Montreal Conference: 2016
Table of Contents
Ephesians 3:1-10
Trying to Flee From the Presence of the Lord
Take a Stand for the Lord Even If Means Standing Alone
Homosexuality
Abstain From Idols, From Blood, Things Strangled, Fornication
Ephesians 3:10-14
Gospel 1
Gospel—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.
Good evening. Thank you for coming.
Let's start by saying #14 just the first verse in the chorus of #14.
Have you been to?
Falling in frustration in Princess I argue, I think.
Perhaps. Perhaps also the first verse in chorus of #19. Just the first verse in the chorus of #19.
And perhaps the first verse in chorus of #4.
Just the first verse in the chorus of #4.
Christ is the Savior.
Nsnoise.
Father, ask for help in the name of Jesus to clearly present Jesus Christ as the only Savior of sinners and the only hope for each and every soul in this room tonight.
This in his name and for his glory. Amen.
As in water.
Face answers to face.
So the heart of man to man.
The heart is deceitful.
Above all things, and desperately, incurably wicked.
Who can know it?
I, the Lord, search the hearts.
Any man that hears the word.
And does nothing with it like a man that goes to a mirror.
And looking into it, examines himself.
And immediately leaves and forgets what he saw. Tonight we're gonna look at two people.
But the first verse means is when you look at another human being.
You see some of yourself reflected back again.
When you look at the life of someone that you despise.
Someone said if you had to make your top ten list of the worst people in the world, you'd put them at #1.
00:05:00
That person is a mirror for who you are, for what you are capable of inside.
That's why I quoted the second verse from Jeremiah.
Because you and I don't know how bad we are.
The two people we're gonna look at.
We're close friends.
First one is Judas Iscariot.
Second person is my savior, Jesus Christ.
Let's turn to John.
The Gospel of John.
The 12Th chapter.
If you're not comfortable finding things in your Bible, just listen. I'll try to read verses for you.
If you are comfortable, read along.
Gospel of John, chapter 12.
Jesus is in the House of Mary and Martha and Lazarus, two sisters and a brother.
He's having supper.
While they're eating supper, one of the sisters named Mary comes with a box filled with valuable, precious ointment.
And she begins.
Let's read in verse 4.
Then this is one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, who is going to betray him.
Why was not this ointment sold for 300 pence and given to the poor?
This he said, not because he cared for the poor, but because he is a thief.
And had the bank and bare what was put therein.
Judas is a very famous person.
His name is synonymous with treachery, with betrayal.
But Judith didn't go.
From being a 5 year old, a 10 year old, a 15 year old, a 20 year old.
Overnight, he did not turn into the man who betrayed Jesus of Nazareth to his enemies.
And ultimately, since the Lord Jesus Christ to the cross, that did not happen overnight. It happened slowly. And I'm here, we're here reading these verses because this wasn't the beginning for Judas, but it shows a little sample of what Judas's life was like and it shows us.
Because of verse six, you and I get to look in to the heart of Judas Iscariot. We get to see greed.
We get to see sliver of how ugly our natural hearts are.
Assure her.
Like you guys to do something with me?
Please close your eyes.
Please close your eyes.
Take a minute.
And think, consider and evaluate your thoughts today.
Were they selfish?
Is there any pride in your thoughts?
Is there any greediness?
Any covering? Any warning what someone else had?
Any lust?
Any unkindness?
Any dislike, any hatred, any bigotry.
What were your thoughts like?
Don't try and justify yourself. What were your thoughts today?
Thank you.
We don't take the time in the lives that we lead.
Stop and think about what's going on inside.
We tend to assume that whatever is going on inside of me is the default. It's what should be happening, after all. What we hear all around us is that I'm basically a nice person. I'm basically a good guy. There's nothing wrong with me.
00:10:04
But the Bible says that there is something wrong with me. I do have a problem. That problem is sin.
And it's far more than just the things I do. It springs from within me. It's part of who I am, and I can't get rid of it.
There's a part of me that loves to sin.
I enjoy doing it.
I get pleasure out of it.
Oh, you won't see it.
Because my sin also means that I care more about what you think than about what God thinks.
My sin also means.
That I don't mind misleading you. I don't mind hiding what's really inside my heart. It means that you like me.
You don't know my heart.
You really don't.
I don't know yours, but there is one who knows both our hearts and that is God.
I, the Lord, searched the hearts, I tried the reins. Why? To give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings. The eyes of the Lord are in every place.
Beholding the evil and the good, there is nothing that is not exposed to the sight of God. There is no creature that is not within His sight at any moment. At this moment He can see you and He keeps you alive.
We're gonna be turning the six passages and all That was the first one. Let's go to the second one in Matthew chapter 26.
Because you see Judas.
Not just Judas, all of us. When we sin, it grows.
It starts out as something small.
God says it's like conception.
Something so small you need a microscope to find it.
Something deep within us.
But it grows and it grows and it gets bigger until it ends in.
Judith.
Group.
Just like the sin in your life and my life will grow and will continue to grow until it ends and death.
Unless we turn to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Matthew chapter 26 and verse 14.
Then one of the 12 called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said to them, What will you give me if I deliver Jesus to you?
And they made a deal with him for 30 pieces of silver.
And from that time, Judas looked for a good opportunity to betray Jesus.
I struggle with different sins than Judas did.
Put yourself in his shoes though.
You know, my initial reaction when I read this is I would never.
Betray Juliana, my wife.
I would never.
Arranged for my brother to die.
In exchange for $20,000.
But what have I done in my life?
What sins have I done that have had a deep impact on both of them, on many other people?
Effects you can't see on the outside, but deep, penetrating, awful effects. That is what sin is.
You have an enemy tonight. He doesn't want you to listen.
He will take sin and make it look like the most beautiful thing in the world.
He'll make you think you can't live without it like you need it.
He'll do that.
He'll put it in the center and then he begins to wind lies around it.
And then he comes to you of the package.
And you say, how could I turn that down?
00:15:04
Judas wanted what was in that package.
He said to the chief priests, What will you give me? Is that what you're thinking tonight?
Are you sitting there in your chair thinking, what can I get?
Can I get 30 more minutes? Can I get through 30 more minutes of James talking so I can go to young people's and play hockey?
Can I get through 30 more minutes tonight, all day tomorrow until I can get back to my life? So the things I really want to be doing.
Is that what you want?
Is there something that you wanna do?
Is there some goal you want to achieve?
What do you want? What do you want?
What are you willing to do to get it?
Judas was willing to betray and to sell Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Someone he had spent three years with.
Day in, day out, together.
Not just hanging out.
Not just having a good time, curing people who could never be cured, bringing people back to life, throwing demons out.
Yeah, you just did that.
What do you want?
Do you want the people around you to look at you and think?
Nice guy, nice girl.
Maybe you look around and you say no.
I don't really want anything that's that bad.
I'm not. I don't want to do anything that'll make the hair on the back of my parents neck stand up on it.
But what I don't want is to have to admit to God that I'm a Sinner and that I'm wrong and that He is right.
Is that what you want?
I said that we'd also see the heart of Jesus as well as the heart of Judas, the heart of Jesus.
It's so different from ours that.
To say it's the difference of night and day, I wanna make a clarification.
Imagine a winter day.
It's just no.
The night before.
There's snow everywhere, on the tree branches, on the ground, on the houses, on the cars, and it was a light fluffy snow, so it sparkles.
That was during the night. It snowed. In the morning, the pods were gone.
The sun comes up, it clears the tree tops, but it's too cold for the snow to melt, so it stays there.
And that son is there. It's 11:00 in the morning and the sun is blinding.
You go outside and you can't even open your eyes, it's that bright.
You're looking for your sunglasses.
That's that's Jesus. That's the heart of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Uh-huh. You know, there's so many lights in this world today, we don't really know what darkness is.
Give you 2 options. You get in your car and you drive and you drive and you drive and then you get out of your car and you walk.
Till you're hours away from civilization, then maybe it'll be dark enough. His yellow outside tonight is pretty bright up there. Yeah, it's dark. And yes, evil deeds love darkness rather than light, but there's an awful lot of light outside still. Your other option is find a room out of the door with a good seal on it and no windows, and then go in there and close the door and when you can, take your hand.
And pass it in front of your face 1/4 of an inch away from your nose and not know what's there.
That's how dark our hearts are. That is the contrast between Jesus Christ, the one who came down into this world to be the Savior of sinners, the one who came down to die for us.
We're about to see a little bit of what was in his heart.
Just like we've had a couple of glimpses into Judas's heart.
Let's move down to verse 21.
As they did eat, Jesus said, Verily, truly I say to you, that one of you will be trained.
00:20:07
Verse 24. The Son of Man goes as it is, as it is written of him, but woe unto the man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.
It had been good for that man if he had not been born.
Then Judas, which betrayed him, answered and said, Master.
Is it I?
Jesus said to him.
You have 7.
Regis and verses to give you a little glimpse.
Into what was in the heart of the Lord Jesus, as he warns Judas here.
This is a warning for Judas.
I'm sure it was not the first time Judith had listened to three years of the Lord Jesus speaking words of life and truth. How many years have you listened to?
Are you hearing the gospel for the first time?
Have you heard the gospel so many times you're bored right now?
Because you figure you know what's coming next.
Judas managed to get through three years.
Of somebody absolutely perfect teaching the way of life.
And he ignored it every single day.
That's what my heart is.
And that's what your heart is.
But let's get a glimpse inside the heart of the Lord Jesus. I'll read you a few verses.
Yes.
It was my own familiar friend.
And whom I trusted.
Which to eat of my bread that has lifted up his heel against me.
It was not an enemy that insulted me and condemned me.
Because then I could have borne it.
Neither was it he that hated me, because then I would have hid myself from him.
But it was you.
A man might equal.
My associates. My acquaintance.
We took sweet counsel together, and we walked together in the middle of the crowd to the House of God.
Then Jesus.
Looks at Judas says it had been good for that man.
He had never been born.
It says.
Judith.
You said it.
Because Jesus cared about Judas. Jesus never slams the door and Judas's face. And he could have. It's what I would have done.
But Jesus never did that. And Jesus will not slam the door in your face. He wants you to come to Him. He wants you.
To repent, to admit that you are wrong and God is right.
That's what he wants. He doesn't want you to go to a lost eternity.
Lord Jesus said to Judas had been better.
If you had never been born.
If you reject Jesus Christ.
If you think that you know more than God.
If you would rather do your own will for your entire life instead of God's.
I'll tell you tonight.
It would have been better for you.
If you had never been born.
Because there was a man.
That we know.
Went to a lost eternity because he did not want to listen to what God said. He did not want to involve God in his life. He simply wanted to live his own life and not worry about God.
He wanted to have a polite non relationship with God. God, I'll stay out of your affairs, you stay out of mine. It doesn't work that way. God made you.
And because of that, he has the right to tell you what to do.
He has a claim over you.
He is your creator and your Maker. You must answer to Him for the things you've done.
00:25:03
But he's more than that, because God loves you so much that he sent his one and only Son to die on the cross to take your sins.
And because of that, he has a second right to you. Not only did he make you.
He paid a price that's unimaginable to have you again. Are you really gonna say to no twice to God?
The man I mentioned that went to a lost eternity without God.
With no love in his heart for Jesus.
He's given a chance to make 2 requests.
First, he said.
I want a drop of water on the end of my tongue because this is awful. And when that was denied.
Is that all right? Pick somebody, Anybody. Send them back, Warn my brothers. I don't want them to come here.
There's a lie. It's a very old lie.
