Michigan Family Camp: 2022
Table of Contents
Tabernacle Talks #1
Tabernacle Talks #2
Tabernacle Talks #3
Shepherds and Shepherding
Address—Stephen Rule
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Stay together tonight. The number 238 a little block. If you have a handy not, it's one some of you might know #238 in the little block.
Our shepherd is the Lord.
A while back I started to meditate on a subject that I wanted to meditate on for a long, long time and have it. I want to meditate on it because it's an area where I'm very deficient.
So where else are you going to get instruction in the word of God?
And.
There are many of you in this room that are probably can give me instruction afterwards on the subject, and I would be truly happy to hear it. But my desire tonight is to stimulate you in that same desire, and it's the subject of shepherding, and shepherds I am not.
Actually that I have a lot to learn in the subject and some of you perhaps have a lot to instruct.
But I want to share with you, it's a vast subject in the Word of God and.
It's it's something well worth recognizing the need of shepherding and shepherds, and also that we are sheep being shepherded. Each one of us is a shepherd, a sheep in the hands of that great shepherd of the sheep is currently at work in each of our lives. So we'll get to see his work in each of our lives.
Driven home to me, and perhaps I said this is an encouragement to you if you feel like this isn't your.
Area of expertise has driven home to me on Tuesday or this week.
00:05:05
That thing on the subject for some time, but on Tuesday of this week, I lost my hat and it's a special hat to me. It's not just any old hat. It was a gift from my son and not just any old gift. 4 1/2 years ago, he and I went to visit in Ecuador where we lived for six years. And so when we went, I never went into a particular market and I bought a.
Leather knockoff of an Australian.
And I really like that hat for a few months until somebody admired it and wanted to have it. Some of my sisters and I hadn't given them a gift and I don't know how many years now. Well, finally I know what they want. I don't have an excuse. So I gave them my jackaroo and.
A few months ago.
My son and I are just chatting and something clicked in his head, I think. And so for Father's Day this year, he ordered a kangaroo Hi Jackaroo from Australia, had it shipped, arrived in time for Father's Day and I was wearing and enjoying. It's kind of nice for summer.
And I lost my hat. I got in the car. We lived less than 10 minutes from BTP, where I worked publishers and didn't get past halfway down the street.
That's why.
I lost my hand and it was bothering me enough because when I got home it wasn't there in the evening and I must have left it in my office and I got in the car. You know I'm not going to be able to sleep real well tonight if that thing got stolen out of my car when I walked at lunch today.
And so I got back in the car to go, and I'm driving down the street. And when was the last time I hopped in the car to look for anything else? Anyone else? I don't know what your answer to that question is. Maybe it was this morning. But that was my lesson. I looked all over. I searched everywhere in the building I thought I'd been, and I drove home without my sheep. I mean, without my hat.
And it never came to me.
And telephone you know our Shepherd never loses.
A shame. And what about maybe you're young here, maybe of a younger sister or brother, and you're concerned about it and your heart's toward them? The Lord never loses his sheep, and He wants you to share that attitude. He wants me to share that attitude and until he find it. So I want to share four things that I've enjoyed. One of them is an attitude that goes with shepherding and then three actions that go with shepherding. 1 is how the shepherd guards the sheep.
Another is how they give to the sheep. And the third is how they gather the sheep. There's about 178 verses in the Word of God just on the flock. And forget sheep and shepherds and lambs and ewes. And there's a whole bunch more. You read through those verses on the flock, you'll find 3 big things at least. And those three will go through the guarding of the sheep.
The giving to the sheep, whether it's food or water.
It's like giving, not a taking. And then there's a gathering of bringing together. It's another three actions at least, and probably more of a shepherd. And there this is for all ages. I'm going to turn to verse the year. That's the elders. It's stressed elders, but it has the right attitude in it, and that's why we're turning there. I'm not encouraging you to take up a gift the Spirit of God hasn't given. In Acts 20, it says to the Ephesian elders that whom the Holy Spirit has put in that place of leadership. That's not my burden.
Evening. It's that attitude, not heart of our Shepherd and each one of us.
Toward the ones in our path. Maybe it's your children, you're a father and a mother. You've got a few sheep land in your home. If it's your brother and sister, maybe it's another one in the assembly where you come from. But that attitude of a shepherd is what's on my heart. So let's look at it in Prince Peter Five. I think it's captured there beautifully.
First Peter 5.
This was the strange sheep.
They've got a job of taking care of sheep, and the Lord gave them that Commission. So clearly he had that gift and that service, and he writes about it here, but he brings in a key point and first Peter chapter 5 and verse two, feed the flock of God, which is among you.
I'll pause there. Feed the flock of God. That merge is one that suggests that this should be characteristic of you.
So drivers translation, not about shepherd, but it's what should be characteristic. It's what you should be saturated with. And I would just suggest that each one of us can be saturated, maybe not with this specific work, but with the attitude. The attitude of love, one for another, the attitude of a chair for the person next to you. You haven't spoken to my conscience despite a lot of time reading verses and meditating on them.
00:10:26
When was the last time you went out at night?
After a lost cheek, you'll go out. After a lost hat, will you go out after a lost sheep? And this attitude is one that isn't acquired in an evening. And so if you're younger, this attitude is an attitude acquired over a lifetime. And it says which is among you. You know, it's pretty fascinating if you look at shepherds and flocks and so on in the Scriptures.
You would think that the dominant thought would be guiding and leading.
I'll give you a question you can tell me later. How many people in the Old Testament does it say lead God's flock? I'll give you 2 That I don't believe it ever says let the flock of God. But since they followed it and we're going to go through one. One is David and we won't go through it, but Amos is the other one. They followed the plot of God and I believe there are only two that it says lead. Notice right here that they flock of God and there's.
Attitude which is among you. So that attitude that's involved in shepherding appears to be not lording it over what belongs to you, but that among you that are next to you, the ones that are by you, the ones that belong to God. It's God's flock, it says in the beginning part we read the flock of God.
Feed the flock of God if your heart is close to the Lord. If my heart is close to the Lord, I'm going to care for what He cares for, who He cares for.
And what belongs to him and the lambs and the sheep that belong to him are where my heart is going to go out.
There's more to the attitude and verse 5.
Likewise, you younger submit yourself than the elder. Yeah, all of you be subject 1 to another and be clothed with humility. For God resisted the proud and giveth grace to the humble. Then it says humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time. We'll look at it if there's time later on. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God.
You don't believe this means?
You did something wrong.
And God just had your tires blow out on the road and you swerved into the ditch in the front end of your car is crumbled. God speaking to you, you better not be so proud. That's not what this means. It's not the trials and the difficulties and the tribulations of life being used to bring humility to a person who's not. I believe that the humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, the sense of it is this.
It's like David.
David sat out on the hills, the Judean hills, as a shepherd. He looked up toward those heavens, and the power and the might and the wonder of his God was present before him. And he writes about it at least three times in the sauce. No doubt the memories of his shepherding care as a young shepherd.
And when he looks out he was tiny, but God was great. Humble yourselves is not be humble it is have that attitude of humility in the presence of the greatness of God. That's what we need to have the right attitude for caring for the sheep. Go to Galatians 6 when you're restoring, restore such a one in the can't quote it, sorry.
I'll turn to it.
The spirit of meekness.
That there's a There's an attitude of humility, in other words.
Such as one in the spirit of meekness, considering myself, lest thou also be tempted. There's that attitude of humility with the shepherd.
I'll just read one verse from Psalm 78 on that attitude.
Right. Can't read that character in the Word of God without coming to know and love them. In recent years I've come to know and love Shaken the shepherd and Peter the shepherd, and recently David the sheep and shepherd.
He's the one that said the Lord is my shepherd. We won't take that up. That means he was a sheep. And I love this. And Psalm 78 and verse 70 it says.
00:15:12
He chose.
David also his servant, and took him from the sheepfolds, from following the use. Great with young, He brought him to feed Jacob, his people in Israel, his inheritance. So we fed them according to the integrity of his heart, and guided them by the skillfulness of his hands. Who did the Lord want to feed his people?
The one that was following use.
What an attitude, what a spirit. You know if you're a young man and you have a tremendous amount of energy.
And strength.
And or brings into your path.
A young woman and you're brought together.
Let's just suppose I know that can be the opposite.
But let's just suppose her energy and strength is different than yours.
And her bedtime is 10 and yours is 1:00 AM or whatever it might be, whatever the need is. Who did the Lord choose to shepherd His people? I was somebody that was following the use.
He was going at her pace, not his. He was going at the pace that the sheep can handle, not what he felt like.
That's the attitude involved in shepherding. So let's look at these three things to guard.
Can't think of guarding the sheep without turning to John 10.
I just want to read a couple verses out of John 10.
We'll spend most of the time thinking about David the Shepherd guarding.
John 10.
Not just.
Three verse 7 not going to go through the whole.
Of John 10 here, that this there's a dispensational figure that's beautiful. It's not on my heart this evening, he says.
Then said Jesus verse 7 John 10, verse seven. Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I sent you I in the door. Sheep very likely.
The picture the sheep bolt in the Middle East, the Stonewall that was the keep out the predators from the sheep needed to go in at night.
They had a great big one near the town usually and that great big one near the town sometimes they could have 10,000 sheep in it. There's a traveler in Syria near to Vasquez in 1800 did a reporting on it said that there about there's a sheep pole there about 10,000 sheep. But when they went up into the high pasture into the mountains, they're much smaller. She pulls to keep those sheep at night and.
The shepherd really was the door.
Machine. They didn't have a wooden door on that sheepfold, or the rocks stacked up around to create the wall around. And in that doorway sat a shepherd.
And maybe you've heard that many times, so bye. But have you ever thought of what that means? What that means to sit between the enemy and the flock? Never thought what it means to. I suspect a few of you are in beds a little less comfortable than your norm. Maybe it's more comfortable than your norm, but some of you may be a little less comfortable than your perfect pillow mattress situation for the next few days.
So when you lie down tonight in a slightly uncomfortable imagine sitting on the rocky ground with your back against rocks and your knees against rocks, and your job to keep a liner bear from getting into where the sheep are. Not that that'll make you sleep better, but it's an image that will help you understand what it means.
To stand between the enemies of the sheep, and that's the action of the shepherd.
That's why you're a Good Shepherd, and my Good Shepherd did for us. He laid down his life for you and me. And so he says a little further down.
Verse nine I am the door. Invite me. If any man come in, enter in. I'll skip down to verse 10. The thief cometh not, but who were to steal, and to kill and to destroy, I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. I am the Good Shepherd, The Good Shepherd giveth.
His life, the sheep. What an impressive statement. Lord Jesus laid down his physical life there at the cross for you and I. He was a Good Shepherd, giving His life for the sheep. There's a lot in those words.
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You're a dad, got children in your home, you're tired at night and your kids want to play and it's not their bedtime. Yet you have a chance for maybe half of 1% of what the Lord did here.
Taking and giving. Oh, and you're not really in that particular mood to give your mom and you've got kids in the home. I can't say I can say exactly, but I bet there's an awful lot of opportunities when you're sitting with a craft back and cramped knees, figuratively speaking, in order to stand between the danger and your children.
Do you think your shepherd doesn't notice?
Sometimes we do, don't we? We think we're the only ones that know how hard it is, but our Shepherd has been there ahead of us.
And he's been there to guard his sheep, and he knows. And he values that service standing between the enemy and his children, something that he deeply values. You know, that's why I chose David, First Samuel 17. Just look at it briefly. First Samuel 17 and David.
Speaking to Saul, you know the story.
But David speaking the song and verse 32 Says.
And David sent this law that no man's heart failed because of him. Thy servant will go and fight with this Philistine. It's also to David that we're not able to go against this Philistine, to fight with him, with our bloody youth, and he a man of war from his youth. And David said unto Saul, Thy servant kept his father's sheep, and I came a lion and a bear.
It took a lamb out of the flock, and I went out after him and smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth. When he arose against him me, I caught him by his beard, smote him, slew him. Thy servants slew both the lion and the bear.
That's David's resume. Would you like to have that on your resume? I'm not sure which jobs did you get, but you could get a job as a shepherd.
And, you know, there was a lion and a bear. I don't believe this was one incident. I believe if you look at the wording carefully and a variety of translations, you get the sense that this was when the lion came or the bear came. And this kind of thing happens more than once, probably many times. And you know, if you have the care and you have a love.
For one of God's children, maybe it's one of the children he's entrusted to you in your home, and maybe it's that brother or sister.
Or a young person in the assembly. It might not just be once, might not just be twice, might be quite a few times. You're called on to make a sacrifice that hurts because there's a lion or a bear there. But God recorded David's sacrifice and he valued it, and he records everything and values it, but it's done for him. Maybe that others don't notice or don't really care, but.
God does. He sees it and he values it.
When we stand between his sheep and that threat, whatever it might be.
It was also pretty personal, wasn't it? Because David was an expert with the sling, right? And with my non shepherd's heart, I, I have imagined, well, if that were me, I think I try to knock at least, you know, use the David with Goliath method. That sounds a little better, doesn't it? Get it in the head and go over and chop off the head, sling that stone, get the lion, then kind of deal with it at that point. That should be a lot nicer.
But that wasn't his resume. He went over and he took it by the beard. It says. I take it the lion in that case, took it by the beard and smote it and slew it. There was personal pain maybe involved in that action of caring for God's sheep, us children, but it's valued. It's valued by God.
Only the time to go through it, so I'm going to give you something to look back on if you if you feel like at some point.
David seems to have grown, learned all kinds of lessons until he became kings and when he became king, all the way up until Nathan came to him and spoke to him about his sin with Bathsheba and Uriah. There's a mixture, and you and I are mixture. Every one of us, no matter what age we are in this room here, we're a mixture. And perhaps there's some things that are really for the Lord in your life or in mine.
00:25:20
Things the Lord needs to work on. And that was David's life. If you look for the book of Second Samuel, you want to read the book of Second Samuel, start in the second chapter and watch all the way up to the 10th chapter and you'll find at least five things where David was starting to stray. Remember, he says the Lord is my shepherd. David knew he was a sheep by the time he wrote those words.
And I think he was reflecting on some of these things.
There are, there's multiple, there's at least five passages, perhaps at least three things, and you'll watch that of those three things, the last four chapters of the book.
The Lord solves all of them. It's beautiful when you look at it. The Lord brought his sheep back on this one and he brought his sheep back on that one and he brought his sheep back on the other one. We're only going to look at one of those three things. The other, the other two you can look at. There's at least five passages that do the build up.
But there the Lord brought his sheep back He goes, and until he finds it, that's the attitude of our shepherd. And he brings him back as beautiful with David. And then there's an explosion of joy at the end of his life. But this guarding of the sheep, I'll turn and.
Well.
We'll look at just a piece of it, I think in Second Samuel Chapter 12, that's where.
Nathan comes to speak to David's conscience. That beautiful Psalm 51, that Psalm 51 was the end of David's journey. It's a fantastic beginning to it. But he had all kinds of lessons that the Lord brings together and solves by the end of his life. But Second Samuel chapter 12, I just want you to notice the figure the Lord sent to David.
And.
The interest of time will only read a couple of verses out of it.
Verse 3. Second Samuel 12. Verse three. But the poor man meant nothing, save 1. Little ewe lamb, that she had bought and nourished up, and grew up together with him, and with his children. He did eat of his own meat, drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom was unto him as a daughter.
And stop there.
That's what David took.
You know, David as a shepherd was chosen by God because he followed the use and lamps in that care for the ones that needed him and he was willing to go at their pace and follow them, caring for them the whole way. You know, a you that's pregnant apparently needs about three times as much water as.
A few that as a regular defeat, a sheet might need about a gallon and a half of water every day to drink.
Are you with young ones? Needs about 5 gallons a day. And those are the ones that David cared for. Three times as much work to draw the water. If you have to draw from the well in Bethlehem where they love the water, if you had to draw that water, I don't know. But if he drew it from there, it was three times as much work. And it didn't matter because he cared for those sheep. And that's why the Lord took him. And when he became king, he forgot. Somewhere along the way, David forgot it.
You know, maybe you're a father or a mother, or maybe you're an older brother or sister and you have a few more privileges than the others that you're caring for and that you have to care for. And it's a slow slide sometimes. And I believe it was a slow slide in David's life, and not without a mixture of wonderful things, wonderful actions and grace. But there was a slow slide. And he got from the point where he followed those views.
To where he took the little you.
That was the only one the poor man had. You know, they raised him as pets. Apparently they still do. I raised one as a pet. And this was one was precious, wasn't for war, it wasn't for milk. It was the precious pet of its owner. And David went and took something precious. They took it for himself. Davidson did it with Bathsheba, didn't start when he was walking.
On the rooftop and he looked out.
They saw that cheap enough. Davidson with Bathsheba didn't start when he didn't go out to war, and he stayed back at the time when kings went to war. David's difficulties began a long time before that, when David started to be the one who took some things instead of gave to his sheep, instead of guarding them.
00:30:22
He took it would have been so hard. Every king around was different.
Have been different, David started to take and you know it's very hard if you're in that position where you can take but maybe not take a take a little bit here, take a little bit there.
I just a word that's a word to my conscience, so I'll pass it on if it's not yours. Fabulous.
You know.
Really good things.
One of mine is.
I enjoy that last hour or so of my day and.
And because I get that opportunity to read and to pray and to have a slow heading off of bed and when somebody comes to me with the something they want to talk about, that's something on their heart and needs to be talked about.
Exhaust. Conscious. Pause. A conscious thought, then yes, that's what we're going to do. Because.
There might as sheep or the lamb needs something.
Can even be your.
Not to the full neglect, not to never having your time with the Lord. You have to have it, but I mean, when you're choosing it because boy, I just enjoy this versus Lord's calling me something at the moment that I need to spend on it. That is the kind of attitude writ large that grew in David's life.
But he had a shepherd and a fabulous shepherd. That shepherd brought him back. I just loved the end of this book.
And I won't go through the other ones, but I want to read you this first. I just so enjoyed it when I saw it, especially because I believe it's here morally. The last chapter of Second Samuel isn't necessarily chronological. In fact, the last four chapters aren't necessarily chronological. So it had a moral reason for God putting it here.
And.
In verse.
14.
David send the numbering the people, the judgment of God has come, the destroying Angel is there. Watch these words. And David said unto God, I am on a great straight. Let us fall now into the hand of the Lord, for his mercies are great, and let me not fall into the hand of man. So the Lord said of pestilence. And then it comes, verse 16. And when the Angel stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord repented him to evil, and said to the Angel.
People it is enough they now thine hands and the Angel of the Lord was.
By the pressing place of Iran on the genus site. And David spake unto the Lord, when he saw the Angel that smote the people.
And said, Who? I have sinned, and I have done wickedly now these words. But these sheep, what have they done?
Let thy hand, I pray thee, be against me and against my father's house, as I realize that there's a lot in this story and I realized that David recognized that the destroying Angel was there because he is the king had failed and then brought in the problem.
But it's his attitude that I love, and I believe it's the result of the shepherding of his Shepherd.
He says these sheep, what have they done Now he cares more for those sheep than anything that happens to him or his father's house. I believe that that's why he can go into the next book and he's ready to hand off the Kingdom because he's learned or relearned the lesson that he knew are many lessons we know and we forget. God brings him back to us in his faithful shepherding of us. Second action of a shepherd that was guarding.
Or failing the guard and needing to relearn.
2nd is giving.
Just the whole attitude of giving.
And not taking.
I don't know how to say this so it doesn't get misinterpreted. You won't get upset, it'll just. But I'll try it.
00:35:05
Can you think of anywhere in the word of God?
Where sheep shearing?
That's a good connotation.
The reason why I introduced it as I did is there's nothing wrong with Wolf, right?
So I believe it's in Proverbs 31 woman spins the wall and makes clothing for her family and certainly spins the plaques, right. I think well, it's used. There was wool was there not in some of the there's certainly goats here in the Tabernacle, but she cheering.
As a sheep before shears is done, that wasn't the best context for sheep shearing.
Amnon. Let's see. I know Absalom.
Absolutely, he organized a sheep shearing for.
He organized the sheep shearing so that he could murder his brother Amnon. Not not the best context, Judah. Judah went down to shear his sheep and he had a little.
Moral difficulty.
See. There's at least there's at least one more.
With the sheep shearing, Oh yes, Nabal Nabil was organizing a big party for his sheep shearing and.
I didn't go very well either, did it? I think it's a figure. There's nothing wrong with sheet sharing. She apparently somewhere they need to lose their wall otherwise I get too hot. There's a lot of good reasons for it, but I think at least in general in the scriptures, sheep sharing has a negative connotation because that's the shepherd taking from She Divided and Ezekiel 34 as well.
We're not going to touch on that chapter tonight. It's a fantastic chapter on Shepherd.
She you're taking their wall there. I think it doesn't use shearing. It says taking the wall or something like that. Ezekiel 34. Why? Because the shepherd in God's book is there to give to the sheep, not to take from the sheep. The sheep aren't there for you to feed on them or me to feed on them. They're there to be given to and again in this attitude.
Of giving to the sheep. There's so many verses. The word of God is packed with it. Let's just look at one beautiful one. This is the Lord the shepherd in Isaiah chapter 40, and this is the shepherd giving to his sheep the spirit of it.
Dispensational figure again the Messiah regathering the scattered tribes. But in Isaiah chapter 40 and verse 11 it says he.
Shall feed his flock like a shepherd. She'll gather the lambs with his arm and carry them in his bosom. And shall gently leave those that are with young. There it is again. There's that tender, loving, giving care. Can you imagine walking along carrying a sheep in his arms? This isn't even on the shoulders. I can. I'm curious. My son, when he was young, on my shoulders. And that was kind of fun.
I enjoyed it. He wasn't very safe. It felt flat on my face once stripped right over the curb and hit the ground with him on my shoulders.
Not the best shepherd, but the Lord doesn't trick like that. And in this figure he's carrying them in his arms, not even on his shoulders. Beautiful. And maybe because it's the Lamb, but he says carry them in his bosom. He's close to his heart. And she'll gently leave those that are with you on with measure the waters and the hollow of his hand. And it goes on. And it gives those figures. And if you had time to look at them, if you go back and read them, I'd suggest the next few verses.
The spirit of humility.
Here is my shepherd. He's the one. The nations, they're the Gentile nations. They're a drop in the bucket. They're nothing. He's got that power. That's his. And what's he doing with it? He's holding me in his arms.
He's got that power and what's he doing? He's giving to me. And the first part of that verse he shall feed his walk.
Shall feed his flock. He's giving them what they need. He's giving them to eat. See Moses.
When Moses came to his father-in-law.
He when he came to his father-in-law in Exodus 2.
Maybe I can't quote it. I'm going to read it and access chapter 2.
This is Moses up to this point.
He learned in the school of Egypt. He learned a lot the unlearned shepherding. I didn't teach that. They didn't believe in shepherding. So what he learned in the schools of the Egyptians, the shepherds were supposed to be down in Goshen because the Egyptians didn't like shepherds. So that's where Jacob wet when he came down with his family. So Moses didn't learn shepherding in the court of Pharaoh.
00:40:17
What's the first thing he does when he plays? He arrives. Exodus 2HE arrives. What's the first lesson? Apparently kindergarten shepherding. Maybe it's preschool shepherding. I don't know. First step. Anyway, Exodus 2 and verse 16, the priest of Midian had seven daughters and they came in Group water and fill the troughs to water their father's flock and shepherd's game and drove them away. Not very nice shepherds in that area.
But Moses stood up and helped them.
And watered the flock.
First step regards. And he gives. He waters their block. Jacob, what he means, Rachel, what's the first thing he does? He waters the block. But do we read our Lord doing, feeding, giving to them? What does David write about in Psalm 23? Well, there's those good pastures. There's those still waters.
It beads any waters.
Got another homework assignment for you?
What's the difference?
I have the answer key to the first homework assignment. I don't have an answer key to this one, so when you find the answer, give it to me. I meditated on a little bit and enjoyed it. But shepherds are supposed to feed and water.
And they're both a lot of work. You got to leave the sheep to the right pasture. You look at the amount of work that.
That Rebecca had to do to get water for the camels of Abraham's servants. It's a lot of work.
That's a lot of work. Maybe it's a lead. And find the quiet pool where the sheep will will drink.
There's a lot of possibilities and there are a lot of things to enjoy and meditating on. Why feed and water? I don't know, but I do know this. They're both giving to the sheep, not taking from the sheep. So let's go to First Samuel 17 and I think a key to giving to the sheep.
And not taking from the sheep is found in David's life at the very beginning of it.
I think it's a figure anyway, again in First Samuel 17.
And.
Verse 14717 and verse 14.
David was the youngest, I'll notice this the three eldest.
Followed Saul. Great children. The three oldest followed salt.
But David went returned from Saul to feed his father sheep to suggest this. I've enjoyed it in meditating on it anyway. So let's figure sometimes of the Antichrist and scriptures is also a figure of the flesh and the three older brothers.
Or a long way from the sheet, they had a bunch of ideas about how David should be with the sheep.
But they were a long way away. And it says specifically, it could say they were with the army, it could say they were there for the battle, but it doesn't. The Spirit of God chose to say they followed Saul. And he could say that David left following Saul and he came back to feed the sheep. I'm sorry. It could say that David left the battlefield, left his brothers, left whatever to feed the sheep. But it does. And it says return from.
Beat his Father's sheep. And I would suggest, just as a practical application, at least maybe there's others that if you want to feed God's people, water God's people give to God's people, there's no room for the flesh. There's no room. There's no place, there's no opportunity in the flesh. The flesh doesn't like sitting in doorways at night.
Being a wall so that there's none that can attack the sheep.
Doesn't like getting up to give when it could take. And so in order for David to feed the sheep, he had to leave and figure at least return and saw the thieves. And if we're to feed whatever sheep the Lord puts around us, whether we're a shepherd with that specific gift, whether it's the children or family or those nearest in our home.
00:45:10
Or assembly it's going to be if the plush doesn't get any place.
We returned from it to feed.
Giving there's one more.
Make this suggestion too because it's beautiful. If you read just first and second Samuel, there are the books that express the responsibility David had and see a lot of failure mixed in with a lot of grace and a lot of learning. If you want to get refreshed after reading that, just go right on in the first Chronicles and when your tongue is done getting twisted in the 1St 10 chapters with all those names.
That have good lessons in them too.
Starting from Chapter 11, just read quickly all the way to the end of the book. Enjoy a good fresh drink of water because you'll find just floating of grace in David's life. Totally different view, a view that God has of his sheep when he's done. And a lot of that end of that book is the end of David's life. Maybe the last few weeks, months, I don't know, but it's the end of his life and God's work is done and God delighted with it.
Is it? Where can you? Is it working me? And he's a shepherd that's so faithful. He's just with you every single step of the way.
Just like Jacob at the end of Jacob's life, Jacob says.
Again, I can't quote it. I love the verse, but I can't quote it. I'm going to have to turn to it if like, somebody can help me.
The one that speaks of one that shepherded me all my life long until this day.
And then there's the time I'll have to let you look for it. It's it's within the last couple chapters of Genesis and Jacob says.
As he reflects, he looks back on his life, he says God something very close to the God that shepherd me, shepherded me all my life long till this day. Thank you very much. Paul 4815 They blessed Joseph and said, God, before whom my father's Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me.
All my life long until this day. Fabulous. That's the end of his life.
A lifespan of the physical shepherd, but as a sheep realizing that he's a sheep.
David at the end of his life is beautiful. Just read those last chapters in First Chronicles and just enjoy. There's almost no failure in any of those chapters. There's two verses on what First Samuel takes the whole chapter on, but just a couple of verses here with David learning to give beautiful at the end of his life, First Chronicles 29.
And this is the result of life.
I'll just read a few verses. First forward, he's giving for the temple that Solomon will build even 3000 talents of gold of the golden Oprah, and 7000 talents of her fine silver, to overlay the walls, the house houses with all the gold for things of gold, and the silver for things of silver, and for all manner of work to be made by the hands of the artificers. Who then is willing to consecrate a service this day unto the Lord?
And the chief of the fathers, and the Princess, and the tribes of Israel, the captains of thousands.
And of hundreds, with the rulers of the Kingsburg offered willingly, David had learned a gift. And he gives abundantly, he gives richly. And.
Stimulates others. It's beautiful. It stimulates all those others and they give and they're listed. They give willingly. Well, that's giving. There's gathering. We could look at the principle of it in Matthew Chapter 9.
With the Lord Himself.
Matthew Chapter 9 and verse.
36.
Lord has been going around.
Casting out demons and preaching and teaching and healing.
Verse 36. Matthew 936. But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, as they fainted, and were scattered abroad as sheep, having no shepherd.
So I mentioned that before.
But I not only.
Not only do I have a lot to learn shepherding in the practical spiritual sense, but I know very little personal experience with sheep.
00:50:05
So I go back to one very.
Helpful experience to me in my life, whether a few years ago my wife and I were visiting in Peru. I went up into the mountains in the mountains of Peru to a little village called Pine Chakra. It's a small little place, some subsistence farming, some subsistence shepherding. The family we're staying with at your smiling saw you've been there, having you. They were.
6 sheep and six goats. That was the flock of the family where we stayed. And when we got there, we left our things at the house and dad wasn't there. He was off shepherding his sheep. So we went to find him and we walked out the road and down past and over the stream and, and the brother was with me, saw him all across the field there and.
You know there's 12 sheep and goats together total.
And he came over the road and he had a big smile. He was glad to greet us. And it didn't seem at all interested. And what we had to say, that's what I thought. It didn't seem at all interested because, you know, he just kind of listened a little bit and he kind of look away from us. And he'd listen a little bit and he'd look away from us. And finally, they're slow here, kicked in. He was making sure his sheep didn't get scattered.
He was constantly looking where his sheep were. I don't know if there were predators there. He'd call me later so, but as far as I know, the danger there is falling over a Cliff, falling all the rocks, everywhere there's the stream. There's a lot of dangers at least. And there's a chance of getting dispersed and scattered and that Good Shepherd and as I and his sheep constant, constant that they wouldn't get scattered.
They constantly wanted to. In fact, he left us a couple times to go over and draw them back together.
And here's the Good Shepherd, and he's got his eye on those scattered sheep, and his heart's toward him. And what does he say?
What he says to my heart, and I think he says to your heart, and the burden on my heart this evening. And saith He unto his disciples. The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few. Pray, therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest.
I know that this is among his people, Israel.
And just want to apply it here, not in the normal way of applying it in the gospel and going out with the gospel, but applying in with the heart for His own people, the shepherds.
Want to turn? There's a lesson in scattering, and I'll just give it in words. Remember what happened after David's sin?
You read the first, let's see, read chapters 2 Through 9 part ways of ten of Second Samuel. There's there's this victory and there's that victory and there's the capture of Jerusalem and there's all those other things. And then you hit chapter 12. Well, you hit Chapter 11, sin with Bathsheba chapter 12, and Nathan speaks to him and then just everything appears to be falling apart. And in the sense of his Kingdom, it was.
I'm going to make this suggestion that in fact, we'll look at one verse, Second Samuel 15, just to make a point a little more clearly. Second Samuel 15.
And verse.
Yeah.
Specific one.
Verse 12 will do.
An absolute scent for HIPAA. All the gala night, David's counselor from his city, even from Gilo, while he offered sacrifices and the conspiracy was strong and the people increased continually with Absalom. And from that point forward, you get a mess until Absalom dies and then everybody's scattered. David's on the wrong side of the Jordan. People are scattered.
And the shepherd is ready to gather them all back together.
Because there's a work that's been done in a lot of hurts. I want to make this point. Absalom was all about Absalom, and that's what's scattered.
David began and ended as one who loves God's sheep, and that's how they get the gathering of others is in an effort so much of our own will. It's a sharing of a heart of the shepherd, and where we put ourselves first, it's going to automatically lead a scattering.
00:55:13
Of God's when our interests are after ourselves, when we're like Absalom where you could.
Pick just about anything in his life and you would find an example of pride, an example of self-interest. That's what leads to scattering. If small little thing, it has the effect of scattering. If it has God's sheep at its heart, it's going to lead to gathering. It's going to lead to the bringing together of God's people.
Bringing together of your family if you are a parent in the family, the bringing together of brothers and sisters if you're a brother or sister. And that's the context in which you can have a shepherd's heart. Look what happens with David and First Chronicles 29 again. It's beautiful. Well worth reading the whole book of First Chronicles.
Music quickly to get the flavor and slowly for the detail. But infrastructure 29 again.
Here is the gathering that was the result of David's the end of David's life.
Just read a few verses, verse 20 and David said to all the congregation, thou bless the Lord your God and all the congregation blessed the Lord God of their fathers and bow down their heads and worship the Lord and the king, and they sacrificed sacrifices under the Lord.
Burnt offerings unto the Lord on the Morrow after that day even 1000 bullets 1000 Rands 1000 lands with their drink offerings and sacrifices in abundance for all Israel just to show that it's the end of Damons life. The next verse says. And that eat and drink before the Lord on that day with a great gladness. And they made Solomon the son of David king the second time.
And anointed him unto the Lord, be the chief governor.
It's the end of David's life. The Lord is my shepherd. He's been gathered back. What's the effects that flows from his life? He's got the people around him gathered back. And what are they doing? Worshipping.
Worshipping the Lord together. That's the proper end result of any work shepherding.
Hymnsing - Dealing With Fear
God Is Knocking at Your Heart's Door. Have You Opened the Door?
Gospel—Paul House
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Well, welcome tonight to the Gospel meeting, and I'd like to sing a hymn in the Little Flock and #49 in the appendix.
49 in the appendix and if you someone can start that for us please.
If I want there is one.
00:05:28
I just want to read a little verse that I enjoyed in my own reading a few days ago.
It's in Second Corinthians chapter one.
And this is in verse 11.
I'm going to pray now and ask the Lord's help, but I would just read this verse first for each one in this room who belongs to the Lord Jesus.
He also helping together by prayer for us.
So my desire is that each one who is a believer here in the room.
Would pray as I do and through the meeting that there may be salvation for.
Someone tonight who is not saved yet. Let's pray. Our God and our Father, we just, we give thanks for this. Another privilege to have a gospel meeting.
The talk about the crucified one, thy beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and now we would pray to thee. Our God is the one that knows every heart, every life, every person in detail here tonight who's looked down on our lives since we were born.
Knows everything. And we just would pray that if there's somebody here tonight who is not saved, who has never accepted the Lord Jesus as their Savior, that tonight they may come just as they are. They may accept the Lord Jesus as their Savior. And we would just thank Thee tonight for our salvation. Each one who belongs to Thee by grace were saved, not of ourselves.
We were wrought and sinners that deserved hell just as much as anyone else.
We thank Thee for thy goodness to us, our God and our Father, and we just ask for help tonight.
And we pray in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
You know, you know, you may say to yourself, why do I come to gospel meetings on a regular basis and.
The reason I like to go to gospel meetings is I like to hear about the Lord Jesus one more time and how he gave himself for me. But there's another purpose I have for going to gospel meetings and that is so that I can tell the gospel through the week to people, to my customers for instance, or people that I've met and I can tell them about the gospel, meaning that I had the privilege that to be out on Sunday evening.
And how the gospel that was given out, how it would apply to them.
And so last week when I was in gospel meeting in Reno Ferry at home where I live.
There was a man called Francois Leger who had the gospel, and it was an excellent gospel. He told a story that really touched my heart. And I want to just tell the story at the very beginning because it was a very, very good story. And I've told this through the week and the story goes like this years ago, and it was a long time ago, there was a man that was a landlord.
And he had.
A series of tenants that rented properties from him and one of the people who rented from him was an old lady and she didn't have a lot of money and times were tough and so this landlord really cared about her and.
He went to see her and he knocked on her door and she saw him coming and she said, oh, he's after the rent. I don't have enough to pay the rent right now.
So when he knocked on the door, she hid down behind the cupboards so that he wouldn't see her. And he knocked and he knocked and he knocked and she didn't answer the door. Finally, he went away, and a couple days later, she was in the market buying groceries and who would come by but the land board. And she's like, oh, man, I'm going to have to talk to him.
So she talks to the landlord and the landlord said, you know, I came by your place a couple of days ago.
And my desire was I had a box of food that I wanted to give you, but you know, you never, never answered the door.
00:10:09
And so this landlord, he wasn't there to collect the money her the rent that she owed. He was being kind to her and brought her a box of food and she missed out because she didn't answer the knock on the door. And I want to just say to you that are here tonight.
You know if you're saved or not, I don't know. You know, you know, if you've ever asked the Lord Jesus to be your own Savior, And I hope that each person has done that, but you know, if you haven't, you're missing out. You're missing out.
