Address—Dave Newby
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Sing together #219 Please 219.
We'll speak a little bit about why we're here, about the word, and about words.
About books and about reading.
And first of all.
Years ago.
This was probably 3035 years ago.
A brother told me a story that he had attended a lecture. It was a lecture, an address, and I don't remember what all the circumstances were.
And it was about the importance of man.
The value of man.
And I was chatting with a brother afterwards, he was telling me a little bit about it.
And he said to me as he was sitting there listening to the speaker talk about the importance of man.
He said. I thought of a hymn.
Lord, what is man?
Tis he who died?
You know, there's a verse in the 72nd Psalm where 77th Psalm where he talks about.
How he is so moved and so full of the thing that he cannot speak.
And brethren, I have been very encouraged to also think of the Scripture where the Lord says to Israel through Hosea, take with you words.
Do you ever feel a need in your own heart?
And you can't hardly think of the words to pray. You don't know what to say. Isn't it a mark of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that he says, well, here, take you words?
And I've been very thankful over the years.
To be able to just take the words of God right back to the Lord.
Some of my favorites are Ecclesiastes and probably the Gospel of John.
And the book of Romans.
And how many times I've come into the presence of the Lord.
May be very burdened.
And I can just bring the words of God that He's given to us in His Word.
And justice Read them back to the Lord.
He gave them by inspiration.
So what is man, Lord? What is man? You know the scripture asks the question, what is man?
And to make a Long story short in this particular subject.
God gives us a man where all others failed, where Adam has failed, and all of his race.
God has given us a man. Now think about some of the comments that have been made just in this conference in the last two days.
Some of the scriptures that have been read.
Have you heard the Word incarnation? I've heard that word a number of times in the last few days.
The Incarnation And we heard about the incarnation of the Son of God.
We've heard about the Trinity.
And that at a particular point in history, God the Son.
He took the seed of Abraham by the hand.
He became a man. We speak of the man Christ Jesus using the words of the apostle Paul.
And I'm sure that all of us as we anticipated coming to this conference.
What did we know that we were going to do?
We were going to open the book. We're going to open this book right here. We are people of the book. We're people of the word. God has given us a book.
There are rival books that God has given us this book. There are others that claim to be the word of God, but they aren't. And there you have the field of apologetics where where skillful and gifted men have gone in and have looked at some of these things and they've laid out before us some of the reasons why.
We would consider this to be the word of God, the claims that it makes, and why some other book might not be the word of God.
So I have some quotations and then we have a few scriptures we want to read. And I have to say thank you to some of my brethren that you have anticipated some of these things. And I think that we are together in that when we come together to talk about the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And what He is to us in our own personal lives.
And in the midst of his own, it's a good question. Why are we here? You know, there are. We heard some questions, asked basic questions.
You know, and some of the basic questions really touch in on what we're talking about here when we're opening the Word of God.
It's been noted that probably the two major philosophical questions at the basis of all other questions are why is there something rather than nothing?
We know that there is something. There's not nothing, there is something.
We're all experiencing that.
And if there is something, why is this something the way it is and not some other way? Every question goes back to God and we're going to see that when I turn to my go to chapter, so.
First of all, Saint Augustine from his confessions.
Now listen very carefully.
He addresses the Lord in that book.
Saint Augustine's Confessions is a That's one of my desert island books. If I had to be marooned on a desert island and I could have five books, I thought of this. I've played with this idea. If I could have five books, that'd be one of them.
He says you have made us for yourself.
And our heart is restless until it rests in you.
You have made us for yourself.
Now we spoke of the Triune God, the Godhead.
And think about a word like this. There are some who are lonely. There are people who are lonely.
But there's another way of looking at something like that. There was a period in my life where I was lonely.
So just as some of you, I went looking for the solution to my loneliness.
And by the grace of God, I found the solution.
And there she is.
But as I got older, I looked at it a little bit differently. Instead of loneliness, use this word.
Incomplete.
Incomplete.
God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, God is love.
And love would have an object.
The father would have an object of love for his beloved son.
Would we ever say that God was incomplete in and of himself? God is eternal.
We are finite. God is a necessary being. We are contingent. We are not necessary.
But God is love, and God would have an object.