I know a man who believes it.
The lie goes, I'd rather be in hell.
With my friends.
It doesn't work that way.
It is a lake of fire. It is the blackness of darkness.
It is a place where your conscience will never have peace, You will never be at rest, you will never be happy. You will never be comfortable ever again for eternity, for as long as you can imagine.
Don't buy that lie.
Instead, Jesus says, come to me, anyone that laborers.
And has a heavy burden.
Do you even feel a niggle inside when you do something wrong?
Is there ever a thought at the back of your mind that maybe, just maybe, what I just did or what I did years ago that I can't forget, Maybe that there there's gonna be consequences for that, that I can't even see? You ever feel that way? Do you ever worried Jesus Christ died so that you would not have to worry? God wants to give you forgiveness of sins. He wants to wash your sins away.
And he can, because his Son, Jesus Christ died for you.
Let's go to Blue or to John. Sorry, chapter 18.
John, Chapter 18.
Jesus comes out of the garden in verse one where he had been praying to his Father.
Experiencing something that you and I can never fully understand.
Judas knew where Jesus was. Judas had a plan.
His scheme?
Went something like this.
I've seen Jesus get out of jams before.
I've seen Jesus in the middle of a crowd of people who hated him, who were picking up rocks to kill him, and I've seen him just walk away.
Like they weren't even there. I've seen soldiers searching for Jesus.
And miraculously, they couldn't find him.
If I betray him, it's no big deal.
You'll get away.
Nobody needs to know. I'll do it on the side.
I make 30 pieces of silver.
N.
Life goes on.
1St 4 Jesus therefore knowing all things that should come upon him.
Knowing.
That whatever Judas had in his heart.
Whatever Judas might have thought.
Jesus knew what was going to happen.
Jesus saw Judas and the soldiers coming towards him.
Jesus went out to them. He walked forward to meet them.
With No Fear.
00:30:01
They answered, sorry, verse four, he says to them. Whimsy key.
They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus says to them.
I am.
Judas is standing with him, and as soon as Jesus said I am.
They all went backwards and fell flat on the ground.
If you're Judas at this point.
Things are probably going according to plan.
This is the point where Jesus is supposed to walk away.
Is that what you'd like?
Is everything in your life going according to plan?
Would you like Jesus to just walk away from you and leave you alone so you can do whatever you want? Because you figure that whatever you wanna do will make you happy?
It's not what happened.
Verse 7. Then Jesus asked them again.
Humsiki, they said, Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus said, I have told you that I am.
If therefore you seek me, but these his other disciples go their way, look at the care that Jesus has.
He's about to be taken and killed. He knows that. He knows the hours of interrogation, of spit running down his face, of hair pulled from his beard, of punches.
That he wasn't expecting or that he couldn't see coming because he was blindfolded hitting him. He knows.
Did a whipping from the Roman government that would put you in the intensive care unit in the hospital was ahead of them. He knows there's a crown of thorns waiting, and he knows most of all that there's three hours on a cross where he will be punished.
For our sins, He knows that all that's coming, and yet He stands there.
Any thinks of someone else, he thinks of his disciples who are behind him.
He says I've told you I am. What does that mean?
I am was the name that God used in the Old Testament.
Jesus was leaving, no doubt.
That he is God.
Do you believe that tonight? It is absolutely vital that you believe that Jesus Christ was and is the Son of God.
You have to. There's no two ways around it.
The same man that.
Thinks that he's gonna spend eternity in hell with his friends. Looked at me and said.
You don't really believe that Jesus is the Son of God, do you?
And when I nodded my head yes.
I couldn't quite believe.
B.
He's a very polite man, but there was an awful lot of anger on his face when he said that's stupid.
You have a brain.
You cannot simply look at Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the one who lived for 33 years on this earth, a perfect life, and say he was just a good person.
He is the Son of God.
He died for you because you and I had no way to save ourselves, no way to earn our own salvation. He died because He loves us.
I can stand here tonight and tell you that God loves you, that Jesus Christ loves you.
But Jesus had to suffer unimaginable things.
So that I would have the privilege of standing here tonight and saying he loves you and he wants you.
Let's move over to Luke's gospel.
Chapter 22.
Luke's Gospel, chapter 22.
And verse 47.
We'll start our way through the verse.
Judas drew near to Jesus to.
Kiss him because he had given a sign.
An agreement between him and the soldiers.
00:35:03
Saying the man that I kissed, that's him.
Take him safely.
Judas drew near to Jesus to kiss him, but Jesus said unto him.
Judas.
Are you going to betray the Son of Man with a kiss?
Are you going to use?
An expression of affection Endearment.
And friendship to betray me.
Are you tonight, tomorrow morning, the rest of your life going to use an expression of love?
A fellowship.
A friendship to betray Jesus? Are you going to pretend to be his friend?
Are you gonna tell yourself that you have it right?
That what you think?
As close as it may be to what the Bible says.
Than what you believe, even though it differs from what God has said in the Bible, what you believe is right.
Are you gonna betray Jesus like that He died for you?
He loves you.
He wants you to change your mind, to repent, to realize that you're wrong, that he is right.
But this isn't like admitting to your brother and sister that they're right and you're wrong or you don't get anything out of it.
This is.
Admitting to the one who made you, who made this planet, who made this universe that knows everything, that has seen everything you've ever done and kept track of it because he loves you. That one and means that that one who's so far beyond us we can't even imagine it. Simply saying, you know what?
I'm wrong, You're right.
I'm a Sinner. You are holy. I accept. Your son is my Savior.
That's not that hard.
Except for what's in our house, what was in Judas's heart kept him from it.
Jesus. Here he gives Judith another warning.
This is Judas. Are you really gonna do this?
Is God saying that to you tonight?
Are you listening? Do you care?
Let's go over to Matthew chapter 26.
Matthew, Chapter 26.
And we'll read in verse 48.
Just in case you missed it, Judas gave them a sign saying whomsoever I shall kiss.
That same as he hold him fast.
Forthwith, immediately, he came to Jesus.
Walked right up to him and said hail master and kissed him.
Jesus said unto him.
Friend.
Y are you here?
Why did you come?
Friend.
Judith just betrayed Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ looks at him and calls him friends.
Would you do that?
I wouldn't.
What is what Jesus did?
Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. But he also says that he is not willing. He does not want anyone to perish.
And to go into eternity without him.
Judas.
Didn't betray the Lord Jesus.
Overnight it came slowly, just like I'm pushing this book.
Slowly.
Is that what you're doing?
Are you going?
Day by day.
Living your life. Maybe sometimes you think about God, about Jesus, about the claims that he has over you, about how he loves you and died for you, but how he wants you to be saved, but how he wants to give you happiness and peace and joy.
00:40:05
But you never do anything about it. You never take them seriously. You just go day by day.
One little thing here, 1 little thing there. It's not that bad, is it? 1 little thing here, 1 little thing there. You ignore what the Spirit of God is saying to you. You don't want to listen to God until eventually it comes with time where you leave this world.
And it's a guarantee from the Bible that it is appointed. It is a set thing for every one of us to die and after death.
A Judgment.
Which one of those pushes sent that book over the edge?
It was the last month. No, it was all of them. You are not going to be judged if you reject Jesus Christ tonight. You are not going to stand in front of Him someday at the great White Throne and be judged based on one thing that you did in your life that was wrong. You will be judged on a lifetime.
A day after day saying to Jesus, I don't want you.
Maybe you don't wake up every morning and actively think that.
But the choices you make.
The sins, no matter how small, let you decide to commit all add up.
2 letters that you throw in the face of the Son of God.
No.
Why don't you say yes to the Lord Jesus Christ tonight?
God sent his only begotten Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.
I I used to sometimes try and illustrate it to my Sunday school class by saying, you know, I've got a truck that I really like.
If I gave you my truck, that would be about the best way. I'd have to say that you're my friend, that I really like you.
That's pretty feeble example.
Lord has given us a little girl.
She's the cutest little girl in the world and.
When she comes after I get home from work and she runs toward me, jabbering with her arms wide open.
It's incredible.
She makes me so happy.
When God looked down at this world when Jesus was here.
His heart was so happy.
Because Jesus was perfect in every way, in everything that he did.
He made God happy.
And yet God.
Sent his son to die on a cross.
For you and for me.
I wouldn't give Emma for you.
I wouldn't, and I really wouldn't give Emma for you. If you told me ahead of time what you were going to do to her, it wouldn't happen. I'd take her as far away from you as I possibly could.
He'd never get her, but God.
Sent his one and only son into this world. God chose to say I love you like this. Jesus died for you to take away your sins and all he asked from you tonight is that you turn to him and say yes and accept him. Won't you do that tonight?
That's great.
Father, I just ask that each person here would put their faith in their trust in Jesus Christ, the one who died for them, and be saved. In his worthy name I pray, Amen.
Jude's Letter
Children—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.
I see there's a lot of kids here in the front row and that's wonderful. If there's any more who want to come and join in the front row, that would be great.
Maybe we'll start off by singing a hymn. And so who would like to give out the first song?
Yes.
Three.
40 OK #40 And we'll get that one after OK, Henry.
#40.
You guys must have been talking. You both wanted the same, the same song. That's that's wonderful.
#40 is Jesus loves me. And let's start by singing that one Jesus loves me.
Is strong, yeah, I feel like.
I did. I belong to me.
I mean, yeah.
Well.
I can't help me so.
Our brother yesterday read a verse in first Peter 5 and it said feed the flock of God, which is among you. Now I just want to read one more verse that's connected to that one and it's in John.
21.
And just the last part of verse 15, the Lord Jesus says to Peter, he says feed my lamb. And so that's why we have this children's meeting this morning because if everybody here, if we're all sheep, well we've got some smaller sheep in the front rows here. So we got some lambs. And it's important that not only do the sheep get fed, but that the lambs get fed too.
00:05:12
And so I hope that all the the children enjoy this meeting because it's it's meant, meant for you. So let's sing another hymn. Who has one that they'd like to sing? Yes, 39.
1A friendly.
It's all I can do. I'm greatly prepared. Whoa.
Nsnoise.
Nsnoise.
You know what the Lord loves to hear from each one of us?
And he wants to hear from each one of your children as well. So in my family, every night before we go to bed, we, we thank the Lord. And sometimes, and I remember being young too, sometimes you're going to bed and you're just not feeling too thankful. There's, uh, you just want to go to sleep. But I try to tell my kids.
Let's just think of one thing that we can be thankful for tonight.
Maybe it's the nice cozy bed that you have to sleep in, or maybe it's the fact that you have toys. But let's thank the Lord for one thing every night. And I think the Lord appreciates that if we can think of even just one small thing to thank Him for. And as we grow older, I think we'll find that there's many more things that we can thank Him for as well, instead of just one thing.
OK, who has another song?
41.
That's the number 41.
Around the throne.
OK. And you don't have anything for myself, but that is what I need to like. We'll be out of rain.
Well, they don't even have a lot of.
00:10:02
Birthday sinking.
Umm, I mean, through all of our business, it's been a problem. I said, Oh no, no, no, no, no.
But bring them to the world.
I can't say we're always dreams and joy and love about any industrial grandparents.
Nsnoise.
Who has another song they like to sing Tom?
#5.
Oh, happy day.
Oh my God.
Well, make it falling hard to each other. I need to get on the lake and someone's gone.
I do know where.
Transaction.
I am my boy and he is calling his grandmother and I followed her. Like your son's house. The one thing called I have to be there and I have to be glad to be there.
No, I didn't give us a call to my Timberwares.