You're the one that.
That's losing, you know, that landlord. He wanted to be kind to that poor lady.
He brought her food. He wanted to be kind to where he wanted to show her love. And she said no, no thank you. Are you saying that to God tonight? Are you saying no thank you? I don't want your love. You know, I was talking to a man this week about his soul and I said to him, do you have any idea what an insult it is when somebody says to you, go to hell?
You've heard people say that, haven't you? People have said that to me. Believe me, that's an insult, one of the biggest insults I can think of. And you know, people who say go to hell do not understand how horrible that place is.
And I said to this man, I said, you know, you've heard that before, haven't you? He said yes. I said, you know what hell is like.
And you know what he said? He said no, I don't.
And I was able to tell him a little bit about health. And you know what? I don't know how bad it is, but I told him that hell was prepared not for men and not for women and not for boys and not for girls. But it was prepared for the devil and his angels who disobeyed God and who ruined this world.
Who ruined everything and want to ruin everything? That God?
Does that's good?
And I said, if you accept the Lord Jesus.
You get to go to heaven, you get the box of food like that Lady could have had, but instead she said no. And are you saying no to night to God? Are you saying no? I really don't want your kindness 'cause if you are, you're saying I want to go to hell.
Because that's the alternative. There's only two places. There's heaven and then there's hell. And if there's somebody here that's never accepted the Lord Jesus as their savior.
Then you're going to hell.
And it's horrible, the blackness of darkness forever. That's what hell is where there's weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Is that what you want? I don't want that, and neither did the man I was speaking to.
He thanked me for telling him the gospel, but as far as I know, he hasn't come yet.
And take in the box of food. But you tonight have the opportunity to come one more time. You have that opportunity. You're here, you're listening to the word of God being spoken. The good news that God is love, that God sent his Son, the Lord Jesus. We sang about it, that he was crucified on the cross. And can you say tonight he was crucified for me?
If you can't, there's a problem.
And tonight, our desire and our prayer, Like I said at the beginning, I want you all who are believers to pray through the meeting that if there's somebody here that can't say he died for me, by the end they'll be able to say I'm saved, I'm ready to go. I don't have to go to hell. I don't have to burn. I don't have to be miserable for all eternity. I'm safe.
I'm happy, I'm satisfied.
Now you know when I was a boy.
And that's a long time ago now.
I had a mom and she's still alive and she still loves me. And, you know, before the meeting, I sent her a text message and I said mom.
00:15:06
I have the gospel meeting at the camp in Michigan. Can you pray for me? And you know, my mom loves the Lord Jesus. She told me about the Lord Jesus. That's how I got saved. She told me how the Lord Jesus died on the cross for me. And you know, now I have the privilege of saying, mom, can you please pray for me?
And my mom, I'm sure, is praying for you tonight if you're not safe now.
There were reasons why I remember that I didn't get saved.
There was a time when I sat in my chair in meetings like this and I said no to the Lord Jesus, and I remember that. And are you saying no tonight till the Lord Jesus and his love for you?
Are you saying no? Don't say no. Say yes. Thank you.
Well.
Finally, I accepted the Lord Jesus as my savior, and I don't know when I accepted the Lord Jesus as my savior. I don't know what day it was. I don't know how old I was, but my mom told me she knows that I got saved because I changed. You know, I was a bad boy.
I was a very bad boy. I got into trouble all the time. My poor dad and my poor mom had to discipline me all the time. I was a royal nuisance.
And you know what? I was the black sheep of my family.
That's a miserable thing to look back and to think about the things that I did that pained my dad and my mom. But what about the Lord here? He put me in a Christian home.
He put me into the assembly and I didn't value it. Shame on me. I said no to the Lord. But finally I came and accepted the Lord Jesus as my personal Savior. And I'm so thankful I did that. And tonight, are you thankful that your sins are gone? That you get to go to heaven to be happy and fruitful forever?
I look forward to heaven.
Well, there was a time where the Lord was knocking on my heart. He'd save me, and thank the Lord He did. But then there was a growing desire inside my heart.
To respond to what he'd asked me to do.
So before the Lord Jesus went to the cross, before he suffered for me.
And before he suffered for his disciples, he said to them.
Remember Me in my death.
And so as a young person, I knew that I should ask to remember the Lord. I knew that, but I was afraid to. And you know the enemy of my soul, he didn't want me to honor the Lord and obey the Lord, to worship the Lord and to show my respect to him either. And so.
He gave me reason after reason, excuse after excuse so that I wouldn't.
Asked for my place at the Lord's table.
Well, one day I, by the grace of God, did so.
I went to Mr. Van off Wigan, who is an older brother in the assembly and I said brother, I'd like to be in fellowship, the Lord's Table. I'd like to remember the Lord and he said Paul, that's so nice. He encouraged me and he's encouraged me my whole life. But.
When I got home, I told my dad and my mom.
They were thrilled.
But my mom said to me afterwards, she said, you know.
You know, the brothers are probably going to come and have a little talk with you. And I was afraid of that. That was one of the reasons why the devil kept me from asking. I was afraid because he said, hey, they're going to ask you a bunch of questions. You remember I'd been a bad boy, so.
My mom said to me, she said there's a verse in John chapter 6 and I want to turn to that now.
Verse 37.
She said they're probably going to ask you something along these lines. They're going to say well.
You know, Paul, how long have you know? Are you sure that you've belonged to the Lord Jesus? She said, Paul, what first would you give? And I said, well, I don't know what I'd say. She said, well, let me tell you one that I've really enjoyed for myself. And then you can have that and know where it is. And if that's appropriate for you to tell the brothers, then you can. Well, this verse has grown in importance to me over the years, but it's verse 37.
00:20:23
And it says all that the Father giveth me.
Shall come to me and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. You know this is anybody.
Everyone in this room can come. There's not a single person that can say I'm too bad. You know? The Bible, caught in his wisdom, is so wise. Even the worst Sinner has already come.
You know the chief Sinner, he said I'm the chief, but he's come the apostle Paul, he's already saved the worst. So if you come to the Lord Jesus tonight, he'll take you just as you are. I so enjoy this verse him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.
So the question I would like to ask you is, have you come?
Have you come? And if there's somebody in this room that says no?
I haven't come then tonight. Come, come to the Lord Jesus.
Just as you are.
Now we're going to turn over to the 12Th chapter of the Book of John.
And I want to introduce the subject that I want to speak about tonight.
John, Chapter 12.
And verse 32.
It says and I if I be lifted up.
From the earth will draw.
All men unto me this, he said, signifying what death he should die.
You know, this is a little aside, but I'll tell you another story. When I was a boy growing up in Ottawa.
There was an old lady in the meeting and she was a very special old lady because she always used to wear a coat that had minks.
Around her collar. I remember that as a boy thinking, wow, she's got animals on her coat. But it was a really nice coat and she was a extra nice lady. It was actually the mother of John Kemp, Missus Kemp. Her name was Dorothy Kemp. And when Dorothy Kemp was a younger lady, she.
Taught Sunday school.
In a little town South of Ottawa.
And one of the students in her class was a man by the name of George Beverly Shea. Do you know that name? He was. He sang with Billy Graham. And so George Beverly Shea was in her Sunday school class. And that always impressed me that she knew him. And I just have enjoyed him singing this.
Little verse so many times, if I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto me.
Now.
The next verse is what we sang about at the beginning, this he said, signifying what death he should die. And I don't think there's anyone in this room tonight that doesn't know how the Lord Jesus died on the cross.
You know, I work in the type of work where I often get cuts and bruises and scratches, materials, slipper, they're sharper, whatever it is.
And you know, there's when you bleed.
Then there's pain, right?
And I've just thought a little bit about what it means to be crucified. And that wasn't the only thing that happened to the Lord Jesus. We're going to read a little bit about that maybe in a few minutes, but Can you imagine?
Putting having a nail right through your hand.
A nail right through your foot.
00:25:03
A nail.
Through your other hand, a nail through both of your feet.
Imagine the agony of that.
You ever thought about that in connection with the worst injury that you've ever had?
What is the worst thing that's ever happened to you physically? Have you lost a finger? Have you? I don't know what it may be. What is it? You can answer that yourself, but then think of how the Lord Jesus had to suffer there on the cross.
How he was crucified. He was lifted up to die.
It says, you know, it wasn't just.
That he was going to be hanging on the cross.
But it was so people could watch him die.
Could watch him suffer, Could see the pain.
And could be happy they were getting rid of him. He was lifted up. But you know, this little expression lifted up, it makes me think of God and what he saw that day. He saw his Son crucified.
Hanging on a cross, people making fun of him, the Son of God.
On a cross, Can you imagine the insult to God that man hath done the judgment that is coming on this world, and people say, well, God wouldn't send anyone to hell.
Why wouldn't he?
And if you say no to the Lord Jesus and his love tonight, that's where you're going.
And you deserve to go because you've sinned before a holy God, and because.
Your heart is the same as the man who hung Jesus on the cross.
Now I just want to turn to a verse in Isaiah 53 and we all know this verse, or at least we should. Isaiah 53 and verse.
Six, it says, all we, like sheep, have gone astray.
We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on him.
The iniquity of us all this morning we spoke.
We read someone read to us about the precious blood of Christ.
Is that blood of the Lord Jesus precious to you? I can assure you that it was precious to God when he saw it.
The precious blood of Christ. But here we have a little bit more about when he was lifted up. It says the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. And another brother read that this morning. But how the Lord Jesus bore our sins in his own body on the tree.
Now let me ask you this, you people in the back that aren't paying attention.
I want to know if the Lord Jesus.
Has borne.
The iniquity for your sins. Have you ever asked the Lord Jesus to be your Savior?
You have the opportunity to do so tonight. May you? Now I'd like to read a story, Back in Numbers, Chapter 21.
And you know, it's important for us to listen in the meetings. So two weeks ago in the meeting where I go to in Rio Ferry.
My brother read these verses in the morning meeting on Lord's Day, Numbers chapter 21. And you know, it's important for us to hear versus read, but it's important to think about those verses afterwards. You know, there's a verse in the Proverbs that talks about.
The slothful man not roasting that which he took in hunting. So last night our brother Steve mentioned a lot of things and you know, I'm getting old. I can't remember things very well, so I have to write them down. Now if I just write them down and never look at that page again, do I benefit from that?
So I wrote for 45 minutes. Is that?
Was that a waste of time? It is if I never roast what I took in hunting.
00:30:06
By never review it. If I never think of it again, then I don't benefit from it. So let's let's just pay attention in meeting why so that will benefit from it. That's why. And if you can't remember like me, then write things down so that later you can go back and say, hey, what did Steve say?
Oh, yeah. OK, so there was Judah. He was somebody that was involved in sheep shearing, and so was Absalom, and so was Naboth Nabel.
I learned that what that meant this meeting last night. Now I can benefit from it. That's just an example. So here this brother read two weeks ago this story in numbers 21.
Since he read the story, I've read it a few times. Why? So that I'll benefit from what was read. And that's why it's important for us to read the Word of God and to think about it.
OK, so Numbers 21 is a story about the children of Israel when they left Egypt and they were rocking toward the promised land in Israel.
And in verse four it says, and they journeyed from Mount Horror by the way of the Red Sea.
Compass the land of Edom, or to go around the land of Edom.
And the soul of the people was much.
Discouraged because of the way and the people spake against God.
And against Moses.
Wherefore have ye brought us up out of the land of Egypt to die in the wilderness?
For there is no bread, neither is there any water, and our soul loatheth this light bread, you know.
I'm no better than those people. And you know what, neither are you. You know, the Bible says that all have sinned. The man I was speaking to on Friday about his soul that I spoke of, we talked about that verse.
That all have sinned and come short. And I said to him, I said in the Olympics.
There is a bunch of swimmers that are in different lanes, swim in a certain stroke and they decide who the fastest swimmer is in the world and they give them the gold medal, right? That's how it works. I said, OK, so let's take the 10 best swimmers from all over the world, one that got the gold, two that got the silver, three that got the bronze, and so on all the way down to 10. We take him to Vancouver.
Or Seattle.
And we say, OK guys, you're good swimmers, I want you to swim all the way to.
Japan, they look at me and they go, you're crazy, we can't do that, but you're good swimmers.
Why can't you do that?
But you know, all of us have sinned. We've all come short. We can't make it on our own. That's what it means. And if there's somebody here tonight and you're short, you've come short because you're not saved yet. You have a problem. You have a big problem. You just like the swimmer.
In Seattle that says I can't do that. And you know what? They're right. They can't. They might be great swimmers. You might have a great personality, you might look wonderful, you might have tremendous abilities and talents. But could you swim all the way to Japan? And you can't get to heaven on your own either. It's impossible. How can you get to the presence of God in your sins? No way.
It can't be done, and the Bible assures you that you can't be. You can't get there on your own.
OK, so these people are murmuring and complaining. I've done that. I do that all the time. I complain about this and that. I hate paying my taxes. I hate waiting on the highway when there's an accident. We waited 25 minutes on Interstate 96. Do you think I was happy about that? No. I was whining and complaining, saying hey, no, don't the people in Michigan have their act together?
Right. And we've all done that. We've all complained.
We've all said things we shouldn't have said, right?
00:35:00
I remember one time I said something to my brother when I was a kid and it was so bad. My mom took me to the sink. She said Paul, open your mouth and she took the Palmolive dish soap and put it in my mouth.
And I've never forgotten the taste of that. It was so bad it burned my lips, my tongue.
But she made the point I said the wrong thing. I swore. Have you sworn? Have you said the wrong thing? Because my mom heard what I said. She got the dish soap and she applied it to my mouth. But everything you have ever said, everything you have ever thought.
Has been written down and recorded by a holy God that never has made a mistake and never will.
And were guilty before God in our sins. And if there is somebody here tonight?
And you're lost, you're not saved. The Lord Jesus says, Come unto me.
And be ye saved. Now we're going to read a little bit further.
It says in verse six the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people.
And they bit the people, and much people of Israel died.
You know, I think of this as being like sin. It bites. You know, there's consequences to our sins and we may not have them right away. It may be years and years later, you know?
I'm going to tell you another story when I was at Otter Lake when I was a kid.
I played a trick on another young person.
But guess what happened? About 20 years later, I met.
That young person.
You think he remembered the trick I played on him? He sure did.
And I did too. I hadn't forgotten for 20 years. And guess what? My conscience was still working. I'd been unkind to another young person. How did that affect his walk with the Lord? Was I encouragement to him to pay a nasty trick on him? No, I was not. Was that a good thing before God? No, that was wrong.
Is there consequences? Yes.
I had to tell him I was sorry.
You think it's real fun to tell somebody 20 years after you did something, it was you're sorry. I waited how long to tell him, But by God's grace I was able to tell him and we're good friends. He forgave me. So thankful.
Now verse seven. Therefore the people came to Moses and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against thee.
Pray unto the Lord that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people.
You know what's interesting in this story is that Moses or the Lord didn't take away the serpents, but He made a provision so that the people could deal with the effect of the serpents.
And you know when we get saved, the Lord Jesus doesn't.
Just clean up our heart. He gives us a new heart. We still have the old flesh that we're born with, but He gives us a new life that's capable of pleasing Him. That's perfect, just like the life of Christ.
The very life of Christ.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole, and it shall come to pass that everyone that is bitten, when he looketh upon it shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole. They came to pass that.
Sorry. And it came to pass that if a serpent.
Had bitten any man when he beheld the serpent of brass He lived.
You know, the other day when I was working, we were working on a cottage by the river and we're eating lunch.
And one of the guys that works for me says, hey, look down there. And I look down there and there was a snake in the water swimming along. And this snake was probably this long and about this big around. You know, I hate snakes. I did not like that for one moment. And you know, there's not too many people who like snakes.
00:40:04
And Can you imagine the multitudes of people that were all around this day?
And all these fiery serpents are zinging around between the tents, you know, and its fiery serpents. Because what I've read is that when they were bitten, the the bites got red and dark and fiery.
And so if you can imagine you're in your tent and you've got it all closed up and all of a sudden the snake comes in and bites you, then you have a choice to make.
Either you die.
Or you open the door of the tent and you look up at the pole with the serpent on it, and you get better. And tonight you have a choice.
You can open up the tent door and look at the Lord Jesus Christ and get saved tonight. Or you can say, no, I don't want His love. I don't want the box of food. I'm just fine the way I am now. I want to tell you about another man that I worked with years ago.
He told me that he had never sinned.
He got mad at me when I told him that he did.
About two months ago, I went to his funeral.
There was a lot of other people there. At the end of the funeral, when everybody was streaming out, they played a song. You know what the song was? The song was.
I'll do it my way.
That characterized him his whole life.
I'll do it my way. Is there somebody here tonight that's doing it your own way?
That says I got bit by a snake. I know I'm a Sinner. I know I'm going to die.
In my sins, I know I'm going to go to hell and you won't open the tent door and look up to the Lord Jesus Christ in simple faith and say, Lord Jesus, when you died on the cross, will you die for me? I want you to take my sins. I want you to pay for them. I want you to forgive me. Please, God, won't you do that? That's it's as simple as that.
To ask the Lord Jesus to be your Savior.
Won't you do that tonight? You say the preachers being very simple, but it is. It's very simple come just the way that you are.
And ask the Lord to wash your sins away. He'll do that well.
This man, Moses, he was so such a great leader, God's people, he failed himself.
But you know, I can just see him in my mind making this.
Serpent of brass and putting it on a pole so the people could look at it. You know, I think of him a little bit like me tonight.
I'm just telling you what somebody else told me.
You know, God told Moses what to do and Moses did it. And people who benefited from it, they benefited from it. And you know, somebody told me the gospel, my mom, my dad, and now I have the privilege to tell you. And you say, well, you know, I'm already saved. Wonderful. Then pray, pray for people that are here tonight that aren't safe, but tell other people too.
When you were to go to a gospel meeting, make mental notes of things so that when on Tuesday.
Somebody at the gas station says to you such and such. You can say, well, I was at a gospel meeting on Sunday and the speaker said this. You ever thought about that?
OK, now we're going to turn to John Chapter 3.
John, Chapter 3.
In verse 14 and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, Even so.
Must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life?
You know, we don't want anyone here to perish. God doesn't want you to either. We want you to have eternal life and that's available tonight from the Lord Jesus. Now we're going to go a little further into John chapter 19 now.
And you know.
I remember very clearly.
00:45:00
And it was probably 50 years ago, I remember when there would be gospel preachers that would read this chapter and I didn't like to hear it.
There was something in me that would say, I don't want to hear it, just block it out of my mind. And, you know, there was one preacher in particular that I didn't like to hear. That was my grandfather. And I remember when he would speak, there were times where I would say, shut up, shut up, shut up. Why? Because I wasn't saved and I didn't want to hear the gospel again. And tonight, if you're saying that in your heart, you have a problem.
You're on your way to hell, and tonight come to the Lord Jesus.
Accept Him as your Savior. He loves you. He loved you enough to be lifted up.
To stretch out his hands, for the nails to go in his hands, for the nails to go in his feet. Why? Because of his love for you, His love to God. We're going to read a little bit in John chapter 19.
Verse one Then Pilate therefore took Jesus and scourged him.
Now, if you don't know what that means, that's like a very severe whipping. And in the olden times the Romans would do this and people would almost die from the scourging, it was so horrible.
They would take the flesh right off people's backs, and that's what Pilate did to the Lord Jesus.
It's horrible. And the soldiers plaited a crown of thorns. I remember Lee Mayhew, for anybody can who can remember him. I remember he had the gospel when I was a kid and he said, you know what that means? That means they made a ring of forms and then they put it on his head, like he pushed it down into his head.
And I remember as a kid thinking, wow, they did that to the son of God. Yes, they did. People like me did that to God, son. It's a horrible thing. And it says and put it on his head and put on him a purple rope. They made fun of him. They dressed him up in a costume to mock him and said, hail, King of the Jews.
They didn't believe that he was the king of the Jews. They were making fun of him and they smote him with their hands. Now think about this for a minute. The Son of God and people are hitting him and soldiers.
Do you think God has a record of when somebody punched his son in the face? You bet he does. And God has the record of the lies you've told, too. And when you haven't obeyed your dad and your mom.
And if you think you're going to get away with that, you're not.
You need to deal with God tonight about your sins and the Lord Jesus died on the cross.
And his blood will wash away your sins tonight. But you've got to come to him for forgiveness. You have to humble yourself before God and say, yes, I have sinned. The people said they'd send to Moses, but they had to look up at that serpent of brass in order to be safe, in order to get better.
OK.
Verse 4 Pilot therefore went forth again, and Seth unto them behold.
I bring him forth to you, that ye may know that I find no fault.
In him now, Pilate said he found no fault in the Lord Jesus.
But he had scourged him. Why did he do that? Why did Pilate say I have found no fault in him, but he whipped him now would it be right for me to whip Tom when he didn't do anything wrong?
No, you'd say. You're a horrible dad. And you know what? I'm going to tell you Pilot was horrible to do this.
Now what have you done to God's Son? Have you told him no? Have you insulted him? Have you used his name in vain? What have you done to the Son of God who loved you?
OK, let's go a little further.
Then came Jesus forth wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe.
And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man, and tonight.
We hope that you'll behold the man. You won't make fun of him any longer.
That you'll say, hey, that's the man who died for me. I love that man. You know, I remember when I didn't love him, but I do now, right? It's a wonderful thing to love the Lord Jesus. He loved me before I ever loved him.
00:50:07
When the chief priest therefore an officer, saw him, they cried out, saying, Crucify Him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Take ye him, and crucify him.
What does it say next? So I find no fault in him? What?
Crucify someone that didn't do anything wrong. This is horrible. Parents that are here tonight, would you discipline your children for doing nothing wrong here? There's a Roman governor who says the man did nothing wrong and he whips him then condemns him to be crucified. This is horrible judgment.
This is the epitome of poor judgment, isn't it?
Anyway.
I'm no better than pilot in my natural self.
Now let's skip down a little bit to verse.
16.
Then delivered he him therefore unto them to be crucified, and they took Jesus, and led him away.
And he bearing his cross, went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew.
Golgotha, where they crucified him and two other with him.
On either side one and Jesus in the midst and Pilate wrote a title.
And put it on the cross, and the writing was Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. This title then read many of the Jews. For the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city, and was written in Hebrew and Greek and Latin.
Well, we've talked a little bit about the sufferings of the Lord Jesus tonight, and I hope each one of us who belongs to the Lord Jesus on a regular basis.
Considers these things and how the Lord Jesus suffered for us and how much he went through.
Tomeka Sizzon.
And tonight the gospel is to convey the love of God, the love of God in giving his Son, the love of the Son in enduring from the hands of people like me. What we just read, the mockery, the nails through his hands and his feet, the crown of thorns. You know, in other verses it talks about how they spat in his face.
Spitting in the face of the Son of God, I might ask you, has anyone ever spat in your face?
You know, I've had that experience. It's horrible. It's horrible. But then think of the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, people spitting in his face. And now let's ask another question. What do you think God thought about the people spitting in the face of his son? Would you like somebody to spit in your son's face? Would you be happy with that?
And then people say, well, God won't judge anything.
Pardon. And so it's very important for us to be ready to have our sins forgiven. If there's somebody that isn't ready, that doesn't have their sins washed away tonight, make the Lord Jesus your Savior.
Verse 28 We'll end on this after this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. Now there was that a vessel full of vinegar, and they filled a sponge with vinegar and put it upon hyssop.
And put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore, had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished. And he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost. The Jews, therefore, because it was the preparation that the body should not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath day, that Sabbath day was in high day. He sought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.
Then came the soldiers and break the legs of the 1St.
And of the other which was crucified with him, but when they came to Jesus and saw that he was dead already.
They break not his legs, but one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water, and he that sought bare record, and his record is true.
And he knoweth that he saith true that ye might believe.
Well, I love this account in John's Gospel.
You know, I think it's a wonderful thing for us as believers.
00:55:04
When we're quiet, we have some time sometimes close our eyes and just picture the Hill of Calvary. Picture the Lord Jesus, his head bowed in death.
And then picture.
The Roman soldier coming to the first thief, breaking his legs so that he would suffocate and die.
Walking around the cross of the Lord Jesus, breaking the legs of the next thief.
Instant suffocation and death, and then for him to come back to the center cross and look up and see the head of the Lord Jesus bowed in death.
Instead of breaking his legs, pulling out the sword.
And putting it into the side of the Lord Jesus because of his love for me.
Is love for you. That's why the blood flowed out. That's why the water flowed out. Because God wanted your sins to be paid for.
By His Son, tonight you have the privilege of saying thank you and reaching out and taking the gift, the provision that God has given, the way of salvation that God and His wisdom devised so that ruined lost, guilty sinners.
Like me, could have their sins forgiven forever, could go to heaven.
And not hell. Could be happy and not sad, could be forever satisfied in the presence of a holy God.
Tonight, if you're not saved, get saved.
For us Christians that are here, pray.
Session #1
Consideration of Children
Address—Will Hayhoe
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Well, Tim reminds us of the value of.
Staying on a schedule and it is beneficial. So I guess it's 8:00 and.
With the Lord's help, we're going to get started here. And I just wanted to say at the outset that.
A couple weeks ago and Tim and I exchanged a few messages and he shared with me a desire that I think is evident to everyone. But maybe just to be sure, this is what was said. There have been many spiritual and doctrinal attacks on the Saints these past years.
And we need a time of refreshing and encouragement as well as building 1 under up in the most holy faith. So that was encouraging to me to know of Tim and I'm sure it's Timoney Lanes desire. And so I trust that the effect of considering the word of God this evening together might do just that. We're thankful that we have the Spirit of God and we're thankful we have the word of God without that.
Where would we be?
And so.
It is encouraging to know that it is possible that we can be truly refreshed and encouraged in our Christian experience and the Lord desires it to be so. I was reminded at supper time of a verse someone gave to me from John 7 where the Lord Jesus says if any man thirst, let them come unto me and drink. So again, it just reminds us that true encouragement, real refreshment is going to come.
In measure as we get to know the Lord Jesus more.
So I trust it'll be so by considering him together this evening. We usually start with a hymn, so I'd like to sing #209 Someone could start hymn #209.
Let's just ask the Lord's help with the word of prayer.
Lord Jesus, we look forward to the day when we will be home in heaven and see thy very face, and we thank Thee that we can.
Walk through this world with a measure of peace. So I desire that every soul have peace with God through salvation and that we are be guided as we walk through.
Go day by day and we realize that Thy word is given to us as a lamp to our feet and light to our path. We trust that the effect of reading it together this evening.
Might both encourage us, refresh us, let us know while I do it. Alkins guide and convict each one of us, as Thy word is considered in whatever is necessary. And so we pray that we'd be turned in and sensitive to hear Thy voice as we consider Thy word together. We ask Thee for Thy help. We count on it. Lord Jesus, we ask it in thy name. Amen.
So I was thinking that I think many of us have come to meetings like this.
Where the topic is not really known in advance. And so if you're like me and I think a lot of us have similar characteristics, perhaps you walk in and you wonder, well what's going to be spoken about. And I suppose that's a very natural and fair question And then?
Perhaps you're a little bit like me and sometimes you get part way through a topic or you've been sitting in a meeting and you wonder, well, I'm struggling to get the point of what's being talked about.
I don't know if anybody's had that experience. I have, and sometimes I've realized afterwards that it's not not on the speaker. Maybe I wasn't as familiar with the Word of God as I should be, but nonetheless it, it happens.
But you know, sometimes we also ask the question. I wonder if the topic is relevant to my life.
How many of you have asked that question sort of in your head ahead of time?
And again, naturally, it's a good question to pose in some ways.
But you know, when you, when you do that or when I did that and still do sometimes something like your reference point as well. It's, it's you and what I think I would benefit from, from the word of God and, and the Lord knows our our hearts and he knows why we ask those types of questions. So it's nothing wrong with asking a question. But I want to start this evening with a little bit of a.
Few general comments before we go into a subject.
And.
I want to suggest that there is a better question to ask than perhaps all of those questions, and it's when the Word of God is open.
As it trusts can be here in a few moments.
Am I? Am I willing to truly listen to the Word of God?
Perhaps even.
Of necessity, sometimes maybe we we get distracted by what the person's saying. Are you not?
00:10:00
Easily following along, but the word of God itself, it has the power.
In it, it's perfect, it's without air, and the Spirit of God can use it. And I would like to, just as a general comment before we go into the subject, I'd like to call attention to three occurrences in the Word of God where people were able to truly listen to to God and they're commended for doing so. The first one, if you can just turn it, is in First Thessalonians.
Chapter 2. So this is a collective audience.
An assembly in the city of Thessalonica and the verse that I'd like to read is First Thessalonians 2, verse 13.
And Paul is writing and he's writing to the Thessalonians and he says for this cause also thank we God without ceasing because.
When ye received the word of God, which he heard of us.
Now this is the point. Ye received it not as the word of man, but as it is in truth the Word of God, which effectually works also in you that belief. So tonight we're starting the message on the premise that everyone here knows the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior and that you have therefore the Spirit of God within you, and the Word of God to some extent is of value to you in your life.
And I trust them that we can.
Take from the example of Thessalonians. These were relatively new converts. They had not been saved that long.
And yet they had a desire to receive what was presented to them as it came from God, so much so that Paul could write and thank them for the example they were being for receiving it as. So in other words, they didn't get distracted by the messenger Paul. They believe that as from God himself. And that was it says at the end, which effectually also works. And so that's the word of God itself.
Through our conscience sometimes and speaks to us and helps us in our Christian pathway as he knows best, so we may have a good idea of what I may.
I have a good idea of what I think I need a certain stage in my life. And it's not wrong to have those desires and God delights to guide us, but it's primarily from his Word. And so every time we open up the word of God, I hope that we can do like the Thessalonians do. And that applies whether we're reading in our personal reading or in a family reading at home, or certainly it's if it's read in assembly or in an occasion such as this. So that's an example of.
A collective group. Now let's look at two individuals which both women, which I think are very precious.
That are commanded much the same and the first one will go to as in Mark Chapter 7. You could turn to Mark 7.
And here we started. We'll just read starting verse.
24.
And this is the word Jesus here on this earth, and it says, And from thence he arose and went into the borders.
Natalie and Saigon entered into a house, and would have no man know it, but he could not be hid, for a certain woman, whose daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet. The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by nation, and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter. But Jesus said unto her.
Let the children first be filled for does not need to take the children's bread to cast it.
Into the dogs.
And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord, yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs. And he said unto her, For this saying, Go thy way, the devil has gone out of thy daughter. And when she was come to her house, she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed.
Well, you might be wondering what's why? What's the point of the passage in context of what we're saying?
To me, this woman is a striking example given to us in the Word of God, if you could think of someone in distress in their personal life.
To a greater extent than this woman had a distress. Could you imagine something more distrustful than a mother with a daughter possessed with a devil? That was a very, very.
00:15:02
Strong need, great need. She came to the Lord Jesus and she laid out her concern and what does the Lord do? He says let the children first be filled for does not need to take the children's bed into custody. And of the dogs, did that seem to have any?
Relevance to her great need.
I don't think immediately it did, but you know what? She listened to the Lord Jesus.
She listened, and the reason we know she listened is because her response was in relationship to what the Lord had just said, not directly in relation to his great need for what she had come to the Lord in the first place.
I trust you can see that she is an example of willingness to listen. And so often we have great needs and the Lord wants to teach us something and it's maybe not immediately about what we think our need is. It's something out that He needs to show us.
But we just keep going at our need, not really listening to the word of God.
And so I just want to call attention to her as a wonderful woman of faith and at 11, to whom we can turn to when we get to thinking that the Lord is not hearing us, are we willing to listen from His word? Now, another one is Mary and Luke 10. So we'll just go to Luke 10.
I think you know the story Mary, Martha, Lazarus from the town of Bethany. This is in Luke 10 verse 38.
Now it came to pass as they went, as they went, that he entered into a certain village, and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. Martha had a sister called Mary which also sat at Jesus feet and heard his word. But Martha was covered about much serving, and came to him and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister left me to serve alone?
Good her, therefore, that she helped me. And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha.
Now we are careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful.
And Mary hath chosen thy good part, which shall not be taken away.
Somehow, well, I think we can immediately, perhaps many of us have enjoyed this portion of how Mary it says very specifically she sat at Jesus feet and heard his word. Don't think that needs much else additional explanation just to ask myself as we go now a little bit further into the word of God, perhaps on a specific subject.
I hope that you'll that we will all hear His word.
And I just want to say as we go into the subject that perhaps along the way.
A speaker like myself, the same might add a little bit, might even give a personal instance or something like that. But if it's going to help, well, I hope it is, but it could not be. But don't get distracted by an example from a personal life experience or try to just be assured that you have your can I say the core message as it is from the word.
You can ask yourself at the end of the meeting, what verses were referred to and can I go back over them because that's where the value is, because that's.
The words of God, the living Word of God, is so.
Essential. And so that's a little preamble, but now the subject at hand, I'd like with the Lorde help to consider a little.
How that I'd like to have a message, I'll say it.
Four children, but it's not two children.
And I'd like to look into the Word of God, and I think we'll quickly learn that God places an extremely high value.
On children and this is a family camp so we have all ages.
And thankfully we have children here, but it's not so much I want to try to let the Word of God speak to us that we can be reminded of how God places a very high value on children.
And how those of us who are not children anymore, we can learn from God's word that our actions, what we do, what we choose to say.
Has an effect.
And it's, it's real. And I think that if we are truly have our hearts attracted to children.
00:20:03
Then we can, and periodically those of us who are adults take a little pause.
Anna And just be assured, how am I behaving, whether that's in my household, whether that's in the assembly where I go, whether that's any interaction I have, It's a it can have an effect and it does have an effect. And we have a real privilege to support our children. Now, we understand, of course, that parents have an especial, very specific role and we might touch on that very briefly. But my thought more is just to be reminded from Scripture for all of us.
That children are valuable. So let's look at a familiar verse first in Psalm 127.
I'll read 2 scriptures now. Psalm 127, verse 3.
And then one from the New Testament.
Psalm 127 verse.
3.
No children are inherited.
Of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is His.
Reward children are in heritage from the Lord now.
Familiar portion. You can maybe even be able to guess what it is from Mark 10 where the Lord Jesus says suffer the little children to come unto me. So let's read that from Mark 10.
Verse 14.
Verse 13, Mark chapter 10 and verse 13.
And they brought young children to him that he should touch them.
And his disciples rebuked those that brought them, that Jesus saw them.
But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them now, for of such is the Kingdom of God.
So we have those two verses, children, our heritage from the Lord suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them. Not in both cases. It doesn't say parents, it just says children. And so of course, I think we all understand Justin.
Be sure that we're telling us like children, we're talking about those of a certain age. We all are children of God. But tonight I just want to emphasize that young ones, little children are precious to the Lord Jesus as we have it reported to us in God's word and it says children are in heritage.
Of the Lord. What does that mean? I think we probably all pondered that verse a little bit, and I did a little bit too. And a heritage. What is a heritage? Well, I think it includes a number of things, perhaps something that is of value.
From the past on, we anticipate into some point in the future.
I think sometimes heritage brings out the thought of protection. It's valuable to be protected. Children are valuable. As I was thinking about this, I.
How to experience in my work involves developing land and we started a parcel a year or so ago and about a month ago we got this notice and it said that adjoining this parcel there is a heritage tree. That's interesting. What is a heritage tree? I mean, exactly what is that? Well, we got to figure it out, but looking into it a little bit, it seems like.
There is this tree was.
Could be several 100 years old or more. And it seems the claim is, is that it marks a path. So before there were roads and certainly GPS or anything like that, there was apparently paths that were built by peoples of the day and they as a tree grew. If they needed to mark a certain point, they would trim it, print it in a certain way that they knew it was going to mark the path for the future for those who would come. So it would take time to do that right to grow.
And then prune it in a certain way. And so the what's been put forward is, is that this is a heritage tree. So I got a plan last week and a big bold letters heritage tree with an arrow pointed at it. And you need to go and study this tree and figure out how it might be affected. So heritage. So it means it, I guess it means something of value. And I think in the context of the word of God, it's very clear that's what it's trying to say. Children are valuable. They're precious over time and they need to be.
Protectable. And so now that we have that established, I'd like to look like to read about the Lord Jesus when he was 12 years old from Luke two. And the point of reading this passage is just to help us get from the word of God.
00:25:11
We have children and then we have adults. So let's just read from Luke 2, starting at verse.
40.
This is the Lord Jesus himself. Remember, this is God himself. It's recorded in his Word.
The child grew, Jesus grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.
Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover, and notice this. And when he was 12 years old they went up to Jerusalem. After the custom of the feast. When they had fulfilled the days, they returned The child Jesus carried behind in Jerusalem, and Joseph and his mother knew not of it. But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day's journey, and they saw him among the King's folk and acquaintance. When they found him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem, seeking.
And it came to pass that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. And when they saw him, they were amazed. And his mother said unto him, Son, why is thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father, and I have sought thee sorrowing.
And he said unto them, How is it that you sought me?
Wished ye not that I must be about my father's business. And they understood not the saying which he stake unto them. And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them. But his mother kept all these sayings in her heart.
And then perhaps I'll just quote a verse that I think was familiar to all of us from the Paul wrote when he wrote to the Corinthians. It's kind of an interesting verse in the middle of the love chapter. And he says, when I was a child, I thought as a child, I understood as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
So I'd like to just pause for a moment and again, just receive it from the Word of God.
We have a children.
And I think what the Bible presents to us is we have adults. So this room is filled with.
One of two children or adults and the reason I just want to call attention to that is that because.
Relative to, I'll say, our culture that we've all grown up with for quite a few years now.
There is a the tendency to think that you have children and then you have a period of time and then you're an adult and there certainly is a transition and it's a unique time in your life. Some of you are in that period of time, but the Bible presents to us in the example of the Lord Jesus.
It says that he was 12 years old and you know, we only learn of his age at perhaps well, we know of his birth when he was two years old, 12 and then 30. So we know that this happened and it's recorded for us. And I think it's for a reason. It shows that there is even for a holy God, there was the example of one that was.
Becoming a man and so I just want to say that and.
As we go on now and talk to those who are not children, I think if I asked any 14 year old in this room are you a child, you would quickly say no.
But if you're not a child, then there is a maturing and an interest in what the Word of God says. The Lord Jesus himself called His Father's business. There was an interest that was different than a child in that verse in Corinthians says that you put away childish things.
And so we live in a culture where.
There is a lot, perhaps it's promoted subtly and otherwise, that there's a long transition time and I just want to say gently.
That consider the word of God.
You know that the word teenager only came into existence in about 1945, so that means for 1900 years.
There wasn't that word. And you know, if you read in history, and some of you I'm sure have and more than I have, that if you read in the 1800s when you were 1214 years old, you were counting on as an adult to contribute to the family household and there was a.
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An attitude, responsibility and all that went with that. And so the last, you know, all of us and most of us in this room have been born since maybe 1945. There's probably a few before that. But you know, we just want to be careful about.
When you get to that age, take up with those responsibilities. So I just want to pass that along as I believe it is. I'm hopeful to distinguish. So now with that, I'd like to look now at what I'll call.
Practical exhortations, and these are just five. The Bible is full of practical exhortations, but I think that they can be of maybe particular significance to help us as adults. We should lay hold of these things and then as we interact with children again, parents in a very special way, we can try to instill in them these.
I'll call them exhortations. So the first is we are born.
With an old nature and the flesh prophets nothing. So we'll just consider that for a few minutes and then I have one here. I'll just call it We reap what we sow, and that applies to adults and we'll consider that. And then perhaps there's opportunity to help our children understand that we have the whole thing that's so important.
Around.
The need to learn to trust God, to believe His Word, and that the path to happiness is through obedience. And that again applies to all of us in this room. And perhaps we can help our children learn that in their youth for the benefits that come with it for a lifetime. And then we have the thought around that God has designed us in such a way that we are.
To depend on him throughout our entire life and dependence is the expression of that. We need help. And let's consider a few scriptures around that. And then I have something here called that we need to learn to guard or control our affections. And then finally that part of Christian experience is.
That we are all in the school of God and the Lord. He corrects us throughout all of our life.
And it's valuable to learn to accept the chastening hand of God. And so the first one is we were born with an old nature. Romans 7 and 18 says, for I know that is in me, that is in my flesh dwells no good thing. And I can I trust that every adult, every person here in this room knows the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior. And at that point you have a new nature.
And then there's the conflict, as we know, between the old and the new nature. But I just want to say that.
We are all born with the condition of an old nature.
And perhaps it's not very pleasant to think about, but it is what we read in God's Word.
And then, so then we have the thought where David said in Psalm 51, Behold, I was shape it in iniquity and in sin did my mother concede me?
David came to recognize that he had experiences. Perhaps he's the person in the Word of God that has shown more than anyone else the experiences of life. And he made mistakes. And he came to the point of saying that that was the condition in which he was born and.
We know that that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and so I don't want to do all this one too long.
But just now, as it applies to our children, you know, that's how they are born in this world and it's healthy. It's good to simply recognize it. And so maybe especially for parents, it's a little bit hard to see you're especially a newborn baby and say that they have the old nature, they're beautiful. They're they're to be nurtured, they're to be protected. And and the thought that they have the old nature is.
Perhaps not.
Could be not acknowledged as it should and so just the point is, is that then.
If it manifests itself as it will and does it did in everyone of us, and it can still in each one of us will serve our adults too. But if you have the care of a child, whether you're a parent, whether you're a friend, an aunt, an older sibling, even a grandparent like I am, now you see that you can try to look into God's Word as to how you can help the child to recognize it so that they come to repentance.
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Age and know the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior. So you can almost turn it into a positive by saying, yes, it's hard and it's painful to acknowledge. But if it brings them to their point of repentance when they're just one year old or 18 months old or whenever it is, they're brought into the presence of God and they say, Lord Jesus save me, then they have the new nature, then they're saved for all eternity. Don't we all want that? The Lord Jesus does And so just remember that.
There is that old nature.
Now let's have a few thoughts around. We reap what we sow. Now let's turn that for this one to Galatians 6. Again, it's so important to get it from the scriptures. Galatians 6.
Verse versus 8:00 and 9:00. So then Galatians chapter 6, verses 8:00 and 9:00.
For he that sails to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, but he that sails to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. Let us not be weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.
So again, that applies to all of us adults, and we need to take it seriously. What we do has consequences. That's what these scriptures are saying, that it gives us the analogy of sewing. And I'm not in agriculture. I know Bernie and others are. But just a few thoughts that we can draw from this, that we can then apply perhaps.
To how we can help children.
We have the thought in agriculture of preparing, being prepared. We have the thought of nutrients. So you need to add fertilizer and, and nutrients. And then what about weeds? You can have Weeds aren't going to help a plant grow well and.
Then. So let's just think about those for a few minutes. Prepare.
How can we prepare our children? Well, there's valuable ways we can prepare them and still in them the Word of God. Take time to read the word of God. You know, plants experience inclement weather, we call it, or adverse situations, but if they have a good soil prepared, we can compare that to the Bible.
They have a better chance of surviving and so I just want to encourage.
Again, all of us, yes, again, parents have a special role in this, but we interact. Those of us who have a care for children, there's times that we can call attention to the word of God.
And help them.
And so perhaps.
You're like my wife and I are now we have the joy of grandchildren. They come over well. Is the word of God part of the occasion? Maybe you're an older sibling and you're stirred up a little bit to show, you know, you're 16 and you have a younger sibling. Maybe you're an aunt, an uncle. There's opportunities to bring the word of God before children in a simple way. They take it in. They're so they, they yearn for things. They're so attentive. They are.
So impressionable at such a young age. And if you take an opportunity to have the word of God before them, it can bear fruit. And it's like providing nutrients and bringing the soil in so that when the adversity comes, they're they're more prepared. And what about the thought of weeds? Well, maybe we could just apply it in this way. Little weeds are not very profitable, right? They are.
They hinder the growth and so we can you can ask yourself.
As you interact with children and maybe I can say a word, especially to parents, because again, you have a very special privilege and unique responsibility. What am I? Are there things that I'm that my kids are being exposed to that seem little and insignificant, but as they grow, they're going to choke out the word. We have that story about the the seed that sown in the bad. And one of them is.
Out the word and so you can just ask yourself again, kids are so habits that are formed in their youth.
The recreational activities are amazing, but is it so intense that the Word of God is tending to be?
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Set aside or not being emphasized as it could be again, there's no rules in Christianity. We don't the word of God in the New Testament isn't written that way. It's written for our heart to to attract us and to that it's also written to stir us up. And so I think that it's it's healthy to ask, you know, how are the children being affected by how I interact with them and there's look for opportunities to to have the word of God open and.
And there's there's many some are invested in perhaps you take up with taking a Sunday school class. What a great opportunity to, you know, do a craft and and get the kids into the word of God. And so it's these things that are sown can reap tremendous benefits down the road.
I just have a few. I want to make sure I do things that I had in mind.
It talks about here if we faint not it says here in Galatians again I'll just read it. Let us not be wearing while doing from due season. We shall reap if we faint not and so I just want to say a word maybe especially to the mothers that are here this evening. Raising children is a tremendous amount of work. It is beyond measure what God will reward in eternity is don't give up it's it's.
It's not easy. Day by day, the Lord will give strength for the day and maybe for all of us. You know, again, kids are so impressionable. Sometimes adversity effects those of us who are adults. And how do I respond?
You know kids are watching.
And they pick up on things far more than I think we generally give them credit for. And if there's adversity of some kind in our life and it happens, right?
The Lord himself said in the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I've overcome the world and so how do I respond?
Proverbs 2410 says, If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.
We should lift up the hands that hang down. We should try to continue on even when there is the winds of adversity seem to be against us.
For the benefit of our children who are watching, if they see us wilt under adversity, it can have an unintended but real consequence on them that could have a real effect on their life. So lift up the hands that hang down. Well, let's continue on here.
The thought around the value of trusting and obeying.
And believing God's Word, I was reading this afternoon a little bit from Acts 27, where there's that account of Paul. And he was on the ship, I think it left from Crete, and there was a great storm. And the Angel of God says it came and strengthened him. And Paul was brought to say, sirs, I believe God. It was a very adverse situation. But the point is, is that he.
Believed God. He claimed God's word.
And he said it to all that could hear him on the ship. And so do I believe God. We have the example of Thomas. He doubted, but the Lord restored him. Well, how does this affect our children?
We have the verse Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Children, obey your parents and the Lord for this is right. Maybe the kids are even able to listen a little bit.
Children obey its essential for your happiness. God has made us that we need to learn to trust and obey not God doesn't want to make us little hope. I speak reverently robots that just do things because somebody told us to do it. He'll tell us why any in due time, but in the meantime.
You will reap tremendous blessing if God and Mom give you instructions and you're able to just say OK.
I will do it. The Bible teaches us that That's the path of blessing, the path of happiness. You think of the example of Joseph in the Old Testament.
It caused tremendous challenge in his life, but he when he was 17 years old, his father said, will you go? And he did and he obeyed. I think he had a sense that it was not going to go well, but he he continued on and it was for the ultimate blessing of his entire family because he was willing to obey. And so the Bible says, children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
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I'd just like to read some verses from John 13 that speak to the fact that happiness comes from obedience. John chapter.
13.
Candidates versus the trust will refresh us and encourage us. John 13, starting at verse.
15 Do I give you an example that you should do as I have done to you? Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his Lord, neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him, if ye know these things.
Happy are ye if ye do them so just a simple application that.
We have instructions from God's Word, if your children that are young, your parents are given to you to guide you, to show love, nurture and admonish, and you'll be happy if you can just simply learn to obey. That's God's path of blessing. Now we'll move on to the thought of dependence, and it's closely related.
But I think that it's something that I just like to read a verse that might appear a little bit unusual in this context, but.
I hope it helps Matthew read from Matthew the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5.
Matthew chapter 5, verse 3.
The Lord Jesus himself says.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven. Now I just like to read. I enjoy the commentary on this verse and.
Just want to read it, the man said.
And comment on this, he said poor in spirit refers to those who acknowledge their own helplessness.
And rely on God's omnipotence. That means that God is all powerful.
They sense their spiritual need and find it supplied in the Lord.
Isn't that a good attitude for all of us to have? Me especially the attitude of depending. We live in a culture that trains us to be independent, to think it through. Everything is given to be evaluated and held for consideration until I understand it. But that's not how God has designed us to go through life. He designed us to go through life depending on Him in a real way.
And so we can help our children to learn.
To be dependent and in that regard, I want to quote a verse that may appear a little bit unusual, but in this context, but it's a that's a verse we know it says in Proverbs 2215, foolishness is bound in the part of a child. You say, well, what do you that doesn't seem to connect. Well, foolishness is presented in the Proverbs and in most of the word of God isn't so much the way we use it now like oh, he's being foolish like trivial or it's more.
A fool is someone that lives independently of God.
They may acknowledge that God exists, but it's of no relevance to them and they go through their life.
They say the word of God, and what God says is it becomes irrelevant to them. Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child.
They need children need to be taught to depend.
And an independent streak in a young child needs to be addressed as early as possible because it's essential that they learn to depend on God. And we know that verse goes on to say foolishness is bound in the heart of the child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him. And so the Bible is given to us. Receive it as God's word. Not what any man says, but there is the thought of correction to help them understand.
That they must live in reverence to reference to.
A holy God. And they can't just do what they want when they want. Otherwise they're going to have a life full of sorrow. And so there are many ways that we need to learn. The Bible says you are not your own.
You're bought with a price. The Lord Jesus paid dearly for our salvation. We need to depend on Him for the salvation of our life. We counted on Him for the salvation of our soul. We need to depend on Him for the preservation.
And salvation of our life, lest we fall into a ditch, as we all are prone to do.
It's important to learn to walk in a dependent way. And now I'll just move along to the thought of controlling our affections and our desires. We know the verse in Colossians. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. I don't think that's hard to be understood, but it's so important. Our affections are our hearts.
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And we as adults, we get to, I'll say to some extent you can say we get to choose where is my heart, what is important to me? The Lord Jesus pleads with us, Set your affections on things above not and things of the earth. And I know some verses in Titus two that I just like to read together.
Titus, chapter 2.
And starting at verse, we'll read verse six. It says young men likewise exhort to be sober minded or self-control, control your affections. And then we'll jump down to verse 12, teaching us that denying ungodliness a worldly lusts, we should live soberly. Again, that word has the thought of self-control.
Guarding our affections, not just letting them go anywhere.
We should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world.
Our children are observing us and I'm not. Again, I'm a grandparent now. It's a wonderful joy, but it's wonderful to have children around. They're constantly observing us. They can pick up on what our hearts are attracted to. So that's the part that it affects the children. And if our heart is towards children, I'm willing to set aside affections then my life.
That could be a distraction to them as they observed me. Am I willing to even think about that?
It's significant how impressionable they are, and I know probably many adults have talked about this, and I know my wife and I have, but we have these things.
And my, they're attractive and I'm guilty more than probably anybody else to be. You just go to it like you have a few spare moments and, and, and your kids.
It starts to take away from time that you could spend with them and then all of a sudden they're like pulling on you and you're like annoyed and it just goes downhill.
Well, it started with I didn't control what my affections were. So these things are real. Perhaps they are with you. I know they are with me. And so we can consider where our affections are and we can help train our children to set affections in the right place. Again, just think of things like they have children, have spare time, they're all at a different age. They grow up so fast. You have such a short period.
With them, but at different ages they're attracted to different things and you can help them learn to get them to participate. Dad and mom in your household, you're having guests over well at a very young age you can help them participate in and get their affections going towards your the guests you're going to have by getting them to participate. I know that's practical you can take it for what it's worth but.
There's real ways that you can help your children get affections in the right direction so as they grow and get older.
They then can do things that are of value for eternity themselves. And so these are just little things that we can consider together. So then the last one I want to go to is.
The thought of correction. We know the verse Hebrews chapter 12, verses 6 and seven. Salzburg. And ye have forgotten. And have ye forgotten the exhortation which speaks unto you as unto children, my son.
This is from Hebrews. You want to turn to it. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 7. The word of God says, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, for whom the Lord nor faint when art rebuked of him for whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every song whom he receives.
We are all in the school of God.
We if some of the kids are listening and saying, OK, well, he's getting ready to say that I might need correction. What the word of God is saying is that we all need correction. We are all subject to it throughout our entire life. And yes, there is the role of parents correcting children and the Bible gives a little bit of practical, I would say very practical instruction in that regard to be taken up with.
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But let's think about the thought whom the Lord loves. The source motive is love.
Sometimes I used to think of this as you sort of had to set aside love to get the correction done, but that's not the way the Word of God presents it. Love is not suspended to accomplish correction. It's the root motive that's there all along. Yes, there's, if any correction. And in fact, it goes on to say that it's painful in the moment. The Word of God acknowledges that. And so if it's so, don't be surprised.
If your child comes to the point of needing correction and there's tears, it's that's.
It's part of the necessity of training the nerd that says in their Ephesians the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Those two things go throughout life and throughout raising our children. Nurture and admonition. Perhaps just a few practical thoughts in that regard. If if correction is necessary, it's beneficial. The Bible talks about doing it speedily.
Whatever that means, do it sooner.
Then later the Bible says, so withhold not correction from the child, don't hold back. It might be painful, it might be hard to get over the hurdle, but Bible says withhold not correction. You know, and I just want to say a word to those who are fathers here.
You know, again, we are affected by our culture and there's a real eroding of authority. But a father has authority and he has responsibility.
And we need those of you who are dads, you need to take up with it in a very real way. It's for the benefit of your whole household. Take the responsibility, take the leadership.
You're done in the right way, it will garner the love and that your wife desires to have expressed that she knows that there's the protection is being brought by someone who is cares enough to look out and try to guide children.
For the Lord Jesus Christ for that eternal day.
David said at the end of his life, I think was it yesterday or at some point someone referred to the Samuel and the last words of David and he said it in it. And at the end of his life in Second Samuel 23, David records that God spoke to him and said he that rules over man must be just ruling in the fear of God. So when it comes to discipline should be done.
With a sense of the God is holy, that it's never done in anger.
It's never done as a fleshly response to achieve an immediate result. It's done with love and care, the spirit of that it would be for the eternal blessing those who receive it. And so we need to have a reverent fear of God, every one of us and especially those of us who are men, that we would realize that God is over us and we give an account to him.
And so I just trust that those two thoughts would be for the encouragement of each each of us here and know what each would cause us to go further into the Word of God and to pray together to seek to support each other in our Christian life. We don't know what's ahead of us.
But the Lord Jesus can take care of us.
Session #2
Spiritual Maturity in the Life of Simon Peter
Address—Daniel Nicoara
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.
Or to start tonight's meeting by seeing him #46 in the Appendix M #46 in the back of the book. Be thou the object, bright and fair to fill and satisfy the heart. My hope to meet thee in the air. And evermore from thee depart, that I may undistracted be to follow, serve, and wait for thee.
I've been fighting a little bit of congestion, so if somebody could please raise that tune for me, I'd appreciate that.
That's helped God our Father, we thank you for another opportunity we have to open the Scripture to preach Thy word. And we just ask now tonight for open minds and open hearts to receive your word and proclaim your thought for the preacher.
And for?
Words that would bring honor to thyself for Jesus.
We ask for help this evening. Your name we pray, Lord Jesus, Amen.
00:05:05
When Tim asked me to have this meeting several weeks ago.
He first bought me some Chick-fil-A, so in case you all ever need to know what you need to do to get me to do anything, I guess that's it.
But on a more serious note.
As I thought about this address, I think I should be sitting up with you young people there still. I don't feel like I have a lot of life experience to share with you, and I feel like I have so much to learn myself and so on taking up this meeting.
The burden on my heart tonight is spiritual maturity, and I think it was as much as profitable for me, perhaps more so than for you listening tonight.
To dig into this subject and I want to take up the life of Simon Peter.
And the theme that I want to take up in his life is spiritual maturity and growth. We live in a time when much of the world is unserious and immature. And this unseriousness has crept into Christendom because we are influenced by the world around us. And for many people, Christianity has become more of a culture.
I'm a Christian. I live in a Christian nation, but it's a superficial Christianity.
It's mean Christianity, it's TikTok Christianity, it's Christianity that's only skin deep.
I'm not talking about churches out there.
I'm talking about the assembly here.
Talking about each one of us. The temptation to be unserious. The temptation.
To remain at the same spot in our lives, to go through the motions, to come to the assembly meetings, to briefly read our Bible in the morning, to briefly pray the same prayer we've always prayed. To never take that next step in our Christian faith.
And our Christianity becomes a religion of superficial outward motions and inward emotions.
So the response to each believer?
Tonight to this environment of superficiality and immaturity is to develop some depth and maturity. And I want to mention before we go on that spiritual maturity and spiritual death are the result of personal conviction. Spiritual maturity is an individual process. It's not a collective thing. You can't expect that church attendance.
Or meeting attendance or fellowship with other believers will produce spiritual maturity. Those things are good.
But it's the result of a believer that is in communion with the Lord, who welcomes the working of the Lord in his or her life that will produce growth in our lives. The Lord desires for us to move beyond a superficial or immature faith. Turn with me to Colossians chapter 2.
Colossians, chapter 2.
And verse six as ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord.
So walkie in him, rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith as ye have been taught, abounding therein with Thanksgiving.
When I turn to a lot of scriptures tonight, so bear with me, First Corinthians chapter 13.
1St Corinthians 13 and verse 11 was quoted a couple of nights ago.
When I was a child, I spake as a child. I understood as a child, I thought as a child.
But when I became a man, I put away childish things.
First Corinthians, chapter 3.
And race one, and I, brethren, to not speak unto you as on a spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.
I fed you with milk and not with meat, for hitherto you were not able to bear it neither, yet now are you able.
Hebrews, chapter 5.
And on verse 11 I'll read a couple of verses here, of whom you have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing. For when the time of ye ought to be teachers, you have need that one teacher again, which be the first principles of the oracles of God.
00:10:09
And I become such as have need of milk and not of strong meat. For everyone that uses milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness, for he is obeyed. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. The reason I read these 4 verses in quick succession here is because I want to make a point that the Christian I've seen in the New Testament is not seen as someone who is.
And stops there is not seen as someone who wants They are saved, they read their Bible, they go to meeting and they go through the motions of Christianity, no.
The Christian as seen in the New Testament as someone who goes on, who grows, who learns the Scriptures, who are bounds. And so spiritual maturity is what God wants for each one of us tonight. Growth in our lives is what he wants for each one of us.
So what should characterize somebody who is spiritually mature?
I have a list here that I want to go through. First we'll go through the signs of spiritual maturity, and then we'll turn to the life of Peter and we'll look at some of the workings of the Lord that produced spiritual maturity. And I have seven things on this list. And I and I that was coincidental, if any. I'm sure there are many more things we could add to this list, but for the sake of time, we'll go through these seven and we'll see that a number of these begin with the word abound because.
Abounding implies to have gone beyond the mere basics.
Beyond the mere necessities, so the first one will stay here In Hebrews chapter five, one of the first signs of spiritual maturity is to be skillful in the Word of God. He talks to ones here who are unskillful.
We should strive earnestly, each and every one of us, to have an understanding of the Scripture, to be skillful. Paul tells Timothy that he should have an outline of sound words and that he should rightly divide the Scriptures. In Matthew 22 and verse 29, Jesus answered and said unto them.
He do error not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God. So much of the confusion in our personal lives and in our assemblies could be avoided if we simply had a deeper understanding of the Scriptures. How many times do we have questions? What is the will of God? In my life? The answer was in the scriptures all along. And we go ask some faithful older brother or our parents or friend, and they simply turn us to a verse of scripture that didn't come to our mind because we're not familiar with them.
And I speak to myself as much as anyone here tonight. We need to have an understanding and be skillful in the scriptures. We cannot expect any growth. We don't go past this point if we don't begin with a thorough and dedicated effort at studying the scriptures and understanding them.
Turn to Romans chapter 12.
And verse one. I beseech you therefore, brethren.
By the mercies of God, that He presents your bodies a living sacrifice, holy.
Acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, and being not confirmed to this world, but being transformed by the renewing of your mind, that he may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. That brings us to our second point here. The 2nd characteristic of a mature Christian is complete devotion to God. We are all called to be a living sacrifice.
The apostle states that this is our reasonable service. We often sing in hymn #283, where the whole realm of nature, ours that were.
And offering far too small love that transcends our highest powers, demands our soul, our life, our all. A mature believer will recognize that the uttermost deaths into which the love of Christ found to them, they realize that the only reasonable offering in return is their complete and utter devotion to God.
Devotion is an initial decision. It's something that we decide.
But it's something, it's a commitment that we have to continually renew. Someone once said that the problem with the living sacrifice is that it tends to squirm off the altar. And how true that is for so, so many of us, for myself included, we start out wanting to be devoted to sacrifice our life, and then we get distracted and we squirm off that altar. But that is our reasonable service, and a mature Christian will have complete devotion to God.
Romans, chapter 15.
Romans chapter 15 and verse 13.
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Now the God of hope, surely with all joy and peace, and believing that he may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost. The Third Point here is that a mature believer is abounding in hope is filled with the subtle expectation that is the soon coming, the hope of Christ soon return. We should abound in hope.
This world and often a carnal Christian, someone who is not mature, someone who's not walking.
After the Spirit, they see nothing beyond this earth. But that's not what a mature believer should see. They should see the hope of Christ's coming each and every day. The prayer of the mature believer should always be Even so come Lord Jesus, and everything that we do has to be done in the view of the Lord soon coming in the ushering of eternity in His presence.
Let's turn to 1St Corinthians chapter 15.
First Corinthians chapter 15 and verse 58. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for as much as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. This is the natural outflow of the first three things on this list. Knowledge of the Scriptures, devotion to the Lord, and the hope of the Lord's coming should make us have a desire.
To work for the Lord, they should prompt us to show energy in the Lord's work. All of us have a work to be done for the Lord, and that will look very different for each one of us. Even the apostles, even though all of them are called to be apostles, if we study the scriptures and history, know that there was a different character to their ministry, each and every one of them. But the Lord has called us all, and He's cause of work for each one of us to do.
In First Corinthians 12/28 we read God hath set some in the church. First apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps governments, diversities of tongues. There's something for each one of us to do. There's a work for every single one of us in this room.
We just think of a camp like this and all the work that goes into it behind the scenes, in front of the scenes. Everybody has a role and nothing would get done if one person didn't do what they were supposed to do. It would throw everything off. Everyone has a role, and the same goes for spiritual things. And a spiritually mature believer will abound in the work of the Lord.
2nd Corinthians, chapter 8.
There's something for each one of us to do. There's a work for every single one of us.
And verse 7.
Therefore, as ye abound in everything, in faith and utterance and knowledge, and in all diligence, and in your love to us, see that he abound in this grace also. So the last three things on my list I've found in this verse, and you might count more than three there, but I, I figured utterance and knowledge went under, the first one being skillful in the word. So the next one on my list here is to abound in faith.
We know that saving faith is a gift of God. We get that in Ephesians. But we know that we can grow and abound in faith for every times in our life where our faith is tested, when the devil will cause us to doubt. But a true belief, a mature believer, is marked by strength of faith. They keep their eyes on the Lord, their mind in the scripture, their heart and prayer when prevents those doubts from becoming overwhelming and will speak more of that as we look at Peter's life.
The 6th one is abound in diligence.
Diligence means careful and persistent work or effort. Spiritual maturity will not happen if you just have brief moments of passion or zeal. It is something that takes time to process, that takes Christian discipline to grow and mature. It's important for us to have habits to aid with this.
During our busy lives, it's important for us to take time every morning to read the Scripture, prayer, communion with the Lord, and steady consumption of solid Christian ministry and fellowship of believers that will provoke us unto love and good works. These things are important if we're going to abound, and that's why we need to abound in diligence. It takes hard work to mature and to grow.
And the last one on this list is to abound in love. I think here specifically, I'm thinking of love shown to our brethren. Although it can probably include love shown to unbelievers and lost souls, and it can include love shown to the Lord, I believe it speaks primarily.
About love shown to our brethren. And the mature believer desires to show love to their brother, to other believers, to other brethren.
To encourage, to edify and have fellowship with them as we're doing at this camp. We have scriptures that encourage us to be hospitable.
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And so there they suggest there are 7 marks of the mature believer. That's enough for us to strive for. And if you study the scriptures more thoroughly than I have, you'll find more things that will mark someone who has progressed in their Christian faith, who has gone beyond the basics of simply going through the motions.
We see another list similar to this and Second Peter chapter one, and let's just turn over there. Second Peter chapter one.
And besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness.
And to brotherly kindness, charity. For if these things be in you and abound, they make that ye shall be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see it far off. And I've forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore the rather brethren give diligence to make her calling an election sure. For if he do these things, he shall never fall.
For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
And so I just want to draw attention particularly to this eleventh verse. The end result of spiritual growth and maturity is to produce an abundant entrance into the Kingdom. There's that word again to abound. We can enter heaven because we were saved, but that's not what the Lord desires for each one of our lives. He desires for us to have an abundant entrance, to have run the race and fought a good fight, and to enter in heaven abundantly abounding.
And that's why the Apostle Peter himself here.
Is also encouraging us to give diligence to grow to progress.
He wants to say to each one of us, Well done, thou good and faithful servant. That's the burden of the 2nd Epistle of Peter to stir up the brethren, to stir up the Christians, that we go on to grow, to mature, to lay hold of these things, to put them into remembrance.
And that introduces my main subject for this evening, which is Simon Peter. Miss Peter. His life is a beautiful study and the growth of the believer and the time that they're called through the ups and downs of the pathway of faith to the abundant entrance at the end of a life that was lived in devotion to Christ. I chose Peter in particular because I feel that many, if not all of us can relate so much with them. And I found myself so often reading and my heart.
Disappeared because I feel like I've done the exact same things in my life. You know, in many religions, they're heroes.
Are venerated, they're presented as perfect people, as superheroes. But that's not how the Scriptures talk about men, is it? And as it presents Peter, even though he was one of the greatest, if you will, one of the greatest heroes of the Christian faith, it records his triumphs as well as his desperate failures.
And we can learn so much from that. He triumphed when he was walking by faith, and he failed when he trusted in himself, like so many of us have done. He's full of zeal and emotion and impulsiveness.
He truly loved the Lord.
Let us I want to look at 8 major events or periods in the life of fear. So let's turn to the first one in John chapter one.
Because the Gospels are often not written chronologically, you have to kind of go back through and piece things together. The West Walston has a book on the life of Simon Peter, and he kind of helps to get a chronological order of the things that happen in his life, and this is the first time that he encounters the Lord.
In John chapter one and verse 35 says in the next day John stood and two of his disciples and looking upon Jesus as he walked he said behold the Lamb and the two disciples heard them speak and they followed Jesus.
And then down to verse 41 of the two which heard John speak and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messiah, which is being interpreted Christ.
And brought unto Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jonah, thou shalt be called Cephas. So is better Andrew believe the testimony of John the Baptist, behold the Lamb of God. And then the first thing he does he finds Simon and tells him, we have found the Messiahs and brought him to Jesus.
So before there can ever be spiritual growth, there must first be faith in Christ. One must be brought to Jesus. And if you're still in your sins tonight, then you have to be saved first before the rest of this meeting or anything that I said prior to this will apply to you. The first thing is to come to knowledge of this one who is the Lamb of God, who God has provided as an offering for your sins. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. This was the first part of Peter's calling, His calling. This is the call of salvation.
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And so he listens to his brother and comes to me, Jesus, and took the first steps of faith here. And immediately he's given a new name, which signifies ownership. We know that, for example, Pharaoh changed Joseph's name in the Old Testament, and that was something that we've seen a number of times in the Old Testament. It signifies ownership. Simon now belonged to Jesus. He was his, and the Lord would use him how he saw fit.
That was the call of salvation. But then there's the call of discipleship. Let's turn to Mark chapter one.
And verse 16.
Now as he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea. For they were fishers. And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you fishers of men. And straightway they forsook their Nets, and followed him. So now they found the Messiah. We read previously they believe John's testimony, but evidently they were still fishing here.
And here the Lord Jesus gives Peter the call of discipleship. He says, Come ye after me.
What does Peter say? What's his immediate response? It's so beautiful. It says it here straight away. They 1St and they followed him.
Is that the response of our hearts to night? This is the first call away from simply being just a believer, just having been saved. It's his first call of discipleship, telling Peter that he's got something more for him. And the response of his heart immediately is to forsake everything and to follow the Lord Jesus.
Come ye afternoon.
It's beautiful, but can we close the book here?
We can't because we know that the Lord had a lot more to work with Peter. And you know, even though we respond to that call of discipleship, even when we're young, perhaps in our teens or in early childhood, we say I'm going to follow Jesus just as Peter followed Jesus. We all know that there's a lot, but the Lord takes each one of us through to teach us, to mold us, to make us a vessel fit for his use. And that's what comes next in Peter's life.
The next few scenes will bring that up. Let's start with Luke chapter 5.
And now this is actually the same scene that we just read in Mark, but since it's written by Luke, Luke, he gives us a little bit more to this story. And he had left speaking in verse four. He said unto Simon, launch you out into the deep, and let down your necks for a drought. And Simon answering said unto him, Master, we've toiled all the night and have taken nothing. Nevertheless, at thy word I will look down the neck. And when they had this done, they enclosed a great multitude of fishes, and their net break, and they beckoned onto their.
Is richer in the other ship that they should come and help them. And they came and filled both the ships so that they both began to sink. When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down as Jesus sneezed, saying, Depart from me, for I am sinful man, O Lord, for here is astonished and all that were with him.
Now he realizes in the presence of who he finds and one of whom he finds himself, and he realized who he is as a man. He says, depart from me, for I am a sinful man. And this is a critical part of spiritual maturity. It's beginning to realize how sinful we are and how holy God is. When we realize how unworthy we are interviewing His presence, we begin to think God's thoughts against sin and against ourselves.
Sin is not to be taken lightly. We live in a world.
As I said earlier, that is unserious and sin has taken very lightly in this world. It's in joy, it's reveled in, but that's not for the mature believer, is it? We have to learn how sinful we truly are in the presence of a holy God, not like God, learned Romans, who said, shall we send that grace may abound because the new man should recall at the thought of sin.
Instead, the mature believer walking in the spirit desires after holiness.
And we get that in first Peter chapter one. I won't turn to it for the sake of time, but he says be holy even as I am holy. I read a book once when I was a teenager by William McDonald, which I recommend. It's called Be Holy, the Forgotten Command. And I, and I encourage everyone to take that up or some books similar to it, where to accept the concept of holiness that is so counter to the culture that we live in today that glorifies unholiness.
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But that starts with having an appreciation for how terrible our sin is. And sometimes as new believers, that we realize we're sinners, that we realize we have need for a Savior. Sometimes we don't realize how truly, desperately wicked each one of us is. And that was something that the Peter had to come to realization here. He had to say, I'm an unclean man.
I'm worthy to be in His presence, even though the Lord did show him grace.
Let's turn now to Matthew chapter 14, to Maxine and Peter's life, a very well known scene full of instruction.
Where he learns the power of God.
And that's keeping the eye of faith on the person of Christ. Matthew chapter 14 and verse 24.
But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves, for the wind was contrary.
And the 4th watch of the night Jesus went unto them walking on the sea. And the disciples saw him walking on the sea. They were troubled, saying, It is a spirit. And they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus spoke unto them, saying, Be a good cheer, it is I be not afraid. And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water. And he said, Come. And Peter was come out of the ship. He walked on the water to go to Jesus, but when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid and beginning.
He cried, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?
It's important to note here that it wasn't that Peter didn't know that Christ could keep him, otherwise he wouldn't have asked to come out of the boat to him. And it's not that he didn't have faith initially. Here Peter faltered and failed because he took his eyes off the Lord and looked at the circumstances.
Around Him. It's a very simple concept to keep our eye on the Lord. But we all know how difficult that is, isn't it? We're halfway through camp, almost, And as we all go back to our homes, back to our jobs, businesses, school, perhaps we have trouble with friends, trouble with family, trouble with our faith, doubts.
And we go away from this safe haven where we're surrounded by the Lord's people and.
By godly ministry and great volleyball and other games. And we go back and the winds are boisterous and the waves around us are boisterous. It's so easy to take our eyes off the Lord, to look at those waves and to forget in whose presence we stand. And that's what happened to Peter. He took his eyes off the Lord and he looked at those circumstances around him.
And as he looked at those circumstances, he faltered, and he started to sink.
Or in other words, Jesus is everlasting hands or right there immediately to catch him and pull him out of the water. And Peter learned an important lesson that even as he's floundering, even as we flounder in our faith, the Lord Jesus was there, and he's powerful, and he's stronger than any storm that assails us in this life.
And not only is he stronger than those storms, he is in the storm with us, with each one of us. And as we go back to our homes and to our lives, we have that to lean on, the fact that he is in that storm with us. Gideon built an altar in Judges 6 and verse 24, and he called it Jehovah Shalom, which is the Lord, our peace Peter.