For his love.
And thus we have the scheme of salvation in Scripture. You have made us for yourself.
And our heart is restless until it rests in you.
Are there restless hearts in the world today?
Probably more so than we have ever known in the past. Now some of that may be due to.
Media hype and so forth. But there is a spirit afoot in the world, and at the bottom of it is a restless spirit.
The heart was made for God.
For fellowship with him.
And the heart of man will always be restless.
Until it rests.
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In faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Where do I learn about that? I learn about it in the book.
That's where I learn about it.
I opened the book and I read about it. Now everyone of us knew that when we came to Walla Walla for this weekend, we were going to open the book. What do we wonder? Well, we wonder what passage is going to be suggested for the readings, and some of us are thinking about what it might be.
We wonder what are our conversations going to be like? Who am I going to visit with?
Who have I not seen for a while? And I want to visit with that person. I want to see how they're doing. And I think about who is going to be here. You know, I have a few questions for a brother. I want to take up a certain passage of Scripture with a brother.
Who's going to speak? Who's going to have the gospel? Who's going to have the addresses? Who's going to get up and speak in the open meeting? Who's going to speak of the young people? Sings.
Who's going to have a children's meeting? Those are the questions that we wonder about. And at the rock bottom of every single one of those questions is the Word. Because we're a people of the Word. We're not going to come here and air out all of our ideas about this and that and the other thing. We're going to come here and we're going to open the Word because as believers who are redeemed through the work of Christ and the grace of God, we want to know what the Lord has to say to us. So we pray before we come here.
And we pray in the prayer meeting because we want to know what the Lord has to say to us.
Why do we want to know that? Because we know that our hearts were made by Him for ourselves, and the heart is restless until we rest in Him.
There are those in the room here who have hearts that are restless regarding certain areas of your life. You have challenges in school, you have challenges with your family. You you don't know what to do for a living. You have whatever circumstances it might be, there is something there where you need to turn to the Lord.
To find your direction. The good thing is, is that you know that you need to turn to the Lord.
We sorrow when people turn elsewhere other than the Lord.
From Charles Bridges on Ecclesiastes.
I recommend that book very much.
Here, Bridges is actually quoting another writer.
He is the substitute for everything, He being the Lord Jesus.
Nothing can be a substitute for him.
Think about that.
There's lots of stuff in our lives.
Probably more than ever before, I hear people say. Well, I'm just so busy.
All kinds of things that demand our attention.
Hold this way, pulled that way. It actually becomes kind of comical in some ways because you have to ask yourself, do you really need this? I mean, do you really need this? How much of this is self-inflicted? Just so much what CS Lewis calls the Kingdom of Noise.
What another writer calls the chaos of the now.
One writer talks about how the tendency of the day and age in which we live is to get people to think that the here and now, this moment, is all that there is. We're going to talk about that when we go to a certain chapter. This moment is not all that there is.
He is the substitute for everything, all of those things in our lives. How sweet it is, how comforting it is to be able to turn aside and just say, Lord, I just need to spend some time with you.
Just quietly.
With the man Christ Jesus.
Now, we'll see a little bit later when we turn to some scripture again, this question, what is man? There's a statement of GV Wigram. I might be giving it a little bit roughly because I couldn't find it before I came to this meeting. I've got it marked somehow, but there were so many markings in that book that I couldn't find which marking it was.
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Were it not for the incarnation, I should be ashamed to be a man. Did I say that right?
A brother over here, Dan Leaning I think, pointed that out to me many, many years ago, were it not for the incarnation.
I should be ashamed to be a man.
I am only thankful to be standing here as a man before you because of the man Christ Jesus.
Not because of Adam.
But because of the head of a new race, the Man Christ Jesus.
And those of us who have believed in Christ, who are sealed with the Spirit of God, are no longer viewed as in our Adam standing. We still have the flesh.
That we are viewed as in Christ. Brethren, this is the Christian position. This is at the heart, at the core of Paul's ministry who had the mystery revealed to him. And this is a doctrine, this is the line of teaching that constitutes Christianity. That is largely being given up in our day. Somebody made a comment about replacement theology. That's one of the terms.
