other reason we talked about this bit already reading my own desires and opinions into scripture and verse that speaks to that is John 717. If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine. Remember that verse we talked about. Doctrine must be accepted as godly edifying, which is in faith. It must be with reference to God, not with reference to me. I can come to meeting sometimes and have an idea.
This is what I need and this is what I want. Am I willing to accept what God has for me? Do I read my Bible in my personal reading with my own preconceived notions and opinions? Or am I willing to let God speak to me?
Another reason is similar to that, but I think a little bit different, is not holding the scripture as the living Word of God that speaks directly to my soul. And the well known verse For the Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and as the joints and marrow, and as the discerner of the thought and intent of the heart.
Every day I need to be reading the word of God is the living.
Word of God. It's not an intellectual good advice book. It's the living Word of God that can speak to my heart. If I'm not approaching in that way, then the good of all the doctrine that's in the Scripture won't be good to me. And I think sometimes we are very good at applying the Word of God.
To problems we see in other people and perhaps at the same time forgetting this to always be reading the word of God is the living word of God that speaks to me.
I might see all the problems from other people and the way that I think godliness should be seen in their life and how the Word of God might apply to them. What about me? And as a husband and also a mother, what about my own family? Do I apply it there first?
Very important.
I think this is the last one I have here.
00:40:01
I believe some, and we've already spoken to this as well, thinking of doctrine or godliness. There's a list of do's and do not.
And I like to read Hebrews 13-9 be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines, For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace, not with me which have not profited them that have been occupied therein.
It's great. It's like that verse that you considered Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.
Never forget that, Never forget that.
Sometimes we.
This first one, it says meet. It's referring to back in that day, one particular way they made doctrine a list of do's and do's not was applying the law and said you could eat this and you could eat that. Perhaps we don't make our list in in reference to what we should or should not eat today, but I think even subconsciously we don't even realize it. Sometimes we're thinking of doctrine and godliness in terms of, well, I need to do this and not do this. As long as I've got that covered, then I'm good.
Godliness is living with reference always to what would please God. It's not confined to a certain length and I think another reason that another way we perhaps go astray here is things that fall outside of direct instruction in the word of God. We sometimes refer to these as personal exercises. We take my personal exercise and I make that the standard for godliness and projected onto you. And if I don't see you living out my personal exercise.
Then I'm making certain assumptions about whether you're living godly or not, and that is a mistake. That is what Paul was speaking about in this verse.
Now, the last thing that I'd like to speak about is profane and vain babbling. Now, if you're like, we've been talking about doctrine and godliness and all of a sudden profane and vain babblings, What? How does this fit in? I understand. I said at the start that at some point we would get, umm, speaking from my own life, so practical it hurt.
There are three times in the Timothy's where First and Second Timothy where all spoke about profane and vain babbling. One time you used a slightly different word for the 2nd umm, but with the same intent.
And I've read this many times before, and I think my thinking was something along the lines of, well, as long as I don't swear and talk about myself all the time, I'm good.
And missed the point entirely. And I think some of this is due to changing language, perhaps our King James translation. I was really struck that this phrase was in there three times. So dug into a little more as to what it actually means. We think of profane in terms of our modern word profanity, which is swearing, taking Lord's name in vain. And so therefore, perhaps our thinking is long lines or something. Profane is something that's really, really, really bad. And as long as I don't have something really, really, really bad.
Then I'm following this instruction. That's not what profane means. Look it up for yourself. I use the Vines dictionary. Profane means something that it doesn't have anything in common with God or the person who studied and wrote his thoughts down in that book said it's something that does not promote relationship with God. That is very different than something that's only things that are really, really, really bad.
And to the second. And that being babbling is really all one word.
In the original, and it just means empty sound or something. That's just for myself, and I'd like to look at one of the places where this is used. It's at the very end of First Timothy.
First Timothy, chapter 6, verse 20.
O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings in oppositions of science, falsely so-called, which some professing have aired concerning the fate. Grace be with thee. Amen.
So Paul writes this very heartfelt epistle to Timothy. It was from the heart. You can see that here in that little expression. Oh, Timothy, he's he's desiring his blessing. He writes this very heartfelt epistle that Timothy would teach no other doctrine that there would be godliness expressed in his life. And he gets to the end and it's like Paul said, he closes it says if there's one thing, Timothy, that's going to get you off the path.
Of living with reference to God and what would please him. You need to avoid profane and vain babbling. And again, because of our language, I think we, we almost, it's hard for us to get our heads around what that means. And I believe what it is. It's just things in my life. They don't have anything in common with God. They don't bring me in relationship with God. They're just empty. They're just for me.
00:45:24
The more I if I let those things come in into my life, little by little by little by little, I'll be taken off the path of living with reference to go out that very last verse where it says which some professing have erred concerning the faith.
It's the, the, the thought there. If you, if you look and dig into the words a little more, these people, their intentions were good. They wanted to please God. They wanted to do what was right, but they let these just empty things, things that didn't promote relationship with God come into their lives. And little by little by little, even though their, their desire, you might say, was to please God, they were pushed little by little by little by little.
Away.
From that desire there's not time to go and read and go into it in detail, but there's an interesting section in Timothy that is written to widows and it talks about young widows and it there's some instruction there that young widows were not to be put on the list of receiving full time financial support.
And.
We can, we can read it. And the reason for that is that then they would they would be idle time then and that would open the door to bad things in their life. Well, I think if this is a place in the Bible where if we think about this in context, we think back to that time. Perhaps young widows who had few, if any children were might say the only group speaking in general in society that would have had a lot of vital time if.
Given full time financial support. Fast forward to 2020.
We've got all these conveniences, modern technology. How much idle time could we all have in our lives? It's a very.
Practical, sobering question. For me, I've been in university, I've been the father of three children, which he is a very busy thing. And all those times, if I wanted to, I could have a lot of vital time that I could fill up with cocaine and Zane Valen and.
It's I can give testimony in my life, you let that come in little by little by little by little, you'll get knocked off the path of living with reference to what he's gone. I think many of us here would say there's a lot of time in our lives where.
There's not necessities that need to be taken care of where we can make choices with how we spend our time.
What do we do? I believe the Word of God is warning us here. You choose to just do it on something empty doesn't promote relationship with God. Little by little, by little, you're going to be taken off the path of living with reference to God and to just emphasize that warning off.
Go to one other verse here has the same expression in Second Timothy 216. It says shun propane and vein babbling they will increase more ungodliness. First of all you can see in that verse that empty things and things without reference for God there are ungodliness because it says they will increase into more ungodliness.
When I said the word of God can be so practical that it hurts, umm, this is what I had in mind.
It's been a lot of empty.
Things that did not promote relationship with God and it has this effect. It's a warning and I just passed it on to something that spoke to me and trust it can speak to you and that there could be more in our lives recruit and pleasing to God.
We have a few minutes left here, and in reading and thinking about Timothy, there's umm.
A few specific things that you might say they were given in Timothy and instruction and godliness at all share a few thoughts on one is in regards to honoring your parents.
Ephesians 6 verse 2 Honor thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise.
00:50:04
I believe that God has put us in families and the first commandment, not actually the first commandment. The list of 10. It's the first commandment with reference to men.
It's a training ground for children to learn oddlyness.
And I'm not very far along this road, but I'm thinking about this. It struck me, Why must my children learn to obey and honor their parents?
Because God said so.
There is nothing. It's not because I can convince them or I can reason or I can always be right. It has to be because God says so. And my oldest is very young, but I've already found it very impactful to Is there something that's not right to speak about it in those terms?
It's because God says so. It's very easy, I have found, to fall into a line of thinking of wanting them to obey or honor me because.
They respect me or because I can convince them.
And I'll just pass on the thought that came to me from thinking about this that that is a very, very dangerous way of approaching it. I believe that honoring your parents is God's training ground for learning godliness. And I'll put the question to young people, and really it applies to people like me who have left their homes. Do you honor your parents? You might say it's the first commandment, the 1St test for you, knowing your life, whether you live with reference to God.
It has nothing to do with your parents. Maybe they don't understand, or you think they don't understand. Maybe they're not always right. You honor them because God says so. It's a very important question.
You had a question a couple days ago, umm, about leadership in marriage. And another thing that struck me in considering First Timothy, and this goes beyond marriage. If I could summarize the instruction in First Timothy given to men in two words, it would be take responsibility.
And it starts with when you're young, you might say, before you're married. Now see if I can find the verse here. Umm, it says, let no man despise thy youth.
Maybe someone can help me or so Thank you.
Let no man despise thy youth, but be thou an example of the believers in Word and conversation and charity and spirit and faith and purity. It starts when you're young. Do you take responsibility for your own life in the example that you are? The messaging in this world is totally opposed to men taking responsibility.
I would just encourage you to look into these things yourself and ask yourself, am I going to take responsibility in my life, in my life as an individual 1St And then we talked about this in the question answered me a few days ago. Then it goes to if you're married one day and have a family to take responsibility in your family. And that is God's training ground. Like I think the family is a training ground for us to learn godliness.
Leadership in the family is God's training ground to eventually one day.
Take leadership in the assembly and then lastly, umm.
Something can be hard for me to talk about.
Umm, to.
Young mothers and young women, here I'm.
Obviously not a woman and I, I can look at the world and I can see.
How?
Incredibly opposed the world and the messaging is even the Christian world to what the Bible would say in first Matthew and elsewhere as to what the path of godliness, what would be pleasing to God would look like for women especially. I had in mind young mothers totally opposed to it and I also recognize that sometimes.
Even though the opposition comes from the world, the comments and the innuendos.
That hurt the most come from.
Fellow believers, maybe even your own assembly and I just can only pass on the.
What it says at the end of chapter 2.
00:55:01
Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in children, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness and variety.
To devote yourself to.
Grazing of children.
It's pleasing to God.
Says here.
Your life will be saved.
World.
Many Christians will tell you and.
Not even realizing that your life will be lost.
God's health will be saved, not just your life.
Children as well.
I can't speak this very well, but.
I just wanted to encourage you in the.
So.
Closing. I hope that we can perhaps in our thinking about these subjects of doctrine, we would not think of it as head knowledge, not think about it in terms of what I would like to hear, and also speak about it in terms of head knowledge and thought. We would both speak and receive it the heart.
That we would remember that doctrine should always be characterized by feeding Christ.
I mean, I stand the Lord Jesus. It's found in feeding on him living with reference to God and what would tease him and that warning that Timothy put at the very end of his book that he wrote Timothy to avoid these empty things that in your life wouldn't have any reference to go on.
It's very striking how similar it is to the end of First John. Maybe I'll just read that.
In a very similar epistle, John writes this very heartfelt epistle. You can read it and see the longing he has for the hearts of those he's writing to. And how does he end it? Verse 20, chapter 5. We know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding that we may know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true.
There's the doctrine even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God in eternal life.
There's the godliness. And how does he end it, Little children? There you can see He's speaking to the heart. Keep yourself idle.
Like I've written all this to you and if there's one thing it's going to take you off the path. Keep yourself some idol very similar to how all ended First Timothy, and I'll suggest they're connected to you in this way. Idle, more question of the heart.
Where hard is vain and being babbling, more question of what we choose to do with our time and the two are connected.
Lord Jesus said where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Not this principle. You cannot change it. You choose to put your time to empty things, things that don't promote relationship with God, your heart will follow. You cannot stop it. And both Paul and John were inspired by.
Here's God, we're warning about it, and the Lord give us help and willing heart to listen and heed the warning and live lives that would be pleasing Lord Jesus.
In closing, I'm just going to read one hymn that perhaps I might say expresses the secret to godliness better than any of the words that I could have said this evening apart from reading the scriptures.
It's #193.
Jesus, my Savior, thou art mine.
Father's gift I love to buy.
All thou hast done, and all that work, and now the portion of my heart.
Poor, feeble, wretched as I am, I now can glory in my name, now clearness in my most precious blood. May the righteousness of God, all that thou hast, thou hast for me. All my fresh springs are hidden me, In Thee I live.
01:00:14
I confess I nothing in it all possessed. O Savior, teach me to abide. Oh shelter death I wounded sighs which are receiving grace on grey, so you see the face to face.
Right.
God and Father, we.
Thank you for instruction you've given us in the Word of God.
We ask for courage and purpose to live out what we could learn.
We thank you that your desire for us eternity, your desire for us now, and the desire that will be fully accomplished one day when you take us home.
Just to have relationship with uh, for us to know you better.
We pray that we could lay hold on this by faith.
That our lives would be characterized by feeding on Christ, not in doing so He would live with reference to God and what would feed him. And he asked us the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.
Session #6
Q&A
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
I guess we can begin our questions.
Again, anyone who umm speaks, please get one of the two mics at each side of the room.
And don't be afraid to go up and get the mic or have it passed to you. And when you speak you can take your mask off so we can hear clearly.
