Scranton Conference: 2022
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John 3:1-7
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Gospel of John chapter 3, beginning at verse one.
There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher, come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him.
Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.
Nicodemus said unto him, How can a man be born when he is old?
Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb?
And be born, Jesus answered.
A Verily, verily, I say unto thee.
Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.
Marvo, nod that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof. But canst not tell when's it cometh, and whether it goeth? So is everyone that is born of the Spirit.
Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knoweth not these things?
Verily, I say unto thee, we speak, that we do know and testify that we have seen.
And you receive not our witness, if I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things? And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man, which is in heaven.
And as Moses.
Lifted up the serpent in the wilderness.
Even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.
That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
For God send not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.
This chapter.
Has instruction for us.
And to the keys to understanding the work of God in the soul to bring us into blessing. It also helps us to understand the difference between the plans of the Old Testament saying that and the New Testament to me and the consequences. If we don't understand what this chapter gives us, there's many things that we won't understand.
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And come to interpret.
And so it begins with the most fundamental thing that God must do.
To begin with, when he is going to train.
And into one begins with Newburgh, it ends with eternal life. For everlasting life is both the same, same, same word.
But it supposes one very important thing, that man is completely ruined, lost. Another just says has no capacity in himself or any response towards God. Therefore God must work.
And so the initiative is on God's heart and in sovereign will. And so it's very important to take in the first few verses. Maybe I should have asked earlier days to read them or the flesh few verses of character 2, because verse 23 of chapter 2 properly begins a new section in the Gospel of God as part of what we have in chapter 3 now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover and the feast day.
Believed in his name when they saw the miracles, which he did.
But Jesus did not commit Himself unto them, because He knew all men, and neither not that any should testify a man, for he knew what was in man.
Bullets first stage to express faith, doesn't it? On the part of those inside miracles? How is it that the Lord doesn't commit himself to them? It wasn't this faith. It wasn't faith.
It wasn't faith, it was man looking at the works, the miracles, making a deduction in his own mind, satisfied with what he has concluded, and then says, yes, I believe this is the one that's not facing the testimony of God. That's faith in the power of his own intellect and making his own deduction and coming to his own conclusion.
And there are many in the world that have that kind of faith.
The Lord doesn't commit himself to that. That's not the work of God and soul. And so that's that's an important preface to when we come to chapter 3. And really where it says there was a man, it says but there was a man. There's a proper translation because it's linked with a few verses that went before he knew what was in man, but there was a man.
23 speaks up, but there was a man and he comes to God on that very basis, and he has made a deduction in what he has seen and a conclusion, and that as a consequence he's going to come to the war on that basis.
No change in Him. There's been no change. There's been no work of God.
His single tracks made his conclusions and he comes based on that and he comes and he says Rabbi teachers, we know this is the conclusion of those that I've associated with that thou art a teacher come from God. I'll fight through maybe in itself, but it certainly wasn't all the truth, but that was his recollection led him to conclude and what he had seen, but it wasn't faith.
It wasn't the work of God in the soul.
And he comes to the Lord.
And he owns. No man can do these miracles.
They saw the miracles, they made a conclusion, they believed in his faith. No man can do these miracles that thou doest. Except I'll be with him, and the Lord stops and ring his heart. It's not going to take him any further to be enough. You're coming on a wrong basis. Your conclusion is totally wrong.
You're coming to me as a teacher in hopes that you can bring me into your group. And boy, what we need to do in this school with a teacher like this.
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Really make things better. This is what we need. And he says, no, it's not what we need. You need all movie days, a whole new beginning.
This first portion of what we've read needed work with God and SO.
Situations we see that Nicodemus came to work exists by night. When I asked why can't come by tonight, perhaps there was a certain statement and that was coming to the war. You don't know.
But years ago I met in the House of a very influential Member of the British Parliament.
Over 4 hours and later on you would have noted that the one that you put into slavery in the British Empire, but in the younger days you were still member of Parliament. At that time he was going through great exercise of cold. You hadn't had deliverance and so he knew that there was one individual that would probably be able to give him some help.
Amazing dress and this was a pastor and a little older in England and so he defeated it. Whether he would go to 6000 and this cross was mine, that is fine. Finally he decided to go.
To go at night because it was not shame, perhaps.
Connected with that.
Evening gets a knock on the door and there's William will report. And as a result.
Wolf report was truly converted and went out and.
Represented Christ and many of the things that he did, but I I think of that situation where Jesus by night.
But we know that this is not the end of this story. Connection is entrepreneurs, because if we go to the 19th chapter of John, we see one of the last many of them and verse 39 or back to actor and 3013 also Nicodemus.
And what is the team doing here?
Bringing a mixture of her and our about 100 and blade so it was like so it wasn't worth it. I could be caught with it because.
Of the thing, and perhaps you can come.
Brother Steven, are you saying that God had begun the work in Nicodemus soul, but he had to learn the truth of it? Is that what you're saying? That work had already begun? He was different from the others?
No, I don't know that it necessarily presented that way to us. I think he comes on the same basis with what you see in verse 23 or 1:50. And I think it is in the conversation with the Lord that.
The work of God that begins in his soul and it's at that point then we see progression now through the gospel that ends with what our brother had. That's how I take it that he really comes and he's a sample win of of what we've had at the end of the year. A sample man of one who has just come on the basis of what he's determined on his own intellectual, but he's got to have something that's going to take place.
Soul and that's Uber and it's going to be by the power of the word and by the power of the Spirit of God and the word that the word Jesus Christ peace, that new life is going to be imparted where there was none before in Nicodemus. That's how I take it. Yes, I wondered because it does seem the Lord had begun something there at least. And if you go on to the verses beyond where we stopped it brings out the Lord is the light.
And it says there that.
Verse 19, This is the condemnation, that light is coming to the world, and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone that doeth evil hateth the light either cometh through the light, this his deed should be reproved. Now that's exactly what Nicodemus didn't do. It was night, but he came to the light and the others wouldn't do it. They sent out in John 7 the other verse of Nicodemus and John, they sent out someone to take him.
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They wanted to catch him. Nicodemus was probably timid, like you said, so he has to come at night, but he was going to the light. And so if he didn't have that new birth yet, certainly the Lord was working something there to produce a Nicodemus, that desire to be examined, didn't he?
Connect with Bunker with a man that there had been already been to work through what he had heard the Lord said previously.
That isn't reported here. So thank you. I believe as we as we go down the chapter, it give us a little bit more explanation how a man cannot find way to God. Doesn't matter how hard one tries. We cannot see God on our own. So what was said was a light was given. So we find that often among Christendom, they say, well when you're born again.
You are saved. I do not believe that's what this passage tells us. So when we'll get down to that shortly. One is so you can see.
Then he said after that you can enter. I won't jump too far ahead into that, but let's go back to the very first verse where you said there was a man. I believe that's important because this is saying that this is not a make up story. This is real. And as our brother mentioned in the previous verses, really it concluded that we all have seen.
And come out of the glory of God.
There is none that doeth good. No, not one. He has no confidence in any of them. And now among these men there was a man, a story of this particular man, and then, if you notice, it doesn't say his name, yet it was a Pharisee.
And I believe it's not just the thought of being a Pharisee, but I believe the thought here too is many of us can identify ourselves with the character of the Pharisees. We have children here.
It's how many of you are smart enough that when mom and dad tell you to do something or not to do something, you find a way to get around it. So perhaps mom said don't touch the candies in the candies jar.
So I know if you're like my children, they'll say, no, we didn't touch it. I took a spoon and fished it out. I didn't touch the candies. I don't know how many. Well, some of you may be smarter and come up with different ways. That in a sense is the spirit of the Pharisee, isn't it? We'll find a way to argue and say that's not so. So it's.
See our thoughts, our awe points us back to the darkness. So there was a man, he's a Pharisee. He find ways to argue with God that he's good. Oh, now it becomes personal. His name is Nicodemus.
And I trust that as the story unfolds that you and I may say, yeah, I think the Lord is speaking about me being that Pharisee, fighting with him. And not only that, he was renowned. He was a ruler. He was. He was. He's not just a nobody, He's a ruler of the Jews. He's got a responsible position. But yet.
He came by night and I'll let other comment on that.
And some already commented on it. He need a savior. And now the chapter unfolds after the process of how he needs to be born again. And then later on it tells us what eternal life is.
Actually, Nicodemus would have should have known.
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That when the Kingdom was established.
New birth would be necessary.
Versus In Ezekiel, Isaiah present to us the need of a cleansing.
By the Lord with his people.
Before they are established in the Kingdom, Nicodemus was well instructed in the Old Testament.
And he knew the stories that the Lord referred to the bitten serpent.
But he really didn't understand.
What the Lord was saying that there must be a new life and a new nature.
Imparted the Lord was going on.
To eternal life.
Which had a different character than the Old Testament. Here we are brought into the.
Knowledge of God into the family of God with a.
With an ability to understand heavenly things, Nicodemus knew that there would be an earthly Kingdom established. You should have known that new birth was necessary for that. But the Lord says.
Accept a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God, whether it be the earthly character or the heavenly character.
A new birth was necessary.
By the Spirit of God using the Word of God to bring man into a new position.
Before him having a divine life and divine nature.
Maybe we could look at a few verses that.
Illustrate man's conditions because that's important to understand. And let's start with the 1St chapter of John.
1St 10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, His own received Him not.
Many has received Him then gave you power to become or the right to be the children to greed of God, even to them which believe on His name. Who is it that believes on His name? Who is it that in believing on His name now has the right to know themselves as a child of God?
And to know themselves in relationship with others of God's children. Who is it? The next verse tells us it's those which were born. Notice the tent which were born.
God of blood.
That is not by earthly heritage, nor of the will of the flesh, not my personal, my own will and determination, nor the will of the end, not by somebody else's will.
But which were born of God. That's the opening of Gospel of John. John starts where the other gospels finish. They show man tested, tested, tested and morally totally bankrupt. John starts there says we're going to start right here at the beginning and then in our chapter will be read in the end of verse 11 and he received not our witness.
Down to verse 27.
John answered and said, a man who received nothing except to be given him from heaven, verse 32, and what he has seen and heard that he testifies in no man receiveth his testimony go over to chapter 6.
44.
No man can come to me except the Father which has sent me. Draw him. The end of chapter 6, verse 65.
And he said, therefore said unto you, that no man can come unto me, except that we're given unto him of my father. Let's look at Romans chapter 3.
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Romans, chapter 3.
Verse 10 As it is written, there is none. Righteous. No, not one.
There is none that understand it.
That speech of the intellect, the mind. There is none that seeketh after God. There's a heart.
Not only not understanding, not even a desire in the heart, any movement towards God at all.
And in his fallen simple nature is completely unable to respond to God. So God has to start by giving a life that will respond.
He has to start by sovereignly imparting a life where there was no life that will desire after God, that will seek after God, that will come a life that the Father can draw.
And how does he do it? And it's called new birth by the power of the Spirit of God realizing the word of God in parts of life where there was none before. God said, let there be light.
And there was light. It's the same beginning work in the soul. Second Corinthians, chapter 4.
2nd Corinthians.
Chapter 4.
Verse four. In whom the God of this world hath blinded the mind of them which believe not, let the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
Verse six What's God's remedy? Satan is involved in keeping man in this condition, but what is God is the same thing He said at the beginning of the creation.
For God has commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts.
