Pella Conference: 1991
Table of Contents
Ways We Can Feed on Christ
Address—G. Hayhoe
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Our souls in our grace.
God bless the quiet.
Live our God.
Let's look at the different ways in which we can feed upon Christ. And so first of all, I'd like to turn to.
Exodus Chapter 12.
Exodus chapter 12 and the fifth verse.
5th verse Your lamb shall be without blemish a male of the first year. He shall take it out from the sheep or from the goats, and ye shall keep it up until the 14th day of the same month. The whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening, and they shall take of the blood and strike it on the two side pulse, and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it.
And they shall eat the flesh in that night well with fire and unleavened bread, and with bitter herbs they shall eat it, eat not of it raw, nor sadden it all with water, but roast with fire his head with his legs, and with the pertinence thereof Ye shall let nothing of it remain until the morning. But that and that which remaineth of it until the morning, he shall burn with fire, and thus shall eat it.
Your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and ye shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover men just passing over to the 32nd verse of this chapter.
00:05:11
It is a night to be much observed unto the Lord for bringing them out from the land of Egypt. This is that night of the Lord to be observed all the children of Israel in their generation.
Well, as I said, I'd like to look at the different ways that we feed upon Christ. Here we have the Passover, and then we have in the 16th of Exodus the manna. And then in Joshua we have the old horn of the land, the fruit of the land of perhaps you could say, just putting a brief link to that. Feeding upon Christ as the Passover is our appreciation of what He has done for us on that cross of Calvary to put away our sins.
Bring us into such a place of favor and blessing, and then in the Nana I believe it's the food for the wilderness. It is a figure as we know of Christ. He was the bread that came down from heaven. And so in His blessed pathway here in this world we see one going through all that was possible to go through as a righteous man and glorifying God and leaving us an example that we should follow in His steps.
And so perhaps we could say in the manna, it's our appreciation of him and his pathway here that helps us in all the things that we have to meet. Because it tells us that he is a merciful and faithful high priest, Tells us too that he has tried in the path before. It says he was in all points tempted, like as we are set apart, but that he might be faithful to us as our high Priest, and so as we feed upon him as the manna.
You think about all the things that we have to meet in life, and there's one who's gone before. He's not them, all in perfection. And more than that, he's left us an example. And perhaps I could say still more, He's given us his life so that we can walk in that path enjoying his company and all the difficulties and trials that we need. When we think of them as the old corn of the land, I believe that brings before us Christ in glory. It was after they had even entered the promised Land that they fed upon the old corn of the land or the fruit of the land of Canaan.
And so sometimes the Lord lifts us above the trials. We have our appreciation of what He has done through for us. We have His help in the trials, but sometimes He lifts us above them. I think a little Him expresses that thought nicely. If here on earth the thoughts of Jesus love lift our fore hearts this weary world abroad, what will the sunshine of His glory prove? What the unmingled fullness of His love? Well, He gives us forecasts of this brethren, and in this way we feed upon Him as the.
One who's gone up there, and we see ourselves in Him, accepted in the beloved, holy and without blame before him, in love and enjoying the fact that that's really our home. We're not of this world, and so we need food for our pathway, we need food for our natural bodies. And God has provided so bountifully for the national needs of our bodies, but I've been impressed by them as I read the Scripture.
Both in the Old Testament and in the New.
How important it was that God's people should be fed, tells us in the book of Malachi, the last book in the Old Testament. But everything had broken down among the people of God. Yet the Lord said, Prove me now here with saith the Lord, that I might oh, that I will open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing, that there might not be room enough to receive it. And in that same connection he says.
That they would bring his thighs, and that there might be meat in my house. When the Lord rose from the dead, he said to fear. Feed my lambs, shepherd my sheep. Then, Paul said to the elders. The overseers at Ephesus, he said, feed the flock of God Peter. In addressing those who were in that position, he also said the same thing the feed the flock of God.
So we all know the need of natural food. Probably we can ask ourselves, are we really feeding on Christ? There was a lot of other things that are really the United States trash that can occupy our minds, can depress us, can rob us of the joy and the Lord. But there is that which we can enjoy. And I believe the Christian life consists of enjoying our portion. We only enjoy it in part down here, but in glory we're going to enjoy it in fullness.
00:10:14
Mr. Garvey once made the comment. He said our testimony to the world is our joy in the Lord. And when you see a Christian get into difficulty and you can see that he has a joy that rises above his problems and situation that he's in, then you know he's feeding on Christ. He has something that sustains him in the midst of it. Well, you can easily understand them by the Passover comes first and why it was so important.
Because until a person knows the Lord Jesus as his Savior, he certainly cannot enjoy these things at all. In fact, by nature, brethren, we were enemies in our minds by wicked works. That was our natural state, and every one of us can look back, even if we were brought up in a Christian home where there might have been times when we resented having to have been told we should be reading our Bibles.
Because by our natural birth, we were enemies in our minds, and it wasn't until we got to know the Lord Jesus and our Savior, and that we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son. And so the proof of the Christian is that he possesses a new life that enjoys new things. He enjoys The Lord often said that if you're a true child of God gives you a real thrill to meet somebody else.
That knows the Lord. Perhaps in your travels or something, you meet somebody, you find out that person knows the Lord.
Did you enjoy the same thing? Because you're in the family and so are they. You enjoyed this, perhaps passing a few words between you above your portion in Christ and what he means to you. Well, so you can see why I read the Passover first, because the Passover is the beginning of our Christian life. That is in type, of course, but we all know from First Corinthians 5 that the Lord Jesus is the true Passover.
It says when Christ is Who is our Passover was sacrificed for us. So the Lord Jesus is the true Passover lamb. And as we read these verses we can see such an app picture of him a lamb without blemish and without spot, one and the only one whose precious blood could meet our need. And so this was when that lamb of the blemish was slain and the blood was sprinkled on the lentil on the side pulse.
Then those in that home were safe from judgment As long as often said. It doesn't even bring up the question of how they felt. It was just enough that the blood was there. They might possibly even have those. But if the blood was there, God didn't say. When I see how you feel, When I see you have strong faith, what he said. When I see the blood, I will pass over you. Does anyone here who's having doubts, remember. It doesn't depend on your feelings.
If you have laid hold of the blood of Christ as the only ground of your blessing, then you are safe, because it was the blood that made those homes safe. How? How could they be sure? Or just resting upon the word of God tells us. When I see the blood, I will pass over you. And so they had the blood to make their home safe, but to have peace in their own hearts, they took God at His word.
Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. So peace is a result of in simplicity, believing the value that God has put upon the blood of his Son. He says that it cleanses from all sin and it's a simple faith on our part to take God as His word. And so that was what made their home safe, what made them secure.
But as I said, and what I'd like particularly to dwell on, is there was a feast inside of these homes. God didn't just want them to have security in their homes, He didn't just want them to have peace, that nothing could touch them. That night when the Destroyer passed through the land, that was a wonderful deliverance, but he wanted them to be feeding upon this rose land and so in order to have a happy feast in their homes.
00:15:03
There were certain provisions that were made.
About this feast, you know, we might say, well, I know the Lord Jesus is my savior, but I could ask myself, you can ask yourself, are we feasting upon Him? Are we like these people? Supposing one said, well, I'm just satisfied to know my home is safe and he isn't feasting upon the lamb. While he's not enjoying his portion, many dear Christians are not enjoying their portion.
It's easy in a world like this, with so much to distract and discourage, to lose our enjoyment of the Lord. And I haven't any doubt, brethren, that that's Satan's great attempt to try and keep us from enjoying our portion. And they bring in all kinds of things in order to hinder our enjoyment. So it tells us how they were to enjoy it. They were to eat the flesh in that night, Roast with fire, and it says in the ninth verse, eat not with rum or sodden at all with water.
But rose with fire. That was the first thing that was mentioned. And that is to know that the Lord Jesus has borne all the judgment and when it says more sudden that all the water we might say boil. And I think we all know that when you loyal something it doesn't matter how hot your fire is. Whatever you boil doesn't get the full heat because.
You have to be it has to be roasted in order to get the full heat of your albums, say 400. Well, it'll get the full heat, but if you put it on top of the oven in water, then it'll only blow up a size blowing .212°. And that's a side doesn't go. In other words, it doesn't get the full heat of the fire. But you know, there are people that believe something like this. Yes, I believe the Lord Jesus for the judgment, but I have to do my part too. And they add something to that lesson. Finished working.
They're enjoying only believe that there are real questions who don't enjoy eternal security. I believe that there is not properly taught. I believe they're secure because they're under the blood, but they're not enduring the feast. They're not enjoying the full blossomness of their salvation. It's very interesting in the end of the Romans when Paul speaks about our security. It's a very unusual thing. The way those last two verses of Romans 8 are worded. It says I. Now that's singular, isn't it? I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature.
Shall be able to separate me? No, He changes to the plural. You don't very often in a sentence change from singular to plural. Why does he do that? Well, Paul was persuaded. Paul was enjoying it, but he said others can't be separated from the level by which they would be persuaded. But it certainly can't be separated from the law. It can't be separated from the value of the lung who bore all.
The storm construction. So it wasn't gonna be raw, that is without the judgment. It wasn't to be just very part of the judgment. It was to know isn't it wonderful thing, brethren, that judgment is fast for us. Remember visiting a dear man in the hospital?
Real believer and many times he preached himself, but the last time I visited him voice was very very weak and I could still remember how he looked up, said Gordon. Isn't it lovely to know that judge him is passed for the believer, judgment is passed all just to know that the Lord Jesus for all the fire of God's gentleman and not one sin can be charged to you because it was laid upon Christ.
So it tells us here roast with fire and then unleavened bread.
You know what 11 as a figure of Scripture tells us?
You were to keep the feast not with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. We can easily spoil your enjoyment of the Lord and your security. Now we're talking about feeding on Christ. You can often spoil your enjoyment, and I can spoil mine by allowing a bad feeling.
In your hearts, malice is bad feeling, and many of us have a bad feeling for somebody else. Very, very important that we don't allow it to remain there. Very important that we ask the Lord for grace, not to bow that feeling, but to forgive as we have been forgiven. And Saul says, not with the leaven of malice and wickedness, Supposing I allow something in my life that's dishonouring to the Lord, will I be a happy Christian?
00:20:32
Can I really enjoy beating on Christ? I mean, maybe, and if I'm truly saved, I'm secure for all eternity, but we're talking about feeding on Christ, enjoying him to feed upon the low sand.
They were to feed upon it with unleavened bread and then with bitter herbs. I believe it just brings in the thought that we should never forget that it was our sins that calls him all that suffering. When you and I sit down on Lords Day morning to remember the Lord Jesus and his death, to all of us think well, why do we have to suffer like that? Why were those hours of darkness when he was forsaken of God?
And so I think that him writer had that thought in mind. Having said with joy and sorrow minded, we do remember thee so that the the bitter herbs I believe bring before us. He runs a feast and Allah with joy and feed on his roast lamb. And there was that which caused them to consider it was always sins. Really. We won't forget that in heaven he was saying that he redeemed us to God.
Mind as well. And He washed us from our sins in his own blood. So it was.
There and then it says His head with his legs and with the pertinence thereof. Isn't that lobby to think of the Lord's purpose? Nothing could turn something aside from that purpose. Sometimes we have a purpose, but things happen and we get the stories, and we don't go on with purpose apart. We allow things to turn us aside.
But nothing. Not all the rejection of the nation, no holy lack of appreciation of the disciples or of the people of the deal. So many of them. So few.
When he healed 10 leopards, just one came back and helped. You gave thanks for what he had done, but he went on in that pathway of love and went on to the cross. And I believe when it says his head with his legs, with a pertinence thereof, it was not love. It was in his heart that just let him onward.
To the cross, in spite of everything that man could put him away. And even when Satan's was attempted, the Lord Jesus went on in that pathway. And I believe that's the thought of the enemy of this verse. And then I believe when it says here in the 10th verse.
They were not to let anything remain to the morning. I believe the Lord would have us to have a fresh appreciation of Him. We can have an appreciation on Lord's day when we gather to remember the Lord.
And just carry it through the week without feeding upon Christ through the week, so that he sat there in his presence and you enjoyed thinking of his love and remembering him. But you know we need diligence through the week, don't we? So that one day we appreciate him, on Tuesday we appreciate him. And so it's something that goes on. We all know that with food, it's always nicest when it's fresh. And so they were not to leave it over.
It says it was leftover. It was to be burned with fire. Every keeping to the Passover was together flesh and Joyner of thought the Lord had done to deliver the mount of Egypt. And then with your loins burden I believe the loins speak of our desires. Grit up the loins of your mind. Be sober. You know there's a lot of things that.
Tend to put thoughts into our mind in a world like this, and we have to.
Screwed up the lines of our mind, We need to be careful what we let ourselves think about as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. Anil, if you just let your mind go after all kinds of things, you find that Satan will fill your mind with a lot of things. And you know the mind is quite a story place. Very often you get things in your mind and you wish they were never there. So you need to watch.
So we don't allow our minds. We need to Garrison for our minds in the in the armor in the 16th of the 6th of Ephesians. Rather it tells us the loins heard about with truth so that I believe this is important. The lines girded shoes on your feet as they often say, the shoes on your feet that keep your feet from getting dirty if the load is dirty that you have to walk through.
00:25:28
You have shoes on the end of the day. Your feet are dirty. Maybe your shoes are, but not complete because those shoes were your protection from picking up dirt. And you know, brethren, we have to walk through our world. It's awfully easy to pick up here. It's really a very defiling world. I feel sorry for children and young people, parts more than those of us who are older, because some of us don't have to meet the world in the same way. But you younger ones need to go to school. Some of them, some have to go to their employment.
There's a lot of things, and you really need shoes on your feet that you don't pick up, that you found out that you have to wade through.
All all the time in a world like this, so they would keep out to be violent by having shoes. It's interesting in the Song of Solomon how the bridegroom looked at the brides feet and he said I'm beautiful. Our live feet with shoes called Prince's father. He knows that she had shoes that would keep out, but if I'm not other places where she had to walk.
And it says your staff in your hand. That's dependence. I believe the staff, just like the person, carries a cane. And you say, well, why are you carrying that cane? Well, if you're a little unsteady on my feet and I don't want to have a fall, so the gap and carry a tree.
Well, it's interesting here that it doesn't just say all the people you know, It says your shoes and your feet and your staff and your hand. And I often wondered when they left Egypt, if you know, didn't all have a step. Because it doesn't matter what your age is. Old people can fall, young people can fall, any of us can. That we don't lean on the Lord.
It says preserve the old lot, for indeed life of my trust you may have long faithfully for a long time.
But the person who carries that staff, right, probably 9/10 of the time, he doesn't need it, but it's going to be a time when he does. And so he carries it last becomes the point where he's a little unsteady or something's in the way. And so we need it all the time, but every day.
We need to be dependent and solve its nose. He shall leave it in half in haste. The reason for that was they were expecting marching waters. They were going to leave Egypt, and they were going to leave Egypt for good. They were going to start out for the promised land. And we're waiting for that too, rather than aren't we? We're waiting for the marching orders. We're going to leave this world for good, perhaps sooner than someone else might expect.
The Lord is coming. Well, so I just wanted to mention these things about the Passover. So as I say, there was a blood that made their homes safe. It was simple resting on what God said that gave him security in their souls. But God wanted them to enjoy a peace, and he wants us to be happy Christians. He wants us to enjoy the knowledge and the constant population with what He has done for us.
And that's the way we feel on him. We we all understand how feeding is making a thing your own. You go down to a nice meal, sit there, there's the food in front of you. Doesn't do anything unless she is. And God provided a lot of good food for us as Christians. But it doesn't. It isn't enough just to know about it. You can know a great deal about the truth of God. Some of those satisfials have been people who knew a lot about the precious word of God.
But it's feeding the planet that makes it our own that becomes part of ourselves. And that's what the Lord meant. Either eateth me, even He shall live. That is, as we make Christ our own in a practical way, then we have the strength to live in a world like this as Christians. So I stay at the end. The Council, I believe, brings before us the enjoyment of what the Lord has done for us.
By that work that he accomplished on the cross of Calvary, the enjoyment of it is so precious.
It's our it's our theme here.
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There's a little song that we sing sometimes and put in scenes of glory. The glory I sing, the new, new song will be the old, old story that I have loved so long. What we sing in heaven and what we sing down here, but we enjoy in heaven and what we enjoy in part down here is the same gossip person.
It's the same glorious work. And so the Passover brings that before us, I believe. Now let's turn over to Exodus 16.
Here we have above the mass.
That.
First in line.
Moses lake on there on the same underwear stand alone congregation of the children of Israel come near before the Lord.
He hath heard your murmuring, and came to pass, as Aaron mistake under the whole congregation of the children of Israel, that they look toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. The Lord is faithful to Moses, saying, I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel speak unto them, saying, that even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread.
And you shall know that I am the Lord your God. And it came to pass that and even the quails came up and covered the camp. And in the morning the view lay round about the holes. And when the Jew that lay was gone up, he rolled upon the face of the wilderness. There lay a small round thing, as small as a hoard cross on the ground. And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, it is manna. But they was not what it was. Moses settled to them. This is the bread which the Lord had given you to eat.
This is the thing which the Lord had commanded Gather up if every man, according to his eating an Omar, for every man according to the number of your person, is taking every man for them that are in his tents, And the children of Israel did so, and gathered some more, some less.
When they did meet it with an Omer, he would have gathered much, had nothing over, and he had gathered little, had no luck, and gathered every man according to his eating. Moses said, let no man leave of it till the morning.
Understanding they hearken not unto Moses, but some of them left of it until the morning, and it bread worms sang, And Moses was rough with them, and they gathered it every morning, every man according to his eating. When the sun blacks hot, it melted.
And the 35th verse.
And the children of Israel did eat and have 40 years until they came to a land inhabited.
Until they came under the borders of the Land of Famine.
So here as I said we have a mana and to read in the 6th chapter of John. I won't take time but it speaks about your father's did eat manna and the wilderness and our dad. Then the Lord Jesus said I am the true bread who came down from heaven, that a man may eat there out and not die.
So this man was the wilderness food, as we noticed at the end of the chapter.
It continued through their passage, right through the land, until they entered the land of Kingdom, and brings before us the pathway of the Lord Jesus. It tells us in John about him being the bread, and then he tells us too in Peter's epistle that he left us an example that we should follow in His steps, and in Hebrews that he is the captain of our salvation.
And that he was in all points tempted life as we are sent apart. So I believe the manna then brings us before us the pathway of the Lord Jesus is the food for our souls, and also as that which gives us a pattern and strength to go on.
You know those that the people murmured, and the Lord answered it by sending this man what we often remember when difficulties come in our wilderness life, because rather than we're going through the wilderness too. This world is a wilderness slide. We have nothing to see for to choose. And it's very, very easy, when things get a little difficult, to murmur and complain. And we see two things the Lord sent the quails and the quails.
00:35:03
Made them safe That we find from another place in the book of numbers. And more than that, it tells us also in the Psalms. He gave them their desires. He sent leanness into their souls. You know, sometimes we're getting problems and we think we're just straighten out. This matter. The way I like it, it'd be so wonderful. But sometimes if we got our own way, it wouldn't be for the best. Sometimes we have to admit.
That when the Lord gives us our desire, it sends leanness into our souls. It doesn't really satisfy, in other words.
And so it's good for us to be content with the provision the Lord makes for our pathway. Because if we murmur and complain, that displeases the Lord, and if we think that the way to get this problem solved is the way we think best. But to me, it's like the fails when we get them, they don't satisfy, they don't bring the happiness that we expected.
What the Lord said to Manna and that continued, and more than that, tells us here. Perhaps I should have read the 33rd verse.
Moses said unto air, And take a pod, and put an almost full of manna therein, and lay it up before the Lord to be kept for your generations. The Lord commanded. Moses saw Aaron ladies before the testimony to be kept. And if you remember, when the ark was built in the mercy seat on top of it, And in that ark was placed the mammal I, remembrance of how the Lord had fed them all through their wilderness. And there it was.
In the in the Ark.
I believe that when we get home to heaven, we're going to remember the way the Lord LED us.
We're going to recall all those circumstances that the judgment seat of Christ. We're going to see the wisdom and love of all God's ways. They'll be lost for anything where we only wanted our own way. Because it says if any man's worth be burned, he shall suffer loss. But if any man's worth abide, he shall receive a reward. And so there, if we just have a long way and live for ourselves, we'll be lost in that delay. But.
This man, when I was, her remembrance of how God had them there in the wilderness. There's a few details about this that are.
I believe important for us to notice it was very small. It must have taken a little bit of difficulty to gather it. You know, for big pieces they could gather very quickly, but it definitely took a little energy. Don't you find it takes quite a bit of energy to have time to read God's word? It seems that it really takes energy because there's so many other things brought into our minds. Everything we've got to do this. I've got to do that first thing, you know, you squeeze out anytime.
That needed for the reading of God's word, and it says when the sun came up, it waxed hot and then it melted. So you know we do need to feed on God's word and we need that portion for our souls in order to go forward and meet the difficulties of the way. And you just think of yourself in different situations and.
If we just ask this question when we meet a situation, how would the Lord Jesus act in this situation? You'll find his life in that all kinds of things in order to be a pattern for us. We see people don't appreciate what I do. Well, they didn't appreciate what the Lord did always say. People say things that hurt me. The Lord said, reproach has broken my heart and full of happiness, always say a friend let me down.
Well, the Lord Jesus said, give it to an enemy. I could have worn it, but my own familiar friend Judas betrayed the Lord. And so the Lord has been through all these things that we have to make. He was hungry, He was thirsty, he was weary, He faced all those things in his pathway, and that's the food. And when we meet these situations, isn't it lovely to be able to look up to him about and know for that he went through?
Those situations before us.
Have a feeling nobody understands, nobody cares. But there's one above who says I'm through it all and I'll supply the grace and the help that you need. Phyllis comes early under the throne of grace that we had obtained mercy and find grace to help in time of need. But you might say, well, I don't have time to read very much either gathered little ignorant and that says.
00:40:18
Well, I I read several chapters this morning. Well, he had doubted much, had nothing wrong. The question was to measure it into the owner. I don't believe they found out until they measured into the Omar which was the need of a day. And you know, I could read 5 chapters and just go away like James says and forget what manner of man it was. More you may only read a few and like the clean animals, they chewed and cut and.
Often found maybe just read a few verses. There's one verse that sticks with you. That verse was what you needed for the day. In a special order. You measure it into your owner which will need to the day. And then I say this to parents. It says in the end of the.
16th verse.
Every man for them which are in his fence. And so this is a family thing now that is, as individuals we need to gather. But let me say this for those who are parents, how important. But there is a reading of the word in the family gathering. The man that's just for us, older ones and parents, but for the children too. And so fine here that there was full provision. They couldn't keep it all work.
Because.
His little poem that says tomorrow's race and strength I can't borrow, and why should I borrow its care? So you can't really do it for tomorrow. What you read is for the day. What you read tomorrow will be for tomorrow's needs. I don't mean that you can have it stored in your mind, but I believe the thought is that it needs to be a fresh thing.
Day by day. So all this instruction was given to them. And then there's another interesting thing. There was no manner that fell on the on the Sabbath day. Now for us, of course the Christians day is the first day of the week. But I think the idea perhaps is that someone might think well monthly busy during the week but when the Sabbath comes by I'll sort of catch up on what I.
Didn't do through the week because.