He started how to do what you're right.
Home.
Nsnoise.
9034 6.
Nsnoise.
And for those of us here who do have our sins washed away, we can look back on that day and know that that was a happy day when all that burden, that heavy load of sins that we were carrying, the Lord Jesus washed him away with his precious blood.
00:15:01
Let's pause. We'll thank the Lord.
And then maybe we can sing one more.
Let's close our eyes.
Our God and our Father, we thank you that we can come here this morning and we can learn about the Lord Jesus our Savior, that we can open up your precious word to us. We pray that the children here would listen and learn and enjoy the Lord Jesus. And we pray that if there's any here who do not know you, Lord.
That today they would not wait any longer, they would want their sins washed away. And today might be that happy day for them. So we would commit this time to our God and.
Just pray that the message would be clear and simple in Jesus name, Amen.
All right, who wants to give possibly the last one, Savannah 14, OK.
I'd say possibly because maybe we'll sing one at the end but haven't decided yet #14.
Have you been to?
His brains and how hard he was.
Over your heart and the blood in the soul might take Wow.
Oh, so far then, while I can die, No. Why do you want to stay in the blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah?
OK, does anybody have a memory verse that they learned for this week that they would be willing to to say this morning?
OK, we have some over here. OK, go.
Psalm 23. Six. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I'll dwell in the House of the Lord forever. Psalm 23/6.
756 and three OH.
What time? I'm afraid I was trusting the 5066.
There's some Sev, some 7116.
I will go on the strength of the Lord God. Psalm 7116.
OK did anybody else wanna say a memory verse?
Romans 839.
So I'm persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor powers northern present, nor things to come, nor light, nor debt, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate me from the love of Christ, that love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
00:20:31
15 Verse 26 The thoughts of the Lord are about our abomination to the Lord, but pure, but the words of the pure are pleasant words.
OK, anybody? Anybody else have one that they wanna say?
Wonderful that.
From a young age that you kids can learn these Bible verses.
I think of Bible verse and Colossians. It says it says let the word of Christ dwell in you richly and if you.
Memorize a little portion of the word of God. It's like that is inside of you because you could say it at any point in time to somebody. And that's a really valuable tool to have. So I encourage all of you children to continue working hard on memorizing your verses. OK, so let's get into the the talk.
Umm, after we're done, I I've got quite a few questions for your kids, so I hope that you'll help me out, because I don't.
Really want to do all the talking.
And if everybody listens and helps me out, then we have treats at the end of Sunday school at the end of the meeting, OK. And so make sure you grab one after. So I got them in my pocket here.
And what is this?
Yeah, an envelope. OK. And what, what do you get in an envelope? What? What might you get? Yeah, a letter, Right. And I know my kids, they love going out to the mailbox when they hear the the mail person coming along and checking to see if there's any mail. Now, usually it's Flyers or bills. And so that's not always exciting, but every once in a while, somebody writes us a letter.
Who cares about us? And that is exciting when you get a letter in the mail. And so I want to read a very short letter to you. I have a letter in my hand and it's actually in this hand. And I don't think we'll read all of it, but, uh, but we'll touch on a bunch of it. And it's, umm, the letter that Jude wrote.
Has anyone heard of Jude here? It's right at the end of.
Your Bible.
And this letter is full of interesting pictures, so.
We'll pause as we go through it and.
We'll try to get your kids to understand a little bit about what June is trying to say. But we know that even though Jude wrote this, it was really God who wrote it. And so when a letter comes to our house, we like to see who is the letter from and who is the letter written to. And so.
At the start of this letter, the first verse, it says Jude.
The servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James to them that are sanctified by God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ and called.
So this letter is from a man named Jude and it's written, written to you, written to us. Now who is Jude? That is the question, and I could be wrong, but this is very interesting. I'm just going to read a verse in Matthew chapter 13.
And it tells us who this man Jude is.
And Matthew 13 and verse 55, people are asking questions about the Lord Jesus. They say, is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary and his brethren James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?
So we see here the Lord Jesus had four, had four brothers, James, Joseph, Simon and Judas. And we know that Jude in his letter said that he was a brother of James. So could it be that Jude was a brother of the Lord Jesus?
00:25:10
Maybe, but here his name is called Judas.
But in his letter he's called Jude. Why? If he's the same person, why do you think he might wanna go by Jude and not Judas? Anyone have any ideas?
Do you have an idea? Judas Iscariot? Yeah, we learned all about Judas Iscariot last night.
And I wonder if Jude went by Jude because he didn't want to have the same name as that disciple who betrayed the Lord.
Now let's just think about this for a minute. So, Jude.
If he's a younger brother of the Lord Jesus.
Put yourselves in Jude's shoes and what would it be like if you're?
I guess so, yeah. What would it be like if your oldest brother was perfect?
Would would it be hard for you to?
To follow that that example, your parents would always be telling Jude, why can't you be like your older brother Jesus? Because the Lord Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life. We know that about him, don't we?
And so poor Jude, I wonder what he thought of his oldest brother. I want to remind you kids of the story of Joseph.
Joseph. He wasn't perfect, but Joseph followed the Lord. And did Joseph's brothers appreciate him?
No.
No, they didn't. They didn't really appreciate that. And so I just wonder if if Jude might have grown up as a child and not really had an appreciation for Jesus and who he was, but.
This letter that we have it, there's a lot of Gray showing here. And it's awesome that the Lord Jesus would choose his brother Jude, who maybe didn't appreciate him as a as a kid, but later on came to appreciate his older brother, not just as a good older brother, but as his Lord and savior. So let's let's read on. Let's see what Jude has to tell us here.
First two, he says, Mercy on to you, peace and love be multiplied.
Who's in about grade 4 here?
Marissa Alright, so do you know all about multiplication? Yeah. So if we have 10 + 10, what does that equal 20? But if we have 10 * 10100? And that is what Jude wants, mercy, peace and love, he wants it to be multiplied. And so if for those of us who can do a little bit of math, we know that.
He wants us to have those things in abundance, and it's through the Lord Jesus.
That we have those.
So in verse three Jude says.
That he wants to write to them because he wants.
He feels that they need to earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered onto the Saints. And so the faith delivered on to the Saints we have written in this book. And Jude wants all of us to be reading our Bibles carefully. And he's gonna go back and he's gonna talk about some things that happened in the Old Testament. And he expects us to be familiar with them. So we'll we'll talk about them.
In verse 4.
He wants to warn them.
Against.
Against certain teachers. Now who here goes to school?
OK, most of you kids do.
And trip, you probably have a teacher, right? Yeah. What's their name?
OK. And what, what do teachers do?
00:30:05
OK, Yeah. So sometimes they discipline you. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. What do teachers do, Ernie? They, they teach you. Yeah. So. So you learn from them, right.
And I think that when we're in the lower grade, we would expect that our teachers would be telling us the truth. Is that not right? Like when they when they show us how to add, they might say 1 + 1 equals. What does that equal? Two? Yeah. So what if they said 1 + 1 = 3?
Hi. Some funny laughs. Yeah, you'd laugh. Yeah. Right. Because they're. Because they're not telling the truth, are they? And.
You wouldn't believe them, but if they continued to tell you that they're older and wiser, and if they kept saying it over and over again, you know what? You might actually start to believe that. I don't know, maybe 1 + 1 does equal 3 and.
So Jude was warning against these teachers and they're called false teachers and he said that they were gonna gonna creep in amongst the flock.
And they were going to be telling lies, telling lies about the Lord Jesus. They're going to be telling lies.
About what we as Christians should do, and we need to be on guard.
Do you wanna go see Bob and Jenna?
And so Jude wants to remind these people about some things that happened. He talks about the people who came out of Egypt.
Did they all get into the promised land? All the people who came out of Egypt?
Tripp says no, and Tripp is absolutely right. We know that because of unbelief. Many of them, most of them except for Joshua and Caleb, I believe they died in the wilderness.
He talks about in verse 7 two cities, Sodom and Gomorrah. Does anybody know what happened to those cities? Savannah.
God sent fire and brimstone and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because they did not obey, they did not believe.
And so he's reminding.
Us of the fact that God has judged in the past.
And God is going to judge again in the future for those who do not believe.
So he talks more about these false teachers. He says one thing. He says they've gone in the way of Cain in verse 11. Now does anybody know who Cain is?
Yeah, Cain killed his brother Abel, didn't he?
It also says that these teachers, they've run greedily after the error of Balaam, they say. Does anybody know who Balaam is? Never getting a little more obscure.
Yeah, Salem. No. But Balaam wasn't a false God.
But maybe to help you out, yeah. Do you know Max?
He was he was a false teacher, that's for sure. But does anyone know anything kind of unique about about Balaam? He wrote an animal. OK, Do you know Molly? He wrote a donkey. And what did the donkey do?
Yeah, the the donkey saw an Angel dot and the donkey did something very strange. Yep, the donkey talked to Balaam.
And and the donkey said to bail him. What are you doing to me? Now that would be strange, wouldn't it? And Jude is, is reminding us of all these stories in the Old Testament. There's one more.
He talks about Korah.
Inverse 11.
Does anyone know what happened to Cora? And this is for the young people too.
00:35:07
There's a lot of references in this book and it's good that if we don't recognize them because some of these stories are buried in in the Old Testament, We need to study our Bible and figure out well, what is Jude trying to say? Because this letter it's written to us in in verse one. So we need to we need to understand what he's saying.
Does anyone know what happened to Cora?
No, yes. OK. Well, Cora.
He rebelled against Moses and the earth actually opened up, and Korah and others were swallowed up by the earth because they would not obey God.
OK, verse 12.
These false teachers as well, He says that they are clouds without water, clouds without rain. Now you might think, oh, I like clouds without rain. The clouds come and they they block the sun. So it's nice and cool, but then it doesn't rain. So I can go outside to play. But picture yourself for a minute. OK as a farmer, OK as a farmer who has crops.
And it hasn't rained.
For a long, long time. And you're wondering if your plants are gonna survive. This is your. This is how you make money. This is your food. And you check the weather and it looks like it's gonna rain that night. Lots and lots of rain.
And all of a sudden, you see a cloud coming along, a nice dark cloud. And you're so hopeful it's gonna just pour rain down on your crops and they're gonna survive, OK? And then this cloud comes along, moves over your field.
And just slowly keeps going without giving a drop of rain. How disappointing would that be?
You were hoping so much for rain and it didn't happen. That is what these teachers are like. They're like a cloud without rain.
Another example.
Is trees whose fruit wither it or without fruit.
Now, we went apple picking a month ago or so, and these apple trees were full of apples. But imagine we'd be pretty dismayed if we showed up to the apple farm at the right season, went into the field, and there were no apples to pick.
We are looking forward so much to picking some apples and eating them and there's nothing there once again that's like these false teachers. They're like trees without any fruit on them.
Now I've got AI got a star here, OK.
And here's another example of what these.
False teachers are like now.
For ships today, how do you think they know where they're going? Anyone know Savannah?
They follow the sun. They might do that, but I feel like, feel like most ships today would have GPS in them and they'd follow their GPS and it would get them to where they're going. But you know what? Back in the Bible times, they didn't have GPS, did they? And so you.
You know what they would follow what they'd they'd look up at the sky and they would follow the stars to figure out where they need to go. Now, so we know that there's a a star called the North Star.
So what part of where do you think the North Star would be? It would be in the in the north, right? And so if you head for the North Star, you'd be heading north. But these false teachers, it says they are wandering stars. So imagine if you let's say that this direction is north, I'm going to take a guess that maybe it is. Imagine if you want to go north, so you head for the North Star, but the North Star wandered its way over here.