Progressive dispensationalism, all of the inroads of any number of different teachings that deny distinctions that God has made in his Word. That's why we turn to the book.
We want to understand the distinctions that God has made.
Job 36 Who teaches as he do we want to be taught?
Do we want to be someones pupil? We need to be a pupil or a student of the Lord.
Inasmuch as we are, we can take advantage of and value others that the Lord has raised up to teach us. But we must first of all be a student of the Word of God, every one of you.
Start when you're young.
We're a people of the book.
Why do we turn to a book?
Because reading is the universal means of learning.
Reading is the universal means of learning.
It is through reading and meditation on the Word of God that we develop an appetite for silence and solitude.
That is productive of reflection and self containment.
Young people, learn to pursue it in your life.
I'm saying this very seriously.
You need to learn to pursue this in your lives.
There are certain things that you cannot hope to have if you are constantly bombarded by noise.
Now this is a question. You don't raise your hands.
In the last month or so, how many of you?
Have sat quietly.
Without.
The stimulation of electronic gadgetry.
And read something and meditated on something quietly and alone, because you wanted to read it, because you felt a need for it. Not a school textbook, not a magazine, not social media, not something like that, but something that had core to it, something that had substance to it.
Because you had a need.
The word of God, yes, but maybe some writings of some gifted person, or maybe a book of doctrine, a book of ministry or a biography or a a book of history, something that lays out something solid for you. How many of you have done that?
An hour.
It's time well spent.
Through reading, our attention is directed.
So here are some questions to ask ourselves. What commands your attention? It's a very interesting thing to go throughout a day and be mindful of. What commands your attention? Why was I drawn to this particular thing? What is it within me that made me want to pay attention to this particular thing, whatever it might have been? It's a very interesting question.
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It's a good part of reflection and.
Self containment. To learn to be able to have a feel for that and to pay attention to what it is that causes you.
To look at certain things and to think about them.
It can be a real grief.
But it can be the means.
To helping you get on the right track and realize that the Lord has given us certain areas that He wants us to focus our attention.
Now I want to read a little bit of a quote. A bit of a quote.
It's a little bit lengthy, but please listen to this. This is very, very helpful. This is from a passage that I go to. I was speaking with a young brother before the meeting, and it was kind of interesting. I think it was a little bit providential.
He asked me this question.
He said. Do you ever read a book twice?
My wife smiles because we've talked about this quite a bit. And I said, yeah, you know, I'm not a reader, I'm a rereader. And if a book isn't worth reading twice, it wasn't worth reading once.
I have books that I pull off of my shelf.
Time and time again, and I learned a very interesting thing from one writer who was writing about the subject of how to read and how reading affects us.
He says you not only need to be careful what you read, what books you read, but you need to be careful what you read in those books.
And I'm going to read you a paragraph that I go back and read this all the time. I have. I don't know how I go back and read the paper that it's in. This is in CS Lewis's book God in the Doc.
When any man comes into the presence of God.
He will find, whether he wishes it or not, that all those.
Things which seemed to make him so different from the men of other times.
Or even from his earlier self.
Have fallen off him. All those things that seem to make you different.
He's back where he always was. Have you ever been back where you always were?
Adam sued Omnia Semper. I don't read Latin, but I have a whole bunch of Latin quotations and that's my favorite.
Adam, Pseudomnia Semper.
Everything is always the same.
I'll break off there for a moment.
I've read because of some of my background. I've studied the writings and some of the history of the higher critics.
All of those guys that buzzed around Germany hundred, 150 years ago and so forth and.
Taught us that the first five books of the Bible weren't really written by Moses and Isaiah was written by two or maybe more people.
And what we call the destructive critics, those of us who have some knowledge of Scripture understand the value of what's called the lower criticism and textual criticism.
But the higher criticism, that's the destructive criticism. I like to call it the lower criticism because it smells like sulfur.
The objective is to destroy and to undermine.
And one of the things that they would say is, you know, those times back in the Bible.
Way, way back there, thousands of years ago, you know, the mindset was so different.
And those times were so different, and everything about those people's lives was so different that we just can't even understand what it was. So we have to demythologize the whole thing and try to get back to the intention of the author and all of this now really. You really believe that?
The Bible more than any other book.