When he's writing the first epistle in chapter 5 and verse 7.
He writes, casting all your care upon him, for he cares for you. Peter had learned in whose presence he was walking. Peter had learned who was in the storm with him, and he can cast his cares upon him because he cares for each one of us.
Let's turn to Matthew chapter 16.
Another scene in Peter's life.
In verse 15 you say unto them, That is the Lord Jesus, but whom say that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou Simon Barjona, for fresh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, for my Father which is in heaven.
Then let's get down to verse 21. From that time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples all that he must go into Jerusalem.
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And suffer many things of the elders, and the chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. Then Peter took him and began to rebuke him. He's rebuking the Lord Jesus, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord, this shall not be unto thee. But he turned and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou art an offense unto me. For thou savour us, not the things that be of God, for those that be of men.
So here Peter has a beautiful confession.
And he confesses who the person of the Lord Jesus really was, and his beautiful proclamation was such.
Never heard Jesus calls this the rock upon which he would build his church. The Peter makes a serious error and tells the Lord Jesus.
That he should not suffer at the cross. And this review receives an instant rebuke from the Lord. And Peter learned a lesson here, that all who follow after the Lord must learn when we speak the truth.
We're simply a vessel of the Spirit to speak through us. If we speak our own wisdom, we are speaking men's wisdom, and man's wisdom comes from the devil. Let us not fall prey in the thinking that our own cleverness can be a substitute for godly scriptural ministry. Let us ever be praying that we preach only that what is being which has been revealed.
By God himself in the Scriptures, Peter later on writes in first Peter chapter 4 verse 11. If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God. If any man minister, let him do it as the ability which God giveth. So he learned that lesson too.
Being too quick to speak and to speak in his own wisdom.
Matthew, Chapter 17.
Matthew chapter 17 and verse one, the mountaintop experience of Peters life, perhaps the greatest mountaintop experience that ever was. And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an higher mountain apart, and was transfigured before them. And his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. And behold, there appeared unto them Moses.
I was talking with him, then answered Peter and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be clear.
If thou will, let us make your three tabernacles, one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias, while he yet spake. Behold a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold a voice out of the cloud which said, This is my beloved Son, and whom I am well pleased. And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face, and was so afraid. And Jesus came and touched them, and their side. Arise, and be not afraid. And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man but Jesus only.
And here's another lesson that the Apostle Peter had to learn, because as he proposes that they build 3 tabernacles, here he puts Moses and Elias on the same level as the Lord Jesus. And we see that the Father zealously guards the person of the Lord Jesus and swaddles the mountain in darkness. And then when they look up again, they see no man.
Say Jesus only, and one of the lessons that we must learn as we go on our pathway of faith, as we grow and mature, it is not to elevate man above what he is.
Moses and Elias were great men that the Lord used mightily, but they were men, and this was the Son of God and whose presence they found themselves. Only Christ should occupy our highest thoughts and meditations. Men always should fade into the background of that. Our temptation, even in our holiest moments, is to think highly of men and to distract ourselves from the perfect man.
We'll see you later. We'll leave at the end of this meeting when Peter writes about the Transfiguration.
In Peter, there is zero mention of anyone but Christ himself. When he talks about that mountaintop experience the second time in his epistles, he doesn't say and then we saw the Lord, and then we saw Moses and Elias to There's no mention of that. There's only one thing that he recalled from that moment. That was the Lord Jesus himself.
And now let's move on.
To Matthew, chapter 26.
In verse 33.
Peter answered and said unto him, The Lord Jesus, though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended.
Jesus said unto him, Verily Sam to thee, that this night before the **** pro thou shall deny me thrice Peter said unto him, Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee. Likewise said also all the disciples now in the verse 69 of this chapter.
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Now Peter sought without in the palace, and a damsel came unto him, saying also was the Jesus of Galilee. But he denied before them all, saying, I know not what thou sayest. And when he was gone out into the porch, another maid saw him, and said unto them that were there This fellow also was with Jesus of Nazareth. And again he denied with an oath, I do not know the man. And after a while came unto him day that stood by and said to Peter.
Surely thou also art one of them, for thy speech betrayeth thee.
Then began he to curse and to swear, saying I know not the man, and immediately the cock crew.
And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, which said unto him before the **** pro, Thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out and wept bitterly. Now let's turn over to John chapter 21.
You're in Matthew.
We have Peter's greatest failure, that despite all of his boasts, he denies the Lord Jesus. Not once.
But three times this is the darkest hour of his life. Not only is his Master crucified, but he denies him from whom he has so strongly professed affection and love.
And he did it with zeal, and he said it would despite what anyone else would do, he would stand with the Lord. And then when he was put to the test, he did what any of us would have done in that situation, and he denied the Lord.
It's inevitable in our Christian pathway that we will fail, and the devil will use this failure to discourage us from ever following the Lord again or being useful in His service. He will use that bad conscience.
And not failure to keep us down and to keep us thinking about that instead of the love and grace of our Lord Jesus.
Yet at this lowest point in his pathway, we have, I think, probably one of the most beautiful and tender examples of the love of our Lord Jesus and restoring Peter and to make him fit again, to be a vessel for his use. He had a purpose for Peter. He owned Peter. He changed his name to Peter.
Because he had a purpose for him and he was going to go where Peter was and to restore this man in the most loving and tender fashion that we have reported in Scripture.
So when they had dined in verse 15 of John 21, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, I'm going to switch over to the new translation.
Simon Peter, Simon son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He says to him, Ye Lord.
I noticed that I am attached to thee, he says to him, Feed my lambs. His boast was that if everyone else denied the Lord Jesus, yet he wouldn't. And so he says, Peter, lovest thou me more than all these? And Peters reply here is that he he can't say that he loves him more than those because he had denied him.
He was the only one that denied him vociferously everyone else Fred.
Denied him and so he doesn't say back that he loves him. He says I have affection or some have rendered its strong affection for the.
And verse 16 he says to him again a second time, Simon, son of Jonas Lovestami, he says to him, Dear Lord, that I know that I am attached. Thou knowest that I am attached to him, to thee. He says to him, shepherd my sheep. So this time he asks them again. And this time he doesn't bring other people into the equation. He simply asked him if he loved him without comparing him to the others.
And Peter again replies, Yeah, I have a strong affection for you.
And then he says the third time.
And this time he doesn't say, Do you love me? He says.
Simon and verse 17 son of Jonas, art thou attached to me? And Peter was grieved because he had said to him, the third time, Art thou attached to me? And he said to him, Lord, thou knowest all things. Thou knowest that I am attached to thee. Jesus says to him, Feed my sheep. And here we see how the Lord had brought Peter to the very end of himself.
The very point of departure because Peter's problem wasn't that he didn't have affection for the Lord.
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But it was that he trusted in his own affection. He thought he could show that affection for the Lord. And this third time when the Lord Jesus asks him if he even had affection for him, Peter is at the end of himself. And he has to admit Lord Balnost all things, because it was so not obvious that he had affection for the Lord while he was denying him with oaths and curses.
That the only way that anyone would know.
That Peter had affection for the Lord Jesus was because the Lord Jesus knew all things and knew that deep down he did have an affection for him. And he's brought to the end of himself here. And the Lord tells him, feed my sheep. And then he goes on in verse 18. Verily, verily, I say to thee, when thou wast young, thou greatest thyself, and rockets will thou desirest, but when thou shall be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee and bring thee where thou dost not desire.
But he said they're signifying what death he should glorify God. And having said this, he says to him the same words that he told him at the beginning, follow me and Peter was restored even after a fall so desperate, even though it said earlier in the Gospels, if any man denies me before men.
I will deny, also deny Him before my Father, but here we see that the Lord Jesus.
Deals with us and Grace.
And so now I want to read.
A number of verses which you don't have to turn to.
To show what happened.
To Peter, after the Lord called him the second time to follow him and after he had restored him. What happens to this man that was afraid before a maid, this man that denied his Lord with oaths and curses. This man that had gone through all these exercises of teaching the Lord, taking him through different scenarios when he taught him his love and his power and his his own unrighteousness and his own ability to fail when he didn't trust in the Lord.
Acts chapter 2 and verse 14.
But Peter, standing up with 11, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judea, and all that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words. And he preaches the gospel. Here in verse 31 we read.
Van Berry, that gladly received his word, were baptized in the same day, or added unto them about 3000 souls.
Now over in Acts chapter 4 and verse 13.
Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled, and they took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus. Verse 19.
But Peter and John answered and said unto them, These are the rulers. Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you, mayor, more than unto God, Judge ye, for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen.
And heard Acts chapter 5 and verse 28.
And they said, the priest, the counsel, thy priest, asked them, saying, Did we not straightly command you that you should not teach in this name? And behold, you have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine and intent to bring this man's blood upon us. Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, we ought to obey God rather than men.
Acts Chapter 12.
And verse five. Peter therefore was kept in prison.
Her prayer is made without ceasing of the church and to God for him. And when Herod would have brought him forth the same night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers bound with two chains, and the keepers before the door kept the prison.
He also wrote to epistles, and we know that most likely he was the one who dictated the book of Mark to his helper, John Mark. At least that's what history teaches us.
But what happened now that he's restored? Now he was a vessel fit for the masters use. And now we don't get the same man all of a sudden. We don't get the same man that was afraid before a maid. We don't get the same man who denied the Lord with oaths and curses. Now we have one who's standing up before crowds and preaching. One who's standing before the same chief priests and rulers that put his Lord to death and telling them we ought to obey God rather than men. And now we have 1.
Who had feared when he was walking on water in the presence of the Lord? Now we have him sleeping, chained to two soldiers, sleeping because he knew who was in control. Because he had progressed in his life, Because he had matured from the fisherman that was walking along the shores of Galilee when Andrew brought him to meet the Lord Jesus for the first time. And now he was Peter the Apostle. Now he was a vessel fit for the Master's use. He had gone on. He'd grown.
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Let's turn to second Peter, chapter one.
Second Peter chapter one and verse 12. Here he's at the end of his service. Peter is anticipating martyrdom because when the Lord Jesus so tenderly restored him, that's what he told him. What happened to him. He says, Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, let him know them and be established in the present truth.
Yeah, I think it neat as long as I am in this Tabernacle to stir you up by putting you in remembrance, knowing that shortly I must put off this my Tabernacle.
Even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath showed me where we read there, nor of I will endeavor, that He may be able, after my decease, to have these things always in remembrance. For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when He made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ for our eyewitnesses of His Majesty. For He received from God the Father honor and glory, when there came such a voice to Him from the excellent glory.
This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven, we heard when we were with him and the Holy Mount.
Now he sees the end coming for himself. He knows that he's going to be martyred for the faith and for his testimony for Christ. But do we see Peter afraid here? Do we see him concerned about the things he was going to suffer? No, because the Lord had given him a charge.
The Lord had given him a task that was to feed my sheep, feed my lambs.
And shepherd my sheep. And here He is as the shepherd of the sheep of his flock, riding to them and to us now to day. That he wanted to stir them up and put them in remembrance, and to remind them that we had not followed cunningly devised fables. That He Himself had been a witness of this majesty on the mount. That he had seen the Lord Jesus himself.
And that after all these things that he'd gone through.
Despite his failures, Christ had brought him back and had used him mightily to spread the gospel and to lay the foundations of the church with the other apostles. And as he looks forward to his death, he's not thinking about that. He's thinking about the glory of the Lord Jesus.
And he's thinking about his flock and what they would do after he was gone. And he wanted them to be stirred up, to be put in remembrance of these things.
Simon Peter signed the epistle of his life and signed those words and those epistles with his own blood. And that is perhaps one of the greatest proofs that we have that this was real, that what we read in the Scripture is real.
And that's why we need to go on and to grow in grace and grow in the knowledge of the truth.
That's why we need to mature, because we don't serve a dead God.
We serve a risen Christ, we follow a risen Christ. And Peter, though he was a common man, like each one of us, he was a fisherman, as it said, though they took knowledge of them, that they were unlearned.
It didn't matter. Christ had something for him, He had something for Him to accomplish, and He had something for each one of us to night to accomplish.
So as you head back to your homes, you head back to your lives.
You have an option.
You can maintain the status quo. You can continue to go through the motions of Christianity or.
You could do something different.
You can do what Peter did and allow himself to be worked on by his master. And when you have that call that all of us have the call to follow him, to forsake all and to follow him.
Let's read Second Peter chapter 3.
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Second Peter chapter 3 and verse 18. These as far as we know.
Are the last words that we have reported coming from the Apostle Peter, the growing grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?
To him be glory both now and forever. Amen.
In the Scripture is real and that's why we need to go on and to grow in grace and grow in the knowledge of the truth.
Tonight to accomplish.
To your homes, you head back to your lives.
To be worked on.
Second Peter chapter 3 and verse 18. He's, as far as we know, are the last words.
Started coming from the Apostle Theater.
And the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
And to read them and we trust profit from them.
Hymnsing 4
Session #3
God's Grace and Sovereignty
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.
While everybody's while, everybody's coming in, let's sing #44 in the appendix.
Together for us, I'm saying by sea.
My subject tonight is grace and sovereignty, the goodness of God.
God is so big.
That we can only just scratch the surface of the sovereignty of God. But we're going to talk a little bit about the sovereignty of God tonight. Let's ask the Lord's help.
Our God and Father we give thanks for this time. We can come together to consider the words of God and the sovereignty of God and the grace of God and the goodness of God. And we just ask for help this evening that we might be able to get our message from you and not from our own hearts because your heart thoughts are higher than our thoughts. We just ask that we might understand your ways just a little bit. We just commit this meeting to you, Father. In Jesus name we pray.
Amen.
Hey, this meeting is for believers.
Unbelievers won't be able to understand this at all because they do not have the Spirit of God.
They do not have eternal life. If you are not saved, you can listen in. But really, I'm talking to believers tonight.
To help us understand the secret of God that he calls the mystery. And so let's look in Ephesians 3.
Verse 9 to 11 and read about the mystery.
Mystery is a secret, The secret of God. Ephesians 3, verse nine. And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery which from the beginning of the world has been hidden. God who created all things by Jesus Christ.
To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church, the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord. Well, what is the eternal purpose of God? God would take Jews, He would take Gentiles, and He would put them together into one body, into the Church.
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The Bride of Christ and the angels are watching. They're watching. They're watching and learning about God's plan. That's what our verse is going to tell us.
It does tell us.
To the intent now that the principalities and powers in heavenly places. And so the angels are watching and they're learning about God's plan as they see all the subjection of the church to Christ. They see men who take their hats off and women wearing head coverings where the Lord Jesus is being honored as head of the church. God had this plan of his manifold witness.
From eternity past, let's look at Romans chapter 8.
Romans chapter 8 and verse 29.
Down to 30.
For whom he did foreknow.
He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the first born among many brethren. Moreover, whom he did predestinate them he also called, and whom he called them he also justified, and whom he justified them he also glorified.
If if God had not chosen us in His eternal purpose to salvation, we would have refused the love of God.
Just like the world around us, I'm speaking to the believers now because our verse in Romans 8 means that God knew who you were in eternity past because he had already selected you.
To be saved. That selection is sometimes called election.
And other times God says you are chosen, You are chosen for His eternal purpose, that we would be conformed to the image of His Son.
You are chosen to be holy and without blame before him in love.
So that you could be included into the church and to be part of the Bride of Christ. And this plan is called The Mystery of God.
In these verses that we have read in Ephesians.
Have you ever thought about these other verses words in the verses in Ephesians that says according as he has chosen us in him before the foundations of the world?
How far back was that? How far do these words of election take us back in time? Are we chosen in Christ because of something we did in our own history and circumstances? No. It was the choosing.
It was bad, was it? We are chosen in Christ.
Long before that the choosing was we wondered, was it at the introduction of the sin of Adam, when we were chosen in him?
No, we go back even further that than that in the plan of God. Were we chosen before the world was reformed into its present state? No, it was further back than that when the found when were the foundations of the world laid? We read in Genesis one in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Well, when was the beginning in the beginning refers to the eons of eternity past. We were chosen in the incalculable, immeasurable infinitude which God calls.
The beginning before time began, but before the mystery of the Church was revealed.
God chose Abraham and he chosen nation of Israel to be his special people.
He did not choose Russia. He did not choose China or Africa or America. He did not choose Brazil. God chose Israel to be his special people, and God gave special treatment.
To Israel better than to all the other nations. He wanted to have fellowship with Israel, and so God gave Israel 10 commandments, plus about 600 other rules that they could keep so that they would know exactly how to be good.
And righteous.
They had simple instructions to obey.
So God would be able to have fellowship with them. And God treated them so nicely. He treated the way a man should treat his wife.
He was kind, he was just and he was thoughtful. And in the middle of Jeremiah chapter 3 and verse 13, God said to the nation of Israel, I have loved you with an everlasting love.
Everlasting means from eternity past to eternity future, everlasting. The nation of Israel had all the promises and the privileges and the guidance that God could give them. They had so much incentive to be good and righteous, and this was God's plan, so that he could have fellowship with them. But Israel failed. Nobody would follow God.
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Nobody could follow God, But why? Why could nobody follow God? Why could nobody obey the commandments? Is because everybody had sin inside of them. Sin is like a seed that grows like a stalk of corn that produces more seeds of corn and more corn. The seed of sin produces more sin. We are all born with that seed of sin inside of us.
And we inherited that seed of sin from Adam, and that seed of sin is the reason you are.
Condemned already.
Sin is a part of every person.
We are born with that sin inside of us, and this sin destroys any possibility.
For man to be good or righteous and that is why people are unable to have fellowship.
With God. Look in Romans chapter 3 and look what it says here about the condition.
Of every person.
Romans chapter 3.
And we'll go to verse 10.
Verse 10 says there is none. Righteous. No, not one.
Verse 11 Says there is none that understand it. There is none that seeketh after God. Verse 12 There is none that doeth good. No, not one. These verses say that in our present condition of sin there is none righteous. There is none good. Fellowship with God was impossible because fellowship with God requires righteousness and no one was righteous. And since no one was righteous.
How is God going to have intimate fellowship with anybody on the earth? Nobody was good or righteous, and nobody wanted God. God knew that nobody would want him. And so God, before he created the world, God decided to choose certain people that would be special to him.
The Bible teaches that God did not choose anyone to go to hell. That's what the Bible teaches. The Bible says it teaches the opposite. It says God is not willing, that any should perish.
The Bible says that God so loved the world. He loved everybody in the world.
So he sent his Son to be the savior of the world.
So that whosoever could be saved, so that they should not perish, we read about a Christ rejecter.
That Jesus loved.
God loves everybody in the world. Let's look at Mark chapter 10. We'll look at this Christ rejecter that Jesus loved.
He did not predestinate him to go to hell. He loved the man. He wanted the man to be saved. And in Mark chapter 10 and verse 17. And when he was gone forth into way there, the way there came one running and kneeled to him, and asked him, good master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, Why do you call me good? There is none good but one, that is God.
You know the commandments, Do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false witness, defraud, not honor thy father and mother. And he answered and said unto him, Master all these have I observed from my youth. Then Jesus, beholding him, loved him.
Jesus loved him, and said unto him, One thing you lack go your way, sell whatever you have, and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven, And come, take up the cross, and follow me. And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved, for he had great possessions. And Jesus looked round about and said unto his disciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God. See, God loved this rich young man.
Who chose riches instead of Jesus? The man did not want God.
Jesus knew the man was rich, and Jesus knew that he himself would be rejected by this man.
But Jesus loved him and Jesus made himself available to that man. Jesus does not want to send anyone to hell. It is a strange act for God to put someone in hell.
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He doesn't want to do it. His love and compassion goes out to everybody.
And that is why the grace of God is so amazing.
It is amazing to think that Jesus would come specifically into this world to offer salvation.
From the punishment of hell to everybody.
Let's look in Matthew chapter.
22.
Matthew Chapter 22, verse 11.
And when the king came in to see the guests.
He saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment, and he said unto him, Friend, how did you come in here not having on a wedding garment? And he was speechless. Then said the king to the servants, bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, for many are called, but few are chosen. Jesus gave this man opportunity to repent and to get right with God before it was too late.
Jesus loved this man. Jesus called him friend, but the man was speechless.
He liked the social aspect of Christianity.
But he did not want Jesus.
For a friend, he did not want Jesus for his gods.
He knowingly rejected Jesus and he accepted outer darkness.
In hell.
The rich man.
And the speechless man? They remind me of people.
That we will call Mrs. Pearl because she is a very nice person. Missus Pearl brings food to the neighbors and she visits the sick. She is kind to the beggars on the streets. She pays her taxes. But Mrs. Pearl is not into this God stuff.
Does Missus Pearl deserve to go to hell?
God had shown himself to Pearl every night at sunset.
Meeting It's over a little too late, but there's beautiful sunsets out here over the lake every night.
That's gone. It's proof that God exists but misses. Pearl didn't want that. She has heard the stories of Jesus at Christmas time and at Easter time, and she even went to see the Passion play once, but each time, she said.
No, I will not allow God in my life. I don't want to give him control of my life.
She does not want God and in a sense she has committed Deocide, that is the murder of God.
She just wants God to go away and leave her alone. And that is what hell is, alone without God.
An unwilling with with an unwilling heart, God will give missus Pearl exactly what she wants. God will leave her alone for eternity.
Without God.
Mrs. Pearl will perish in everlasting punish.
Punishment because she did not receive the love of the truth that she might be saved.
Oh, she believed in Jesus, but she rejected God.
Many are called to come to Jesus, but many refuse.
But Jesus chose a few, including you, to be his bride.
To be his wife. You know, I chose Elaine to be my wife.
It would not be fair to Elaine if I picked every other woman.
And if I chose even one other woman instead of Elaine, we would not be having this camp right now.
It would be a different life.
It was the will of God that I chose Elaine.
But really, it was God who chose Elaine for me.
We might say she was predestinated to be my wife.
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I am thankful that God selected me to salvation.
And to be holy and without blame before him in love. I know he loves me. Not only did God love me, but He chose me.
And not only did he choose me, but he prays for me.
Let's look at John 17.
John 17 verse 20.
And he's talking about the disciples in his prayer to God the Father.
And Jesus prayed in verse 20.
Is neither pray I for these? That is, the 12 disciples, neither pray I for these alone, but for them also, which shall believe on me through their word.
That's you.
He prayed for you that you would be saved and you were saved.
Some people believe that you are not chosen until you believe, but this verse indicates that Jesus knows who to pray for before they are saved.
That includes you and me. Jesus was praying for us since 2000 years ago. God knows who these chosen people are. Not all of them are saved yet, but God knows who they are.
God chose them to believe, and they will believe.
It's very nice that God has included us in this plan so we can share the gospel with them.
Because how can they believe? If they don't have a preacher, how will they hear?
And so Jesus knows.
That those he chose to be saved, he knows who they are and he is praying for them.
I have chosen myself. I have chosen certain brothers to speak at the meetings each evening, and at the hymn Saints I chose them and I pray for them. Let the Spirit of God would give them exactly the message that is needed for the souls that are in the audience each night. And I pray that they will be able to deliver the message in a clear way, so that you will be so that you, the audience, you might understand the message and to be able to apply the message.
To yourself and into your lives. I didn't just choose these brothers and forget about them, Say my job is done.
No, I prayed for them.
Revelation 13.
And verse 8.
All that dwell upon the earth shall worship him whose names are not written in the book of life.
Of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
This verse indicates that God wrote your name down in the book of life of the Lamb from before the foundation of the world.
And by writing your name down in his book, God shows the knowledge that he has of his elect.
You're valuable to God, He remembers you. He prays for you.
How often do we tell someone that we will pray for them and then we forget?
Jesus has not forgotten you. He loves you. He cares about you. He knew what your name would be a zillion years ago. You will always be one of God's elect. Even if you backslide like the prodigal Son, you will never lose your election. Your election does not depend on you. You are the sovereign choice of God. You're his child. You are part of the Bride of Christ, and you will never perish.
Let's go to 2nd Thessalonians.
2nd Thessalonians, Chapter 2.
And verse 13. But we are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord.
Because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief.
Of the truth. What a great verse. God chose you to be saved.
One of the commentators, that of those who do not believe.
In God's sovereign choosing to be saved, as this verse teaches.
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He wrote this statement.
And it confounds me, he says.
Everyone who is called is elected from the first moment of his faith. What?
How can you be chosen after you're saved? That doesn't agree with the verse we just read, and so long as he continues in his calling and faith, he continues to be elected.
If at any time he loses calling and faith, he ceases to be elected.
That doesn't make any sense to me. Maybe it does to you. Why not just believe what God clearly says in his word? God has chosen you to salvation. Look at verse 14, Second Thessalonians 214. Where unto he hath called you by our gospel to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ?
So we see the ultimate purpose of God was that these chosen ones should obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have been chosen to a great salvation for a wonderful purpose by an Amazing Grace by a sovereign God.
Remember in Ephesians chapter one we learned that Jesus chose you before the foundation of the earth.
John says that Jesus is praying for you, for those who shall believe.
Jesus already knows who they are, who shall believe. And Jesus has been praying, had been praying for you to be saved.
Since 2000 years ago and it is encouraging for you to know how special you are to God.
You've been special to God for a very long time.
Jesus knew that he chose you before the world was created.
And so, because you were chosen, Jesus was praying for you before.
You were saved. He was praying for you as you went through many experiences in your life and God uses experiences in your life to guide you to the point where you need to accept your responsibility to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior in John 6 verse 37.
It's another good verse for this subject, John 6, verse 37.
Verse 37 All that the Father gives me shall come to me.
And him that comes to me, I will in no wise cast out. Those whom God has chosen shall come.
To Jesus to be saved. God the Father has given you to Jesus.
Jesus prays for you, and when you came to Jesus, he did not chase you away.
He received you. And for those of you who are saved, I want you to know how much you mean to God.
The Spirit of God.
Gives the people that he has chosen.
A life that wants to know God, he chose you.
He prays for you. He protected you so that you would be saved.
At some point the Spirit of God starts at work in His chosen people in order to make them realize that they are sinners and they need to be saved. In John chapter 3 and verse eight it says the wind blows where it lists and now he and you hear the sound thereof, but you cannot tell when it is coming, where it's coming from, and where it is going. And so is everyone that is born of the Spirit. We don't know how the Spirit of God works.
But he does. And these chosen people who have been born by the Spirit of God.
They know they deserve to be punished in the lake of fire because of their sin.
The Spirit of God, I believe, will give these chosen people a desire to have their sin removed.
Because their sin separates them from God, from the fellowship with God. And the Spirit of God gives them a desire to have a personal relationship with the Lord of glory.
Jesus is the only one who can fill the emptiness.
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In a person's soul, Deep down in a person's soul, they want peace with God.
And they desire fellowship with God.
But if you if you are one of the chosen.
How do we, the chosen, have our sin removed?
Let's look at one John Chapter 4.
First John Chapter 4, verse 9.
And this was manifested the love of God toward us.
Because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him here in His love. Not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins, Propitiation.
That means that Jesus, the Son of God, is the remover of sins and that Jesus is the just one who justly turns away the wrath of God.
By His sacrifice on the cross to take away our punishment for our sins.
He is the propitiation for our sins.
Just for an example.
Here, a few years ago, one of the boys found some berries.
And he took the berries, and he was able to write on the side of the newly painted white buildings. And he put signs on several of the buildings.
And.
When we found out who the boy was, the boy and his father, they went with soap and water and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. And they had some chemical and they scrubbed and it couldn't come off. The red Berry stain would not come off.
And that is how is how it is with our sin. We can work hard to be good, but there was nothing we could do to remove our sins. We can scrub and scrub and work and work and try to get rid of our sins, but we cannot remove our sin. And that is why God the Father sent His Son, Jesus Christ into this world to be the substitute to die for us sinners.
And this allowed God to remove the sin that made it possible, that made it impossible for us to have fellowship with God.
When that boy could not remove the berries, the red stain off the white walls, we tried using a spray bottle of bleach cleaner and we sprayed it on and immediately the red dye disappeared. The stain was gone.
You might say the bleach cleaner was the propitiation for that boy's sin. It took away the sin that damaged the building, and it turned away my disappointment.
Well, that is like the blood of Jesus Christ, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son cleanses us from all sin. The blood makes the sin disappear. God will never punish us for any of our sins.
Because Jesus took all our punishment after Jesus took God's punishment against sin, the veil of the temple.
Was renting 2 The door that covered the veil that covered the door that went into the presence of God. That veil was removed. The door was opened right into God's presence. After we have been born by the Spirit of God, the next step for us was to be given the faith to believe by the Spirit of God. Ephesians 28 and nine we all know that verse, for by grace are you saved through faith.
And then not of yourselves. It is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.
Saved through faith. It is the gift of God. And because there is nothing good in us, God does not allow any of us to get any credit for our salvation.
Even salvation by grace through faith is a gift from God in John chapter 6.
John chapter 6, verse 28 and 29.
Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that you believe on him whom he has sent.
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Is the spirit of God who has been working on our souls to bring us to the point of decision to believe the door was opened for us.
To come in to fellowship with God the Father through Jesus Christ.
Jesus said in John chapter 10 and verse nine he says I am the door by me if any man enter in.
He shall be saved. So Jesus is the open door we entered into salvation.
Through Jesus and Jesus did all the work of salvation for us on the cross.
He said that he finished the work that God had given him to do.
Jesus prepared everything for us to be saved and Jesus endured the judgment of God as He was punished for our sins.
Jesus died and shed his blood to wash away our sin. Jesus did all the work that was necessary.
To save us from our sins.
There is nothing more.
That he could do. And so then it became our responsibility to come to Jesus in faith alone. By the very faith that he gave us. We come to him. We entered in through the door of Jesus. We believed on the Lord Jesus. We were saved by Jesus. The same grace and goodness of God that saved us is also the grace.
And goodness of God that keeps us safe.
I want to read some verses in John 10.
John, 10/28/29 and 30.
And I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish.
Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My father, which gave them me, is greater than all.
And no man is able to pluck them out of my father's hand. I and my father are one.
Jesus gave you eternal life immediately. When you believe he doesn't wait until you get to heaven to see if you have been good enough. If you trust Jesus now, you have eternal life now.
I want to list some of the things that God has done to make certain that you would be in heaven.
With him.
First of all.
There's the fact that God knew about you in eternity past.
After that, God chose you before He created the earth.
He chose you to be a child of God. He chose you to be part of the bride of Christ.
The church. And then God was thinking about you until he wrote your name down.
In the book of life from the foundations of the earth.
Then Christ died as your substitute to take the wrath of God as punishment for your sins. He was buried and he rose again the third day.
And then Jesus prayed for you. He prayed for you before you were saved, and he's still praying for you.
And then the Spirit of God, he started working in your soul so you could understand the gospel.
The Spirit of God then gave you faith to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
After you believe the Lord Jesus gave you eternal life, he gave you the gift of the Spirit of God.
And after you received eternal life, you were indwelt by that, and sealed by the Spirit of God.
So you can never lose your eternal life.
The seal of the Spirit of God is God's guarantee that you will never lose.
Your salvation.
God did all of this so that you might know that you have.
Eternal life. Then God raised us up to a position above this sinful world.
And he has seated us in heavenly places. He has sanctified us.
He has justified us, he's redeemed us, and we have all been brought near to God.
All through the blood of Jesus Christ.
It is certain.
That from what we have learned tonight, that God did everything and we did nothing to be saved and we can do nothing to keep our salvation. We are kept by the power of God. God, He planned this for so long. God specifically chose you to belong to him. He loved you so much He paid. Excuse me, He paid such a big price.
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To reconcile you back to God, Southern, that you could be the child of God.
And so that you could be the bride of Christ.
John 14.
We read that Lord Jesus said I go to prepare a place for you.
And I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also.
If God did all that work for you, and He's prepared a place for you to be in heaven, he is not going to let you get away from him. Nothing will be able to separate you from the love of God, neither sin, nor Satan, nor self.
Nothing can get you out of the hands of Jesus or the hands of God the Father. You are safe forever.
If you have been chosen by God to be saved.
And to be holy and without blame.
If you have been selected, and you have been foreknown by God, and you have been predestinated, and you have been called, and you have been given the gift of salvation by grace through faith, and you have heard the gospel, and you believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, you've done all that. How can you be sure? If all of this is true about you? What evidence is there that you are one of those elected?
Granted, some of us are a little bit shaken in our faith when Satan plants doubts.
In our minds, life gets busy and some temptations get too strong for us. And some of you will be going very soon back to school, to high school and to university in a few days. And you need to understand that many of the teachers and the professors are professional tools of Satan and they will make you question your faith.
You will think that they will make you think that your simple faith is too simple.
And you might seriously consider the professor's arguments.
But why?
To the professor's arguments confuse you to have muddy thinking. If I can use that word muddy, muddy thinking, it is because the professor's arguments are built on sand, and the foolish man built his house upon the sand. And when the rains come, the professor's arguments are all wet.
Sand and water makes mud, and so the professor's arguments muddy up your thinking to confuse you so you don't know how to answer.
That professor is paid to make you doubt.
To make you doubt God in his attempt to destroy your faith.
You need to stand on the rock. Christ is the rock. We have the word of God. We can stand on the word of God and if the professor says anything that disagrees with the word of God.
Just disregard it. Dismiss it in your mind. His arguments reject God and he will spend eternity with Missus Pearl.
Let's go to 1St Thessalonians chapter one.
Paul tells us in these verses first Thessalonians, one starting at verse 5.
Verse five and six Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God for our gospel came not unto you in Word only, but also in power.
And in the Holy Ghost and in much assurance. And you became followers of us, and of the Lord, having received the Word in much affliction with joy of the Holy Ghost. How did Paul know that the Thessalonians were elected of God? If you look at these points, it might help you to know about your own election.
The points of evidence that Paul had was that they followed the teachings of Paul.
And they followed the Lord. Even though their university professors and their friends in society caused much affliction for them and persecution, they had the joy of the Holy Spirit. Further evidence of your election might be.
00:45:06
The word of God was spread abroad by them. Look at verse 8.
Or from you sounded out the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Anachias, but also in every place your faith to God word.
Is spread abroad.
Another evidence is that they turned away.
From the life of the world. And they turn to God. Verse nine. They turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God. So we can also know that we have been elected because we have an appreciation for the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And because we have accepted the forgiveness of our sins and we believe that we are justified from all things. And we have received the word of God with joy in the Holy Ghost.
We spend our time with the Lord's people, following the Lord together with them do these points.
Define you.
Do you have a joy in understanding the special place you have in Christ?
Who are you whispering to your friends and making jokes and having fun and ignoring this? Are you one of the elect?
Are you going to spend eternity with Missus Pearl?
We don't forsake. Another point is that we don't forsake the assembling of ourselves together.
That gives us assurance, and the word of God is precious to us.
And we want to share it with others. And so these are a few points of evidence that might help us to know that we have been elected.
That verse, according as he has chosen us in him before the foundations of the world. Have you ever thought of those words?
How far back in time that has taken us.
We spoke about that a little earlier.
We were chosen before the foundations of this world.
The Father from eternity chose us, O Jesus Christ, in thee. Let's sing #31.
Session #4
Covenant Theology
Reading
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So if you'd rather don't mind, this morning I wrote down my thoughts that I could try to get things in order and not need to figure things out, which I may have done anyway. And other brothers who filled that in.
But what I'd like to do is start just by giving a little introduction as to what covenant theology is and why there are dangers living as opposed to the truth that.
We believe we present in the assembly. So if the brethren are OK with that, I'll just read it. So the thoughts I wrote down. So covenant theology is a system of theology that does not recognize the difference between Israel and the Church, like Kim was saying earlier.
It teaches that man is in relationship with God only by covenant, and it always includes the Law of Moses as an essential part of that covenant.
Somebody can correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding read quite a bit about it is you'll never find it without the Law of Moses right in the heart and center.
The truth is that Israel was under covenant relationship with Jehovah under law, but in no sense are we under covenant with God as a church.
Since they wrongly teach that we are under covenant with God by the Law of Moses, they also must teach two things that are needed with regard to that law.
In terms of salvation.
First, the law must be perfectly kept for one to live.
And 2nd, if the law is broken, its curse of death must be born, and in fact, the law does require these two things.
Since all have sinned, they teach that the work of the Lord Jesus Christ has two distinct parts that are necessary for the believer to be restored to covenant relationship with God. So it's the only way you can have relationship with God is by covenant. The laws are part of it.
You need something, and these two things correspond to what we just spoke about. First, the Lord Jesus died to bear the curse of the law for every believer.
This they call his passive obedience.
When a person believes on the work of Christ on the cross, they are no longer under the curse of the law. The Lord Jesus obeyed. He kept the law.