They couldn't workout in the fields in the Sabbath day, so had a little more time and they might think, well, as the man would just fall on the saddest day, then they could make up for what they had failed to do through the week. But really, I think it's the same with us. I don't believe that we can make up on Lords Day for what we failed to do through the week. Nice to read our Bibles on Lord's Day. I believe that we ought to read it each day, but I believe that the point is that you can't sort of catch up on the Lord's day. We need to do it day by day.
Those men, as I say it, continued all through their wilderness journey and.
And then it tells us that it was laid out there before the Lord, and how wonderful it will be when we remember, like Israel all the way the Lord our God LED us. Now let's just take a few minutes with Joshua where we find about the.
Children did well.
Verse chapter 5 and verse 2.
At that time the Lord said to Joshua, make these sharp knives and circumcise again the children of Israel the second time, and Joshua made him sharp knives and circumcised the children of Israel at the hill of the forest skins.
But this is the cause why Joshua did circumcise all the people that came out of his Egypt, that were males. Even all the men of war died in the wilderness. By the way, after they came out of Egypt, all the people that came out were circumcised. But all the people that were born in the wilderness, by the way, as they came forth out of Egypt, then they had not circumcised.
It says in the eighth verse it came to pass when they had uncircumcised and all the people that they abode in their places in the camp till they were whole. And the Lord said unto Joshua, this day have I rolled away the approach of Egypt, the mafia. Therefore the name of the place is called Gilgal under this day the children of Israel in Campton, Gilda, and kept the Passover in the 14th day of the month, and even in the plains of Jericho.
00:45:17
And they did eat at the old corner of the land on the Morrow after the Passover, unleavened cakes and parched corn in the self same day. And a mammoth ceased on the moral after they had eaten of the old corn of the land, neither had the children of Israel manna anymore, but they did eat at the fruit.
Of the land of Canaan that year.
And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes, and looked before there stood a man over against him. With his sword drawn in his hand. Joshua went unto him and said unto him, Or thou for us, or for our adversaries? And he said, Nay, but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come, Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said unto him, What saith my Lord unto his servant?
The captain of the Lord's soul said unto Joshua OSU from off 5 foot to the place where I'm now standless, He's holy, and Joshua did so.
Well, I'd just like to say a little about the children of Israel and during the land of Canaan. We know that they passed through the Red Sea when they came out of Egypt and sang on the banks of the Red Sea. And I believe that the Red Sea brings before us Christ death for us. And that is the death of Christ brings us outside of this world. It says he died that he might deliver us from this present evil world to the longer part of it anymore.
Then we have dilimess experiences.
We think about the Lord. They have to deliver us from judgment as the Passover. You think it probably helps us in all our wilderness experiences, but here we have them coming over and entering the promised land in figure. I believe it brings before us what we have in Ephesians.
Ephesians, as many of us know, is not really a wilderness epistle, But that is, we don't have the experience of the wilderness, but rather to enjoy the fact that God sees us already seated in the heavenlies in Christ. He sees us as already in the enjoyment of the land, that is in the enjoyment of what our position is in Christ, and so that looks just above.
Full of him puts it nicely. If here on earth the thoughts of Jesus love lift our poor hearts this weary world above that. Yeah, as I mentioned before, it shows that we're not viewed as an Egypt. We're not going through the hardships of the wilderness. The Spirit of God lifts us above to enjoy those things that are alive. Or Christ sits at the right hand of God, perhaps all of us.
We.
We're so happy when we were saved and then we have a lot of problems that we have to meet in wilderness life. But if you ever come to the meeting and you almost forgot all the problems as you just sat there and enjoyed your portion up there in the heavens, You enjoyed the time when all tears would be wiped away when you get home there in the Father's house. And you almost forgot that you were here in a wilderness full of trouble because spirit of God lifted you above those things.
That's why it says the man is ceased. In other words, when you're enjoying heavenly things by, you don't hardly need somebody to be comforting you about the problems because you're lifted above them in the enjoyment of Christ. I sometimes tell a little story that helps me to see the thought. There was a young man and he was visiting in the hospital, and he perhaps had an unusual approach, but he said that this old lady that he was visiting.
Are you going to heaven? And she said I was there today and he was sure she didn't hear. So he said a little louder the next time. And again she said I was there today, the third time being sure that you couldn't hurt. He said really loud And she said I heard what you said, but I was just lying here from my dad and I was just enjoying heaven as I lay here. And he didn't have to comfort her for her problems. It doesn't mean that at times she didn't need the comfort. We need the whole 3.
But there are times when the spirit of God lifts us above trial and feeds us up there with heavenly things. Now you notice previous to this there was the circumcising that took place. Perhaps I could say, when they crossed the Jordan. It's what God has done. He has put an end to my old standing. He has brought me into an entirely new position.
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For us in the favor in the beloved one, then. So I believe that Jordan tells us that those stones were left in the bottom of the Jordan, and they're there until this day. And thank God, Lord, I have the old nature within me. In God's account, by old man is crucified with him. It's in the bottom of Jordan. God doesn't see me in that world standing. He sees me in a new standing. And so they took the man. You know, Joshua should say.
Put the stones in the bottom of Jordan and brought them up to their lodging place, then pitched them together, and to you and I realized, like Colossians said, dead and risen with Christ by then. Before I say the wilderness of those experiences are we we lifted above them. But I believe, rather than that the circumcision is the practical application of this in our lives.
Before God it's a fact. We die. And someone has mentioned that these three verses need to be put together. We are dead, and your life is hid with Christ and God. And then in Romans 6 reckon yourselves to be dead and be unto sin, but alive unto God. And then the third one, always faring about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus. The first one is what God has done, the second before we lay hold of it in our souls.
But the third one is that it's a daily thing with us.
And if I let that old man which I should recommend, act in my life, it's going to hinder my enjoyment of heavenly things.
Until I got right with the Lord that's going to hinder and saw those sharp knives that they made are the practical application of this in our lives. But that is putting the life on self. It's something of the thought in 2nd Corinthians 4 where it says.
Always very close the body. The dying of the Lord Jesus at the length also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. And so why do they make these knives? To deal with the people of the land? No, to deal with themselves. So lift the knife on self and you know whether we'll never be in the happy enjoyment of our portion in Christ up there, unless.
We constantly practice self judgment. Someone has said self judgment is the inseparable condition of a God in communion with the Lord. So those knives were to be used themselves. And it tells us we are the circumcision, which worship God by the Spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. Please, they didn't have to go out and fight the enemies, yes, but first.
Lift the knife on itself. And then when they won a victory, if they didn't go back to Gilgal, the next thing was defeat. Because just like when they won that victory of Jericho, they thought, oh of course it's wonderful warriors, we just need to send a few men over to that little city of AI. We can easily handle that. And they went there and got defeated and they had to come back to Gilgal. They had to lift the knife on self. Something had been allowed.
It was a hindrance to victim itself had been allowed instead of been put in the place of death.
So through the death of Christ, our old man has come to an end before God. But circumcision, brethren, is the practical application of it in our lives day by day. And everyone of us have a self within that's holy, so bad that God himself hasn't attempted to improve it. God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and forcing condemns in the flesh. And it was so bad that.
That it was crucified with Christ.
I say come use you or I expecting this old man to change, because it'll never change. It'll never change. It just needs to have a nose constantly on it because it wants to pop off in every situation that comes. Or perhaps we get proud and things we'll have to handle that problem. All right, then we find that we can we have to get before the Lord and realize we can't do anything in our own strength, and that's what we have on the end of the chapter.
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After this, circumcision had taken place and the word Guildhall doesn't mean low, but rolling, that's what you're looking to margin means rolling. In other words, it's a constant thing rather that when a self exerts itself in our lives that we put the knife upon it. If we have failed, just like with the children of Israel, and they can take that wedge of cold and things, then it had to be dealt with and we have to deal with.
Self coming up in our lives and that's what self charging is. We have to deal with it because lights to assert itself likes to say I'm somebody, I'm important. I can do this where we all have that within and we can easily be let us say aside because Amalek is a picture of satans power over us through the finish. If Satan wants to get a victory over me, he works on that fallen man and it should be in the place of death and if I haven't put it in the place of death.
It's got some material. They were coming and what do people see? They see old self instead of the life of Jesus.
See in their bodies the life of Jesus. And so is it lovely at the end of this chapter.
The Lord appears as the capital of the host, and Joshua says, art thou for us or for our adversaries? He said. Hey, as captain of the Lord's host will never be right unless they own the Lord Jesus as the captain. As the woman, Walton said, there's one person who has a right to tell me what to do anytime and every time.
As the Lord Jesus.
Had given us and he is the captain of our salvation. And so he appears here and it says here he fell on his face and did worship often said you can make a simple test of any doctrine that's presented if it is all man or does it exalt purpose. And so with things in our lives, are we doing it to set self forward? Are we thinking that we're better than somebody else and the Lord has to show us again and again?
Well, that flesh.
And so it's nice here to see what Joshua said. What saith my Lord unto his servant? And he said, Loose thy shoes from offside feet, for the place where on thou stand was his whole site. In other words, here is the man who was the captain of the holes down here upon earth, who was leading. And what must he do? He must come to himself, and be resident in the presence of the world, And it doesn't matter who the person is.
Maybe it's a very important person in Christianity, but if we don't take the humble place before the Lord.
We're nothing in ourselves. And so after they had learned this, then what did they enjoy? They enjoyed the fruit of the land of pain. They enjoyed the store that was there, the horn of the land of the harvest that had been weekly. They enjoyed it. And then what was freshly coming off that year, they enjoyed it too. And the Lord wants you and I to be enjoying heaven. He wants us to be in this world as heavenly men.
There's a war along now. It's very easy to get occupied with it. Don't mean that it doesn't interest this because we see God's movement in these things, but you know, the one who's over at all, he's just accomplishing his own purposes. Isn't a blessing to be able to look out. The men of the world are puzzled and know that the captain of the Lord's host, he's leading. He's the one, and he's going to accomplish his own purposes.
And it's not going to be very long until he takes us away and then.
The kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. He's going to deal with this world in righteousness, man castrating the things out. God may use them to bring about temporary situations, but nothing will be really settled until the Lord Jesus has his rightful place. I will overturn and overturn it. It shall be no more till he shall.
Leviticus 13, 14
Gospel—G. Hayhoe
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118 Thoughtfully and tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me. Patiently, Jesus is waiting, watching, watching for you and for me. 118.
And watch it. Watch me for you and for everything.
I want.
When I.
Got there and updated and buried me in the house is. Probably.
The most standard.
Of all I don't know.
I'd like to turn tonight to the also the Whitaker and the 13th chapter.
13th chapter in the.
First verse And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, saying, When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh arising **** or bright spot, and it's he in the skin of his flesh like the plague of leprosy, then he shall be brought unto Aaron the priest, or unto one of his sons the priest.
Look on the plague in the skin of the flesh, when the hair and the plague is turned white, and the plague insight be deeper than the skin of his flesh is a plague of leprosy, and the priest shall look on him and pronounce him unclean.
Verse 12 And if the leprosy break out abroad in the skin, and the leprosy cover all the skin of him that has the plague from his head even to his foot, wheresoever the priest looketh.
The priest shall consider, and behold, if the leprosy have covered all his flesh, he shall pronounce him clean, that at the place it is all turned white he is cleaned. Then the 14th chapter in the first verse.
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And the Lord speak unto Moses, saying, This shall be the law of the leper. In the day of his cleansing, he shall be brought under the priest, And the priest shall go forth out of the camp, and the priest shall look. And behold, if the plague of leprosy be healed in the leopard, then shall the priest command to take for him that is to be cleansed.
Two birds, alive and clean, and cedar, wood and scarlet and hyssop. The priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water. As for the living bird, he shall take it cedar wood and the scarlet, and the hyssop, and shall dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water, and he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy 7 times.
And shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose into the open field. Neither is to be planned. Shall wash his clothes and shave off all his hair, and wash himself in water, that he may be clean. And after that he shall come into the camp, and shall Terry abroad out of his tent seven days. And it shall be on the 7th day of all his hair off his head and his beard and his eyebrows, even all his hair he shall shave off.
He shall wash his clothes also He shall wash his flesh in water He shall be clean, and on the eighth day he shall to he lambs without blemish. And one you lamb the first year without blemish, And 3/10 Deals of pine flour for a meat offering mingled with oil, and one log of oil. And the priest that makes him clean shall present the man that is to be made clean, and those things before the Lord at the door of the Tabernacle of the congregation.
And the priest shall take one he lamb, and offer him for a trespass offering in the lives of oil, and wave them for a wave offering before the Lord.
And he shall slay the lamb in the place where he shall kill the sin offering and the burnt offering in the holy place. For as the sin offering is the priest, so is the trespass offering. It is most holy. And the priest shall take some of the blood of the trespass offering, and the priest shall put it upon the tip of the right ear of him that is to be cleansed upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot. Dupree shall take some of the log of oil.
And pour it into the palm of his own left hand. And the priest shall dip his right finger in the oil that is in his left hand, and shall sprinkle of the oil with his finger 7 times before the Lord. And the rest of the oil that is on in his hand shall the freeze put upon the tip of the right ear of him that is to be cleansed, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot, upon the blood of the trespass offering.
The remnant of the oil that is in the priest hand, he shall hold upon the head of him that is to be cleansed.
And the priest shall make an atonement for him before the Lord, and the priest shall offer the sin offering.
Make an atonement for him that is to be cleansed from his uncleanness, and afterward he shall kill the burnt offering, And the priest shall offer the burnt offering and the meat offering upon the altar. And the priest shall make an atonement for him, and he shall be clean. And if he be poor and cannot get so much, then he shall take one lamb for a trespass, offering to be waved to make an atonement for him. 110th deal of fine flour mingled with oil for a meat offering and a log of oil.
And two turtle dogs or two young pigeons such as he is able to get, that one shall be a sin offering and the other a burned offering.
Well, we know that in God's word he often uses sickness as a figure of sin, and so we find different things in the word of God. I believe leprosy brings before us the defiling character of sin. Palsy brings before us how man is helpless. A man with palsy feels very helpless. And then when a man has died, the Bible speaks of us being dead in trespasses and sins. And so there were different diseases that people had in each One of them was a picture.
Of the different kinds of different characters of sin, helpless.
Defiled dead and leprosy was, as I say, this depiling character that was so horrid in the eyes of God, so very serious too. Even in the eyes of people sometimes there are people who are sinners and everybody says, oh, I wouldn't mind anything to do with a person like that. But there are other people that are called respectable sinners. Yes, they pass in society as being all right, but in God's sight.
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Every sin is serious.
God cannot have even one sin in his presence says about heaven. There shall in no wise enter into it anything that be final of either whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie the day that are written in the lambs book of life. And so we know that when Adam Sam just once he was shut out of the garden and eat too just for one sin. And so let us never look lightly on sin. But as I say, God uses these different diseases that afflict the human race as pictures.
Of something far, far more serious than sickness, and that is the disease of sin.
So important in God's sight that, as I say, He cannot even look upon sin, tells us He's of two pure eyes to behold evil and cannot look upon sin.
The reason I read those verses in the 13th chapter are because if we didn't understand the grace of God, we would wonder why it was put in that way. Here's a man, and he has one spot of leprosy, just one spot, and it brought to the priest, and the priest pronounces him unclean. And here's another man, and he's covered with leprosy from head to foot, so the priest can't even find one clean spot. And to the surprise I'm sure it'll all he says. That man was pronounced clean.
You say, well, just what does that mean? Well, you know, we meet many, many people who taught something like this and say, well, I know I'm a Sinner, but I don't think I'm that bad. I don't think God would shut me out of heaven because I really, I'm not as bad as a lot of other people that I know.
Just like those two men who went up into the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee. And he said, I thank God I thank thee that I'm not, as other men are extortioners, unjust, or even as this publican. I fast twice a week I give ties of all that I possess. He He didn't say that he wasn't a Sinner, but he dwelled upon his good works and felt that he would be acceptable to God. But beside him stood a man who had nothing good to say about himself at all.
He didn't say, well, I'm not covered in leprosy. I'm not covered with sin. No, he took his true place and it says he wouldn't even look up to heaven. He just looked down and he smiled on his breast and he said that God be merciful to me, a Sinner, and I want to say to everyone in this room tonight, if you think there's some goodness remains in you, why you're going to cling to that little bit of goodness and hope that perhaps everything will be all right in the end.
But when you see yourself as God sees you covered, as it says in Isaiah chapter one, from the crown of the head to the soul of the foot, there is no goodness but wounds and bruises and putrifying sores. When you see yourself as God sees you and say like that sinful woman.
Sad truth, Lord, when you just accept God's verdict of your condition, then God has good news for you. He has perfect cleansing for you. He can make you so acceptable to him that his holy eye will not find one spot upon you. Because one who has been cleansed in the blood of Christ is so clean that God can pronounce him clean everywhere, cleanse from all sin in the precious blood of Christ.
Dear friends, that's the gospel. There's a great deal being preached today of telling people that they're trying and they're doing the best they can. Just keep on and everything will be all right. Just like the man who has the one spot, but the person who's willing to say I have no goodness to present to God. I'm nothing but a Sinner covered with sin in the soul of a holy God. But I feel my need a cleansing, and I come to the only one who can Cleansing.
Lord Jesus, Then there is salvation. Then there is perfect cleansing.
How important it is that we realize this, because when we see ourselves in the presence of God, we are willing to recognize this. This holy eye sees everything it says in Job chapter 33. He looketh upon man that if any say I have sinned and pervert that which is right, then he is gracious unto him.
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Deliver him from going down to the pit. I have found the ransom, but the man says I'm going to try to get better. I'm going to turn over a new leaf. I'm not all bad. Oh, the man who says I have sinned then he's gracious to him. So these verses in the 13th chapter show us that the man who realized his true condition can be cleansed. And the 14th chapter brings before us in picture God's way of cleansing.
It's not man's way, you know. It's God's way. Man's way is always identified with something that he can do. Isn't it amazing how people will think of something as soon as you start to talk to them about spiritual things? They'll tell you that there are church member that they give to every good cause or they sing in the choir or something. They'll always bring up something like that. But here we find that God meets the one who is willing to say.
I have sinned. I'm covered with sin in the eyes of a holy God.
So it tells us here in this 14th chapter, the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, This shall be the law of the leopard in the day of his cleansing. He shall be brought unto the priest, and the priest shall go forth and out of the camps. What a beautiful picture this is. Who is?
The true great High Priest, the one who himself has taken up and settled the question of sin. Or I think most of us in this room know the answer. It's the Lord Jesus, the one who tells us he's able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him. And so this man is brought to the priest. And where does the priest take him? He takes them outside the camp. And as we read in Hebrews chapter 13, it says.
Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the cap bearing his reproach. Where was the Lord Jesus crucified? Outside of the gate of Jerusalem, outside of all those ordinances that were connected with the Jewish worship the woman made the sacrifice, for sin was outside all that.
Because it wasn't possible that the blood of bulls and goats would put away Sam. And so it was necessary that the Lord Jesus, the only one who could cleanse us and fit us, was taken outside of all that. And there he was on Calvary cross. It was true that the hands of wicked men put him there, but God had a purpose, because on that cross of Calvary the Lord Jesus was to be made sin for us.
That we might be made the righteousness of God in him. That's what was in God's plan as far as man was concerned. He wanted to get rid of him, but as far as God was concerned, God was going to turn that wicked act of man and our hearts were no better. Is going to turn that into the way of blessing for sinful people like you and like me. So this man we see he's brought outside the camp and the priest looks and it says.
Healed, He's taken his place as a Sinner. And now it shows us here in what follows, the ground on which this man could be pronounced clean. And so when we understand what the Lord Jesus has done, we see that God has provided A righteous basis by which he can bless sinners. And so here we find in this beautiful picture that's brought before us here, tells us here that the priest commanded that the date would take two birds.
Alive and clean in cedar wood and scarlet and his socks. It took two birds to fulfill a type because the Lord Jesus elderly, died for our sins, but he was raised again for our justification. And as we read this story, one of the birds was killed and the other carried the blood of the bird that had been filled up into the open sky. So we can see a very beautiful picture of what we have in First Corinthians 15.
Christ died for our sins. He was buried, and he rose again the 3rd day. And it says in Hebrews that when he had made satisfaction to God for saying that he took his place, he seated himself at the right hand of the throne of God.
The Savior who died for me has entered, heavenly tells us in Hebrews also.
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He entered heaven by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption for us. And so this is a bird comes down from the sky, is put to death, and the other one carries its blood up into the sky. So the Lord Jesus came down from heaven.
It says that in John chapter 3. It says the Son of Man who came down from heaven and the Son of Man who is in heaven. He came down. He was born in Bethlehem, laid in a Manger, walked his way through this world and went to Calgary and has gone back to glory. So what a lovely picture we have in this type in the Old Testament of our precious Savior and what he has done to meet our need of guilty sinners before God. So these.
Birds were taken for the man that had the leprosy. Yeah, that was the very purpose. Why did the Lord Jesus come? We often sing in the little hymn. He left the brightness of his home for sinners such as I rejected. And a stranger here he came to God. He came down as he said, not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many. So it was for this very man that these birds were taken.
Alive and clean, but they had to be clean birds because you know, the sacrifice have to be without blemish.
If the Lord Jesus had one sin of his own, then how could he meet our need as sinners? But he was the Lamb of God without blemish. In him is no sin. He not only never sinned, but he never could. He was the Holy One, all the fullness of the Godhead dwelling him. He was perfect God and perfect man in one person. And so the birds had to be without blemish and it had to be a perfect sacrifice. Nothing else would do.
Only a perfect sacrifice. Then it says cedar wood and scarlet and hyssop, Well, these are figures. God uses also to bring before us pictures of man. I believe the cedar speaks to us of man in his greatness and the scarlet of man's glory and the hiss of really man's littleness. And you know, there are people in this world who think they're very important.
Some years ago and the days when they used coaches and horses, there was a hole in England and the and the man had a man who worked for him and a man who worked for him, Got said he had done tried to testify to him about the Lord Jesus and the way of salvation. And he said, do I have to be saved in the same way as my coachman? He thought he had some special preference because he was a great man.
But I want to tell you, the President of the United States are the greatest and Sinner in the whole realm has been saved in the same way. Man is a great that has to come down. Zacchaeus climbed up a tree, but the Lord said make haste and come down. He didn't get the blessing till he came down. And so it doesn't matter whether a man's highest in society or at the bottom of society, It doesn't matter who he is. It's got to come down. And so the cedar had to be sprinkled with the blood.
And then the Scarlet, a lot of people that they really are quite glorious, you know, they it's not just exactly man and his Grace, but you know, there's a lot of nice pleasant personalities in this world, people you like to meet, people that really are nice to do business with and everything. Maybe not like the president, but they're sort of nice people, you know, and you enjoy talking to them, but you have to tell them that they have to be saved in the same way as the violence center. There's no other way.
So even scarlet, it had to be sprinkled with the black. And then there's somebody who might say, well, no, the Lord would have no interest in me. I I'm nobody and I'm a great Sinner. Yes, the Lord has an interest in the highest and the lowest. Yes, who's whoever will. And so we see here a picture of the Savior and we see man brought down to be sprinkled with the blood. And so it tells us here.
The priest shall command that one of the birds be killed.
In an earthen vessel over running water. This is interesting because.
In 2nd Corinthians 4, our bodies are compared to earth and vessels.
And the Lord of glory, the creator of this world, the one who upholds all things by the wordiest power, came down and took an earthen vessel. It says in Hebrews a body as thou prepared. Think of the one who made this world, who upholds all things by the word of his power. Come down into this world, and take on a body like yours and like mine, only simplified.