And the first question what would you tell a person who has been restored and feels forgiven by God?
But has a problem forgiving themselves. And what should they do about a future spouse?
I'll address the forgiveness first if we go to Ephesians chapter one.
We need more than feeling forgiveness. We need to know that we are forgiven.
If we're just dealing with feelings, our feelings will go up and down, our emotions go up and down, but we need to have our, our, uh, doctrine established on truth and something that does not move. And so our forgiveness comes from the Lord Jesus and he tells us you're forgiven.
You can know you're forgiven and if he's forgives you.
You can forgive yourself in Ephesians one, verse six, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he has made us accepted in the Beloved, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace, and so we have been accepted in the Beloved.
When you know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, you believe on the Lord Jesus.
Not just believing that there is a God, that there is Jesus, but putting your trust in Him and believing that He has the power to save you and that He has made a way for you and that He is the way.
Lord Jesus says I am the way, the truth and the life and He wants to give you life, but you need to put your trust in Him and believe that what He's done has covered your sins and you are forgiven. When you're saved, you're forgiven.
And in whom we have redemption through his blood. He's paid the price for it. For you. It was with his blood. It took a lot for him to pay that price. He's not going to let you get away from him. And we have the redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace. And so if he says you're forgiven, you can you can believe that you don't have to go.
You can accept what Jesus says, because Jesus is God, and you can forgive yourself.
00:05:03
Is that it? The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin.
We cannot underestimate.
I'll say it again, we cannot underestimate the value of the blood of Jesus Christ that was shed at Calvary's cross.
It's, umm, humbling.
To think that the creator of this universe.
Would, uh, give himself for us.
And since he's done that, though, he has done that and we've accepted him, then we can trust him completely.
He has made no mistake.
We make mistakes, but he's there to hold us up.
Purposely that is his design, because he loves us.
I was just looking at that verse. 2 Bruce in first John 1/7.
The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from every sin.
That's a one time sacrifice for sins. It doesn't have to be.
Shed again. There's not a known sacrifice needed after the Lord Jesus suffered once and died once and shed his blood once.
And that blood is good for all time, not just to get you into, not just to get you saved so you can go into heaven, but it keeps you saved. And so we don't need a second application of the blood. The Lord Jesus doesn't have to die again. That blood takes care of sins in the past and sins in the future and so.
When we confess our sins, that is so we can continue on in our relationship and a fellowship with God here on earth.
And so there's another another verse in, uh, Second Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 21.
For he hath made him the Lord Jesus, to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
The Lord Jesus was the holy, spotless Lamb of God. He had no sin in him. He did no sin. He thought no sin.
There and but yet he was the one who went to the cross to take our sin upon himself, your sin upon himself and he and now he has made you the righteousness of God in him. And so God looks at you as righteous. Maybe you don't feel righteous, but we're again, we're not dealing with feelings we are dealing with absolute what God has said.
And he says you are righteous because you've been covered by the blood of Jesus Christ, You've been accepted in the Beloved. And so now he says you are righteous. You are the righteousness of God in him.
30 seconds so.
I know that we've referenced this before, but I want to say it again.
I think we're all familiar with the tremendous fall that King David had with Bathsheba.
And in Psalm 51 we get.
00:10:01
Umm.
David expressing some of the exercise of soul and confessing and getting before the Lord and, uh, not hiding it and asking.
God to create a clean heart and immense and I believe some 32 maybe a sequel to that. Umm, blessed is he who's transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed it is the man whom the Lord imputeth, not iniquity, and in whose spirit is no God.
Basically after David added out before the Lord.
Umm, he got this sense of the word. Blessed is the man to whom the word and never counts in against him. And umm, I think it's important to read to get that a hold of that in your heart. You say I can't forgive myself.
Well.
I want to turn to the last one of the last verses of Mike after this.
Umm, I hope this is not taking too many liberties, but I want to share something here.
The Book of Micah.
When somebody says to turn to a book like Mike, I think the Books of the Bible song probably goes through most people's minds, at least mine.
Mike, it's Chapter 7.
Umm, second to last verse, verse 19. He will turn again. They will have compassion upon us. He will subdue our iniquities that will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.
I remember listening to UH talk by Corey 10. Boom.
And she was a older lady that had come through World War Two and.
Had been arrested by the Gestapo for hiding Jews in her home, sent the concentration camp and her sister Betsy was killed by the.
Nazis in that camp, and there are a lot of reasons that she would be angry and unable and unwilling to forgive.
And the Lord had to deal with that. I know you, whoever wrote this question is asking about forgiving yourself. And uh, one of the things that Corey said is she read this verse, all their sins and the depths of the sea. And she said, God had to make me realize, don't go fishing there.
And so when God says it's.
Paid Suppose that I owe Kyle $10,000.
And the debt gets paid.
It's not right to sit there and go, yeah, I, I, I owe Kyle 10,000 bucks. That's not good, that good.
It's paid the word Jesus paid the penalty, the cost for whatever this issue is.
And.
God does not count that against you if you're a believer. Now, in regards to what they do about a future spouse, I have a couple of thoughts on this. Number one.
If you're not old enough to have a spouse.
Get to know other young people.
On a friendly basis and don't try to get into a husband wife relationship too early.
Second thing I'd say is don't rush around and try every doorknob.
In a frantic effort to lock somebody down.
Uh, that's not God's way.
I would say what to do about a future spouse?
Realize your position in God's view.
As forgiven clean. I think about what the Lord said to Peter when, uh, he was on the roof at Simon the Tanner's house. There's that vision of all those unclean animals. And Peter said, oh, I've never eaten. I've never touched any of that stuff. And the Lord said, don't call, come. And what I said is clean. So the Lord says you're clean.
Don't sit there and say well I'm damaged goods, I'm broken, busted 30, whatever.
00:15:02
God says clean. That's what he that's what it is.
And so in looking for a husband or a wife.
Get on your knees.
Ask the Lord to provide the one that He has for you, and then wait.
I'm glad you turned to Micah, Bernie. I'd like to read two other verses in that same chapter. Micah Chapter 7, verse 8.
Rejoice not against me, O my enemy. When I fall I shall arise. When I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light into me. I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I ascend against him until he plead my cause.
And execute judgment for me. He will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold His righteousness. I don't have much to add to that verse, but I think similar to what's been commenting already.
Don't measure your worth to God on the basis of what you've done in the past. That's not how he measures it.
Just want to read a couple verses and then give a little practical encouragement. Maybe the classic cases in Acts 3.
Acts 3. Reading from the middle of verse 13.
Person preaching here says preaching to a crowd of Jews.
Jesus.
Whom you delivered up and denied.
Him in the presence of Pilot, when he was determined to let him go, but he denied the Holy One and the just, and the preacher is.
Peter.
Everyone knows the story of Peter. This isn't 30 years later.
Just I don't know exactly after the day of Pentecost is probably less than two months later. And this is Peter preaching. I just encourage you. There are consequences in life when we sin, but pick up the word of God, take a notebook and go through we've had David, David the consequences in his life because of his sin.
Who is in the line of the Lord?
That she was mentioned there she that was the wife of Uriah and the son Solomon take up Jacob. Jacob had consequences in his life from his sin. It could be the end of his life leaning on a staff. How does God refer to Jacob in the New Testament? I'm the God of.
Alright, think about it. And he says Jacob.
There's the consequence, there's the result. Jonah was Jonah left on the shelf of damaged goods. Who wrote the book of Jonah? And you can go on, pick up, look at it. Are there consequences? Who in this room hasn't sinned that hasn't experienced consequences? Pick up the lives of just about anybody you can find in this book and look at what God did with it.
Or consequences. But look at what God does with what each one of us is.
And then you can have joy.
00:20:30
In Romans chapter 5.
Romans chapter 5 and verse one.
Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Justified means the guilt has been taken away.
God sees faith.
I cannot see your faith, but God can see your faith, and you have peace with God. You might not have peace with me, but you have peace with God.
Because you've been justified through faith. But what does man see? Man sees. We see one another's failure. It's nice when we can see evidence of faith.
Looks on the outward appearance, God looks on the heart, and so from the heart God sees faith, and we're justified before God through faith. Now go to James.
James has a different presents a different view.
And in James chapter 2 and verse 24.
This is what man sees.
Verse 24 You see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.
Man.
Women, they see your works.
They don't see what's in your heart.
And so.
How can what can you do about a future spouse?
If your future spouse knows about your works, maybe you've had sin in your life. Maybe you've committed fornication.
That's what man sees.
And it concerns.
The man or the woman?
If that's all the they know about you, they don't want to be a spouse.
And so when your works.
Are by their fruits. You shall know them when your works are such that people see your life has changed.
Your life is honoring God. Your works honor God when they see that.
They know that you've been justified by faith, so your works can work on your behalf if your works are the works of God, but when they only see your works.
The fruits of the flesh, then it's going to be difficult to get a spouse. But when the when your prospective spouse sees that there's been a change in your life, that you've been forgiven, that you've been justified and that you enjoy that justification, you enjoy that forgiveness and you're living in the good of the new man.
Then you'll be able to find a spouse so it it man is justified by works as far as other people's see you.
With God, maybe you've been forgiven, maybe you've been repented and you've been restored, and God see with God and God sees that, but that's on the inside. Now you manifest with your life what's going to be on the outside, and then man sees what you do, and then man makes judgment by what they see.
OK.
Our next question.
How can I truly be saved if I am addicted to a habitual sin?
Then Hebrews 10 verse 26 and 27.
For if we sin willfully, after that we have received the knowledge of the truth.
There remains no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries.
So the con, the concern here is.
If I'm addicted to in habitual sin.
How can I see any evidence of life in of faith in my life?
Am I really saved?
These verses in Hebrews 10 are really speaking about apostasy.
Turning away from God. Rejecting God.
Specifically in Hebrews for the, the Jews who are, who were, uh, affiliated with Christianity and they had a knowledge of the truth, but there was never any acceptance of the truth. There was no faith. So this is, and then they turn away from Christianity and they, they deny God that that's, that's what's being addressed here.
But these verses can also be used and they convict umm.
Us when we sin willfully.
The sitting, again, the sitting willfully in this verse is apostasy. It's not a willful sin of some other immorality or or anything else, but we can apply it in that way.
So this, this verse is giving sometimes gives people umm, concern about whether or not they're saved because they are struggling in their sin.
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Tim, could you explain that a little more, how we know this versus talking about apostasy?
Probably not very well, but uh, who's he writing to? He's writing to the Hebrews, he says. Specific letter to the Hebrews. All the ones who who came out of Judaism, some of them were saved, some of them were not. Some of them were just following and they received the knowledge of the truth.
And the sinning willfully here is rejecting.
God and, and the, and it's rejecting the truth that they had known. And that's, that can happen in a Christian family too. You're raised in Christianity and you, uh, have a knowledge of the truth. Maybe you know more than anybody else about the word of God.
But that knowledge?
Doesn't save there needs to be the faith Yes, we can believe intellectually, but we need to believe in our hearts. We need to put our trust in the Lord Jesus and if we have that knowledge and we turn away from.
From, uh, from God, I, I believe that's what it's Speaking of here. Uh, I'm sure someone else can really, uh, explain it better.
So 3 verse 29.
Of how much sore punishment suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing, and done despite unto the spirit of grace? And so a Christian, a person raised in a Christian family, can also, umm, be like this. They're not rejecting.
As Christ, as the Messiah. But they're true, rejecting the Lord Jesus as they're.
Savior of how much sore punishments are he? He's talking, he talks about the ones in, uh, in Moses day, perhaps when somebody was going out picking up sticks, they knew the law. They knew they weren't supposed to do that, but they did it anyway. And they, but now he's talking about the Jews who had a knowledge, or maybe even you who has a knowledge of Christianity.
And you're re, you're rejecting that you haven't really taken the, uh, the step of faith to put your trust in the Lord Jesus. And if you don't take that step, eventually you'll get hardened. Your heart will become more hardened like Pharaoh and you won't be able to believe and you'll turn away from God. And so this whole section here is.
More more about the the apostasy.
Maybe someone else can explain more about the apostasy.
Maybe these these verses in Hebrews are this come at the end of a lot of context. Not to go through in detail, but the 1St 8 chapters present a person, present the person, the Lord Jesus, his character, who he is, and present him as far better than any of the types of figures.
And the whole Jewish system.
That led up to and pointed toward Him in chapters 9 and 10. It presents His work, and it presents how His work was far greater than the sacrificial system that preceded it. That looked ahead and forward to him. And then these verses come in. It's after that whole section, in fact, in this very chapter, at the beginning. I suspect many have heard the verses toward the beginning of this chapter often and breaking of bread.
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That referred to the work that he did is far greater than the all the Old Testament sacrificial system.
And then it tells us to draw an ear, tells us to come close, tells us to come to Him, and then comes the warning that we began with. And so the context is, in fact, the end of verse 26 might help a little bit. It says there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin. That is, if this person, the Lord Jesus, and this work, the work he did on the cross to put away sins isn't enough for you.