To the South.
And you're still following the North Star. You'd be going the wrong direction. Isn't that right? If the star that you're trying to follow wanders away, you're completely lost.
00:40:05
And that is what these false teachers are. Like you, we don't want to follow them. We will be completely lost.
Now in verse 14.
Very interesting verse.
Jude talks about a man named Enoch who we can read about right at the start of the Bible and somehow through God he knew that Enoch said these words and Enoch said behold the Lord cometh with 10,000 of his Saints.
And if we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that he died for our sins.
We are one of those Saints that will be coming with the Lord very soon, and the Lord is going to come and He's going to put things right down here in this world.
Verse 15 says that he's going to execute judgment upon all. And so all the stories that we've been referring to in the Old Testament, a lot of them have to do with judgment.
And so this book might sound a little bit harsh, but I think it's a a really good word for all of us today because we see a lot of crazy things going on.
In verse 15.
There's a word ungodly. Can anyone with the Bible count how many times it says ungodly?
In that verse.
Jude verse 15.
Four times.
That's who the Lord is going to come, and he's going to execute judgment upon these these ungodly ones.
But this book isn't all doom and gloom. I think of the verse.
Umm, it's in Colossians chapter four. Let me just flip to it for a second. Oh no, I know it. It says let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt. And so Jude is writing this letter. There's some gracious words in this letter and especially at the end here. He has something for each one of us.
He says.
That we need to build up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost. So it's important that at home and at school that we remember the Lord Jesus, what he's done for us on the cross, and that we need to live for him.
Praying in the Holy Ghost I've really appreciated over the past couple days.
So many.
Have just mentioned to me that they're praying for me and they're not only praying for me, but they're praying for each one of you. And so many in this room care about you just like how Jude does and especially just like how the Lord Jesus cares for each one of you. And so many in this room are praying that each one of you would know the Lord Jesus as your Savior and that you'd wanna, you'd wanna go on for him.
Verse 21 Says.
Keep yourselves.
In the love of God, now it's a nice sunny day outside today.
And so you can go outside and you can stand in the sunshine, or you can choose to stand in a shadow, can't you? And you won't. You won't really feel the sun, will you?
And that's what it's like with the love of God. It's not that God's love.
Isn't there anymore.
But we can choose to stand in it and enjoy it, or we can choose to stand in the shadows and be a little chilly. So let's make sure that we're standing, that we're keeping ourselves and the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. We know He's coming back soon to take anyone who believes in Him back to his Father's home. What a day that will be.
Let's go down to the last verse.
Verse 24.
Says now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. Do you know that it's the Lord Jesus who can, who's going to keep us? He wants to keep each one of you. He wants to keep us from falling, falling into sin, doing things that we shouldn't. And you know what? He's able.
00:45:11
The last verse to the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen. I like how this verse ends.
Or how this chapter ends. The last word is power. The Lord Jesus gets the glory.
He's he gets the majesty, the dominion, he has the power. And it's so nice that he reminds us of this because with what we've been reading with these false teachers coming in and when we look around us, we might think, oh man, things are looking pretty bad. But.
He has the power both now and ever. Amen. And this is our Savior that we have. This is the one who Jude wanted to write about. For one, his older brother Jesus, But most importantly, his Savior, the one who died on the cross for his sins. And he gives a warning to each one of us, especially in these last days that we live in.
That we should. We should wanna live our lives.
For the Lord, be obedient to our parents.
Be kind to one another and all those things.
Let's pray.
Our God and our Father, we thank you so much for your word that we could have before us. We pray for these children that they would believe it, want it for themselves, desire to read it, want their parents to read it to them or God. We, we pray for their souls. We pray that you would keep and preserve them. So we thank you for this time we could spend and we just would give thanks.
In the name of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
The Journeys of Jacob
Ephesians 3:14-on
Gospel 2
Gospel—Bob Thonney
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Good evening to everybody.
#13.
Man of Sorrows.
What a name for the Son of Man, who came ruined sinners to reclaim.
Hallelujah.
What a savior.
Man of sorrow.
S.
Dangerous.
And the same Alaska and goddamnit.
Nsnoise. Hello sweetheart.
You've been having a good day. I'm a little bit of a little rude.
Before we pray, I just want to quote.
The 1St 4 words of the Bible.
In the beginning.
God.
Let's pray.
Father, we're so thankful for another opportunity.
To speak about the Lord Jesus, to talk about him, who he is and what He's done for us, we ask for blessing.
We pray that thy spirit may have liberty not only here, but wherever thy word is opened, bless it. In the name of our Lord Jesus, we pray, Amen.
Like to sing another song that's not on our hymn sheet, but I think we know it.
By heart.
I mean, before we sing it tell you that the first time I heard this song.
Was when I was going to junior high school.
The city of Walla Walla, WA.
I think it was when I was in the eighth grade, there was a popular singer that came to the school and we had a all school assembly in the gymnasium and he sang quite a few different songs. I don't remember exactly what they were, but at the end of his program.
He got to the microphone and he said I've asked your principal.
For permission to sing my favorite song.
And he gave me permission.
And he got up to the microphone.
And he sang How great Thou Art. Still one of my favorites.
He had, you know, a big stomach on him and those kind of people can really pump it out.
So I think we.
No, enough of you here that we can carry the tune for the others that might not know it very well.
Oh Lord my God.
The world's like a Hathaway.
I believe I can hear you about the way. Uh-huh. Whatever the bar and borrowers the people are.
00:05:10
Giving me the first gifts the way they're getting.
Let, everything's my fault. My name is.
I'll regret it.
That's where life is, that God is unlocked and everything. Then we can build ourselves and they will be at the end of the day.
Nsnoise.
When I shall come? Where thou from? A high blood and we have taken shrine. I have anything to call. What are you? What are you gonna help me get on the phone. I can come back on my phone number.
Johns Gospel chapter one and we'll start with verse one.
In the beginning.
Was the word.
And the word was with God.
And the word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him, and without him was nothing made that was made.
In him was life.
And the life was the light of men, and the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.
00:10:11
There was a man sent from God whose name was John. This is John the Baptist. The same came for a witness.
To bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe he was not that light, but was sent to bear witness.
Of that light.
That was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
But.
As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name which were born.
Not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
John bear witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, he that cometh after me.
Is preferred before me because he was before me.
And of his fullness have all we received in grace. For grace For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father.
He hath declared him.
Wonderful. The story of the Lord Jesus that we have in the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, each one giving a different focus on this wonderful person of our Lord Jesus Christ. But here in John's Gospel, it starts out in this wonderful way.
In the beginning was the word.
It doesn't talk really in this chapter about his birth, except verse 14 is the only one that comes close to speaking about his coming into this world.
The Word was made flesh because in this gospel he's presented as the eternal one. He always was there. Let me tell you, it just blows my mind to try to think of a person that will always was there, never had a beginning. He's eternal, the Word.
Of God the Word.
Was God the Word in the beginning was the Word, that's his eternality. And the Word was with God that it's distinct person in the Godhead because God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He is the distinct person in the Godhead and the Word was God, that's his divinity.
Oh, what a wonderful person. And then it goes in verse two says the same was in the beginning with God. There was no change.
In the beginning, whatever beginning you wanna talk about, he was already there. And then verse three says all things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made. Everything that was made was made by him.
00:15:11
A. By deduction of these verses, we have to say he was not made. He always was. He is the maker of everything that is made.
Wonderful reality, you know, They stop and think sometimes. We need to reflect on the grandeur of the creation that we are living in. We are living on planet Earth.
And I love parts of this planet.
I love the Andes of South America.
Where I've traveled quite a bit of the time.
As the Andes Range goes down the western coast of South America.
In the southern Peru, it splits into two main ranges down through Bolivia, and in between those two Rangers, the inner Andes and the outer Andes is what is called the Lt. Plano, a High Plains that.
12,000 feet altitude and above those High Plains, those mighty, and they stretch upward toward the sky.
So remember coming over the Andes from photo C towards the High Plains of Uyuni, and as we come to the point where we drop off, coming down to the 12,000 feet altitude level, we stopped there just to take a look. They're out in the distance, couple 100 miles away.
We're the outer handies along the coast of South America.
Just the grandeur of it all makes me wonder at the tremendous power of God that created it all.
But really the end is doesn't do much justice to what creation really is because it's far greater than that. You know that we are on planet Earth, which is a very small globe in relation to the sun, which is about 1,000,000 times greater than.
Planet Earth and that our sun is one.
Of approximately 200 billion stars in what is called.
The Milky Way Galaxy.
And the Milky Way Galaxy is only one of they say, now I understood, I've seen in a book approximately they calculate now the numbers always grow up at least 250 billion galaxies more in the known universe. The farther they go, the more they see, the more they realize the grander of this creation. And here's the person.
Spoke it all into existence. He spoke and it was done. He commanded, and it stood fast.
All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. And so it doesn't matter if you want to look out into the grandeur of it all or if you take a microscope and start looking into the intricacy of our human.
Being.
The structure, the genetic structure that is so tremendously complicated.
They used to talk about the simple cell. They found out the simple cell was not a simple cell was extremely.
Detailed and so here's the one that we're talking about the word. Why does it give him that title? The word? What does that mean? The Lord Jesus has many titles, but what does the word, the title word mean? You know, I could stand up here.
And look at you folks.
And not say anything.
And you can look at me and guess what I'm thinking, but you probably wouldn't know too much until I open my mouth and use words to express what I'm talking about, what I'm thinking about. And so God is so immense, so infinite in his being.
00:20:11
He's everywhere at once. He's omnipresent, He's omnipotent, He's all powerful, he's all knowing. He's omniscient. He knows the very details of your heart, those things that you try to to hide from others. He knows every single detail of it. This is the one we're talking about. But God is so immense that there's no way.
That we could know him.
Until he sent his word, the word of God. Now we know because the Lord Jesus has come. We have the full revelation of who God is, and it's wonderful.
Verse four in him was life.
End the life was the light of men. What is light? These are basic issues to me. It's so wonderful to notice that verse four, it's only it's a short verse. It only has monosyllable words. Every single word is just one syllable long. And yet the depth that is in that verse, listen to it again.
In him.
Was life and the life was the light of men? What is light?
Light is what is necessary to see.
If there was number light in this room, I could listen, I could make some guesses what might there be out there, but I really wouldn't know. Somebody flips on the light switch, on comes the light and I can tell, oh, there's some people in here. So many men, so many women and young people.
With the light you can.
See things that otherwise you would not be able to see, and I say if you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ, you cannot see properly.
In him was life, and the life was the light of man. And then it says this sorry commentary. The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. What's this? This is a darkness that is not a natural darkness.
Because natural darkness, you take a light and shine into it, and it makes the darkness.
Go away. Lighten and darkness cannot exist in the same space at the same time. In the very first chapter of the Bible, God divided the light from the darkness. Either there's light in your soul, or there's darkness.
And the light makes you see everything properly.
But you know, this is the darkness. That's a spiritual darkness. It's a blindness, says in Second Corinthians chapter 4. The God of this world has blinded the minds of them which believe not. You can take big searchlights and shine them into a face of a blind man. How much is he gonna see? Nothing.
Why can't he see? Because he's blind. And it would be a sad situation except that God can give a command and the light penetrates the darkness. And that's what happens in the preaching of the gospel. Oh, it's wonderful, the message of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Then it says verse six there was a man sent from God. I mentioned this already.
That this is John the Baptist, not John the Evangelist.