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How marvelous. And so tells us here that the that the birds was to be killed.
In an earthen vessel, the Lord Jesus, a man here in this world that God at the same time was the one who was nailed to the cross. And the reason it says over running water is because water in the Bible is a figure of the word of God. And if you've read the account in Matthew, you'll see over and over again. It says as it is written, as it is written because the Lord Jesus being crucified was fulfilling.
All those Old Testament Scriptures that hold about his coming Scripture told where he would be born, told above it is crucifixion. Long before there was such a thing as crucifixion, told Hollywood, Pierce his hand to his feet, told how they would give him vinegar to drink. He was He. He just fulfilled all those Scriptures because he was the one who came to meet our need. And God had been foretelling this all to the Old Testament.
So it says it was killed in an earthen vessel over running water. Then it tells us, As for the living bird, he shall take it, and cedar wood, and the scarlet and the hyssop, and shall dip them in them, and the living bird in the blood.
Of the bird that was killed over the running water. And then in the end of the seventh verse it says and shall shall let the living bird loose into the open field. So I say again, we have this picture. Let me quote the verse again. Christ died for our sin.
He was buried. He rose again the 3rd day, and he's gone back to heaven, and he's seated at the right hand of God. He entered by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption for us. As I say, the cedar wood and the scarlet and the hyssop all had to be sprinkled with the blood. God only has one way of salvation, but now we read in the seventh verse. In the first part he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy.
Seven times, and shall pronounce him clean.
Seven in the Bible is the perfect number and it just brings before us how that when a person has been cleansed in the precious blood of crises, perfectly cleanse, perfectly cleansed, so much so that the eye of God can't see one spot of sin upon the one who has been claimed. Remember hearing about little boy, 7 years old and he had been to Sunday school? His parents were not believers.
And he had learned that beautiful verse, the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanse of us from all sin. This little boy took very sick and.
The doctor had to tell his father that it was so serious that he didn't believe the boy was going to recover. This was bad news to the father, of course, but he felt he should tell his boy what the doctor had said. And so he said to the little boy, he said, The doctor has told us that.
It is in the fridge. We're not going to recover that. We're going to die.
But he said he'll be all right with you because you don't have very many sins.
The little boy had been to Sunday school. The little boy had learned that verse. The blood of Jesus Christ, his Son cleanses us from all sin. And best of all, he had believed it. He believed it was true. And so he looked up in his father's face and he said, Daddy, I don't have any sins.
Well you know thoughts went through his father's mind. 7 year old boys been disobedient quite a few times probably and saw he looked down. He smiled and said well not very many and the boy looked up again and he said, daddy, I don't have any sins. The blood of Jesus Christ, his son cleanse us from all sick. That was simple faith. This is a boy or girl here if you put your trust in the Lord Jesus.
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Them, you're clean. The priest here and a man was friendly, who pronounced him clearly. He pronounced him clean. So if I can put it this way, the blood made him clean. The word that was spoken to him. Paid insurer. That little boy, 7 years old, he had assurance. Why?
Just because he took God of his word, he didn't have doubts. Sometimes all the ones get dealt because they try to reason for. This little boy just simply took God at his word. Then there was another older man getting very near the end of the journey, and one of his sons said to him, he said, Dad, do you have any doubts Now in this picture, this man was sprinkled with the blood, the same blood that had been carried up into the sky. This blood valve was put upon him and he's pronounced clean.
How wonderful words must have been, as the priest said beautifully.
Well, how wonderful. And if there's anyone here tonight that feels your sinful condition, this is what the Gospel Meeting is for. To tell you what the Lord Jesus has done to save your soul, to give you assurance, to make Him know that you're fit for His holy presence through the blood. So now he's pronounced clean, The bird is let loose into the open field. But this man hasn't done anything up to this point.
He hasn't done anything. The priest has looked at him. He's taken outside the camp. The birds are killed. The blood is sprinkled on him. It's somebody else doing everything for him. I'm friendly. You need to realize this, that as far as being made clean before God, it's not what you do. It's what another does for you. And that's the Lord Jesus. He did it all as we sang. Jesus did it all. All to him. I owe Sam had left.
A Crimson stain. He watched me let us know. But now, does this man do something? Does he? Does he do something to make himself clean? Now he's already pronounced clean, but now he begins to do something. And you know, after we're saved, why there are things that we can do. We can show our gratitude to the Lord. We can show our lives that we belong to Christ. We can be worshippers, as we find in this chapter, but not to be saved, but because we are.
If you read in Ephesians chapter 2, it says by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. The next verse says which got perhaps I should read it because I'm not going to quote at this rate Ephesians chapter 2.
First hand for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus under good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. You can see very clearly here that good works follow salvation. They don't go before it, because all our righteousnesses are I still be brave.
But after her say, then there are good works. There are works that God can accept once you have been saved. Her little poem that says, I could not work my soul to save for that my Lord has done. But I would work like any slave for the love of God's dear son. And so now this man has been pronounced clean. Now he washes his clothes. Well, in the Bible the clothes are used as a figure of the associations of life.
We use them too, as people work clauses about sporting clause. We speak of clothes for special occasions, and the Bible speaks in that way. It uses clothes in that way as being associations of life. And so this man had become accustomed, I suppose, for a long time, of being associated with levers. He didn't care if his clothes were all leprous, because that was where his association was. But now he washes his clothes.
Just like we read in the book of the Acts of Odd Saul of Tarsus.
Group of men on his way to Damascus to bring the Christians bound to Jerusalem. But the Lord saved him on the way down. And where did he want to be? He wanted them to be with the disciples. He was with them coming out, coming in and going out of Jerusalem. You know what? You're saved. Then you want to be with others who love the Lord. You never did before, but you wash your clothes and say, now I want new associations, new friends.
00:35:06
Because when you're saved in the family of God, you're one who's on your way to heaven. And so this man now he washes his clothes and shaves off all his hair. Believe this is a little picture in all your hair grows within. And So what have been growing from within before he was brought to the Lord, why he put the knife to that? You know we have within, I'll say they fall in nature. And just as your hair grows out from those roots, so why does a person sin?
Because he has something inside that wants to sin, and the outward sin is only because you have something inside that wants to send, wants to send. You have and I have. We were born with it. The fallen nature that loves sin.
So now this man applies the knife to what comes from within, so he shaves off his hair.
He flies the knife, I say to that which came within. And many of us in this room know that if we didn't, if it were saying no to some of those things that come from within, he wouldn't be acting like Christians. We'd be living in the way we did before the Lord saved us. And so he he shaved off all his hair, bathe himself, and he washes himself in water, says that he might sanctify and cleanse it by the washing of water, by the Word. After we're saved, there's the application of the Word of God to our lives.
I would say I got a instruction now in God's Word. I can find out from my Bible how I can please the Lord. And so there's a practical washing with water that takes place in our lives after we're saved.
Says after that he shall come into the camp, and shall tarry abroad out of his tent for seven days. But it shall be on the 7th day, that he shall shave all his hair off his head, and his beard, and his eyebrows, even all his hair he shall shave off, shall wash his clothes, also he shall wash his flesh in water, and he shall be clean. I believe that these this ninth verse springs before us, that.
And time proves that the work is real. And just to illustrate what I'm saying, some of the brethren in this room know John Burton. And you know, I happen to be there the night that John Burton was saved. And Brother Martin, whom perhaps some of you know, was there also at the meeting when he accepted the Lord as his Savior. And Mr. Mr. Martin made a little note in his diary and kept a diary and made a little note in the diary, somebody told me afterwards.
Tonight a young man named John Britain confessed the Lord as a savior. Time will tell if the work is real. Well, many of us who know him know that it was proved that it was real. But you notice here that this man was a big change. But seven days later he even went a little deeper, shaved out all his hair and his beard and his eyebrows. In other words, as we got to know John Burke a little bit better, future changes that took place in his life at once.
But as time went on, more and more we saw that evidence that he wanted to please his Lord and Savior. And it is very beautiful to see this. And it tells us here that he tried abroad eight of his 10, seven days. Do you remember when Solid Tarsus was saved? He came to Jerusalem. The brother wouldn't believe that he was saved. They said, Oh no, not this man persecuted the Christians and says they were all afraid of him. But Barnabas came and said, I can vouch that this person was really saved.
He's shown the fruit of it in his life. So you see that time proves the reality. When it's a work of God, it stands the test of time. When it's only something that's superfluous, that is sometimes people say, Oh yes, I'm saved, but as you watch their lives, you really wonder. But as you see a person going on growing in grace, then you know the work is real. Now, God doesn't need that evidence because God knew the very moment. John Burton's opponent in his heart to the Lord.
God knew the very moment that it's all there. But the Bible says, by their approach ye shall know. We only know by the fruit that we see. And so this man was very proof that others could see that they saw him no longer associating with lepers, choosing different company, and showing that he wanted to be different than he had been before. And now it we come to this tenth verse, and he wants to be a worshiper.
00:40:12
It says on the eighth day, the 8th day, you know, the Lord Jesus rose again from the dead the first day of the week, spoken out in Scripture sometimes as the 8th day, seven days of the week. And the 8th day brings before us new creation, the beginning of a new week. And so this man who had once been so defiled with leprosy, now he's coming as a worshipper. And no, the Lord delights in this. He saves us.
Puts our sins away.
And then he delays that we should come, like a few of us did this morning. Why did we come here? Well, we came here to thank the Lord for what we have done for us. He didn't bring like this man brought a lamb without blemish and two tents of fine flour and so on. We didn't bring those things.
Those were only types and shadows in the Old Testament. But what we did seek to bring was an appreciation for what the Lord had done for us. We came here. We came here as worshippers. He didn't come to get saved. We didn't come here to get a better standing before God, you know, He came here just like this man. He has now been cleansed and He comes. We notice here that he can only come to the door.
Congregation why does it call attention to that? But you know, under the Jewish ritual there was no one but the high priest once a year who could come into the holiest of all. But now the veil has been right. When the Lord Jesus died the veil is read back to we often sing that lovely in the mail is ran. Our souls drawn here come to a throne grace. The merits of the Lord appear. They fill the holy place.
As we signed this morning, the holiest, we enter a perfect peace with God, to whom we found our center in Jesus and his blood. So we see this man coming in. All those different offerings were pictures of different aspects of the work of Christ.
That is, when we think of the burnt offering, we think of what that work was to the heart of God, telling out God's heart to us in all the wondrous grace that is there. And we think of the sin offering. We think of how that work that he did met our needs.
And we think of the meat offering. It brings before us how he became a man, and down here in this world he walked in this world as a man and suffered there on the cross, bearing our sins in his own body, on the tree. What is the peace offering? It's now that we are once enemies of God, and we are not enemies any longer. Sometimes the peace offering is called the communion offering, and that so we delayed to think about the Lord.
You don't run and hide from like Adam did, but now there's communion between God and man because.
Our very best friend is the Lord of Jesus, and so that peace offering was a communion offering. And so these offerings. And as we worship, we worship in those different thoughts. We think that the Lord is the one who put away our sins. We sing in lowly in the danger He lay when we think of His humanity.
And then we think to the glory he brought to God his Father in settling the question of sin so that the Father's heart might be told out. We wished with all those different characters. And so it's very lovely to see this, because this man came and it mingled with Oilers. It's the Spirit.
Kissing sometimes no heart but of the spirit taught makes melody to be and we might have a fire and have people who are trained singers who can sing much better than any of our voices. But the Lord values that which is by the spirit in our class. Not just entertainment of very nice scene but but comes from your heart and mind that is true melody to the Lord and that's why it speaks about it being.
Mingled with oil.
So he brought all these offerings, because now he's a worshipper, and now we see something of the further effect of it in his life. And what is the 14th verse? And the priest shall take some of the blood of the trespass offering, and the priest shall put it upon the tip of the right ear of him that is to be cleansed, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot.
00:45:09
Notice here how this blood was put on his ear, and it was put on his thumb and it was put on the great toe of his right foot. What did this bring to us? Well, it tells us in Perinthians that we're not our own. We're blocked with a price, and that price is the blood of the Lord Jesus. This is we sing. We are, by Christ, redeemed. The cost is precious blood. And so that man with the blood on his ear brings before us. The Lord said, take heed what you hear.
You know, there's a lot of things being said in this world. I say this to the boys and girls and young people to know you go to school and you go to the office and you go and hear all kinds of things and you know some of them much better that you don't hear them. Always remember that word the Lord Jesus said. Take heed what you hear. And it tells us in Proverbs, when you see something wrong going on, it says avoid it, pass not by it, Turn from it and pass away. And I think every Christian in this room will agree.
That we have heard things that we wish we never heard. They come back to our minds. At times we wish they didn't because we let our eager to something perhaps that we shouldn't. And you can't get rid of it. It's there. And so the blood in his ear would be a reminder. Be careful what you feel.
Careful, it's going to make a lodging place in your mind. And any of those things, as I say, you wish they weren't here, you wish you'd never heard them, and then to here was his thumb. Every time he put out his hand to do something, perhaps somebody said, what's that on your finger? Always said I was a leopard and I was surprised.
Wouldn't that make a little careful what he did, what he thought of how he had been cleansed from that horrible disease, you know, And you and I put our hand to do something. Let's just think the blood on my thumb. Am I. Am I going to forget that I'm not my own, That I really belong to the Lord?
And then you want to go somewhere. And he took his first step. There was that right hand, that right toe, and the blood was there, a reminder that he was a cleansed leopard. And the cost of the blood, the blood of the trespass offered. And so you can see how this pictures to us, our whole life, things we hear, things we do, places we go and how you might say, but that's kind of difficult at times.
Harder to make a choice sometimes about these things.
Well, that was put on top of the blood. Priest had a marble boy on. He took some of that oil and he put it on top of the blood on his ear. There was his thumb, and he put some oil on top of the blood on his thumb, and he put some oil on the top of the blood on his foot. He said. I find it hard to live the Christian way. You and I can't do it in our own strength, but God has given us power, Lord Jesus.
Said that he would send his Holy Spirit. And he said he shall receive power. After that the Holy Ghost has come upon you, and he shall be witnesses under me in Jerusalem and Judea, the other most parts of the earth. And you know, if I rested on my own power, I'm sure I break down many times. But then you say, Lord, I can't do this. It's too hard for me. But, Lord, I need thy health. We have all the power.
In the Holy Spirit of God, God giveth not his spirit by measure. And so as a believer you not only have been redeemed by the blood, but after that you believe you were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise. He had unction from the holy life and so he had the power. Every Christian has the same power. When you say why don't all Christians live devotedly for the Lord anything else and say it's something like my automobile. I think I have a fairly good engine in my automobile.
But I could very easily spell on the hill. Probably. Say, why? Well, just don't step on the gas. Just when you start to go up the hill and it gets a little steep, don't use the power that's there under the hood. Don't step on the gas and your car will stop. But there's plenty of power there. But you didn't use it. And every Christian has the power. We have the power, brethren, but we don't always use it. We just rely perhaps on a salad. Or we.
Don't ask the Lord and say Lord help me. We don't ask Him to give us the training. We don't ask him to preserve us from sin. And so we fail. Well, he's made provision for that too, that we can be restored. But I'm only Speaking of the provision that was made. And then it tells us after you've done that, then it says in the 18th verse, and the remnant of the oil is in the pre sand shall pour upon the head of him that is to be cleansed.
00:50:25
And the priest shall make an atonement for him before the Lord.
No, this was done the cleanse leopard. It was also done on the priest, and it was also done when a person was anointed king.
And you know, that's what God is made-up. It says he has made us kings and priests and the God and his father. Every believer is going to reign with Christ. I often say people get upset about the garage and the things that they do and get a little bit concerned about it at times. But I often say just be patient. We're going to rain in the first righteous government the world has. The world has never had righteous government.
But a king was going to rendezvous righteousness and he said we're going to reign with him. And that keeps us from getting so upset at what's going on because we know that the Lord is going to take his place When the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. That makes us patient and all the unrest and confusion that we see. And then to every believer is a priest, it says he a holy priest to OfferUp spiritual sacrifices.
Acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
When a Jew came, he had to give what he brought to the priest, and the priest offered it for him. But in Christianity every believer is a priest. Every Christian who sat in the meeting this morning with the Lord in the mids could OfferUp his spiritual sacrifice of praise. And he could be there as a holy priest, and then before the world that says we're royal priests, to show forth the praises of him who have called us out of darkness.
Enjoy his marvelous life. Who is this man? A man there was once. Leprosy from head to foot. Just think of a tremendous difference. And that's what we are, right? We're sinners, saved by grace. We're brought into this wonderful place, and not because of anything that we have done, but because of what he has done for us. But we can respond. We can wash our clothes. That is, we can say, I want to choose the company of Christians in my life, and I want to be concerned about the things that I do and the things that I hear and the places where I go.
Because I really belong to the Lord, and I have a place as a worshipper around him gathered to his precious name. All this was the portion of the man.
Then that goes on. Just a little comment before we close, says the 21St verse. And if he decor and cannot get so much, then he shall take one lamb for a trespass offering and 110th field, and then in the 22nd verse and two turtle doves or two young pigeons such as he is able to get here. Isn't this lovely that God made provision for the man who said well, but I really can't, I can't provide to he lands.
I I just, I'm too poor. But the Lord said then I'll accept 1 lamb for a trespass offering said I couldn't even provide that Well he said then you can bring the smallest 1 turbo dogs and young pigeons you know sometimes older brethren may.
Enjoy some of these things in a fuller way and a young person might say, well, I'm afraid to go up in my feet and thank the Lord because I just don't know how to express myself very well. I I'm not sure whether it would be acceptable because I don't enter into these things like perhaps some older person does. George says it's alright, but this man just brings the turbo dowser young pigeons. It it speaks of Christ and So what we present in worship.
Is Christ maybe our apprehensions feeble? I think some of us feel that maybe we are just offering turtledoves and young pigeons, but the Lord valued the turtle dogs and young pigeons. It's nice when you grow in grace and learn more about our Savior because He wants to teach us more of the wonders of His love and the truth that He's given us in His word. Because you don't have to wait until you're a mature Christian before you can praise Him. Thank you.
00:55:02
So the man the God brings before us, shall I say the fullest down for him, because God wants us to grow. In fact, the purpose of ministry is that we should grow to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That is, God wants us Christians to have a growing appreciation of our blessed Lord and Savior, but He always leaves room for growth. And so how beautiful it is to see that God made provision in the end, even for the one who could only bring the turtle dogs or young kids and.
So I want to say as we close, if there's anybody here.
Would not say. Does anyone here tonight who feels the burden of your sin and knows that you have something worse than leprosy? Because if your sins haven't been put away, you have a far, far worse disease than leprosy. You would just be horrified if you saw some people who are suffering with leprosy and see the awful condition they're in. But in God's sight, your condition is worse if you're not cleansed from your sage. But there is cleansing tonight. There is cleansing. The Lord Jesus Precious Lord is available for use.
Be willing, like that leopard, to come. There's no provision for you so you can be claimed. You can go out of this room and say, I know it. Love Jesus Christ has cleansed me from all sin. He brought me into perfect acceptance. And for those of us who know Him, may we also grow, embrace in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
For the same #111 Once again, the Gospel message from the Savior you Mccurge it is you. The invitation will return and seek the Lord 111.
And now it's driving.
You can't speak your side.
Maybe we can do anything.
I'm just kidding.
The Remnant Exercise
Address—D. Gorgas
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Now let us run. Never tired.
Thy presence shall our comfort be thyself.
Our sole desire.
Our present Savior, while your fear and our sin can come.
In our year.
So I can call attention to that third quarter students, a very precious unchangeable.
My gracious love, our earthly path, has ceased with you.
There knew our feeding heart to move and tender mercy still pursued. If it's ever with us, may they abide.
Those of sin.
That we saw 10166.
Lord, thou hast drawn us after.
Whenever time.
Like president shall more comfort me.
Myself, our whole day, heart.
Our price and say good day, One Lord fear nor sin can fall.
Here for our dear Lord.
Save your wild heart here.
Nor sin, and from.
Unchangeable.
What gracious Lord.
Peace bless you.
Where you are being take heart killers.
Why had their mercy?
Silver swim.
Nothing work with.
God may make a heart.
A close class day and cry every time.
Never when life.
To malify.
Just for a couple of verses. I don't want to spend much time in Malachi, but.
You just turned to Malachi for a minute or two.
First chapter is Malachi and the first verse.
The burden of the word of the Lord.
00:05:00
To Israel by Malachi.
That expression arrested my attention.
Some years ago and I've meditated on it.
And.
I thought of it this way.
God put a burden on the heart of Malachi.
Connection with the word that he had for his people, and what kind of a day was it that now by?
Was called to minister among the people of God wasn't the days of Solomon an all the glory of Israel was was the fame of Solomon went throughout the earth. And there was that bright and beautiful testimony that emanated from the temple that Solomon built in that glorious time of you might say that apex of of the.
History of Israel.
No, you know, it wasn't that.
Was it even the days of?
Ezra and Nehemiah.
When there was that calling back to the time of.
To the place and to the testimony that God has raised up, even though it was just the people that were Remnant, and they came back and took hold of things in effect and real way. No, it's not those days. Things had come down to the very lowest point, far away.
The Old Testament.
You don't have to read far in this book, and we're not going to occupy ourselves with it tonight because I don't think you and I have to be reminded about how low things were in Israel in the time of Malachi.
And I think we feel in some measure how low they are in the.
State in the Lord's people, speaking generally and with respect to those of us who.
Bless and privilege between God within the end of the Word, Jesus Christ.
It's indeed a low day.
Just a little hint of it is given in.
In the various challenges that God gives to the people of Israel, things like a son honors his father and a servant his master. They're six. If I then be a father, where is mine? Honor by be a master, Where is my fears that the Lord host?
Unto you, O priests that despise my name. And what's the response? Wherein have you despised our name? I think if there's anything that characterizes the Book of Malachi.
It's an insensitivity to the state of the people of God.
It's heartbreaking.
God lays something before them and they say in what have we done this? How did we do this?
Beloved brethren and sisters, that is not.
A healthy state of things, not even to recognize what the Lord was so lovingly and graciously bringing to their attention, seeking, to arousing them from the terrible condition that we're in.
Another scripture that comes to mind is.
God says my name shall be great in verse eleven among the heathen.
There's 12 That ye have profaned, in that you say the table of the Lord is polluted, and the fruit thereof, even his feet, is contemptuous.
And you also said what a weariness is it?
You brought that which was torn. I don't think you could get a bleaker picture.
And as they say, it's not my exercise to dwell on that, because that doesn't help us.
By itself, we've got to recognize it, but we've got to see the background against which this book is written. But what's the first point in the burden that God laid?
On Malachi, it's just unbelievably gracious.
00:10:02
Verse two, I have love you.
I have loved you and beloved, if this could be anything that will encourage us and correct us and renew our affections, it's the knowledge of his life for us that's what God would blame us.
Oh, it's true, they said. We're in. That's about one place.
We even called and questioned the love that he had passed forth.
But that was the burden, or the beginning of the burden. I should say. I am lovely. That's the basis on which God is speaking to the minister, basis on which he speaks to you to make tonight I love you.
Isn't that a wonderful thing to lay hold of who God loves us?
And how he is proving that wasn't true.
Is he married?
Have we even comprehended it? No. I'm afraid that many times we say I don't see the word loves me. He loves me. Why is this happening? Why is that happening?
But he lays that down as the faces. I love you except the Lord. I don't know about you, but that's an encouragement that no matter how dark the condition, no matter how discouraging the day in which our lot is cast and beloved brethren, I'm convinced that we are not. And you don't. You and I don't have to debate this point. We know it. We're not in the days of the apostles. We recognize that.