Nevertheless, we do preach the gospel to man as a accountable creature.
With a responsibility toward God and we want to keep things in balance. Man is accountable to God and he is going to be judged on that ground.
The gospel was presented to him and he refused. It must be a work of the Spirit of God, but we need to keep these things in balance. When?
Unsaved souls stand at the judgment seat of Christ.
They're going to remember the opportunities that God gave them to believe the gospel and they refused. They are accountable. They are accountable to God and will be judged on that ground.
No one is predestinated to a lost eternity.
Man makes that by his decision.
So we, we need to keep things in balance. God so loved the world, doesn't say he so loved the elect. The heart of God is going out toward every Sinner in this world, regardless of his background. The love of God is being presented to man as a responsible creature. Is that right, Steve? Yeah, I think that's a good point. Because really, that's the beauty of this chapter.
1St we get God's work in the soul, we get Christ work on the cross, and then the appeal whosoever believeth in him. And so we get both God's work sovereignly and we get man's responsibility to receive that message. They're both here in this chapter, but in their prior order.
We get in the Old Testament.
Scores and scores of pictures and types.
Statements of men like Joe as to what the nature of man was really like, but as a revelation from God, the things we're considering this morning were not part of that revelation before the Lord Jesus came. And so the full character of man from the top of his head to the soul of his foot being corrupt.
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And without any merit. Yes, we see it prophetically speaking about Israel and Judah in Isaiah Job said, you know man, he drinks up iniquity like water and how can he be clean? That is born of a woman. He he, he felt that he expressed it. The doctrine that there was not even a shred of good in mind to reach up and save himself is not revealed until the Lord Jesus came. And so the full revelation by God himself of who and what he is.
Was concurrent with the revelation of what man is, and thank God for that. So as we see here in this beautiful chapter, I'm so glad you gave it out.
Accept a man be born anew, born as a say in the King James, born again from an entirely new source. This is not rehabilitation. This is not remodeling of that which has been proven to be unacceptable to God in its totality. This is a life that comes sovereignly from a new source. And so it says, accept a man, Jew or Gentile.
Because now when God falls back.
To his own sovereignty to work, He says, hey, I'm going to work according to my own heart and it's big and I'm not going to confine it towards you. I'm going to go out to the whosoever, to all men. And so it's except a man be born anew. He can't even see the Kingdom of God.
Read through the New Testament. I had a client once that I worked for, he said. I read through the whole New Testament.
It says all I see is some advice on how people to get along to one another.
And all the things that you and I see and enjoy, he couldn't see them at all. He read the words, but he couldn't see the Kingdom of God. Because in this context, the Kingdom of God is moral, and it's not even seen as an unbeliever.
Wonderful things. And I wonder if we could say that you know what we learned here. You love those thoughts. You know Nicodemus. Nicodemus.
He, he, he's only having the ability, he said.
You're a teacher, and I have the feeling you've learned.
Well, the Lord stops it, and he says he must be born again.
But what's the Lord doing? Can they ask? But what's the Lord doing this? He's not doing a work. Set you not free.
You're our client when you want and a lot of times you you want to do or not do.
We want to credit or smoking credit, but it's all based on ourselves and there's the UPS and the downs and the unhappy days and so on and so on. And we never really learned the love of God, how powerful it is and how extensive life is very in in churches, so many demons.
These one of us isn't a wonderful moment that we are saying yes, this isn't a more wonderful moment when we say free, I agree doesn't depend on me the pants on like many of our brother.
You know the love of God because we often use the phrase that God is love and God is light. The love and the light goes together. We don't have just half and say well God is love, so how come he allows certain things to happen? Well, we have to remember the governmental side of God, that he is a God of love. I mean a God of light as well as a God of love. Now if we go back to the beginning of the Bible.
What do we find the condition of this earth in the very, very beginning? And some of your children may remember reading Genesis chapter one. And if you don't read it again, what was the condition of this earth?
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It was without form and void, and they said, and darkness was upon the face of this earth. This world begins with darkness.
What was it like when they crucified the Lord of Glory?
Again.
Why would you and I too fall into this category that we need to be born again? And what does it mean?
Not too long ago I was able to reread a book that I had read some years ago.
Deal with the life of the German missionaries. Name was Samuel.
Come perhaps that read the fact called Phoenix tough, but he was very influential in bringing many.
British soldiers who are saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus.
On one occasion, one officer.
Further through it and said no way will I let him into my tent when he comes to visit.
So on a different occasion there was a very hot afternoon.
Was in the encampment.
At the Sanford, your footsteps approaching.
And he said I seem powerless to resist.
We pay attention to say no, get out.
But this man who was somewhat a separate and.
He did not really have a good grasp of the English language, in fact.
Said that the only mastered about 550 words and the English language, yet he was very effective.
And when he *****.
Officer.
That he looked at the man, he was a major I believe, and he pointed to the shelf. He said get the book. Well, he had books on military tactics and other books, but he knew what even was telling the joke.
Bible the position to him when he first sent him to service, and he said to him, open the book.
Read Genesis one and verse 2 which I will read and learn. And darkness was upon the face of the deep.
Very hot move upon the face of the water, and he prayed with this major.
Within a few minutes, let's say we're on the same line either approach the fence again.
And he did the same thing. He pointed to the shelf. He said get the books.
And against that read Genesis one verse two. And he read it. He prayed with him and left.
And then the third day.
He said enter, stop. Make your step at that.
And he said get the book which is applied with and he said read Genesis one and verse 3.
Let there be light and there was light so between.
Day 2 and day three.
Might go on upon that man's soul. He was under conviction.
Last week he came to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus, but he was in a place of darkness, needed to be brought into a place of life.
In this chapter, we are pulling back the cover.
You know, there's an engine and it works and there be a latch on it, what it is, and you can open up and you can see inside, Steven was saying in his first comments. And realize it's God which worketh in US both to will and to do with his good pleasure.
And that's the side of it we're looking at in the beginning of this chapter. Is God's side what he does under the cover.
And he works by the communication of life. And so really, we're passive in new birth.
It's not something we can do. I learned this as a young brother holding gospel meetings. I made the mistake one time of telling everybody that they must be born again. A man comes up to me and says I want to be born again. How do I do it? I was speechless. I didn't know how to tell him to do. I couldn't do it and he couldn't do it. I, I stopped, I preached more as the way John was saying and not so much of this side. I put the cover back on. And you present to man his responsibility because God now commandeth all men everywhere to repent.
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And he's appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he after ordained. That's the gospel message. But we're looking under the cover this morning, and it's wonderful to see that that it's God's work. First, the Spirit moved upon the waters when there was nothing but darkness and chaos.
And spirit moves on the water and says, let there be light. And so as we read in our fifth verse, except a man to be born, it's a passive. I think that's the right verb tense. I'm not a grammar student, but it's except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. This is something that God does and he indicates to us the the the means with with which which he uses.
Uses the water and the spirit and by other passages in James and first Peter one and other passages like that we see that the water is the word of God. Let's just turn to first Peter one is one example without I don't want to be tedious. I know most understand these things very well.
First Peter chapter one.
Verse 23.
And reading it in a very better translation, having been born again. You can check it if you've got.
Translations having been born again.
Not a corruptible seed, but by incorruptible by the word of God.
Since we're almost at James anyway, we're back to James chapter one.
Verse 17 is nice to connect with this James one and 17 every good gift.
And every perfect gift is from above and from the down, from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. And then?
And Speaking of God's goodness from above, verse 18 of his own will.
Even read in John one, not by the will of man, or the will of the flesh, or by blood, but of His own will, God's own will begat He us the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of His creatures. And so it uses in John three the figure of the water.
It could have said, except a man be born of the word and the spirit, but it uses the figure of water.
And I think that's very interesting and instructive because what does water do?
Am I not speaking loud enough?
What can you turn the mic up?
What does water do? I'm not a good shouter. It it, it washes as well as that's the figure from the word. It's the effect of the word, not just the use of the word, if I could put it that way. And it's not necessarily a gospel verse. That's a God that God uses in his work.
Read back in Genesis chapter one and God said and it goes down through those two chapters over and over again he spoke and so we have in this chapter of God speaks and by his spirit he makes the word effectual in your soul and mind or we wouldn't have life at all, let alone follow on with the fruits of it. So I thought this might be a different.
That word is so helpful. Also I think just born.
When it comes to Ephesians, it speaks about you happy, quick and who were dead. It's the same thought that you don't have anything to do with that, do you? You're dead. How do you, being dead, get life? You obviously have nothing to do with it. And it's the same with being born, isn't it? Just the very thought? Yes, it's the impartation of a life. But.
Well, I think we all understand that. When I was born the first time, I don't remember it. I don't have anything, didn't have anything to do with it other than being there. My mother sure remembers it.
And God knows when we're born.
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But we ourselves don't know that. We come into a realization later on. God brings us into that. So it's a really good word to help us understand, isn't it?
When when you get the expression born again, would you say it's the same thing that's happening when you get the expression born again or born anew? It makes an assumption. You had a life, but it's corrupt, it's ruined.
It's without any response towards God at all. You need a whole new beginning, a new life.
When it's the word quickening, it's it's saying you're dead.
And trespassers and sin doesn't even recognize you as having a life.
But you need a life quicker, slightly different, but it's the same work of the Spirit of God. And the flood is a beautiful picture of what we have. What happened with the flood? There was the world falling into sin and corruption and violence. And God brings in the flood. It wipes clean the whole world and it introduces a new world.
Upon which Noah stepped out of the ark into a new world.
The Spirit of God uses the Word of God and he and the Word of God pronounces death upon that old fallen nature that we have, and it has a cleansing power and prepares the way, as it were, for the impartation of a new life in that soul that it didn't have the force just like the flood. Two things except the man.
Be born again. He cannot see.
And he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God again. The Lord does not say that. Nicobas, Nicodemus, you better go out and get born again.
Not what he's saying. He's saying a fact. Except the man he born again. Except there's this whole new beginning, a life from a new source. There's nothing.
When one when a soul is born of God, there's two things that happen.
It sees things that never saw before and I appreciate your comments earlier, Brother Tim. Maybe that's next to work in the soul of Nicodemus. Even previous to this, he's seeing things he never saw before. The soul foresees things now because of that new life that never saw before. It sees believers. It sees things in their life and says, I like that. I would like that for me.
What is that? What is the problem for it's It's like.
That prodigal in John 15 that came to himself and he said I'm in trouble.
And a soul becomes, not only does it see things in others, it becomes aware of controlled condition. I'm in trouble. I perish with hunger. And it's this, you know, back in my father's house, there's good things there. I like that. Warriors running away. He was unaware that he was dying.
Until it says he came from God. That's really a picture of new bird. He now sees things he never saw and appreciates things he never saw before. The second thing is, is that outside the converse there is no entrance into God's Kingdom. The flesh is the flesh, and that's what the next portion tells us. It never is going to change. It's never going to be revitalized. It's never going to be reformed. That which is.
Born of the flesh is flesh. It will never change. You need a life from God. You should be born of God. And so it's a statement of fact, the Lord giving, not an exhortation of Nicodemus. This is what you need to do.
The initial effect of God working in a soul is not necessarily enjoyable. Matter of fact, it can be just the opposite.
Gordon Hale used to tell a story of AI, can't remember whether it was a seaman or a San on his ship. And he was misbehaving and they tried everything. They finally put him down into the hold and there he was in darkness, living in his own excrement. And they passed down water and day after day there was no change in he was down there in his own filth. And they didn't know what to do to bring the the the young man around. Finally someone said.