Gives us a repertoire of characters by which we learn to recognize and judge what it is to be human. Have you ever met somebody like Joab? Don't tell me that that was just all way back. And we can't understand what they're, what they were thinking, and their lives were so different. Joab is as transparent as they come.
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And we see in the Bible that there were people who saw through Joab.
Like the fellow where he said, you know, Absalom, he was hanging in the tree, why didn't you take a sword and kill him? Well, the king said not to do that. And besides that, if I'd have done that, you would have been the first one that would have ratted on me.
What happens today that wasn't just a long time ago.
Do not let us deceive ourselves, he says. No possible complexity which we can give to our picture of the universe.
Can hide us from God. No complexity can hide us from God.
There is no cops.
No forests, no jungle thick enough to provide cover. That's the 139 Psalm, isn't it? We cannot flee from his presence.
This is the one who wants to have fellowship with us and we cannot flee from his presence.
We read in revelation of him that sat on the throne, from whose face the earth and heaven fled away. Chapter 20 and verse 11.
You know the meek and gentle Jesus, the gentleness of Christ, the meekness and the gentleness of Christ. There is a day coming when the heavens and the earth are going to flee from the face of that man. There will be no place found for them.
It may happen to any of us at any moment.
In the twinkling of an eye, in a time too small to be measured.
And in any place, all that seems to divide us from God can flee away.
Vanish, leaving us naked before him, like the first man, like the only man, as if nothing but he and I existed.
That's being alone with God.
And since that contact cannot be avoided for long, and since it means either bliss or horror, the business of life is to learn to like it.
This is the first and great commandment. The business of life is to learn to like it. In other words, we need to get used to the way things are as God has revealed them to us.
Why is there so much restlessness in the world today?
The bottom line is because people don't like this world as God made it. But you know.
They're welcome to look for another one. I wish them the best because they aren't going to find it.
We live in a world of fallen men.
And in the book, God has told us what the remedy is.
Now, I know that many of you, I'm sure, have a book of the Bible or a chapter of the Bible that you turn to for comfort.
It might not be what you're reading in at the time, it might be something that you turn to when you feel a need.
I do. I have some passages like that, and I have one that I turn to probably more than any other, and quite frequently. It's already been read by two brothers.
Thank you, Ted. Thank you, John Villasali. And it's John chapter one. Before we go there, I want to mention Psalm 90.
Psalm 90A Prayer of Moses the Man of God, Verse 1 Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Everything is always the same.
We have a dwelling place in God. He's the dwelling place for all generations. And now Moses is speaking about God and His dwelling among the people of Israel since he brought them out of Egypt. Now verse 2, before the mountains were brought forth.
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And thou hast formed the earth and the world, even from eternity to eternity.
Thou art God from eternity to eternity.
Thou art God. I don't remember who it was, but a brother used that expression I believe this morning. From eternity to eternity. And I thought about this.
Thou art God from eternity to eternity. Sometimes, conventionally speaking, we use an expression of past eternity. I heard that expression.
Past is an expression of time, so that's a conventional expression. There's no such thing as a past eternity or a future eternity. Eternity is the eternal now, and that's not the chaos of the now that we have in this world. That is ignorant of eternity, both past and future.
But with God, all is an eternal now. All is present before the mind of God at every moment of time. See, look, I did that again. I said time.
I lack words to even express eternity, but from eternity to eternity thou art God. Now we learn in in Ecclesiastes chapter 3 that he has put the world. It can also be rendered eternity or the age in their hearts. Ecclesiastes 3 and verse 11 I believe it is.
So please turn with me to John chapter one, and we'll just make a few comments from this chapter and leave it for your consideration.
But before we read a few verses in this chapter, let's just pick out three of them to see the flow of what I want to emphasize. And I've already touched on a few of these points.
Verse one in the beginning was the word. Now it refers to him as the word there.
We've been talking about the word. We've been talking about words. We have the written word and we have the living word. The written word is a revelation to us.
Of the living Word, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Did we not sing together? Thou art the everlasting word.
The Father's only Son. That's who we came here this weekend to speak of and to enjoy together the common faith, the redemption that we have in Christ Jesus. Where do we learn that from young people? Where do we learn that from? We learn it from the Word by spending time in the Word.