Everything has deteriorated from those wonderful days.
But we sometimes forget that we're not even in the days of the recovery of the truth when there was a fresh taking hold of things in the past century, when God worked in such a wonderful way. And I don't mean to despise either what he did at the time of the Reformation. Those are bright spots, and they're encouraging.
And that very same truth you and I have the privilege of maintaining, but against the backdrop of total ruin and departure. What a privilege.
But the thing that he assures himself right at the very beginning is I love.
I have loved you.
Keep in mind that whole black bleak picture and let's turn it over to the.
16th verse of the third chapter verse we often.
Read together and I love this course. I just.
It is such food for our souls and such an encouragement to us. But there's a word at the beginning of that verse that we sometimes don't notice.
That when?
When in the midst of that condition of things.
That was such a burden to Malachi that the Lord had laid on him to bring out into.
And to charge Israel with in the midst of that when you could very easily say what's the use, why should we carry on, why should we try anymore? Everything is all falling apart and you know there's giving up on every side and the enemy is attacking this and you know I, I.
I was heartbroken. I was talking to him.
Brother the other day and told me about someone I loved very much, in fact the fellow that's related to me, the flesh, he said. I just heard that. He says I'm finished with brethren, I'm not going on with bread, and anymore I'm tired.
Oh, what an awful statement.
Here it says Then in the midst of all that then they that feared the Lord.
Take off in one to another. They didn't give up on things.
They had sweet communion together.
And believe me, I don't believe after reading this verse carefully that they sat and talked about troubles among the people of God. I don't think that was their occupation at all. That's soul destroying president and we're still trying to do it in front of our children. And I think we make a great mistake when we do. I know you have to talk about things.
Things that have to be spoken about. There are conditions that have to be addressed, but let's be careful that we don't become occupied. In fact, I think the Spirit of God is bringing before us here. Beloved brethren, and I trust will agree with me that their occupation was with him. They're speaking to one another often.
00:15:23
That was so appreciated by the Lord was not a question of hashing over the troubles that were among the people of God, but I believe that they had their souls taken up with the glory of the Lord.
They had their souls taken up with what was due to him.
I think that's why it says they they feared the Lord, but they feared the Lord in the midst of this careless condition of things.
What? What a weariness it is. And how have we just advised the table of the Lord? How have we polluted it? How have we done this? In the midst of that, there was this little company of believers that fear the Lord, and they spake often one to another.
Many just talk to one another after meeting on some reviews. The expression, I mean, we're not talking about somebody here, of course, Lord, we're talking about the people of Israel. But it wasn't just, well, I saw you at the Temple last week, you know, or the synagogue and we had a few words on the way out the door. I don't believe that was the thought at all.
I believe they took every opportunity to encourage one another to and to speak to one another, and to bring before one another the claims that and the value there is in the name of God, the name of Jehovah, and of course for us is the precious name of Jesus.
And the word heart. It's a sobering thing that the Lord hears everything you say.
I've sat down sometimes at a conference and trust I'm.
Saying this, I sat down at a conference in between meetings and I appreciate those times of fellowship at the conference almost as much as the meeting themselves as the opportunity to sit together and talk together at a table or.
A little after meeting or a little time perhaps in a hospitality room or something like that. A very valuable times. But sometimes I've gone back to my wherever I was staying and I've said to myself, have you stopped to think the word, heard every word that you said to me.
Did you speak gratification to your brethren, or was it rehashing of difficulties, or or was it discouraging to them? Did you encourage your breath? The Lord hearkened and heard, and the book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord.
You see, that's the first thing that's brought before us about these people is that they feared the Lord. Twice In this verse, he's mentioned that they feared the Lord.
A lot of our difficulties from our brethren is believers are that we have not been walking here before.
We are not walking in the spirit of the Lord, and I'm not saying this to discourage anyone, because the last thing I want to do is discourage someone, but for exercise that there is a lack of fear of the Lord. May the Lord increase that fear. I was just reading an encouraging verse, and I as I was reading it, it just brought before me a fresh.
Time when Charles Krauss and I were talking. And this goes back a lot of years. It goes back to when Frankel remember we were just reminiscing before the meeting 38 years ago. Frank wasn't.
When we were in the army together. I wasn't even gathered at the time, but I remember Charles Krauss mentioning to me a verse.
Be valid. The fear of the Lord all the day long and that has stuck with me. I've gone back to that verse over and over again. That's the secret of a life that's pleasing to the Lord.
Is to walk in the fear of God.
To be concerned for his place, his brains, his glory. To have that before our hearts so often. What's before us? When I speak for myself, we have to answer for yourself. What is before is very often is how do I look to the others. It's not how how I maintain God's brains in this matter. How am I concerned about what is due to the Lord in these things?
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And so twice in this verse it speaks to those who feared the Lord in the thought upon his name.
Fought upon this nation.
All that that name brings before us, and this is the name of Jehovah.
And our occupation is with that one whose name is Jacob.
It was a lot connected to your life and beloved as to what his name represents.
And that's where God would have a soccer player. Now, I'd like to cast from this scene that perhaps is a little bit, you might say, on the negative side. And I don't intend it to be that way. But you know, brethren, we can, we can say, well, we don't want any negative ministry. And if we do that, we're we're really in some ways criticizing the word of God because the word of God has a lot of negative ministry in it.
But it isn't solely made. It has as its object the restoration of our affection for Christ. And if God has to bring something before us that hurts and that exercises is, it's not to discourage you. It's not to turn us aside, but rather to stir up in this fresh affection for the person, to praise fresh love for him, fresh care. As to our war, it's a good thing sometimes to look back over our lives and and and think about things. The second of Jeremiah brings that line of things before us. God says, I remember when things were a little different with you.
What's happened? Did I change?
Graciously thought to challenge us in that way. Have you found something in me?
We have to answer no, it's not being married. It's us. It's us.
We're the ones, and it's good for us to look back over our lives and take stock of things and get into the Lord's presence. And that's always the object of the ministry that God has for us that we might call negative. It's never the discouragement of the people of God or the imposition of legal requirements on our beloved brethren. That isn't the thought at all. God wants to stir anew in our hearts that affection for Christ that would produce.
A life pleasing to him.
Does he parking? He surely does. He's written it down and I'd like to take the amount 400 years beyond this point. 400. We call them the Silent Years.
Because God was silent as.
Revelation is concerned doing this, so 400 years and take you on to where I believe that story of that little group in Malachi 316 is brought out again. For our encouragement, let's go to the Gospel of Luke.
Who are these people? Who are these that feared the Lord and the thought upon his name? And you know, I'm delighted as I've meditated on the early chapters of Luke to think that the spirit of God, whatever whatever record he has, and I'm sure it's a wonderful record of these things in in heaven, I believe that also he has given us a record on earth.
Of the same company. Morally, what do I mean by that? I mean that the people that you see in the beginning of the gospel of Luke.
Are the very same people, morally, that God was speaking about, and all during those 400 silent years, I believe that He lets us know that there was that little company of those who hear the Lord and they fought upon His name.
Don't you want to be part of that kind of company? And at the end of Luke, I don't want to get ahead of myself, but at the end of the Gospel of Luke, I believe the Lord Jesus, and reading them out to Bethany takes that same little Jewish remnant.
And takes them out to Christian ground, so to speak.
Puts their gaze upon himself in glory. And then we go to the second book of Luke and we find the cooling out of that people for his name that we know as the Christian assembly. And it's a delight to our souls to see how the spirit of God puts his finger on that little fruit. You don't find him in Matthew, because what Matthew is laying before us are the claims of the king and the rejection of the king.
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By the nation of Israel, and it's a very solemn picture. But you do find you in Luke. I'd like to just notice a few of them for encouragement.
Let's look at the first chapter of Luke in the fifth verse.
There was in the days of Herod the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias of the course of obvious, and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth, and they were both righteous before God walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blames. Now we could say a lot of things about these two, but the things I'd like to just call attention to first of all.
Is that the Spirit of God pulls attention to the fact that they were obedient in a very practical way to the Old Testament scriptures. God had told them they were to marry within their tribe, and they find that Zacharias at the course of abya with legitimate priesthood in the courses of the priesthood establishment. David.
And Elizabeth were of that triumph of the daughters of Aaron, and they were therefore obedient to God in that wonderful way. And then the verse 6 which is very precious, they were both righteous before gone.
Now that's one sided things. I believe that brings before us to stand.
Not in the false sense of the New Testament, of course, where our standing is so much more secure and clear. But nevertheless, they were righteous before God, and then it goes on to say, walking, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blames. Does that mean they were perfect as far as never airing or sitting? Well, I don't think you have to go far in this chapter to find it. That Zechariah's your man that he was, He failed and believed it.
And the Angel has to give him a governmental.
And a sign of that and giving them to be done until God had worked past that which he did not take hold of fully at the time. But I think the point is that they had a good testimony that went along with their standing. And you know, beloved, I think that's the first thing that the spirit of God be presented for us in connection with the little remnant that we read about in Malachi 3. Not only do they have a perfect standing before God.
That they walk consistent with that.
And they didn't pick and choose among what they'd like to obey. It says, well, commandments of an unworthy of the Lord's language. That is, I believe that within the limits of their human frailty, I believe it is. Zechariah has put it very practically. But Zacharias and Elizabeth read something in the word of God that they had in their hands, which was the Old Testament. They said, oh, let's walk. And they did.
To the glory of God.
It wouldn't that be nice if that was true of us.
God expects that He doesn't. He hasn't let down his standards, no matter how things have gone in those years since during those 400 silent years. And we know that when the Lord came on earth, he found no real fruit.
There was nothing really for God speaking nationally, wasn't it?
That's the side of things. It's very solemn. You can't looking for food and there's nothing.
Oh, what a delight to him.
And to our souls that here was this couple, that in spite of the general ruin, in spite of the general failure, they were not only blameless, they were not only righteous before God. As to expanding what they were angels in a practical way in a war. And I don't know about you, but that exercises my heart.
Because I believe that's what God has something to say for us about practical righteousness.
Then I'd like to know this first aid, because I think it goes along with it and it came to pass that while he executed the police office before God in the order of this course.
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Just like we're stuck there from home.
Point out that this man.
Fulfilled his priesthood.
You and I have sat in the presence of the Lord with all the blessed truth of the universal priesthood and believers known to us defended by us.
Perhaps even ministered on to others that are not with us.
When we sit there sometimes and.
And the one year where the priest.
We're the priests.
Where are the ones that are exercising their priesthood?
That are fulfilling Mr. Darby's translation says that they that he fulfilled his priestly service before God like just like to challenge each one of the SO sisters and now I can I don't have to listen No, I don't believe that's true at all. You have to listen just as well every one of us as we come here.
On the.
Especially on the Wednesday morning, it's Gavin around that blessed one to remember him in his death.
There is a priesthood and there's there's there's a fulfilling nothing. And God would exercise our hearts. The little remnant that He brings before us in Malachi 3, and in particular this one example that I think he takes each one with a little lesson to be learned. And in the case of Zechariah, we learned that he fulfilled his priestly service.
Before his brethren? Is that what it says?
We do that sometimes. I don't know about you, but I do sometimes more conscious of fulfilling it before brethren, before God, when we fulfill our priesthood, eliminates before God, before God, and then it says in the order of this course.
Well, there was a due order. We know that David establish those 24 courses of the priesthood and the Abbia was the 8th one of those.
Way from that, it's it's not original to me, but William Lincoln has very clearly, I think, calculated the birth of the Lord to be sometime in the month of September based on the priesthood of Zechariah being when it was and taking all the dates and filling in the times. And I don't believe the spirit of God occupies us with that. But I just suggested that if you stop to think about it a little bit, you'll see that perhaps the word came. He's Tacernacles. What a wonderful thought.
That is so, but at any rate.
In the order of this course. What's the order of our course?
You see, God had an order in the Old Testament that was in the 24 courses of the priesthood, and they each had their two weekly biweekly.
Service to serve before God and Abby didn't. Obvious priesthood Zacharias. Priesthood of the course of Bobby. He didn't come up in, let's say in the middle of September and say, well, you know, I'd like to take part this month and only did it in the order of his quotes.
Well, what is our order? We don't take turns and we don't say, well brother, someone so close to bread. Last Lords day. I guess it's my turn this week. No, that isn't the order of things in the New Testament, is it? And the order of our course is as led by the Holy Spirit of God.
May we be exercised by them.
And then it causes tension to the fact that in verse 8 his lock was deferring incense when he went into the temple of the Lord.
And we don't go into the temple, do we, in the sense of what they did. But as we come into the presence of God, what is it that we're bringing? Self or insects?
What does incense speak of? Oh, it speaks of the fragrance of that blessed one.
More of his perfection.
Which goes up to God as a sweet savor, all that. That might be our occupation in our priesthood, that we might burn that instance before the Lord, that we might do it in the due order of that course. Now, I said, the sisters are kind of part of that part of the priest. Of course they.
And dear sister, I'm sure you know it. I'm just going to repeat it because sometimes we forget it your state.
00:35:01
As you come into the presence of the Lord affects the state of the assembly.
The package goes up to God.
Christ.
I'm sure there are other brothers here who have had the experience, and I have been having a dear sister come up with any after the meeting and study all. Brother, I'm so glad you gave up that hand. That was on my mind and I was thinking about it and just meditating on it and I was thinking, oh Lord, even if you want to pull up a brother, to take that out.
And it's just brought tears to my eyes.
It's brought tears to my eyes because I know in my heart.
But it was on her heart 1St and the Lord took it from her heart and put it into mind.
Wasn't me. It was the state of that dear sister that led to that him being given out on the police for God for the wars that allow for God.
It was due to her state of soul in the presence of the Lord.
It's been an encouragement to me. I just mentioned that to the sisters. I'm sure sometimes you think, what point is it to come have to be quiet. I can't say anything. All your state contributes in such a wonderful way.
To that praise that goes up from the assembly, where the brother who speaks only speaks is the mouthpiece of the assembly.
It's a sad thing if we're sitting there going through the hymn book looking for a favorite and.
That is, that isn't fulfilling our priesthood before the Lord and the reorder of our courses.
You know it's God delights to take the praises of the assembly through the Holy Spirit and audibly present.
Gone through the mouth of the brother, or through the whole assembly, singing to him what a wonderful thing that is.
Brethren is so substitute for God, all the human organization and and human arrangements and putting hymns up on the board. And I don't deny sometimes the brother says to me, don't you think I'm addicted that that the minister who's sitting there selecting those hymns that isn't before the Lord about it? Well, that would be a mean thing to say that he isn't.
How much better, how much better to let the Holy Spirit gather those things up from the from the company of the Lord's people and presented to God using whomsoever He will. What a blessed principle. That is what I don't want to delay to going on that. Let's go over to the.
26 words and the first degree.
And in the sixth month the Angel Gabriel was sent to God unto a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph of the House of David. And the virgins name was Mary. And the Angel came in unto her, and said, Hail thou that are quietly favored, the Lord is with thee, Blessed art thou among women.
And when she saw him, she was troubled, his saying, and casting their mind what manner of satisfaction this should be. And the Angel said unto her, Fear not married, for thou hast found favor of God, and behold, thou shalt conceive of women, Bring forth the sun, and shall call its name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the highest. And the Lord God shall give unto him in the throne of his father David. And we shall reign over the House of Jacob Forever.
And of this Kingdom there should be no way.
Well.
Comment on a number of things in this, but I'd like to point out about your daughter and that I believe that we as those who are rejecting excesses of Catholicism.
Sometimes.
Bad to understand that this woman is indeed blessed.
Among women, among women, that is not out of the place.
But God would not have us in any way despises this chosen vessel. What a privilege to carry.
The Lord Jesus Christ.
In his manhood.
Under her heart for nine months and a careful hands this human needs, They want to say too much because we're treading on very holy ground when you talk about it. But I think we want to keep that in perspective and realize what a wonderful privilege it was for her to be that chosen vessel. But you know, God calls attention to something that's kind of despised and laughed at today. But I just want to read it without comment.
00:40:25
Any young people here tonight? Because there's a few and.
And I just want to be sure that we notice this. It says to a virgin styles to a man whose name is chosen.
Yeah, just leave it there for your conscience.
God does not sanctuary.
Anything that would violate that?
That work?
Point that we have in the 27th verse.
It's laughter. It's made fun of today.
God highly favored that woman, and he held.
She was a chosen vessel.
Say that the whole truth.
The whole truth of the sinless humanity from Lord Jesus Christ.
Kindness upon that fury.
Practical theory.
In court case.
That is.
The truth as to the sinless humanity of the Lord would be impuned, or other than what the Spirit of God gives us here.
Now there's another thing about her verse 38. She says, you hold the handmaid of the Lord we want to be according to thy word. And Major departed from her, And Mary arose in those days, and went into the Hill Country with haste into the city of Judah, and entered into the House of Zechariah, and saluted Elizabeth.
Time to say they want to skip over a few verses and get down.
To 56 and Mary a bogey are.
About 3 months and returned to her own house.
The Angel comes and would like to picture this with me. The Angel comes Gabriel and he makes this wonderful announcement to her and immediately after she learns about Elizabeth.
And finds out that it was six months apart.
Names of total six months.
Very practical.
Blessed Resolved.
She picks up and she goes to her elder Kim's woman.
For two purposes, I can believe. I don't think I'm stretching strictly to say this.
For practical help to her in a difficult time, remember she was an older lady. She went to her for practical health. I think of the world the wonderful revelation that she had just received.
To fellowship with her and you could see what they talked about. Did they talk about things about the practical side of of of of the children and when what they were going to do? That's perfectly proper. There's nothing wrong with that. That's one of the delights of motherhood. We have 13 grandchildren. And sometimes I, I, I enter into more a little bit of connection with the grandchildren. What a joy it is to think about the coming of the child and all the things that you've connected with that the practical side of it, the naming of the baby and all of these wonderful things that happened. And I don't want to take away at all from that, but, you know, there was a higher level too.
Of their community.
Had to do with the glories of that blessed One.
And what God has done in fulfilling His Word and at last, after all these centuries, making good the promise that he made in the third chapter of Genesis in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's just beautiful, and those three months must have been precious for both of them and encouragement to Elizabeth at a difficult time.
It's interesting that Mary doesn't stay into the baby's boy.
She leaves and goes back, and I don't know if I'm right on this. I've talked to some brethren about it, and I'd rather think it's so. I don't think that the Lord revealed the matter to Joseph until Mary got back. I've read it carefully in all the gospel accounts, and I wouldn't press the thought on my brethren, not in any way. I just suggested, for your consideration, that she perhaps spent that entire time.
00:45:20
In her own personal exercise with the Lord, shared only with Elizabeth as to what she had learned.
Because when Joseph finds out.
And if you think about the timing of it, now that Mary has been carrying a child about three months.
Comes back.
Now The thing is evident, and now Joseph says it.
I don't know what to do.
And he's put through a test. He didn't know what the situation was. He was upright. God honored him for his uprightness.
Didn't leave him in doubt very long.
But there was that little exercise.
I think it's just sweet to think about what a communion they must have had together once the Angel had.
Appeared to Joseph, considered Joseph.
Don't fear. Take care that your wife. There's nothing wrong there. I'll tell you what happened. I believe it was a great rejoicing in the two of them. I don't think I'm stretching scripture to imagine lesser time they must have had sharing together the evening the communications that each one of them had received independently. I'm sure of that. As to the timing of it, I can only suggest to it.
It seems to have been a time of testing in between.
To appearances, at any rate, what a wonderful thing it could be when they shared together what God had done and when he was full delight, acknowledged her as his wife.
Well, with Passover, the rest of that chapter and we'll come to the second chapter and the eighth verse.
The scriptures are so well known to us that you can ensure safely Passover the details and leave that for your own personal reading. But I'd like to read.
Verse 8 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
I've often imagined this scene I had the privilege in 1968 to.
To go out on what they call the shepherds field and that's not him.
Everybody else is flocking to the Church of the activity at so last place I'm going to go. I did go in. I was sorry I went afterwards, but.
What I I don't think because someone they took me down into the grotto where the Lord was supposed to have been born and all adored with silver and and priests around, all around lights playing on and all this sort of pageantry. And if it was replacing, perhaps it was.
It just stayed growing and I preferred myself. I went out on that little field and I tried to think about those shepherds faithfully watching over their flat spraying.
And I believe that's another characteristic of the little remnant that we have in Malachi 3 is faithfulness and the responsibilities of America is committed to us. There's a care for his sheep.
Some of us were talking at supper time tonight.
We're crying, really for shattered upon God's people.
Thank God for every faithful shepherd.
Thank God for the local brothers too, who in obedience to.
The word communicated through Peter and through Paul are shepherding the flock of God. There was a moment taking the oversight. Thank God for that. But there's a real need of a loving in that faithfulness, and I believe the little remnant.
That God notices and pays attention to Luke as if he's saying here are the individual characteristics.
Of that little company that I brought before you with Malachi 3, here they are seen in their details. Here are the particular things that I want to call attention to, and I'm not pretending that I've gathered them up with any sufficiency, But there's a few of them there, aren't there? There's things that exercise our hearts, and these men were there, abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by money.
00:50:16
It's a dark day.
And the enemy? Whoa.
See the higher our office.
How do it? The shepherds are busy too. Watching. It isn't so much what we do as it is a watchfulness, and it's important.
And I I think there's a precious thing in what the Apostle Paul says. They watch over your souls as those that have to give an account.
A brother or sister is concerned about me.
And they're watching over my soul. I ought to realize why they're doing that. They're doing it because they have to give an account to God.
There's a day of reckoning coming. There is a Chief Shepherd who's going to appear, and he's going to reward those who are faithful in the carrying out of that responsibility of watching over the fly, and especially beloved in the night in which our mind is cast.
How important, how pleasing to God it is, if there are those who are faith in that.
Well verse 9 And lone Angel of the Lord came upon me, and the glory of the Lord shone round the balcony.
An Angel said unto them, feared not. For behold, I believe good societies of great joy, which shall be to all people who know. That account is so precious that I want to go down to verse 15. And it came to pass as the angels were going away from them into heaven.
The shepherd said, one to another.
I'm going to put it this way to bring out what it does not say.
Well, let's sit down and talk about this.
And think about it and let's study this. You know, let us go even now until that's what happened, and see this thing which has come to pass. Beloved, I believe that the little faithful remnant that we have, Malachi 3, one of the things that characterizes them is not so much that they study the truth as they go see the truth.
And it's feeling.
And experience the truth now. Now you don't misunderstand doctrines of all importance of life.
Without doctrine, there is no Christianity.
But it isn't just the study of the God wants us to.
See this language is continuing.
Which the word is made, but it's the sons of the prophets in the Old Testament we find they say with with correctness to Elijah. Don't you know your master is going to be taking the most of your head today? What did he say to you? I know he's silent. Be quiet.
Why did he tell them to be cautioned? Well, they were. They were looking at it as an academic thing. There's nothing more dead in the soul than taking truth academically and dealing with it academically. God wants us to make it good to our souls, something that we enjoy, something that takes up our affection.
Something that we're living through.
Relation is walking from place to place with Elijah. He was in the good of the same thing that they had appeared.
So, he says. Can you be quiet? I'm relentless. I'm going place to place. To me, it's a real thing.
And I think in the case of these these.
Blessed Shepherds.
As they took counsel, one with another, they said let's go and see.