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I have an idea, send a light down there, send the light down into the pit and you could see what he had on. He would see what he was in the filth and all of the rest and he cried for mercy and said I went out. So the initial work of the Spirit of God is repentance towards God and then faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. So when a soul starts to work, don't, don't be too hasty. Don't as a brothers used to say, maybe it was Ernie Wakefield, don't pick unripe fruit.
And justice, let it ripen and let someone Stew in their juices. And if they're exercised about things, that's good. Let them stay right there till it's time for them to lay hold. We'll get that later on in the chapter. Usually when we read through John three people get too impatient and they want to run to John 315 to 16. We'll see how how we hold up here, but that comes later. So it is repentance and it's a painful thing. I was a miserable young man for two weeks.
After the light of God shined in my soul, the miserable young man. And so it is. Repentance is the work of God, and thank God for it.
Learning or seeing it says here in chapter one of our books it says verse 11.
Seeds in law.
Matthew.
Well, what's it doing here? Please just bless us and see who's being rejected. And Matthew, they wanted me. They wanted a Superman, and they weren't accepted it. They want to say yes, he can do it.
He has sword and shield cover and he's a fighting warrior and he's real now. That's the kind of man we want.
Thinking of our eyes being open.
And we say.
It's what God help.
They might have had a 2 from that. If they wouldn't have, they wouldn't have. They wouldn't have the one of those life in the world as it.
See that?
You're so much more into your brother and I feel my suspicions.
I certain things I see, but I have to admit your.
Like you said, I'm not.
I haven't seen my feet walking in. I see a lot in my feet so.
Last year that discovered a wonderful thing that is we're learning about every day, but in life that has never and never will be matched.
The Lord has his friends ruling in the lips, the Millennium and himself. So he's no Google never was a wonderful to see that and then to enter into a long part of that to say, yeah, I want to come under his jurisdiction, under his mind, under his laws. I want to be under that because that is why we see that.
Dropout humidity. The Lord doesn't want one of them.
He doesn't want one of us role on things.
There's a scripture in Ecclesiastes that says the.
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The light is sweet and it's a pleasant thing for the eyes to behold the sun. Well, we might say it's not very sweet when the light exposes our condition as.
Helpless, hopeless, held downstairs exposes the fact that we're calling for us that the priority of the first man, the light, exposes it. But The thing is, at the same time, the light reveals the solution to the problem, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, I can walk into my garage and turn on the light and I see.
Well, there's dirt all over the floor of this garage. It's not a pleasing thing, but the light also shows you that up against the wall there's a broom and a dust pack to take care of the problem. So you know God, even though he would bring before us our problem.
He never leaves us without the remedy, and the remedy is Christ. It's all about Him, I noticed here.
You know, it speaks about that which is born of the flesh is flesh. There's no good to be found in the flesh. The Lord Jesus said home and John chapter 6 I believe it's the spirit that quickens capital S the Holy Spirit is what quickens in parts life.
But the flesh profits nothing.
Turn over to Romans, pasta, fall, he says. I know that in me that is in my flesh dwells no good thing. Now the world doesn't want to hear that they're trying to improve the flesh, reform it, educate, cultivate it, make something good out of it. No, you got to set it up and we got to realize we need a brand new life. And it's God that imparts that I really appreciate.
Being said here today because, you know, a dead man lies there on the floor, what can he do for himself?
Nothing.
And there's nobody that can impart life but God himself.
So God begins to work, and it's wonderful how he begins it, but he carries it on.
I was just noticing too. I'm sure others have enjoyed this in verse 7.
Lord says to Nicodemus, Marvel not that I said unto thee, You must be born again.
It's been referred to as The sinners must.
There's three must here in John 3.
The second must is found in verse 14. Maybe we could call this the saviors must. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, Even so must the Son of Man be lifted up to whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have it eternal life. So the Savior is the answer to the sinner's problem. But what about the third must been referred to as the Saints must.
Verse 30 He must increase, I must.
Decrease.
So as believers, he recognized that the Lord Jesus.
Has been the answer to our problem and love willing to do the work required for our redemption.
And it causes us.
A response in our souls. The love of Christ is what constrains us. Our desire is consult His name and to magnify the Lord together.
And it's so wonderful, the Viennese meetings here today and get the sense that the desire in this conference, at this meeting is to excel Christ.
That he might increase and that we might decrease.
I think it's important to see and.
The Gospel of John that we have a transitional character to the gospel.
The eternal life spoken of is the very life of Christ in resurrection, a life that he enjoyed with the Father from a past eternity. Of course, it's not deity imparted, but it's a life that has the.
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Ability to understand the very things of God, to connect us with a heavenly portion.
Nicodemus was familiar with the Kingdom being established, and he should have known that cleansing was needed for that Kingdom to be established. But the Lord in his ministry is connecting us with a heavenly portion. But as to the.
Sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. We do not know anything about the decrees of God.
We we do not understand.
Who the elect are, so we are.
Commanded to preach the gospel to every creature.
And.
And repentance. The Lord spoke about repentance.
And putting man in on a responsible in a responsible position. So we are to remember that the heart of God is going out to whosoever, however great a Sinner he may be, and the grace of God can meet that that need.
As as he did here and as he did in chapter four with the woman of Samaria.
We sing #15.
All that we were, our sins, our guilt, our death was all our own. All that we are, we owe to thee, Thou God of grace alone.
God's Sovereignty & Man's Responsibility
Address—Bruce Conrad
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
While everyone's getting situated, let's start by singing hymn #104.
Alba's purpose gave us being when in Christ in that vast plan.
ABBA chose the Saints in Jesus long before the world began.
What love the Father bore us so. How precious in his sight when he gave the church to Jesus. Jesus, his whole soul's delight in #104.
Shall we pray?
Our God, our Father, we.
Thank thee for the opportunity to be together here as thy children. We thank thee for the.
Gift of Thy beloved Son, whom Thou did send to be the Savior of the world. We thank Thee for that work in our hearts to pronounce with power and love. Let there be light, and we thank Thee that Thou hast drawn us unto Thy Son. We thank Thee for working in our hearts, that we have been able to see beauty in the one in whom Thou has found Thy delight.
So as we open the scriptures this afternoon, we ask.
For the guidance and leading of Thy Holy Spirit to take up some things from it which concern the glory of Thy beloved Son and of Thyself. We look to Thee, our God and Father, independence for speaker and hearers alike, and that our hearts would be opened and we would be able to receive Thy word and respond with understanding and joy to it. So we ask these things, our God and Father.
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Name of our God and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Well, I had thought to escape taking up what some would consider a difficult subject, and I guess I consider it a little difficult myself.
But with the taking up of John chapter 3 and some of the comments that were made about it.
I thought it would be good for us to consider these two aspects of truth that in a certain way seemed to be opposed to each other, namely the responsibility of man and the sovereignty of God to act in accordance with His own will.
I feel clear to take this up and it has been a joy to me to.
Pursue it in my own personal study.
I find it difficult to know exactly where to start to take it up. So we really need the Lord's help in this. But perhaps the simplest way would be just to kind of divide it between, you know, the left hand and the right hand. I remember a couple years ago when we were flew out to the East Coast to try to help one of our daughters while she was having her first child.
And because of COVID we had to isolate for X number of days.
And so we rented a little place on the beach near our house and, and I spent a lot of time walking and, and pondering this very question. I think Brother Kemp mentioned it in the readings. And I'm standing there on the beach and I'm thinking.
You know what a what a marvelous thing. Here I have a left foot, a left leg and a right leg. And here I have a right ear and a left ear. And the scientists tell us we have a right brain and a left brain. I don't know what each one does, but that's who we're told. And here I am looking out at the Infinity out there in the ocean, and I got a right eye and a left eye. And I thought, man, it's kind of like that with these two aspects of the truth.
And God has made man in a wonderful way.
And we are being asked to. We're encouraged to look at things that can't be seen.
I think it's the end of Second Corinthians chapter 4.
Let me let me just turn to that verse and you'll.
You'll appreciate this, I trust.
In 2nd Corinthians 4.
Verse 18 While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.
You ask yourself, well how do I look at things that are not seen and then I'm asked to to take in and understand things that are that pass understanding.
So at a certain point we just have to stand in awe that God's ways are higher than ours, and in a certain sense we can't. We can't embrace them all at one time.
And so, so, so we go forward. So first, if those that have been through middle school, and I realize some are too young for that, in middle school you learn mathematics and you start to learn these long equations and you start to have to pay attention to parentheses. When Steve and I were young and learning, sitting under the feet of our teachers, we learned the prophetic scriptures and the outline of prophecy with the use of parentheses.
But there's also a parenthesis that has to do with man's responsibility, and it's a big one.
And then there's a parentheses outside of that, which really isn't a parenthesis at all because it comes from eternity and it goes to eternity. But let's just confine ourselves first to think about responsibility. And so as the brothers were were were commenting in the reading meeting today, it is very clear that man is responsible to God.
God has his rights.
And in a certain sense.
The rights of God and the sovereignty of God is the basis for all of man's rights, and as one brother put it, it's the basis of all morality.
And so we look back and we say, well, when did responsibility start?
Did it start an eternity past? I don't think you can say that it started an eternity past. Man didn't. There was a time when man began. And so we can trace back in the genealogy of the scripture and say about 6000 years ago, the 1St man, Adam and boys and girls. I don't understand. I know it pops up in the news all the time. We found a new man who's 30,000 years old and he was, I don't know about any of that.
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I really don't.
But scripture says that the 1St man, Adam was made a living soul and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And we have Adams genealogy all the way down to this present time. And to me that's what I need to know because that's what has God has taught me how old the earth is and all of these things. I leave that to the scientists, the geologists.
And whoever else ways forward on it. But we have in Genesis one, as we had this morning, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
And he put mine into a position where man was responsible and it didn't matter whether it was 10 trees or three trees or two trees or one tree, it didn't matter. Recently we had some young people over that are just starting to raise their children and bringing them to meeting. And they're trying to learn how to, how to get the, the, the, the child to behave in the meeting and not, you know, swing from the chandeliers and everything.
And I said, well, what we discovered in our life was you could bring in 60 toys, or you can bring in six toys, or you can bring in one toy. But sooner or later they're going to get to the end of the 60 or the 6th or the 1:00. And you're just going to have that, have that discussion or more that says, OK, here's what we're going to do. You're going to have this and you're going to sit there. And when we're done, we'll go out and you can play.
And so that's morality. And so it was in the garden that that.
The man and the woman were told you can eat of every tree in the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you cannot eat.
One tree and one command. As a guys that I used to work with, you know when someone messes something, not just we just joke sometimes about after the damage is done, we say we gave you one thing. Of course they had more than that, but that's the way you had one thing to do and they had one thing to not do and they did it and the responsibility was.
Was manifest and you know, Adam chose, Eve chose.
They chose to do what they did, but God chose the consequences of it. I'm indebted to to John Kaiser for that bit of that that tidbit, and I've always appreciated it. We're all you can. You can choose today, you can choose tomorrow. You can make decisions in your life, but you're not free to choose the consequences of your decision. God keeps that to himself. We're guided in the word as to how He's going to respond to certain decisions that are made, but the decisions fall.