For them. We'll talk about that in a minute.
But this would only go so far as to keep a person out of hell. It doesn't bring them into covenant relationship with God.
And so this brings in, say, teach the second part of the work of Christ, that is, that He perfectly kept the law as a man in his life on earth. And this is what they call His active obedience. When a person believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, they teach that his righteousness is imputed to them. They call this the imputed righteousness of Christ. Have you heard of it?
I did often. I didn't know what they were talking about. Well, they have a very definite meaning by it.
And this is what they're talking about, that the Lord Jesus Christ.
Kept the law and he.
As a man on earth, and that now gets imputed to the believer. And then they when a person believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, that righteousness is imputed to them. And that means to them that the believer now stands before God is having perfectly kept the law, because Christ kept the law on their behalf.
See where they're going with it.
So the believers.
Curse of death is born through Christ's passive obedience.
And the believer can live in righteousness as righteous in covenant relationship with God by having Christ active obedience imputed to him.
Having been brought into this relationship, the believer stands before God under essentially the same relationship as Israel, but through the work of Christ. This is the New covenant. Those in the New Covenant are now subjects of the Kingdom that has Christ as its king and the law as its rule of life. That's king.
And so when you get into common theology, you find much about the king. We're children of the king or in the Kingdom. We are the Kingdom. We know that. But that's basically where covenant theology just dwells in the Kingdom and the law becomes the rule of life for the believer. That's what God gave her covenant with him.
00:05:12
That, in a nutshell, is more or less what covenant theology is, and it's not.
The truth of Scripture. The fact is that we are not under law at all. We were condemned as sinners before God, having come short of his glory, not just the law. When one believes in the Lord Jesus, he's not forgiven his sins, but he's also justified. That is, God reckons him perfectly righteous simply by faith in Christ, and puts a believer not in covenant relationship with himself, but in the very place of Christ.
That's important. It's infinitely farther than the other. Where government theology.
God puts the believer.
Not in covenant relationship with himself, but in the very place of the Lord Jesus Christ. The believer is seated with Christ in heavenly places. It isn't Christ's righteousness that is imputed to the believer, but instead God counts him righteous because he has believed in Christ.
And God even goes further than that.
The believer dies entirely out of the world.
To which the law applied, so that the law has nothing to say to him its requirement of death for those to whom it abide.
The Jews really is entirely met because the believer dies with Christ and then lives before God.
In a new place in Christ, with a new life, the very light of Christ himself.
It is not the imputed righteousness of Christ that Scripture teaches, but Galatians 220. That's why we learned verses like these are very important. I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live, and yet not I, but Christ lives in me, and the life that I now live in the flesh. I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. We are now in Christ before God, in a life to which sin cannot attach.
It's holy and made perfectly righteous in him. It is living his life in the power of the Spirit that pleases God, not me trying to keep the Law of Moses as a rule of life.
As a believer, I'm now part of the Church in relationship with Christ, not just as King, but in a far closer and more intimate relationship as his body and his bride. See, what is this so important?
This brings in some of the great problems of covenant theology. Not only does it wrongly put the believer under law, but it fails to recognize the new nature and the Spirit of God is the basis for pleasing God.
They don't, I understand, recognize two natures at all. Only the old you practically denies the heavenly position of the believer and makes him merely a subject of an earthly Kingdom.
Much of the practical truth of the body of Christ on earth is lost, and the nearness of affection of the Bride is also lost. There are many other points that we could take up, and I suppose we have time to do it now, but perhaps this is enough to give some of the main points and to show why we have to really learn dispensational truth and many of these other truths that we present in the assembly.
It's my short statement, I just mentioned one thing.
That I found that sometimes makes it a different topic and that is as you go out, you interact with different Christians who hold to come into theology.
They you may present some of the points that 10% of them they say I don't agree with that, I don't approve this thing. And it's because there is such a mixture of covenant theology out there, not just like there's a tremendous fixture of dispensationalism out there.
And So what what Tim is presenting is core covenant theology, what somebody would believe if they believed truly covenant theology. And I had a guy I worked with one time and he was, he was, he got saved later in life and he was with open brother similar to what we are dispensational. And he went on to Presbyterian Church covenantal and what his hope was it was to create a creating a open.
Cafeteria church. He wanted to mix dispensations and covenant theology, which.
Is like, you cannot, like you can't do it. It makes no sense. But in his mind it could. And what he would do is he would take some from one and some from the other. And so when you would meet somebody like that, you would say, well, if I don't hold that. So we have to look at this as a, as a truth. This is what covenant theology is. But your, your experience running into different people might, might be a little bit differently concerned to a few of the verses that they use.
00:10:25
It might help because they'll probably, if they know what their theology is, they'll probably turn to some of these.
Then the first one I would turn to would be Romans chapter 5, Romans 5.
And verse 19.
Says.
Whereas by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.
Now many incumbent theology, perhaps most who know what its teachings are, will come to this first.
And they will say that this obedience is the Lord Jesus Christ, legal obedience in his life, that He kept the law perfectly, and that's what makes you righteous. They won't deny that disobedience includes Him being obedient unto death, as you have in Philippians chapter 2, perhaps the primary way that I understand this verse. And of course, neither will I deny.
That the Lord Jesus had to be obedient in his life or he couldn't be the spotless Lamb of God to go and.
In fact, that death at Calvary's cross, you can see some of the crossover of thought in a verse like this, but this is a verse that they will use to say that the Lord Jesus.
Is active obedience, legal obedience and keeping the law was required, and you're made righteous by it because it gets imputed to you. And they'll talk about that imputed righteousness of Christ over and over again, which if you ask them to find it in the Bible, usually this is the only place that I know. Maybe somebody else knows that, some other places.
Where they try to go, you go to the book of Romans, you see imputed righteousness, but it's God's righteousness, never the righteousness of Christ there They try to make it into that, but it's the righteousness of God. And the first thing it speaks about is God being righteous and justifying the Sinner. How can he be consistent with his own nature in doing it? And he shows how and then how he reckons that to the one who believes in Christ. And we know that Christ is made unto us righteousness. That's in first Corinthians chapter one. That's a different thing.
And we learned that, of course, in other ways it's from himself, the position we have in him, his life, all these things that are taught and other verses, but they take it up in the way that I tried to present at the beginning.
Tim, one verse that really helps me with that earlier in Romans when he when he starts developing the subject of God's righteousness. I'll just read the verse. It's Romans 321.
It says, but now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested. It's the thought of the righteousness of God, not on the principle of law at all. Whether it be our key to the law or whether it be Christ keeping the law for us. That is not the basis of the righteousness that God has in salvation. And so Roman Romans deals with these questions, things that it unfolds the foundation of how we are saved, how we are justified, how we are brought in the blessing.
And then later on enrollments, the subject of what God is doing with Israel and the Gentiles has also unfolded. So the very first epistle, I think by no accident, God allowed it to be the first one in our in our Bibles, deals with these basic foundational questions.
And I'll just, I'll just say one more thing.
I actually have to run. And so I know you guys have continued, but you know, the other pistols in the New Testament deal with these issues head on as far as what the church is. And I know that we'll get to these verses, but there's a verse in Colossians chapter 2 That I think is so important.
If we just look at that verse.
When it comes to what we are part of.
In the church.
Colossians, chapter 2.
It says.
Verse two, That their hearts may be comforted being knit together in love, and unto all riches. Of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God.
00:15:10
And I think the last few words of that verse are not really supposed to be there. And verse three, in whom or it should be translated, In which are did all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
So if we could just sort of summarize that it's this mystery of God in which are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, what the apostle Paul unfolds in his doctrine, the gospel and the mystery, but specifically the mystery in that are revealed all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, the truth of what we are as the church.
Is a mystery that was, did and gone. It is not something found in the Old Testament.
It is not a continuation of Israel, it's something totally new and distinct.
Altogether from and that is if you're being challenged with covenant theology. It's one of the most important things to understand is what is the church. The verses that I I I read did not explain what the mystery is. I think Ephesians chapter three first year visual Ephesians chapter three really unfold that and it's perhaps its fullest way, but understanding what the church is.
Is so important, and the epistles of Ephesians and Colossians really tackle that head on.
And so this is not a peripheral thing. The epistles of the New Testament, especially the epistles of false, tackle these issues head on. And if you just simply, with the Spirit of God, work your way through those epistles and seek to understand what the arguments and the message really is, you'll be fortified against.
The false teaching of the Covenant beyond.
Bruce Ansky has a, excuse me a book on Kevin intelligence book. Many here have read it and I was just wondering he has a pie chart thinking there Christian groups and denominations showing that about 70% Christian believes in covenantology. I'm just wondering what the end game is for all that. What's the motive for wanting to pull that? Seems like they're going backwards. Not anything we would want to put ourselves under.
Why they want to believe that? If anybody thought on that, I think we should understand that.
This sensational truth is a recovery of the truth of God that came later.
Common theologies and outgrowth of things that happened in the history of the Church and the only days of the Church is five in the Book of Revelation and Smyrna. They were under much persecution. They were looking for the Lord to come.
And then after that the hypergamous, which is married and the church settled down the world, became married to the world. And then it was no longer the thing to be looking for the coming of the Lord, but instead it must be that somehow the Lord is reigning down. And Augustine introduced the city of God and it went on from there.
Till Calvin, I think, developed any of the systematic parts of this.
And.
It got put into the lot of the catechisms, the idea of the difference between the Church and Israel dispensations. It was all lost until the 1830s when the Lord recovered those truths. So this is really where Kristen was coming from. Mr. Darby, when he was 27 years old, went from one year of being entirely in common theology, and that was his whole thought like everyone else's.
To a year later, having pretty much all of these precious truths that we now understand and enjoy and teach in the assembly, He had them all given to him by the Lord. And so that was a new thing in Christendom. At first it wasn't a resistance to it, but as time went on, no doubt to hold on to their system and many of the ways of doing things, they continued with it. And covenant theology naturally leads you to the fact that the Lord is the King.
This world is His, which is all true, and and that's our place as Christians right now.
Is to act with a king while we're here and their end time views, there's various different ones, but they all have something to do with that. But essentially means that you're going to get involved because the affairs of this earth, you're going to try to reform the culture. You're going to try to win this world in some way for Christ and it entirely changes the way you live in this world. So obviously if we're here as a company of people.
00:20:13
Saying no, Christianity is for those who are called out this world, this world is under judgment and can we just preach the gospel that they don't agree with? And now it's been a great deal of resistance that's come in against this truth.
I think that the chapter that.
About an economist replacing the moment of legend, about let's talk about that's true. And when you go through that chapter, it's pretty hard to see when you get to the end of it, how.
You know the.
Israel is brought back again, I think a while to go through, but I knew somebody who grew up and kept theology, and this is the chapter that convinced of that that couldn't be true.
But anyways, there's some other point you want to make on this. Or just point that fact out. I think you're right, they do.
And Roger, you had a point on this chapter as well, right?
Well, I'll just add Catherine.
Certainly something that I'll get because that is not.
Going to restore their effect.
There's so many types of things.
It's interesting recently at home.
And.
White or it's not Isaac.
Stands.
Right.
The Sun is kind of any kind of last year for his wife.
Answered our questions.
And there's children.
Set aside ejector.
We have a set of practices.
Summarize those points just.
Pointing out.
Has gone past the latest people.
And it's clear I'm an Israelite. He's talking about Israel. He says it's Todd Castaway Israel. And he goes to show now and then he says in verse 12, he says.
Sorry, verse 11. Through their call, the end of the verse, salvation has come to the Gentiles.
And then skip to the end of the chapter.
End of verse 25. Blindness and partisan happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles.
Come in. And so all Israel shall be saved. I mean, both of the chapter, you see, very blindly. First Israel set aside Gentiles coming to blessings. Then there's going to be a time when there's a fullness of that and Israel's going to come back into blessing. There's nothing of replacement here. No thought that the church is the New Testament. Israel, it's talking about Israel, Gentiles, Israel. Everything remains distinct in the word of God.
Is that what those verses like at the end of chapter 3 it says?
Verse 28. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Verse 29. Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, seeing it as one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith and uncircumcision through faith.
So it's a little bit different because you have to understand Romans has three parts is first of all the doctrinal teaching. And in the doctrinal teaching he ends up with there's no difference. That's where he comes all the guilty and then there's no difference. He shows mercy to all. And then you've got the dispensational part that's chapters 9:10 and 11:00 where he has to answer the question of, well, if it's like that, there's no difference that you and Gentile all save now, then what about God's promises?
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And there he's showing very definitely that God has is going to keep every single one of those promises.
None of this truth of the gospel sets aside the promise of God. So it's a little bit different. Romans 3 is talking about the fact that we're all saved the same way right now by faith in Christ.
It's helpful when you go through Romans 2. Imagine all writing that epistle or dictating it to somebody who's writing it, and in that room there's a group of Jews, and every time Paul gets to a different point, they start throwing out questions.
And so the apostle Paul all through Romans addresses these questions that are posed by the Jew in regards to the gospel. And the big one has Tim has said is what about those who promised that were given? And he addresses a little section towards that.
So we if we think about those, those promises that were given, which is a big one.
Covenant theology will.
Say that we have taken over for Israel and that the church is going to realize all of Israel's blessings. The blessings of Israel would be realized in the church. But God gave unconditional promises to Abraham, then to Isaac, then to Jacob. What followed was conditional promises to Israel in keeping the law. This is what I will do. If you don't keep the law, this is what's going to happen.
But God promised something to Abraham on God's own merit, based on who God is. He swore by himself because there there was no greater. And what covenant theology seeks to do is to take those promises that were given, that were unconditional, that weren't based on anything that Abraham had to do, anything that Isaac had to do, anything that Jacob had to do.
And it sets them aside because of future failure some 400 years later. That was on the principle of law they were given before, and the gifts in calling of God without repentance, they read in Romans Chapter 11. And those promises that were given, that were unconditional, God will fulfill. He will give them just as He promised them to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Nothing that follows later we read in Romans is going to annull an agreement that was made previous until you can't come out with a law that then somehow dissin all what God had given unconditionally later. It doesn't work that way. Nobody would operate that way. The Spirit of God our views through the impossible. We wouldn't operate that way in our business, much less a righteous God dealing with his people.
One other thing I wanted to say that covenant theology holds as well is that the 1St man, Adam, is still under test. And because it's a covenant and because the law has a part in that covenant, Adam is still very much alive and still very much having a place before God.
Where what dispensationalism teaches?
Is that God tested man, tested man and tested man and the result of that was complete and utter depravity. There was no hope we can read it in regards to Israel in the Old Testament, which is pretty much a summary of the Old Testament in Isaiah chapter 5. It says now will I sing to my well below the song of my beloved touch against vineyard. My well beloved had a vineyard in a very fruitful hill and expensed it and gathered out the stones thereof and planted it with the choice of vine built a tower in the midst of it and also made a wine press there in.
And he looked at it should bring forth grace and then brought forth wild grapes history of Israel and now inhabitants of Jerusalem. The men of Judah judge. I pray that which may and my vineyard. What could have been done more to my vineyard that I have not done in it. Wherefore when I looked at it should bring forth grapes brought forth wild grapes goes on and tell what he's going to do with that. But Darren is going to tear it down When you come to the New Testament where we've already been in Romans.
00:30:11
We get a history of all of mankind, we get the barbarian, we get the culture Gentile with their laws, and we get the Jew. And he culminates with what Josh was speaking about what? What Josh quoted Romans chapter three, he says.
Therefore by the needs of the law there shall no flesh be justified in this sight by the laws, the knowledge of sin, and now the righteousness of God, without the laws manifest, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ.
Unto all, upon all them that believe there is no difference.
We might sit there and say.
If it was me and I was put into that position of Israel, I would have done it. But the whole of the Old Testament is is written to us for proof that God tested Adam to see if there was anything in Adam that could please him.
And there was not. He gave them the best possible circumstances, not so we could tell God, hey, if you put me in those circumstances, I would be able to be like that. He didn't just show us that we cannot, man cannot, mankind the the race of Adam cannot. So what does he do? He sets aside Adam is done and he presents his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ as the only one who can.
Please him.
And our righteousness.
The righteousness of God, God being perfectly consistent, and who He is a holy God.
And being able to stay band and have a relationship with them is not on the basis of Adam somehow being in a covenantal relationship or keeping the law. It's on the basis of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ of commerce cross, his righteousness. That's that's what he's given to us. Adam has set aside. He came with the 2nd man, He came with the last AD because of the first atom, but not different.
Just to continue a little further then in that chapter, Joe.
Question then is, is our salvation have anything to do with the law or the Lord Jesus keeping it in his life and just going down to verses Romans 324 being justified freely by His grace to the rejection that is in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth to be of appreciation through faith in His life. It's not his life or the righteous law keeping there.
It's all based on faith.
In the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ is his work on the cross that is given as the basis for our justification before God and it's really important to see that because they use that other to keep all alive the whole principle of life for the believer as well that.
We're under the law and this goes on makes all these points clear. But just to go to chapter 6, I had a somebody come in theology say, well, if if it's not the law that is given to us, then how would we know how to please God? And of course that's a longer subject, but it has to do with what we have presented here in Romans and Galatians about the Spirit and the new life.
But Romans 8 is very clear anyway, just before we get to that.
Romans 6 is a good verse to remember, verse 14.
Sin shall not have diminished over you, but you are not under the law, but under grace. That's pretty simple. You're not underrated, period. It doesn't matter how many thousands of Christians and the other persuasions say so. One verse says they're all wrong. And to go on a little further, Romans Chapter 7, he puts it even stronger than that, he says.
There in verse 4. Wherefore, my brethren, you are become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that you should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead.
Then why? What's the purpose of that?
We get to the law, how will we know how to please God? Well, God says no, no, no, you're dead to the law. And here's the purpose.
That we should bring forth fruit to God.
That's how it is. You can't live like Joe was saying, as man, as Adam being tested under the law to bring forth truth for God. Even as a Christian, we can't do that.
00:35:10
Instead, we're dead and we're brought into something new entirely, a whole new life in Christ. And that's what God has given to us for this purpose of bringing forth fruit. If you're going to try to live the old way under the law, you're not going to bring forth fruit to God, but he has put us to death with Christ. We are dead so that we have that position where we can bring forth fruit to God. And so this is taking off right through the other verse I was getting at was Romans.
Chapter 8 and.
Verse three, God in the middle of the verse. Well, Betty, the beginning of it.
Sorry, let's go to verse one. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus period. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. Now that's plainly saying what we're talking about. There's a whole new law, the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. That old law talking about the law of Moses, it's a law of sin and advocate only condemn.
We're free from that. Then it goes on to explain why in verse 3 for what the law could not do and that it was weak through the flesh. God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin condemned sin in the flesh, He says exist all over all that we were in Adam. Forget it. It's done with what Joe is saying. It's condemned and God's not looking for anything there. He condemned it and verse four, it tells us that the end result, the purpose of it, that the righteousness of the law.
Might be fulfilled in us so you see if you're even taken up with that, there is a righteousness that is in the law and it's going to be automatically filled fulfilled out in US who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. There's a new life, there's a new walk. The spirit is the power of that walk and when we do that we fulfill the thought ever could have looked for in the law and a lot more besides. So these things all answer it when you take them off and come in theology denies.
What we're talking about in these verses.
Doesn't covenant theology also?
Teach that since the Church is now Israel or takes the place of that there's no, there's no rapture that we're on earth until the very end, all the judgments and so forth or not. I have known some who believe that their their rapture, even if it's the same time as the Lord executes judgment. But in talking to them, I came to know that they had no living reality in their hearts.
This was the end when the Lord was going to judge.
Others maybe, I don't know, but the ones that I knew, they didn't speak about the coming of the Lord.
I have a question just like more than general principle of covenant in the Church, I understand all the problems of the accompanying authorities.
People all in the law and give it to us and let's get into your understanding of these problems. But just with the idea of maturing, these are covenant.
I think you'll get the Gospels when Christ institutes for suffering says.
This cup is the New Testament by blood. All of you drink it and just like thinking about the past foods like especially.
And verse 18 starts talking about other Not a lot since you're not going to be such a French buyer on the blackness Darkness masters.
Does Donald Trump?
Ways that are treated other words not so.
There's so much.
In the dark, so terrible.
Then 200 said that you're going to come on the Zion. It's not the city of the living God.
Of the Evangelist, General Assembly of the Church, first floor.
There really doesn't go judicial.
So whoever will give me serious the church and be honest, I'm confused. I guess I just thought this question. I don't know where, where is there?
Any questions? Candidate? But why can't the church be under covenant?
00:40:05
The contract for the treatment and I guess I've heard people to find the new code that possibly church seeing as you mean that whoever trusts in Christ blood saved. What is the issue with this? I was thinking second along a similar line so.
Maybe just go to Jeremiah 31 and actually read the reference in a few places. But actually really it is in a way covenant is a contract to play benefit so much turn. And so the language of the contract can mean something. It's not just, you know, hypertly or something. It really doesn't mean what it says. So in Jeremiah 31 and verse 31 here we have the language of which is called the scriptures of the news and covenant.
Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that ought to make thee new covenant with the House of Israel and with the House of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made their fathers in the day that I took them by hand, bring them out of the land of Egypt, which my covenant they pray, although I wasn't husband unto them say glory. But this shall be the covenant that I think the House of Israel after those days say it were out of my law in their inner part in writing, write it in their hearts, and ought to be their God, if they should be my people.
They shall teach no more everyone whose neighbor and command his brother, saying No before they shall all know me from the least of them unto the greatest of them say to the Lord, for I will give their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. Thus saith the Lord, which given the Son of the light by day within the ordinance of news, and of the start of the way for late by night, which divided the sea, and when the waves are abroad, the Lord of goods of its name, if those ordinances depart from me, say it, Lord, then the seed of Israel.
Also shall cease from being a nation before me forever. That is the language of the new continental. Just go to Romans theatre now.
Romans chapter nine, first one, we know that there's this.
Heard the phrase at the end of chapter 8 and it closes kind of the 2nd and now you put kind of chapter marker and and he begins to say that the fall by the Spirit begins to say something different. So he says I say the truth in Christ first one.
I line on my conscience also very new witness in the holy goods, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart, for I can wish that myself rehearsed from Christ.
For my brethren, my instant according to the plaque, you are Israelites.
Could this be misunderstood? As a Christian, could he be?
Wishing himself a curse. You know for a Christian that says the first part we just read where Israelites to rule pertaining to the adoption and the glory and the covenants plural covenants. So both the first covenant means clearly Israel could you know the next yes, you bring your own and the giving up the law.
And the service of God and the promises whose are the fathers and of the mess concerning the flesh Christ pain, the Christ known as a Gentile.
Take a Christian.
Becomes a Jew, Israel, and he's an Israelite. What he's talking about in this verse or Israelites is kinsman according to the flesh. I'm talking about Christians. I think that's clear. Covenant geology has to listen and say no, no, no, he's talking about it.
It's not Christians, they need to come to Chapter 11. And so my point there, I'm sorry, my point there is that the covenants still currently as he writes it in this passage nearly 2000 years ago, they belong to Israel.
As has already been referenced, it's divided into two sections. Chapter 11 it's the close of this. This middle section of Rome is divided into two sections. Each section is headed by a question. A personal has already been read.
I say then have got fascinated speak, God forbid, but I also limit Israelite to see the paper now the tribal benchmark, et cetera. God has not passed the latest peoples which he for him. He is saying essentially right now God has not passed away. His people Israel, I'm an Israelite. There's other Israelites. God is not just utterly thrown away. Israel and Israel is called gone right now, right. He was writing this and then he goes on to the future in verse 11. There's two questions is Israel done.
00:45:01
Right now, the answer no, he's not done. Right now it's not done. There is still a presence of Israelites.
Who are faithful? They're called. But then in chapter verse 11, he asked another question. To put a paragraph, he asked another question. I say then, have they stumbled? But has Israel stumbled? That they should fall?
Now this is King James is going to make this confusing, right? Half of these someone that they should call God forbid or rather through their fault, salvation summons the Gentiles.
Order for both of the jealousy. Well, it sounds like he's saying have they? Some of them they should fall, God forbid. But actually they did fall because it uses the same word fall. But in the Greek the word for fall is different. The second one is often translated transgression, their transgression.
Salvation so much the Gentiles were both into jealousy. The point of this is that Israel did stumble. They crucified their Messiah. They failed in the first covenant. Israel did the stumble, but is the end result of that stumbling to remove them, to lower them to the place of all the other Gentiles to be done with history? This is the heart. This is the question of government theology. Has the church replace Israel as Israel's gone from its place up here down to the level of the world that is place down here? This is the question that we'll ask.
As God did, but rather through their transgression. Salvation is not much the Gentiles to provoke them to jealousy and now I know coming back to Denny's question talks about.
If the Jews have been set aside of Israel has been set aside and it's the bringing in of the Gentiles speaks of this verse 12. It's the fall of them being the richest of the world and the diminishing of them, the richest of the Gentiles. Gentiles, how much more their folks because Israel has been.
Set aside, as we say, Gentiles have been brought in, They have been grafted into this tree of lesson. It does not bring people along to them because the language is not written to them. It is with the House of Israel, with the House of Europe. We are not the House of Israel with the House of Judah. It does not break people wrong to us. But has Christ decided we will remember our sins no more? He has.
As Christ written this laughter in regards, in some ways He has. We have the Spirit within us.
So we come into the blessings of the government and that I think answers the question, at least part answers your question to clean up for me about making mistakes, but come into these blessings of the covenants that don't rightly belong to us. We have not replaced history.
The sun so brightness, the moon still rises, the stars are still there, the waves still roar, All those things are still. Therefore Israel is still God's people. So just I'll just say this one last thing that when you come down to the end there.
Verse 26 Long River 25 I would not rather that you should be ignorant of this mystery, but you should be wise your open seats that blindness in part is happening to Israel until the fullest the genocide, and so all Israel shall be.
Your company, you have to read this Israel as the church you have to the church you have to ask a question when he says Israeli dispersed as to me, Israel does to me church in the context of everything in this chapter and ask that question.
Sure, because everything else is right. How could it be the church that's that gets pushed away?
Verse 15 passing away.
Israel is being seen in Chapter 11. That's separate from.
Alex, if I could just summarize, you said the letter of the covenant belongs to Israel. Will always the letter always the letter of the covenant belongs to Israel. It was always there as it actually specifically applies to them as needed. You didn't say this, but Hebrews 8.
Repeat Jeremiah 31 repeats Ezekiel but 37 and says again specifically what you said with the House of Israel, the House of Judah, but the spirit of it.
Belongs to us because we have forgiveness of sins, we have the knowledge of God. These are things that we enjoy, the spirit of the goal. And that's exactly what Paul says in Second Corinthians chapter 3.
00:50:11
And verse six speaks about him and the other apostles. He says that God also has made us able ministers of the new covenant. That's what that is, Testament covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit.
With the letter killeth but the Spirit giveth life. That doesn't mean the letter would kill for Israel. The letter belongs to them. But if you take the letter of the new covenant and try to apply to the church.
It will absolutely kill our position. It lowers the Christian position down to no more than Israel. That kills what the church is before God. And so that's what he means when he's saying that the the letter kills and he's not a minister of that. He's a minister of the new covenant in terms of the Spirit only in the church.
Something I think, you know, I said that it's probably 5, but I think that's a little bit worried about why.
That's a little guarantee. So very clearly on I think there's a couple of things to remember and that is that safety plants these seats of legal doctrine it has throughout the church.
And why? Because it diminishes the work of Christ.
Or Jesus Christ their figure, and that is the same brain. So he knocked off with the things that people take out on this other thing is.
Giving me something to do and give me something that I can vote. I don't want to Java and they can refer.
And.
Christianity is not a new stunt, so there's nothing I can do both in there.
Yes. Well, just I can't even say, well, at least I have a good sense of who I trusted before now is that was children, Henry Ford Foundation, Newark and that other thing. So there's nothing. I can't even go and say. Well, at least I had nothing.
Become a theology and replaces course with that, I say.
That's it. So.
It's almost.
So that's why today is attractive.
To people because static that's, you know, everybody wants to be able to do something close to that and as you said earlier.
There's two majors, but we can think of two nations. It's one thing that we know perfect motivation. It may not be the reasonability, even if we're given a loving story, right? You know, if you say, oh.
The Lord was righteous, and so that remains the righteousness. And so now I've got a running side.
By keeping the law.
Mayor that's it's done and it dies like that's dead, man going in there, you have a new life.
And that's how they came by the law.
Is something for the man that hosted instead of the garden, right? Maybe that's not been disobeyed. We can fix this. Hey, that's a big reason we'll fix this, right? We have Israel and Exodus landscape.
Thursday, all the people answered together. Is that all? The board has spoken, We believe. Wow.
You and I don't have to be able to say that all the board has spoken. The Lord Jesus did on his cross. I rested. So that's very it's very clear ridiculous the relationship that we have.
It's not a question related to Ben's, so I'm really going to.
He is saying that because.
The flood is the basis of the department and how we made whether the faithful to experiment and these assignments here are entirely all Christian ground. Yet this is they would.
00:55:00
It's almost like they're the Lord is telling them that a new covenant will be made in a future day and his blood is the basis for them. Is that correct?
Well, it says in Hebrews said, and maybe it said a testament is common in his own force after.
Death.
So upon the death of Christ.
After his blood was shed, covenant became active, became available and it has not yet brought those in. It has not been acted on and bringing Israel into his blessing. But I think if I'm understanding your question right, if I'm wrong, but I do believe that we are brought into blessing on the basis of a lot of we are not under government.
That's clear, that's but we are brought in this blessing based on the blood of death. That's true. That's the blood of Jesus Christ that Washington.
I also.
This way is about something else.
That.
It's not anytime. So there's there's basically three main views there's.
Post millennial, general post millennial is that at some point in history the Kingdom is going to come, a millennial Kingdom, The price is going to come into the brain victorious, the church will bring into the earth, at the end of which Christ comes and we are uttered into the eternal state, supposedly.
Our millennial believes because I think it's century over this century question all millennials general position. I believe that we are ready now. We're in Millennium brick now running over the church, but things are selling going to get worse and worse and worse. The benefit price is going to come execute all of his judgments and then we're going to be up to the eternal state. And then there's historic premium Lennon, which is less popular.
Those are the two main most laborers.
Like if you were to put a pie chart, and I understand that most believers who are covenant, so are all they don't like.
But they believe, essentially, that there is no physical grant price over the earth.
Done via the church.
So there are different colors and shades.
To introduce yeah. Then there's historical freedom as well, which is still coming up. So that this is how it, this is how it affects us. I, I had a guy who I work with and he was.
A a dispensationalist at one time he believed in a free tribulation rapture and that moved to a post tribulation rapture.
And that then moved to where he currently is right now, a Millennium where it's it's everything's just spiritualized.
And the, the verses that deal with the Millennium are not literal, they're just spiritual. So you just apply this to that. And so I, I asked them, I said, well, what are your views on the Lord coming when you think the Lord is actually going to come back?
And usher you into eternity says, you know, Joe, I just think it's a long way off. And so I asked him the second question. I said what would change if you had a pre tribulation, which would then be free millennial view of Christ's return. And he said I probably have a whole lot more zeal. And this is how eschatology or the study of end times actually has a present effect in our life.
And this is the difficulty that covenant theology practically brings in, depending on what flavor you take up is going to have a greater effect in your life. And so your thought is I'm raining now, and the Millennium Lord's coming a long way from now, and eventually I'm going to inherit the earth. Then your thoughts are probably going to be pretty earthwork because that is your what can I do down here?
01:00:02
Where if we have a thought that this world is under judgment, that the only way that this world is going to be fixed is through the Lord Jesus Christ coming and judging this world and reigning, and that I have no part in this world, and that He might come at any moment, I'm going to have a lot more zeal to live for Him right now. That actually is a true thought in my mind. Not just acknowledge, obviously, it's actually in my heart.
So these things that we're taking up, they're not just X's and O's. They're not just physically than that belief. They really do have a practical effect in my life. And it's not to say that you're not that every covenant theologist that you that you meet is not going to have any desire to go out that that that's not what I'm saying. It's just a focus is not going to be to be with Christ possibly today.
By and large, that is going to be lost.
And it has to do with our understanding and enjoyment of our relationship.
Is it with God under covenant and with Christ as our King, or is it with our Bridegroom, the head of the body, and our Father? And there's a big difference. There's so many differences in it.
I'd just like to ask one quick question at the at the end of this or I don't know when it's.
The last part of the question and the thing was and why is it so bad?
And so how, what would be how we should give those approval that would be familiar or something to fellowship, whatever they say, how should we do that?
Instead of theology, that's bad. The people are brethren, Beloved, I said the answer you're looking for. That's important, though, so thanks for answering the question. I mean, these are dear, dear brethren.
And we should not look at them with jaundice eyes because of this theology that is really bad. They love the Lord. You meet them, you talk to them, and the Lord died to redeem them. And they know that and they love him and they love the Lord's people too. So we get a wrong view about that. We're going to have a lot of other things for all thanks to our brethren. I think that meant it's time for lunch.
He was timing out.
I just want to ask about.
In Ephesians 2, you know, it speaks about having no hope in this world. What hope can they possibly have under that kind of?
Kevin, they all look forward to having. They're not without hope. For many of them, that is the coming of the Lord. We know that's wrong, but they enjoy it. It's not that government theology has nothing that somebody couldn't find hope and enjoyment in. It just lowers our position so far from what the truth is.
And trigger that opening point. I think Zachary, 14 kind of mentions the end times in the living after the tribulation. With the board comes seven feet down Mount Olives.
Lee, this is during when everything's in the back of Zachariah 14/9.
And the Lord shall be king over all the earth that day. There shall be 1 Lord, and his name one. And if he goes down to verse 11.
Then men shall dwell in there should be no more to utter destruction. If we're honest, is Jerusalem Satan inhabit that we can say so.
They're still being suffered, suffering and the governmentally I think.
Verse 21.
I just had a question about this. Maybe look at the last part of the verse says that data should be no more Canaanite than how Sarah can I have this one right now?
The wrong question.
Refers to that committee. That's a wide range because they spiritualize. Some spiritualize much more than others. The House of the Lord is the church. Then you can certainly have Canaanites in it.
I looked at it in broad sense. I mean, it all depends how these spiritual. I think it was the point Joe made early on that there's a very wide range. We tried to cover some of the art of it here.
01:05:05
But yeah, but that point is important. It's a critical point that the covenant theologist will look to the Old Testament and they will see definitively that there are literal prophecies that took place. I can't remember if you mentioned this in here already or not, but things concerning the Lord's first coming that were literal. But then what there is, is there's a shift and.
It's subjective and anything that deals with the Lord's second coming is that makes spiritual.
But there's no basis for us to be able to do that. There's no warrant, given the Scripture, for us to say, OK, this was literal and we're going to spiritualize this. If there was something that would tell us, hey, you can do this, it would be fine.
Where dispensations, dispensationalism will look at a literal interpretation of Scripture and when the Lord, when the Word of God presents the Lord's first coming, it was literal. And when it speaks about things that are going to happen during the Tribulation and the Millennium and the Old Testament are literal, they are actually literally going to happen.
There is no shift between literal and spiritual and yesterday 2 verses before we leave. First one is what our brother mentioned in chapter 12 Hebrews and he didn't mention the next clause verse 24 in verse 12.
Gave us the meeting and covenant.
But sprinkling that speak of better things that have table God's covenant like blood and all of the back to David.
Nothing to do with them.
Than we have in Hebrews 13 verse 20. Now the God of peace brought again from dead our Lord Jesus that great shepherd of the sheep what they are lasting covenant. All of our blessings Abel fought out so I'm all keeping it all.
And the board?
Not Ashamed: Progression in the Life of Nicodemus
Address—Etienne Leger
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.
Alright, good evening, everyone.
Glad you guys can all be here. Before we start, I had a special request from a friend of mine that asked me that I do something special than before in Sunday school. It's called hands up, hands down. If you know it, join in. If you don't know, you'll learn pretty quick. All right, so we'll do it all together. Make sure we're all ready to listen. OK? Hands up, Hands down. Hands up. Hands down. Clap once.
Advice hands up, hands down one more time, hands up, hands down, hands up, hands down pants up twice hands up, hands down okay, very thank you very much for those of you who don't know me, my name is ET Leisure. I'm from Montreal, QC and I'm here tonight to ask you to share with you a message. And you know I actually had on my heart a message ever since the month of April and May. He only asked me in the month of July or June and.
Really, I'm excited to share with you a message tonight. Before we start, we're just going to start off by singing #24 in the back of the book and we'll get started together. And your brother can help me start the tune #24 in the back of the book.