He came for a witness to bear witness of the light, that all men might believe through him.
He was not that light, but he was sent to bear witness of that light.
What would you think?
00:25:00
I go outside and a nice sunshiny day and walk up and down the streets. Everybody I met, I said, hey, the sun's shining, the sun's shining, let's see, you crazy guy. Everybody can see that the sun's shining. But you know what? When Jesus came, nobody was aware that the true light was here, and God had to send a man ahead of Jesus.
John the Baptist to tell them this is it. This is the true light that cometh into the world. He's come in. He came to bear witness of the light. And then it says in verse 9 that was that true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. Like it or not, his light is shining into your life right now.
I hope there's not a willful resistance.
Of the light of the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Where do you stand in relation to Jesus? That is the tremendously important question. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him.
And the world knew him. Not an amazing. And he came into the world.
The animals knew him.
But the religious leaders of his day did not know Him. They rejected Him. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. The Jewish people in general rejected Him. But then, it says, as many as received Him to them gave he the power to become the sons of God to them that believe on his name.
Isn't this beautiful simple truth?
What do you have to do to receive him? Is there something you have to do? You have to pray.
Remember one time in Bolivia, we were a resident there, a young man who had been coming to some of the meetings came to our house.
And is definitely under conviction.
And he said I don't know what I have to do.
To accept Jesus.
The brethren told me I have to repent, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do.
He was a law student at the university, so I said well.
You can raise for me a verse, please. And I had him read verse 12 and I said, what does that say you have to do to receive him? What is it that you have to do? Does it say you have to pray? I think it's good to pray, but does it say anything about praying there? No, not really. What does it say you have to do?
He looked at it for a while, said believe on his name, you got it, I said. That's what it says. He did kneel down and pray and they got up. We took him to the river to baptize him.
And as far as I know, he's still going on to this day. A beautiful simplicity.
Receive him. What does that mean? Believe on his name. Trust him. He's big enough. He's true enough to be trusted. Trust him.
And then it says in verse 13, this is interesting, which were born, these are the ones that become sons of God, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man. That's the way we were born the first time.
But this is a new birth.
This is.
Being born again.
And it's of God.
You know, the first time we're born, we're born of a father and a mother human seed, which is corruptible. That's why I got Gray hairs on my head. That's why I got sometimes my knee hurts me.
Corruptible seed. We don't last that long. Before the flood they lasted up to 900 years and more.
00:30:02
I don't expect to last that long with this body, but you know what? When you are born again, God gives you.
A brand new life.
It's eternal life. It's life that can never die. To me, it's the most wonderful thing. Yes, this body might die, but the life I have that the Lord Jesus gave me is a life that can never die. And the moment comes.
When we will live no longer in this?
Corruptible body. We will have an interruptible body that the Lord Jesus will give us at his coming again. But now verse 14. And like I said, this is where it speaks about his coming into the world, since in this gospel we have the Lord Jesus presented as the Son of God.
The eternal Son of God, really. It wasn't his beginning when he came into this world. It was his beginning as a man. Yes, he was conceived in the womb of a virgin. That's very important because all of us have been born of sinful parents.
The Lord Jesus was born of a virgin. He had no human father.
God was His Father, so that when he was born, the Angel announced to the Virgin Mary, That holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. He was holy at birth.
Sometimes I've seen South America.
Little babies just born, they say, oh, what a holy little child. I say to the parents, just give them a little time and he doesn't get his milk on time and he will show that he's really not holy, he's sinful.
And all of us have that sin nature in us. But the Lord Jesus was born of a virgin, so he was made flesh and dwelt among us, And it says we beheld his glory, the glorious of the only begotten of the Father.
Full of grace and truth. Oh that thrills my heart to talk about it. Grace is the outshining of the love of God.
Truth is the outshining that God is light, God is light, and God is love.
Was seen in this person full of grace and truth. You know, sometimes we are rather lopsided.
Maybe we're full of grace, but we forget about the truth. Maybe we're really strong for the truth, but we forget about grace. But in this one, there was a perfect balance of grace and truth.
Wanna go down a little bit here in verse 29?
The next day, John, this is John the Baptist again.
See if Jesus coming into him and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
So here's another title of the Lord Jesus. You've had the word of God, we've had the light of the world, and now we have the Lord Jesus presented as the Lamb of God. What is this mean if you go to the Old Testament?
You would read that when people in the Old Testament times sinned, they could bring an animal sacrifice to God, a lamb or a goat or an ox or some other animal, sometimes little birds, and that animal would be sacrificed.
To cover the sin of the guilty party, God.
Accept substitutes. Well, when John saw Jesus, you know John was the Baptist was related to the Lord Jesus in the flesh.
His mother.
And the Lord Jesus, his mother we're cousins, so they were related but.
Uh, here he sees him coming and I don't know how he knew this, but it must have been that God showed it to him. He saw Jesus coming. He said, behold the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world.
00:35:17
In what way was he talking about? And this is what I want to tell you about because this is the most wonderful story. Absolutely baffles me every time I think of it. This same one who is the creator of the universe, This one who is all powerful, is the one that came to pay the price for our sins.
On the cross.
And at the end of his 30 and 3 1/2 years of life down here, they took him to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, because the Jewish people could not execute anybody. They had to do it through the Roman Empire, which was in power at that time.
And Pilot, even though he knew that there was no charge against him, really.
He accepted the will of the people, that Jesus would be crucified and gave sentence. And the soldiers took Jesus away. And the Roman soldiers were not known for mercy. They were cruel, they were practiced in cruelty.
They crowned him with thorns. They took him out, They tied him up and they beat him. They plowed upon his back. Those terrible Roman scourges ripped open his back.
They hit him in the face, the chief priests in one place that says they came up and they spit square in his face. You know, I've had people spit at me. I've never had anybody come and spit in my face but the glorious Son of God.
The creator of the universe.
They came up to him and they spit, squaring his face.
Man naturally speaking as an enemy of God, we proved it by the way we treated the Son of God.
And then the soldiers took him outside the city of Jerusalem, out to the hill of Golgotha, the place of the skull, where man's skull is empty.
There they nailed him through his hands and his feet to a cross. There they lifted them up and hung him between heaven and earth.
There he hung from 9:00 in the morning till 3:00 in the afternoon.
For six hours, he hung there. In life, I don't think we, any of us, have any way to imagine the pain of hanging through nails pounded through your hands and feet out there under a blazing sun.
Not only that kind of suffering, not only that physical suffering, but they taunted him. They say if he's the Son of God, then let God deliver him.
If he delighted in him.
And you know.
God didn't deliver him.
He says prophetically in the Psalms. Reproach has broken my heart. You know, sometimes you can.
Better physical suffering.
A reproach is an emotional suffering that is sometimes even worse.
But then we come to 12 noon and the Scripture tells us the sun was darkened for those three last hours until 3:00 in the afternoon. And what took place there, no human eye could capture it. Too awful. But God is holy. He cannot forgive your sins if somebody doesn't pay the price for them.
00:40:03
Who's on those most 3 hours of darkness? And God laid on him our sins, Every one of them. I don't even remember all the sins I've committed. But God doesn't forget. He doesn't have that human weakness of forgiving.
He led them on Jesus, his beloved Son, and then he poured out the fury of his judgment on the Lord Jesus. For three solid hours the waves and billows of God's judgment poured over him.
Until the very end.
The end of those hours?
Lord Jesus, through those three hours it was complete silence. He bore it all in silence until the end. And God turned his face from him and he cries out in the agony of his his soul. My God, my God, why I so forsaken me?
Don't ever understand the awfulness of the price that Jesus paid on that cross. And then at the very end he said it is finished.
And he bows his head and gives up his life.
No one took it from him. He gave it.
Freely of himself.
There he is, hanging dead on the cross.
Here comes those Roman soldiers. They were told that they didn't want anybody alive on those 3 crosses outside Jerusalem.
At the end of that day, so they went up to the one thief on one side, they broke his legs.
That they died, went up to the other thief, broke his legs, and that thief died.
They went up to Jesus. He was dead already.
The soldier takes his spear and rounds it into his side, and now it flows but.
And water, the price of my redemption, was paid in full by the blood of the very Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God.
That wound, Lord Jesus, had many wounds in His body, but that wound showed there was no more life in that body. He had given His life. He shed His precious blood. Oh, it's such an important thing that you know that your sins are gone before you leave this world.
And the only way you can know it is through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. I don't know where you are with God tonight.
Sometimes there's young people that have been raised so-called in the meeting like we talked about it.
But they haven't gotten it straight with God. I know several young people that were brought up so-called in the meeting that are now atheists.
That scares me stiff to think about it. Is there anybody who really, truly hasn't gotten it straight? You're just kind of passing along like you're a Christian too. You have your parents all convinced, maybe even the brethren you know you're not right with God.
I ask you, don't let this night go by without getting it straight with the Lord it's way.
To important Jesus is coming back to this world.
We look forward to his coming again those of us who are Christians.
It tells us in First Thessalonians chapter 4, The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel, and with the trump of God.
And the dead in Christ shall rise first, then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together to meet the Lord in the air. And so shall we ever be with the Lord. He's coming to take us home.
00:45:03
I don't know that would happen right now. Would this room be empty or would there be some still sitting here?
That's what scares me and that's why we're here to preach the gospel. Even the majority of you profess to be Christians. We don't know. We can't see your heart.
But the Lord Jesus is gonna come at the end of a period of time called the Great Tribulation. We have it. We've been reading about it these days.
In Revelation chapter 19 it tells about it that heaven opens and there is someone that comes out of heaven riding on a White Horse followed by the armies of heaven.
It is the Lord Jesus. He's coming back to planet earth. He's going to set his feet down on planet earth in exactly the same place where he went up to heaven after his death and resurrection, because he was raised from the dead the third day and after 40 days here in this world showing himself.
Alive by many infallible proofs, he was received up in glory, and there is a man in the glory of God.
A man that is powerful to save those that by simple faith.
Put their trust in him, but he's going to come back again.
You know, he went up from the Mount of Olives. If you've ever seen the picture of the city of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, and to the east of the Temple Mount there is a valley, the Kidron Valley. And on the other side is the Mount of Olives. That's where Jesus went up to heaven in his ascension. That's the very place where he's going to come back down and set his feet down on planet earth again.
And those of us who believe in the Lord Jesus.
Are going to come with him.
Never gone to the Holy Land.
Until now. But I've got plans to go, and I think quite a few of you all are planning to go to at the end of the Tribulation. We're gonna come back with Jesus. We're going to see Him when he takes his place in this world as King of kings and Lord of Lords, and every knee shall bow to him, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ.
Tonight we just want to extend the plea to you. Like I say, I look around the room. I have no way of knowing where you stand with God. But the eye of God is on you. And I want to say to you, you can fool me. Lots of people have. You cannot fool God.
Don't think you can, because if you think you can, you're fooling yourself worse than you're fooling anybody else.
Don't do it.
Repent of your sins. Sin is an awful thing in the sight of God. It ruins people, it ruins families. It ruins countries.
And that's why God paid such a terrible price to redeem us from sin. And that's why we say, if you are not yet saved, repent tonight and by simple faith, come to Him. Accept Him as your Lord and Savior.
Whereas.
Whosoever shall confess with his mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in his heart that God has raised him from the dead, he shall be saved. Let's just pray, Father.
Bless thy precious Word. Thanks so much, Father, for that glorious man, our Lord Jesus Christ. The Word of God. Thanks Lord Jesus, for paying the price of our redemption.