Don't you think they were part of that little remnant that we had to Malachi 3? I think so. And it says, And they waved, came with haste and found Mary and Joseph in the faith line in a Manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the same which was told them concerning this trial and all they had heard. It wondered that those things which you told them by the Champions.
And then I just hastily want to call attention to Mary again. It says that she kept all these things and pondered, for their part, not in their head.
00:55:02
Not in her head, in her heart.
God wants us to be so taken up with the truth that it's our.
That we ponder it in our hearts. That's what meditation is all about, beloved. It isn't some some mystical thing that was invented out in the East, You know, Miss meditation is clearly brought before us in Scripture, but it always has an option, and I believe that it was the object of their parts to the Occupy.
A little rapid camp.
The last two of which you will not speak up about this full attention from your exercise.
Around and semi.
So the end of that picture said in that order from the output many years ago that the mother father-in-law and some of you know and.
Such a dear man of God, he was preaching its Scranton on listening. It's.
Spoke with Cinderella, taking the board in his arms. Mr. Gill called attention after the meeting to something that my father-in-law treasured the rest of his life, Mr.
Translation says that you received.
You receive.
Was a certain respect there, isn't it? It's beautiful you're receiving it, he says now. Lord, let thy servant be part of peace, for mine eyes have seen my salvation.
Was he an old man?
The word doesn't say beloved.
I think it could be perhaps inferred than he was.
But I don't think that's what the Spirit of God is occupying this. I believe that we are in the same position.
Times you're sending it. We have our eyes have seen a salvation, and we're ready to report now.
We don't have to wait to get old.
We don't have to be. My dad is 88 now and he's.
And the enjoyment of that looking forward to coming up the board.
But I thought, sometimes this dad has war.
Reason to say, let my surgeon depart in peace? In some ways, yes. He's got a very cold and happy life.
Whose of the Lord and his path? But I don't think.
In the sense that we have here that you and I were perhaps a little younger.
Grab center, close the over what that is, but I don't think that's a question they should. I think it's a question of satisfactory department, correct?
And once you have gotten your eyes filled with him, once you have been occupied with him, the Spirit of God is taking your heart and occupies you with him.
I think you can say now where there's nothing more to do down here, I'm ready to go. And you can say that at 18 or you can say it at 88.
Lord, we're ready and I need to go. Have I an object, Lord below, to divide my heart with faith, which with divergences and flow, and the answer to thy constituency?
Is there any hope, however, dear? No, nothing be thou be objective, praise and fear still unsatisfied apart.
He was old, you know, It's just encouraging. I can just picture that woman. I don't know if she went out of the temple afterwards. She didn't go out of the temple before.
By the way, I just call attention to the fact there are two words used temple in the Bible and the testament. One is the shrine itself and the other is the might say the temple compound that she really lived in the temple compound. I'm sure she went out of the temple at the South, you know she spoke of him to all.
Action in history.
What did she speak about?
The weather.
The deteriorating conditions in Israel. So she spoke, May that be our object, may that be that which the Spirit of God stirs in your heart and mind.
11:00 will be encouraged. I don't care how dark the day gets.
Will be that.
Encouraging them, and that's why Paul says I believe it's Paul for sure.
Hebrews chapter 10 but encouraging this translation for encouraging one another and so much more. As you see with that approach, are we downcast and thinking everything is 1? There's not much left. Well, that's true in a certain way. It's still hot in you still have that option that the Holy Spirit cuts before our hearts.
01:00:19
And improvement and encouraging one of them.
So much good morning as we see today.
Habakuk
Address—T. Cedarland
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169 Lord, we can see by faith in thee a prospect bright, unfeeling, where God shall shine in light divine, in glory never fading, a home above of peace and love, close to thy holy person. Thy Saints shall dare see glory fair and shine as thy reflection. 169.
Lordly.
And save my faith in the.
Prospect, Christ.
Where God shall shine in my life and glory.
And everything.
And shall I?
Refresh.
The difference?
And when our spirits.
Downward and where you fall in love life.
Surrounded.
No more.
Right here, Ministers. Jennifer.
Upon your way to unholy.
No more to thank, love.
Well, I kind of had in mind tonight to take up something that might be.
In line for those who are younger, but as I look out in the audience here, I see that perhaps most of the room is that those that are as old or older than I am. So as I was thinking about that and sitting there, I felt the Lord would maybe help me take up something else tonight than what I had in mind. So I would like tonight, with the Lord's help, to look back in the Old Testament to a book in what is called the Minor Prophet. Somebody mentioned at the conference about.
Older brothers may be spending time in the minor prophets and how a brother Barry in his old age was still in the Gospel of John. But you know, the Bible does say that all Scripture is profitable and there is not one portion of the Word of God where there isn't blessing to our souls. And I believe so many times we get looking at some of those books like Zephaniah and Hagee I and Zachariah and Malachi. And we go through those books because we try to read through the Bible. And sometimes we don't understand just how the book gets in and where it goes or how it goes together. But we see a verse here and there that we enjoy.
And life and so we underline that verse and maybe enjoy it. And yet there's so much there. We we finish that booking so well, most of that I didn't understand. I'm sure the Lord has something more for me, but I don't understand what it is. Well, tonight with the words help, I'd like to take up one of those books, the book of Habakkuk. And if you would turn with me, please to that book. Perhaps we can look through there and see what the Lord can give us from one of these books and maybe we can come away.
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And you'll feel like you have a little grasp, a little understanding of the how this book fits into the word of God.
And that we can all learn something tonight that will help us if we get into the Scriptures that was going to say that these books were sometimes referred to as the minor prophets. You know, I personally don't like that term real well because I don't think there's any part of the word of God that is minor.
And so we could say, although these people were.
Are referred to as the minor prophets, their ministry really, so to speak. They're batting in the major leagues, not the the miners. They're very important books to look at. And so we'll look at this book, the book of Habakkuk, and we'll read through a bit of it. Not every word first, but just enough so we can kind of see how it comes together.
Chapter one of the book of patrol in verse one the burden which Habakkuk or Habakkuk of the different ways is pronounced Habakkuk the prophet did see Oh Lord, how long shall I cry? And thou wilt not hear even cry out under thee of violence. And thou wilt not say why does thou show me iniquity that's caused me to behold grievous force smiling and violence are before me. There are that raise up strike.
And contention therefore the law is slapped, and judgment does never go forth, for the wicked does compass about the righteous, Therefore wrong judgment proceedeth.
Behold thee among the heathen in regard and wonder marvellously. For I will work a work in your days which ye will not believe, though it be told you. For lo, I will raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation which shall March through the breath of the Lamb to possess the glowing places that are not theirs. They are terrible and dreadful. Their judgment and their dignity shall proceed of themselves. Their horses are swifter than leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves.
And their horsemen shall spread themselves, and their horsemen shall come from afar, and they shall fly as the eagle that hasteth to eat.
Then shall they come all for violence. Their faces shall suck up as the east wind, and they shall gather the captivity as the sand, and they shall stop at the kings, and the Princess shall scorn unto them, and they shall deride every stronghold, for they shall heat dust and take it. Then shall his mind change, he shall Passover and offend them, Tooting his power unto his God.
Are shall not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, my holy one, we shall not die. O Lord, thou hast ordained them for judgment, and Almighty God thou hast established them for correction. Thou art a pure eyes, and to behold evil and chance not look upon iniquity. Wherefore look a star upon them that deals treacherously, and hold us by tongue, when the wicked devours the man that is more righteous than he, and maketh man as the fishes of the sea, and as creeping things which have no ruler over them.
They take up all of them with the Angel and Chuck them in their neck and gather them in their dread. Therefore they rejoice and are glad. Therefore they sacrifice under their net and burn incense under their dread, because by them their force in this path.
And their meat is plenteous. Shall they therefore empty their net, and not spare continually display the nations?
Chapter 2. I will stand upon my watch, I will set me upon the tower, and will watch and see what he will say unto me, and what shall, what I shall answer when I am recruited? And the Lord answered me, and said, Write the vision, make it plain upon the tables that he may run it. Read it, for the vision is yet for an appointed time, but the end. But at the end it shall speak and not lie, though it Terry wait for it, because it will surely come.
It will not tarry. Behold, his soul, which is lifted up, is not upright in him, but the just shall live by faith.
And skipping down to verse 14, in the middle of all of these woes that are given in this chapter toward the heathen, verse 14 it says, For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
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And verse 20, Let the Lord is in his holy temple, let all the earth keep silent before him. A prayer of the back of the prophet, a foreign sugar knife. Oh Lord, I've heard thy speech and was afraid, O Lord, revived my work in the midst of the years.
And in the midst of years make known in wrath, remember mercy.
Verse 16.
When I heard, my belly trembled, my lips quivered at the voice rocking. This entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself, and I might rest in a day of trouble. When it cometh up unto the people he will invade with his troops. Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall there be any fruit in the vines. In the labor of the olive shall fail, and the field shall yield no meat. The frock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the styles. Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will join the God of my salvation.
The Lord God is my strength. You will make my feet like times feet. You will make me to walk upon my high places to the chief singer on my screen instruments.
Well, as we.
Look at this book we see just to get the setting. It's a book that was written about 600 BC.
Habakkuk was a contemporary of Jeremiah. The prophet is what we could call a pre captivity prophet. If you remember the children of Israel were carried into captivity because of their idolatry and their sin for 70 years. Jeremiah was that weeping prophet that went and warned them that if they didn't turn back to God they would be carried away captive and havoc lives during that time and prophesied during that time.
There was a time where the king Jehoiakim, when the word of God was brought to him on the scroll, he took his pen knife and he cut it up and he threw it in the fire because he didn't want to read what the Lord had to say to him. He didn't like what the Lord had to say to him. And so that gives a little bit of a setting after the time and his pocket lived and he was a man who could look out and see all what was going on in Israel and he wasn't indifferent to it because verse one says the burden back of the prophet, you see.
You could look out and see all of those troubles and burdens.
And it weighed heavy on his heart. And I'd like to say that if we were going to give a little outline of this book, maybe something that if you have a pen tonight, you might just write down because you'll find this something that might be helpful. If you're going to go through this book and study it on your own, that we could say that in chapter one, you find that the prophet is wondering and he's worrying. He's wondering and worrying. And in chapter 2, when he goes up on his watch, his high tower, he's watching and he's waiting.
And in chapter 3.
We find that he is worshipping and witnessing. So he starts down in the valley, depressed, down in the dumps. We could say, as John Bunyan could put it, he's in the slew of his farm and he's down there in the valley. He's wondering and worrying. Looking at his circumstances, his eyes are not really thinking about what God is going to do. He doesn't know, but he's wondering and worrying. As we said, chapter 2. He's watching and waiting and Chapter 3.
He's worshipping and he's witnessing.
But in chapter one we find that he accuses the Lord of three things. He accuses the Lord of first of all in verse two, of being indifferent.
He's praying and God is answering his prayer. He thinks. He says, how long the Lord shall I cry and I will not hear, How long shall I cry unto thee of violence and I will not save it accuses the Lord, we could say, of being indifferent. In this chapter. He's going to accuse him of being inactive, not doing anything. He shows him all the problems and trials and doesn't do anything about it. And he's going to accuse the Lord of not only being indifferent and inactive, but he's going to accuse him of being inconsistent. Because when God tells him, look about it, I'm going to answer your sirs. I'm going to work the work that is so wonderful and marvelous. You're not even going to believe it though, if he told you.
Then when he sees how God is going to answer his prayer, he says, God, you can't do it that way. Are you going to punish your children of Israel with your people, with a nation that is more wicked than they are? That wouldn't be fair. That would be inconsistent with your character. And so that's when he goes up on the high power watches to hear how he's going to be reproved. So as we mentioned there, those are three, three accusations. And sometimes we can get to where we feel the same way. We get all burdened down.
We're down in the valley. We get down in the dumps. It's trials and problems and difficulties we get occupied with. Maybe there's problems in the assembly, maybe there's problems out on the farm and we want to get some crops planted. And they just, the rain just keeps coming and coming and we just think it's never going to stop. One brother up in Iowa Falls told me, he said I got up at 5:00 in the morning and I heard the rain come down and my wife says, well, where are you going, honey? He said I just have to get up. He said I got up and paced the floor and I got down on my knees and I praised and then I felt better.
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You know, it's nice, but that's what the backup did when he had this burden. He took it to the Lord so many times. When we have a burden and a problem, we tell everybody else about it first. We tell our brethren about it. If we tell our husband and wife, we complain to them about the problem or whoever. Remember just recently back home.
I had taken a trip off to Vancouver, BC and I was coming home and I had a package that a brother in the meeting had given me to deliver to another brother.
And I tucked it under the seat of my car as I went through customs. I guess I thought, well, maybe they'll ask me what's in that package. And I wasn't sure what was in it. So I thought I'll just tuck it out of sight so that you don't want any difficulty here. But I got all the way back down and the brother called me and said, do you have a package for me? I said, yes, I do. I went out to the car to find it and I couldn't find it. And I looked in my office and I looked throughout the house, everywhere where I put things, and I couldn't find it anywhere. Am I was trying to complaining a little bit and saying I just can't figure it out. I don't know what I did with that.
Finally my wife says to me, Well, dear.
Great about it, and I had to admit that I hadn't. And so she said, well, why don't you pray about it? It's wonderful to learn. Jesus help me so it can help us when we get in those kinds of depression too and things don't go quite right. So I got down and I prayed about it. It wasn't long before I found that package that I was looking for and was able to give it to the brother, it turned out. But I think here this property saw those things and he took the burden to the Lord.
Let's just say this too, that there are two extremes that we can have.
In problems with problems and difficulties, why is it we can be indifferent to them completely and almost close our eyes and isolate ourselves from problems and not want, even almost pretend they're not there? And Habakkuk wasn't that way. He had a real heart for the people of God. He loved them and he could see them in this condition and so that.
His heart was there, but we can go to the other extreme and we can get overburdened and we can get so burdened that we get our eyes off the Lord and we get down in the dumps and we get depressed.
And that's not right either. A few weeks ago, back home, I was in the town where I live. I was asked to take the funeral of a young man, 31 years old. He was a man who.
Was a professing Christian, seemed to be a very happy man, and he went to church in our community every Sunday. He went to Bible studies. Fact, he'd even visited the meeting in Gig Harbor a couple of times.
But in a moment of disparity of his life left behind the three children, ages 6 and four or two, and a beautiful wife left all that behind.
And people were wondering, well, how could somebody who was a professing Christian ever come to that point? Well, we're mentioning a little bit that it's like the disciples, you know, when the Lord, they came to the Lord and they said, Lord, we have here 5 loaves and two fishes. But what are they among so many? You know, we can look at the magnitude of our problems, the 5000 that need to be fed, and we can get overwhelmed or we can look at the minuteness of our own.
Resources, our own sufficient insufficiencies and become underwhelmed or we can get our eyes on the Lord Jesus, that one who is all sufficient and the one who's able to do exceedingly abundantly. But all that we ask you, thank you, and we can become encouraged to go on.
One brother, one time in a meeting, somebody said, you know, you just don't seem to be overwhelmed by the problems. The rest of us here, we're just, we're going through these problems and you just go on like everything is fine. And the brother said, no, He said, I, I trust and I feel these problems and difficulties just as much as you do. He said, but I don't allow it to let me, I don't allow it to interfere with my enjoyment of the Lord Jesus Christ. And you know, Satan is busy trying to bring things in to our lives.
Through the trials and problems to cause us to have things interfere with our enjoyment of the Lord Jesus and we need to always be on guard. If we don't allow something come in, it would spoil our enjoyment of the Lord. Well he said, how long shall I cry? And the second time he says, and thou wilt not hear even cry on the day of violence. And I will not say that the second time that word cry is used in the Hebrew, it actually could be translated to screen.
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Maybe some other lives here can know what it's like to have frustration in the house and the kitchen where you get to the part you can say.
I could just scream. Maybe nobody's ever said that, but I've heard that said before by someone in a moment of frustration, and that's how the back he was. He was at the point where things irritated him so much he could just scream.
But he says, why do you show me this uniqueness? He looked out and he saw the contention and he saw the strike. We saw all those things and this is in God. You're not doing anything about it. He says the law is slack and judgment doesn't go for it. Seemed that way to him.
Israel had turned to idols, they were backsliding far away from God. Here's his faithful prophet, and God says I am working. Verse 5. Behold ye among the heathen, and regard and wonder marvelously, for I will work a work in your days which you will not believe, though it be told you.
And then he tells him how he's going to raise up the Chaldeans and come away and still come through the land and carry them into captivity. They'll sweep through the land and they're going to chase them, the people of God, and bring them back to God.
So God says I am working well back in like the way God was going to do it. And so he says, God, you're pure eyes and to behold evil and cast not look upon iniquity or injustice. Are you going to chasten your people with a nation that's more wicked than they are?
And he says, you know, they the heathen, they go out and they fish, and then when they catch their fish, they worship their nests.
These people, that's what was going to happen. They're going to worship their weapons of war. They'll look at their own strength and they're not going to worship you. And so God is going to show Habakkuk that he is going to deal with the heathen tube and bring them around and punish them. But first he's going to deal with his people, Israel. So God may use things in our lives that we might think we may not understand what's happening.
That he works everything out for good. It says all things work together for good, but I love God and to them that are called according to his purpose. He doesn't do things the way we do. His thoughts are not our thoughts. Neither are our thoughts his thoughts as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are God's ways higher than our ways. But God is working everything out for good and sophomatic at the beginning of this book, so to speak, He's saying as it were gone, you're doing it wrong.
But by the time we get to the end of the book, he's saying, God, you're doing everything right. And that's what the Lord is wanting to do in the trials and difficulties in our life. And the things that are happening is he's trying to bring us around to the point where we can say, like the Beckett could, at the end of the book, I will rest in the Lord.
I will rejoice in the Lord. I will rely on the Lord gets his eyes off his problems and realizes that God is completely in control. So as we mentioned in chapter one, he's wondering and he's worrying. And verse one of chapter two really could go at the end of chapter one. So chapter divisions are not inspired. They say that these chapter divisions were made.
By a man.
Way back in the early 1500s, I believe it was, it was going on horseback from the city of Paris to the city of Lyons. And he traveled back and forth and as he did, he went through the Scriptures and he put the divisions in there. And Mr. William Kelly makes a comment about that. He said said this. He said that a man would have done a lot better to be in a closet on his knees rather than on his horse just putting the tractor divisions in. So sometimes when we look at the traffic divisions, we can say.
It could have gone perhaps in a little better place. Those are not inspired. The Scriptures are inspired and the book of Psalms. God did divide all those up, and those chapters are all divided rightly. But sometimes we find that it's good if the chapters could have maybe been placed in a different place. And so a backup finishes in verse one of chapter 2. I will stand upon my watch, set me upon the tower, and will watch and see what He will say unto me, when I shall answer, and when I am reproved.
So now not only is he in the first chapter learns how to.
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Bring his burden to the Lord, but now he's listening to the Lord for an answer. Sometimes we take our troubles to the Lord, but then we don't stop and listen to what the Lord has to say to us. Remember Samuel back in the Old the Testament? Eli told him to say, Speak Lord and I serve him, hear him. It's real easy to talk to the Lord, but how much time do we spend whistling to what he has to say to us? It could be said that in chapter one of his book we find that the prophet is signed.
And in chapter 2 he's silent. And in chapter 3.
He's singing.
He signed many silent listening to what God has to say to him. And then at the end he's actually come to that point where he's singing and rejoicing in the Word. You know, if we were silent more often and listening to what God was saying to us in our difficulties, we would be able to rejoice like this property. And this is one of the few books in the Bible where we actually get a dial out back and forth between God and one of his servants. And that's the whole way that this book goes. You know, in the book of Job, sometimes you see a dialogue between Job and his friends.
And between Lihu and Job and so forth throughout the book. But here's a book where we find a back. It comes with its burdens of God. God answers him, and Habakkuk gives his answer back. And now he's going to sit and listen to what's going to happen when he is reproved. He's up on his tower, he's watching, and he's waiting.
He's learning to be quiet and listening to God speak, you know, sometimes in order to wake us up in the middle of the night because He has something to say to us. Those are some of the best times I know in my own personal life that I have with the Lord. You do 3:00 in the morning, the Lord will wake me up. Maybe it's because I said something to somebody that I shouldn't have said, and He'll bring it to my attention and I'll realize that I need to go to that person and try to get straightened out. The Lord is faithful.
Somebody said when you can't sleep at night.
Don't count sheep, talk to the shepherd and I like that you can't sleep. Don't talk **** don't count sheep, or some people do, but talk to the shepherd. Take advantage of those hours in the middle of the night when you're laying there and you can't sleep and speak to the Lord and let Him speak back to you. Sometimes I get up out of bed and I get out of a pen and a paper and I write down clocks if the word will give me on some burst or something, because I'm afraid when I go back to sleep I'll wake up in the morning and I'll be like Nebuchadnezzar. When he had his dreams, he said The thing is gone for me.
And so often that's the way it is. And so I'll give a little PM count and I'll write down some thoughts. Speak to us if we listen. He wants to fellowship with us. And primarily he speaks to us through his word as we read the word of God. I've never heard a audible voice from heaven saying to him do this or Tim do that. But I've heard about school small voice in my heart, and I believe you have two. And as we open up the scriptures and read it, he speaks to us from his word. And so it's not just through the.
Chapter as quickly as we can, but let the Lord say what He has to say to us from each verse and each line, and each chapter from His good word.
Well, he gets his answer. God speaks to him in verse two and it says here and the Lord answered me first. He listened and the Lord gave an answer and this is what the Lord says. Write the vision, make it plain on the tables that he may run that read a fit for the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and not lie military wait for it, because it will surely come to pass. Behold the soul which is lifted up.
Is not up right in here, but the just shall live by faith. So Habakkuk is told from God to take and right this reason down. And this is the prophecy that comes in later on in this book and in the next or in this chapter and in the next chapter.
And it says, write it down, make it plain upon the tables. You know, one of the things that I think about that is that not only is he making it readable, but the word of God is plain when God speaks to us. It usually the problem isn't with God not being able to make himself plain. The problem is either we haven't read the passage carefully so we already have our minds made-up what we want to do, or we just simply don't want it to be that way.
Otherwise, normally the Lord wants to communicate His word to us in a way so we can understand it and do something out of it. So he tells the prophet, make you find upon the tables that he may run, that we didn't just say this.
But it doesn't say that he that he shall read it, but it says that he may run that readeth it. And so in other words, it's not enough to read the word of God. But the whole purpose of prophecy in the Bible isn't just to stuff our head full of knowledge so we can kind of understand how a dispensational chart goes together, but it's to have an effect on our lives. When he says that he may run that readeth it, he's not thinking that he'll run away and be scared, but it will stimulate people who read it to live for the Lord.
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And that's the effect that prophecy should have on us. As we think of the menace of the Lords return and things shaping up in our world, as we see the European Common Market all coming together and the common currency and the barriers have brought down and the very shadows of fulfillment of prophecy right here before us. We know that God's prophetic time clock is stopped and it won't start again until the Lord takes the church out.
So we're not looking for any prophecies to have to be fulfilled until the Lord comes. But as we study prophecies, we study the Word of God. It shouldn't be just to say fill our heads full of knowledge, but it should stimulate us to live for the Lord and to share the Lord with other people, and to seek to be an encouragement to our brethren and a help to our brethren in the enjoyment of his love and of his person. And so he says that he may run that readeth it goes on to say.
The division is yet for appointed time military.