In the beginning was the word now from eternity.
In the beginning was the word there is your from eternity.
To eternity.
God shall be all.
In all.
So let's see, from eternity Here in the beginning was the word. Now go over to verse 14. That verse was read.
The one where we can say where the writer could say in the beginning was the Word. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
This is the incarnation of the Word. This is the incarnation of the Sun.
There was a mention made of the eternal sonship. There was a paper written years ago and it was entitled Something like this.
The incarnation of the Sun, or Sun ship by incarnation? How do we answer that question? It's the incarnation of the Sun.
The Son of God became Incarnate. That means he became a man. You know, if you take, as far as I'm aware, if you take a standard English Dictionary and you look up the Word incarnation, you will see a reference to Christ.
There is no other system of teaching that has that.
You say, well, what about all the Greek gods, The Roman gods? Wouldn't you say that that's kind of an incarnation? Well, there's an interesting thing that you can say about that and even about myths about the flood and, and other things like that.
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And this is something that was brought out also by CS Lewis and I think very profitably. If in the history of the human race there was absolutely no myths connected with the incarnation and some of these things, and then the incarnation came along, you might think, well, this is a new thing.
But the very fact that there are myths surrounding some of these things shows that there are intelligences behind what has happened throughout the history of this world, and then at a particular point in history it happened.
The Lord Jesus Christ stepped into this world through the door. He tells us that in the 10th of John he came through the door.
And not only did he come through the door, he is the door. Scripture mixes its metaphors. A door might mean one thing here, It might mean something here.
He came in the divinely appointed way such that there was number possible way that it could have been imitated or faked in any way, shape or form.
That is why the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ and all of the events surrounding His ministry, His death, His resurrection and His ascension, all of these things as they are laid out in Old Testament prophecy.
Give us confidence that God has spoken and acted.
Now again, This is why we want to read the entire word of God.
It's one thing to have our go to passages.
That we use for comfort in an hour of need, but we need to study the entire word of God because it's it's like an older man said at one point, he said that the study of Scripture becomes more and more exciting and gets more and more a hold of you the more you do it because you begin to see the connections.
When you're reading through a particular passage of scripture.
And you're familiar with the Word of God, you can read through and you can see allusions to any number of other passages that show you that the book has a common origin. And it tells the same story. And it's been noted.
That a book as large as this book that we have written by approximately 40 some authors over a period of probably over 1500 years or so.
Tells you the same story, just like where one chapter is done and then the next writer takes up and he writes the next chapter and everything fits together.
Because the key to it is the Lord Jesus Christ.
He's at the root of it all. He is the great subject, the great object.
He is the one who ties together every thread of teaching and the entire Word of God, and that's why we want to see Him in the Scriptures. If you go back to the beginning of the book.
Right there in the fall of man.
You have the woman's seed bruises the head of the serpent.
There you have in the third chapter of Genesis.
You have that foreshadowing, that prophetic foreshadowing of the redemption that would be accomplished by the Lord Jesus, but of His victory over the enemy. What a precious thing that is to be able to see that and then to follow that thread all through the Scripture. So let's just look at verse 29.
And my point is not to go over every verse.
In this passage, but to point out how you might notice that there are certain.
Passages of Scripture, maybe a chapter or a brief portion of Scripture. And I like to see this kind of thing because it shows that God may go on for quite a length with something. And then He'll give you a little summary where in just a few verses or a chapter it kind of gives you the whole thing. And then He starts over again and brings you up to the same point. Mr. Kelly calls that the habit of prophecy.
And that's true in the prophetic writings, and I think it's true very broadly in Scripture itself.
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Verse 29 When John the Baptist sees Jesus coming to him, he says behold the Lamb of God, now the Word.
Who has been made flesh? Now he is called the Lamb of God.
And says, Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, that does not say sins.
That says sin of the world. Now in Mr. Kelly's exposition of John, he has some brief but very interesting comments on this where he talks about how we see the whole work done even irrespective of time. It's the character of the Lamb of God. He is the taker away.
Of the sin of the world. When will that finally be fulfilled? From eternity to eternity in the eternal state now.
Especially those of us who are younger.