And we pray if there's just one or more people in this room that still haven't settled the issue, that they might do it tonight. We pray for blessing on Thy precious Word wherever it goes out in that most wonderful name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Open Mtg. 3
Open—W. Dear, M. Roach, R. 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.
But we started by saying it once already through.
172.
Oh, teach us more.
Of God.
I've been worried.
I was raining.
By our heart and God.
And right that day I can't get to my e-mail.
When I'm in the world.
Now.
We try to get the blindfolded.
Rain time I love.
It's all good price.
My God in our Father.
We commit this meeting into thy hands.
We commit the brothers, whom, through whom whom thou wilt speak to each one of us this afternoon.
We commit our hearts, our minds, our ears to Thee, so they would be open to receive that which Thou desirest to instruct us with, to encourage us with, to comfort us with, to exhort us with. Father, thank Thee for Thy desire to equip us.
To represent thee well.
And faithfully, as we wait for Thy soon return, we thank Thee, Father, for Thy grace to us, Thy unsearchable paths in love and grace to each one of us. We thank you for being here in peace and comfort in freedom.
We think of our brothers and sisters who have not this freedom and may we treasure this privilege all the more and remember them in our prayers. We thank the Father in Jesus name, Amen.
I would like this afternoon.
To encourage.
Each one here today who has come to Christ to take a stand for him, even though it may be having to stand alone.
It's worth it.
And if it has God's approval, that's all that really counts.
I recall I saw a poster one time that Cecil Russell's bookstore some years back and it showed a multitude of people.
And they were all.
Outlined in black and they were all moving in One Direction.
However, if you look carefully at the poster, there was one outline in red and that was.
00:05:02
A person that was going in the opposite direction.
Have you ever felt like that, perhaps at school or at work?
That the tide is against you.
I'd like to turn this afternoon to an individual.
Found in John's Gospel.
Chapter 12.
Who I believe took a stand.
For the Lord Jesus.
Because he was precious to her heart.
And it was a bold stand.
And when I say a stand, the fact is that she was at the feet of Jesus.
Her name is Mary.
And I believe that most, if not every reference to Mary of Bethany, we find her at the feet of Jesus.
That's a good place to be.
Somebody, I believe it was J&T.
He wrote low at thy feet, Lord Jesus, this is the place for me. Here have I learned deep lessons, truths that have set me free. Free from myself, Lord Jesus, free from the ways of men, chains of thought.
That once found me never shall find me again. Not but thyself. Lord Jesus conquered this wayward will, but for thy love constraining I had been wayward still.
I believe the love of Christ had conquered Mary's will.
And constrained her to do that.
Which?
From all outward appearances.
Would be a very.
Shall I say hazardous move on her part? Well, let's read about it, John, Chapter 12.
And verse one.
Then Jesus, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany.
Where Lazarus was, which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead. There they made him a supper, and Martha served, but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him.
Here we find.
A house betting it was a place where the Lord Jesus knew that he would be welcome.
With the Lord Jesus, be welcome at your house.
Would he know that coming to your house he would receive?
A warm welcome and hospitality. That's how it was at Destiny.
And if we back up into Chapter 11, we find that the Lord Jesus.
Had performed a wonderful miracle on one of those residents at that household. His name was Lazarus.
Lazarus had died.
And.
Martha, she said to Jesus. If you'd been here, my brother would not have died.
But you know, the Lord Jesus had a purpose in allowing that grief in that household.
In allowing Lazarus to die because he was going to display the fact that even more wonderful than healing a diseased body is to raise a dead body.
From the grave.
And the Son of God was glorified through that miracle. You know, sometimes we think.
The Lord doesn't know what he's doing because we've got problems. We've got trials and difficulties and griefs.
00:10:08
But the fact is that I do believe whatever is taking place.
In your life as a believer.
God has your best interest at heart, and He's going to make it work together for good.
Not only for your good, but for His own glory and praise. And that's how it was here.
And there were those.
That witnessed what had taken place at Bethany.
And it tells us here.
In verse 45.
Chapter 11. Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him.
And so we find that there were those that believed on him.
But as we read on in the chapter in verse 47, then gathered the chief priests, the Pharisees, the council, and said, What do we This man doeth many miracles.
As we read on, we see that their council is in verse 53. Then from that day forth they took counsel together for to put him to death.
So we find that.
An environment.
Had developed that was hostile to the Son of God.
You know we live in a hostile world today.
And the world's attitude toward the Son of God has not changed since John Chapter 11.
It hasn't changed since the Lord Jesus Christ was nailed.
To the cross of Calvary.
This world is going on.
A course in opposition to God and to his Son Jesus. But the wonderful thing is, God has not abandoned the human race, But we find that he offers a full and free pardon to those who are willing to bow at the feet of Jesus and acknowledge him as Lord, who put their faith in confidence in Him.
And what a wonderful God we have. Who?
Reaches out to the vilest. He's full of compassion.
He's plenteous in mercy. He's ready to forgive, ready to pardon.
He's gracious.
You know I believe Mary.
Saw this in Jesus.
And he had captivated her heart.
And as we read here in chapter 12.
When Jesus came to the house, he was welcome.
No matter what the attitude of the religious.
Leaders were Jesus.
Was.
Her Lord. Her Savior.
Jesus was on her heart. It was Himself who captivated Mary. And so we see as we read on in this portion, that in verse 3, Mary, it says, took a pound of ointment.
A spike in our very costly and anointed defeat of Jesus.
And wiped his feet with her hair.
And the house was filled with the odor of the ointment.
This was an act of devotion on the part of Mary.
That was exemplary.
And as we read on, we find that this hound of ointment spikenard that was very costly was perhaps worth at least 300 pence. And a pence is one day's wages in those days, one day's wages, so 300 pence.
00:15:11
If you translate it to today's.
Currency. 300 days wages. That's a lot of money.
And I suppose that Mary had.
This ointment for some time.
I don't know how long she was thinking about.
This that she wanted to do.
But it did come to fruition and that which was very costly.
Mary was willing to expend it.
On Jesus.
It was the sacrifice for her.
Did she regret what she had done?
She got right down to the feet of Jesus.
And wiped her feet, his feet with her hair. You know, it speaks about the hair being the glory of the woman. But I do believe that.
Mary wanted to give Jesus all the glory and all the praise. She was in the presence of the Lord of glory. And you know, when we get to glory, we understand we're going to have crowns, but we're going to be casting our crowns at the feet of Jesus that he might be exalted, that his name alone would be magnified.
As we have here on this poster in all things he might have.
The preeminence.
Well, you can imagine if Mary wiped his feet with her hair.
What did her hair smell like? This was a very fragrant.
Spikenard.
And I'm sure that as Mary went forth.
The fragrance of this spikenard.
Would be dispersed abroad. Well, it tells us here that the house was filled with the odor of the ointment.
And it was a very wonderful.
Atmosphere to be in this House with the order of the ointment.
Well, you know what this is I believe worship.
And worship is what God desires.
And I'm not sure just and I speak to myself how much worship there is in my heart.
For the Lord Jesus. But this is what He values. You know, it's one thing to get something from the Lord, and it's very wonderful that when we receive something from Him, yet our hearts are filled with Thanksgiving and praise.
And there were those that fell at the feet of Jesus in order to get something. I think of Jarius, he fell at the feet of Jesus on behalf of his daughter that was sick, 12 year old daughter.
There was the Cyrus Phoenician woman came to Jesus and fell his feet on behalf of her daughter. They were looking to get something from the Lord Jesus.
And they weren't disappointed.
And I trust that they did give thanks to him for what he did for them.
But I believe there's something even more wonderful.
Than to.
Get something from the Lord Jesus and that is to ensure.
Him for who he is. That's worship, you see.
We praise the Lord for what He has done for us, but we worship Him for who He is.
His beauty.
His glory.
00:20:00
We sang this morning about.
All the peace forever flowing from God's thoughts of his own Son. All the peace of simply knowing that on the cross.
The work was done, but as we sing along and at him.
Jesus Savior.
We adore this.
Christ is God, ascended high.
We're thinking about what he's done for us, but now we're worshiping him.
For who he is, we adore him.
Federation. Well, we find that.
Mary here I believe, was filled.
With adoration for her Lord.
And.
She displayed this in a remarkable way.
Now in verse four, then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, what should betray him? Why was not this ointment sold for 300 pence and given to the poor?
Judas Iscariot takes exception to what Jesus has done.
He claims that he has a care for the poor. Is that true? He had no care for the poor any more than he had a respect for the Lord.
Find it. He was a thief.
And, uh, he took that which was put into the bag. I suppose he thought about that. 300 pence, he thought, you know.
I could have got something out of that.
He had no love.
Love. No regard.
No worship in his heart for the Lord Jesus Christ. So we see a contrast here between Mary and Judas Iscariot. But the sad thing is, if you turn over to another gospel, you find out that not only was Judas.
Having a problem with what Mary did, But it tells us the other disciples as well were filled with indignation.
They too.
Were critical of Mary's sacrifice.
So now what are we gonna say? Here's Mary, Here's Judas and the other disciples.
Marries one individual who got the disciples 12 disciples.
Who is right?
Jesus will settle the score.
Verse 7 Then said, Jesus, let her alone against the day of my bearing, as she kept this for the poor. Always you have with you, but me you have not always.
Much people of the Jews therefore knew that he was there. They came after Jesus sake only, but that they might see Lazarus also, whom he had raised from the dead.
You know what?
Mary had Jesus on her side and she was only one. But you know, it's been said that one plus.
The Lord Jesus or one plus God makes the majority.
And I believe the Lord Jesus exonerated.
Mary for what she had done.
And we read in another gospel that.
What Mary had done was going to be proclaimed throughout the whole world in the Gospel and would be a memorial for time and for eternity.
And Mary was willing to stand alone.
You know, sometimes even other Christians we would expect to be.
Shall I say.
00:25:01
Promoting that which is of God, but doesn't always work that way.
The important thing is to look to the Lord and do what He tells you to do.
And.
Seek his perspective.
On what is before you.
And.
Let me just read this here.
We had this the other night over in Fredericton.
At the meeting there First Corinthians.
It's just two words that really stood out to me. First Corinthians Chapter 7.
And verse 24.
1St Corinthians 724 Now brethren, let every man wherein he is called, now this is the calling of God, therein abide. But notice 2 words with God, with God.
That's critical.
If you can do what you are doing with God, you're on the right track.
And you won't regret.
What you are doing?
You have God's approval. Don't look around to the world for its approval. You'll be misdirected.
It's possible that even professing Christians might be a source of misdirection.
But look to God and that's what Mary did, and she did the right thing and she will not regret it. You know, Mary had spiritual discernment. She knew that Jesus was going to the cross. I think she had more discernment than the disciples as to what was to take place. She was a woman, but there was devotion to Christ.
A love in her soul for Christ.
And it came out in what she did.
And she knew this was her opportunity.
Because the storm clouds were gathering over her Savior and this was her opportunity to show her devotion to Christ and she took advantage of it. There was this afternoon. Time is short. The Lord Jesus is coming and you and I, we have an opportunity.
To make a sacrifice for the Lord Jesus, the one who has loved us and washed us from our sins.
In his own blood.
But the opportunity.
Is here today. It could be gone tomorrow. The Lord is coming.
So may we and I speak to myself as well.
Keep our focus.
On the Lord Jesus Christ, looking unto Jesus, the Author and finisher of our faith, and take advantage of the opportunity.
To live for him.
Even if.
From outward appearances, it seems as though you're a loser.