Him and so man 8 and off he went in under the governmental hand of God in responsibility and you could trace through the word of God and I'm sure you have how the earth the the 1St man born was a murderer, the very first man born, the 1St man born murdered.
And on it went from there until the earth was filled with violence and corruption.
And God said I repented, and I made man on the earth.
When you stop and think, and I'm going to cheat outside the parentheses a little bit first. When you come to think from the from Proverbs chapter 8.
Where the Spirit of Christ, I believe prophetically, says, The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old, in eternity passed, before anything was made that was made, God had before him the children of men.
He had the children of men before him. I remember Brother Lundeen, the late Brother London saying man is God special, special masterpiece.
I know Satan likes to get to make us think that we're part of the animal Kingdom. We're not. There's a flesh of birds, there's a flesh of beasts, there's a flesh of birds, and man has a flesh, and man is God's special creation.
But when? When?
Man when the man and the woman transgressed.
Then the question comes from God.
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What have you done? Where are you?
And what have you done?
Now when we read the word of God.
We try to put inflection. We try to imagine the tone of voice. When the Lord Jesus was here and he said something. We imagine a tone of voice that we think he would have used in making a certain pronouncement.
And when I imagine God coming down and seeing.
That Adam and Eve had partaken of the fruit of the Tree of the knowledge of good and Evil.
And now they were shamed, and the devil's lies that yes, man can discern good from evil, but he has no power to choose the good and to reject the evil. That was the poison of it all. No power at all. That part wasn't discussed, was it?
And God comes down and he says, what? What have you done?
Look at you. Where are you? What have you done?
For an eternity, if we could think of an eternity in time. He looked forward to his creation in man, having fellowship with himself. He came down to have fellowship with man in the cool of the day.
And man made that. He broke that.
And when I imagine those words.
What have you done?
Think of all the sorrow.
Think of all the sorrow in this world for the last 6000 years.
We know just a little bit, a little tiny bit of it.
Think of it all.
Overwhelming.
Brother Lundeen said one time in an address. He said if you knew the he was in Montreal, I think at the time, he said if you knew the sorrow.
And all the souls and all the hearts in one city block, he said. It would drive you insane.
World is full of sorrow.
It's full of death and death by sin.
What a break.
And how I just I just put those words of what have you done? Where art thou? And then there was the the the consequence for the responsibility is unfolding.
And so man becomes, he manifests the corruption that he brought on himself. The earth becomes filled with violence. There's a flood and the man comes out of the flood and he's given government and he doesn't govern himself. And God sets up priesthood in the priest fail and he makes them. He gives the people a king and the king fails and the and on and on it goes.
And the responsibility goes from one thing to another thing to another thing, with the same sad results. And so, as you know, in the parable in the Gospels, it says last of all, last of all, he sent his son.
Last of all.
And so he sent his son, and they say this is the heir, let's kill him, the inheritance shall be ours. And so they take the son. And after all the indignities, they nailed him to a cross of wood.
So in a certain sense, the curtain drops.
That's the end, because it was last of all he sent his son.
As some of the brothers maybe said this morning, no more testing.
Why test something when you know what it is? You've manifested what it is.
You now know that the crowning sin of man is when God came down to man in goodness. Man says You know what?
I don't want you either.
I don't want you either.
And so, in a certain sense, the moral history of the world ended at the Cross of Calvary.
With the murder of God's beloved Son, the moral history is over. There's no more test. God isn't testing man now. He's not testing nations. He's not testing anybody or anything.
Because that test has been over, the results are in and God has pronounced and as the brothers were mentioning this morning.
The flesh profiteth nothing.
And even a believer can say.
I know that in me that is, in my flesh dwelleth no good thing.
And we could read scripture after scripture. I think I quoted one in Job this morning. Or you could quote from various places in the scriptures to show.
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That man is not 99% bad and 1% good, but he's 100.00 out. As many as you want. Corrupt. The corruption is thorough.
And this is important to see, and we don't need to just jump on it. Sometimes in a reading meeting. We, we what, what's the expression in English? I know it's being translated. I try not to use figures of speech, but it's like we kill a dead horse. So here you've taken a couple kicks. Let me let me do it myself. And we, and I think sometimes young people get sick of hearing us talk about how bad man is in the flesh, in the old man. We've established that, I believe.
But the point I want to want to stress in this.
Is that though responsibility? The moral history of man and responsibility was ended at the cross. Personal responsibility still exists for every man, woman and child. I turn to Romans a minute ago.
Because we read there.
We read about the righteousness of God, we read about the wrath of God, verse 18 revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness, of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness, and so on and down the spiral goals.
And so we read if we, I think it's in Ephesians 5, if we flip over to there and just to extract a verse.
To extract a verse in this exhortation to Christians.
For which sakes I'm looking for that verse if somebody can help me.
Verse 6, Ephesians 5, and verse six. Let no man deceive you with vain words, for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.
God is not testing man in a broad moral sense anymore in the great themes of God's dealings with men on the earth. But every man, woman and child is responsible. We read in Romans, I think it's the 14th chapter. Every man shall give account of himself before God. And then if we turn to Revelation 20.
Before we move off this subject.
In Romans chapter 20.
And I saw the dead, small and great stand before God. Verse 12. Romans 20. Revelation 20. Verse 12.
I saw the dead, small and great stand before God, and the books were opened and another book was opened, which is the Book of life.
And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books according to their works.
And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them, and they were judged every man according to their works.
Verse 15 Whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. I know sometimes you hear that a person doesn't go to hell because of their works, but for rejecting the Lord Jesus.
This scripture and many others show that a person is responsible for their works and these individuals that have the sad destiny of standing before a holy God in their sins are judged according to their works and they are cast into the lake of fire. And yes, a book is checked. A book is open to see if their name is found written in the Lamb's Book of Life.
And if it's not, we're on the ground of responsibility.
And so that's inside this parentheses of God's ways with man.
But let's move out beyond that. Let's go back, let's go back however many years and, and, and if, if man says, well, the earth is 9 billion, you're fine. 9 billion years.
Than before 9 billion years, 9 billion and one there was nothing and there was God, and there was the eternal God, and there was the Father and there was the Son.
And the Son was the delight of the Father, and the Father delighted in the Son, and love existed, and light existed in the moral character of God. But there's something else that took place then. So let's read, let's I want to read a series of verses.
That give us a window back into eternity past, because this is more important than how old the earth is anyway.
I, I guess, you know, I'm not a young earth person. Sorry, but I'm not.
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In First Corinthians chapter 2.
Paul jumps in.
In.
Six, we speak wisdom among them that are perfect or mature, yet not the wisdom of this world, nor the Princess of this world that come to naughty.
But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory.
Which none of the Princess of this world knew, and so on.
We could turn now to Second Timothy.
In chapter one. Second Timothy. Chapter one.
And verse nine, God, who hath saved us, and called us within holy calling, not according to our works.
Getting outside the parentheses.
But according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. And then Titus chapter one.
And verse 2.
In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie promised before the world began, but hath in due times manifested His word through preaching, which is committed unto me according to the commandment of God our Savior.
And finally, Ephesians chapter one.
Well known passage to most.
Ephesians 14 According as He hath chosen us in Him, in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.
These scriptures established that before.
As the brother was saying recently in one of our meetings, before he hung the earth upon nothing, that says in Job he hung the earth upon nothing.
Before he made the stars also.
There was a purpose that God has that Ephesians later on we could read in verse sorry chapter 3 and verse 11.
According to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Eternal purpose.
The world.
Is a small place.
The farther man can see with his telescopes and with his mathematical concepts, the smaller it seems.
But as late Brother Darby put it, though Earth itself is a small place, that which took place on it is not.
Because God chose the earth and made it so that it would be the platform for the display of His eternal purpose.
Eternal purpose.
And that eternal purpose included your blessing in mind.
I was rather astonished to hear a few years ago in a reading meeting an interpretation of what we have in Ephesians 1.
As if the election or the choosing same thing of believers was merely corporate.
And I suppose we should be generous with that interpretation, because the adoption or sonship of Israel was was collective and was corporate out of Egypt. Have I called my son? The nation was looked upon as his son.
And an Amos, you only have I known.
And he foreknew the children of Israel. And Paul gives credit in his epistle to the Romans that to the Israelite pertains the adoption, the national adoption, or the national sonship of Israel. And it was corporate. But that's not the way it is with believers.
To establish that, you can hold your finger in Ephesians and turn to Romans chapter 8.
Among other verses.
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In Romans chapter 8, the apostle has reached is about to reach the climax of how he has built from the ground up.
'Cause provision for man as an as in as individuals to be justified before himself.
Built that from the ground up, started with all different categories of sin and sinners and he builds it up through chapter 3-4 and five and takes it up into chapter 8 and then looking back in verse 28, we know that all things work to good Romans 828 for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. There's that word again.
For whom he did foreknow.
He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the first born among many brethren, for whom it does not say for what. If it was the Church, it would say for what?
And God's purpose is not that there is going to be such a thing as the church and I have, and I have in my purpose there is going to be this collective entity like, like you would have an orchestra or something. And so I'm going to have an orchestra. And then people have to compete to be the first violin or the second violin or the third violin, and they work their way into a good seat. Isn't that what you call it, an orchestra seat?
It's not that way, not that way at all. He chose individuals.
A question could have been asked this morning during the, during the reading in John chapter three. Well, OK, so it's so so I had the experience of repentance some years ago and, and, and then I, I had no choice. I had to bow the knee. I accepted Christ as my Savior. But you're telling me that you started the work.
My God started the work in me.
And and so if he started the work in me.
Well.
Well, like why me?
Why me? Why not somebody else? And that is the difficulty, one of the difficulties that people have with this truth of election.
Because they're looking back, I won't say they're like Lot's wife because she probably had other motives.
But this truth is understood in a positive way. I'm always baffled by believers that have a problem with choosing with election when they themselves have been chosen. Why would you have a problem with that? God loved you, He foreknew you. And that doesn't mean that just he has omniscience and knows everything, because we know he has that.
And James says that in Acts 15, known unto God are all his works from eternity. He has that.
But he didn't look at Bruce before, before Bruce was even born, and say, well, you know, he's probably going to be a pretty good guy. So I'm going to no, there was none of that. There was none of that. It starts with an eternal purpose, and that purpose went out to individuals, to you and to me. And I'm looking into dozens of faces now.
Of men and women and children that are going to spend an eternity.
Not only with Christ, but like Him. And why? Because He chose you.
And he loved you, and when the time came, he called you.
And then he made a work whereby he can justify you.
And at the end of the day, he's going to glorify you, and you're not done yet until you're glorified. You're going to be glorified to be with him like Christ.
And so I think it's important to see.
That this choosing has to do with individuals. It was made in eternity past and it's going to be carried out and displayed through. And we're like children thinking of time and eternity. Like, like we think that eternity stops and then time and then eternity picks up again. And I, I know I talk that way and sometimes think that way and it's, I know it's childlike, but I, I can't wrap my head around these things.
But for all eternity.
We're going to be the bride of Christ.
We're going to be glorified with him. It's never going to end.
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Now, if he had chosen you when you were five years old or six years old, it's still God's sovereign work.
It's still God's sovereign work to choose you, even if He chose you in time. But He chose you before time.
Because it was an eternal purpose.
And because he's God, he can do that, and that's what he did. How wonderful when we reflect on the fact that when God falls back onto his own sovereignty, what comes out? Goodness.