There's nothing.
That's enough for you. It was enough for God. He sat down forever at the right hand of God. God was satisfied, but if you're not satisfied with him and his work, there's nothing more. You go out and say, well that's not enough for me. I have my own path. Then the back has been turned on. God's only, umm, the only thing he'll accept to put away sin and so.
Apostasy is having fully.
Been presented with and God knows who's been fully presented with is not just hearing words.
And God knows who's taking it in, understood it and rejected it because he knows the heart. But it's the one who's taken in, understood and rejected the work of Christ and willfully chosen their own way. That's referred to here. But I will add one thing because I made a very, I think serious mistake. And when quite a few years ago there was a.
A fellow teacher.
And, uh, they had a lot of interactions. I was in my second year of teaching, I think. And so I was just out of college and I, he's, somebody was touching him with the idea that he could be saved and lost. And so I came on pretty strongly about how he couldn't be saved and lost. And I believe it. I.
Couldn't take the slightest thing away from it because of this book, but sometimes.
The Lord puts verses like these ones in to touch our conscience. We look at the context, there's no doubt whatever that we couldn't be saved and lost, that we could be saved and lost. I'm sorry, there's absolutely no way that we could be saved and lost because it depends on the work of Christ. These verses are here to touch our conscience in that, umm, context.
And this man, I believe was truly saved. He broke off, uh, adulterous relationship he was in.
Umm, but it didn't fully bring it to the light, and he went back into it. And habitual sin is serious because of it. We don't truly let it come to the light, then let it come out before God and allow it to be out before others. And we often don't truly judge it. And so it's important to allow everything to be out in the light.
Where it can be judged and.
And put away in a practical sense.
One more comment, Umm.
If we're going to take this these verses in there context of what touches are in the the subject of touching the conscience.
Just I'm not sure what sin is being referred to.
The gossip, the gluttony, the pride. Is it unbelief? I doubt it, but those are things that many of us might fall into.
Does that need to be brought out in the light before God and the flesh kept in the place of death? So sometimes when we want to, umm, get a simple answer to a question such as this, I'll speak to myself, not for the person who asked the question. I want a simple answer. It's so that I can turn away from the sort of the spirit that touching the conscience on something umm, so that I can have a security that, umm, is really only in the Lord.
And found in closeness independent to him.
It was just very small comment. Umm, understanding the book of Hebrews.
It's addressed to three groups of people.
One is those that are true believers.
Another group of people, those that are professors, they're not real and there's a lot of warning with them. Like even the birds where it says receive the knowledge of the truth.
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Those are professors not in this in another place in Hebrews that speaks about half days of the heavenly gift. It's struggling there. You might stay on the pin, but they're not real and there's a warning to get those unless they let them slip. And then there's those head apostle side. So the right they divide the furniture we have to realize.
Who are these persons referred to?
And, uh, the indication here, we can see from verse 29 that they're, they're not real, they're professors.
Well, I feel for the person that might be struggling with this. I know umm, in my life, umm, when I was around 1920, I, I had umm, umm, the same struggles that were getting worse and worse. I was looking at my mom and.
Umm, she was happy in the Lord singing and her life seemed like what a perfect Christian. I I want to be like that. I don't want to.
Umm, I'm going to go. You know, I made a commitment to go through at least one day without sinning, and of course I failed. Whether somebody took my spot, umm, at work or whatever it was, umm, I couldn't do it. And I tried harder and harder every day and I was getting more and more discouraged.
Extremely discouraged. Umm, after three months I could hardly even pray and umm.
I got invited off to a brother in Canada anyway, umm, brother Wayne Coleman. He realized there's something wrong and I'm like, nothing, no, I want to talk to you. And he pulled me aside. What's the problem? And I told him he's like.
What?
Umm.
What are you? What are you doing? You're going to get just as dirty hugging the chimney sweeper as if you're fighting him. So if you're fighting him, you think you're going to try to change? You can't change it. The Lord doesn't do remodels. It all doesn't give us regulations and umm, you got to do this things to umm self help. No, there's nothing that that man, you are far worse than the worst thing you ever committed.
And umm, he picked up the word of God and he said, what do you, what do you think this book is about? Do you think this book is about you? I'm like, what?
I'm not sure it's like it's not about you, it's about the Son of God. We grow in his image as we are, as we have Christ before us. That's how we grow. It's not maybe it's for sure, but we cannot be self self occupation. You're not going to improve upon yourself.
And, uh, it kind of goes hand in hand a little bit with the question before I've forgiven myself really. Because that's why you really think you're that good. You're far worse. If possible says in in my place, well, there's no good thing. And apart from me, you can do nothing, nothing. In other words, if the Lord gave me the power to go through one day without sinning.
Then the next day I would walk in independence the day that you gave me. But no, it's he wants us to walk independent and the Lord Jesus Christ was the most dependent man.
Umm, we have to, I think for this case here. If this umm, for this young brother, I would say he's probably struggling more like umm, Romans 7.
Umm, or a girl? It's umm, so Roman 7.
I would say from 15 on.
14.
Umm, the thing, the thing which you want to do, you know, we, we don't have the power, we, we don't want to do what is bad. And, uh, but that's exactly what we're going to do. Why? Because apart from God, we can do nothing. And, and, and there's something else in that Christian circles that it's very troubling and it's creeping in really fast. Umm, I had a younger, umm, lady tell me that look, the Lord gave me a brain to make the right.
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Noise, she said what? That's a horrible thing to say. Are you telling me that the flesh can make the right choice and that the flesh would think of God? If there's thoughts of God, they were put there by God. They did not come there from the flesh, from the old man. And as a matter of fact, it says he, he has not chosen me, but I have chosen. So it's all from his side. He has chosen us. We need to leave that with him and.
If we, uh, if we're self occupied, it's just going to bring us into despair.
You, you. We cannot, you know, Let's say this, brother.
Whatever, umm, the addictions you may have, you may go through two weeks without, uh, falling into it, and then you may think of himself, Oh, I'm doing pretty good and you'll fall right away. No, you can not. You got to give up the fight. Pick up the word of God. The flesh has to be put in the place of death. Make no provisions for the flesh.
And be occupied with Christ. You think as such a warm as I that God would give his only begotten Son?
For me and to bring me into that relationship when there's nothing good. And He gives us His spirit, the new nature that desires to be occupied with that, and we could be meditating on those things. And the Lord says He gives us something to do because I don't have the placing of the devil.
He gives us something to do, and He tells us forever more, Rejoice without ceasing. How can we do that when we're occupied with the flesh?
Trying to make it better. We can never improve upon it. And maybe, uh, a month later you check and see, oh, I'm doing pretty good. No, that did man.
Things just as bad as ever, and there's two things you're going to learn in your life is the richness that's in my own heart.
And the goodness that's in the heart of God.
So I'll read James chapter 2 and verse 20 to 24.
But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?
Was not Abraham our father, justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was made?
Faith was made perfect, and the Scripture was fulfilled, which says Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness, and he was called the friend of God. You see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.
So if my works.
Are not good.
Does that mean I'm not saved?
Maybe I struggle.
I try to do the good works like in Romans 7.
I try to do the good works but I do the bad. I try not to do the bad works but I do the good.
But I believe that if you are.
Trapped in an addiction?
It's going to be very difficult.
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To pray, it's going to be very difficult to recognize the goodness of God.
We need to get out of that addiction, but how?
If I.
Maintain sin in my heart. The Lord will not hear me.
And we had much about spiritual warfare this week.
And we have the shield of faith.
To turn away the darts of the wicked.
The darts of the devil, Satan and Satan cast many doubts in our minds. I believe that's what the darts are. He's putting doubts in your mind to make you think you're not saved, to take away any power that you will have through Christ. He wants to put doubts in your mind, and as long as you have those doubts in your mind, you're not going to feel like you are saved. You're not going to feel like you have any power.
But uh.
We need to have that shield of faith and we need to be strengthened, but we need to remove what's hindering us and replace it with something else. The time you spend in your sin, if you replace that with time.
In something profitable, something that honors God.
It will be helpful, but you need to replace that with with something that honors God.
Matthew's Gospel, chapter 12.
Sebastian, I think.
Spoke very.
Well, about this struggle and I think if we're honest with ourselves.
I think quite a few of us have struggled with overcoming sin is something that seems to perpetually.
Stumble or choke out wrote in Matthew 12. The Lord is speaking about trying to reform yourself.
Verse 43 When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, you walk it through dry places seeking rest, and find it none.
Then he said that I will return into my house from Wednesday came out when he has come he find if it's empty.
Swept and garnished.
Then go with thee, and take it with himself. Seven other spirits more wicked than himself and the inner end dwell there, and the last state of that man shall be worse than the 1St.
Well.
To try in your own.
Strength, your own intellect, your own self-control, your own thinking to overcome.
Uh, an eventual sin.
You will not be successful.
When?
Something is moved, the nature, of course, a vacuum. And when this, in this example here in Matthew, the, uh, evil spirit is driven out. There's a vacuum that hasn't been replaced with something else and it came back stronger.
That you need to fill up that space in your heart, in your mind, in your life.
With, as Tim was saying.
Umm the things of the Lord with umm.
Thoughts of Christ, communion with the Lord. If you just try to, I'll just give you a pro. I'll just tell you.
When I was a teenager, I had something I struggled with mightily.
And it was a terrible.
Umm.
Drain on my growth and I knew it was wrong and I just felt stuck back young people. I got to the .1 Time where I wrote out a pledge and put it in my wallet that I was never going to allow that to happen again and guess what happened?
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It happened again and again and again and.
I wasn't able to get victory over that until I was got to the place where I think it's in Philippians 3. I had. I tried to have confidence in the flash. So Sebastian has rightly said the flush is rotten to the core.
Have no confidence in the flesh.
Uh, Philippians 3.
Verse 3.
At the end of the verse.
I'll read verse two as well. Beware of dogs, Beware of evil workers. Beware of the concision which I believe means putting on the flesh.
For we are the circumcision which worship God and the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have.
Uh, skeptical confidence of the flesh because there's a little bit of good, but mostly bad. Is that what it says? Have no confidence? None. There's absolutely nothing.
Good. That's going to come out of the plus zero.
And I would just tell you practically I think it's Romans 13 says make no provision for the flesh and so.
Yes, I was going to speak for my own experience, but as a kid I had a paper route and on the way home from the paper route I would stop at this convenience store.
And umm, they had pinball machines in there and there was a picture on one of those pinball machines that got into my mind and it was taking me.
Down a road of impurity and I would stop at that store every day on the way home from my paper out.
And I was making provision for the flesh.
Don't do that.
Recognize it's that don't make provision for the plus. So I don't know what you're addicted to, but I I really sincerely empathize with your question because I was there.
Don't make any provision for the flesh. It's dead. It's rotten. Uh, earlier in the week we were talking about lessons from the farm. One of the things we didn't talk about was leads. You know, the word spoke about the parable of the sower and umm, the seed went in, fell on the ground, it started to come up, and then the weeds were choking out the growth.
And if you wanted to go to, uh, cornfield that's quite nearby here and see what organic corn looks like, it's got weeds that are over my head.
The production is really bad and it's a good example of allowing those weeds to choke things out. So what's the point? You got to get to the root.
Is sit there with a pair of scissors and snip that off every time it came up and you'd be sitting there for the rest of your life sniffing off the symptoms. But you never got to the root and pulled out the root and you continue to struggle because you think, oh, there's a little bit of good in this. I can overcome it myself, no.
When that thing is dealt with, fill up that vacuum, that space with Christ, communion with the Lord. Umm, I don't want to do all the talking and we're past time here. Read Ephesians 4 about putting on a new man, putting off the old man. Uh, if you think that, that you can get along together and you can somehow regulate it.
You're going to be terribly frustrated in your Christian life. There can be victory over this.
And I want to encourage you in that don't when you're self focused and it's you're thinking about, oh man, it happened again. You, you get, you begin to cycle down and depression comes in. You're filled with thoughts of yourself and how you blew it and you can't get it right. Walk in the spirit, fill up that empty place.
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With.
Uh, Christ.
And you will be able to get victory over this, but if you're going to continue to strive and fight, Sebastian said. You know, fighting with the chimney sweep, it is going to get covered in dirt.
Can we just get a quick explanation of what these verses in James?
Mean we explained the verses in Hebrews.
Uh, but I don't think we really covered exactly what these verses in James mean. I think it might help the person who was asking the question.
Faith expresses itself with works and so when other people are looking on, they can't see the see the faith in the heart very much. I've enjoyed and been helped by an analogy from another brother who UMM was talking about somebody who had a fireplace in their house and a chimney out the roof.