You know, today and yesterday I had several brothers come up to me and asked to pray with me. And I know many have been praying for this camp and for the speakers. And just so you know, it's a big encouragement and I know that there's a lot of prayer covering this camp. Satan doesn't like it when we get together and have the word of God open. He doesn't want to get us excited about falling the Lord and so.
Just we're going to ask the Lord together for help.
Before we start, before we dive into the message, let's just ask the Lord together for yourself.
Lord Jesus, thank you so much for being amazing. Thank you for this camp, for the opportunity we have to be together with Christians. I pray tonight that what is said would be from my spirit. Pray that you might be able to use something that is said tonight for the encouragement, conviction and blessing of those that are here. We just pray that you would be glorified. Lord Jesus and your name we pray, Amen.
Tonight I'd like to speak about a topic and it's about not being ashamed, not being ashamed of the gospel and to. For starters, we'll start off in the book of.
Romans very famous verse Romans 116.
Romans chapter one and verse 16.
I will be going through a story, the story of the life of Nicodemus. There's three instances that we see in Nicodemus in the New Testament.
We're going to go through his life and we're going to see a progression. We're going to see instances and we'll see how he changes throughout the encounters with the Lord Jesus. It's my and it's my prayer tonight that you also know the Lord Jesus Christ first and foremost as your own Savior.
If you don't know him, this message will not really be relevant to you. And if you do know him, the question is, is he the Lord of your life? And we'll get to that later on, but we'll just start off by reading Romans 1.
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.
00:05:03
For it is the power of God unto salvation.
And to everyone that believeth.
You know, there's a gap sometimes in our minds and our lives from what we know.
And what we do?
A gap from maybe we are here at a camp like this. We're feeling encouraged. We're feeling.
Like we can go home and seize the world and just live out for the Lord.
And I don't think anyone here has a bad intention while doing that. But there's another disconnect with what actually happens right when you get home. I know a lot of us are going back to school or to work. And those be challenges will be new things that will come up in my heart. And my prayer tonight is that there's something that is said here that would just encourage you to be sold out for Jesus to be excited about Jesus, you know, we have a great Savior. He saved us. He didn't just save us from our sins. He's giving you the Holy Spirit. You have the opportunity.
Do great things in this world, not necessarily on a financial level or maybe in a an academic level that might be part of it, but to serve the Lord Jesus Christ is, should and should be our greatest goal and objective. We all have different personalities. Now, maybe you think of not being ashamed of the gospel as being like someone like John Kemp. That's bold, that will just walk into a hospital and hit every floor and they chase him out of the hospital, goes to the next wing and just gets right in there.
Keeps going. You know, I, I'm not quite there yet. I don't think I have that much courage. But maybe tonight you're here in this room and you're pretty shy. You're like, well, how can I not be ashamed of the Lord? I'm I'm kind of shy in my in my I'm more timid. I'm more reserved. I don't really have the gift is to speak or I don't really have the courage to speak up in a place like this. You know, the Lord knows that the Lord knows exactly your makeup. He knows exactly.
Where you're coming from. He knows your capabilities, he knows your strengths, he knows your weaknesses.
And yet he's given each and one of us a gift, an opportunity to share with what is real in our life. You know, Andrew, you know, our brother spoke about Peter a few nights ago, and Andrew brought Peter to Christ. Andrew, maybe it wasn't that gifted, outgoing, boisterous apostle, but he brings Peter to Christ and Peter is greatly used. Maybe he'll be an Andrew. Maybe there's that school friend you've been thinking about witnessing to. Maybe there's that sibling that you know you have to have that conversation with.
Maybe you can be a blessing to that relative or that neighbor. Maybe you can be unashamed of the gospel of Christ.
Michigan Camp 2022, I have a challenge for you.
What would it take for you to give up your faith now? Think of it carefully. It took Judas 30 pieces of silver.
It took Peter.
Getting ridiculed a bit.
And I don't say that giving up your faith in the sense of walking away from Christianity, but what would it take you to compromise?
In your faith, you know, I don't think it's something that you just arrive at and that now that I've said or I've decided that I'm never going to be ashamed of the gospel of Christ again. I will always live in that, in that moment. No, I think we're challenged every day. Every day. If we're going to live in fear, we're going to live in faith. Are we going to believe the message of the gospel and how it applies to our lives, not only for salvation, but everything with the Bible, what it has to do with our lives?
I'm going to go through the story of Nicodemus.
And recover these three instances and hopefully we'll be all encouraged.
On rate on April 20th, 1988.
A young 17 year old girl named Rachel Scott wrote in her journal. I'm not going to apologize for speaking the name of Jesus. This is a high school student.
Is I have to sacrifice everything I will.
Now some of you have maybe have written something similar in your journal. Maybe you've written a journal or a letter.
So it's a friend. I mean, you've made that declaration with your lips exactly one year later to the day.
Two gunmen walked into Columbine High School.
And they went straight for this girl called Rachel Scott.
And they asked her, are you a Christian? Will you renounce Jesus?
I don't know the exact words that were said.
But you did not, and they shot her eight times.
You know she didn't wake up that morning.
Thinking I'm going to do something heroic for the Lord. She's going to wake up thinking today is the day. I really have to be ready. Make sure I read my Bible, make sure I pray, make sure everything is good. She didn't know and you don't know when you'll be called on to take a stand for the Lord. You don't know when will you'll be at moment that you'll be called on to maybe publicly take a stand for the Lord. But if you've been in fellowship with the Lord, if you've been reading and praying, the Lord will prepare you and He's not going to put you in a position you cannot handle. We're never tempted in a position.
00:10:09
Tempted or put in a place that we cannot handle.
So why would I be unashamed?
What's the purpose? Why would I put up with some ridicule? Why would I put up with maybe my friends on accepting me?
Why would I put up with maybe not be accepted by the kids in class being rejected?
You know, none of us likes to be rejected. None of us like to be pick last. None of us likes to be maybe.
Not part of the crowd. The cool crowd.
You know the Gospel does two things.
It brings out the shaming behavior and those who don't believe if today I said to you.
2 + 2 = 4 and you guys made fun of Maine.
I would say, you know what? You know, you're making fun of me, but deep inside I know that 2 + 2 = 4. And so I could be confident in knowing that this is something that I've known. I've seen it worked out in mathematics, I've seen it worked out in my life. I can believe it.
The same thing with the gospel. If you've accepted Christ as your Savior, if you've seen the power of God transform your life.
And transform the life of others. You should be unapologetic for it. And if someone makes fun of you, sure, it can hurt. Sure, I'm not saying it's going to be easy. But you can with confidence, say I know this works. I know that Jesus Christ saved me. I know his blood washed away my sins. I know there's power in prayer. I know He's changed my life.
And he gets freedom.
From shame to those of us who believe, those of us who have accepted Christ as our Savior, we have had our shame removed.
We have had our sins, our iniquities blotted out, removed from us. We don't have to live in shame. We've all been shameful things in our past. We've all done things that we're ashamed of, but the blood of Christ covers that. We've accepted Christ as our savior. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son cleanseth us from all said. We don't have to live in that shame. And the reason why people don't want to accept what we have to offer is that they know deep inside they have a God-given consciousness that knows that what you're offering, what you're bringing.
Is.
The right thing, and they'd rather shut you up than they meant that they're wrong. Now, they might not say that outright, but.
We have multiple verses that we can go over and that the Word of God gives ample testimony to the fact that the Holy Spirit is working each heart in this world. And when we try to be a light for the Lord, either we can be ridiculed, some people might just pass us off, or they might accept that we don't always know. But our job is to preach Christ. It's the most loving thing in the world.
To tell the truth about the about the way to salvation. If you really love that friend of yours at school, if you really love that coworker, you will share.
Christ, how could you love? There's a there's an atheist named Pen Teller, I think his name is. He's a famous atheist. He says how can you hate someone so much not to tell him what the gospel if you really believed?
Let's say a truck is coming towards me.
When you really believe that truck was going to hit me, you'd push me out of the way if you really believed it was real. And if we really believe in Jesus Christ, if you really believe what the Bible says.
Should that not motivate us to share Christ with our friends, with our coworkers? It might be in different ways. It might not be in a sermon style. It might just be in a conversation, the question and a track. And there's many ways that we can share our faith.
You know, someone asked me tonight, they said, am I going to get church tonight whenever I speak? And you know, I hope tonight you're not just getting church, that someone's just yelling at you or talking.
And if I speak a bit louder, if I'm passionately because I hopefully I believe it and I want to portray that it's true. I hope you realize that I struggle the same as many of you. I struggle sometimes to share my faith. I'm not here saying that I've got all figured out, but I know the Lord Jesus is a great God and he is worthy of our trust. He's worthy of our of our of our confidence. He's worthy to be trusted in. It's my prayer that as we go through the life of Nicodemus, we see someone that goes from.
Be a closet Christian to being a sold out believer.
Let's start in John chapter 3.
John, Chapter 3.
Verse One there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
00:15:02
Mathematics by night. And said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these things Miracles except that thou doest except God be with him.
She just answered and sent him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God. And I'll just move down to verse 7. Marvel not that I say unto thee, must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth.
And now here is the sound thereof, but thou cannot tell where it cometh, and whither it goeth. And so is everyone that is born of the spirit. Verse 9. Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? He has answered and said to him Of our master of Israel, I know it's not these things.
You know Nicodemus, he's a ruler among the Jews, he's a Whelan, he's an important man. He's someone with influence.
And the Jewish community was a member, I believe, the Sanhedrin, or a Pharisee at least the very least. He was a man with influence and he's gonna come see Jesus at night now.
Many historians maybe differ on this, why he came at night, but I'm gonna go with this reason very evidently when you're going to see someone at night.
Usually it's maybe more secretive, maybe it's more of a you don't want other people to see who you, who you're talking to and what you are being associated with. And this is, I believe what.
Nicodemus did. He came to Jesus by night. He had questions. He was a genuine truth seeker.
He came to Jesus by night to have these questions answered and not my intent to go over the aspect of new birth and everything he brings out. I know Tim mentioned a lot of thought in his meeting yesterday about election, that type of thing. My my point is just this. He came to Jesus, He had that encounter, He had that personal.
Encounter with the Lord Jesus tonight My question to you, Michigan Camp 2022, is this Have you had that personal encounter with the Lord Jesus? Have you been transformed?
Have you had the Lord Jesus Christ? Have you had a personal encounter the way Nicodemus had with Him? You know the longest journey you could ever take is 18 inches from the head to your heart. It's knowing something in your head and believing it in your heart. Where do you stand tonight? Have you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior? Nothing else matters. Nothing else matters. School wise, career wise, relationship wise of this question is not addressed.
It's impossible.
But someone says they're saved without having a transformed life.
We don't. I don't see your heart. Someone told me once, why are you judging me? I was speaking about something they were doing. I said I'm not judging, I'm just a fruit inspector. I don't see any fruit in your life for the Lord. And are you really saved? I don't know that tonight. I can't say. Look around and put a yes or no on your head. But the Lord Jesus knows. And don't play games with the Lord. God is not mocked. What a man sows.
He will also reap if you profess Christ today and you have an unchanged life.
My friend, be careful that you're not just deceiving yourself. Make sure that it's not just something you've known in your head, you've believed in your head, you've learned the verses, the memory work.
Everything else to do with Christianity without having that personal encounter with the Lord Jesus.
And so.
Here begins the story of Nicodemus.
He's starting to learn about the Lord Jesus he's starting to be.
He had obviously listened to him, he had obviously known a bit about him and so he starts off this journey.
And we're not gonna be able to follow his journey through this life, only these three little snapshots of his life where we see a change in him. And I'm not saying that that change might be overnight, but there should be a change in your life if you encounter the Lord Jesus.
You know.
Nicodemus cannot come in his own.
Pompous way as a as a as an educated man, he actually came as a as a truth seeker, he called Jesus Rabbi.
Which means teacher, he acknowledged who Jesus was and he came and had an honest questions. And it's not wrong to have questions. I'm not here saying that there's no place for apologetics. There's no place to have honest questions about some of these things that maybe you're not sure about. But know this is the Lord Jesus Christ absolutely is interested in your life. You cannot be more loved tonight than you are right now. The Lord Jesus Christ is just the same God that died on the cross 2000 years ago. He's interested. He died when he was hanging on that cross. He was thinking of you.
He was. He died. He shed his blood so that you could live a transformed life, a life that is not ashamed of him.
Let's go down to the second meeting in John chapter 4. Sorry, John 7. John Chapter 7.
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And 43.
So there was a division among the people because of him.
And some of them are going to take in hand, but no man laid hands on him.
Then came the officers to the chief priests and Pharisees, and they said unto him, Why have you not brought him?
The officers answered. Neverman spake like this man.
You know the Lord Jesus never had a bad word come out of His mouth, always had the right thing to say, always had the right conversation.
And there was a division because of him, because he came and he divided between light and darkness. He came and he came as the light of the world. And he caused that division because some rejected him.
And some accepted him and there's a whole conversation later on going to be happening.
Those that came to the officers that went to supposedly arrest Jesus, they said never man steak like this man. They were, they were realizing this is not a regular, you know, random, you know, itinerant rabbi going around preaching this is someone special. He has a message that we have to listen.
And the Pharisees answered in verse 47, Are you also deceived? Have any of the rulers of the Pharisees believed on him? But this people who knoweth not the law, are cursed. And now on the scene appears Nicodemus again, the second time. The first time he came by night.
And the verse actually reminds us again, verse 50. Nicodemus said unto them, Bracket he that came into Jesus by night, being one of them.
Close bracket. Let the law judge any man before I hear him, and know what he doeth. The answered and said unto him, Art thou also of Galilee? Search and look, for out of Galilee arises no prophet, And every man went into his own house.
Second time now we're going to see Nicodemus and he appears on this scene. There's a controversy, there's a division over who Jesus Christ is in his message, and he takes a stand. Now this is maybe not taking a stand in a open.
Quite public. He kind of asked the question, he kind of gets involved and he actually causes the whole controversy kind of cease and everybody went to their own house. But the point is this, there is a transformation. There is a progression in his life where he takes a stand for the Lord Jesus. And my prayer for each and every one of you, old ones, young people alike, is that in your life there is a progression.
But maybe yesterday you were too embarrassed to ask the Lord for his help or pray for your food and find your classes. But tomorrow you'll do it. But maybe you're too embarrassed to to not laugh at that bad joke that your coworker said. But now, I mean, tomorrow or today you're not going to do that.
But maybe you're not going to join into the laughter of an inappropriate joke and you're gonna maybe just be quiet, even if you're just quiet without me saying something that has a marked witness. And so my prayer is that and the prayers of many here at the campus that we see growth. You know, my kids are growing from, you know, 0 from 10 months to four years. And there's growth. It's not gonna happen in one day. But there is progression. And we try to feed them and help them so they grow up. We sing that song, Read your Bible.
Every day and you'll grow, grow, grow. I was at Michigan camp.
Believe seven years ago and some kids here weren't even born. I have pictures of playing with some of you kids at a table like in the in the in the hobby classroom. And now you guys are like beating me at soccer and stuff. You know, like people grow up and thank God that we have a generation rising up. But there is a progression doesn't happen overnight and it's the Lord's will that we all grow. We we take a stand more and more for the Lord.
For His glory day after day.
You know, Nicodemus, put yourself in his position. He's a he's a rich man. He's an influential man. And people are talking bad about the Lord, but his heart has been touched. He doesn't want to say nothing. Maybe he's having cold tremors. Maybe he's having cold sweats. He's stuttering, his hearts beating. What do I do? Do I say something? Do I just be quiet? And maybe another time. But no, he's going to take a stand right there and then, and he takes that. It's not a major stand. It's not.
Hey, I'm a follower of Jesus, he asked the question. And maybe you're going to be in that situation next week with your coworker.
Will it bring up something about the lorry and you maybe can have an opportunity to ask the question. Maybe you'll be able just to say a little something for the Lord and maybe you'll open up a door. Maybe you should be praying that in your life. Lord give me little opportunities. I'm going to plant little seeds, little seeds here and there. I have 7 Punjabi employees working for me and a bunch of other unchristians and they're very respectful of the bold holy book, the Bible.
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They don't believe in it, but they're respectful of it. And so if I mention a little something about God, about what Jesus said, but listen.
So I'm careful. I try to plant these little seeds, bring out these conversations imperfectly. I've missed plenty of opportunities, but with the Lord's help.
It could be for their salvation.
So he takes a stand. Nicodemus takes a stand and dissipates.
The crowd.
You know, he was able to say that and.
We'll get some approach. They asked him, Does the law judge any man before? He says that not our law judge any man before it hear him, and nobody says. And they answered him. I thought also of Galilee, almost like accusing him.
You're also from gallery. Are you like you know his his homie? Like are you friends with him? Like are you trying to support him? And, and sometimes the world won't.
Attack us? What the like kind of throw little jabs in about the Lord just to see her reaction, especially if you've taken a stance of the Lord before.
You might see our friends kind of throw a little side one in there, like a little comment now and then to poke you and to see where your reaction. They might, you know, test you sometimes. I know I have.
A bunch of young male guys working for me and we're working on the job site. Sometimes in a good looking girl walks by and I can tell they're all looking at me out of the corner of their eye. What's the boss going to do?
Is he going to do a double take? And it's a challenge to be not only not look but also be intentional that I'm not looking.
And that's a challenge because the world will test us and they're looking for little inconsistencies in our lives. They're looking for little things just to be like to stick it to us. Ha, you said you're a Christian to look what you did. You said you're a Christian, but look at that joke you you enjoyed or the thing you watched. And Satan is the accuser of the brethren. He'll want to come in and just say you're a failure. You messed up. Forget this whole faith thing. Just keep it to yourself. Don't bother sharing it around you.
And he's an accuser. He'll want to come at you. And the truth is, have I ever failed in my faith? Absolutely. But we confess our sins. He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins. And he wants to us to continue to confess, to move on and grow.
In second Timothy 3 verse 12 it says they that live godly.
Maybe will suffer persecution. Is that what it says? No, it says they that live godly will.
Suffer persecution now persecution has different forms. Income from the world from a non believer just making you openly.
If ever you've gone out, passing tracks or street preaching will be people that will make fun of you openly.
People that will reject you or ridicule you, that's openly and that's hard.
You might be rejected by the religious community, may other religions by other.
Groups that.
Don't believe Jesus Christ as God, don't believe in what Jesus said about himself and what the Bible teaches. But the hardest group by far is our peers being rejected by our peers.
And that is the hardest because some of them might be sitting in this very room, maybe that you're a fellow Christians.
So-called Christians, maybe they're actually real believers, but they're not pulling you in the right direction.
It's one thing if it's an unchristian unsaved school friend that might just not love the Lord and just and you know that OK, they're not saved. But what if it's your?
Your your your Christian friend that's sitting beside you tonight.
That's not really encouraging you in the Lord, but instead of, you know, in the mornings.
When you're in your cabin, instead of reading their Bible, encouraging you is just trying to get you to go play.
Carpetballer, ping pong or volleyball? I just distracting you from your reading.
That can be hard. What if you're just saying, I want to read my Bible and pray and they kind of say, oh, come on, let's go. You know, I've been there, I've been in that cabin and, and seeing that happen back in the day, I'm sure it hasn't changed now. And you know, I just want to encourage you, if you're that person that is trying to take a stand, even while you're Christian friends, take that stand. Just be faithful to the Lord. No, Daniel didn't change his.
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Didn't change his.
Habit when the going went rough.
I was at a conference once.
And you know, I'm I'm someone who remembers certain things, certain key phrases or certain lines. I remember a meeting I heard 15 years ago about the consecration of a Christian, Another meeting about from Brother Doug Nicolay on Who art Thou Lord? Little tidbits. And I don't know how, but these stuck with me.
And their meetings, I listen to you over and over in the past, and I remember them and I've stuck with them. And this is a little tidbit from one of these meetings.
The brother said this is an older brother, respected laborer who said.
What will have the most impact?
In your life from this weekend, talking about a conference weekend will not be.
What you hear at the meetings, and I almost fell off my chair. I'm like, this brother is telling me that like, I'm not going to be like changed by what he's going to say. Like he's actually like kind of almost discrediting or undermining what he's going to say. He says no, He said, you'll be blessed by what you hear, and that's good.
But the people sitting the left and right of you are going to have a way bigger impact on your life.
So you're saying choose your friends carefully?
We'll do a little exercise here tonight, turn the person to left of you and say you are an influence.
On me.
Turn the person to the right of you and say you have an impact on my Christian life.
Turn to the person to the left of you and say I can be a health or hindrance to your Christian life.
Turn the person to your right.
And say I will either pull you up or drag you down.
None of us lives and dies to ourselves the way.
You act will impact the people around you.
I look in this room and I see a lot of my good friends, guys with a bunch of kids, and these are people that I know how to bless it in my life. But if I look at a group of guys and girls, a group like this, I can tell you at least half of the people that were my age or other not following the Lord at all or maybe left the assembly or maybe just doing their own thing, not really interested.
I'm 34 right now, and it hurts to think, you know, that maybe I contributed in a way to their demise. Maybe there was things I allowed in my life that were a discouragement to them when I was 17 years old at a Mount Tabor conference.
I was with my group of friends and that was a conference that I decided that I want to start getting serious and I took my notepads to have a note. So I remember I started taking notes.
And after meeting people around her kind of being silly and just so you know, I was pretty silly too. So I'm not like throwing one under the bus here. My sister can attest to that. I know she prayed for me a lot. But and I was at that meeting and when I was at that meeting, I was taking notes. I'm like, you know what, I'm just going to focus. My friends are being a little bit all focused. Maybe that's you tonight. You want to focus, but your friends are like elbowing you and like, what's this guy saying? Whatever.
Brother came up to me after, I'm not going to say who because he has some kids in the room here. He came up to me and he said brother.
Are you saved? I was like, yeah, gathered and like, saved. Like what are you talking about? He says.
He says you're not acting like a Christian. He's like all those young people in the back. He's like you're part of them and like he's like you guys like you, you're here for a conference. You're just being silly. He's like, are you guys even saved? And like I kind of took it like hit me hard and I kind of like try to talk my way out of it. And he kind of toned down a bit. But he had a good point. And I thought about that since.
I was not acting. I was with the group that was not acting very much like Christians. There was not.
Something there that was building up, maybe someone in that group was trying to be focusing, but people around were distracting and were not helping them along.
You know it's not just a question about attention and meeting when you're talking among yourselves after meeting in the in the dorms at night. You know, when you're playing ping pong or volleyball. What are you talking about?
What are the conversations your the music choices you share with your friends?
The movies, the friendships, the associations, these are all things that we have to ask an honest question about. Am I helping my friend out?
Alcohol is another big one.
I have at least five or six friends in line that I grew up with going to young people's.
And started getting in alcohol and we thought it was cool. I was part of that group for a while.
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And I can tell if five or six of those guys about alcohol problems in that time and have not followed the Lord. And so you might think it's OK for me to do, but just think about your brother or sister that might have a weakness or might take it the next level, next, the next, the next step. It's a solemn thing and I'm not proud to say it.
Evil company corrupts good habits. The question is, are you being the evil company? Are you bringing your friends up or bringing them down? And that all ties into not being ashamed of the gospel.
Because Nicodemus had to choose to break off from his religious friends to follow the Lord Jesus, and you might have to break off with some of your true friends.
Maybe the people sitting in your room, maybe the people, the young people, your local assembly, maybe their friends that you spend a lot of time with will be a time when you say I can no longer go with you to do this. I want to follow the Lord Jesus. I'm sold out for the gospel. I want to believe what the Lord is Word and follow him. And you won't be accepted by them.
When I was in my late teens, early 20s.
We had rented a Airbnb, about 20 of us guys at a friend's wedding.
And I came back later on that evening and these are all guys in the meeting, by the way.
They were throwing a party at the house.
Playing cards, alcohol, music, everything. And I walked in there and I was staying at that house. I was associated.
And I said, you know what, guys, enough is enough. I went, I turned off the music, said, guys, I got to talk to you. I said, guys, and I'm not saying this, that if any pride in myself, but I came, I said, guys, this has got to stop. Like how far are we going to go? Like what's going to happen? Like, are we just going to keep going down the hill? There was another house next door doing a party. They were completely unrelated to us and they were not Christian. I said, there's absolutely no difference between what we're doing here right now and what's going on next door.
I said how we gotta stop this? Like this is not right. You know, in front of all my friends. I'll think about this being 18 years old and our 1920 and have all your friends tell you.
Most of my friends that were there, and these are guys I grew up going to young people's events and stuff. Is it ETU? Stop it. You're being too legalistic. Just just just don't just stop it, man. Like, OK, That's what Bob will say, ha, ha, let's go Bible study and we'll kind of then we'll like play cards and like keep drinking. And I'm like, guys, we gotta change. Someone's gotta change. If not, we're gonna keep going down because at that point, some of my friends that were there already had alcohol issues.
I said guys like you either going to rather going to going down and bring other people down. Are we going to change? And that was hard to have my own friends, the guys, you know, the young, the guys that play volleyball with, the guys that go Rd. tripping with people I go snowboarding with. Can I say ET look, just not all of them made fun of me. Some are just like on the fence. I could tell, but I had, you know, these people and I felt so.
Low in my life because man, these are like my support group of people I care about.
And I have to like not really roll with them anymore because I can't because it's affecting me. And again, I'm not saying this to say that I was anything special. The Lord gave me strength and he helped me find new friends, other Christians, other believers that love him and wanted to serve him. And I just say that that don't want to get to that point where you have to just.
Make a dramatic thing. I just felt it was the moment. It was a time the Lord gave me strength and it was ending the weakness. I'm not saying I did it in the right spirit. It's the past now. It's, you know, 20 years ago.
Or 15 years ago. The point is this. If you are honoring the Lord, if you take a stand for the Lord, if you're going to not be ashamed of the gospel of Christ, it's going to cost you something, young people. It's going to cost you something to be associated with the Lord Jesus. Now, you might do it in weakness, you might go too hard on them, but it's better to be true to the Lord than live in a compromising situation.
So just be careful.
What you do, you know, I felt ridicule and that really hurt. I like people. I'm a people pleaser. I always like to be like out and about with people. I don't, I'm not a loner at all. And so to have that in front of my friends was was hard. Thankfully, around that time, I got an e-mail from Tim Roach who said, hey, want to go to Malawi and that was exciting and thank you. It's a long story, but we've been denied a couple times and.
Saw my wife down there eventually. So the Lord worked it out. The Lord honored it. But the point is this.
You're going to maybe have to make those tough choices, and Nicodemus started making that choice. He didn't quite go all out with the Lord.
But he made a decision, I think at that point was kind of where he started saying I'm going to separate from that. You might not be in a in a historic clash with your friends in front of them at a party. But maybe you have to say, you know, I'm not going to go on that road trip with them. I'm not going to go watch that movie. I'm not going to, you know, associate with this because it's going to drag me down in my life. I can't tell you exactly what to do. Some of you are going to probably going to new schools this fall or starting a new course. You're going to have choices to make. Who are you going to sit with? Who are you going to?
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Associate with is it going to be for the glory of the Lord? Some of you are moving out now from your parents. You now have freedom with freedom to do what? Freedom to live for yourself, freedom to do whatever you want to do? Or are you going to say, I'm going to make sure that my life is what the Lord Jesus would want me to do?
Let's turn to the third instance, John 1938. Let's Fast forward some time here, Nicodemus.
Probably had seen what went on. He may have been part of even the trial that condemned the Lord to death with Pilate and Herod and the crucifixion and what followed.
We don't hear them stepping up there. We don't hear them saying hey, stop guys, don't put them on the cross.
Now whether or not it happened or not, the Spirit of God doesn't tell us, but He takes a stand for the Lord.
When the Lord died, and this is when he said, you know what I'm done with?
These guys, these Pharisees, I'm going to associate with the Lord Jesus in John 1938, and after this, Joseph Arimathea being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, besat Pilate.
And he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate give him leave. And he came therefore, and took the body of Jesus. And there came also Nicodemus, which at first kidney Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of marinallo is about 100 lbs weight. And they took their body of Jesus and wandered linen cloth with spices. The matter of Jews to bury.
In the place where He was crucified there was a garden in the garden of New Sepulchre, wherewith no man was yet laid.
There Lady Jesus, therefore, because of the Jews, preparation day for the sepulchre was nigh at hand.
So we have another guy come out of the woodwork, Joseph of Arimathea, a disciple, but a disciple who was afraid. He had, he had fear, he had a, he was afraid he was a rich man. He says he was a ruler. He was someone with influence, with power. And maybe he could have said, well, maybe I'm going to use my influence and power for the Lord in my sphere of work. I'm just going to do what I'm doing. I have this authority and power. I'm just going to like kind of just do the right things for the Lord.
And maybe that worked for a bit, but now there was this moment.
There was a fork in the road. What's he going to do with the body of Jesus? Are we going to let the body of Jesus go into a common grave with the criminals?
What are we going to do, Take a stand? And he takes a stand and it's so nice. And he tags, teams up with a guy called Nicodemus, right? Our third friend, Nicodemus, him and him together. It's so nice to have a Christian friend, isn't it? To have a friend that you can trust, that you can pray with that prays for you. I have a friend.
Once you're having close to different people over the years, but I know that I can call anytime and pray with them and he prays to me and calls me if there's a struggle. And it's so nice to have that brother in arms or sister in arms to go along life with you. And I encourage you seek out those friends that are going to encourage and build you up. And so they go to pilot. Pilot had had a long day. He didn't really want to deal with this like he had the Sanhedrin on one side, the people almost a riot going on. And now he has someone asking for the body of Jesus and the Lord.
God allowed it being sovereign that he got the body of Jesus and he goes with Nicodemus and they take it down off the cross. Now this would be something that would have been a pretty gruesome task. The body of the Lord Jesus was very damaged. You know it was a corpse, you know it was not. He was dead. And they take him down, they elevenly wind him up and they anoint him this 100 lbs of ointment and they and they publicly are.
Defiling themselves for the dead now they probably were, according to Jewish law, probably couldn't have partook of the of the feast because they were now having in contact with a dead person.
But they take Jesus off the cross, they wrap them up, and they give them an honorable funeral, which is in line with prophecy. But there's a public demonstration. There's a courageous obedience. They had a lot to lose. They're highly ranked Pharisees.
They're associating themselves with a crucified leader of a rebellion to overthrow Rome. So that's what the Sanhedrin thought. Their associates are saying we're going to be with the rebel guy, the dead rebel guy. But they're saying, you know, we're going to be a part of that. We're going to associate ourselves with him.
You know, it wasn't a very, it was a menial task.
Wrapping someone up, it's not like a happy thing, but they did it for the Lord Jesus and it cost them something. It cost them a new tomb. It cost them 100 lbs of spices.
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No, Jesus Christ died. He died for you, He rose from the dead. He died because he loved you. And what are you going to do for him in return? We preach Christ crucified to the Jews, a stumbling block into the Greeks foolishness. First Corinthians 123.
Michigan Camp 2022 Are you ready to be a fool for the Lord? Are you willing to associate as a fool?
We're not fooled because we have the right message, but we're going to be viewed as fools because people are going to see us and say this guy's office rocker, this girl's off her rocker, Why is she telling me about this? Jesus doesn't make sense.
Philippians 120 says, According to my earnest expectation, hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness as always, so now Christ shall be magnified in my body is your life.
Worth something to you personally? Do you put great?
Do you put care in your body? Do you take care of it? You workout, You eat the right things.
You take care of what goes inside you. Are you willing to let Christ be magnified?
In your body, Paul could say to for me to live as Christ and to die again. Are you willing to use your talents through skills that God gave you to begin with?
For His glory.
What does it mean practically to be identified with the Lord Jesus?
A lot of us are wearing these nice shirts.
Michigan Camp with burst in the back, and O'Donnell wins the prize for the Christian T-shirts he wears. I mean, you like, I'm encouraged by them. I have a couple myself. But what does it mean to not be ashamed of the gospel? Is it just showing up at a, at a weekend like this? And, and, and just saying, oh, I'm just going to, you know, be a part of all the meetings, sing really loud And the hymns thing. How am I going to be tomorrow or on Monday when I go home?
When I go to work next week, am I? Of course there's going to be some failure.
But the Spirit of God doesn't give us.
Room to or doesn't give us an excuse to fail. We all know that we have the flesh we have. There's been times that I've gone to a conference, been on a high and gone back Monday morning and man, I followed my knees for the Lord and say Lord, you know I I need you. I need you so badly. What are we going to be a part-time Christian or a full time Christian? Don't be a part-time Christian that demands a full time God. The Lord wants you to be sold out for him. He wants you to be obedient.
For him, maybe it's going to be that movie you're going to want to watch. It's only a little bit of cussing, it's a bit of nudity. But you know, how much sin does it actually take to grieve the Holy Spirit? If you grieve the Holy Spirit with your actions, with what you watch, what you communicate with, what you associate with, you're not going to be a clean vessel for the Lord's use.
Who your friends are going to tell you, don't judge me, don't judge me in my Christian walk.
People might tell you judge not lets me not judge, but you can reply twist not the scriptures, lest he be like Satan.
Seems pretty good at twisting those scriptures that verse judge not be not judged has nothing to do with judging a friend because he's watching something.
It's a lot more than that. In Second Timothy 1/8 it says be there in four. Not ashamed of the testimony of the Lord.
There is a testimony to the glory in this world, the word of the Lord, this Bible.
Is illegal in 51 Countries. There is people that when they accept the Lord Jesus Christ.
Are going to pay a great price for this book. I have friends that I know of in India, in other countries, Malawi and other places. I'm sure if you read the Book of the Martyrs or if you get those newsletters.
You'll see that there's people that suffer great things for this book and what's it going to cost you Michigan camp 2022 What's it going to cost you to follow the Lord? We're told to study ourselves are proven to God a Workman that needed not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Our brother Daniel gave a really great talk on Christian maturity.
There is a need for us, for young men and young women, to dig deep in the Word of God, to take these things seriously for themselves.
To rightly divide the word of truth. You know, we're here in the camp, we're having a great time.
But some of us are from small assemblies, some of us are from groups that have had difficulties in the last couple of years. Maybe there might be a reproach even being gathered to the Lord's name. They might say you're too legal. You separate from true Christians. You think you're better than other believers. You know, those accusations could be true in some way. Because there's been times when I know maybe I've held the truth of God with a high hand or.
In a real legal way. But that doesn't change the truth of what the word of God says. It's not my point to go into the ground of gathering tonight, but there is. The word of God is. There's a way for us to behave in the House of God. There is.
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The truth of God for the believer, a path for us to take and you need to dig the time. Take the time to dig these truths out for yourselves. Don't just assume that it's going to fall into your lap. Maybe there's a brother or sister in your local assembly that irk you. Maybe that they are holding the truth of God in a wrong, wrong spirit. Don't let that discourage you. Be a blessing to them. Hold dig in for yourself and and don't be ashamed of what the word of God says.
You know the hardest, Like I said, the hardest opposition can sometimes come from our friends, from our from true believers.
That are going to be with us for all eternity in heaven, but might just not be in a state of soul to be a blessing to us. You know, if there's weakness that an assembly, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Don't reject everything you've been taught you've been grown up with because of the attitude of a brother or sister or a fellow peer. Take the time, go to them, get golly counsel, find an older brother or sister or many of us here at camp would love to have a conversation with you. Have any questions? We have the question meeting for questions like this.
Just because you see failure in your family doesn't mean that or around you doesn't mean that you should just reject everything you've been taught and seek a large path. We should have a what? We should have the whitest heart as Christians. We should have a wide heart seeking the love every single dear member of the body of Christ, whether they're at the Lord's Table or not with us on a Sunday morning for the same time. Narrow path. The path of the Christian life is a narrow one. We're not going to have to just we're told to separate from that which is wrong.
And to cleave after the Lord with those and that's an encouragement with those that follow on the Lord with pure heart. They'll always be those that are going to be willing to follow after the Lord with a pure heart for our blessing and for the encouragement of God's people. So in summary, I've been there. I've been ashamed of the gospel feebly. I've tried through some ways to.
Move out and to take a stand for the Lord slowly. There's times that I fall back on my face and I got to say, Lord, I'm a failure, but I want to try again. You're worthy.
Peter fell down, the Lord restored him, and maybe tonight you're here in this treatment and you had a failure. You know that you're not where you should be at with the Lord. And it's my prayer tonight that you just take that time. You're just sitting in the seat right now. Just confess with the Lord. Say Lord, I can't do this without you. I want to start again. I want to start out fresh with the Lord. Maybe there's one person in the room that you've been on the fence about following the Lord. You've been raising a Christian home, but you have big decisions coming up. You're going to go. You're going to go to.