Goodness comes out because God is light and God is love.
But He chose us in eternity, and you are already up.
You are already a partially completed work of God because you've been turned to darkness, from darkness unto light. You have the Holy Spirit indwelling. You are members of his body. You are a citizen of heaven. You are part of a heavenly, a heavenly entity, even now while we're still here on this earth and in this world.
Chosen in eternity, we are part.
Of this eternal purpose, now we have eternal redemption.
We are. We have been given an eternal inheritance.
We have eternal salvation.
And we presently possess this eternal line of things in Christ. We have eternal life now.
And we're going to possess it all the way into the future.
I was very intrigued lately when reading through Ephesians chapter one.
And those with concordances on their phones can check me out on this, but I believe it is so.
Where he speaks of being accepted in verse five. Let me just read from verse 5. Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children, which is really sonship by Jesus Christ to himself.
According to the good pleasure of his will.
To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the Beloved.
And I'm thinking, you know.
That word accepted.
It's not a great word.
It kind of it kind of. At least I'm I'm just saying in the English language, the word accepted is kind of like almost an indifferent word.
Like, OK, you can come in, you're accepted.
But when you look up the word, it's only used one other place and it's used of Mary.
Who? When the Angel visited her, he said, Thou art highly favored. It's the same word. It's only two places in the Word of God. The Angel saying that to Mary, he, he saluted her. Thou art highly favored.
She was going to be that mother in Israel that was going to bring forth the Christ, the Messiah. Highly favored. It's the same word for you and me. You're highly favored in the Beloved. You've been accepted into this eternal entity of light and love.
And so questions come up in people's mind.
And it centers around this.
I think it centers around.
Is God really fair?
Because he chose you.
And what about your next door neighbor?
What about the guy that I worked with?
Who was a stranger to Christ his whole life and died suddenly in a motel room?
What about him?
Then I will just say this.
That there's nothing fair.
About the only perfect man.
Coming down into this world.
Laying all his Godhead glory by unveiling it and walking through this world for 33 years.
And being reproached, misunderstood, doubted, challenged, all the rest. And finally?
00:40:03
Abused.
There's nothing fair about the man Christ Jesus, who was that holy thing, even as man pronounced by the Angel in Luke chapter one. That holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.
Making it very, very clear that the transition from Him in his Godhead glory to taking manhood to Himself was not going to sully the the inherent glory and holiness of that one.
At such points in the life of the Lord Jesus, the Spirit of God says, now I've got to say something here. When the Lord Jesus took his place with the excellent of the earth and was baptized of John is one of those times in the silence of heaven is broken. This is my beloved Son.
And so on.
There's nothing fair about that at all.
There's nothing fair about the sinless man Christ Jesus being lifted up like a mark for the arrows of the Almighty. And he could say, behold, if there be any sorrow like unto mine, yes, the world is filled with sorrow, but there has not been a sorrow based upon the word of God like the sorrow that he endured when a holy righteous.
Man in Christ Jesus.
Stood in the place for you and me, and was made sin.
That work has glorified God. That work has addressed the sin that came into the world, the outrage of sin against the holy nature of God. Because primarily, sin is an affront to God. You may sin against your brother or your neighbor, but ultimately all sin is against God.
And God is the one whose rights have been sullied by the entrance of sin into this world.
And the Lord Jesus could say, then I restored that which I took not away. He didn't take away from God's glory, He added to it.
And he offered himself as a sacrifice for sin, and God accepted the offering.
And proved that He did by raising him righteously from amongst all the rest of the dead. Nothing fair about that at all. Nothing fair, nothing unfair about that at all. It's not it's, it's so far beyond fair that we just take that right off the table in my mind. Take it right off the table because God has come out in unimaginable blessing for man.
And so.
You know, I believe those scriptures we read show that God's eternal purpose included the election of individuals to a destiny picked out ahead of time. The destiny is to be with Christ, to be in Christ and with Christ. That is the destiny.
Someone said no one, No one has been predestinated to a lost eternity because God has not done that. He's not willing that any should perish, but that all men might be saved. And by the offering of his Son on Calvary's cross, he has been justified in making an offer, a bona fide, honest offer, to whosoever will.
Because of the work of his son.
And that's what propecia, I know it's a big word. That's what propitiation is. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the whole world.
The blood has been shed, the sacrifice accepted, and now the messengers can go out and say, have you heard the news that you can be accepted by God because of the work on Calvary's cross?
And so the offer goes out.
And it goes out. It's a bona fide offer.
Because people say, well, you know, if, if a man, if a man can't, if a man can't respond, then is it a bonafide offer?
But why can't the man respond?
Why can't the man respond? It's because he chose sin and a Sinner he became and so they offer goes out.
And it's a bonafide offer. It's a real offer to whosoever will. And the Bible, the Scriptures teach us.
That as as Brother Kemp put it in the reading, that since the whole world is now, is now a candidate to receive God's offer of pardon because of the work of Christ, then the offer goes out universally. It's not just to the Jew, it's to it's to man, it's to mankind, it's to whosoever, and out it goes.
00:45:18
We'll read that in John Three if if we continue on in it, it goes out to whomsoever.
And God has glorified in the sending of it out, whether it is received or not received.
And so it is.
That.
Strange, isn't it, that men should say, well, if God is sovereign and he chooses some and not others, then is that really fair?
And again I go back to the fact that God has made provision for all.
And he has sent the message out to all, unto all. And it can be shown in the Word of God that Christ Jesus died for sinners, for the ungodly. And whoever you meet in any culture, any land, anywhere in the world, you can say God loved you and Christ died for you.
But you have to stop there and say, But if you receive him as your Savior, you have the privilege to say, He bore my sins in his own body on the tree. That is the privilege only of the believer.
And so the message goes out.
And men.
Decline the message.
Except God is free to fall back in his own sovereignty.
Because God could have shut the whole thing down.
He made the heavens dark during those three hours of darkness.
And after that, the Lord Jesus.
Having made the victors cry, he bowed his head and dismissed his spirit.
And the earth shook, and the temple was rent and twain and all the rest. And God could have said, You know what?
I really tried. I've tried for 4000 years. I sent them profits.
I sent them my word. I did all of this. I don't know what else I can do. I finally sent my own beloved son. Nobody, Nothing is more precious to me than my son. I have delighted in him for all eternity. Last of all, he sent his son.
And when the rejection was finalized of the sun when the spear went in to make sure to give testimony that he was really dead, God could have just said let's just shut it down. Would he have been righteous to do that? Yes, he would have been righteous to do that. He could have shut the whole thing down and said, I stretch forth my hand all the day and no man regarded. Let's just close this up. He has the power.
He just he has the power to withdraw his breath from from all flesh.
He can dissolve the whole world. He could dissolve it in one second from now, dissolve it all. He could have done it then.
But what does he do forthwith? Comes throughout blood and water.
And beyond even the gift of God's Son, now mercy, now forgiveness is offered. As Brother Adrian Roach used to say, all may, none would, and some shall.
And that is where we have to leave it.
For years when we would take up, I think we can have established from the word of God.
That the election of the believer is part of an eternal plan and an eternal purpose before the world was made and it is now being realized or or actualized in the calling and the new birth and the ceiling of believers and being joined to Christ.
Just totally lost my train of thought.
I know what it was.
The scriptures make it very clear.
That election is part of the truth of God, that God is free in his own sovereignty to do that.
The scriptures are equally and justice as clear and true that man still is responsible before himself.
And even if you take up the truth that we had this morning about man's total corruption.
00:50:02
Just in common sense, you know that just because somebody doesn't have money to pay doesn't mean they don't have a debt. If I borrow $1000 from you and, and I say I will pay it back next week and you come around next week and I say I'm sorry, I don't have any money, does that mean I, I don't still have a debt? No, I still my, my bankruptcy does not take away my responsibility and my debt.
And the Word of God is 100% clear that man is responsible. The soul that sinneth it shall die.
And if you believe not I am He, you shall die in your sins. And whither I go, ye cannot come 100% clear that there is responsibility, and I believe 100% clear that God has fallen back on His sovereignty.
And and, and says, you know what, some of them are going to come. They're all running down that broad Rd. but some of them are going to come. And he extracts this one and he extracts that one and he extracts this one.
And you find yourself part of this eternal counsel of God. And these things are hard to reconcile in our mind, I suppose, impossible to reconcile in our mind, as Brother Kemp was telling me after the morning meeting. And I used to just use that analogy that brothers used with the two railroad tracks. And if you in America that the tracks are 56.
And change apart, that's the gauge and you stand on tracks.
And we used to do some track work and you look way out ahead over here, you can see the tracks way out there and they look like they come together. But but the the illustration is, but they really don't.
And so we say, oh, well, they don't come together. And we just accept that because we look at things that are not seen and we understand things that are passing understanding. But I don't use that analogy anymore because it dawned on me that the tracks do come together. They came together at the cross of Calvary.
Because they're the only sinless man stood in the breach for you and me, and he took up your responsibility and mine. The debt was not cancelled. The debt was not forgiven. The debt was paid. Your responsibility and mine was addressed and addressed fully and addressed so fully that God was even glorified in the taking of it away.
Because as we read in the Old Testament.
When something was stolen, it was restored, the 5th part was to be added, and the Lord Jesus added the 5th part in glorifying God, even with the with the respect of taking away sin, God in sovereign love sent His Son.
God did not have to part with the darling of his own bosom.
In sovereignty he did that and he provided his son. He met our responsibility on Calvary's cross.
And that's why these two things clash together on Calvary's cross.
When I was a young.
First became a staff person on a construction site.
I remember.
One afternoon in the trailer with this big window in front of me, looking out on a road outside of a dam and just flipping through the drawings for some reason.
And an ambulance came smoking down from up the mountain and a young girl came speeding up on her lunch break from down below, and they crashed right in front of my eyes.
What a horrific crash.
When you work around high voltage or power, which I know.
Just about nothing about.
They show you films, educational films, to give you a sense of the power that lies in those voltages. And when something touches something that it shouldn't touch, men get blown up and horribly burnt.
In a in a less than a fraction of a second.
And there on Calvary's cross, these wires crossed together and this collision took place.
And God dimmed down the lights of the universe.
At the horror of the man Christ Jesus.
Bearing the wrath of God.
And not for a millisecond. And then a breaker switched at all. It went on for three hours.
And the sacrifice, you know, and sacrifices in the Old Testament.
They they shed the blood first. If you've ever if you raised animals for food, you know that.
00:55:04
They shed the blood 1St and the animal dies. Then the animals put on the fire and offers the sacrifice. In Christ Jesus. You had a man that was alive when he endured the fire of the wrath of God.
Hands outstretched, and there he was, and during that?
And so I believe.
Very fully that those two things that are so that seem at such contradiction to you and me, because responsibility says show me what you have, show me what you can do, give to me, respond to me.
It's, it's looking for something to be received and the grace of God that is now going out to you and me is the 180° off from that. It's give. I have something for you and I'm giving. And those things are just so, so completely apart. And so it is that you and I have been brought into blessing through the sovereign love of God.
I wish I could make this more understandable. Sorry for my my brain cramp there for a moment, but I know this comes up in the last two or three years when we've been in reading meetings with young brothers and older ones too. This comes up all the time.
And I have tried to address it with the Lords help. It's wonderful to think that God knew you before you were you and that he set his heart upon you and that he chose you. This should be a source of of of wonder. We all have our we all have our.