They had a fire burning in that fireplace. Umm, maybe it was just smoldering a little bit. Somebody was outside and they're looking toward the house. They might not see any smoke coming out the chimney. They wouldn't know there was a fire inside. There might be, it might be. It might be just smoldering there in the fireplace, but no one outside could see it.
And if it was a nice blazing fire in the fireplace, though, there would be smoke coming out the chimney, so somebody outside would look and say, oh, there's a fire inside.
Their ability to see that fire depended on the smoke that came out. And that's really a lot of what the book of James is about. That's why Martin Luther, who's so totally laid hold of the book of Romans, wasn't even sure James was in the Bible because it seemed like it was a it wasn't wasn't an inspired book, I should say, because he just couldn't get around.
This different perspective, perspective of the book, because somebody outside looking towards the one who has faith. And so in these verses it plays out this way. Wilt thou know vain man, that faith without works is dead? There's the principle. He's saying from the outside perspective, if there aren't works, well then there's not faith working on the inside. Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?
That is, Isaac's offering on the altar by Abraham was a full proof any that we're looking on that there was faith in Abraham's heart, umm, God. That faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. It's a work of God even there not to get us looking inward on ourselves as we've been enjoying for the last little while.
See as thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect, that is, made mature.
Made something that, uh, could be seen to be growing in the soil as true, true work. Not false work coming from profession or from the flesh trying to make a show for man, uh, but a true work for God that's done in faith for God is evidence of a mature soul who's really laying hold of the power that's in God to do those works.
Scripture is fulfilled, saith Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness.
As the faith was imputed for righteousness, uh, and he was called the friend of God, So he had the, the, that outward sense or more than the outward sense. There was a practical fellowship between Abraham and God based on his life of faith. You see then how that by works, a man is justified and not by faith only. So it's not talking about.
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Works to be justified before a holy God due to umm being freed from sin. That's the work of Christ on the cross and his blood, but he's justified by works in the sense of.
Umm, man looking on will say there's somebody that's different. What makes him different? As they draw clothes, they'll find this work of Christ and the soul.
If I.
If I don't have the works.
Does that mean I'm not saved? Is that what this is saying?
Because if I'm struggling with the with the works of the flesh.
And I can't do the works of the Spirit.
I'm not displaying the fruit of the Spirit because I'm involved in the works of the flesh. Does that mean I don't have salvation?
So salvation is the gift of God was never based upon our performance.
And umm, we accept it by faith.
Now, when we're not in communion with Christ.
We're going to be as weak as any other man. Not as weak as the weakest Christian, but as weak as any other man. We can fall into this, uh, addictions of the world.
But there is a way for strength and, uh, we have to be.
Keep close uh track and uh in first John.
Let's see first John 19. It says if we confess our sins, is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Here we can see that He is faithful.
It it's not us, we were unfaithful, but he is faithful and he has made a way for us to come back into this.
Communion. We can be back in communion and if we're not, there is absolutely no strength. There's no substitute for communion.
But through Christ, we can do all things we can overcome.
Good. Umm, we need to cherish it, We need to value. You know, I work in umm, I do services and I go into people's homes and it could be defiled very easily.
You walk into a room you don't know and then there it is on the walls, you know, pictures and.
I realize I need to judge it communion with Christ somebody. I think it was Lord and I don't know which one it was umm and said that we need to cherish it is like a there was a flower up in the mountains.
And if you just speak to it or whether very sensitive when we need to realize we're we're used to sin, we don't think much of it, but God is holy and the relationship is not broken.
But the communion is broken and we need to, umm, confess it and come back into it.
I guess our our time is up. Thank you for your questions and trust that some of them are answered.
Power and Love
Address—Stephen Rule
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You have an outline. I don't know whether or not we'll complete it or not, but I think I can share with you in the next minute or two the whole of what I have to share with you this evening and the rest of it will be detailed.
The burden on my heart, things been going through my own mind for a couple of months off and on. Something that I've been enjoying for myself is that.
In our Lord Jesus Christ, our great High Priest, it is impossible, impossible to separate his power from his love. The two are inextricably linked. They're tightly bound together, and you can't tear them apart.
Here's what I mean, why it's important, why that kind of a thing is more than just a set of words. Umm. I'll give you several examples, but first of all.
How many of you have ever been in a a car as a driver with a passenger beside you or behind you that was sort of a hint driver?
Kind of. I wonder what the speed limit is along this road.
Or oh, I wonder if they just put that stop sign in or you you've got a hint helper along the side.
Have you ever been a hint helper for the Lord in your life? Kind of a gentle suggestion that he may want to focus a little bit of attention over on this particular area. That's a little bit of a concern and seems to be.
Neglected. That's when we don't have a a sense of his power in our hearts. You know, we would never sit in the passenger. Well, very rarely when we sit in the passenger seat and reach over and grab the steering wheel and try to drive, unless you're a driver's instructor or something like that.
So you might kind of subtly reach over and give a little hint. And that's how I think most of us act with the Lord. But I want to encourage, turn our focus and our attention on the Lord tonight.
And see why his power and his love cannot.
Be separated. Let me give you one more example of one of these two things.
I'm going to be as deliberately vague as possible. Umm, but someone that.
Has sat in these seats since this camp was held in this facility, in this building, in this room that I'm standing in, I've had a conversation within this year.
And that conversation with them this year involved them expressing to me, but I'll characterize as having lost a sense that God had power. There's been a situation in their life, and in that situation, they did all the right things. They checked all the right boxes. They went to the right people for advice. They went to.
Umm, you're supposed to read your Bible. They read their Bible. You're supposed to pray. They prayed.
And they weren't getting deliverance in their circumstances.
And as they expressed it to me.
If I felt betrayed by the Lord, I went to Him for His power.
And they thought he didn't give it to them.
So they came to the point where they doubted his love.
And now as of the conversation I had with them.
That person, as I would call it, teetering on the drink brink of agnosticism.
Is there a God?
Well, I don't know.
Not quite there yet, but they're awfully close because they lost a sense in their heart that this person, the Lord Jesus Christ, had power and love for them that was in perfect union.
It couldn't be divided. I'm going to give you a figure of it. It's in the Old Testament. We won't spend a whole lot of time on the figure.
But.
The high priest had his garments of glory and beauty. There's a lot to them. It's a beautiful subject. I'm not going to take it up with you. There's just one part of it that I want to one little sinky piece of the hole. You can study the whole thing and it's beautiful. But that high priest had on his heart. It says on his heart, I still found his chest. The Scriptures use the word heart.
Start with the breastplate and it has in it those stones and they're connected to shoulder plates. And so just to get a little bit better figure of it, this is obviously not a very detailed rendition, but give the part I'd like to focus on this evening and add the 12 Stones. And this picture doesn't show it, but the names of each of the 12 tribes of Israel were.
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Written on them.
They're engraved on them.
They were carved in stone. You know, you grab a little gel pen like the one in my pocket, and you scribble a note and you set it down in the wrong spot. And if you do it too quickly, just smudge and smear the ink on something else. You engrave a name on a stone, it's not going to get rubbed off. Those names were engraved on the breastplate on the heart of the Lord Jesus. He's the figure of that great high priest, and then on the shoulder pads.
Six names, but six on each side were engraved and Onyx stones and set in pouches of gold. The shoulders represent power, and so in that power the the government should be on his shoulder. It says in Isaiah you have the shepherd and the Luke 15 carrying on his shoulders, plural, the sheep, the place of power. If you want to push a vehicle you may or push something you may get down and put your shoulder into it.
To place the power, the heart.
The place of love. This is what I want you to notice. We'll turn to the scripture to give the figure of it.
And umm, Exodus chapter 28.
The next is 28 and verse 22.
Just read fairly quickly down through and then I'll back up and just give you a couple, umm, keywords.
Verse 22 And thou shalt make upon the breastplate chains at the ends of reason work of pure gold. We'll stop right there. Those chains that connect the shoulder blades and the breastplate and the figure I have there aren't. I'm very glad for whoever created the graphic, but they're not precise to what we just read. Let me give you what we just read.
Apparently.
Those chains gold fairly soft.
And so if you have pure gold, it's relatively soft. It's easy to work for a metal. It's soft. And if you want to make it so that it's very strong, you know those steel cables like you'll have a suspension bridge and those steel cables will suspend that bridge. If you look in closely, you got a lot of fibers that are twisted together and then those cables themselves are woven together in some way. And I understand in the.
Original.
On the scholar, I read it in someone else's who is from I got it from someone else who is. And in that verse 22 at the end means that twisted at the word has the idea of twisted in it. So it's like the fibers of thin strands of gold were twisted together to make ropes and then those ropes were woven together to give a cable. Like those steel suspension cables that hold up a giant bridge that you run semi traffic across.
That's the connection between the shoulders and the heart. It's not coming undone. And it's made of gold, a symbol of divine righteousness.
God cannot act in power towards you without a heart of love in the motive and in the work that He's working out in you. And He can't have a heart of love toward you or to me or toward anyone else without the power to carry out.
What he needs to carry out, what he'll has planned in his council, the 2GO, absolutely together.
Spending our life where hint drivers in the life that God has us leading and we're hint drivers because we lose sight of him, we lose sight of his heart, we lose sight of his ability to do something. And I want to take a couple minutes to run through an analogy. This is just an analogy.
You could pick it apart. This is not the truth, but I want to give you an analogy just because the Lord said to uh, the Pharisees, I guess that they could discern the face of the sky. I want to show you that you have a certain kind of discernment that makes you ready should be with their faith to accept the fact that God is fully able to work in our lives.
So this is the analogy.
Suppose you lived in a dot verse.
This is a dot verse and we have our nice green person narrator off on the upper right who's narrating on behalf of the green dot. But the dot verse consists of one dimension, this line that's horizontal, and it has two separate red dots, one on either side. And imagine you're this person in the dot verse. Now you live beyond the dot verse, so you can think for the person in the dot verse, you're past that one dimension. You're looking at this one dimension and.
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Suppose you're a very intelligent green dot person.
And you go back and forth and you investigate in your world and you head over and you find on the right there's a red dot to the right. And you discover more searching past that red dot on the right. There's nothing past there. You go back in the other direction, you come to another red dot over off on the left, lie on that. There's nothing else. And you investigate carefully and you're quite confident.
My analogy for us as we walk about our daily life, as we examine things, as we think about them, without reference to God.
And form our own conclusions. Along comes somebody, that person comes along, and they join a thought verse with us.
As a blue person off on the left, like it's a little narrator up on the left and the blue person comes along and says to the green dot person and their dot verse. You know those two red dots, they're actually part of the same thing.
Well, that's ridiculous. Couldn't possibly be part of the same thing. I walked over to the right and I come across one of them. I walk over to the left, I come across the other one of them. They're distinct. They're distinct. They're different. They're not the same.
Now you outside the dot verse of one dimension, tell me how they could be part of the same thing.
Thank you, Adrian.
Could be a circle? Is it a circle?
That should be He said he has knowledge beyond this diverse, and he suggests a circle. OK, why aren't you confident, Adrian?
Can't see the rest. Anything else that could be?
Did I hear square? OK, I did. Umm, my hearing isn't completely gone yet. Yeah, could be a square, right? You got to have a square that could connect us. Anything else?
There's an infinite number of answers. You could have a weird squiggly drawing of just about any shape that could connect those two dots if you could see beyond the dot verse.
You don't know what's beyond that. Here's my point. You don't know what's beyond that unless I tell you.
There are a tremendous number of people on this earth tonight who are ready to tell God what his world is like.
It's far beyond us, the one who breathes in there with the stars, the one who spoke and it was, and who has spoken and given to you something that just about everyone of you holds tonight. His Word and His word is the perfect revelation of what is beyond.
What your experience will give to you.
And yet how many of us have recourse not to His word? I'm not talking in our speech with one another in a room like this. I'm talking about and the reaction of the heart when you are, umm, held up at work for an extra 15 minutes and have to work extra because the computer crashed.
And you have to reboot it.
I'm talking about the little things of life that are fully in the control of one who has power and love. This particular case?
I did draw a circle, so there was a circle outside, but my point is it could have been anything. The only way to know is to be told. The only way to know is to be shown in this book what the heart of the Lord is.
And so I would like to walk through with you 3 examples in the Word that show the great high priest combining his power and his love and action. And we'll pick up details as we go along. So the first of them is in Mark's Gospel.
Chapter UMM 5.
And we'll follow a thread in Mark, but I will mention.
Umm, some details from other gospels.
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So we have the full story. It's beautiful. I would suggest, I would strongly encourage you to, umm, take and put in parallel the different stories in the different gospels. Not to try to blend them all together to get one chronological account, but to see the beauty of each one. You get the whole picture. You see the beauty of the why the Lord brought out different details in the different gospels.
And, uh, you can gain from it in that way. So let's just read a few of the verses here in Mark, beginning with verse 24.
And Jesus went with him, that is, with gyros who had come to him, and much people followed him and thronged him. A certain woman which had an issue of blood, 12 years, and it suffered many things of many physicians, and it's been all that she had and was nothing better, rather guru worse.