He says don't carry, wait for it because it will surely come. It will not tarry. Now that verse is quoted in the New Testament in Hebrews 10, verse 37. It's amazing. There's a number of verses in Advocate, at least four that come to mind, or three that come to mind right now off the top of my head that are all quoted in the New Testament. So if you say again, it's a very important book.
We've already skipped over one of them, but this is the second one that's quoted in the New Testament and there it's referred to it says get a very little while and he that shall come will come. It's referring to coming of a lawyer, whereas here this verse is referring to all of the prophecy. It says it shall come to pass.
Whereas in Hebrews he shall come, that's a part of the fulfillment of the prophecy is the Lord's coming. And then the third verse that's quoted in this book is in verse four. It says, behold, his soul is lifted up, which is lifted up is not upright in him. That's the Columbians and their pride. But it says, but the just shall live by his faith.
Now the apostle Paul was a man who picked up this book and read it, and it stimulated him to run for the Lord, and he quotes in his epistles.
This book, the just or this verse, the just shall live by faith. He quotes that three times in the New Testament. Once he quotes it in the book of Romans, once he quotes it in the book of Galatians, and once he quotes it in the book of Hebrews. And in the book of Romans. The emphasis is on the 1St part of the verse, the just, the just, shall live by faith. The question in the book of Romans is how can a man be justified with God? That's the question Job asked.
It's answered in the book of Romans how God can be both the just and the justifier. And so the emphasis that Paul uses it in Romans is on the just. And in the book of Galatians the emphasis is on shall live. He is saying they're in Galatians now. Look, you didn't get saved by keeping the law. You got saved by faith in Christ. And so you think now that you were saved by faith that you're going to live.
The Christian life by keeping the law, No, you live a Christian life. It's a life of faith. And that's the emphasis in relations. Whereas in the book of Hebrews it is the emphasis is on by faith. That's in Hebrews hands. And we find that full 11Th chapter of Hebrews is the faith chapter and it gives accounts of all of these men of God who faithfully live for God by faith. So later on in this chapter, God shows Habakkuk all of these woes that he's going to pronounce on the heathen.
And he shows them. There's 5 words that are mentioned here, and they're all things that characterize the gentile world.
Right up from the time we hear people talk about the times of the Gentiles. When did that begin? Did it begin when the day of Pentecost? No, the church began at the day of Pentecost. But the times of the Gentiles really began when Israel was carried away into captivity in the Old Testament and Nebuchadnezzar was reigning there on the throne. And we see where the Gentiles began to dominate the world. And even when the Lord came, Israel as a nation was in captivity or under the ******* of Rome, and they were looking for him to deliver them from the Rome. And but during the times of the Gentiles, Gentiles.
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These five blows characterize what the world is going to be like until the Lord comes and sets it straight. And so in verse 6, there's a woe to him that increases that which is not his. There's selfish ambition. In verse 9, there's a little against covetousness and pride. And in verse 12, there's a woe to one who would exploit others even to the extent of murder. And verse 15, there's a woe to him that maketh his neighbor drunk.
He may look upon his nakedness. There's drunkenness and immorality and in verse 19, there's woe to him that saith the wood awake and to the dumb stone arise and it shall teach. There's a woe against idolatry. People have idols today and all these things are going around us today. We have people who are covetous and proud. We have people who are idolatrous and people who are immoral and drinking and all these things going on. And God says, I can see all this in the Chaldeans and this is what's going to characterize.
The world until I said it right, but it says to the back the just shall live by faith. In other words, he gives them three things to take him through that difficult period of time. Now we're getting around to where things might be relevant to us tonight. Those three things are things that will help us as we go through this life, even now as we wait the coming of the Lord because we're living right now in the time to the Gentiles, the Bible says Jerusalem will be trotted down by the Gentiles.
Times the Gentile people killed and the first one as we mentioned is in verse four. The just shall live by his faith we see God's grace and in verse 14.
We see God's glory and in verse 20 we see God's government, God's grace, God's glory, and God's government. He's saying to Habakkuk, I'm going to give you the grace to go through it. You live by your faith.
One of these days the earth is going to be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. It gives them a vision of the millennial time when the Lord sets up His Kingdom. We're not looking for that immediately. We have a hope of something even sooner than that, and that is the rapture of the church. But we need to have a worry before us if we're going to make it through this world with all of its corruption and problems.
And last of all, you see God's government. He says in verse 20, the Lord is in his holy temple, He's still on the throne and let all the earth keep silence before him. In other words, he's saying I'm on the throne and everything is in my control, so don't worry. It says in Psalms 46, be still and know that I am God. We may see problems and difficulties in the assembly or in our marriages or whatever. God is going to set it right. And I just say this about God's grace. The just shall live by faith.
Someone asked Mr. Moody one time.
They said, Mr. Moody, do you have the grace to die for the Lord?
He said no I don't, but he said if the Lord called me to do it.
He said if the Lord called me to do it, he'd give it to me.
And I think we can say that about any problem that we might face in our life, that if the Lord called us to go through it, He will give us the grace to go through it. That's why by faith. And we need to be characterized by a life of faith and His grace. As we go through His life and we come into the assembly, we're all different.
I'm standing here today and I'm Paul and Slim, and maybe there's someone else out here that's short and heavyset, you know, if you were to walk through a garden of tulips.
And you went through acres and acres and acres of tulips.
Might get pretty bored after a while.
And so the Lord doesn't just have a garden that's all flowers that are exactly the same, but it shows in the dandelion here and a gaffa bill there, and we're all different.
And I like to think of it this way. There's a little saying that helps me a little bit. And I enjoy this. It feels like this, that diversity.
Plus Unity.
Equals maturity. Say that again, diversity plus unity equals maturity.
If you have people with different exercises, maybe we have some people here that feel stronger one way and others feel a little strongly another way. We all have different exercises, but the key is not necessarily to try to make everybody fit into my mold. God isn't in the business of making someone who said cookie cutter Christians where we all look like we're stamped out of the same mold. I remember having some gospel meetings in Gig Harbor and Brother Dave Whitaker, who grew up in Iowa, came to those meetings.
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And he was telling me, he says, you see those ladies all sitting up there in the front row. He says those ladies belong to a group that are called Go yeast or two by twos.
And I said, how do you know that? He says it's real easy to spot him. He said they all look like they've been stamped out of the same mold. They all have their hair in a bun. They all wear the same colored dresses, and they all look very much the same. And they look like we might say they're cut right out of the same cooking mode. But the Lord hasn't made us that way. He's made us all different. And so he wants us to go on together. He throws someone said he puts a bunch of cats and dogs all together and so to speak. And he tells us to get along.
And it's the Lords desire that we go on together. It says brethren dwelling together in unity. I'll, I'll spell sweet and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. And so the challenge in this can help the assembly when things are right, though there might be different exercises. We'll balance each other out and we'll go on together.
We need to be careful that we don't get the idea. Remember, Brother Albert Hale sang one time as he traveled. He said, you know, I used to go into some homes and I'd see certain things there in the house. They were certain magazines in the house and things that were there. And he said, after I leave, I'd say to myself, these people are kind of loose.
Then he said I'd go into other homes and see how things were done and when I would leave. I'd say these people are kind of legal.
And he said, I found myself saying as I walk out of one of some of those homes, well, Albert, you're just about right, aren't you?
You know, sometimes we can get feeling like, well, we're the ones that are right and everybody else is out of left field and right field. It's true. The Lord commends kings for not turning to the right hand or to the left in following the Lord. And I covet that spirit. I want to be one who doesn't get over here on this extreme or that extreme.
But real spirituality is to appreciate all of our brethren for who they are and what they are and what the Lord has made them. That isn't that we would tolerate things in their life that weren't right. We love them that would seek to be a help and correct them. They're going on in sin or something where we see they're headed for danger. But yet spirituality is gone in diversity and still have unity and that's maturity. That's true in the home too.
And the Lord never made a refined, when you get married that often, opposites attract. If we have the same strengths and weaknesses, we wouldn't need each other. And so my wife can remember names and details and phone numbers and I, I just don't remember those things very well. And those things I remember that she doesn't remember. And we compliment each other. And that's the way it is in the assembly. The Lord has given all different exercises and we need to go on together and not make waves.
Sometimes we can be indifferent to the needs of others.
And I live in a little town called Gig Harbor.
Illustration tonight that when we come into that harbor by water in a boat, there's a sign outside the mouth of that harbor and that sign says on it slow.
Leave no wake.
And what that means is, you know, somebody become a reason for that sinus. Somebody could come speeding in there and their boat and they could be pulling a water skier or maybe doing 30 miles an hour or 35 miles an hour and just having a wonderful time. But the waves coming off from the side of that boat will ripple through the water. And there's boats that are docked along the side of the harbor and they can hit those boats and those boats can smash into the dock and they can do millions of dollars worth of damage.
There's literally millions of dollars worth of fiberglass in that harbor where somebody could be happily sitting down to their dinner, anchored there in the harbor, and they're just ready to eat a nice meal. And all of a sudden the big waves from the wake of that boat come rolling across the hardware and hit that boat and there goes whatever they have to drink that night, the spilling over and the food spills, and it would spoil their dinner. What I think about that is Christians, every one of us leave off a certain wake.
I hope when I come to pallet at the brethren here won't say well, I'm sure glad he's gone. He left a very unpleasant wake, but I hope that they would be able to say well, you know Tim's visit was an encouragement. We really appreciated that he came and helped well each one of us should desire to be exercised before the Lord that what kind of an effect we have on others because the scripture says no man liveth to himself or die after himself. And so in the middle of a difficult time, just like a back of lids when things in the world were a mess.
00:45:16
You can see everything going to ruin and among God's people as well. God says I'm going to give you 3 things about you that are going to take you through. One is my grace, the other is the vision of the future glory. And last of all, I want to tell you about my government. I'm still on the throne. I'm still in control.
The Lord Jesus is still son over his own house. Sometimes we think it's up to us to try to solve the problems and the difficulties. But in second Timothy chapter 2 and verse at the very end of the chapter, it says there the servant of the Lord must not strive but be gentle unto all men says patient uniqueness, instructing those that oppose themselves if God for adventure will bring them to repentance to the acknowledging of the truth. In other words, it's God who really changes the heart. We can take the word of God and gently bring the principle before somebody, but.
We're not there to strive and try to force somebody to conform to the way we think they should conform it. Just gently take the Word of God and bring the principles and let the Lord do the work. The work is the Lord's work. It's not our work. And sometimes we spend a lifetime learning that. Well after Habakkuk got all of this from the Lord, in chapter 3, we find the worshipping and the witnessing a prayer of Habakkuk the prophet.
Upon Chigenabe.
Oh Lord, I have heard thy speech and was afraid. O Lord, revived my work in the midst of the years, In the midst of years make known, and in wrath remember mercy.
So when he heard the word of the Lord, he trembled when he saw what God was going to do in bringing these Talibans down and all the judgments that were going to come. But he says revive my work in the midst of years. He prayed for his people. Still, let's not give up on the work of the Lord and say, well, things are so weak and they're so near the words coming.
Let's just give up and justice point of despair and be burdened and kind of go through the motions of coming to meeting and still making the meetings and so forth. No Habakkuk prayed that God would revive his work in the midst of years, and I believe his prayer was answered. And that remnant that came back and Ezra and Nehemiah's time, that even in the midst of God's judgments, it was a little revival that took place. And there were those who did go back, not the whole nation of Israel, but there were a few that went back and it was time interruptable time, 1St and Ezra in the Dmias time. And there was a people when the Lord came.
That's why I believe no matter how bad things may appear or how weak the testimony may be of the people of God, we can still pray and we can still be exercised about the Lords work to see that it keeps going forth in our day. We could still be exercised about the gospel.
And we can think of those that are on foreign fields or those that are seeking to serve the Lord and we can pray for them, we can encourage them, we can support them. Those works are going on in our assembly where somebody teaching the Sunday School class or whatever outreach it is we want to.
Pray for that work, encourage it, support it, and all the different functions that go on in the assembly. We don't want to get the mentality that the Lord is through working because He never quits working. He's always working. Even when I'm back, it didn't think he was the Lord, says Habakkuk. I'm going to work at work that is so marvelous that you won't believe it though if He kills you. Well then, as we mentioned in verse two, we find Habakkuk is praying and in verse.
Verses 3 through 16 we could say he's pondering, and then for the rest of the chapter he's praising. But in verses 3 through 16, he gets a vision of all of the greatness of God. He sees some of these things have to do with what the Word has done in the past, and many of them have to do with what the world is going to do in the future. And as he ponders the greatness of the Lord and the power of the Lord and who he is, and this victory of the Lord actually coming in and judging all these nations that oppose Israel.
Then he ends up praising the Lord. And I just say this, that a backup, you have to remember was an Israelite prophet.
And all of Israel's blessings in a future day, we know they're all based on sovereign grace and the work of the cross. But they are also based on the fact that God is one day going to take all these nations that are oppressing Israel and have oppressed Israel down through the years. And he's going to judge them all. And then he's going to give Israel the rightful place, and they're going to be the head and not the tail. And that's coming. And that's all fulfillment of this prophecy that sees in this book. Now He's rejoicing in the victory of God over the nations. And the Lord Jesus, when he comes back, is going to rule the nations with a rod of iron. He's going to judge them.
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And bring Israel into their place of blessing. But for the believer, those of us that are part of the church.
We're we can rejoice in the victory of the of the cross and the fact that we have a home in heaven. We're going to be with the Lord in a heavenly portion in the Father's house. And it's true we're going to reign with him over the earth. But Israel today for the most part is grinded to the victory of the cross. Their eyes will be open when the Lord judges the nations.
But today they're for the most part blinded to the work of the cross. And Israel was going on.
A indifferent to their Messiah. One day they'll look on him whom they pierced, and all the tribes who mourn because of Him. But today we can rejoice, not necessarily in the fact that the Lord is going to judge the nations, though we rejoice in that.
We can rejoice in the victory that the Lord has given us through the Lord Jesus Christ. Also that in first Corinthians 1557, thanks be unto God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. While when Habakkuk gets hurt, all these judgments that God is going to bring up the nations. Then in verse 16 he says, when I heard my belly trembled. Remember in Isaiah 66 there's a verse about he to tremble at thy word as it is 66 two, but he says, when I heard my belly trembled.
Quiver at the voice. Rottenness entered into my bones. I trembled in myself that I might rest in a day of trouble.
As we mentioned at the end of the chapter, we found we said I will rest in God and verse 18 He will rejoice in God and the Lord. And in verse 19 He's going to rely on the Lord, the Lords of strength. But here it said I might rest in a day of trouble. I think in Matthew 1128, the Lord says, come unto me. All that labor and a burden, a backup was burdened at the beginning of his book. Now he can rest in a day of trouble. And then in verse 17 he says these words that are often included.
Says all the fig tree, although the fig tree shall not blossom.
Neither shall there be any fruit, neither shall fruit be in the vines.
The labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat. The flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls. Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will joy, and the God of my salvation, so he.
He could see the Taliban just ready to come down and sweep Israel and take away all of their herds and all of their flocks and all of their fruit and destroy their vineyards and leave the land a waste. And yet he could rejoice.
How could he do that because his hope was in something better than just what was down here. His hope was now becomes in the Lord himself. You know so often it's so easy to get taken up with things here that rob us of our joy and that's what Ted Robbie back of his joy as he saw the burdens and he saw his beloved nation and all these things ready to be wiped out. He was burdened and now he can say God, you're doing everything right. We can bring this up to modern times and say though.
The stock market crash and though that the jobs wanted lists in the paper be a mile long and no jobs available, and though it keep on raining right into the month of June and finally not able to plant their crops or whatever, we can still rejoice in the Lord. Or we could look at it in a spiritual sense and say will there be not much food in the assembly, not much food on the vines, no oxygen in the stalls? Maybe not those servants of the Lord that once labored that seemed to be able to have such power and way they ministered.
And such a help to the brother and and now those it seems so.
Small and powerless compared to those men of old. And we can look at all these things and we can despair or we can be like a back. We can say I'm going to rejoice in the door. There's a verse in Jeremiah chapter 2 and verse 13. We won't turn to it tonight. You might make a note of it, but I just quoted it to you. Jeremiah says remember he's writing a similar time as Habakkuk. He says my people Speaking of the people of God, he says have committed 2 evils.
He says #1 The first evil. He says that they have forsaken me. It found him of living waters.
And then he says the second thing is and reviewed to themselves cisterns, which are broken cisterns that hold no water.
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You know, that verse is really spoken to me recently as I thought about that. But anything that we make to try to find our satisfaction and happiness apart from the Lord Jesus is only a broken sister.
It may be a good thing itself to take a marriage. I have a happy marriage. I trust those of you in this room tonight that are married have a happy marriage too. But if I try to find all my happiness in my marriage and there's problems today, Christian couples and they hit married with expectations in their life partner that only the Lord can meet.
And pretty soon after they've been married for a few months, they find out that this man who they thought was Mr. Wonderful was so great after all, or this woman who they thought was going to be the girl of their dreams. And they find out that she may be very beautiful, but sometimes she can get into a bad mood or something and everything isn't perfect and wonderful. And, you know, if we try to find all of our happiness in a marriage which is wonderful and good as that is, we are going to be disappointed and we will find out eventually.
That it's a broken cistern that can hold no water. And if they try to find all our happiness in our job or our career, and we can maybe go to college and we go to school and we get out into this job that we study for and we think is going to bring us lots of fulfillment to find out that it's only a consistent pretty soon there's things that go wrong and things just don't turn out the way they thought they were going to turn out. And if we try to find all of our happiness.
In our possession.
We get things and pretty soon they don't satisfy or they break or they rust. And I believe it's a lifelong process that it takes us to learn. And all of us in this room are still learning it, and we sometimes continue to learn it over and over again.
First could say all of my springs are found. Indeed, the Lord Jesus is the true fountain of living waters. If I try to find all my satisfaction and fulfillment in the assembly, in the meeting where I go, I may get there and think it's just a wonderful group of brethren. But after I've been there for a while, I find out that they all have the old nature in them too, and I find out that that doesn't satisfy. Maybe I think the Lord's given me a ministry and I'm going to find my fulfillment in that, and I go out and preach the gospel.
And my whole source of fulfillment is to see souls saved in a man will induct as a broken cistern because brethren, there is only one second satisfying. Habakkuk learned that lessons and that is the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Few people out here on the farm, no farm no what his sister is about than I do, but I believe that a cistern is something that would kept they would store the rainwater in and it would catch the water and they would have his sister and sometimes down on the ground next to the house.
But if a cistern was broken, the water would leak out and you might go to it to get some water and find out it's dry. Like the little hymn writer could say, I tried the broken cisterns, Lord, but all the waters failed. Even as I stooped to drink, they fled, and they mocked me as I wailed. And there's another hymn that says.
About the Lord Jesus Christ Exhaustless springs. The water is free, all other streams are dry.
And I believe that's the lesson that Habakkuk learned. And even as he could see everything ready to be wiped out and the enemy coming in and everything to end in what might seem to be disaster, the Lord had given her vision that there was going to be something far greater to come. And he could rejoice in the Lord. He could rely on the Lord. He could rest in the Lord. So he said the Lord first, the last verse is my strength. He will make my feet like hindspeed, Hines like a deer, and can jump over great obstacles.
He will make me to walk upon five places to the chief singer on my string instruments.
Well.
Just say this, remember years ago a reading about a story of the man who his name is in the back of his hymn book. His name is RC Chapman. He wrote a number of hymns in the Little Flock Hymn book. But there was a division among the brethren and Mr. Chapman went with a different brethren known as the Open Brethren.
And one day Mr. Darby was walking down the street with a group of men brethren, and they passed RC Chapman coming the other way. RC Chapman was a very kind of, what we would say, a saintly looking man with a long beard. He came walking down the road the other way and one of the brothers walking with Mr. Darby made a little bit of a critical remark or a snide remark about Mr. Chapman, saying how could he end up going with those other brethren?
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Mr. Darby answered back, he said.
Don't criticize RC, he said. We talk about the heavenlies. He dwells there.
And you know, we see how a backup was able to raise above these problems and say, speak with like time, speed, and he could dwell in high places. And yes, how much greater those of us who are now know the Lord and we're part of the church, the bride of Christ, and receded in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. We should be rejoiced in the Lord. We should be happy. Hopefully when we meet one another, we don't greet one another like with sour looks on our faces and look like we've been baptized in pickle juice or lemon juice or something. But then we can have the joy of the Lord that will reflect in our lives that we're not controlled by outward circumstances, that we have found a fountain of living waters.
That can satisfy in a way that all the other broken systems can. And that's the person of the Word, Jesus Christ. So may the Lord help us to keep our eyes on him. And the little time is left till he comes to take us to be with himself. And now that we have a little bit of an outline in this book of Habakkuk, maybe when you get to glory, one of the persons no doubt you're going to meet there is the prophet Habakkuk. And he may say to you, have you ever read my book? And you can go home tonight and you can read it and see how it goes together a little bit with what we've given tonight.
You can say yes to back if I read your book and I enjoyed it and there was some helpful things for me there that were blessing for my soul where all scripture is possible. May the Lord bless that book to us. Perhaps there are time we've done. We could just close a little.
John 8:1-18, 5:32-47, 10 Witnesses
Address—R. Bauman
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For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that he through his poverty might be rich. I want to sing #27.
#27 Son of God, thy Father's bosom ever was thy dwelling place, his delight in him, rejoicing one with him in power and grace.
All what wondrous love and mercy thou didst leave, lay thy glory by and for us It's come from heaven as the Lamb of God to die. We'll sing from the second verse on of #27.
Wandering around.
All must praise her.
In the world.
I have that day.
Where everything?
I cry.
When we see.
Our.
Plan What's all the way through the air gun?
Wandering as a homeless stranger in the world by hand had made let's look to God and speak. So look at John's Gospel.
God last night and I just feel like staying in John's Gospel tonight. Well, look at the 8th chapter of John's Gospel.
00:05:09
That I'm going to read the last verse of the seven and then the first verse of the eighth, more or less to present what's on my heart here about this Blessed One.
And every man went unto his own house.
But Jesus went under the Mount of Olives. You know those two verses are quite striking when you read them together.
Every man went on to his own house. God emphasizes this, you know?
In John 2010, when Peter and John ran to the Sepulchre after hearing from Mary that he's not there, they looked in and afterwards we agreed that the disciples each went on to their own house, their own home. I believe it says their own home in John 1927, when the Lord Jesus on the cross looked at John the Apostle and asked him to take care of his mother.
It says John took her unto his own hope, emphasizing that fact.
You know when the Lord Jesus looked up into that Sycamore tree and saw Zacchaeus up there, he said, Zacchaeus, they taste and come down this day. I must apply this thy house.
He went into Simon's house too. Remember that? Healed his mother and Martha invited him or received Jesus into her own home. I was thinking of Levi too. What does it say? He made the Lord a great feast.
In his old house. Well, we could go on. God emphasizes this. We have a house, We have a home, We have what we need for comfort here. But there was not wherewith for the Lord to lay his head.
You know we have that. I want to read the first chapter of John. Just a verse or two to get the thought. Here in the first chapter of John, verse three, first chapter of John, verse 3, all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. Verse 10 he was in the world. The world was made by him. The world knew him not. He came under his own and his own.
Received him not.
Sad words, aren't they? When you think about that in Luke 27, we find there wasn't any room for him when he was born.
And there wasn't any room for him either when he died. He was a borrowed too.
You have no place where they came into this world. He had no place when he went out. But how wonderful the grace is. A place for us for eternity and his holy heaven. It's a wonderful truth. But here's the point I want to get at. If we look at Luke 21, Luke 21, and I believe that's the thought we have here, Luke 21.