School, you're starting a new course, a new job, you're contemplating a relationship with someone that may not be a believer. We have plenty of instructional, the word of God about that. Are you going to be ashamed of the Lord? Are you going to start off obeying his word? Nicodemus? We see a progression from closet Christian to sold out follower to associated with a dead man, a dead man, Jesus, who rose from the dead three days later, victorious over the grave.
But he associated, he compromised. He did not compromise. When it came down to it, knew that some in this room that's been playing a double game. Maybe you're something to your friends here at meeting, but you're going to go back Monday morning and you're going to be the complete officer. We're not going to recognize. If I were to see you on the street, I would not know this is you that was sitting here at the camp playing volleyball with all of us.
Maybe there's someone here that has the best intentions. You say, you know, I go to school, I'm in the car and I pray, Lord help me speak and you struggle day after day.
To speak for the Lord. My encouragement to you is don't give up. Don't give up the Lord.
Will fill your mouth. Keep communing with him. He will fill it. He will help you. He will not let you down.
Maybe someone here is discouraged and saying, you know, my small assembly, they're just, there's nothing there for me, nothing there for my kids, there's nothing there. Don't give up, Don't give up. The Lord can bring in encouragement. He can bring times like this or we can be strengthened. Don't give up. The Lord is worthy. Give what is due to Him. He will, He will fill the rest.
Network from an assembly with not many kids. It's hard. It's hard on us parents, but want to be faithful to the Lord. He can bless and he is no man's debtor. You know, I've got a need to these categories in my life where I've been on the fence be following the Lord, where I've been in compromise, been discouraged with the assembly. I've had the best intentions, but I can't open my mouth. I'm not here. Please don't think I'm preaching at you. I could be sitting in this chair and I wish I was.
But the Lord has put this burden in my heart and I really wanted to share it.
I look around you guys and I love you guys. You guys are the future of the Assembly. If the Lord leaves us here, maybe we'll have camp twice as big in a few years. You know the Lord is worthy. He is poorly to be followed. Don't settle. Don't compromise. Be sold out for the Lord.
00:55:01
Now maybe it's in your own family. Maybe you look at your parents life and you look at how the word of God says. He says my dad and mom aren't really doing that well. Maybe they failed. And you know what? I'm already a failing dad and the kids are four. It's going to get worse. I'm going to make mistakes. I'm sure guys like Tim and Bernie would agree they've made mistakes. Don't look to us through our parents and say.
Well, if it what you guys messed up, so I'm not gonna really buy for myself. Look back to the word of God. We're all we're all fairly humans. Maybe you could be an encouragement to your parents. Maybe if you see that, you know, the word of God says that you young brothers should be praying and that you should be taking part and taking your priesthood seriously. Maybe your dad never took part in the assembly. And I had friends that say, yeah, my dad never took part. Robert, I take part. Well, the word of God says you should and take your you do you be serious about the Lord.
And see what will happen. You could be a blessing to your parents.
You can be an encouragement that way too.
A God that is faithful yesterday.
Today and forever, my prayer is that this conversation that we've had tonight, this talk encourages you and lights a fire inside your heart to be sold out for the Lord, with failure, yes, but committed to Him so that you can live a life that is not ashamed. Romans 116 I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. It is the power of God to salvation.
And to everyone that believes.
I want to end with a quote. In the 1980s, a young man in Rwanda was forced by his thrive to either renounce Christ or face certain death.
He refused to renounce Christ and was killed on the spot.
The night before.
He had written the following commitment that was found in his room. You may have heard this before, but it's called the Fellowship.
Of the Unashamed and I'm going to read it in closing.
I am part of the Fellowship of the Unashamed.
The die has been cast. I have stepped over the line. The decision has been made.
I am disciple of Jesus Christ.
I won't look back.
Let up, slow down, back away, or be still. My past has redeemed, my present makes sense, and my future is secure.
I'm finished and done with low living site walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams.
Chintzy giving and dwarf goals.
I no longer need preeminence.
Prosperity, position, promotions, plaudits, or popularity?
I live in His presence. Lean by faith, love by patience, live by prayer, labor by love.
Labor by power. My pace is set, my gate is fast. My goal is heaven.
My Rd. is narrow, my way is enough, my ray is rough in the companions few, but my guide is reliable, my mission clear. I cannot be bought, compromised, deterred, lured away, turned back, deluded or delayed. I will not flinch the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of adversity, negotiate at the table of the enemy, ponder at the pool of popularity, or meander in the maze of mediocrity.
I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. I must go.
Until he returns, give until I draw, preach until all know and work, until he comes. And when he comes to get his own, he will have no problem recognizing me, for my colors are clear. I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. My friends, this is something that this man wrote. He gave his life and it's something that little parts of it I can relate to, you can relate to as well.
The Lord Jesus is worthy.
Of our trustworthy to be followed. And may you be able in a small way to not be ashamed of the Lord Jesus Christ, not be ashamed of the gospel of Christ.
Hymnsing - What Hast Thou Brought to Me?
Session #5
Taste and See that the Lord is Good
Address—Mark Allan
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Maybe we could start the meeting this evening by singing 275.
And I'm thinking particularly this evening, and I think you'll see this later about verses 4 and verses 6.
The topic I'd like to take up this evening is taste and see that the Lord is good.
And that may seem like an easy topic to take up, but I've been.
Actually struggling with this one for a little bit, not because.
I don't believe it, but because I realize the importance of it in my own life. So maybe we could just start by singing 275.
Help.
Our God and Father, we just thank you that we can be here this morning, this evening, to have your word open.
And our God and Father, we just would thank you for the Lord Jesus, the one who came from heaven to go to that cross so that our sins could be forgiven.
And her father, we just look to you for help as we consider this topic this evening. We just let us know the heart of every single person.
In this room, know my own heart. You know how often we don't appreciate you, Lord Jesus, in the way that we should. And so we just ask for your help and we pray that your Spirit would be able to open your word to us, that it would be sweet to our taste and that we'd be able to enjoy it. And we just asked us in the name of the Lord Jesus, Amen.
So over the last.
I guess since last fall perhaps, I've been enjoying.
Psalm 34. And I had noticed when I was reading that chapter, there's a number of things in that chapter that really touched me that I I spent a little bit of time chewing on just for my own.
00:05:04
Help and there's a quite a few things that David does in that chapter This is a chapter where David has failed and.
He gets himself in a very, very difficult situation and he cries out to the Lord and the Lord delivers them. If you look at the beginning of that chapter, says the Psalm of David when he changed his behavior before Venelect, who drove him away and he departed. And then you read through this chapter and there's a it's a wonderful chapter.
And David does a number of things. He blesses the Lord, he praises the Lord, he boasts in the Lord, He magnifies the Lord, He exalts the Lord.
He seeks the Lord, he cries to the Lord, he tastes and see, he fears the Lord, he trusts the Lord, he Harkins to the Lord. And if you go through it, there are a number of things and I've just been considering.
Specifically this evening I'd like to look at taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man that trust in Him, you know?
I had gone through the verses in the Word of God with respect to seeking the Lord, and it's amazing to see how when somebody seeks the Lord.
They find him. It's an incredible thing. And then I went through, you know, and people cry to the Lord. He hears them and delivers them. And that's an incredible thing too, to search out in the Word of God. There are very things that we can do in our lives. But you know, I got to this one and it says taste and see that the Lord is good.
And, you know, this one's a little bit different because, you know, it's one thing.
To maybe you're in a difficult position to cry to the Lord and feel like he helped you. It's a total other thing to enjoy the Lord. You know, that's something that we all look for in our life is the enjoyment of things. And so here it's to taste and see that the Lord is good, Not just that he's there, not just that he saves us, but that he's good.
And you know, I'll be honest, I avoided this one for a little like just in terms of digging when I say avoided it in terms of.
Digging into it and searching it out and looking out versus associated with it and actually my daughter.
Brin about a month and a half ago, she said to me that I should speak on tasting and see if the Lord is good. And she, what she specifically said is I want to know how you do that. You know, this relates very much to the question, the last question that we had this morning, and I thought there were excellent answers to it. You know, there's a lot of young people here and I know that one of the things sometimes that people struggle with is why do I get out of bed in the morning?
I don't really have a lot to look forward to.
And so this thought of taste and see that the Lord is good is an important one. You know, I could tell you that till I'm blue in the face, and it wouldn't do any good at all.
You know, when it comes to taste, maybe my taste is a little different than your taste. And maybe you say, well, maybe that person enjoys the Lord. But I, I don't, when I read, I get, I don't get anything from it. I don't really enjoy the Lord. You know, I thought about that because I see it even in my own life a little bit sometimes.
And I I can honestly say.
That.
I have taste, doesn't seem that the Lord is good, but I forget it within 12 hours or less. It happens over and over and over again. And so that's what I want to look at this evening. It was interesting. We were at the dinner line this evening and I was listening to.
Tim Muruga talked about how he didn't like vegetables.
And there was I I discussion that was going on there.
Specifically about that and you know, I don't, I don't mind vegetables, but you can't make somebody like them, right? You know, I have here.
An apple and maybe some people here like an apple and some don't, but what I'd like to look at and I, I honestly, when I thought about this just off the top of my head, I couldn't think of that much that would be very, I don't want to say convincing, but I just want to go through the word of God and the verses that I enjoyed and I can say this honestly.
Even in searching this out, there was a little bit of a sense that when I tasted.
He was good. It was very good. Now the interesting thing about it is when you read about this in the word of God, it's not just.
Good, it's the Lord is sweeter than honey. It's not just a little bit good, it's absolutely amazing. So how do you how do you portray something like that so.
00:10:14
I'd like to turn, I'm going to go through 10 points and I'm going to try and make it as practical as I can.
And.
Ultimately, the Lord is behind every single one of these points, and it's nothing that I could ever do.
It's nothing that I could ever say, but the Lord is good. Taste and see that the Lord is good. You know, in order for me to taste this apple, I have to take a bite of it. And when it comes to this topic, you personally need to do it yourself. And so the first portion I'd like to turn to is in Exodus 15. I'm going to go through.
10 instances and I hope to give it.
An example.
In each one.
And I was very thankful that the question came up this morning.
I was thankful actually at the hymn thing last night. It gave me a perfect example of this first one. And you know this, there's different places where these verses are. The first one I'm going to read is when the children of Israel escape from Egypt across the Red Sea. They come into the to the wilderness. They just have had a tremendous victory.
They're desperate. They look for water. They can't find it for three days.
They're incredibly thirsty. They finally come upon water, and the water is bitter.
I think everyone here probably knows these verses well, but if we could just read Exodus 15.
Verse 22 And Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea, and they went out into the wilderness of sure, and they went three days in the wilderness, and they found no water. When they came to Mara. They could not drink of the waters of Mara.
For they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Mara. The people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink? And he cried unto the Lord. And the Lord showed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet.
There he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them.
So here, in this first instance, they're in the wilderness and we're all.
In a sense in the wilderness and they're desperate for water. And you know, what's interesting to me is sometimes we think of.
The Lord, perhaps like a vending machine, he should just keep it giving us good things. And the reality is, is that almost all of these instances that I go through, they are actually in incredible difficult circumstances. You know, I was even thinking about my brother. He is no fellowship. He has to put a pile of money into traveling. His flight was cancelled and it was the one.
Week that he had coming here was delayed 3 days.
So he lost three days of his vacation.
He found that very hard. They finally get here.
And two days into it, Matthew gets his head all head up and he's off to the hospital and they have to drive back tomorrow. There's a drop him off the airport. He goes to a wedding and then he goes back to Newfoundland and you know.
Is the Lord good in that circumstance? Maybe that's a question you should ask. He. He and I have had some very nice discussions about this. You heard what he said this morning.
Difficult circumstances often drive these times.
When we need to taste and see that the Lord is good.
The first place we need to go is to the cross.
If we want to taste and see that the Lord is good here, they come to Mara, the waters bitter. And what does the Lord say?
Take a tree, cast it into the water, and it will become sweet.
And in order for them to drink that, drink that water and it was sweet, but it took going a picture of the cross. And I will say this, going back to the cross, if you want to enjoy the sweetness of the Lord.
Is incredibly important. Last night the hymn singing made a perfect example of that. Cummins. You can say it, Andrew.
Mentioned that he was really struggling.
The breaking of bread.
00:15:00
And he recognized that he just, the Lord hadn't had the right place. He said, I'm going to pass. I'm going to taste and see if the Lord is good. So he cut off his Internet for a week, even into the Lord's presence, where he remembered him in his death. And the Lord was sweet.
I've had that happen to me.
Many times.
And I can honestly say that one of the sweetest places.
Even haste and see that the Lord is good.
Is remembering them and we need to go back and go back and go back to that. And so if you want to taste and see that the Lord is good, spend some time considering the cross and its implication in your life. I got to keep going because of time. The next one is in the next chapter.
It is in Exodus 16 and this has to do with.
Mana Hey, you know, man is an interesting one because they didn't have food in the wilderness. And again, we're continuing to talk about the wilderness, which is where we are.
And the Lord makes a miraculous provision.
For food that appears.
Every day.
We have to go pick it up. It doesn't last more than a day.
And they have to take two days for the Sabbath day.
And you know, it's interesting what it says about mana. Actually, let's just read in chapter 16.
Verse four It says, Then said the Lord unto Moses, Behold, I will send, I will reign bread from heaven for you.
And the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day. And actually let's just flip to later in the chapter, verse 31, it says those of Israel called the name thereof manna. And it was like coriander seed white. And the taste of it was like wafers made with honey. So here is the.
Second thing.
Or point that I'd like to make about tasting and seeing that the Lord is good, you know, it needs to be done.
Every single day.
You know, very often I think of this, people say, well, just read your Bible every day.
And you know, sometimes you do that and you don't necessarily get it. It's interesting with respect to manna. They get tired of it and bored with it. And even though it was a miracle, they struggled with it, but it never changed the flavor of it that it was.
Like wafers made with honey.
You know, it's Sean said this morning. He said we need to look for the Lord.
And you know, I think that's a good thing for us to do every day of our life is to look for the Lord. And I think you will find sweetness. You will taste and see that He is good when you look warm. It might not be in your reading. It might be when you're reading a calendar verse, something pops out from the calendar verse. It might be when you go for a walk.
And you're just spending time with the Lord, and he gives you something that is.
Sweet to your taste?
It is the Lord Himself that provides that sweetness that we need, you know.
In the New Testament, we can turn to it quickly. In John, the Lord Himself very specifically said that He was the bread from heaven. Referring back to this, and I just want to point out one point there that has been a huge help to me. I go back to this verse over and over again. This is in John 6.
31.
This is our fathers Nadeep Manna in the desert and it was written he gave them bread from heaven to eat, Jesus said verily.
Unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven, but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven.
For the bread of heaven is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth light life unto the world. They said unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread. Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst, the Lord himself.
Is that bread that were to feed on that manna that were to feed on every day?
00:20:03
You know, I was getting up in the morning and I was contemplating the difficulties of the day.
And realizing that I was struggling with believing the Lord and this verse that is directly related to this, it just it jumped off the page to me. It was like a little bit of sweetness that the Lord gave. But you don't even have to believe. It says here, I'm the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger. You know, you just need to come to the Lord.
With open hands.
And it says you'll never hunger, you know when you do that.
The next part of the verse is he that believeth on me shall never thirst. That is a very, very, very powerful and significant. You know the Lord gives us the ability to believe when we come to Him. And so when it comes to tasting and seeing that the Lord is good on a daily basis, the question that I would have is the first one, are you remembering the Lord 1/2 Are you looking for the Lord?
Every day.
He will give himself to you.
And it will be sweet.
So that's the second one. This is in the wilderness.
There are two. The third one I'd like to look at is.
Moving on a little bit further.
And it's actually over in Numbers chapter 13. And this has to do with.
Our future.
And perhaps in some respects.
Is very more pertinent to us as heavenly citizens and just about anything, because we're not really guaranteed anything on this earth.
Here we have Joshua.
And Caleb, and they're sent to spy out the land of Canaan. So this is the promises that God has given Israel, and he sends them into the land.
And you know, all of us as believers, if we trust the Lord, have.
Incredible promises. You know, sometimes it's hard.
To really appreciate those promises. But the reality is, is that those promises trump anything else I was listening to.
Someone who does the news from a Christian perspective, Albert Mohler and he made the comment to a couple that just got married. He says what I really they person wrote in and asked the question, what advice would you have for us having just been married or what would you say? He said I I just really hope that the Lord lets you enjoy a little bit down here.
Of what you're going to have for all eternity, even though you're not necessarily promised it. And he set the focus on what was ahead, not necessarily what was now. Because we know that things aren't necessarily easy down here. And so maybe it's not comforting for a young person to think.
Oh, I'm going to be in the most amazing place with the most where everything will be perfect and there'll be no. And I know that almost sounds ridiculous because when you actually do think about it is absolutely incredible.
But it sometimes is not a comfort when you're wandering through the wilderness and you're looking at Egypt and saying, man, the food was good there. What am I doing? This is crazy. I don't even know if I'm going to get there.
But you know, we need to have eyes of faith and you know, we have a place where we can go to find out about what's ahead of us as believers.
And I think if we can, even in a small way.
Enter into it, we will be able to taste and see that the Lord is good. We look for the Lord in it. I'm not going to go into this story, but Caleb and Joshua and the 10 other spies go into the land.
And it struck me just in reading it today.
The order of which things happen in this chapter.
So if you go to numbers 13 and you go down to.
Verse 21.
So they went up.
And searched the land from the wilderness of Zen under rehab, as the men come to Hamath. And they ascended by the South and came to Hebron, where him and Shishi I and Talmay, the children of Anak were. Now Hebron was built seven years before Zohan in Egypt. And they came to the brook of Aschol, and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bear between two upon a staff. And they brought of the pomegranates and of.
00:25:16
Figs. The place was called the Brook Ashgall because of the cluster of graves with the Children of Israel cut down from fence and they returned from searching the land 40 days.
So.
The first thing they come across when they go to spy out the land is giants.
Big. Terrifying.
Gaius. But then they come to what the Lord promised, which was.
It was the time of grapes, time of first ripe grapes, it says in verse 20. And they picked this massive cluster of grapes and they carry it back.
I'm sure they tasted it, and I'm sure.
That it was good now if you were in the children of Israel.
You're hearing it from somebody else. You're hearing it from Joshua and Caleb. Are you going to believe it?
You know I.
There's almost no point in explaining. I think if you read the chapters in the word of God that explain.
The joy of having And I know there's not a lot explicitly said about the eternal state, that some of the pictures that are given are just absolutely stunning.
We need to think about that. You know, Joshua and Caleb were able to look at that and recognize that that was the Lord was.
And you have to look at the Lord and everyone of these situations far greater than the giants that were there. You know the question I didn't was not able to make to the covenant theology to me one meeting. One of the biggest things to me is.
We have before us the hope of the Lord's return, Him coming out of the heaven, gives a show, calls his home marriage supper, the Lamb. We come back with Him, and for 1000 years the greatest Kingdom, where the Lord is given His rightful place as King of kings, can have the most.
There's no description of how amazing it will be.
In that thousand years, and then the eternal state comes after that, you know if we.
Lose sight of the fact that the Lord is coming and this is going to happen and we think things as they are today are going to get better what's there to look for? We see morality falling apart every single day. We see the government in its crumbling. We see the polarization, we see the family being destroyed, we see the role of.
A man and a woman being mashed together and mixed up, we see just a complete crumbling. And so if we're looking for a hope in this earth without the Lord in his return.
It totally changed our perspective. We're trying to clean up something that is falling apart, but what we're looking for is for the Lord's return from heaven in an amazing, amazing future ahead of us where we don't have to worry about trying to turn the tide of evil that just seems to be in an uncontrollable slide right now.
And that's something that I can wake up and I can read the news and I can look and see CNN and MSNBC and Fox or whoever it may be and just say I don't need to worry about this. I'm going to come back with the Lord as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And there's going to be a perfect government set up and there will be no polarization. And he will judge everything rightly. And I don't quite understand how I'm going to be.
Part of this as the heavenly bride and a ruling over the earth. Maybe they don't understand the details of that, but it's going to be amazing. I don't even need to try and figure it out what I'm looking for.
Is him to come. Things may be falling apart now, but they're falling together from his perspective. And that's an amazing thing. You know, that's a very sweet thing. And Caleb and Joshua got that and they tried to convince the others, but for 40 years they went through the wilderness and that was before them. I'm not going to turn the verses just because of time, but you know, they got there.
The very first day they arrived.
The mana stops.
They eat the old horn of the land, and they enjoy the fruit, the taste, the delight of that promise of that land that flowed with milk and honey. And we will, if we know the Lords, our Savior, enjoy a future day, even if we don't see it the way that we should right now. And that is a tremendous, tremendous thing that should be sweet to our taste.
00:30:11
I can't imagine.
And I see it even in the comments of dialogue.
But people just say, I don't know what's happened to the US in the last 10 years.
And they're just hopeless and helpless when they comment on what's happening. But for the believer, it's not that way. And that's an amazing thing. And that is.
Tasting and seeing that the Lord is good. So that's the third thing. First thing is going back to the cross. And there will be sweetness every day looking to the Lord and there'll be sweetness in that. Looking to the future that's ahead of us and there will be sweetness in that. The next one I'd like to go to is.
Umm over in First Samuel 14 and this has to do with tasting.
And seeing that the Lord is good.
In battle, and this has to do with Jonathan and you know, we see. It's not my intent to get into this at all.
A beautiful picture.
In Johnson and Saul, where Saul is father.
Does everything in his own power and Jonathan has a remarkable amount of faith.
And you'll notice in and I won't turn to a first Samuel 14, he comes three, He says come three times in this chapter, which is exactly what we read in John and the Lord does he? He says, I'm going to test the Lord even though there's impossible odds against me here.
Maybe the Lord, he says, come, let us go up under the Garrison of these uncirculated verse six. It may be that the Lord will work for us. There's no restraint to the Lord to save by many or few by few.
You know he tasked the Lord.
And the Lord gives him an amazing victory. So the fourth point.
I'd like to make about pasting and seeing.
Is in battle.
In impossibly difficult circumstances in our life.
We can test the Lord.
And he will help us.
You know, earlier this year I was doing.
Person who is my peer got laid off because he wasn't performing and I took his job. They tried to backfill my job.
And then they laid off. My boss and I was doing 2 1/2 jobs, and by the end of February, I was a wreck, a complete wreck. We went on vacation in Myrtle Beach and I, it was terrible, for lack of a better word. I couldn't get my mind off work. I couldn't sleep. Everything was bothering me and I knew.
I thought that there's nothing I could do, but you know, I read and I prayed.
And I felt peace that the Lord was going to deliver me from it. I had prostrated myself on my face.
Before the Lord.
I ended up going off work for five weeks unstressed. Lord gave me a completely different job where the stress levels gone for about 150% down to about 2%. And I'm not saying things are going to get easy because they could be hard tomorrow.
But in that battle.
The Lord showed himself.
Good.
I can't explain that to you.
But I do know.
That if we taste and see.
We will see He wants to help us. It may not be the way that we expect. It may not necessarily be a good.
I mean, I've been trying for years about difficulties with respect to my job, and the Lord's given different answers along the way, but you know.
I I can honestly say that I can see his hand working in a remarkable way and so I'm not going to try and elaborate this. I can't do it. But if you're in a difficult situation in your life, genuinely take it to the Lord and trust him and I think you will taste and see that He is good.
You think about that verse, it says, and see the Lord is good. Blessed is the man that trusts in him. The two are connected together.
We need to trust the Lord. We need to step out in faith. Jonathan here does something that is almost ridiculously foolish. He and his armor bearer go and try and attack a whole squadron on their own energy, but the Lord doesn't.
00:35:08
And he brings amazing victory. And what made me think of this passage was later on, Jonathan comes and he finds this honey.
And he dips his this in verse 27 of chapter 14 it says Jonathan heard not that his father charged the people with the oath. And he put forth the end of the rod that was in his hand and dipped it in a honeycomb and put his hand to his mouth. And his eyes were lightning.
In the flash there will be nothing to enjoy when we trust the Lord their will. It's beautiful to me to see that. So that's the next one that I wanted to look at with respect to tasting and see the 4th 1 tasting and seeing and battle that the Lord is good. The next one I'd like to look at is Tasting and seeing the Lord is Good in failure.
And you know, this is a beautiful one. We can fail. And it's not my intent to go into any specific.
Example of this one. But have you ever failed in your life?
I know I don't even need to ask the question.
But if we go to the Lord again, this gets to going back to the cross.
We will see that He is good. He forgives us when we don't deserve it. He is the creator of the universe, perfectly holy, can't stand sin, and yet He forgives us. Here you have David. And you know, it's interesting to me if you consider David's circumstance when he failed in this Psalm 34 in the context of Psalm 34.
David.
Had a sense of who the Lord was.
He spent time with the Lord daily.
He appreciated the Lord and promised him he was going to be king.
And he entrusted the Lord in battle and defeated Goliath, but he failed.
And here in this situation, he dries out to the Lord, and the Lord delivers him.
And he can write compend these words.
Taste and see that the Lord is good.
Blessed is the man that trusts in him. So if you've failed in your life.
I will say that that's a fifth time when you can very tangibly go to the Lord and taste and see if He is good. He will forgive you. If you're willing to turn to Him and repent, He will. And that's an incredible and amazing thing.
To enjoy well the next one that I'd like to look at and we've been looking specific more specifically at.
At.
People.
We've looked at Moses, we've looked at Joshua, we've looked at Jonathan, we've looked at David. I'd like to turn and these are words written by David and then.
In Psalm 19 and Psalm 103, and this struck me as I consider this topic.
Because it has to do with sometimes reading the Bible is.
Maybe we don't get a lot from it, but what it says, what does it say in Psalm 19?
About the Word of God.
I just.
It says there more to be desired than gold. Yeah, than much fine gold. Sweeter than honey and the honeycomb. You think of the absolute best thing.
Or sweetest thing that you can taste.
And this book.
Is better.
And if that being in the Word of God, once is not enough.
It actually says it again in Psalm 119. You could turn over to Psalm 119.
And verse 100 and.
Three, it says.
How sweet are thy words to my taste? Yeah, sweeter than honey to my mouth.
I can't make the word of God sweet to you when you read it.
And you know, sometimes when I read it.
It's not as sweet as it could be, but you know, it's amazing to me and I talked about there being different ways that we can.
Find the Lord in the morning or whatever it is through the day.
00:40:03
One of them is the word of God. You know, I was, I had a friend since I grew up. He's a couple years older than me. He was turning 50. Him and five friends were at our house all last week. And I was thinking, but what can I say when he turns 50 from the word of God? And the only thing I can think of is that the priest no longer were allowed to do any physical labor. And so it's like saying, oh, you're physically falling apart when you're 50. And I'm almost there.
Great message. You know I was reading in numbers in my.
My reading, and I read the passage and it's in Numbers 825. I just would like, and it just struck me it was just something very small. It says. And from the age of 50 years they shall cease from waiting upon the service thereof. This is Numbers 825. They shall serve no more, but shall minister with their brethren in the Tabernacle.
You know, I thought, you know what?
He didn't have official responsibilities for physical labor, but they got to actually be close to the Lord and the minister there.
That's, for lack of a better word, like promotion. And it was just beautiful to me, just a little firm. I had always sort of when I was younger, I'd stop and say, oh, you're 50 each probably backing away from things.
You know, it was just sweet for me to read that, you know? Then I was reading Corrodes and a Byron, which is a brutal story.
So they all get swallowed up by the earth. This is a few chapters later. I was actually in Johnstown. I was driving from the hotel to the workplace and I listened to it on the audio Bible twice. And the Lords response, this struck me. He says to them, he said you were near to me.
And he wanted something more.
It was just a little.
Sweetness.
Of.
How precious it is to be near to the Lord that they took for granted.
And so.
This book.
Has sweetness in it. It may not. If you give it a 2 minute read in the morning, you're probably not going to find it. And I'll be honest, the example that I had for this was I was struggling with talking about this because I wasn't sure if I could find anything that would be useful.
But when I looked up verses about tasting.
And I thought about people who had enjoyed.
Pasting in the Word of God, it was like the Lord just brought out a little flavor for me to enjoy, and I appreciate that. And I've had that happen to me.
Anytime almost that I'm willing to put a little bit of concerted effort and time into digging into the Word of God if my heart's in the right place, and it's remarkable to me every time.
I would rather.
Go on social media or rather than spend a few hours going into something in the workplace. But when I do.
When I taste it, it is sweet and I can't explain to you how to do that, but I think if you do it for yourself, maybe it's searching a word or looking at the topic or considering something. The depths of what's in here is amazing. I have to watch my time.
That's the 6th one. The 7th one I'd like to look at is in Song of Solomon chapter 2.
And verse three it says, as the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight.
And his fruit was sweet to my taste.
Here you have a comparison between.
Apple trees and the trees of the wood.
And what's better, you have some apple farmers here. You know I love apples if we compare the Lord.
To the options.
There is no comparison, you know, I think. And The funny thing is, is what Satan presents to us, may be it looks better on the outside, but the after taste is horrible. And all you have to do is go back to the Garden of Eden and you can see that, you know, I can work and I'm tired and maybe I want to flip through Facebook. I come home from work. I'm tired and I want maybe I want to flip through Fox News.
00:45:09
But you know if I compare.
What comes out of spending some time chewing on those things?
Versus chewing on the Lord Himself, there is no comparison.
And.
Maybe a book these days looks boring.
In comparison to something that's.
Flashy and well designed.
But the reality is that if you do the comparison.
I think you will find the same thing every time.
That this is what actually brings sweetness to the taste.
There is no comparison I find myself.
Like Andrew?
Letting away my time, doing various things and then just feeling.
Empty and drained and with nothing leftover at the end of it. But when I spend time with the Lord or I spend time with His Word.
It's sweeter than honey, and that's an incredible thing. The next one I'd like to add is further on in Song with Solomon, and this gets.
In some respects more personal, you look at Song of Solomon chapter 5 verse one, which is actually.
And Josh spoke on this several years ago here.
The consummation of love.
Happens here.
And it says in five verse one, it says I am coming into my garden, my sister, my spouse. I have gathered my myrrh with my spice. I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey. I have drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, O ye friends, drink. He drank abundantly, O beloved.
All of us long for personal connections and intimacy in our life, whether it's worth with family.
Whether it's worth friends, whether it's worth a spouse, and ultimately.
With the Lord Himself.
And.
If we spend time with the Lord, you know there is an intimacy of enjoyment that comes with that, that.
His almost Holy Grail. I don't know how to explain it beyond that.
I was thinking this morning when singing was mentioned as something that, you know, you see people lifting their hands very often. It's coming from a personal.
And I realize it can be manufactured, but there are times when we're enjoying the Lord where we just can't help but just be in awe of His love and what He's done for us. And maybe that doesn't happen all the time, but ultimately.
And I mentioned this earlier, I enjoyed it from my sister Malina. I've been chewing on it since Newfoundland, that one of our great purposes is to know him and to make him known. To know him in a very personal way is just the most incredible thing that we can imagine. And I realize that that's not something that I can. You can't force it on somebody, but I think.
You will realize it when you spend time with the Lord, that the intimacy of the coming. I know this is a picture of the Lord in Israel.
But even as you go from the cover to cover the Bible picture of the husband and wife all the way to the bride of Revelation 22, it's a theme of of oneness and communion. It starts with the Father and Son, the Holy Spirit. And you know, that communion, that joy and the sweetness that comes from that is incredible.
The next one I'd like to to look at is in First Peter chapter 2.
This is the 9th 1:00.
This is one I hadn't even considered or noticed at all before I looked up verses on this topic I had been watching. Well, let me read the verses first, says in first Peter two it says his newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word that they make. That ye may grow thereby, if so be that ye have tasted that the Lord.
00:50:00
Is gracious.
And my comment here is to.
Taste like a child tastes. You know, as we get older, we sometimes get a little more crusty. We get bitter about things. The flesh comes out more. But a child?
Has a perspective of just considering things with an open mind without all the baggage that comes from the flesh. And I just, I don't even know, maybe I'm going too far to connect versus 2:00 and 3:00, but I just appreciate the connection here.
As newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the work that you make, word that you may grow thereby. If so be the ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.
I was watching a YouTube video a few weeks ago of a Mormon who went out on his missionary 2 years, mandatory missionary 2 years at 18 and came to a Christian's home somewhere here in the US. First was a Christian.
And the Christian just said to him, listen, I want you to take the New Testament and read it like your child.
And see if it matches with what you're teaching.
So he went home.
And I think he spent nine months just reading the New Testament as a child over and over and over and just thinking about, OK, what's who is the Lord? What was? And he went through it, and his eyes were just completely opened. And he became a Christian. His mother was a professor at BYU University or whatever the place is. Every single one in his family was intimately involved.
He was on his mission trip.
He had to go home and basically blow his girlfriend. But you know what the Lord did? He saved his girlfriend, he saved his parents, he saved his brother just by going through the word of God like a child and seeing its sweetness. And you know, as we get older and maybe it starts more in our teens and things, you have this vision of where things should go and they don't start going that way and you start getting.
Frustrated and bitter, and it gets harder and harder to read.
Like a child.
You know, I've seen that even in my own life that I bring an agenda to the table before really having the simplicity of a child tasting the word of God. And so I just as a 9th 1 here.
Would say to taste the word of God as a child just read it simply it says if you tasted the Lord's grace. She's connected with graciousness Lord here and if you consider.
The Lords, the undeserved favor that we have in our life as believers, it is phenomenal.
So that's the 9th, 1:00 and then the last one.
That I'd like to look at.
It is a warning, and again, I hadn't even really considered this one and it it.
Won't say it scared me a little bit, but in Hebrews chapter 6.
And this is actually I believe has to do.
With someone who isn't truly a believer.
But the principle of.
If you have tasted that, the Lord is good.
To walk away from that.
Is an incredibly serious thing.
Incredibly serious thing. And I'll just read these verses. I don't even know that I could explain them in the proper way that they deserve, but it just, it struck me.
To consider what it says here, it says first impossible for those who were once enlightened to have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the word of God and the powers the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again under repentance.
Seeing they crucified to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open chain.
You know, I looked back at my peers from being your guys's age.
There's a few of them who call themselves atheists now.
There's a few.
Who? There's zero evidence of Christianity in their lives.
And sometimes I I look at them and I say, did they ever?
00:55:04
Taste.
The sweetness of the Lord in any aspect and I don't I don't have an answer to it, but I can tell you that if you consider the verses that we've had before us of tasting and seeing what the Lord is good. Blessed is the man that trusts in there to walk away. Why? Why would you? The Lord is in every single one of them. It's actually himself.
That we taste.
As we read the Word of God and as we spend time with them. As we go to them in battle, As we go to them when we fail. As we go back to the cross on Wednesday morning. As we look forward to a future that is incomprehensibly good. As we compare them to other things. As we spend.
A closeness with him, that is.
Incomparable.
They're to walk away from it is like saying, what's the use of the cross? And I won't say anything more than that other than to say just consider this a little bit. You know, it struck me. I had gone through this and I probably organized the verses four or five different ways. And then, you know, I, I considered in and I like whenever I take out the topic to look what it says at the beginning when it says at the end.
You know, Adam and Eve were put in the garden. All the fruit trees and herb yielding fruits were there and they were allowed to eat anything. But there's one tree they were told not to eat. Satan wants to put in front of us something that looks incredibly good.
But just, well, absolutely.
Destroy.
You know, we go through the word of God and the Lord deals with that when you get to Revelation and I just and I haven't spent enough time meditating on it, but you know, I just was considering.
That tree that yields fruits every month in Revelation 22?
And that tree of life that anyone who has their garments washed have access to. And it's a phenomenal thing, a phenomenal thing, you know, from the beginning to the end, the Lord wants us to enjoy himself, to enjoy his company. And he makes a way for that to happen through the Word of God. Well, that there are my thoughts on that.
I hope and pray that each one of you here.
We'll be able to try to taste and see that the Lord is good and that Placid is the man tosts in him and that it is a true statement. It's not something that I can do for you. It's not something that anybody else can do for you when you take a bite of an apple.
You have to do it yourself.
But the results are clear and amazing.
Session #6
A Spiritual Checkup
Address—James Ferguson
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.
Yeah, thanks everybody for quieting down. Let's start with him from our Little Flock hymn book.
Let's sing #52 in the appendix.
The reason I choose this one is because I like it and.
Singing the verses, it's really just shows what the Christian life is all about, the Lamb of God.
On the cross, so #52 in the back.
Behold, behold the Lamb of God.