It's good to see these broad sweeps in Scripture and how the Lord can give us just maybe you spend a little bit of time quietly in your room, nobody else around, and you use some of these things to get some help. You get the broad sweep of Scripture because when you start digging into the details, you start studying individual books of the Bible. It's good to have the outline first.
So let's go back.
Just to the first few verses of John chapter one.
And let's just look at these verses.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, a statement of His, of the distinct persons within the Godhead, or He is with God. We remember Proverbs chapter 8. He was with Him.
And the word was God, a statement of his deity. He now he segregated out for special notice. He was in the beginning with God. I'm reading the new translation.
Verse three, here's a very important point. All things receive being through Him and without him, not one thing received being which has received being. Now that's kind of coming at the same thought of creation from two different sides. It all received being through Him and there's not one thing that we can see that received being that didn't come into being through him. That's a very broad statement of his creative power, his creative Fiat of God.
And that's found in the one who was in the beginning with God and he was God. Now there's three verses and, and I, I love to go over these verses, each within its own context. Turn first of all to Colossians chapter one. We'll see 3 verses, one in Colossians, one in Hebrews, and one in the Book of Revelation that tell us the same thing.
And this is a very important thing to notice about our Lord Jesus Christ, because it gives fullness to the purpose of God.
In him and remember his redeemed people will be with him. He's going to have us with him to enjoy the inheritance when he takes his inheritance. OK, first of all, Colossians chapter one.
The end of verse 16 All things.
And that's the thought of the all things.
Have been created by Him and for Him. He creates them. He is the instrumental power that creates them, and He is personally the purpose for which all things were created as the center of the Council of God. Now turn to Hebrews chapter 2.
In Colossians chapter one.
As the Son of His love, we have an emphasis in a sweet way upon His deity.
In Hebrews chapter 2, this is the chapter where he takes the seed of Abraham by the hand. This one who is greater than the angels, greater than Moses, greater than Aaron, is the one who.
Becomes a man.
In Hebrews chapter 2.
Verse 10 For it became Him for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make perfect the leader of their salvation, through sufferings by Him and for Him.
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In connection with his humanity that his taking of manhood.
Revelation chapter 4.
Somebody said one time that they picked out a certain verse, I think in Ephesians, and said it was the highest truth in the Bible. Sometimes we like to say things like, well, this is the highest truth in the Bible, you know?
I think that something such as this.
We could say is the highest truth in the Bible. Revelation 4 and verse 11.
Thou art worthy.
O our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power, for thou hast created all things, and for thy will they were and they have been created. Now this is before the judgments come, which usher in the millennial Kingdom of Christ, where the heavenly Saints will come with Him.
When he returns to reign.
With a complete fulfillment of all things will be in the eternal state, when God shall be All in all, when God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit shall be All in all, and we will be with him. Now the thought that we will be with him.
As he takes his Kingdom and as we go throughout all.
Eternity with the one who redeems us. I cannot think of anything that is more calculated to deliver us from the tyranny of the now.
From the tyranny of the urgent, all of the things that seem to command our attention.
And draw us away, often to trivial things.
Now don't get me wrong.
There are simple things in life.
That we need to pay attention to.
And that we can pay attention to in a godly manner because He would have us to do so. We have our relationships, our natural relationships. We have our families, we have our livelihood. That He calls upon us to do that. We are to provide things honest in the sight of all men. But what we are to do is to hold those things and to do those things.
With a view to what we have here in the Gospel.
In these opening verses of the Gospel of John, this one who was life, he is life to us. Without him there is nothing but death, because there's a death upon fallen man.
2nd Corinthians chapter 5 if he died.
That proves that all men.
In their atom standing all men were in a state of death.
He died to deliver us from that.
Well, there are a lot more things that we could say. I would encourage each of you, especially those of you who are younger, to take a little bit of time and go through this first chapter of the Gospel of John and see how it takes you from eternity to eternity. And then when it does that, what does it do? It shows you step by step through the life of the Lamb of God as He trod the pathway.
Here in this world.
It's a beautiful thing, but it takes time. It takes attention. Think about the things that command our attention and how the Lord would have us in the time that we have to learn to sit quietly before Him.
And to take up these things, it's pretty good.