When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind and paused there.
There's this woman.
Let's set the scene, including details from some of the other gospels, before we go on, just to see.
What it really must have been like for her. And I also want to show you a little bit, perhaps if there's time, how God can take a very complex situation and deal with all kinds of things.
At the same time. But first of all, here's this woman and she comes along and there's a big crowd, right?
This woman had an issue of blood. Does anyone remember what that made her in Israel?
They're unclean. You can look it up in #15 #15 there's, I don't know, five to 10 verses. It's numbers. Umm, I'm sorry, Leviticus 15 versus 19 to 27.
And it goes through her being unclean, and her uncleanness would have cut her off from Israel if she had made it known. I don't know whether she hid it or she didn't, but I do know this. And Matthew, it says she said in her heart. So I would suggest to you that she might have been hiding, but I'm confident.
She was cut off from others because of this issue.
There was a barrier there and you may be sitting in your seats and you're physically present with others. Maybe they've been physical barriers earlier in this year. Now you're physically present with others, but in your heart you're cut off because there's something there that you don't want there.
And it destroys that fellowship with others. And this is the situation she was casual about.
She'd gone to the doctors and tried a couple and then figured she wouldn't worry about it.
Uh-huh.
She spent how much?
I don't know the amount of money, but how much relative to her resources it was all that she had spent everything. This is a big deal. She's cut off in Israel from relationship and I would suggest from Matthew and her heart, she's cut off because she has the councils in her heart. She doesn't go take counsel with her friends.
She's cut off, and you may feel cut off by your problem from something that's good.
And you've gone to everybody looking for a solution that's fascinating. If you go through it in Luke's account of this, there I think, or at least maybe five, uh, statements that are exclusive to loop that don't appear in what we read in Mark and they all have to do with people.
Dealing with man in the heart. And you know, Luke was a doctor, right? So doctor Luke says.
He admits the doctors couldn't help and he says she couldn't be helped by anyone.
She couldn't be helped by anyone. You may be sitting here tonight and you may feel like 12 years is a really long time. And I've asked the Lord and I've asked the Lord and last Lord, in this case, you went to the positions. The next person had come to the Lord looking for an answer.
And it's not there, so the heart of love of God can't be there. That's not true.
It sure seems like it because in my experience, that's what I'm living. And you can't tell me what I'm living. No, I can't. But God knows exactly what's going on in your heart. And he has a purpose and love for you and for everybody around you. And so this woman comes and she comes behind and in the account she says I'll just touch his clothes.
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But you've sung the Sunday school him when he gets she gets there, she doesn't just touch his clothes, she touches.
What?
Probably thinking in your head. I just don't want to yell it out with a mask on. She only touched the hem of his garment. No, it was on the border of the godly Jews garment.
It was a reminder of the law. There's some tassels on the corners of that garment. They're woven in with blue. There was a reminder there of the law, in fact, due today, and their prayer shawl, the more Orthodox ones they have.
I think it's 613 knots because the way the rabbis have divvied up the Old Testament law, they have 613 commandments and regulations and so on. And so they have 613 knots so that when they look down, they're reminded of the law. You know, that woman came behind the Lord, hiding in a big crowd in the throng, but she came to the right person, and when she came to him, she reached down to what would have condemned her.
The reminder of what would have condemned her the law.
But met in the person of Christ to instantly heal.
Instantly heal.
Say, well, I I've checked the box, I'm afraid I've done this, I've done that, I've done the other and I haven't been instantly healed.
I want you to watch what comes next. It's really part of the whole process.
She touched the border of his garment.
And, umm.
Sorry I lost the verse here, I'll have it back in a second. Umm.
Says she had grown worse, came in the press behind and touched his garment. Verse 28 For she said, if I may touch, but it's close, I shall be whole and straight way. The fountain of her blood was dried up. She felt in her body that she was healed of the plague.
She touched his power.
She has healing.
Scriptures don't say specifically, but from our actions I have no doubt that she wanted to escape out of that crowd and go home healed.
So you want to just exit stage left and go back around the corner and vanish the way she had come?
Why didn't the Lord let her do that?
Maybe she was a private person, maybe she wanted to hide, but look what the Lord does. And if you bring in the account Luke, you get the full picture of what was happening here and again, it's beautiful. The details look as they have the the personal side, the people side, but I'll read it here first in Mark and Jesus verse 30 immediately knowing it himself. The virtue had gone out of them, turned him about in the press and said who touched.
My clothes.
Remember, it's a big crowd now here in Mark, it says umm.
The disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou who touched me for bringing in a couple details from Luke. It turns out that before the disciples spoke up, the crowd said, wasn't me, wasn't me, wasn't me. Remember there's a great throng and they all denied it. It didn't happen in 1.3 seconds.
There's that woman trying to hide. What's she hiding from? She'd experience this power, but she didn't know his heart. And God will not let you have His power without His heart. He wants you to have both. And so he calls her out to know. Why is he putting me through this uncomfortable circumstance? I don't like it because when he's done, you'll have so much more of him.
Than you'd have if you could sneak out with a chunk of his power.
Without his heart. So the disciples get a little uncomfortable and that's when they speak up here, the big crowd, remember, the disciples had already been out and about. They're connected with the Lord. And it's embarrassing because this big crowd, how could it be that he's asking this question?
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It's embarrassing and so they reprove him. Verse 32 and he looked around about to see her.
That had done this thing. Go straight to that woman.
And she knew. I don't think it's here.
I'm sorry I don't have the retentive memory to tell you which gospel that I have. If anyone wishes it, I have all kinds of notes that you're not going to get that you don't have in the outline. I'm happy to just copy paste into an e-mail that won't be beautifully formatted or anything, but if you want to spend more time on the subject, I'm happy to send them to you.
And you'll get a lot of the details from the other gospels there, but I believe it looks at that woman and in another one of the gospels that says she knew she couldn't be hit. She knew there was no other way. And so she comes. But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in in her came and fell down before him and told him all the truth. That's all out in the open. There's a big crowd there and there's the.
There, and there's the Lord there, and it's all out where it can be seen.
Now what does she hear? And Luke and I thinking in Matthew he says be of good courage. Here in Mark we have the rest of it. Daughter, Faith that made thee whole, go in peace and the whole of thy plague. What does she get? She gets encouragement. Be of good courage. She gets a relationship. She had not it for 12 years.
In the sense that she was unclean and if she hit it, she had a rotten relationship because he was a hide. She was hiding a lie, and if she didn't hide it, she was unclean from all those around her. Now in the presence of everybody, whether they knew or didn't know, they knew. Now she had a relationship, Son of God, the Lord Jesus.
He calls her daughter. It's a beautiful thing to know our relationship with him.
The Lord will not use His power in your life. I'm not trying to speak in a way that is limiting Him in the sequence of time that He uses with you, but I mean in the totality of His purposes with you. He's not going to give you His power without giving you His heart as He does with this woman found up as a high priest.
And that whole figure of who he is and what he is for you.
And so he says here to her daughter, Thy faith has made thee whole. She reached out and touched him with faith. She knew that the issue of blood was dried up.
So you know it wouldn't come back. He says, go in peace, behold a thy plague.
He didn't put her through pain because he wanted to see her suffer for something that she'd been hiding.
She had to come to the light so that she could know His heart, and then everybody would know this woman is clean and this woman belongs to me. It's a beautiful thing. God will not deal with us in our lives except He's doing it for our good. And again, if I go back to that analogy, we may not see it. We may not be able to sense.
What's going on outside of our view? But her face says by faith she come and touched the right person.
She came to the right person. She didn't know much when she came, but she came to the right person. And she leaves with assurance, with encouragement, with the relationship and with, umm, the issue, the assurance that her leg was truly gone, not just temporarily stopped. Let's turn over to the second one.
That was personal need. Let's turn to the next one.
That has to do with a loved one.
Again, we'll trace it in Mark's gospel again.
Again, the other Gospels give beautiful additional touches. We'll bring in some of them.
Mark's Gospel Chapter 9 and verse 9. The disciples are coming down from the mount of Transfiguration and.
Umm, I'll read.
From verse 9, but not comment too much on the beginning part. As they came down from the mountain, he charged them that they should tell no man what things they had seen until the Son of Man were risen from the dead. They kept that thing with themselves, questioning one with another what the rising from the dead should mean. And they asked him, saying why.
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Said the scribes that Elias must first come and he.
Answered and told them Elias verily cometh 1St and restoreth all things, and how it is written of the Son of man, that he must suffer many things, and he said it not.
In this next one I want to bring in two things. One, the loved ones need and some of the hindrances for us really seeing the Lord in our circumstance. So the first of the hindrances is here and.
Pick up maybe the bigger of them. They came down, the Lord spoke about her. When the Son of Man is raised from the dead, they just seen him glorified on the mountain. They knew he was going to rain. They believed in Him as the Messiah. They had done miracles. They'd already gone throughout the villages. They healed. They cast out demons. I take it that particularly the what we've read about so far was Peter, James, and John coming down from the mountain with the Lord.
And he said something that they don't understand.
So they have the confidence to ask him a question, they get a good answer. It's about.
Elias and very briefly, you can trace it out for yourself. I think if you take the notes that I have, you'll get the umm, get the references there, but.
Elias was coming, and that was in spirit. John the Baptist. John the Baptist spoke of himself as.
Quoting from Isaiah that he was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, and the Lord says I believe it's in Matthew 11, that if you would receive him. This is not Elias. I can't quote it properly, you'll have to look it up. So he says if you'll receive them, if your heart turns in repentance towards this coming one.
He's come.
Down the bathroom.
The scribes and Pharisees were making it hard on the disciples. They were saying, where's Elias? I don't see him.
They're making scriptural difficulties, and so the disciples raised it and the Lord gives them a quick answer here just as I've given you a quick answer. The other alliance is in Malachi, I believe. I think it's the third chapter where he's still coming in. In the future. There was a past and a future.
And they couldn't reconcile them, but there was another path in the future to pop points in their dot verse and they couldn't get them together in one person. And that was this business of suffering. So the Lord turns them to that. And I would suggest one of the first one, one reason.
Why we don't discern the Lord's power and His love in our life?
Or in the life of others is because we're trying to do with the disciples we're doing we're trying to steer a path that kind of takes the detour bypass around suffering.
Satan offered it to the Lord in the wilderness. In the wilderness he said that you could have all these kingdoms and the glory of them.
If you would just bow down to him if he was just skip across all of it now.
That's always been a lie.
And it's something I'll just suggest to you. You can meditate on for yourself, on it for yourself. It's something that gets in our way of seeing the Lord at work. So let's go on and let's go to verse 14. And when he came to his disciples, he saw a great multitude about them and the scribes questioning with them and straightway all the people when they beheld him.
We're greatly amazed, and running to him, saluted him. And he asked the scribes What question ye with them? And one of the multitude answered, and said, Master, I have brought unto thee my son, with half a dumb spirit, and wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth them. I think that means not that he had great wounds, but if you look at the word, it means He was convulsed.
As in like in a spasm. And so the word includes that thought and I believe that's.
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What it is you tear with him, or he convulses him, and he from us, and gnashes with his teeth find us away. I speak to thy disciples that they should cast him out, and they could not.
You feel what it is for this father.
You've got somebody you love. There are many of you in this room tonight and listening to somebody that you love.
And perhaps you have that personal relationship with the Lord.
They don't.
Maybe they know the Lord is their Savior, but they're not heading toward Christ. Maybe they don't even know the Lord as their Savior.
And you're passionate about them, you care about them, you love them. And in fact.
It says in verse 17, The man speaking, I have brought unto thee.
My son.
And then he goes on to the next verse and says, and I talk to your disciples. It's almost as though he were coming looking for the Lord, but the Lord and Peter, James and John were up on the mountain and he finds the 9 disciples that were there and he brings them. Well I'll take what I can get.
His heart was headed for the right person finds the disciples and.
What does he get?
Verse thir uh, verse 19 The answer is him. And saith, O faithless generation, how long shall he shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring him unto me.
There's a lot of parents here, or maybe it's a brother or sister that you long for, or maybe it's your grandpa or whoever it is and you pray for them. You haven't seen that change. The Lord says, bring him unto me.
And you say that I've done that.
I've done that. I've been praying for five years, or 10 or 15. Bring them unto me now. Watch what happens. And they brought him unto him. And we saw him straight away, the spirit tear him so he compulsed again. He fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming.
You imagine your child. Some of you are sitting here with small children.
Your child, this moment on the floor in front of you or your niece or your nephew.
And they're foaming at the mouth and they're in pain. And from the other gospels we find that this has been happening and they've been throwing themselves in the water and into the fire.
Can you imagine what it would be? In fact, in the other gospels you'll see it. The Father says uses the word us at one point in the conversation. Can you imagine? I assume he's referring to He and the Mother. You imagine he and the Mother and there's this child.