The eyes of the world, you'll appear to be a loser, but really you're a winner because.
You're doing what the Lord Jesus would have you to do, and it'll make you happy, the Lord Jesus could say.
If you know these things, happy are you if you do that.
I'm sure when we get to glory.
And we're gonna enter in more fully to what he's done for us. We're gonna see the nail prints in his hands. We'll see that spear mark, that wound in his side. We're gonna think about what Jesus has done.
For you and for me.
And, you know, anything that we do for him is gonna appear miniscule.
In view of his.
Sacrifice on our behalf, so may we just.
Take heart and.
00:30:00
Trust the Lord.
And go forward.
And live for him.
Whether we eat, drink, whatever we do, may we do it all for the glory of God.
May the Lord bless His word.
I don't wanna take too much time this afternoon because there's others here that I would prefer to hear that have more depth of understanding. But I looked around the room today and especially on the side I'm sitting and there are a large crowd of young people here.
And I really had this on my heart to.
Present it's It's a topic that may make people cringe, but it's a topic that is very relevant today. But before I get into that topic, I'd like to read some scripture. If you could turn with me to First Peter chapter 5.
First Peter, chapter 5.
And starting in verse one.
The elders which are among you, I exhort, who am also an elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed, feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly, not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind. Neither is being Lords over God's heritage, but being in samples to the flock.
And when the Chief Shepherd shall appear?
You shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away. Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves onto the elder. May all of you be Subject 1 to another and be clothed with humility. For God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble.
Heavy for me, this idea of an elder and the younger people in our assemblies.
I'm sure as we all grew up in our different generations, I referred to myself today as a young person and I was corrected that I'm not so young anymore.
But we, we all faced evil in our generations and maybe different types of evil. But today, when you look at what our young people face, it's there in an instant. And I meant to bring it up with me, but I, I forgot it. I was gonna hold up an iPhone. How many people here have a smartphone?
Pretty much everybody.
When a young person today has a question.
Of the the world, about what the world teaches, and they want to know what the answer is. Do they have an elder in their assembly to go to that they feel comfortable approaching? Sometimes they can turn to and look for the scriptural basis. Perhaps they do, and that's great.
But I know when I have a question on things, sometimes I Google it.
And the topic I want to talk about today, Alex, before I get to the topic, I want to stay on the topic of elders.
I believe there's a real need for people.
Within our within our assemblies to identify themselves.
As those that are willing and able to have young people approach them with questions, young people sometimes are hesitant to approach a older person and ask a question and yet.
They need to get answers that are grounded in scripture. And when I read this passage I I look at verse two and speaking to an elder it says feed the flock.
Take oversight thereof.
Those are active things. Those are expectations to elders to go forward and and and and help and approach.
And the young people submit yourselves on to the elder. Don't be afraid to approach an older brother to ask them a question because you're not going to find the question in the world. And you may, you may struggle to find that question answered in scripture. So go to someone that may be able to answer it.
I would not consider myself an elder, far from it, but I do have the privilege in my home assembly to teach the teenager class, Sunday school class.
And I try to stay teach them doctor and I, I try to do a faithful job at that, relying on a lot of good old brother and commentaries and, and, uh, trying to be faithful and preaching it and speaking to them. But I also try to give them practical instruction on some of the things they're facing in the world today.
And the thing I want to talk about today, and again I said people may cringe, but I wanna talk about homosexuality and what our young people are facing in everyday life. Before I came up here, just for sake of example, I took my iPhone and I typed, went to Google and I typed in Christianity and homosexuality. The first hit I got was Wikipedia, and it said that there are a variety of views among Christians.
00:35:22
On the topic of homosexuality.
The next hit was a site called gaychristian.com. I know if I clicked on the link for thatgaychristian.com.
It would have led to a page full of twisting of Scripture trying to justify what the Bible condemns as sin. And to the young people today, I want to go through the Scripture. I want to make it clear that it is a sin and that when you bring it up or when you speak about it, people may call you a bigot. They may call you a hater. Those are words that are meant to shut down conversations, not to have conversations they're not.
Umm, not. They're not trying to defend what they're doing.
They want you to accept it wholeheartedly, and we'll try to twist it to their favor. Now, if you're speaking to someone that's unsafe, you don't argue these points. They need to be saved first before they'll accept Scripture as truth. But if you're speaking to someone who's a Christian and they believe it's OK to be in this type of lifestyle, and they've accepted these twisted arguments that people put into the take Scripture and twist into a positive.
Umm, on homosexuality, I'm hoping today to provide you with a bit of a.
Called an apologetic, a bit of a defense against those twists of scripture. So I'd like to turn first to Leviticus.
Leviticus 18.
So we'll start in verse 6 just to get the context.
It says none of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him to uncover their nakedness. I am the Lord. The nakedness of thy father nor the nakedness of thy mother shalt thou not uncover. She is thy mother, Thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. The nakedness of thy father's wife shall though not uncover, for it is thy father's nakedness, nakedness of thy sister, the daughter of thy father, or the daughter of thy mother, whether she be born at home or born abroad. Even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover.
The nakedness of thy sons daughter, nor thy daughters daughter.
Even their nakedness that shall not uncover for theirs is not thine own nakedness and it goes on Speaking of sexual sin, incest and so on. If you and if we move down through to.
Verse 22.
Says Thou shall not lie with mankind as with womankind. It is an abomination. Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith, neither shall any woman stand before beasts to lie down onto it. It is confusion.
There's another passage in in chapter 20 verse 13 that repeats the same thing. I don't need to read it, the language is very similar.
So well that it goes 20 and verse 13. If a man lie also with mankind, as he lieth with women, both of them have committed an abomination. They will surely be put to death. Their bloods will be upon them.
The argument today from those who claim that Christianity and this lifestyle can coexist, that the Levitical law is no longer apply, so therefore these scriptures don't apply. But what I find amazing about scripture is it's preciseness. Within Leviticus you find two types of laws. There's ceremonial law and there's moral law.
The ceremonial law which was given to the Jewish people to separate them from the other nations. They're not laws that I would say you would come to through natural thinking. You wouldn't think that you had to wear a garment of one type of cloth. You wouldn't think that you couldn't trim your beard a certain way. You, you may have heard, and so the younger may have heard this umm, it's a mockery of scripture. They say that if.
You deny that homosexuality is allowed, then you can't eat lobster. They may ever heard that or seen that as a headline.
Why is that? Well, one of the laws in Leviticus says you can't eat shellfish, so they try to minimize what it says for homosexuality, like kind of mixing it in with ceremonial law.
And when you read through Leviticus, you'll notice that the Holy Spirit inspired Moses to bookmark when he's talking about ceremonial law that applied to Israel as a holy nation. And when he was talking about moral law that applied to all people, you'll notice, and I, I won't turn to it because I don't have all the references ready to go there. I wasn't sure getting up today. You'll notice that when he's talking about ceremonial law, not mixing seed in your field, not breeding different types of cattle, those things.
00:40:04
He starts out by saying the Lord your God is holy.
And you are to be holy as well. Holy is a separation. So he starts out with.
A statement to Israel being to be separate from the nations, and he goes through the ceremonial law.
But when it comes to the moral law, you'll notice that.
If both stay in Leviticus 18.
So we've read in verse 22 That shall not lie with mankind, as with womankind, it's an abomination.
And in 1St 24 says Defile not yourselves and any of these things for all the nations. For in all these the nations are defiled, which I cast out before you.
Whenever the moral law is brought up in Leviticus, you find that it repeats that all the nations had done these things and were guilty, and it wasn't a law that was carved out just for Israel. These moral laws that an application to all the nations and all the nations had profaned themselves in this way in the Lord cast them out when God brings forward the instructions. Don't eat shellfish. Don't cut your beard a certain way.
He bookmarks those with you are a holy nation, a separate nation, special laws to distinguish them from the nations around, but these moral laws.
Law against homosexuality, for an example.
Was for all nations. It still applies today.
But it's not just in the Old Testament we read of these things. Let's turn to Romans chapter one.
In Romans chapter one, Paul starts out with.
The Gospel of Christ talks about the wonderful Gospel of grace when he gets down to verse.
Verse 18 he starts speaking about man who reject God despite the witness that God has given them. And when they give up God, they start dropping into more and more evil layers of sin to start worshipping creation, start worshiping idols.
When you get to verse 24, it says, Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lust of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves, who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator. He was blessed forever. Amen For this 'cause God gave them up unto vile affections for even their women, to change the natural use into that which is against nature.
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lust, went toward another men, with men working that which is unpleasing, unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meat.
All states are very clearly here that this.
Lifestyle is a sin, and you know the world throws this at us very craftily.
When I was in high school, uh, you know the.
You might hear of, you may have heard something that was involved in this lifestyle, but today you know that laws have been passed that, umm, same sex marriage laws and so on. And it's in advertising. Today, in the blink of an eye, you could see an advertisement with two men clearly as a couple or two women clearly as a couple and it just flashes before your eyes. I was watching the Olympics this past summer.
And a commercial came on television. It was a commercial for Kijiji where people buy and sell used items.
At the end of that commercial, as it faded off went back to the Olympics, it has a scene of two men snuggling together on a couch while a boy played on the floor. Just like that, kids watching. It's it's so natural now, not natural, but it it's so in the face of our young people that sometimes becomes easy to start becoming complacent to these things. And someone brings forward someone who says they're a Christian and and believes that we should be gay affirming.
They look to scriptures and try to twist them to make it look like it's OK.
I want you young people to know that Scripture is very, very clear in these things.
The one thing that I've I've read where how you know, I'll call them, they call themselves gay Christians, how they try to twist this particular passage.
Is it talks about the women leaving their natural use and the men leaving their natural use. They say I was Born This Way. That is my nature and what this scripture is saying that if I go against my nature I'd be sinning. So if I'm born with the same sex attraction.
That's my nature and if I flip it, I'm sending. That's how they twist this scripture. They say that the nature, if they're born that way, that's their nature and twisting their nature is sin. So they they should remain in the orientation they were born in. But again, God's word is precise. You'll notice it says verse 26. Women did change the natural use into that which is against nature.
00:45:07
That word use is a word in the Greek.
Cross in I think is how you pronounce it. Cross in it means use function. It's not a natural desire, it's Speaking of natural function and use without being.
Too descriptive.
In a sexual union.
The function is defined by your biology, your your, your body, defined with the natural uses of it sexually within a marriage relationship.
So when the arguments used that, well, it says here that if I'm born, umm, with the nature to like, uh, be attracted to the same sex and I, I, you know, I can't change that nature. Scripture tells you it's not your desire, it's the function. It's going against what God naturally created men and women to be.
You know not to take too much more time, but I'd like to turn now to First Corinthians.
First Corinthians. I believe it's chapter 6.
And verse 9.
1St Corinthians 6 verse nine Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God?
Be not deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of man, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the Kingdom of God.
Timothy, First Timothy. Paul writes a similar verse. Clearly homosexuality is condemned here.
And those again, I put quotes around at gay Christian movement. The way they try to undermine this verse is that they take the Greek words underneath them and and try to shape them into gobbledygook. They don't shake them into a word that means anything. They say they're ambiguous. They're not clear. It's temple prostitution. It's it's, it's about older men with younger men and they and they try to make it seem like it's not a loving same sex relationship.
So what's very interesting and.
It's believed that Paul coined the phrase. He made a compound word in Greek here where it says abusers of mankind. The word is arsenicoitis. So you may have heard the word anthropos anthropology in Greek. Anthropos means in general. It can mean man, but can also mean mankind.