We all have our histories, and as I lookout I see a bunch of Gorgases and I see a bunch of Stuart's and a bunch of Rugas and everybody has a history.
And assemblies have history and I was saved in Palmyra, ME.
And that assembly had a characteristic too. And the characteristic was that above all things, they valued in another human being that they were worshippers. That was the highest commendation. If you heard Brother Royce say about another brother, he's a real worshipper.
There was nothing higher than that.
And the truth of election that God shows you before the worlds were made is a helped he. He could have chosen you and not told you. It could have been a secret. But he chose you and he told you he did. Why?
So that you would have the same experience that I had when I was first saved. And you can continue with all your Christian life because you say at various points, why me? And that's something that can't be answered other than because the Lord loved you and he set his heart upon you. And I've sat in meetings, sat in courses in university.
Looked out at a group of people this size or larger. I don't know of any of them. Others were believers or not. I knew I was. And I have to say, why me? Why me?
And it's those kinds of.
The understanding of this truth is meant to lead us to the enjoyment of that and so that our hearts can well often appreciation for One who has loved us so much that He paid such a price to have us for all eternity. In closing, let's just sing part of Him.
Hymn 331.
Let's just see.
Verses 7 and eight of him 331 If someone could start it please to a suitable tune.
01:00:29
Our God and our Father, we thank Thee.
For communicating to us.
That eternal purpose.
In which thou hits, glorify thy Son in heaven and in earth, and that there should be one.
A bride that should be one with him in heaven above, and that for all eternity.
We stand in awe, our God.
The great work accomplished by thy beloved Son on Calvary's cross. We thank Thee that we are part of the fruit of the travail of His soul. Help us to appreciate our God and Father, the love that Thou has shown to us in having chosen us before the foundation of the world. This humbles us.
It stirs up our hearts afresh. Help us to be here for the little while that is left to us. For Thy glory we commit that which was.
Brought before us from my precious word to thee.
Thank you again for Thy great love to us. We bless the precious Savior for being willing to be the sinner's friend. We look forward to thy soon return, when we shall be introduced into the liberty of glory along with thyself. We bless thee and thank Thee, Lord Jesus, and Thy worthy and precious name. Amen.
John 3:8-11
Reading
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And we sing hymn #330.
In 330.
And I lost.
Learning where I am.
I guess we pick up with verse 8.
How far a time would you like to eat down, please, Steve?
The same again.
Perhaps we could.
Read down verse 21 This time.
John's Gospel chapter 3, beginning at verse 8.
The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whether it goeth? So is everyone that is born of the Spirit. Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said unto him.
00:05:08
Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? Verily I say unto thee, we speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen, and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?
And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man, which is in heaven.
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, Even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish.
But have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal, but have everlasting life.
For God send 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 had not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness.
Rather than light because their deeds were evil.
For everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that adoreth truth, how much to delight that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
We are starting in verse 8 here.
Taking up more details on the question of what it means to be born of the Spirit. So before we do that, I have a question about born of water. I agree fully with the answer that was given this morning of what it means, but what would you say to someone who thinks that being born of water would have a reference to Baptists?
Thank you, Rob. I was just going to bring that up. I have had people tell me that that's exactly what it means, that this is speaking about being baptized and receiving the Spirit. And then they go to Acts chapter 2 where Peter speaks on the day of Pentecost and says to those who were pricked in their conscience, he says repent and be baptized for the remission of sins and you shall receive the Holy Spirit.
And they say, so you see, it's the same thing. And this is how a person, the way they say it usually is, would get salvation. And of course, we're going to see us not talking about salvation. It's new birth. There's a difference. I think we're going to take that up as we go through here.
But that's not speaking about baptism, it is speaking about what Bruce brought before us in the earlier meeting.
From first Peter chapter one, you remember he gave us that verse at the end of the chapter that says being born again by the word of God, that liveth and abideth forever and the word of God. Bruce mentioned I'm just repeating little of what he said is connected with water in the word of God. Ephesians 5 for instance. Christ loved the church and gave himself for it and that he might.
Sanctify and cleanse it by the washing of water.
By the Word, very clear example as to how water is used to connect with the word in that passage in Ephesians chapter 5. And so this is speaking about exactly what we were saying earlier. It's the Spirit of God that first begins at work by sanctifying a person. You have that in first Peter one as well, and then taking the word of God to produce life where there was none before.
00:10:26
But the whole thing is by the will of God, and that's how we know that this can't be baptism is so important that we get hold of what Steven said at the beginning of a meeting and I just want to go back to it. John, chapter one.
Where it says there.
Verse 13 Which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
If something about being born again had to do with me getting baptized, and I would have something to do with it. But John starts right out, as Brother Steven said, making it clear that my will has nothing to do with it. It's totally the will of God.
And if we understand that, we won't get the wrong idea by introducing a thought like baptism. So I know there's some here who may have friends or maybe colleagues at work who believe this, and it might be helpful to give them an answer from the Scripture. It's important. This is speaking about the will of God only here.
Doctrine of baptism is hopefully described in Romans chapter 6.
New birth is the beginning of life.
Baptism points us to death in Romans 6 verse three. Really not that so many of us as were baptized unto Jesus Christ, were baptized unto his death. Therefore we are buried with him by baptism unto death, That like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, Even so we also should walk in newness of life, and so on.
So the waters of baptism.
Bring before us death and coming up out of the water resurrection and taking our place in Christ and in first Peter chapter 3 this passage that mystifies people often, but at the end of verse twenty of first Peter 3 speaking about the days of Noah while the ark was a preparing first Peter 320 wherein few that is 8 souls were saved.
Through water it should read the like figure, where unto even baptism doth also now save us. Not the footing away of the filth of the flesh, as people wrongly interpret John three, but the answer of a good conscience toward God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So again, baptism doesn't save a soul, but it's the picture of that which does. It puts us into a new place.
In Christ on the other side of death, in that new life, it's not not the subject of John 3.
Sorry, sorry. It's full though.
Over Northern Ireland, who were saved through the instrumentality of the Salvation Army, and they realized that.
Our following conversion, they should be baptized. They were baptized and.
This couple were.
Quite limited in their scope of the English language. They could speak, but they could not read. And the husband said to his wife.
I'd like you to make a uniform like that brother that baptized me. And the wife said I certainly will. And she made the uniform and when he went to put it on he said something is missing.
They have words on the uniform and.
They didn't weren't able to read those words so.
The wife said to her husband, you go out on the street, go up and down the street, and if you see any words, write those words on a piece of paper and I will embroidery those words on the uniform and so.
He came back with the words under new management and so it was very appropriate and a picture of what baptism is an active identification.
00:15:17
Christian baptism is.
Entirely different to the baptism that John the Baptist preached. He was the forerunner of the Lord Jesus and.
He preached the baptism of of remission of sins and has been mentioned has been mentioned. Going down into the waters was an expression that they were worthy of death and.
John preached not the gospel of the grace of God, but the gospel of the Kingdom and people who who submitted to that.
Ordinance.
Took upon them, they took the responsibility of their sins, and it was a baptism unto repentance.
Christian baptism. It is placing the name of Christ on the individual.
The Scripture in Ecclesiastes 11.
That's connected, I think with our chapter, or at least illustrative of what we have. Ecclesiastes 11/5 as thou knowest not what is the way of the Spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her, that is with child. Even so, thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all.
And so our verse where we started the wind bloweth where it listeth. Now here's the sound thereof, but can't not tell once it cometh and whither it going. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit, Jew or Gentile. We don't know the how of these things. God tells us it's by the Spirit and the Word. How? We don't know, but we see the effects. You can't actually see the wind. We say I see the wind out there. What do you see? You see trees moving.
You see leaves blowing around, you see something like that. You don't have to see the wind, you can see its effect and so.
One who is born of God sees things themselves they never saw before because they have a new capacity, a new life. And that's really what new birth is. It's a capacity for things that there was never a capacity for before, a capacity to know God, to enjoy the things of God, to desire the things of God.
Outwardly, from our point of view, we can see the movement too. There's something new that's happening there. How? We don't know how. We don't know how it happened, but we see the effect. We see the effect of new birth and a soul. And so we don't know all the insurance and outs of it, but we do see the effect.
Someone has someone questioned the person that was flying a kite, can you see the wind? And he said no, but I can feel.
The tug on this on the string.
You can see the effect in Nicodemus in verse 9.
No longer.
Like so outspoken as he was in verse four, How can a man be born when he's old? Almost goes a bit far in saying that. Can he enter the second time and his mother swoon and be born? Well, now the effect is working on him. How can these things be much softer now, isn't he?
We can see the process, and I believe it's important to understand the process before we can ask the questions. So we just were told about baptism. Well, you were just learned to see and understand. How can you be baptized? And now we see that light was given in a sense to Nicodemus. Nicodemus, so we can see. So a natural man will never understand the word of God.
It has to be through the help of the Spirit of God. These are not uncommon questions because they see it from a different perspective. I had a four year old asked me not long ago, in fact couple weeks ago, he was saved after a gospel meeting. And at first I thought, well, a four year old could be just mimicking what was said. And then a few days afterward, actually a couple of weeks afterwards, he said to me, I don't think I'm born again.
00:20:25
I said to him, why do you not think so? He said I didn't become a baby again. Now you might smile at that and say he didn't understand. He didn't, but he is thinking and it's good that we took the word of God and exercise that in our heart because the Spirit of God is the one that will make that good to our soul. So once we see this, now the person is responsible.
You know, if you go to Acts, I think the 10th chapter with Cornelius, how did the Gentile like Cornelius got saved? Well, it doesn't say much about it, but it tells us that he was a pious person who was devout to God. So we find that God is the one that has worked in the hearts all along. Before the Holy Spirit was was a place upon them. So it's the work of God that makes all this good to our hearts. So in the following few.
Verses it goes on to explain to us what is eternal life.
What is everlasting life? And without that, you can see, you can hear. If I may, I'll bear one more example. Some of you may notice that I wear a hearing aid. Oh, you probably don't notice because it's hard to see. And you know, for a long time I couldn't understand why I have trouble with the English language, especially when it comes to the essay. Then I got my hearing checked.
What I hear, just like you folks would.
For the special assessment, you said you've been blessed. I go, how is that? He said you lost a high frequency spectrum. I said, that's being blessed. He said, yeah, you can't hear woman's voice as well. Well, with the new hearing aid on, it gave me a new sense of hearing. Now you hear something that you never thought before when you laugh at this. I said to my wife one day, I said, what is that noise? And they all look at me and say what are you talking about?
I said there is that noise, I don't know what it is. It turned out that it was the bacon sizzling, but I heard bacon sizzle all my life, but assures on the different when you didn't hear the higher frequency. So this is what the word of God helps us to understand that God has as if it were for the news that the hearing aids on you or perhaps use the example a new set of glasses so that you can now see.
Does that save your soul? No, not yet.
You have to see the way of God.
If we read, Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee.
Except a man be born of the word.
And of the Spirit he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.
And the Lord was saying to Nicodemus, You must be born again.
And he couldn't receive that. He couldn't, He couldn't figure that out. So it's plain to see that he wasn't receiving the word of God. You know, and I thought of that verse in Hebrews 11 where it says in verse 21, I think it is.
No, it's not Hebrews 11. It's where it speaks about DVD grafted word.
Well, James. James isn't. I'm sorry, James One.
Yes, change.