You've got to, you've got to watch your children here with water or whatever, and you pay close attention. And if they're standing on top of the picnic table, you keep a little extra eye to make sure that there's somebody close enough to catch them if they thought they're close to the edge. Or if your husband doesn't do it and you notice that, you let him know that maybe it was a good thing he should have been doing.
Can you imagine having to watch your child because someone that you had no power of?
Was constantly trying to drown him or burn him to death.
It doesn't even compute in my head. And that's what this father and this mother had been going through. And they bring them to the Lord, They bring him to me to bring him to him. And the problem solved instantly. Like that woman coming from behind. No, it got worse.
The Lord doesn't always answer on our timetable.
But his heart of love and his power are never divided.
He could have, if it had been for the good of that father and that mother and those people standing nearby watching, he could have healed that child instantly and said he allowed that child to be on the ground convulsed and foaming and even there it says.
How long is it ago since this came on upon to him? And he said of a child, And often times that have cast him into the fire, there it is, and into the waters to destroy him.
But if thou canst do anything, have compassion on us and help us. He's got a shred of hope that there's power here if you can do anything.
Show a little heart of love.
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If you can do anything, show a little heart of love to my child. I can't imagine. I'm not condemning this father. If I had a child that had been going through that, I don't know how thin my face would have been. But what does the Lord say to him? He says to him.
Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him. That believeth still hasn't healed the child. He's turned it back toward the Father, but now he's brought it to the heart of the matter. Have you brought that child to me to handle for you?
Are you willing to just commit it to me? Not committed to me. Take it back, Committed to me. Take it back committed to me. What can I do to make the child better? Commit it to me.
And the father says, and you can feel it straight with the father of the child, cried out and said with tears, Lord, I believe helped out my unbelief.
Didn't want he knew his face wasn't what it should be, but he says Lord, I believe.
That's the moment it's come from, his lips says When Jesus saw the people.
Came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto them unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee. Come out of him, and enter no more into him.
Spirit cried and rent him soar and came out of him. It was this one dead in so much that many said he is dead. But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he rose.
I don't know all the reasons the Lord had him wait, don't know every reason why he had to pause and watch his son get torn and then torn again even after he brought him to the Lord.
There are a few.
You realize how many billions of times the story has been printed?
When missionaries translate into a new language, it's frequent. I'm sure it's not all the time, but it's frequent. That Mark is one of the first books, the beginning parts of Genesis.
And mark the shortest of the Gospels, and it gives, apparently it's relatively easier than some anyway, to translate. And so it's been translated. It's been, I should say, printed and shared billions of times.
Does the father care about it? At that moment, he didn't know a single thing about a printing press. He didn't know a single thing about the Internet. He didn't know a single thing about you. He loved that child, and he brought him to the Lord.
And how much blessing has the Lord brought from that moment? How many people have been encouraged and use that expression? Lord, I believe help now my unbelief. I don't want me to be standing in the way of the good of that child. And if you're a father or mother, you've brought your child to the Lord, and they're not where they should be.
Just be willing to say, Lord, don't let me be in the way.
If there's something I need to judge in my life that tendering my child, let me judge it. If I need to confess that it's always been this way with the child, and I'm part of the problem, let it be that way. But bring him to me, and the Lord and His power and His love will work far beyond our imagination. Not on our time frame, not on our scale, not instantly removing the pain, not allowing us to steer past the suffering.
But he will work according to his power.
And there's love now. There's several things after this, and I'll just give three of them quickly without reading the verses. They asked the Lord, why couldn't we cast them out? They had been around casting out demons. These disciples, they had been. They cast out demons already. They've been there and they've done that.
But the Lord tells them they had to act independent, and they may need to for a time be cut off even from natural joys to focus in.
On bringing him to me, if I can put it that way. And if there's that problem, you can't solve it.
But the Lord may tell you to depend on him, to bring it to him.
To set aside from those natural joys for a time, the fasting, the focus in on the matter. There's one other issue that came up after I'll just mention it. You can look into it and it was pride.
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Look what comes after. The disciples were busy trying to figure out who was going to be first. The Lord had more lessons to teach them. One thing that gets in the way when we have a loved one that we care for is pride. So we need to be dependent. We need to let the Lord act on His own time frame. There may be a time of fasting. Setting aside from natural joys, there also has to be the willingness to be.
Humbled if that's what's needed.
Let's turn last of all to John.
Gospel chapter 6.
Sending your outline, I called this.
Umm, compassion for others. For the need of others. There's compassion for the need of others.
We'll just go through a few highlights here of this story.
It's the feeding of the 5000, and most of you know it's the only miracle. I believe it's the only miracle that's in all four of the Gospels.
That's beautiful. I'm going to give you a little something I treasure to hunt for. It's a treasure hunt I guess, umm.
Who passed out the fish?
Who passed out the fish, and why is it in the gospel that it's in? Look for it. Let me give you another treasure.
It's in this gospel, it's in John's Gospel. It says in John's Gospel that there was much grass. Why is it in John's gospel that it says there was much grass? It's treasure. It's beautiful. It's well worth pausing and chewing on. And when you are, you'll come across a bunch more. And if I gave you the answers here and you had a fax to check off, you lose all that once more.
So there's the two things for you to look for.
Who passed out the fish and John the Gospel? You might get confused. You'll have to read that particular verse and and umm, Mr. Darby's translation and perhaps we'll have time for it. But who passed out the fish? And why is there much grass in this gospel? John 6 verse one. After these things, Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias. A great multitude followed him because they saw his miracles, which he did on them that were diseased.
Jesus went up into a mountain, and there he sat with his disciples in the Passover. A piece of the Jews was nigh. When Jesus then lifted up his eyes and saw a great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, And shall we buy bread that these may eat, because it's beautiful? You look at the other gospels, and historically it looks like the disciples came to the Lord.
Look at the the sounds from the other gospels like they raised the issue.
But this is the Divine Son of God, and the Divine Son of God knew everything, the end from the beginning. And He's the one that looks out. Why did those disciples come to Him in the 1St place? I'll suggest to you that the Divine Son of God was at work as it worked in a package deal here. He's working in the crowd, He's working in the disciples, He's working in you and I tonight. When He works things out, He works them out in a way that we could never untangle.
On our own, but he also works with individuals. You'll notice in the Gospel of John that's much more, yes, it's different than Matthew, Mark and Luke. You get stories in John that you don't have in Matthew, Mark and Luke. It's not following along the same line. You also notice something. You get people named in the Gospel of John. You know, there's another thread that likes to say.
Thread of thought that likes to say.
God has power.
He doesn't love me.
God has power, but he doesn't love me. You know the gospel that presents the divine Son of God, the one with ultimate power, is the one that deals most with individuals. Where do you learn that it was Peter that picked up the sword? The other gospels don't tell you, but John does. Where do you learn in the feeding of the 5000 that Philip and Andrew had special roles? You don't find it in Matthew, Mark and Luke.
You find it in John and that's important because it means it says that the divine Son of God is interested in you, the individual. We think in a crowd like this, this message is for somebody else. This message is for someone who this, that and the other. No, the divine Son of God looks on a crowd of 5000 and he calls Phillip with a lesson for Phillip.
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And if we get a chance, we'll see other lessons for others.
You know Philip, Philip brought the message of the Messiah to Nathaniel in chapter one.
Philip brought that message. Philip recognized the Lord Jesus, that person, and he said I want to bring Nathaniel to him.
The Messiah. Let's read the verse. I think it's on your sheet and since I'm 132.
Umm Psalm 132 and verse.
15.
It says speaking, you take the whole chapter. The Lord has chosen Zion. Verse 13 and so on. Verse 15, I will abundantly bless her provision. I will satisfy her poor with bread.
Now the rabbis knew and had thought properly, that this was the Messiah. The coming Messiah would feed their people with bread. Philip knew that the Lord Jesus was the Messiah. He'd already told that.
It's a Nathaniel. So the Lord calls out of that crowd. He calls Philip and he comes and says, Philip, what are we going to do?
Philip, when shall we buy bread that sees me? Oh, Philip could say. But Lord, you're the Messiah. You satisfy your people with bread.
Phillip answered him.
200 penny worth of bread is not sufficient for them that every one of them may take a little.
The best he could do 200 penny wire. You work six days a week like a dude did. If 50 weeks in a year, that's 300 days. 200 penny worth is 2/3 of a year's wages. That's eight months worth of wages.
Phillips pretty practical, pragmatic type, scans the crowd, looks it over, does some rapid mental math.
And.
Eight months salary and everybody's going to have a smidgen besides that where you're going to get it.
The disciples we know from the other gospels, it said, send them in the villages to buy bread.
Andrew Andrew and Phillip are from both from.
Friends before they came to know the Lord.
He brings the chapter The Lad with his five barley loaves and two small fishes.
Bring them to the Lord.
Farley.
And Solomon signed barley is what the horses ate talking about the Messiah here, something that's far greater than Solomon's time. Solomon Ding, a figure of the Messiah the the coming millennial brain and.
Here's I barley loaves, 2 Small fishes carried by a little lad and bring it to the Lord. Oh, what's this among so many?
Jesus said make them in sit down. There was much grass in the place there it is why John so the men sat down in number about 5000. Jesus took the lows and when he had given thanks he distributed the disciples.
The disciples to them that were set down, and likewise are the fishes as much as they would.
I want to say to you, things are real. We have a living savior. The person that cares about you is ready to feed you. And I'm going to give you a very concrete example that spoke to my heart from this week. We're still Saturday. We're still in this week on Tuesday.
Thinking about a certain brother that Jim Highland and many here know new now with the Lord just to ship all kinds of stuff to this brother and umm, thinking about them on Tuesday because.
We couldn't having some real difficulties with shipping and Bible truth publishers where I work. And so I said to Renee at breakfast on Tuesday, meditating on some of these verses, you know.
00:55:06
Where we're at right now, it's like we have 5 loaves and two fishes. My dad and he said, well, maybe 3 loaves, but whatever we've got, let's bring it to the Lord. And in prayer we did on Tuesday morning went into my dad's office to talk about the shipping difficulties and so on. This brother I've spoken to once in my life, but that in context, welcome to him once.
In my life, I stepped into my dad's office and we were talking over where to start with some of the shipping difficulties.
And.
We decided we needed to start with this brother.
I stepped out of his office and within. This is literal, not figurative. I'm not exaggerating. Inside of 60 seconds had someone run over and tap me on the shoulder and say that brother is on the phone for you.
And I found out that just the day before I got my chronology wrong. This happened on Wednesday, just the day before on Tuesday.
The Lord had opened up the door for him, had opened up the opportunity to bring the shipping through. The day I've been thinking about him was the day the Lord, the day the Lord brought him to my mind, the day the Lord was thinking about him. And the moment the words were out of my mouth, almost literally the moment the words were out of my mouth, it was on the phone. Because the divine Son of God is people defeat.
And he wants them to have his word. Bring him your 5 loaves and two fishes. Don't look at them and say oh that's nothing.
Bring them to Him because His power isn't limited by you or me or what we have or what our resources are, and as hard isn't either, you can turn to it. I want to read to Him before we close, and I don't want to go beyond the end. So I'll just say the disciples enter this scene with apparently no bread. They cross the sea on a little vacation. Mark's gospel shows it to us. They're going to go apart into a desert place and rest a while. They come there and they find the crowd.
But the crowd ran around and got there first, so I assume they had a fairly slow TV wedge. Kind of like my wife and I doing little back and forth to the weeds on the canoe this afternoon. Just kind of enjoying being out on the water. A little more of a restful trip. I assume they had a restful trip. The Lord didn't tell them to have rest a while without giving them that rest. But they arrived and they have work to do in their empty handed.
They didn't have food to give, the lad had a little.
Exit and exit with 12 hand baskets. You know how much a hand basket can hold. It's a kind of it's kind of like a mini backpack. You go out for a day hike. It's not one of these great big massive I'm carrying my tent on my back. But you go out for a day hike, you got this little mini backpack or one like mine on the floor there to carry a laptop computer, something like that with the capacity of.
2 gallons.
Every one of those disciples arrived empty handed.
Everyone of them exited the two gallons of food on their back. You're going to be exiting this place, many of you tomorrow and your exiting and you don't say wow that was a good meal and not gather up the fragments. The Lord told them, gather up those fragments and take them with you. The divine Son of God who could make bread in an instant. The divine Son of God who could have turned stones into bread if he wanted to.
Who can turn 5 barley loaves into enough to feed 5000 so they're absolutely full and then each disciple to walk away full?
He tells them to gather it up, gives to you in a place like this, and he gives to you richly to enjoy.
But he does say to you, gather them up, take them with you because it's food from him.
Going to just read quickly.
The stands are there multiple beautiful hymns that go along with.
The same on my heart tonight. Going to read quickly to you #326 and closing prayer.