So I hope to touch on a few things tonight that have already been brought up in the few days that I've been here at camp. We're going to pray in a moment. But in this song here that we sang says that Jesus tasted death for me on the cross. And we heard Mark Allen speak last night.
Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man that trusts in him.
And so we have the privilege of tasting to see that the Lord is good because the Lord Jesus tasted death for us, didn't He, on the cross? And if we accept, if we can accept that for ourselves, believe it, thank Him for it. We've tasted of his goodness. And we know there's a lot more in store for those of us who trust in him. So let's start with the word of prayer.
00:05:06
Our God and our Father, we just give thanks for another opportunity tonight to be together.
Some of your own with our Bibles in front of us and we just pray for blessing our God and fathers. We would open them up and we just pray for listening ears, pray for help for myself that the message would be delivered clearly and simply. We just pray for each in the audience. Our Father, we think of how much you care about each one you we think of difficulties in the pathway.
And we just pray for encouragement and blessing tonight.
And just give thanks for the nice time that we could have here at the camp. And so we just give thanks in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. So First off.
I just want to say this is just my point of view, so I haven't talked to Tim and Elaine, but to me it's just been wonderful to see walk around and just see so many helping out in different ways.
And just think of Nehemiah chapter three, OK, there's all these people that came and they were building the wall at Jerusalem. And it might seem like a boring chapter because it just gives a name and it says this person built the wall. And I don't know if anyones ever been around some stone Masons. I would imagine that's what they were doing. OK, it, I mean, it doesn't look real exciting. I've seen them do it a lot. You know, they got their trowel, some cement brick.
Tap it level next, brick, right, brick by brick. That's how the wall is made. But they're all recorded here in the Word of God because they did their work cheerfully for the Lord with a joyful heart. And I just, you know, meander around the camp and I see Curtis just flattening the cardboard box. Or is Jason, sorry, flattening the cardboard boxes quietly one afternoon, I stepped into the kitchen for a moment, and you could say Caroline was working in the kitchen with Ron.
Cider with Saul beside her and all these things you could say can be recorded. The Lord appreciates all this work that's done. And Tim and Elaine, Dave and Bakke, I, I know there's just a tremendous amount of work that you guys have gone through as well. And so on behalf of myself, it's so much appreciated. And it's great to see everybody labor together. I think that's so important. I mean, we have a lot of fun together.
And that's really important too. But I find it's good for an assembly and for believers to labor together for the Lord. And just want to read a verse, Psalm 133 and verse one. And I'm just going to add something in brackets at the end. And I hope that you'll allow me to. But behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity at camp and.
I feel like that's been the case from my point of view here, So that's wonderful. OK, so getting on to what I would like to talk about tonight, if I was to title this talk, I would call it a spiritual checkup, OK? And now there's a doctor in the room right here and.
I'm not a doctor and I can assure you that.
I think I've met my family doctor one time only.
Because I'm a male under the age of 50, so unless something goes really wrong I tend to stay away from there. But I would imagine that if I went in for a checkup I would be examined by him. And I don't know for sure, but often in these types of cases a checklist is used.
OK, and that way you can tick off the boxes and make sure that everything is looking good and proper. So I want to go back to something that was brought up already, but First Corinthians 11 and verse 28. And I know my own failure in this, but I just want to concentrate on the 1St phrase there it says, but let a man or a woman examine himself.
OK.
When I think of that word examine, I think of taking a good, long, hard look inside of us, a look at our hearts as to where we're at. OK, And I'm not very good at this examining isn't just just a quick glance good enough and carry on, but it's a real careful close look to make sure that.
00:10:08
Everything's going OK and I think I just want to bring that out.
That myself included, and I want to challenge each of us to examine ourselves. And so I'm going to go through this spiritual checkup that I have here. And by no means is it, it's not even close to just a comprehensive list, but just that just a few little thoughts that I put together to be able to just kind of judge where we're at.
And entitling this as well.
So this is a checklist. So I hope that if you can remember this talk and maybe if you remember spiritual checkup, then you can remember. Oh yeah, checklist. And then when we go for a checkup, right, it, it ends in the word up. And that's what we want. All of us in our lives. We want to be going up, not down, OK. And we're going to be moving One Direction or another. We'll either be.
Growing spiritual growth. I know Bernie has mentioned that and that that's what we're talking about tonight, spiritual growth.
So we're either going to be growing from year to year or we're not. Maybe we're heading the other direction, OK, But it's not often that we just stay the exact same. So let's just remember that. So check up, let's make sure we're headed up and look up too because.
Who is on high in the glory, who we sang about. It's the Lamb of God, who I can say tasted death for me and for you too.
So going back to checklist.
When you are driving a commercial vehicle, I believe and maybe dealing with some sorts of equipment, often there's a a daily checklist that we need to look at. OK, so we're going to talk about some things that we.
Should be doing daily. And then just a couple thoughts because when we're driving these vehicles, sometimes there's some things that they want you to maybe check once a month, OK? So we're going to talk about just a couple things or sorry, before we get to monthly. There's some weekly things, OK, that we should be thinking about that we should be doing on a weekly basis and then there's some monthly things.
And I think it's probably a good idea to.
Maybe have a couple things on our annual checklist you could say to make sure that we're headed in the right direction. But let's start with daily. So, OK, these are basic principles, but reading the word of God, OK, So on a daily basis, OK, And when I'm talking about checklist, by no means do I just want to dumb it down really simply to say read a few verses, check the box, carry on, you know, we've done.
Duty OK, but I know with some of us and sometimes I'm in that place, OK, Sometimes you get to a day and you read a few verses and it's almost like you're you're checking the box. Maybe you don't get a lot out of it. OK and you know what the Christian life, you know, it's not always on a high. Everything isn't going super wonderful and sometimes we just got to dig deep and carry on, don't we OK and so.
Times really all we have the strength to do is to open our Bible, read a few verses and we have to run out the door for whatever reason. And if that's where you're at, I encourage you to press on and continue doing that, OK Don't give up because you feel that what you're doing is inadequate. OK just keep it up, OK. The daily reading of God's word is very important. So let's just look at.
Mark mentioned mana. Let's flip to that for a moment. Exodus 16.
So Exodus 16 verse Let's read verse 20 and 21 Says, notwithstanding, they hearken not unto Moses, but some of them left of it until the morning, and it bred worms and stank, and Moses was wroth with them, and they gathered it every morning, every man according to his eating.
And when the sun wax hot, it melted and it came to pass it on the 6th day, they gathered twice as much bread, 2 omers for one man. And all the rulers of the congregation came and told Moses, OK, so most of us know here that the word of God, that is our spiritual food, right? And our spiritual food is so important for us to have good spiritual health. If I stop eating for a while and then I went for my physical checkup.
Say the results wouldn't come back very well, I'd be.
00:15:02
Skin and bones and I think the doctor would say you need to get some good food into you. OK, And if we don't read our Bibles every day, maybe we just read it once a week. Maybe when we come to meeting. OK, then we're we're starving ourselves spiritually. So just like the mana, they had to gather it every morning and they couldn't just gather it say Tuesday.
And decide I'm going to just take a lot on Tuesday. I'm just going to load up on Tuesday.
And you know what, I'll be good for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and you know, I'll save myself the time and maybe I'll go out to go out next week again, OK? Because if they left the mana for one day, then it bred worms and it was no good anymore. And so we just need to keep reading the word every day. So instead of reading a whole bunch and feeling like we're good to go for the week, now let's just keep at it line upon line, precept upon preset.
Here a little there, a little OK, and read. How does the song go? Read your Bible, pray every day and you'll grow, grow, grow, right. I want to flip to one other portion, using it as an application for reading each day. Luke 14.
16 to 20 So Luke 1416 to 20 then said he on to him a certain man made a great supper, and bade many.
And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bid and come, for all things are now ready. And they all with one consent begin to make excuse. The first sent on to him. I bought a piece of ground, and I must need to go and see it. I pray thee have me excused. And another said I have bought 5 yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them, I pray thee have me excused. And another said.
I have married a wife and therefore.
I cannot come. So here is a great supper that's being served and when there's a great supper being served, it usually means that somebody has gone to a lot of work and expense to make sure that there's. If you go to a supper, you would expect to see food on the table, right? And usually plenty for everybody if it's a great supper and.
You're just invited to come because the supper is ready, OK. And so the Lord Jesus in his word, he's.
Done everything to provide us with a great supper. And I know that this story is used in the gospel, and that's wonderful, but I'm just going to apply it to just our daily reading of the Bible. OK? So every day He's given us a great supper, a great meal for us to enjoy. He's invited us to come and enjoy it with him. Now we can be like these three people.
And they weren't able to make it to the supper OK because they were busy.
Right. And we're busy too. Is that not right? We have busy lives and so let's see what they were busy with. So the first one, he was he said I have bought a piece of ground and he needs to go and see it. So he bought some land, some property you could say and he needed to go and check it out. And maybe we're not old enough to have a piece of property. OK, but I'm sure that.
Pretty much all of us in this room own something. We can understand that.
OK. And the more things that we own, the more time it takes for us to make sure that the things that we own, that it's working the way it should, that it's put away in its right spot, that it's getting used the way that we meant to. OK. So we'll just say that the first excuse is property or things, OK. And I'm sure that many of us, you know, we haven't been able to read our Bible one day because we were just too busy just trying to.
Look after some of the things that we own, right? So we had an excuse, not a very good one, but the second person here, another said I have bought 5 yoke of oxen and I go to prove them. So he bought a bunch of oxen. So you could say the oxen, something he owned once again. But you know what he's going to do with his oxen, He's going to plow his field and he's going to.
Grow some vegetables in it or whatever he wants to and he's going to sell them and he's going to.
Make a living off of that, right? So this oxen is helping him with his living. And so many of us who are past school age, we have to go out and we have to make a living. And so sometimes we work some long days, right? We can be tired. And I know for myself, sometimes I can be so tired that I don't get up early enough to read, read the Bible. I come home, I'm still tired.
00:20:03
Other things happened OK, and it just doesn't quite get done.
By daily checklist, you could see the daily thing that God desires from us wasn't able to do because it was prioritizing my job. And don't get me wrong, OK, we all need to make a living. We all need to work hard, but let's not do it at the expense of neglecting the word of God. And the third reason, I have married a wife and therefore I cannot come. So let's call that one family.
OK. And sometimes we have family obligations and sometimes that can get in the way too, of reading the word of God. You know, this was a poor excuse because this what? This person was invited to a supper. And you know what? I'm sure he could have asked. I have a wife. Do you mind if I bring her along too? And from continuing on in the story, it sounds like pretty much everybody was invited. Just come and eat. Sure, your wife can come. We'd love for her to come, right? But.
This man used that as an excuse, used family as an excuse to say sorry, I can't make it. OK, so reading the word of God. So that's something that I think should be on each of our daily checklist. And let's just say, let's aim for quality and not necessarily quantity. And so you know what? It's not a race as to getting through the Bible.
In a certain number of days that could, I'm sure, be beneficial. But let's try to read.
Understand, realize who it's talking about, the Lamb of God on the cross and seek to grow in our relationship with him. So of course, what goes along so well with reading the word prayer right on our daily checklist. We need to pray. Let's turn to Psalm 86 and verse three. The the title of this Psalm is a prayer of David.
He says in verse three, Be merciful unto me, O Lord.
For I cry unto thee daily, and how much we need daily dependence on the Lord through prayer. Let's look at Daniel chapter 6. Daniel was a man of prayer daily praying three times, right? That's how the song goes.
Daniel chapter 6 and verse 10 it says now when Daniel.
Knew that the right writing was signed. He went into his house and his windows being opened in his chamber toward Jerusalem. He kneeled upon his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God as he did a four time, three times a day.
Daniel prayed. You know what? He puts me to shame. He got down on his knees three times a day. OK, and?
Let's use Daniel as our example to remind us how we need to pray daily strength for the day. Pray for those around us, those that we love, those who are we know are hurting. Give thanks to God for all that He's done, for His work on the cross, for what He's going to do in the future.
OK, there's no lack of things to bring before.
God's throne of grace. It's just a matter of our diligence in being able to do them. And I know that we don't always feel like praying, but if we can be disciplined enough to make sure that it's a part of our daily routine, I think that we'll find that our spiritual health improves. So another thing that was mentioned in one of the.
Him sing talks in Luke Chapter 9. Let's read that.
Luke 9 and verse 23 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. So what does it mean to take up his cross daily? Well, when the Lord Jesus.
Was carrying that cross up the hill to Calvary. There it was, I believe, a walk of rejection in this world. He was being rejected as the king of the Jews and as the Son of God. And if we're willing to take up his cross, I think it means that we're willing to associate ourselves with him.
In his rejection and so if we.
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Get up each day and we read and pray and we pick up that cross. I think it means that we've made a conscious effort for the day to associate ourselves with the Lord Jesus and with his cross. And so come what may, that day if we can be reminded of that each morning.
If people are laughing at a bad joke, ET was mentioning that if they're ridiculing Christianity, I would hope that those who know us well know what we stand for and maybe they poke fun at us. That's OK Accept it, take it, it's fine. Because that's the way that they treated our Savior and we should expect no different treatment. So if we're truly living for the Lord.
OK, we should expect some of this now. I don't think we should go looking for it.
But if it comes, that's OK, and let's encourage ourselves in the Lord.
But notice how it says here that we need to take up this cross daily. So just like reading the word and prayer, okay? Because we decided yesterday we were going to take up His cross and today's a new day. So you know what? Let's make a conscious effort to pick it up again today. Every day. Take up His cross and follow me, it says.
So are we? Do we consider ourselves to be a disciple?
Of the Lord Jesus, if we do, we need to follow him right and his path led up that hill to Calvary where he tasted death for me. And let's go over to Hebrews chapter 4 and verse seven part way through it says today if you will hear his voice.
Harden not your hearts, and just because we believe in the Lord Jesus.
OK, that doesn't mean that our hearts can't grow hard. OK, if we decide to take some time off from some of these things that should be on our daily checklist, it won't be long for our heart to get fairly hard and we just have less of a care for the Lord and for his things. And so if you will hear his voice. So if you.
Would want to listen to the Lord's voice in your life.
OK, let's not allow our hearts to get hard, soft hearts, tender hearted. That's what the Lord needs. That's what He can use. So I just brought that up because it has today in it and every day, OK, we need to be ready to listen to the Lord through prayer, through the reading of His Word. And the last thing that I just want to bring up with just things that we could be doing daily.
Joshua 24 I believe it is and it's a well known verse, but I enjoy it. Am I in the right chapter where it's choose you this day verse 15. Thank you. There we go. So Joshua 24 verse 15 so we wake up to a new day. Remember that verse. This is the day that the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. OK, roll out of bed.
OK, let's think about this verse. Choose you this day, whom ye will serve. And then often when we see this on somebody'd wall, it doesn't mention the gods of the Amorites, but it continues on later in the verse. But As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, so we roll out of bed.
Choose you this day, right? Not who we served yesterday. I mean, I hope that you were serving the Lord yesterday, but I just want to say that each day that we wake up.
OK, we're given another choice, right? Are we going to serve ourselves? Or As for me, some of us can say, As for me, I will serve the Lord. Maybe some of us have a family. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. What an important choice to make each day.
Whether we're going to follow our own will or whether we're going to serve the Lord.
OK. So daily checklist by number means there could be I'm sure many other things that we could talk about.
But we'll move on to the weekly checklist, OK?
And let's go to Luke 17. So our daily checklist is so important because if we look after these daily things.
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You know, the weekly things fall into place things on our monthly checklist just fall into place our annual checklist. You could say things are working out because if we live for the Lord, if we decide 365 days a year that As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, I think there's going to be some spiritual growth there, right? So.
Luke 17 Story of the 10 Lepers, verse 11 So it says. And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee, and as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers.
Which did a fire off, And they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go show yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass that as they went, they were cleansed. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks.
And he was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering said, were there not ten cleansed? But where are the 9?
There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger. And he said unto him, Arise.
Go thy way, thy face hath made thee hold. So I just bring this portion up because.
Of course leprosy is a picture of sin, but to be honest, sin is far worse than leprosy is. And Jesus was able to heal these ten men who had this awful disease, but it was that as they went to the priest, they were healed. Now how many returned to give thanks and glorify God out of the 10?
Who knows, David?
Just one, right? And can you picture in a sense the sadness in the Lord's voice in verse 17?
Sadness, I would say, maybe mingled a little bit with joy, because you know what? He'd be sad were there not ten cleansed. But where are the 9K10 people got healed? Nine of them carried on.
One return, you know, the Lord would be so happy that one returned to give thanks. OK, I just want to mention that you know on says in Acts chapter 20 that on the first day of the week, the disciples came together to break bread. And it's something that the Lord has asked us to do if we are his disciples. Follow me, OK, if you love me, keep my commandments. I don't want to say this is a commandment because.
Makes it sound a little wrong in my mind, but it's just something that the Lord asks us to do for him. OK. And so in Christianity you could say 10 people are saved, but only a few return back on a weekly basis to remember the Lord. And so I feel like there's a little bit of sadness when the Lord asks where are the others?
And so on our weekly checklist. It would be wonderful.
And I don't want to, I don't want to try to convince tonight somebody to break bread if you're not ready. But I just want to say that in normal Christianity, if we believe in the Lord Jesus, we're happy that he saved us from our sins. He wants us to remember him in his death. So from week to week, we have the privilege of doing that for him now.
Also, many of us, we have our home assemblies and.
There are some other weekly meetings that happen, prayer meeting and a reading meeting. And so I just want to give you two sides of it that come into my mind. OK, so we have a prayer meeting on Tuesday nights. And sometimes it feels like when you go week after week after week, I think to myself, oh, it's another Tuesday. You know, I got, I'm pretty busy at work here and I'd like to wrap up this project and.
I get home, I'm going to be pretty tired and go to prayer meeting every week and I could sure just take a night off tonight. I could really go for that tonight. And so that thought comes into my mind and it makes sense to me at times I can justify that, right. This happens every week like I could take a week off that would be no problem. OK, but then let's look at the other side of the coin. So there's.
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Seven days in the week, I put in eight or nine hours at work already.
I know that there's a prayer meeting on Tuesday night. I can plan around that schedule and that's one hour.
In 7 * 24, whatever that math works out to be, OK, one hour where I can get together with my brethren to pray, there's the Lord's side. OK. And he's asking, is that is that too much to ask? He's asking me and I'm thinking of myself and I'm saying, yeah, that's a little too much to ask. But I don't think so when we think of it from his point of view.
OK, same goes for the reading meeting. So let's not, let's not take away from the Lord's things and pretend that we, we own ourselves, OK? We've been bought with a price, so we're not our own anymore. And let's just remember that. And I know that we might drag ourselves into prayer meeting or reading meeting at times kind of dragging our feet. Well, here we are, OK. And you know what? It's, it's good to see you there if that's how.
OK, we're, I think everybody could say that they're happy that you're there and so keep it up, OK, and the Lord will reward you for it. So don't want to go too much longer, but we'll just touch on just a monthly checklist and this, I don't know of anything scriptural that I'm really going to pull out, but I'm just going to speak for my own experience, so.
Once a month.
In Rideau Ferry we have an open meeting, OK. And that's an opportunity for myself to think a little bit as to what have I been reading recently? What has the Lord taught me and do I have anything to share? And even if I don't, if I at least put a little bit of work into the exercise of.
Thinking about it, OK, that's fruit for the Lord. And so just challenging ourselves.
In that way, it's good for us and it makes us grow spiritually if we're willing to do that. And so maybe if you don't have an open meeting, but maybe if once a month, if you just thought up maybe a topic and you just dug into it a little deeper, maybe maybe typed out a few notes on that topic, OK, once a month. I think that would be beneficial to our overall spiritual growth and.
Once a month too often, we have.
Fellowship lunch as well at the meeting room and that's important to have fellowship together to eat a meal for people to serve one another.
And so maybe you do that and that's wonderful and maybe you don't, but if you have a home, the Lord asked us to be hospitable to one another. And so maybe we don't really like inviting people into our home. But I wonder if.
We could try once a month or maybe once every two months if we invited somebody into our home for supper and we're able to converse with them, learn about one another. I think that could be really beneficial. So there can be, these are just my own thoughts. So there could be many other things that you, I'm sure you could think of that could go on your weekly or monthly checklist, whatever the case. But then let's move along to our to annually.
So.
Earlier in this Joshua 24, and there's many other portions in the Bible, they go back and they recount some of the history as to what the people of Israel went through. And whatever the case is, whoever speaking, whether it's Moses or whether it's Joshua or any of any of the other leaders, they go back and they say, don't you remember how you were?
Captive in the land of Egypt and how you ran for the Red Sea.
And how you thought you were caught and then the Lord delivered you through a great deliverance. And then you went into the land and there were giants in the land. And you said, Oh no, what are we going to do? And of course the story goes on and on. Steven says it again and in Acts. And so I think for spiritual growth, we can use certain times, like our birthdays, for instance, and just look back on the last.
Here and just take some time. I mean, we should always be giving thanks to the Lord, but just thanking the Lord. So maybe if it's our birthday that rolls around or I find when a new year comes in, that's a good time on New Year's Eve to maybe sit down with the family and just recount a few memories from the past year and just thank the Lord, you know, if we're still alive, alive and.
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We're there, and through the Lord's goodness.
He's given us another year, you know, he deserves the honor and the Thanksgiving for that. And so just on our annual checklist, maybe we could remember that. I won't turn to it, but it's been mentioned a few times in Rio Ferry that Samuels mother Hannah makes him a new coat every year and brings it up to the temple now.
She could have made him a new coat because he wore out the other one.
But I think she probably made him a new coat because he was growing every year and the old coat probably wasn't going to fit him anymore. And so the question gets asked as to if it was a spiritual coat, Kay, would last year's spiritual coat still fit us? Or would we be like Samuel and could we need a new one each year? And I hope that if we can keep on top of our daily checklist and our weekly checklist when we look back at the last year.
We'd be able to see some growth in ourselves and think that, OK, I think I'm heading heading upward, not downward. And so I pray that that would be the case for each one here.
Just spiritual growth in our lives and giving thanks to the Lord. So that's a spiritual checkup once again, I did. I hope that we don't just tick the boxes per SE, but we do need to.
Own our responsibility to dig deep. We don't always feel like it, OK, but the Lord is worthy.
Let's keep reading the Word of God, remembering the promises that He's given to us. Remember that if God be for us, who can be against us and press on?
Jael
Children—James House
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Never hurts to start a couple minutes early because sometimes when you start early you can end early. Who wants to start the singing? Yes Sir, what do you want to sing?
55 Let's see, Hold on. Actually, I got a hymn book right in front of me.
Yes, Leah.
#2A little child of seven.
A little child of seven, or even 3 or 4.
4747 #47.
And I am sure that he says it for me.
Salvation Story, Rebecca.
Someone can say of the children of men. Nobody ever has told me before.
104 Is that the last song in the book?
All right, 104 Yield not to temptation.
Yield not to temptation for you.
00:05:00
My passion says you.
Jesus.
Will intervene here. He will be here.
#3.
A little ship was on the sea all right #3.
A little ship was on the scene.
Almighty Windsor Big swim and all that much indeed.
Raise your gravely wonderful soul when we are not as well today.
You can explore his personal neither wet and she's overhead and she's obeyed.
00:10:23
Avery, 54.
54 Jesus, my Savior to Bethlehem came Jesus my Savior to Bethlehem cave.
Was wonderful. Let's see this name.
From the sky coming for me, for me.
Morning, morning.
I must dream this, and from the sky.
To introduce what I want to talk about today, we're going to sing another song. So the second line, when it's so first line of the second verse, you kind of have to smush it together to fit it in, but if you go quickly, it sort of evens itself out. And then the second verse.
Don't say Abigail's whole name, just say Abby and then it'll work much better.
But it goes to the tune of Shamgar had an ox goat.
Jail had a hammer. Joseph had a dream he had was left-handed. Sarah had a scheme. Rebecca Perry.
And I have four daughters and they all work for the Lord.
All right, maybe we'll see that again at the end. First thing I want to talk about today is a very brave woman, and she's the very first line of that song, and her name is jail.
And before we get started, I'm going to pray and ask the Lord Jesus for his help.
God and Father, Lord Jesus, I ask for your help this morning. Please organize my thoughts. Help me to present the message that you've laid on my heart and ask that there be something here for each of the kids and everyone listening to. In your precious name, Lord Jesus, I pray, Amen.
So back when jail was alive, there were also these people called the Children of Israel. And this wasn't the Children of Israel when they were wandering through the desert or when they were in Egypt. This is the Children of Israel when they were living in the Promised Land.
But there was a problem. It didn't really feel like the promised land anymore because the children of Israel had sinned. They had done bad things. They had done what they were not supposed to do. And that's true of everybody. The Bible says that all have sinned. And the children of Israel, they were no different. And in the book of Judges, chapter four, we read about how they were servants.
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To the Canaanites, their enemies, and these people they were not.
Nice to the children of Israel and we're going to read about the bad guy because every good story has a bad guy in it. So let's let's read about our bad guy and judges chapter 4.
And as far as bad guys go, he does sound pretty cool. His name was Cicera and you could say Cicero.
Good job, Cicero. Now he had something. Let's read about what he had.
Judges chapter 4 and verse one. And the children of Israel gained it evil in the sight of Jehovah. Now Ehud was dead, and Jehovah sold them into the hand of Jabin, king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazel. All right now here's our bad guy and the captain of his army. The general in charge was Cicero, who dwelt at Hirosheth Goeng. And the children of Israel cried to Jehovah for he.
Sisera had 9.
100 Chariots of iron and he mightily oppress the children of Israel. 20 years. Anybody here 20 years old? 21 Oh, OK, we got it. Sorry, my blind spot. So imagine your whole entire life. Are these guys old? Relatively speaking, yes, their whole life. This king Jabin and his evil general Cicero with his 900 Is that a lot?
Where's that? A little. That's a lot of Chariots. And they were ironed. So they were tough and they were strong. And he was mean.
And this went on for a long, long time.
But then it says that the children of Israel.
Cried to Jehovah, and you know the book of Romans tells us that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
And the Lord Jesus Christ came down from heaven, where he lived with his Father, and he died on the cross.
So that anybody who wants to, anybody that feels sad about their sins, anybody that feels guilty because they did something wrong.
Can go to the Lord Jesus and ask him to wash their sins away and all you have to do is ask him, say Lord Jesus, I've been bad, Please take my sins away and with his precious blood that he gave on the cross, he can make you clean and take away all of your sins and become your savior. But now we have to go down a little bit further.
To find our hero, our heroine, I guess the woman that we want to talk about jail.
So it says in verse 17 that Cicero fled on foot the tent of jail, the wife of Hebrew, the Kenite.
So Dale lived in a tent. Has anyone here ever spent the night in a tent? Ever go camping? Is it fun to go camping? Well, Jill lived all the time in attempt. That was her house. Maybe her home doesn't say her home. That's where she lived.
And Cicero, how many Chariots did he have?
900 And what were they made of?
Vienna Iron. So he was very scary. And what I want to talk about today is being brave. Now, the Bible doesn't actually have the word brave in it. Instead, the word the Bible uses is courageous, but it means very close to the word brave. So I'm going to use both words and everybody here has something that they are scared of.
Yesterday out on the lake, I was standing next to a little boy on the dock and he was scared to go in the water.
And.
A few nights ago.
In our room there was a little boy and he was crying and he was scared. And do you know what he was scared of? He was scared of the big bad wolf.
So there's all kinds of things that we can be scared of. You know, sometimes I'm scared to stand up here and talk.
And you can be scared of the dark, you can be scared of being alone, you can be scared of being sad. There's all kinds of things to be afraid of.
Frightened us, and they're different for every single person.
But today we're going to read about somebody who wasn't, who couldn't say she wasn't scared. Even though she might have been scared, she still did what was right. And it's important that even if we're scared, we need to do what's right. See somebody who's brave the inside, they might be scared, but they still go and do what they're supposed to do.
00:20:22
Now jail, she lived in a tent.
And Cicero, he had a big army with his mighty Chariots of iron that scared people, and he went all over the place. But jail, she just stayed at home. Now, you kids, do you mostly just stay at home, or do you guys go all over the place riding around in Chariots?
You mostly just stay home, so most of us in this room were more like jail than like Cicero.
And, you know, trouble found jail. She was just staying at home, minding her own business and this bad guy sister.
Did you come riding up on his chariot? No, it says he ran up. You see, what God had done is he had gotten Deborah and Barack, and he gave them power and strength and a mission, and they had defeated Cicero in battle. And so all of a sudden this guy Cicero, who used to have 900 Chariots of iron, he was the one who was scared.
And he came running because he was scared of the Israelites this time, and he came running up to the tent of jail.
You know how when you run really hard and then you're all out of breath? That's the way Cicero was. And you know who came out the door, jailed it.
And says, right, he wanted jail to hide him because he was scared. But if I saw somebody that I knew used to have 900 Chariots of iron, somebody that used to be really mean to people.
I think I'd still be a little bit scared. Would you? Yeah. So imagine if you're jail, maybe your heart.
Eating really hard and your hands are shaking just a little bit and so she came out to meet Cesaro and Cesaro said I need you to hide me. I need you to help me and so it says that jail. She got Cicero a blanket and.
She took him into the tent.
And then sister is in the tent and after you guys run and play soccer or play Frisbee, does anybody get thirsty? Yeah, I get thirsty even if I'm not playing sports, I get thirsty. And so Sisra, he had just run a long way and he was really tired and he was thirsty, so he said the deal. Can you please get me a drink of water?
You know what she did?
And everybody see the table behind me.
Who can guess what jail went and got?
Milk. That's right. Now the Bible says that it was in a flask, so we don't really have a flask. We have this jug that came from Sam's Club. And so she went and got the jug and she gave Cicero a big drink of milk.
I had some of the smoke this morning. It was very good. So he had the drink of milk and sister, I said now jail, I want you to go stand at the door of the tent because he knew there were people chasing him.
And he said, if anybody comes, I want you to say nobody here.
All right, now he was asking her to tell a lie. Is that a good thing to tell lies? No. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and the Bible. In the New Testament, in Ephesians, the apostle Paul says putting away lying, God wants us to speak the truth with each other. And so says Rahi wanted jail to tell a lie to keep him safe. He said, go stand at the door and if anyone comes, say there's nobody in here, keep running.
And he was going to lay down because he was so tired.
So tired.
And he fell fast asleep. Now I need some help. Who wants to be Cicero? You want to be Cicero? All right.
So remember, you just had a big drink of milk. Have a drink of milk.
Big drink of milk and you've just run a long, long way. Like a really long race. Are you tired? Are you sleepy? All right. And jail just gave you a nice warm blanket. Now you can lie down. All right, So here's our Sisera lying down, and he's fast asleep.
And you know, sometimes I've been told in my life, if you wake them up, you have to put them back to bed.
00:25:07
But you know what, Cicero? He was fast asleep, but jail She was still really quiet.
All right.
Gotta be quiet, don't wanna wake up.
This is the bad guy. He's really mean.
But he's also still very scary.
And we're still scared of him because he's mean and you know it. Jail did. I'm going to take off my shoes so I can be extra quiet. It says that she took a tent pin like a steak that used to hold down the tent, and in her other hand she took a hammer.
She snuck in.
Oops, just made noise and she got up till she was beside Cesaro by his head.
And then she put the nail right up against the side of his head like this, and she took the hammer and she went.
And it went until the tent nail was in the ground all the way through his head.
And then she went outside.
She put down the hammer and she went outside and there was this guy named Barrick running past.
And she said, hey, come on over here, I know who you're looking for. And she brought him in. And Barack, he had been chasing Sis for because he wanted to kill Sisera, and he came in.
And on the ground was that man who used to be so scary, who used to be really mean to people who used to have 900 Chariots of iron.
And there he was, lying on the ground with a nail in his head. He was dead. All right. Thank you for being Cicero.
And you know, in the next chapter, Deborah sang a song because they were so happy that they were free from the evil king of the Canaanites and from that mean man Cicero. You know that day when Sisera died in jail's tent, when she took the hammer?
And pounded that nail into his head. Cicero's mom was at home.
And she went, maybe she probably didn't have a watch, but she was watching the sun move through the sky. And it was morning and it was lunch. And then it was afternoon. And she began to say to her friend, she said, what? What's taking so long? And her friends said, it's OK. He's probably got so much stuff. Kind of like when your mom goes on a big shopping trip, he's probably got so much stuff that he's going to be here in a little while. He's just taking him a long time.
He's got lots of clothes, lots of animals, lots of people. He'll be home very soon. So she waited, and she waited, but Cicero never came home.
Because he was dead. Jail had been very brave. She took her hammer and she took the tent pin and she killed them. Did she use a big sword? Did she go out and buy her own chariot? No, she used what she had.
In her tent, she had a blanket. Does everybody here have a blanket? Yeah. Is there anything special about a blanket? I mean, when I was three, I had a special blanket and.
Probably most people have a hammer at home, right? You have a hammer, ASA. Yeah, and I think everybody either has tent pins or nails. And if you go to your fridge, most people have milk.
Yeah, jail used what she had.
And so the lessons for us from this story are that even though we might not.
Feel like we're very important, even though we don't feel like we have something special. God wants you and me, people who believe in His Son the Lord Jesus, and have had their sins washed away. He wants us to use the things that He's given us.
You know.
Conrad, can I borrow your sketch thing?
You know what's this called? Is this like a drawing thing? Does it have a name?
00:30:06
All right, well, we'll call it your SketchUp thing there. I just did a squiggle on it. Did you know, Conrad, that you can use this for the Lord Jesus?
Because sometimes maybe your brother or your sister or one of your friends will say, hey, Conrad, I want that. And you can either say no.
Hey, I see that happen all the time.
Yesterday I saw a tug of war between two kids over a toy.
And if you want to use this for the Lord Jesus, then you can say, sure you can. **** you can have it. I'll share it with you because the Bible says be kind.
One to another, tender hearted.
The Bible, The Lord Jesus doesn't want us to be selfish. She wants us to think about others.
Or if your mom says, hey, Conrad, put away your sketch thing and come for supper, you can be obedient. And that is a little bit like jail, using her blanket and her milk and her hammer and her nail to do something for God. And, you know, maybe it's hard. Is it hard to share your toys?
Is it hard to think about other people? I find it very, very hard to think about other people. I want to think about me.
But if I'm selfish, then I'm not being brave and courageous like jail. I'm being more like Cicero. I'm being mean.
Now in the New Testament I want to read some verses.
In the Book of Revelation, because in the song of Deborah and Judges chapter 5 it says.
That she overcame Cesare. I mean, she won. Who here likes to win? I like to win.
And in the Book of Revelation chapter 3, there's a verse I really, really like.
Revelation 321 He that overcomes to him will I give to sit with me and my throne, as I also have overcome and have sat down with my Father in his throne. That's the Lord Jesus talking, he says.
If you overcome, you get to sit beside me. Does that sound pretty cool? To get to sit beside the Lord Jesus in heaven?
Now how do we overcome? Well, I want to read you guys a verse in Romans chapter 8, Romans chapter 8, verse 37. But in all these things we more than conquer through him that has loved us the way we overcome, the way we be like jail, and more importantly like the Lord Jesus.
The way we win is by thinking about the Lord Jesus and remembering how much He.
Loved us. If the Lord Jesus was selfish, would he have died on the cross?
Would he have let people do mean things to him? No. He would have gone back to heaven. That was his home.
And if Jael thought about herself and wasn't brave, would she have killed Cicero? No, she would have just been scared. She would have gone and hid in the corner. Or she would have listened to him and lied and done the bad thing that he wanted her to do. But instead, she was brave. She did what was right. And if we remember the Lord Jesus and think about how much he loved us.
And through the Lord Jesus, we can be overcomers. We can win and do what is good and what is right.
To make the Lord Jesus happy.
So.
You guys bored yet?
No. OK, All right. I have one more point to make. I brought two hammers today. I wasn't sure which one to use. Are these hammers the same? No. Am I the same as you? Are you the same as me? No. Are they both good hammers? The answer is yes. They're both good hammers. And, you know, even if you don't look like your friend and even if you don't look like jail.
Or, if you don't look like Mr. Roach, you can still.
Be useful. You know both these hammers.
Compound this nail.
And you know what? The Lord Jesus, no matter what you look like.
What family you're from, the place where you live, the toys that you have, the Lord Jesus wants to use you and he wants you to be an overcomer and to win just like he did, just like jail did. So let's sing the song one more time and then we'll be done. Jail had a hammer and Joseph had a dream he had was like.
Talks on the Tabernacle #3
Deliverance from Fear and Anxiety
Y.P. Sing 11
Why We Sometimes Have an Empty Bag