And it's towards the last of it.
37 Luke 21 verse 37 And in the daytime he Jesus was teaching in the temple, and at night he went out and opposed in the mouth that is called the Mount of Olives. And all the people came early in the morning to hear him in the temple or to hear him he abode in the mount that is called the monobolics.
That's our first verse here. One more verse. Luke Chapter 9. I ought to read it. Luke Chapter 9. In Luke Chapter 9 and verse 58. I believe the Lord brings it in the most clearest sense. Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes.
And birds of the air have nests, but the son of man hath not where to lay his head.
He abode all night in the Mount of Olives and he prayed. Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives. Chapter 8, verse one.
And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him, and he sat down and taught them.
You know we read at Luke 5I think it's verse one. They came to him to hear the word of God.
Marvelous thought when you realize he is the Word. And then in another place in Luke it says he treats the glad tidings to them the gospel. He is the gospel he preached himself. I am the way there is no other gospel. Would have been marvelous to hear him, wouldn't it? Hear him preach the word of God, and hear him preach the glad tidings, the gospel? Well, the people came and sat down, and he sat down and taught them.
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Verse three of the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in a dull tree, and they set her in the midst.
This proof by just what I mentioned for a second, I want to turn to Matthew 23. In Matthew 23 we have them described. I believe the Lord has his worst words for them. It's the religious leaders of that day, the ones that took the lead in the authority, in the things of God. But notice at the end of verse three they say and do not verse five with all their works they do for to be seen of men.
They may prod their phylacteries and enlarge the borders of their garments, and love the uppermost rooms at feast, and the chief seats in the synagogue and greetings in the markets, to be called the men, rabbi, Rabbi.
They may prod their phylacteries and enlarge the borders of their garments.
Both of these things were lovely things in Deuteronomy, and in Numbers you find they were to have phylacteries. They were half to have phylacteries along their arm and wrist, their hands and wrist. It was the law in leather. They wore it so they wouldn't forget the word, but now they had such broad ones and enlarged ones that they went up all the way to their shoulders and both arms, showing how holy they were.
And then they they brought their borders of their garments. And you remember, they told them to put borders on your garments, but on the borders and ribbons of blue.
It was to speak that they belonged to the Lord. They were heavenly, they belong. They weren't really of this world, they were his. They were heavenly minded and so they made them broad so people would see them and the blue was very noticeable. This is what they were the religious people who say and do not. And the Lord said, Woe unto you, woe unto you. Well, these are the ones that verse three of chapter 8 that were coming to Jesus with this woman taken in adultery and placing her in this.
Verse four they say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned. What sayeth thou this? They said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him.
You know the hardness of the heart of these people. They use the law anyway they wanted for themselves.
You know the Lord says that these Pharisees and scribes and the others that were in the religious positions you do make the word of God is not affected by your traditions and by the way they use the law.
Here they were using the law against this woman and it was the law we could look up back at Luke chapter, Leviticus chapters 20 I believe, where it was given Leviticus chapter 20, but they were using it in a wrong way, Leviticus chapter 20.
Thank.
And verse 510 I believe Leviticus chapter 20, verse 10.
And the man that committed adultery with another man's wife, even he that committed adultery with his wife, neighbors, wife, the adulterer and the adulteress, shall surely be put to death.
Now if you turn the Deuteronomy 22, this is the other part that they're bringing out shooter enemy 22.
And 1St.
24.
Verse 23 and 24 If a damsel that is a virgin, be betrothed unto a husband and a man Finder of the city, and lie with her, then he shall bring them both out under the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stone, that they die. You notice the way the commandment was given, and the law the adult to her, and the adult to us. We shall bring them both out and stone them.
00:15:12
But though she was plot in the act, they only brought her all the deceit of their hearts. They only brought the woman before the Lord. And they wanted to tempt him. They wanted to trip him, they wanted to accuse him. They wanted to see what he would say. Is he really that man of compassion and grace and love, or he's going to order her to be stolen? Well, it's wonderful to see how the Lord handles these situations.
In the heart of man is buried in its wickedness and its hatred. At the middle of verse 6 Jesus too, challenged and with his finger wrote on the ground. You notice the last part of that verse is in italics, and it ought not be there.
He knew and wanted them to know that he heard them. He wanted them to know he was going to reach their conscience.
I believe when you read the Lord with his finger, right, it's great. When you read the finger of God, it's judgment. That's what Belshazzar saw, the finger of God, It was judgment. But the Lord here didn't come for judgment. It came for grace. Not to condemn, but that they may be saved. He wrote with his finger. But for them, the same word that saves is a word that's going to judge and convict them.
And so it says he wrote with his finger on the ground. And, you know, many have asked and thought what did he write? Well, we don't go beyond scripture. Some did think, and I read that they felt it was the 10 commandments against them, which could have been. But I think when we're reading something like this, I sort of applied Jeremiah 17. I think this tells us just about what he was writing in Jeremiah.
Chapter 17.
And in verse 13, Jeremiah 1713.
Oh Lord, the hope of Israel, all that for safety shall be ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the Lord.
The fountain of living water. They shall be written in the earth. I believe this is I would feel, but I'm not suppressing it, that he wrote their names on the ground.
I feel they were the ones that should be written in the earth. You know, dust. We were dust. Shall we return but for the grace of God? That's Genesis 314. And in Revelations 8, if you look at it, Revelation chapter 8, we have this thought. I believe this is what the Lord is bringing upon their conscience. Revelation the 8th chapter.
We have in verse one judgment. When he opened the 7th seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.
Hard to imagine this, isn't it? Absolute silence while the space 1/2 hour. I don't believe any of us have ever experienced a minute of absolute fighting.
Can't do that. Absolute silence. Why? Judgment. Judgment. How awful to think about it And notice that silence was broken in the last verse. 13 words here by 1 Angel flying in the midst of heaven and with a loud voice saying notice woe.
Whoa, whoa. To the inhabiters of the earth, by reason of the other voices of the trauma. Woe to the earth dwellings. I believe that's what we have in Jeremiah here. 17 They that depart from me shall be written in the earth as they forsaken the Lord.
He knew what was in man, so the Lord wrote in our chapter 8, verse six, with his finger on the ground.
I feel it might have been their name to believe that, but he wanted them to know he heard them verse 7 So when they continued asking you, he lifted up himself and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him cast a stone at her.
This is what they needed. Their conscience needed to be here. I want to turn to Romans 2 on this because it's a wonderful body brings into their hearts. In Romans chapter two he that is without sin, let him judge this woman and cast that first stone and and in Romans 2.
00:20:17
Verse one, Therefore thou art inexcusable. Old man, Whosoever thou art, that judges for, wherein thou judges another, thou condemn us thyself. For thou that judges do with the same things, we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things. And thinketh thou this old man that judges them which do such things, and doeth the save that thou shall escape?
The judgment of God, or despises how the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long-suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance, but after thy hardness and repentance and heart. Treasure is under thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his deeds.
And they continued asking him, and he said he that without sin among you, let him first cast the stone at her. And again he stooped down and wrote on the graph.
You know, it's beautiful the way Scripture is always carried out by the Lord and all his actions, not just signs and wonders and prophecies and who he is, but according to God's mind, always, because he always perfectly performed God's will. Here he stooped down the gate. Why did he do it? But I think we've got that too in Deuteronomy 19, and we can look at it just for a minute. I believe that's the reason.
Deuteronomy 19.
And verse 15 Deuteronomy 19 And verse 15 One witness shall not rise up against the man for any iniquity or for any sin. In any sin that he sinned at the mouth of two witnesses or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established.
This is a principle in the word of God, brother, and we ought to abide by it ourselves always.
You know two witnesses is confident testimony. 3 witnesses is ample testimony. It speaks of not him. It speaks of the holiness and divinity as the President as the proof of God himself. So two or three witnesses are needed here. The Lord is giving the second witness. He's giving the 2nd testimony against them. You notice in the 17th verse of our chapter 8 of John, it is also written in your law.
That's a testimony. That word ought to be witness of two men is true. So we see here the Lord writing the second time. I believe their names again against them, and notice the effect. Now verse nine. They which heard being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even under the last, and Jesus was left alone with the woman.
Standing in the midst.
You know, this is sort of beautiful. He's the only one that temple that didn't have to leave the citizens son of God.
Have to leave.
And she was standing there with nothing to hide. It was all out. She didn't even have to confess. It was clear that she was a Sinner that needed to be saved by praise. And there she was in the midst. I like the expression because it means as though the only one, the preeminent 1, the prominent one. That's this woman now. And Jesus, What a beautiful picture this is.
And you know, unless.
You have that sense of yourself. You can't be saved. You can't say yes, I'm a Sinner. Aren't we all? That is not the same. You have to be like the publican who was in the temple and spoke upon his breast. And he said, God be merciful to me, the Sinner he was in the midst. It was just him as far as he was concerned. And God, Jesus said justified. Unless one is in that position, you can't be saved.
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You can't speak one of them all, the truth of sinners. It has to be you, your sins and your peril, and your way on the way to hell that God will reach out for and you confess it. She was there, and the Lord was there, and the rest were gone. And Jesus had lifted when he lifted up himself and saw none but their wolves. He said under her woman. Where are those on accusers? Hath no man condemned it?
She said. No man, Lord, isn't that lovely? If thou shalt infest with my mouth, Jesus is Lord. But even thy heart God raises from the dead, thou shalt be saved she can.
Festive as Lord. It's wonderful, isn't it, when you admit your need as a Sinner.
And early Jesus as Lord.
Something that's so wonderful this woman is heading for it now. And notice the rest of verse 11, Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more.
It's a beautiful thing. Neither do I condemn these.
I want to just turn to the third chapter of John because This is why he came the first chapter of John and verse 17.
For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. He did not come to condemn. She was there in a position to be saved. She confessed it all. It was all out.
And she owed him his war, and he said sin no more.
She was saved. The Lord never asked anyone to do anything, but he gives them the power to do it. She had a life that would not sin. Oh, she's not in love with the Spirit of God yet. That couldn't be till after Pentecost. But Brethren, we have that life, and he could say that to us. I want to turn to the first epistle of John just for that verse instead of just saying it. John's first epistle.
And chapter 5. John One, Chapter 5 and if you'll look at verse.
Looking for the verse that says.
We cannot sin was chapter 3. I'm sorry. First John chapter 3, verse 9. Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in him. He cannot him because he is born of God. We have a life brethren, that can assist. It's the life of Christ. It can only do one thing and that please Lord.
Do one thing and that's please God, and it's wonderful. We can allow that life to be manifested. We can allow that life to be what governs us till he comes. And that's barely what he's telling her. If he said don't sin no more, He gave her what is needed not to do it. And how wonderful it is to see this woman saved here and now. Notice in verse 12. Then spake Jesus again unto them.
Saved. I am the light of the world, the end of the earth, the light of life. This is what those religious leaders needed. This is what every Sinner in the world needs. The light, because the light manifests what they are, and they needed this. They really couldn't confess like she did, that she was lost and that she needed him and owned him as loyal.
So he said, I'm the light of the world, the light of life. Once again I'll turn to John Three. I want to read this point, but I think this is what happened. The light shined upon them at that moment. And in chapter 3 of John and verse 19. This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil and everyone that doeth evil hateth the light.
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Neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
This is what happened. The Lord cast upon them himself the light of life, the light of the world that manifest. And they needed it. But you know, there's something very sad here now. The carnal mind is at enmity against God. They hate him. And when Jesus revealed himself who he is to these religious leaders, that hatred came out.
It's the carnal crime that's at entity with God. Romans 870 coming out Now notice verse 13. The Pharisees therefore said unto him, The Lord thou bearest. And this word record, by the way, is witness. Truly, I believe J&D would have it that way, but beginning down in verse 18 and on its witness the same word. And I'm going to read it that way.
Witness of thyself Thy witness is not true. It could also be testimony, just because that's the way it ends in this chapter. Thy witness is not true. Verse 14 Jesus answered and said unto them, Though I bear witness of myself, yet my witness is true. Well, I know whence I came, and whither I go, But she could not tell when I come, and whither I go.
He judged. After the flesh I judge the man. And yet if I judge by judgment is true. For I'm not alone, but I am the Father which sent me.
They are one, you know. In John chapter 10 verse 30, the Lord said I and the father are one and they took stones to stone him again. That's the final mind. Whenever he revealed himself as the son of God or as deity, they tried to kill him. His hour has not yet come, but they tried to kill him when he said before Abraham was I am, they took stones again to kill him. And this is the same hatred that comes out here.
They're contesting this blessed one. So then he says in verse 18 I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me. Now we have 2 witnesses. Remember verse 17 is written that the testimony of two witnesses is true. The Lord Jesus is so faithful. He's so wonderful, I often think.
Preach the gospel, and as they go around, the Lord is so wonderful that there's not one going to be at the judgment seat of Christ that says they didn't have an opportunity. He brings out Himself and manifest Himself in creation itself. Psalm 19 very clearly to all creatures, everyone in this world, and He's manifested himself by His precious word, and He has the witness to everyone.
Of who he is. I have yet to find anyone as I go around the world. He doesn't know who Jesus is. They may not know the whole gospel, but they know the way by talking about Jesus, who he is. Wonderful, isn't it what you think about it? He's made himself know he's going to make himself known to these hateful ones of religious leaders now. And he says I'll give you 2 witnesses, the double witness which must be first Jesus himself and then the Father himself.
And it's beautiful to see this. You know, you have it in Corinthians, I think in Second Corinthians chapter 120, all the promises of God are in him. Christ. Yeah. And in him. Amen. Isn't that a wonderful place? That's the two witnesses. All the promises are. And in him. Amen. And oh, how many promises has he made to us, brethren? And they're all true. And yeah. And Amen.
I often think it's as though the Lord Jesus at the right hand of God takes every promise and says yeah, and God says Amen, that's it, 2 witnesses and what we have in Christ. And so he says you have two witnesses and you know that's that is competent testimony according to the test, the Old Testament. And you know two is confident but 10 is testimony.
Is makes 1 individually responsible And I was thinking here he gave the two and now we do look at the 10. If we have time very quickly, how the Lord gives them all 10 witnesses of himself so that they're responsible, they're responsible to God. And I'm going to turn to chapter 5 for the rest of the witnesses as we begin here in chapter 5.
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Verse 32 Now from 32 down to the end we have 5 witnesses. You know the Lord is so wonderful this way. 2 prophets and then the Godhead 3 belt are in the middle. But the one prophet is John the Baptist.
Who was?
Exalted by God, exalted by the Lord Himself.
There was not a prophet like John among those born among women, said John, said the Lord. There's none great, none greater than John. That's the one problem, One example by the Lord. And then the other is Moses, the one exalted by the people. Moses so exalted by the people. And in between we have the works, which is the Spirit of God in activity here, the Father and the Word, which is Christ himself. Let's look at it for a minute.
And there is another verse 32 of chapter 5. There is another that parents witness of me. And I know that the witness he witnesses of me is true. He sent John, and he bear witness. Under the truth will I receive not testimony from man, but these things I say that he might be saved. He was a burning and a shining light, and you were willing for a season to rejoice in his life.
That's the first witness here of these fights, John the Baptist himself.
It's beautiful to see he perfectly performed his mission perfectly. I want to look at chapter one of John again. Chapter one of John again for this. And first of all, verse 6 to 8, verse 6 to 8 there was a man sent from God.
Whose name was John? The same came for a witness to bear witness of the life that all men through him might believe. He was not that light, but he was sent to bear witness of that life. And now if we would just look at verse 27.
He it is who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoes latch it, are not worthy to unloose. These things were done in Bethpower Avara, beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing. The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and sayeth behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, after me cometh a man which is preferred before me.
For he was before me, and I knew him not, but that he should be made manifest to Israel. Therefore am I come baptizing with water, and John bear record or witness, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him.
And I knew him not, but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me.
Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descended, and remaining on him the same is he which baptizes with the Holy Ghost. And I saw and bear witness that this is the Son of God again. The next day after John stood two of his disciples, and looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God back in John five. That's the first witness of the Lord brings out here What a wonderful witness.
You know John was a voice right in the wilderness. John ate locusts and wild honey, and you know they all speak greatly, do they not? The locust tells us that John was a true disciple as the Nazarene of Jesus the Lord.
Locust swaddle. That's a disciple. Locusts have no leader, it says. Visible God controls the locust.
The wind takes the locusts where they go. That's the way it is with one who belongs to the Lord. The Lord controls him, but while honey is very precious, while honey and scripture speaks of enlightenment.
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God had that enlightenment. He could look at that one walking towards him, and he could say the Lamb of God. That's it. So that's the first run of profit and the last one of profit. I should read that next down to verse 45. Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one that accuses you Moses, in whom ye trust. For have you believed Moses? You would have believed me.
For he wrote of me. And if you believe not his writings, how shall you believe my words? If you believe Moses, he wrote of me, you would have believed me. You know, I'd like to just turn to Luke 16 for a minute. Luke 16 for a minute. This is a very important principle, and we know from Moses writings we have beautiful types, beautiful pictures.
Of the Lord Jesus Christ in many ways of his life. In in Luke 16 at the end.
Verse 29 Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophet, Let them hear that. And he said, They father Abraham, But if one went under them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses.
And the prowess? Neither will they we be persuaded, though 1 rose from the dead. This is the second one. Two crowds. 2 men that were witnesses in John. 5 Here it is both. And what did the Lord say in Luke? 24 When he was restoring those disciples and his apostles? He spoke to them.
I better turn to it. Luke 24. I want to say it right It's so beautiful. Luke 24.
And verse 20 Luke 24 And verse 27 And beginning at Moses, and all the problems he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures, the things concerning himself, Moses wrote of me. Notice verse 44.
And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Mozart, and in the prophets, and in the sounds concerning me. So first it was John the Baptist, that disciple, of whom Jesus said, there's none other like John the greatest, and Moses, who the people exalted so both.
Witnesses of Jesus.
And now we look at the three others here. Notice in verse 36. But I have greater witness than that of John For the works which the Father has given me to finish, the same works that I do bear witness of me that the Father has sent me. I believe this speaks of the Spirit of God who worked through the Lord Jesus. That's why the only unforgivable or unpardonable sin was blaspheming in the Holy Spirit.
It was the Spirit of God working with Christ here, the Eternal Sonic, and that was a terrible thing if they didn't believe that testimony. So he speaks here of the works, the worst. I think it'd be nice. Just look at John 10 for this John 10 in one verse, I think it's 25.
John 10.
And verse 25. Jesus answered that I told you and you believe not the works that I do in my Father's name. They bear witness of me. It's beautiful to see this. So the first one would be the works that he did through the power of the Spirit of God, right here. The next one was verse 37.
And the Father himself, which has sent me, hath borne witness of me. He has neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape. As you have not his word of biting in you for whom he has sent him, he believes not. The Father himself has borne witness of me, said Jesus. So you have the works of the Spirit, and the Father himself is never we read in Matthew.
Chapter 3, verse 17. I believe a buckle to turn to it. But the voice of heaven came out. It was the voice of God. This is my beloved Son.
00:45:07
Here, here, and on the mount of Transfiguration, the same voice giving the 2nd testimony or witness also by God Himself, the Father of the Son. This is what Jesus is bringing out and how beautiful that is. The Father Himself that sets me has borne witness of me. Now the last is verse 39. It's the Word. Search the scriptures for them. You think you have eternal life.
They are they which witness or testify of me. And we've just mentioned they had the Old Testament Scriptures and we heard what the Lord said in Luke 24 that he spoke to them from those scriptures things concerning himself. How precious it is the faithfulness of the Lord to the loss of this world, the witness that he brings out. And you know, it's beautiful to see that this precious word is what speaks of me, the scriptures themselves.
The Apostle Paul said in Romans 33 seeing so many Gentiles being saved and so many Jews rejecting. And he said what advantage did that you have there? The answer is itself. Every advantage for under them was committed the oracles of God. They had these scriptures that were talking about the witness to the Savior, the witness to the Messiah, the witness to the Son of God himself.
These five, he added. And then as I said, 10 is the number of responsibilities. So we have ten others. I may not have time to go into all of them, but as I mentioned, the Spirit is one who still here as a witness, and I believe it's John 16. And we look at it in a minute to show how he testifies and convicts and convinces. John 16. First I look at verse just for one or two verses, 8:00 and 9:00.
And when he that is the Spirit, the Comforter is calm. He will reprove the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment of sin. Because they believe not on me. I could go on. This is the witness of the Spirit that's here right now. And then the 7th would be the science. Oh, how wonderful the witness of the science. And there are so many. Maternity Matthew 12 For this the signs themselves.
That point only to one That's the Son of God. In Matthew 12 we have verse 28, Matthew 1228. I'm sorry I I turned to a mark. I go back.
Mark there, Matthew 1238, Matthew 1238. Then certain of the scribes and the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee.
You know, I watch, I don't know Bible. I got into goodwill for that purpose. And I was going to mark in the Old Testament all the signs that pointed to Jesus. And I got a little bit discouraged with so many. But I can say this, the Lord in his birth and his life, his death and resurrection, fulfilled every sign in the Old Testament. And they all pointed to him and they asked for a sign. And you know, if we just look for a minute, Isaiah 7 It's sort of beautiful to see how faithful God is in this.
In Isaiah Chapter 7 I'll read this quickly. The Lord spanked under the king and said verse 11 Ask assign of the Lord thy God. Ask it either in the depth or in the height above. Don't. Doesn't matter how hard it is, how deep the sign would be. The Lord would give it. Just ask and the King would not ask verse 30, verse 14. Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign.
Behold, a virgin shall conceive.
And shall call his name Emmanuel, God with us. Well, you know how many signs I could go to in the Old Testament, But here in Matthew 12 They come these religious leaders, and say, we would see a sign from thee. Verse 39 He answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a son, and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of the prophet Joan.
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For as Jonah was 3 days and three nights.
In the whale's belly or the great fish, so shall the son of man be 3 days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, shall condemn it, because they reprinted at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, a greater than Jonah is here. The Queen of the South shall rise up in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it, for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon.
And behold, our greater than Solomon is here.
Who could be greater than the prophet Jonah as a testimony in a spying? The one of whom Jonah typified 3 days and three nights in the earth? That's the Lord in his death and resurrection. How beautiful that sign is. The cross is His word for sinners. And who could be greater than the sign or the wisdom I should say of Solomon?
One who gave Solomon that wisdom the wisest man ever lived with Solomon white from here, but Christ. The one Solomon was a type of so we have his glory there. Representatives Solomon and the Lord Jesus and his person, and his work and his word.
Fulfill these signs beautifully. So we have signs. That's the 7th of of the witnesses. And then the 8th is yourself. Sort of nice, isn't it? Yourself. I think it's rather beautiful. Look at first John chapter 5. First John chapter 5 is every believer is a sign and a witness. Now today in chapter 5.
And verse.
10.
He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself, and he that believeth not God hath made him alive because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son. You have that witness in yourself. We are walking epistles of Christ known and read of all men. That's a wonderful thought, isn't it? The 8th witness is ourselves. We are heavenly people. We're going to have that new beginning. But it says he said plethora from the Son of God has to witness.
In itself. And there's a beautiful verse there. I'm not going to turn to a John 333. All that have believed on him has set to the seal that God is true for witnesses. I think it's a beautiful thought, isn't it? That's just ambassadors, but epistles of Christ, known in red of all men. But one last verse might be nice upon you as a witness. John 15. I think it is John 15. And this witness is so precious because it's you and I.