One and 21 wherefore they apart filthiness to include the naughtiness, receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your soul. Now the entrafted word is I receive what the Lord said I receive that just on that simple ground I receive.
00:25:07
Would sit, said the nicotine. You must be born again.
So I think we could substitute for water the word, but we would come up a little short. The reason the Lord uses the term water because not only is He bringing before Nicodemus, the instrumentality, the thing used the word, He's bringing before him. It's effect. What does it do?
It works like water, and so we would lose something if we didn't have the word water. But it's true. It's the word. But the reason the figure water is given because we want to understand its effect in the soul that it comes in the power of like the flood, judging the old world judges that old life and really cleanses the way for the introduction of a new life. And so water is a figure. Ezekiel gives us that too.
And Ezekiel 36 in verse 25.
Then I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will cleanse you a new heart also I will give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the Stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.
Speaking of April nationally, which we're about to touch on one other stricture, Isaiah 66 and verse 8.
Isaiah 66 Eight, Who hath heard such a thing? Who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day, or shall a nation be born at once?
For as soon as Zion travelled, she brought forth her children.
There may be one other verse in Ezekiel chapter 16 to pull it together.
Verse 6 Ezekiel 16 Six. And when I pass by the I saw thee polluted in thine own blood. And I said unto thee, When thou wast in thy blood, live. Yeah, I said unto thee, when thou is in thy blood, live.
Ezekiel 16 is Israel's beginning as a nation. He saw them in the affliction of Egypt.
As it were, it was the time of the birth of the nation. Sees them in their blood. And he says, I said unto you, live. And they became a nation, and God brought them up out of Egypt. But they corrupted his way. And just like man, who God formed and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, he fell into sin. And so Israel followed the same pattern, and that old corrupt life was no good.
Before God, it produced nothing for God. And in a coming day He's going to sprinkle water on them like we read in Ezekiel 36. And he's going to take that old Stony heart that can produce nothing, and give to that nation a heart of flesh that will respond to God, that will desire God and receive him. And a nation will be born in a day again. They were born once coming out of Egypt. He said unto them, live, live.
But they're going to be born again as a nation. So interestingly enough, the Old Testament scriptures had taken up the principle of new birth by the word of God and by water. And Nicodemus ought to have known that. He ought to have known and understood those figures that that was going to be required for the nation. And so the Lord saying to him, you're a master in Israel, you don't know this. You don't understand these principles.
Maybe you have never heard them apply to if any man an individual, but he should have known the principles and that's why the Lord says in verse 7 marble, not that I said unto you. Now he doesn't say, Oh man, he says, ye Flora, the nation must be born again. You ought to know that Nicodemus. It's going to be what Israel passes through as a nation, but it is the necessity for every soul of man and woman that is going to come into blessing too, that may be born of God.
There is a moral cleansing connected with new birth.
Whether it's the nation or in an individual soul. So if you go back to first Peter again chapter one believe this is what's inferred in that verse 22.
00:30:08
Peter 122 seeing ye have purified your souls, obeying the truth of the spirit, and so on. So in John's first epistle he speaks of the water and the blood. The water speaks of life, and the epistle is is dominated by the expressions of that new life.
But then he says towards the end of the epistle, this is he that came by water and blood, not by water only. We'll get to the blood side of it later on in chapter 3. But right now we're on the water. And it's a good question. I think we took it up in the last meeting is why does it say by water and the spirit and not the word in the spirit? And I believe it because it brings before us the picture of the cleansing power, purifying power.
Of new birth. A brother years ago used to describe the work of Christ to us in its double aspect. And he did it this way. And he said he used the figure of a child that's disobedient. Back in Palmyra during mud season, you step off the concrete step and boom, you went into the mud and and so you have all these kids that are dressed for meeting. And so you say to a child, don't go off the step. The meeting is going to begin in 10 minutes. The child ignores you, goes off the step and now you have two problems.
You have a disobedience issue and you have he or she is filthy. And so the work of Christ really applies both. It's a moral cleansing because there's the defilement of sin. The more the Hebrew side, there's also the disobedience, which is a judicial issue. And for that the blood of Christ addresses it. But we're getting a little ahead of ourselves. And I don't mean to get us off the chapter, but I believe that's that's the aspect of the water.
As opposed to just saying the word. I think that's very.
Because.
It's it's it's it's wonderful to his brother not to lose the simplicity of the meaning of these words. Water is something that you wash with and the the Lord saw that the importance of it even when he spoke to the disciples about washing one another's feet. You know, we get defiled. Well, here's a defilement at the very beginning of a soul that that there's no ability at all.
To do anything, there has to be a cleansing. And so it's it's good to see the simplicity in the the type that's being used and just to take it in that way. It's just so wonderful. Just thought I'll add a quick comment on that as well. Not to drag it on the water. Yes, we could use it to apply with the word of God, which has cleansing power. Now remember Nicodemus, know the word of God.
Rather say he knows the law, he knows the Old Testament. We mentioned earlier in the last meeting, this is a transition period. They are just about to go into the day of grace. So there will be the word as the apostle Paul told us that he's going to complete the word of God. There will be certain secrets that were not revealed to the Old Testament sayings as the as the apostle Paul would have revealed to us. So we need.
The complete word of God.
But then the Spirit of God need to work in conjunction with that too, doesn't it? So it's the is the Spirit of God taking the Word of God, making it good to our soul?
Another dimension here we might say the the Lord is connecting the disciples with heavenly things.
Nicodemus was familiar with the earthly Kingdom and that they look forward to it being established. Perhaps this was the Messiah, but the Lord is lifting us above earthly character of things into a new relationship.
Eternal life having the conscious sense that we are children of God, that we know God is our Father.
This was.
Dependent upon the death and resurrection of Christ.
But now we have a divine life that can enjoy the very things that God himself enjoys. And here the Lord Jesus was the one who knew all about these things. He was the one that came from the glory to unfold and to reveal the heart of God. So you, you see this, this addition here the Lord.
00:35:22
Is bringing us into a region of of understanding.
The new relationship we have now, it was anticipated here because the Spirit of God had not yet come. Chapter four. We have the divine life and nature in chapter 3, but we need something else. What is it? We need a power. We need the power.
That will act upon that divine nature, and that is.
Unfolded to us in chapter 4, the Holy Spirit of God there is is the water that is imparted and gives us the power to enjoy what we are going to have for all eternity. Is that right brother?
So there are two distinct things there, as you say, Brother John, there's the earthly side and there's a heavenly side, and that's the next thing the Lord takes up. And this is one of those places where John's gospel, you might say, intersects with Matthews and the 13th chapter in in specifically.
There you get the Kingdom of the Son of Man here on this earth, and the angels are going to cleanse the Kingdom of the Son of Man. They're going to take out everything that offended.
In the Kingdom of the Son of Man and established that Kingdom. And as you say, Nicodemus was looking forward to that earthly Kingdom, wasn't he? And that's what he had hopes for in coming to the Lord as a teacher, that he was going to help and improve things and get there. And so there's an earthly side. But before Israel comes into that Kingdom, they're going to have to experience new birth. We're going to have to go through that nationally.
Before that earthly side. And so when Nicodemus expresses incredulence about this, he says, don't you understand you you can't receive the things that I'm testifying on. And he says in verse.
11 Verily, verily send to the we, that is, the Father and the Son. Speak what we know.
And that's where we began in the end of chapter 2. Jesus knew what was in man. We speak of the things which we know, and we have seen. He'd seen the glory Nicodemus never had, and he received not our witness. If I have told you of earthly things and you believe not because he was really expressing unbelief.
How shall you believe if I tell you of heavenly things? What's the rest of the chapter? It's grace, because He goes on to tell them of heavenly things. And so you get another Kingdom. In Matthew 13. You get the Kingdom of the Father, and the righteous shine forth on the coming day of the Kingdom of their Father, and that's the heavenly things. And there is really an illusion here of what belonged to Israel and the earth.
And what is now our portion as Christians and what we have been brought into and what we're going to enter into. I'd like to pause here for a minute and turn to Ephesians One for a verse.
Ephesians 113 In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, And whom also after that ye believe ye were sealed.
With that Holy Spirit of promise, what is the gospel of our salvation? It was preached after the finished work of the cross. It was never preached in the Old Testament. There was no one in the Old Testament who could ever have heard the gospel of our salvation and received it and been sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, because the work of the cross had not yet been finished. The Spirit of God had not yet been sent down from a glorified Christ.
Were they saved?
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Not in the sense of Ephesians chapter one and verse 13.
Did they have life? Yes, they have life from God. They were born again.
It's an earthly side of things. They were born of God. They had life from God, but there was no gospel to believe in, nothing for the Spirit of God to seal. They did not have eternal life. They had life from God, but they did not have it as eternal life. And that is the key to understanding.
The condition and position of the Old Testament Saints and contrast to us and the Lord says one is earthly things very connected with Israel because nationally they'll go through new births. The other is heavenly things and more connected with the privilege and blessings we have.
Through the finished work of the cross.
They didn't have intelligence, uh, Steve, right, They didn't have intelligence of, of the divine life, which now.
The grace of God and the the washing of regeneration, renewing of the Holy Spirit. Now the believer has intelligence of his position in Christ, which an Old Testament Saints really didn't have. So Bruce brought out it's the water for cleansing. We're putting a new moral position before God when we're born again.
We have a new moral position before God, but in addition to that, we have to have those sins put away. That's the blood of Christ that deals with the guilt of our sins. So you, you have the two things. Would you say, Bruce, that that is, that is so, yes.
I think one of the difficulty for us is we're going through books like this is to keep in our mind at what time frame are we looking at? At this juncture, The Lord hasn't gone to the cross yet. The work has not been accomplished. So Nicodemus would have no way of understanding what the cross is. So he's foreshadowing as if it were. So we're looking back as well. We know all these stories. He didn't at this point.
So he's telling him I'm jumping ahead. That's why he said there are something you're familiar with. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, Even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. Well, I believe you understand the story of how the serpent was lifted up, but he didn't understand that. But so here he has to say, just like the Son of Man, the Son of Man in Scripture is not referring to the glorious Lord.
But the one who was despised and rejected of men, so the Son of man, the despise and rejected one will be lifted up just like Moses did in the wilderness. And then he explained as if once you understand that, then you know that God sent his Son into the world, so that that well known verse for God soul of the world that he gave his begotten son, that hasn't happened yet.
But it's good that he's telling him now, beforehand, so we can understand when the time came.
I'd just like to go back to verse 11 for a moment. And I believe that that we we have in this first a basis for a testimony which as we speak that which we do know and testify of that which we have seen.
And I'd like to link this with a verse and the 9th chapter of John in connection with the blind man.
And verse 28 Then they reviled him, and said, Thou art his disciple. But we are Moses disciple. We know that God spake unto Moses. But As for this fellow?
He may not when he is.
Man answered and said unto him, Them, Why herein is a marvelous thing that you know not from when she is.
And yet we have opened my eyes. Well, the testimony that he gave were genuine, wasn't it? He testified as to what the ward did for him. He didn't go beyond that, did he? But that was the basis and the strength of that testimony. And so.
00:45:21
We see in the scripture that we read in the 9th chapter of John.
That there was.
Some reference to.
Moses, they had some knowledge of him, but was defective, wasn't it? But this man could give a clear testimony based on what the Lord did for him.