326.
As debtors to mercy alone of heavenly mercy we sing, nor fear to draw near to the throne our person and offerings to bring. I'm going to go down to stanza 2, The work which his goodness began. There's his heart of love, the arm of his strength will complete. There's his power. Let's lay hold of it by faith.
01:00:06
Not let these things that hinder get in the way.
Thank you, dear Lord Jesus, we do ask that we would lay hold more of thy heart, my heart toward us. I love to us and we do ask, Lord, that each of us in the different difficulties and circumstances that we're in, we bring them to the and be willing to wait by time for the answer. We just ask it thy name, oh Jesus, Amen.
What Will You Fill Your Life With?
Children—David Gorgas
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All right, that's all now.
Good morning everyone. Uh, I suppose I'll primarily be addressing the ones in the front row over here or the kids. Although I do pray that umm, what said this morning will be practical to everyone here. Hopefully the children in particular will be able to hold on to something that said and umm, be able to.
Use it in their lives.
So I don't know a lot of the people here because we're from quite a few hours away, but my name is David Gorgas. These are my boys, Avery and ASA and my daughter Cassidy. I know that some of you have been playing with them, and umm, so I won't know most of your names. If I need to call on anybody for help, I'll have to ask you your name as well. So before we get started, let's ask the Lord for his help. We're going to pray.
Our God and Father, we give thanks for the time that we could be here this morning.
We give thanks for such a wonderful week we could have here at camp.
For the wonderful Christian Fellowship, we could have all the Sunday School classes, the lessons and give thanks that many of the children were able to memorize verses and get some prizes for all the time that we could have the question and answer meetings as well and the addresses.
And we pray that after all this time here on the camp, that we would be able to go home now and think back on the verses that we read, verses that we memorized, the answers to the questions that we learned, pray that we would be able to review them.
And umm, that we would live our continue to live our lives in a way that's pleasing to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
We give thanks for, umm, that perfect work that was done on the cross to pay for our sin.
And uh, we just ask for help in going through this Sunday school lesson this morning. Now in Jesus name, Amen.
All right, so.
Just so I can get to know a few people because we Can't Sing this morning. And that's something I really enjoy doing. Somebody raise their hand and let me know a Sunday School song that you like to sing, but we Can't Sing it.
What song do you like?
What's your? Why? Why does the ocean Your name is Julia? You know what you said? OK, Nice to meet you. How about anybody else? Does anybody else have a particular song they enjoy? Yes.
The books of the Bible, that's that's a good one to know as well. And I think that was maybe a couple nights ago or yesterday morning that I think it was Bernie that mentioned that that song still.
Goes through his head and that's a very good song to learn. Uh, And I can tell you that ever since I first learned that song, I don't know how old I was. Umm perhaps 56789, I don't know. But ever since then, anytime that I hear these books of the Bible, umm. In particular, the other day the book of Michael was mentioned.
Sometimes it's a little bit hard to find, and as soon as I hear the book of Micah, then Yep, I start singing that song in my head. Joan and Mike. And they have a cook. And I just started looking for those books. Good to learn that song. Umm.
So what I'd like to talk about this morning to everyone here is something that's been talked about several times already this week. And even umm, some verses that were talked about already and I can't remember if it was umm, how many children were there for the meeting that Manuel Adamez had talking about Daniel? Do you guys hear the about the book of Daniel? Did anybody over here remember that?
How about anybody out here, you guys?
Went through Dan or not the whole book, but just that first chapter in particular we went over.
The first chapter of Daniel and that stuck out to me and something that came up several times this week.
00:05:00
And maybe more in the question and answer meetings was talking about filling our lives with Christ, and I wanted to, umm, have an object lesson to, uh, follow up. Such a great one about all the farm stuff we learned about the other day. But I didn't get as quite as complicated as that. I looked around.
And uh, this was as creative as I could get right here. There's not much in there. It's just rocks and sand.
And there's a Sunday School song that we sing. Umm.
The wise man built his house On what?
Rock. Wise man built his house on the rock, and the foolish man built his house on somebody, raised their hand.
Yes, the sand, absolutely.
OK, so that's what we have here. We have some rocks and sand.
And.
Won't be exactly talking about building, but I thought of using these two bags here as examples of people. So here's a person right here, and here's another person.
This one has a bunch of sand in it and this one at the moment only has a little bit of sand in it and I thought of this in reference to Daniel.
So let's read one verse. Not in Daniel first. Umm, we're going to go to Philippians chapter one.
And verse 11 It says, Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God, being filled with the fruits of righteousness we want to, we want to fill our lives with.
Fruits of righteousness. We want to fill our lives with things that are pleasing to the Lord. Things that we can read about in the Bible. Instructions that we can find to us that are good to do. And I hope that I I don't. Umm.
I wanna try to get this down to be a simple lesson. This is something that that I enjoyed this week for myself to be valuable for myself. But I I hope that at least if you kids in particular keep this picture in mind of these these bags of sand and maybe maybe in another year or so you can come back to it in your mind and you'll think of it. Somebody used an analogy, A umm, somebody used a picture like this for me when I was in elementary school my my elementary school principal when I was in uh some grade, I said.
Use the comparison a picture like this and it really stuck in my mind.
And so hopefully you guys can pick it up. Think of this and hold on to it. So here is a bag of sand. It was a sand, a good or a bad thing in Bible there in that song. Bad. Yeah, you're right. So this is somebody that has filled their life with bad things. And sometimes as a as a kid, as a young child, you may not feel like you're totally in control of your life. You kind of just follow your parents you go to on the school with your parents.
But there still are decisions that you can make as a kid. You can choose to memorize verses. You can choose to give thanks for your food. You can choose to pray before you go to bed.
Maybe you play with your parents anyway, but still you can choose to sing Sunday school songs or you can choose to sing maybe nursery rhymes.
Not that, umm necessarily nursery rhymes or other songs are bad, but what we should fill ourselves with is Christ. So this is somebody that made the decision to always do the wrong thing. Things that are wasteful. Things that Jesus does not particularly like. And this is.
Somebody that's going to do some other stuff, we're going to go through the Book of Daniel now.
I think I'll just, uh, use my phone for a Bible to make things a little simpler for myself.
OK, so the other day we learned that in the book of Daniel King Nebuchadnezzar wanted to raise up children.
00:10:00
Get some children here. And Nebuchadnezzar, we learned, was a picture of Satan. That's something that even has children right here, your age. Have to watch out for here. How old are you?
What's that 5?
Oh, you're 4. You'll be 5 next, right?
So young children even like a 5 year old, a four year old, even 3 year old Satan wants to take a hold of and.
Pull them into his work. And we learned that in the book of Daniel. There, in the first chapter, that's what King Nebuchadnezzar was doing. He took children that were. It looked nice. There were there was no blemish. They were well favored. Umm.
They were skillful in all wisdom. These were smart kids. Are you some smart kids over here?
Does anybody like to learn?
Does anybody know how to read?
Good readings, a good thing to learn how to do and everything. Nazar was looking for the smart, good looking children and uh, to understand science even it says, and ability in them to stand in the King's palace. You wanted to raise up these children just like you did here. You wanted to raise them up to serve him. And that's what Satan wants to do. If we don't fill our lives with Christ, if we just fill our lives with sand like this, if there's nothing Christ like in it.
Then they will seek to grab a hold of you and he wants you to serve him. It's a it's a bit of a scary thing. So what we can do is that's where these ones come into play. These are rocks.
And so the rocks are going to represent things, things that we do for anybody. Can anybody think of anything that we can do for Jesus?
Avery.
We can share. That's a good idea, because it's not nice to just board things for yourselves. Not nice to uh, I don't think we saw Jesus doing that here, right? We didn't see Jesus just holding things for himself. Now he was always going out and sharing the knowledge that he had, sharing the healing that he had. So that's a good thing that we can do is we can share. What else can we do? You got your hand up.
What was that?
Right. Yeah. We can pray. The Lord wants to hear us pray. He wants to hear us talk to him every day. And we're we're going to read in Daniel that that's what Daniel did. He prayed to the Lord. Umm. In particular, mentioned three times a day. Umm.
So, so let's let let's umm.
One thing that I I like in this story of Daniel chapter one.
It says that Daniel was among these children that got or that, uh, having another one that raised up. And so we're a Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. And it says that Daniel, purpose in his heart could not participate in what the king had. So let's let's just pretend that this bag right here is Daniel and this is Daniel purposing in his heart is the biggest rock I have in there. So here's Daniel, a real big purpose in his heart. He's going to stick it in there.
Can you see that the bag's real sandy now? Because I had it filled with sand, but uh, do you see that rock in there? OK, that that stands out pretty good.
We'll we'll put some more rocks in there to represent us filling up our lives for Christ.
As Daniel wanted to fill up his life for the Lord.
So it says that Daniel didn't participate in the eating the King's meat.
And it says God gave them a few things. Talking about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, God gave them knowledge, skill, and all learning and wisdom. And it said that God gave Daniel the ability to understand visions and dreams. So let's let's add a little more, umm rocks in here.
You're going to say that here's the things that God was giving Daniel and he was giving him this knowledge, the ability to interpret dreams only through God and Daniel praying three times a day, 123. And then the next day Daniel would pray three more times.
00:15:09
What's in this bag do you see?
Right, right. And you can see that there's rocks in this bag because Daniel had a purpose in his heart to fill his life up for the Lord, to serve the Lord.
There's a few more locks in there. Daniel kept on praying.
Now we know that in the same book of Daniel, you guys remember reading about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. What happened to them? Anybody remember Avery? They went in a fire, right? You know why?
They want to go on the fire, they fall.
ASAP.
Yeah, the pink room into the fire. Pretty sad thing. You know why he threw him into the fire.
Oh yeah, yeah. And the king looked at them and all you could see was these rocks. He didn't see. He didn't see them bowing down to the idol that he had made.
Umm.
So it says in Daniel chapter 3 and verse 11 That those that didn't bow down to this idol were going to be cast into the fiery furnace. And that's what happened to Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. And they said when they were told to bow down, they're given another chance to bow down. And they said our God who we serve is able to deliver us from the burning, fiery furnace. Wow, that's that's a pretty umm.
Pretty bold thing to say.
I'd be really scared about faux getting thrown into the fiery furnace, but you know what they said they said?
The equivalent of us saying Jesus is our rock. This more rock to put in there. They can rely on God for help. They can rather than do something in wasteful saying to build our lives on, they said no, God is going to help us and we're going to rely on God. There's a few more rocks in there represent stronger building on Jesus.
What happened next? They were thrown into the fire and we do know that they weren't killed, right? They were saved in that fire. Umm.
Something else I thought of when we're when we're looking at these two bags here, let's take, let's take these little rocks here. Does anybody know a verse any, any verse in the Bible? Raise your hand if you could tell me any verse in the Bible.
That he is. There's got to be more to the verse than that.
Alright, yes, Lemuel.
That's right. All right. I want you to take one of these little rocks, little tiny rocks in there. And let's just say this person here said I'm going to do something for Jesus today. I'm going to say a verse. So this is 1 little thing. Put that in the bag. Good.
You know a verse 2.
Hey, I don't know how everybody else puts that thing on, but apparently I'm doing it wrong.
All right. What verse do you have that you could say excuse me?
Good. How about you take one Little Rock and stick it in that bag?
OK.
So.
Let's just pretend that this person here.
Decide that they're going to do a little bit for Visa.
And they're going to say a verse every now and then. They're going to go to Sunday school because they were told to bring them to Sunday school and but they don't really want to.
That that that's the thing that you should have to learn to do, and even older ones have to learn to do, is to do some of these things on your own, to try to read the Bible on your own. And even reading the Bible can be a little bit hard, right?
Not everybody knows how to read, and even when you do know how to read, my team a little complicated, but you know what you can do as kids. You can ask your parents to read the Bible. Does anybody like it when their parents read them stories?
00:20:15
Yeah, good.
You can ask your parents to read you stories from the Bible and.
Sometimes we read stories at home that aren't from the Bible. But we can ask children, ask our parents sometimes. Can you read me something from the Bible? Or can you teach me something from the Bible? And even as young people, you can do the same. You can if you're not asking somebody to read to you, but you can ask somebody for help.
And so let's just say this is somebody that's not serious.
And just once in a while they put in little rocks. They read a verse, and then they say, well, maybe I'll pray before I go to bed tonight and then throw in another one. And, uh, my parents asked me to read this morning, so I'll throw in another one. Little stones. These are things that are for Christ. But you're not really meaningful. You're not really trying. You don't really want to do it. And we can put in these little verses that we say now and then on the school, sometimes probably once a day.
OK, what do you what do you guys see in this bag?
And where are the rocks?
Yeah, there is a bag and you pull out a rock.
You got one?
You got one? Good. It took a little bit of digging around in there. It's not too easy to get a rock out of that bag, right? OK, how about how about Daniel, who is praying three times a day and really purposed in his heart to serve the Lord and to do things that were pleasing to the Lord? What do we see in this bag?