Arson, which is the the first part of the arson of which is the abusers of themselves of mankind, is distinctly a male word. It means male. Anthropos can mean everybody, all people.
Arson means male, and the last part of the word coitus is, is, I think, clear to a lot of us. Paul made a word that clearly says it's men in sexual union.
Very clear and yet people try to talk themselves through this, they try to talk their way out of it and.
I wanna stress I'm not giving you these arguments, young people.
To go to an unsafe person to try to convince them they need the gospel. We don't need to go to an unsaved person and say you're doing this and that they need to understand their sinners, they need to repent and they need the gospel. If you're talking to a professing Christian who is trying to justify this type of lifestyle.
You can depend on this book.
It's crystal clear on the subject and it's a book you can look at and you can open it to open it to these passages and sit down with that professing Christian and show them what the word of God says and the pressure may be to conform to this world.
Because again, you'll be called bigots, you'll be called haters. But remember that we're told we'll be persecuted for living for Christ, and we'll receive a reward in the end for it. So don't be discouraged if you're accused of being.
A hater or a bigot?
Stand behind the word of God. Stand on it. It's clear. It's unambiguous. And back to my starting point.
And I I don't know how to frame it or how this may work.
But the older brothers, the older sisters in assemblies, make yourself approachable to the young people. Young people go to the older brothers and sisters for instruction in these things. Don't turn to the world. The world has an answer. They twist things, but the word of God doesn't change. So go to an elder, go to an older person in an assembly, ask your question. And I feel the older people, the older ones, make yourself available, make yourself approachable.
00:50:13
Umm, if that means walking up to a young person today and saying I'm here for you, if you have any questions, I'd be happy to to sit with you or talk to you. I'm open. I just encourage that. And I used this as one example of many things our young people face in the world today. And I just want to be sure that they know there's a place to turn. First of all, scripture and then look to your elders.
To provide you with further instruction and guidance.
That our brothers brought before us in a needful 1.
By way of.
Continuation on to what's on my heart, I'd like to turn to Acts 15.
This is the subject of this chapter is the question of do the Gentile nations.
Those are the Gentiles that believe in Jesus Christ. Are they required to keep the law?
Brother Matthew was talking about a little bit.
And that part of the conclusion is in verse 20.
We write unto them that they abstain from pollutions of idols.
And from fornication.
And from things strangled.
And from blood, I'd like to pick up on the thought, the moral aspect that the brother was talking about.
Idols is one.
The last words of First John are little children. Keep yourselves from idols.
Things strangled in blood. Life of the flesh is in the blood.
That God's due is God's.
We're not to take it in all the offerings that belong to God, the blood.
You think about it.
The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin. He shed His blood to wash our sins away.
It's God's.
But the part that I wanna really pick up on is in the middle. Fornication. It's a big word.
Covers everything having to do with use of our body in a sexual way that's not according to God's plan.
That's one of the things with the subject we're just considering that we need to remember with the Word of God and with these subjects.
The Lord Jesus, when he was here on earth, said in the beginning it was not so.
And God created.
Adam and Eve, male and female, he created them. It's a thing of beauty.
It's an incredible picture that God put in the very beginning.
Of Christ in his church. We were talking earlier this morning.
About the unity of the testimony that Christ wanted here on earth, His Church, the testimony to the world.
And we talked a little bit about how the forces of.
Satan, the demons, Prince, and power of the air is arrayed against the church to destroy that testimony because of the honor.
And the glory that the Christian testimony brings to Jesus Christ.
And the other part of that that Satan worked so hard to destroy is the family and the husband and the wife.
Relationship because in Ephesians chapter 5 we know.
That the Spirit of God uses that as an illustration of Christ in his church, a husband and his wife. And it's a beautiful thing. No wonder the devil works so hard in our society, in every society to destroy that picture, to follow that image, to take it away, because it brings honor and glory to God.
00:55:19
A proper relationship between a man and a woman illustrates the proper relationship between Christ.
And his church.
And it's a thing of beauty.
When it's right.
And I'd like to turn back to, uh, Romans chapter, sorry, First Corinthians chapter 6.
In verse 18.
Flea fornication.
That listed there Brother Matthew Red in Leviticus.
All of it.
To leave from it.
Every sin that a man doeth is without the body. He that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.
You can steal, it's not a sin against your body.
You can swear it's not a sin against your body.
But when you do something that's on that list.
Whether it's incest.
Cheating on your wife? Cheating on your husband.
Cheating in your mind on your future wife by looking at ***********.
Cheating on your future husband.
By imagining yourself in all kinds of relationships that aren't your real relationship.
All that.
Comes under that all of it defiles and degrades.
Verse 19 What know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you?
Would she have of God? Ye are not your own.
It's a beautiful thing to think about.
I speak this afternoon to each one of you as if you know Jesus Christ as your own personal.
Lord and Savior.
And I trust that that's true of you.
If that's true, then God has sent His Holy Spirit to live inside you.
Right inside you. Your body.
Are you going to commit a sin? Am I gonna commit a sin?
That is against that body, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.
I'm not interested and I'm very thankful for our brother Max talked about this afternoon that we have a merciful God, we have a gracious God, we have a loving God.
We have a merciful and faithful high priest in our Lord Jesus Christ. In the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son cleanses us from all sin, and that is an absolutely wonderful thing.
But let's not take advantage of it.
Let's let the love of Christ constrain us, because we must judge.
That if Christ died for us, we ought to live for Him.
Therefore, you are bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body and your spirit, which are gods.
Now, concerning the things whereof.
You rode on to me.
Good for a man not to touch a woman. This isn't talking about shaking hands.
This isn't talking about tapping somebody on this shoulder, it's talking about sexual touching in a way to lead to more.
What does he say? It is good for a man not to touch a woman.
Fathers to daughters.
There's appropriate touching between a father and his daughter.
Don't go at inappropriate touching.
So that that your daughter might perceive.
As being sexual.
You may not mean nothing, but be careful. Guard against it.
01:00:04
Boyfriend. Girlfriend.
We just read that your body is not your own.
Let's go on here, verse two. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own life. Let every woman have her own husband.
Let the husband render onto the wife due benevolence, and likewise also the wife under the husband.
The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband. Likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife.
Interesting expression. Power similar to the one in First Corinthians 11. The subject of head coverings and recognition of authority.
I believe Darby translates the word as authority.
Verse four. The wife hath not authority of her own body, but the husband.
The husband doesn't have authority over his own body, but the wife.
Part of this came to my attention and came to my mind because some of you live in the city of Toronto, and in the city of Toronto they hired a chaplain for the Muslim police officers.
And he expressed his views on the man, woman relationship. And I understand them, I read them, their traditional Muslim views on how man and woman go together, Interestingly enough, very similar to the views of 100 or 60 years ago or 150 years ago, really, what the woman's movement, the feminist movement of today has fought against.
For many years.
That a woman is property and a woman is a sex object.
That same mentality is what he expressed, and what I want to cover in the next few minutes is the truth of Christianity.
Because part of our heritage is not that.
What we have here in front of us, this concept in verse 4.
For a husband and a wife.
Is totally different.
Take a moment. If you're married, just turn and look at your wife. Look in her eyes. Wife look in your husband's eyes. Just do it.
The person you're looking at that you looked at?
If you're the husband, she's the one that has the authority over your body.
She's the one that gets to say yes or no.
And the Wi-Fi?
When you are looking at your husband, he's the one that has authority over your body to say yes or to say no. And there's a verse in the 5th chapter of Ephesians, I'm sure you'd probably know it, that no man yet ever hated his own body, but loves it and cherishes it.
Only 6.
Mentally disabled, mentally challenged people. People with mental problems hurt their own bodies.
Don't hurt the body, your body, whose eyes you are looking into.
Treat it with benevolence. Treat it with respect. Treat it with love.
That covers a lot of you in this room, husbands and wives.
Some of you are younger. You're single. The remarkable thing about the 7th chapter of First Corinthians is that he points out that being a eunuch and single for Christ is more honorable, if I can put it that way, than being married.
Because you are in a relationship with Jesus Christ Himself, you're not your own. You're bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit.
Which are gods. That's the relationship you have with when you're single.
But if you're single today and you're in a relationship or you're considering and entering into a relationship with a young woman or a young man.
Then what I put forward to you in the first verse of Chapter 7 is keep your hands off.
Keep them to yourself, no sexual touching.
01:05:04
Think about it.
If it didn't work out.
Do you want the woman that you're seeing to have to tell a future husband what you did to her?
What will that future husband think about you?
And if you're the young woman?
Would you really wanna tell what's happening right now in that vehicle that you're in or that room that you're in alone? You really wanna tell somebody else in the future what you did if this relationship doesn't work out?
Now that's from a human point of view.
Our brother was mentioning, Brother Wally was mentioning with God, He is always with you. His Holy Spirit is inside you.
If you remember that that he is with you.
Do you still wanna do it?
Yes, your old nature does.
They'll make provision for the flesh to fulfill a lust thereof.
Put the guards in place to protect your relationship and keep it pure.
Because there's incredible rewards for going God's way and staying pure.
Pure in your mind, pure in your heart, pure in your body. That's what you are, spirit, soul and body for Christ.
You know in this 7th chapter of First Corinthians as well, it talks about what happens when a husband dies.
The Three Romans Chapter 7 talks about it, that the wife is no longer under the power of her husband once the husband dies. You know what that means? That means that if you're a widow or a widow widower in the room today, you go back to that relationship between you and Christ, the One who loves you and gave himself for you.
Your full attention and your full heart of love.
Can go out to him and you can feel his coming back to you. So they're absolutely beautiful things in the word of God.
The whole law is fulfilled.
In the commandment, practically love thy neighbor as thyself. Let's keep that in mind. Our brother Matthew reminded us that those who do not know Christ as their Savior need to know Him.
And that's the 1St place to start. And we need to have compassion and love for one another because you know your own heart and I know mine. Philippians chapter 2 tells me I know my own heart and I ought to esteem every single one of you in this room as better than me.
So don't look at somebody who's fallen into adultery and think that person is no good. Look at yourself and know that isn't water. Faith answers to faith. So the heart of man to man, that my heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?
Don't look at the person who has.
Same sex attraction.
Tennessee and think they're terrible.
Same thing that I just said applies in their case For you. Let him that thinks he stand take heed, lest I fall, lest they fall.
But I remember what Max was talking about. We serve a loving, caring, compassionate God.
He gave his life, paid a price.
To buy me and to buy you. And he wants us.
He wants all of us.
To be committed to him. He doesn't want our computer games interrupting our fellowship. He doesn't want our reading material interrupting our fellowship. He doesn't want what we watch on television or on the Internet to destroy our fellowship either. He wants to have the fullest.
Possible relationship that he can.
With you and with me.
And that's the ultimate thing that you and I each individually need to be connected to our Lord and to our Savior. If we're married, then it becomes a threefold court.
Me 100% for my wife Esther.
01:10:02
Astro 100% for me.
And both of us, 100% for the Lord. That's a threefold court. But if it's a twofold court, it works too. You and the Lord together. I am weak, He's strong.
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
Nsnoise.
01:15:21
Blessed God, our Father, we.
Trust. This is the true expression of our hearts. Keep us. We're passing through our world full of contamination.
But we're so thankful for the clarity of Thy precious word. Help us.
To walk in its light. Give thanks, Father, commanding ourselves to Thee for the rest of the afternoon. In the name of our Lord Jesus, Amen.
Yeah, ma'am.
# 2
Y.P. Address 7
# 3