The last verse of John 15 speaking to the disciples. And he also shall bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning, or how precious this witness is, have just set to your seal that God is truth. If you believed in the Lord Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you set to your seal that God is true. You're the witness. And then the Knights are the apostles themselves. Again first John apostles themselves.
In first John chapter one. This is very lovely to see it and what a witness this is.
A John one verse, one that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled, of the word of life. For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness.
And show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us. The Apostles bear witness that.
There was an Incarnate dance, humility and humanity. Jesus Christ, the Son of God become male. And notice in the 4th chapter just this precious verse 14 And we have seen and do testify or witness that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. What a witness. This is the apostles themselves. And now I would just mention for this last one with 10 is the Lord Himself.
I must turn back to the 8th chapter of John and verse 25. Eighth chapter John and verse 25.
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Once said they unto him, Who art thou? And Jesus sayeth unto them.
Even the same that I said unto you from the beginning. I believe JND has it this way altogether that which I said to you from the beginning.
Everything he said was a witness of who he is, the Lord himself, and I just would like to end with the last one. And it's God himself.
Will look back again to 1St John God himself and in first John and and again in chapter 5. I want to just read those verses. This is not the 10th. This is the overall witness of the of the Savior first John and chapter 5.
Already taking the time here.
Verse 9 If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater, for this is the witness of God, which he has testified of his Son. He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself, and he that believeth not God has made him a liar, because he believeth not the witness that God gave of his Son. And this is the witness that God has given to us, eternal life.
And this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life. He that hath not the Son of God hath not life. These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that she may know that she had eternal life. We have set to our seal that God is true, that wonderful witness of God himself.
And finally, I just mentioned that last thought. We are epistles of Christ, President Logan Red and all that. What a witness the Lord has given to this world, first two, then 10 and finally God himself. And we here as witness of that blessed life, let's say number.
198 #198.
Florida.
And break and make me wrong. I pray. Pray for her.
Holy, holy, holy.
Lord.
01:00:07
End up going with those other brethren, Mr. Darby answered back. He said don't criticize RC, he said. We talk about the Heavenlies he dwells there.
And you know, we see how a backup was able to raise above these problems and say, speak with like hind speed and he could dwell in high places. And yes, how much greater. Those of us who are now know the Lord and were part of the Church, the Bride of Christ, and receded in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, we should be rejoicing in the Lord. We should be happy, hopefully, when we meet one another. We don't greet one another like the sour looks on our faces, and it looks like we've been baptized in pickle juice.
Juice or something. But then we can have the joy of the Lord that will be ****** in our lives, that we're not controlled by outward circumstances, that we have found a fountain of living waters that can satisfy in the way that all the other broken systems can. And that's the person of the word, Jesus Christ. And may the Lord help us to keep our eyes on him. And the little time is left till he promised to take us to be with himself. And now that we have a little bit of an outline in this book of Habakkuk.
Maybe when you get to glory, one of the persons no doubt you're going to meet there is the prophet Habakkuk. And he may say to you, have you ever read my book? And you can go home tonight and you can read it and see how it goes together a little bit with what we've given tonight. And you can say yes to back if I read your book and I enjoyed it and there was some helpful things for me there that were blessing to my soul, well, all scripture is possible. May the Lord bless that book to us.
Perhaps there are time we've done. We could just close.
A little prayer they intimately associated with the Lord Jesus. Isn't it important that we understand the direction we're in? We can, dear brother.
It may be a gift of God to.
2 John 2 and 3
Address—C. Hendricks
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Sure. I don't know if we want to open any of those windows and say go to you folks with the.
It might be you get a little air until the electricity is.
Let's turn to 275.
Our God is light and though we go.
Across a trackless, wild, Under Jesus footsteps? Ever show the path for every child?
275.
Raise their tongue fist. Your God is light and the.
Never made landslide.
Burst God.
Shaking.
Love tries like grass.
Let's turn to two very short epistles in the New Testament, second and third, John.
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Start with second John.
The Elder under the elect Lady and her children, whom I love in the truth, and not I only, but also all they that have known the truth for the truth sake which dwelleth in US, and shall be with us forever. Grace be with you, Mercy and peace from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ the Son of the Father, in truth and love. I rejoiced greatly that I found of Thy children walking in truth.
As we have received a commandment from the Father. And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment to be, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one another, And this is love that we walk after His commandments. This is the commandment that, as you have heard from the beginning, he should walk in it. For many deceivers are entered into the world who confess not that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.
This is a deceiver and an Antichrist. Look to yourselves that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward.
Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ? He hath both the Father and the Son. If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither did him God Speak.
For he that biddeth him Godspeed his partaker of his deeds.
Having many things to write unto you, I would not write with paper and ink, but I trust to come unto you and speak face to face, that our joy may be full. The children of thy elect sister greet thee. Amen.
Third job, the algorithms of the well beloved Gaius, whom I love in the truth. Beloved, I wish above all things, that thou mayest, prosper, and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.
For I rejoiced greatly when the brethren came and testified of the truth that is in thee, Even as the walkest in the truth. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in the truth.
Beloved, thou doest faithfully whatsoever thou doest to the brethren, and to strangers which had borne witness of by charity or love before the Church. Whom of thou bring forward our journey after a godly sword? Thou shalt do well, because that for his name's sake they went forth, taking nothing of the Gentiles. We therefore ought to receive such that we might be fellow helpers to the truth.
I wrote unto the church, but diatrophies who loveth to have the preeminence among them, receiveth us not.
Wherefore, if I come, I will remember his deeds, which he doeth, breaking against us with malicious words, and not content therewith, neither does he himself receive the brethren, and forbideth them that would and cast them out of the Church.
Beloved, follow that that which is evil with that which is good. He that doeth good is of God, but he that doeth evil have not seen God.
Demetrius have good report for all men, and of the truth itself. Yeah. And we also bear record. And you know that our record is true. I have many things to write, but I will not with ink and pen write unto thee. But I trust I shall shortly see thee, and we shall speak face to face.
Peace be to thee, our friends. Salute the group of friends by name.
And let's turn back to first John chapter one for a verse, First John one verse 5. This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. And again in chapter four of first John.
Verse 8.
He did love her, not knoweth not God, for God is love.
Verse 16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
And I read those two verses, those 3 verses in one John, so that we could see how that it begins with the wonderful truth that God is light, God is holy, God is righteous. God is absolute purity. He's a puritan to behold evil and cannot look on iniquity. God is light. Nothing so pure as light brings before us those attributes of his being that.
00:10:22
Sets forth His Holiness.
His righteousness, His truth.
But God has loved as well, and that sets before us the wonderful attributes of His grace and mercy, kindness and passion.
Forgiveness. God is love.
Over second John we could write the words God is light.
And over third John they could write the words that God has loved.
Now we'll see why that soul as we go into the two epistles. There's a lot of similarities between these two epistles.
And then some of the similarities are really contrasts.
Both of them are written from the elder, the first one of Second John the Elder unto the elect lady and her children.
There John the Elder unto the Well, beloved Gaius.
Both eat their souls, speak of the truth over and over and over again. Let's notice it in Second John.
The hour under the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth.
And not only, but also all they that have known the truth.
For the truth sake which dwelleth in US, and shall be with us forever.
Chapter verse 3 The end of the verse and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father in truth.
And love for sport. I rejoice greatly that I founded thy children walking in truth.
So we have the truth emphasized in second job and so in 3rd John.
Verse one the Elder unto the Well, beloved guys, whom I love in the truth.
Verse three, I rejoice greatly when the brethren came and testified of the truth that is in the even as thou walkest in the truth.
I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.
And.
Verse 12 Demetrius had good report of all men, and of the truth itself. And verse 8 and this that we therefore ought to receive, such that we might be fellow helpers to the truth.
Second job is negative.
3rd John was positive.
Second, John is a solemn warning to an elected lady and her children to be on guard against those that come to her house, purported to be the.
Servants of Christ, and they fail in the critical fundamental basic test of the truth as to the person Christ.
And so she has warned. The key verse in Second John is found in verse 10, if there come any unto you. And bring not this doctrine, the doctrine of Christ, the doctrine concerning who he is, the truth of this person.
The instruction to her is receive.
And not receive him not so. Second John is instruction to this elect lady and her children, whom not to receive, whom she should reject.
And the key verse in 3rd John is verse eight. We therefore ought to receive such that we might be fellow helpers to the truth.
John is commendation to Gaius, who was extending hospitality and receiving into his home those that went forth, taking nothing of the Gentiles from the name of Christ to serve him in the truth, and so to receive such would be to be a fellow helper with the truth. That's their job. But both are emphasizing the truth, and we can't really be walking in the truth.
If we fail in either one of these two areas, the danger in Second John is to commend and to have fellowship with those that come according to the servants of Christ that don't bring the truth. We ought to reject them.
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The danger in 3rd John is to refuse those that ought to be received, those who are friends, those who are walking in the truth.
And diatrophies mentioned in 3rd John is one who didn't receive, whereas where the commendation is to Gaius who did receive.
So third John is saying receive them, second John is saying receive them not.
And it's striking that these two epistles are both addressed to individuals.
The second epistle is addressed to an elected lady, a sister and her children.
Those that in the area of responsibility are.
Have the least responsibility, you might say, as to assembly functions.
And Gaius is commended for John for his showing hospitality to those that were really friends.
Their job ends with greet the friends by me. The friends salute thee. So third John is even with friends and second John is dealing with enemies.
Verse 7 for many Second John Verse 7 for many deceivers are entered into the world who confess not.
That Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an Antichrist. So one comes that's a that character. Though they purport to be a servants of Christ and ministers of the gospel, if they don't bring the doctrine of Christ, they ought to be refused.
Now you might think that second John would have been addressed to the brother much easier for a brother. You know the man has a nature that is more austere and stern and and firm, and the sister has a nature which is more outgoing and loving and ready to show hospitality. But it's Third John addressed to the brother that he's commended for showing hospitality. And the official address to the sister is instructing her that if anyone comes to your house.
It doesn't bring the doctrine of Christ. You see him not.
So when her husband comes home at night, she cannot say to him. I had a visitor today, some visitors, and I left them in the house and we had some fellowship and I served me some coffee and Donuts and so on. And then when he finally learned what they were bringing her, he would say you ought not to have received them without bringing the truth. But I'm just a lowly sister and I.
That would have been your responsibility to.
To turn them away. But I couldn't do that. You know, the sister can't plead that because Second John is addressed to her. So what is that telling us? I believe it's telling us that.
Even she and her children even are responsible to remain true to Christ and to refuse what is false, mysterious.
That second verse of Second John that says for the truth sake which dwelleth in US and should be with us forever.
Reminds us, and on this you don't have to turn to it, but in John 14 you want to turn to it. You may in John 14 of the Spirit of God that uses very very similar words to.
14 Verse 17 Even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seemed to not, neither knoweth him, but he know him, for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. And verse 16 says this other comforter, that he may abide with you forever, Forever. And so back to second John. Now the second verse, For the truth sake which dwelleth in US, and shall be with us forever, the Spirit of God is called the truth.
In first John 5, let's turn back to first John Chapter 5 where we read that.
First John Chapter 5.
Verse 6 This is he that gained by water and blood. Not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth or the truth. Spirit is the truth and the Lord. We know the verse so well. I don't have to turn to it, but we can quote it in John 14. Six I am the way, the truth.
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And life. The Lord is the truth. He is the truth objectively. And the Spirit is the truth subjectively. The Spirit within us who dwells with us forever dwells in us. He makes the truth good to our souls, the truth of Christ who's outside of us and in the glory. And then we have that other verse in John 17, the Lord praying to the Father. He says, Thy word is true. This book, the word is truth.
So we have.
The Lord Jesus being spoken of is the truth, and the Spirit spoken of is the truth. And the Word contains the truth. It is the truth.
So this truth will be with us forever.
Grace be with you mercy and peace, Second John 3 from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ the Son of the Father. In truth and love. I rejoice greatly when I found of thy children. The the out there suggests that not all of her children were going on in the truth. But he rejoiced that he found of her children some of her children that were going on in the truth.
As we have walking in the truth, as we have received a commandment from the Father. And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that which we have from the beginning, that we love one another. And the way this love is shown amongst God's people, especially in the setting of Second John. See the danger of Second John in Second John is for this sister to to to show love to this one that comes to her house, and doesn't bring the doctrine of Christ when the Word says.
Refuse them. Reject them.
Do not receive them. And so the next verse helps us to explain how that that's really the way of love, verse six says, And this is love that we walk after his commandments, and this is the commandment that as he had heard from the beginning, you should walk in him.
So the best way, the true way, the sure way of showing love and to one that comes as a Christian teacher and doesn't bring the doctrine of Christ, is not to welcome them in and be hospitable to them, but to not receive them.
That's love. Sometimes we don't think of that as love. You see there's a pseudo love that is that is spoken a lot about in Christian circles today and that is to forget the truth and just love your breath. And that's not love. And the truth is that's not the love that John speaks up. Love in the truth.
And if we show love and the expensive truth, that's not divine love and it's not God's way, and there has been, never will be.
And then he warns this dear sister, He tells her in verse 7. For many deceivers are entered into the world. We confess not now. I'm going to change this a little, because the point of the verse is not quite the way it reads in our King James. It's not confessed, not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. It's not the denial that he came, but it's really the confession of the person who came. I read it that way.
Who confess not Jesus Christ coming in flesh.
Now, all of us to be it would be foolish for any anyone to speak of any of us as coming in the flesh, because that's the only way we can come, because we're just men and women. The only way that we can enter into the world is in the flesh. But here was a person who was being confessed, who existed before he came in the flesh, and he's being confessed as having come in the flesh. So it involves his deity, his Godhead, and his manhood. That's really the confession.
That is being denied by this one that comes to this Christian lady, this elect lady and her children. He doesn't confess the truth of the Lord's person, but he is God and man and one person. God come in flesh he who came in flesh. And to deny that is to disqualify 1 to be fellowshipped by this elect lady and her children.
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And then John says, look to yourselves.
Well, he says at the end of verse seven. I should miss that this is a deceiver and an Antichrist and we're not the fellowship deceivers an Antichrist. We're to reject them.
Look to yourselves, he says to this dear sister. Not that we lose, not those things which we have wrought. She was evidently the fruit of his laborers, and her children too, So, he says, if she did not remain faithful in this regard. But there's if there's one thing that God does not allow any unfaithfulness on our part with regards to its being true to the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, you're not true to him.
We can fellowship those that are his enemies, that are deceivers and Antichrist. Then that's a strong indication that there is something likely wrong in your relationship with the Lord Jesus, because if we are to be true to any, it is to Him who has given his all for us.
So John says, look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have brought. They were his fruit in the Lord. This elect Lady and her children, and should they not go on, well, then he would lose his reward. But that we received a full reward. How important it is for the Saints of God to go on well, And if they don't, it reflects upon the one who led them to the Lord, just as if our children don't go on well, and reflects upon us as parents.
Then verse 9 is a very important verse. Whosoever transgress it, Mr. Darby renders that whosoever goes forward, it's the thought of development going beyond what God has been pleased to reveal to us as the truth. And the truth is centered in a person, the Lord of Jesus Christ. He is the truth. And to go beyond that, remember what's passing out tracks in an elevated platform in Chicago. It's where the trains change from the subway to the elevated. And there was a.
Theological Seminary right there, and I got engaged in the conversation in the car with a man who was evidently a professor in that school used to be fairly sound, but it had turned very much modernistic at the time. And he asked me what I believed, and I confessed to him my my belief in the deity of Christ and his virgin birth, and his bodily resurrection, and the infallibility and inerrancy of Scripture, and so on.
The fundamentals of the faith. And he smiled at me and said, that's nice, but now you have to go on to the deeper things. And that's what John is talking about here in verse 9. Whosoever goes forward literally and divide, is not in the doctrine of Christ. This man thought there was something beyond Christ, something that was deeper and fuller and richer than he. But in him dwelleth all the firmness of the Godhead bodily, and we are complete. In him was the head of all principality and power. There is nothing beyond Christ but deadly error.
And so to go beyond him, to go forward, to develop into deeper truth, as he would say, is to go from truth to error. And this is where he was. I don't believe he was really the Lords.
And so I encountered one just like this is whoever goes forward and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God for what they do do That is a proof that he never knew God.
He that divided in the doctrine of Christ, He of both the Father and the Son, So to make to remain true to him who is the truth, is to remain in the truth ourselves. And then he says to this elect lady, if there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive them not into your house, neither did in Godspeed. Or that simply means to greet him, But give him the common reading, Just close the door for he that bideth him. Godspeed is a partaker of his.
Evil.
Deeds.
Now both of these epistles end with John saying having many things to write into you. I would not with paper and ink, but I trust to see you shortening the song that would speak face to face. And that said in the 3rd Epistle 2.
And then he speaks of the his this the children of Thy elect sister Greek, thee. Amen. So there was this elected sister elect lady and her children, and then her elect sister as well. So they are very responsible to maintain the glory of Christ. Now just a few words on 3rd John and then we're close. Third John is written to a brother. The well beloved guys. There's a word that used four times in 3rd John that's not used once in second John because the tone of second John is very, very severe.
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Austere, he's dealing with enemies. He's dealing with those who are deceivers and Antichrist, and he's enjoining upon this elect lady and her children to be faithful and to and to refuse them. But John, the the the whole flavor of the atmosphere. Third, John is entirely different. He's commending Gaius, his beloved brother, for his showing hospitality, and taking in the brethren that came, and housing them, and feeding them and giving them lodging, and then sending them on their journey.
Rejoicing and he commands all this. Notice verse one, the well beloved Gaius. He's mighty out those that are truly friends, because the epistle ends with greet the friends by name. So third John is dealing with friends and second John is dealing with enemies and our attitude towards them. If we're going to be in the truth, our attitude towards them ought to be consistent with faithfulness to Christ.
Light. Second John. God is love. Third John. That is the going out of the divine affections to those who are in the truth and going out in the truth to refuse to do that. The danger of third John is sectarianism of just showing the fellowship with just the few that we know, and there may be others that we.
Haven't met before. In fact, Gaius is commended for taking these brethren that were strangers to him before.
And receiving them because he was certain that they were in the truth, and so he didn't refuse them. We should refuse those who are untrue to Christ. We should be in fellowship with those that are true to him, And seeking to please him, he says. Verse two of third John, Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest, prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospered. He recognized that Gaia's soul was prospering, and evidently he wasn't in very good health, so he.
Desired that.
Dias might experience better health in his body, even as he did in his soul. For I rejoiced greatly when the Brethren came and testified of the truth that is indie, even as thou walkest in the truth.
Wonderful to have that testimony of one by brethren, and to be walking in the truth himself. And then John says, I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth. Evidently Gaius was one of his children as the elect lady, and her children were as well, and he rejoiced in that. John rejoiced in that.
Beloved, Daddo is faithfully, whatsoever thou doest, to the brethren, and that strange to strangers. These brethren were strangers to him. They hadn't seen him before.
And he hadn't seen them, and yet he took them in, and showed fellowship with them, which had borne witness of my charity. And I loved before the Church, whom if thou bring forward on their journey after a godly sort, thou should do well.
Because if for his namesake they went forth taking nothing of the Gentiles, we therefore ought to receive such that we might be fellow helpers to the truth.
The danger in second John is to receive those who are false. The danger in 3rd John is to reject those who are true.
So we don't want to be loose.
And flout a serious kind of love which throws your arms around everyone even though they're enemies of Christ. That's wrong. Nor do we want to be sectarian and refuse those that.
Don't just fit in with our way of thinking, but who are really the Lords? And walking in the truth? So there's a safeguard in these two epistles. You're going to have to take them together in order to understand them.
For his namesake, they went forth taking nothing of the Gentiles. That's almost forgotten nowadays in Christian circles, where you have Christian men pleading with the world to support them in the work of the Lord. Instead of looking to the Saints of God to do it. Saints of God should feel that solemn responsibility to support those that go forth taking nothing of the Gentiles. This is the way they went forth in those early days.
For his namesake.
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We therefore ought to receive such that we might be fellow helpers to the truth.
Now there was a man there that was totally out of tune that the mind of God. I believe he was an evil man. His name is diatrophies. I wrote under the church, but John says but diatrophies. Who loveth to have the preeminence?
Receive it among them, receive it us not.
Now I don't know how he did not receive John the Apostle. It could be that he refused his epistle. He says I wrote unto the church, but the atrophies Receiveth us not somehow. Maybe he did not receive the the epistle that John wrote or.
Discredited it? I don't know. As though John had ever been there before. He might have. Rather reads as though he hadn't been.
But it does say of diacraphies he receiveth us not. Gaius is commended for receiving and diatrophies is condemned for not receiving. He did more than that, John says, Wherefore if I come, I will remember his deeds which he doeth, praying against us with malicious words, and not content therewith praying against the Apostle John. Think of it with malicious words.
Not receiving John and then speaking against him.
Malicious words, and then he says, And not content or with neither does he himself receive the brethren.
And forbidden them that would.
And casteth them out of the church. It's hard to imagine that one man could have this kind of power in an assembly, a man who was so, so evil in what he was doing.
And then he says beloved again writing to Gaius. Beloved he was one of the beloved. Why wasn't the Gaius cast out? Probably because he wasn't a threat to the octopus diatrophies. Would get rid of anyone that had that was a threat to him.
There he he he loved to have the 1St place, the preeminence. He wanted to be the the leader there and he didn't want any rivalry in his doing that. And so whenever there was anyone that would challenge his position and be a rival to him, he threw him out of the church.
Evidently guys didn't have that kind of disposition. It seems as though Gaius was a very quiet, loving, hospitable man that received the Brethren, but he didn't pose any threat to the Atrophy, so he was not, evidently was not cast up.
It's a little difficult to get the picture exactly how it was in this in this place, but he says in verse 11 beloved, follow not that which is evil, that's what diatrophies was doing, but that which is good. He that doeth good is of God like Gaius, but he that doeth evil hath not seen God like that atrophies.
And then he commends in verse 12 Demetrius. Evidently this was a letter of commendation to Demetrius or Demetrius. Evidently Demetrius brought it to Gaius when he went there. Notice what he says of Demetrius. Demetrius had good report of all men, #1, all men good report wonderful, and that the truth itself. Demetrius had a good report of the truth itself. And three.
And yeah, and we also bear record, he says John. So John adds his commendations to this, and you know that our record is true.
And now again he says, like he did in the second epistle. I have many things to write, but I will not with ink and pen write into the But I trust I shall shortly see thee, And we shall speak face to face. Please speak to thee. I think it ought to read the friends, salute the Greek, the friends by name. So here's an Episcopal It deals with Friends. There was one man that was totally out of communion with the Lord, probably not the Lords at all. And that was due to diapto fees.
But Demetrius was commended and approved, so we have some beautiful principles in these two of the epistles. Second, John Goddess light.
I'm clear. John Thomas laws.
But not to receive your second job. Whom to receive the third job? Second job is written to the elect lady and her children, not on the level of nature, but on the on the spiritual level, giving their the sister and her children responsibility of remaining true to Christ, no matter who came to adore. And 3rd John commending him the brother that would not have the nature so much of hospitality, but he's extending it here, and he's commended for this activity of the divine nature going out to those who are true to the Lord Jesus. May we may we be faithful in rejecting all that as opposed to him.
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And also in receiving all those who are truly his friends.
Just got out of life.
#21 in the appendix.
Oh, what a savior is Jesus the Lord. Well, might his name by his Saints be adored. He has redeemed them from hell by his blood. Save them forever, brought them to God #21.
I say.
Word where I listened right and strangely.