Yeah, there's a little sand in there. That was primarily to keep the rocks from going to the bottom, though.
Yeah, can you can you pull a rock out of here?
Perfect. So it's easy to get a rock out of there because this one is full of things that were done for Christ. This is what Daniel purposed in his heart to do was to fill up his life. But thanks for Christ and that that's something that we have, we all have to work on. It was umm. Let me see if umm.
Just just thinking about when Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were thrown into the fiery furnace, they had all these thoughts of God in their lives. So when they were told there's something very dangerous and something very serious about to happen, they didn't have to, they didn't have to, like go scrambling through this bag and they're like, oh, what are we, what are we going to do? Let's pull up an idea here. And they're digging around in the sand and like, here's, here's, here's something from God to help us out. No, that's not what they did. They they had, they had a whole bag full of rocks like this. They built their lives on.
The Lord their God. And they had an answer right away to, umm to answer. The ones that told them they're going to be thrown into the fiery furnace. They told them right away. They said you could throw us into that fiery furnace, but God will save us. They had an answer ready to go right there. They had all these, all these rocks, all these verses that they had taken in all the times that they read the Bible. Or umm, speaking more of ourselves in that case, all the time that we can read the Bible, all the time that we can go to a conference.
All the times that we could talk about something spiritual with our friends, the more of that that we fill up our lives with, the easier it is going to be to pull something out that's profitable. So let's let's see, umm if we can find anything else down here.
So later on in Umm Daniel chapter 5.
There was a king that knew that Daniel was wise and he wanted he wanted something interpreted. He wanted a writing read to him and.
He offered to give Daniel clothes and a gold chain and a high place of ruling if he if he was able to successfully answer this question.
So we we can think of.
We could think of, uh, we could think of those items. A gold chain. Is that something that Jesus wants us to have? That's something that betters our life for Jesus. Or like spending everything we have on caring about our clothes. OK, look a little bit nice.
00:25:17
But we don't want to send everything that we have on.
Umm.
Clothes we're trying to look good or it says here a high place of ruling. Daniel didn't need to be high up. All of those things are just like something more sand into the bag. It may not be too bad if annual were to put his gold chain. Add that in here. Something a little bit of sand in here.
We get. I'll show you that for a little bit of an example.
Let's just say that sometimes we do those things we're we're tempted to, uh, once in a while, do something bad and somebody offers.
Us to do. Umm, maybe as you get older, maybe somebody offers to do something with you instead of going to a reading meeting in the evening instead of reading the Bible. Or maybe one of your friends at Sunday school, umm, wants you to pick on someone with them. Sometimes we do that as kids. We like, we don't like to include everybody, and that could be a little bit hurtful and that'll be like dumping a little bit of sand in there.
Well, it's it's it's hard to see because this bag is so cloudy, but you dump a little bit of sand in there and now I'm starting to see a little bit of sand in there.
However, there there are times that we'll slip up a little bit in life and do the wrong thing. But the the Lord is gracious in umm taking us back, but when we fill our fill our lives with Christ.
Daniel Daniel turned down that umm gold chain and the nice clothes and the high place of ruling. Rather than dumping that sand in there, he turned it down and umm again gave an answer to the king that was honoring to God and so still.
You can see a whole lot of rocks in there, and that's what's mostly in this bag here still.
Which is something that we have to try to keep in mind ourselves, is to just keep adding things to our lives. Just keep adding these rocks to our lives. Keep memorizing verses. That's something really good that you could do. Memorize verses, learn songs that praise the Lord. When you sing songs at home and praise the Lord, that's like filling your life with things of Christ. When you come to a camp like this, I don't know how you can feel, but I I feel a whole lot better being surrounded by Christians like this.
I feel like this is, this is sort of more like filling our lives with Christ. We're like the room full here of Christians. There's a whole bunch of them here. And that can help me out in my life. Because I feel like I've filled up this whole last week with time spent in the Word, time spent reading my Bible, time spent with other Christians, learning from other people that have read their Bible like this. This whole week feels like we've been just adding rocks to the bag like this and not dumping sand in it, and hopefully in the next couple weeks.
It would be easy to just like, reach in and pull up a verse that I heard this week, because that's what we've been working on, that's what we need to work on in our lives is filling our lives with, uh, Christ.
Let me let's look at yeah, let's look at another verse in Daniel chapter 6 and verse four. I think it is.
OK, so you remember when when, uh, the law was made to not worship any God for Daniel. You guys remember hearing that in the story, and Daniel still made a point to pray three times a day, just as he had before. He decided to, rather than, rather than, uh, close up the doors of his house and stop praying. Rather than putting a little more sand in his bag, he said no, I'm going to keep praying three times a day.
And it's OK if everybody sees it, because he was confident that God would take care of him. And it says that people saw him do that. And it says that, umm this, umm this part. Here people saw an occasion against Daniel concerning the Kingdom, but they couldn't find anything.
00:30:10
They wanted to get rid of Daniel. These these people in the Kingdom didn't like Daniel.
And they wanted to get rid of him. So it says that they looked and they decided we can't find anything in Daniel but things about God. So they looked at Daniel and this is all they could see was these rocks.
Wouldn't that be nice if people could say that about us?
You think people could, if somebody wanted to find something wrong with me, you think they could look at me and say I don't see anything but these rocks that he's been building his life on, He's, he's, he's umm all I can see is good things he's done for Jesus.
I it's a sad thing to say that that's not what my bag looks like. Really. I have some sand in my bag and that's pretty sad to pretty sad to say that that I I don't spend all the time like I see in this book of Daniel. I I don't do that as much as I should. There's times that umm, I'm given a choice to add sand or rocks to my pile and into my bag and I I make a decision on my own, a conscious decision. I know what I'm doing.
And I say, I'm going to, I'll get to the rocks later, I'm going to dump some sand in here. That's pretty sad. There's been times that I've decided where someone says, hey, maybe we should read together, or maybe we should go through a meeting together or go to a conference. We should talk about things in the Bible or we should sing some songs. Praise Jesus. And I said I'd rather dump sand in my bag right now.
That's the thing that we really need to watch out for and like I said, it just sometimes can be a little bit hard for.
For kids to do that, if you feel like you're just following your parents and going along, going along with what your parents are doing, but you you can, you can make a decision. You can ask for help. You could choose to hear these Bible stories and to hear about the love of Jesus. And you can choose to umm add rocks into your bag. Add add, umm build your life upon things that are pleasing to Jesus. And it's certainly something that we all need to do.
If this bag, if I keep, if I keep filling this thing up.
Dump a few more of these in here.
I put another handful in and another one.
Yeah, a few more.
This is like really starting to fill our lives with Christ. There's a little bit of sand down there, but.
Here, take a little bit of sand out of there.
You get a little sand out of there. You can't.
We spent so much time filling this up with rocks. We spent so much time.
Enjoying singing Sunday school songs. And we spent so much time memorizing verses. We do that at home. For a Sunday school, we memorize one verse a week. But sometimes kids will memorize more verses, a whole chapter even. And that's like filling your life with Christ right there. If you're spending time trying to memorize verses, sometimes you don't really have time for anything else.
If you're spending time reading the Bible and enjoying maybe not even going to conferences, you can listen to a lot of conferences online. Most of these meetings from this week are already online that you can listen to and maybe maybe kids, you don't listen to meetings from conferences, but a lot of conferences have Sunday schools and you can even ask your parents and I I hope that they would umm maybe listen to that request. You can ask your parents say, hey, are there any Sunday school lessons that I can listen to? And that is something that you can do to fill up your life.
With things of Christ.
Umm, rather than and and you put so much stuff in there. You put so much of Christ like things in there. And maybe there was some things in the past that you've done wrong. Maybe you were dumping some sand in your bag. But like that's all at the bottom. You can't aid and try there. He can't. You can't get down to there. It's still there. If you work hard enough, he could get back to it, get back to that sand. But when we're filling our lives up with Christ like that, that that makes a huge difference.
And that's that's what I picture when.
When, uh, all these question and answer meetings that we've had in the last week, there's people in here and that have left already that spent a lot of time filling their lives with Christ. So when a question comes to them right away, they can, they can reach in and pull out one of those rocks. They can. They they have so many versions that they've crammed into their heads and talked about so much and made it a real part of their lives. They don't have to. When they hear a question, they don't have to dig around and keep digging and digging.
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And then just pull up a tiny something and then they're like, I remember I memorized this first one time. It kind of goes along with it. No, A lot of people really purpose in their hearts to serve the Lord and to get close to him and to make that a big part of their lives. And then you have all these. You may not have all the answers, and you certainly still need to look to the Lord for help and guidance.
There's there's plenty of examples of that in the Bible where people still look to the Lord for help and guidance.
And but when you fill your things with, fill your life with things of Christ, it's very easy or a lot easier to reach down and pull something up that is pleasing to him.
So we know what? Just one more time to go back to the story of Daniel Umm.
We we know that uh Daniel was praying. Daniel continued to pray and he was thrown into the den of lions and Daniel chapter 6 and verse 16.
Says the the king spake and said unto Daniel, Thy God whom thou service continually, he will deliver thee So Dan, Daniel had like so many rocks like this that he had had in his life, He had filled his life up with Christ so much.
So that's what the king could see. So when the king, uh, ordered Daniel to be thrown into the den of lions, Daniel's faith had made an impression somewhat on the king, and that's what the king was able to see. And we know that Daniel was.
Saying and that that's really, really wonderful to see. That Daniel's life was so full of things for God that that's what others could see in him, and it made it an impression on others.
And I really hope that we could each be like that, that we can have our lives so full of Christ, so full of, umm, scriptural things, things that are pleasing to God, that others would look at us and start to know some answers just by seeing our lives. The king saw Daniel so much and heard from him so much he knew that God was capable of saving him. And that's a wonderful thing if somebody can get an answer like that from seeing our lives full of Christ.
And then just a sad a sad ending here just to finish off the story. We can also see, uh right after that after Daniel was saved from the lions that he was pulled up out of the lions then and those that all they could do in their lives was fill their lives up with sand.
So the the ones that accused Daniel and wanted to get rid of him, they're just like these bags, this bag of sand filling your life with everything pointless. Nothing good for Christ. At the end, they were thrown into that denim lion, and not only that, but it's very sad to see that it says that.
The ones that accuse Daniel threw him in or were thrown in and their families were thrown into the den of lions. That's a really sad thing. Daniel had an influence on the king somewhat, where the king knew that there would be a good outcome to umm or perhaps you just hope that there would be a good outcome to Daniel being thrown in the line. Then these ones that didn't follow God, they dragged down others with them. They were thrown into the lion's den and their families were thrown into the lion's den. The actions that we do not only affect us, but they affect our friends around us. They can affect our whole assembly, they can affect other people that we don't know.
These these men that we're doing the wrong thing, drag their family into the lines, then we need to be very careful in our lives to not do these things, fill our lives up with things of Christ, so that this is what people see and that they don't just see a bag of sand like this. That, as we umm as we know, is foolish. The foolish man built his house upon the sand, and his house came down right. But the one that built it on the rock, the ones that will fill their life with Christ.
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They will be able to, uh, survive and they will be helped in times that they're when they need it. All right. So ho hopefully, uh, you can at least maybe, umm, remember that there are two bags with rocks and sand in them here. And maybe, umm, at some point in your life later on you'll recall that. Or maybe you'll ask your parents what I was talking about. And I sure hope that, uh, for each of us here, that's made some sort of impact on us. Just a little visual example, if this thing is full of rocks all the way to the top.
It's hard to cram anything else in there when you have a bag, just an empty bag. You have to. You have to choose at the start of your life or.
I guess, uh, picturing at the start of your life, you have an empty bag and you can choose whether to put rocks in it or put sand in it. And it would be wonderful to see everyone here with their lives full of rocks like this, building your life on Christ the rock and umm.
And not putting meaningless sand in there. All right. I think that's all I have this morning. We're going to close in prayer.
Our God and Father, we give thanks again for the time that we could be together this morning to open up my word.
And we pray that.
Uh, your word would be able to reach our hearts properly and umm.
This lesson has been explained by just a feeble vessel. We pray that Thy word would be enter into our hearts and that it would fill up our lives.
And umm.
Even if, uh, my thoughts have been a bit off, we pray that your word would be able to lead us, help us to know how to fill our time with thanks for the Lord. We give thanks again for the opportunity to fill this whole last week with time learning versus reading the Bible together and all the times that we could sing praises together. We have so much to give thanks for. So much to praise you, Lord Jesus for give thanks for again.
A wonderful work done on the cross to pay for us and for the suffering that you did so that we don't have to.
Good. Thanks. So we can remember you, Lord Jesus, this morning, now in a short time. And uh, we would ask for a safe trip back home for so many people today. In Jesus name, Amen.