I'd like to I just add on to that Brother Bruce in connection with what we're looking at in verses 11 and 1311 Through 13.
If we step back and look at what the Spirit of God is doing in the Gospel of John, he's presenting our Lord Jesus Christ as the eternal Son of God. And part of what we learn here in verses 11 and 13, which your brother Steve touched on when he was addressing the meaning and the significance of the we, that it was the Lord Jesus referring to himself and to his Father together and acting together, and in that sense connecting himself with the Godhead. If you go to university, maybe you meet somebody even in high school, and they'll say, well, Jesus never claimed to be God.
And you're right, they're right in this sense that he never came out bluntly and said I am God. And yet if you look at all the interactions that are brought out through the Gospels, it's clear that the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the priests understood that Jesus was saying he is God. He is God in the sense of the eternal Son and he's Co equal with the Father. And so as we go through this, you see here the point that our brother Steve brought out. But then in the 13th verse it says.
No one is going up in the heaven say he who came down from heaven and he was referring to himself and recognizing and indicating that he came from God from heaven sent like we had in Hebrews chapter one into this world as God's last effort to reach men as we had brought before us and then that's very powerful what God was trying to do. He spoke to us by his son and the Lord Jesus is making this point now at the end of verse 13 just one point if you happen to use a translation like the.
ESV or the NIV, you'll probably find that the phrase the Son of Man who is in heaven is not there. And that's because when whatever Greek text they were looking at, they may not have value. That part of it. If you look at Mr. Darby's translation, it's included and he would have had access to the same documents that the the People W Cotton Court who developed those translations that the NIV ESP are based on, they looked at also and they left it out. Mr. Darby looked at it and left it in.
But the bottom line is the message is the same with that phrase is there or not that Jesus is the eternal Son of God. You can see it clearly from verse 11 if you think about what the we means is that brother Steve brought in.
I just like to make that point that if you're using an alternate translation, just be aware that the people who were doing the translation of your or the compilation of the original Greek text didn't necessarily have the same view of who Jesus Christ is.
You and I would have you may not have seen him exactly as the eternal Son of God as we understand him. So I just put that out as a as a a little warning. Every translation has its issues.
The King a positive tissues and IV has it tissues ESP new King James. Everyone of them has their issues and it is worthwhile if you're using a translation. Do you understand what its weaknesses are? It's really good Rob that goes along with.
Chapter one verse 18 No man has seen God at anytime. The only begotten Son which is which is in the bosom of the Father.
He hath declared Him. I think your comment is helpful to show that the last clause absolutely belongs on verse 13.
Here is one who is competent to speak about things because he knew them. He knew earthly things and he knew heavenly things. If I start to talk about some city that I've only read about and you are from there.
You say, hey, let me speak about that city, That's where I'm from. And so in that sense the Lord Jesus as Son of God and starts to refer to himself now as Son of man, is confident to speak about all spheres. He was there on earth in heaven at the same time beyond us to understand that, but he was confident to speak of heavenly things and earthly things. He reproaches Nicodemus because he had taken a place as the teacher.
00:50:25
And he didn't even understand earthly things.
So in chapter one, the Lord Jesus is omniscient. He sees Nathanael under the fig tree, and then in chapter 2 he's omnipotent. He changes the water into wine. Here he's omnipresent in heaven and on earth at the same time. He's showing very definitely that he is God, isn't he?
So the Lord Jesus says to Nicodemus.
How shall we believe if I tell you everything? So how do we answer the house shelf?
If the Lord asked us that question, how shall ye believe?
Heavenly feet, How's that going to happen?
The wind has to blow.
Say that again, brother, the wind has to blow.
In his soul the wind has to blow. There has to be the work of the Spirit of God.
'S.
Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?
And men use the expression, well, you know, he picked himself up by his own bootstraps. I mean, as a little boy, I heard my dad say that. And I'm like, how do you do that? I mean, it's physically impossible. So it is that man can't. There is nothing in man, as we started this chapter with the end of Chapter 2. There's nothing in that that is capable of receiving and believing left to himself. So the wind has to blow, except you be born anew, afresh.
Of the water and the spirit. You cannot see, you cannot enter, and you wouldn't want to if you could. That's later in John.
So the wind has to blow.
And the and the Lord was the only one.
The Lord was the only one that country.
On a clean thing out of an unclean thing, He did it with Mary, didn't he? God did it with Mary. And that thing that shall be born of thee.
She'll be called for some thought.
Gonna leopard change its spots, or an Ethiopian skin? It's a rhetorical question, no? And people interpret new birth as if you got kind of a fresh start, as if somehow the flesh becomes sanctified by baptism or by some other thing. And that's not it at all. As these brothers have explained in the last reading, that which is born of flesh is flesh. It remains such. And there's a whole new thing come in, a new life. So.
It'd be wonderful if the presence of the new life that we have received through the work of God.
Displaced the old one, but it doesn't, you know, the new birth doesn't kill the old life. It's still there. And that's the doctrine that Paul develops in Romans and, and in other places where sin shall not have dominion over you, it shall not reign over you. It's there, but it's not to rain. So that's another issue.
For the first necessity.
In the work of God.
Save lost man is new birth, the impartation of life, and there may be a period of time between when new birth takes place and then the next thing, the salvation of the soul. And Cornelius was already mentioned as one who had the evidences of new birth in his life.
And then heard words whereby he might be saved, consequently sealed with the Holy Spirit. And there are other examples in the New Testament scripture as well. Like to look at a scripture in Romans 3.
Romans 3 verse 25, whom God set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God, to declare, I say at this time, or now at this time, his righteousness, that He might be just in the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
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No one in the Old Testament could believe in Jesus. They could look forward to Messiah, but that name wasn't revealed until he was born.
And So what about all those sins? How was God righteous and giving life to Abraham or to any of the other Old Testament Saints? On what basis could he give life and new birth? The same basis on which he gave it to you and I.
The same basis on which He saved our souls, the work of the cross. But that was future. And so God forbore. But He gave life even to those Old Testament Saints on the basis of what was to come, the finished work of the cross. It all rests on the cross. And so the next thing that comes into our chapter is the cross. There are two necessities. New birth.
And the dealing with sins.
We need the work of the cross, the forgiveness of sins. We need that salvation that that cross brings. And so that's the next thing that's brought in. For the Old Testament Saints, they never knew of it. And so consequently there were relationships and things they could not enjoy. They were not brought into that position. Not only, I would say, Brother John, that they did not have intelligence, they were not in that position.
It's not that they possessed eternal life but didn't have intelligence about it. They didn't have eternal life. They had life from God new bird. And so the Lord takes that up next. How is this work going to be wrought? How can God forgive sins all one must give his life.
One must give his life, and it must be a man to give his life for man. And so the Son of Man must be lifted up, just as that serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, that all who looked at that serpent could be saved from the serpents bite. And so man had fallen into sin. Man was under the judgment of God, and it was the Son of man who was lifted up on Calvary's cross.
To give his life, none other could give it than him. That we might be saved, and that we might possess a new life, a new character of life, eternal life.
Through that finished work, being born again in and of itself does not make you righteous.
And that's an important thing to get a hold of because that would be like the new birth. I experienced it on morally cleansed. I'm just going about my business. But hold on a minute, isn't there? Don't we have a problem here? Isn't there a debt? Isn't there an issue? And that's why John says not by water only, because he's describing obedience and love and all these attributes of the new life. But he says not by water only, but by water and blood. It was blood and water that came from the side of a dead Christ.
Because propitiation must be made to meet the righteous demands of God. So just being, after all, say, Well, I thought just being born again was the whole thing. No, it's the beginning. But you still have an old nature. So how do you stand in your own self, even as a born again person? Righteously before God, you do not.
Requires the work of God through Christ, and that's why the blood in the water doesn't come.
From a living Christ, it came from a dead Christ. And so in first John, I think it's verse 4.
Let me find that Chapter 4 I mean.
We have in first John 4.
Verse nine And this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten into the world, that we might live through him. There's the water.
Here in his love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent his Son the propitiation for our sins. And there is the blood side. Both are necessary.
01:00:08
It's a little far from the Old Testament. We had the comment that can something unclean bring something clean? Church, turn with me to Leviticus Chapter 11.
Passage does not often get referred to, but they talk about something clean and unclean. I'm hoping to tie this to our chapter.
Chapter 11, verse 37, and we'll deal with 38 in minute.
And if any part of the carcass fall upon any sowing seed which is to be sown, it shall be cleaned. Now we know that when a man touches a carcass, these become defiled and it's unclean. But here a seed, a sowing seed is set. That's OK.
Why? I believe it's the picture of us Gentiles. We were dead and in trespasses of sin. We now learn that in Ephesians, a seed, technically speaking, is dead. That's why we're not under the same scrutiny as if we were that Israel of over. We were dead. We had no part, no part of God away from God.
But then let's look at the next verse, verse 37. If any part of the carcass fall upon, I'm sorry, verse 38 But if any water be put upon the seed, and any part of the carcass fall on, it shall be unclean unto you. So the water in this case, the thought I have not so much of the fact that they become unclean, but that water gave the seed a new life.
Now that seed is responsible before God. So we find here that the born again. Now in particularly we have to remember he's speaking and particularly to Nicodemus, but these apply to us that he didn't know any better, but things will be revealed to him and that he's going to learn. And there's some comment that he is learning slowly. And we find that when you have a transition, things don't, we don't learn things that quickly.
Find the the the Lord's brothers for example, is that they didn't even believe in him. That's his own brothers. What happened to James and Josie They didn't believe in him, but after the Pentecost when the Spirit of God came down and enjoy in believers our brother John mentioned earlier on.
That changed things. We look at how James became a prominent figure for the early Christians. Dude, we enjoyed the book he wrote in the book of Jude and so on. That, I believe, is because of the Spirit of God working at the heart of those that who have light already.
Might ask the question if new birth is life from God then what's the difference? Life from God, Eternal life, what's the difference?
How is it that what the Old Testament Saints have is different?
You know, in the old days when they had gold coins, they were made of gold. Well, you could get gold in other forms. Maybe gold Nuggets panned out of a stream, maybe a gold ingot, but as soon as you meant it into a coin, you can use it.
In a whole new way, you can enjoy it in a whole different way than what you could before. Life from God is life from God in its essence.
And just as the coin and the ingot are both pure gold in their essence, nonetheless they're very different in the way they can be used and enjoyed and held and spent, so to speak. And that's the same thing. Maybe it's a poor illustration between life and new birth and eternal life. What is eternal life? New birth is life from God. But let's look at John 17. John 17.
Verse 3.
And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. It's evident from that verse. No one until that point could have what is being described there as eternal life. In addition, our chapter tells us that until the Lord Jesus Christ was lifted up on Calvary's cross and Atonement's work was done.
01:05:04
None could possess eternal life because it's through faith in a lifted up Christ in this finished work.
Eternal life is a life like our Lord Jesus Christ, not just to live forever. So we have in our chapter verse 15 but have eternal life. I know our time is up the end of verse 16. They use the phrase but have everlasting life. I believe the better translation has its eternal life. I'd like to make one comment to support and hopefully clarify and make media a little bit simpler what we've been talking about.
And that is this that those Old Testament Saints that we've been talking about.
Are going to live forever in heaven. They're part of what is referred to as the Friends of the Bike Ride Room, and in that sense, they are just as safe from not going to hell as anyone who truly believes in the Lord Jesus Christ today.
So there they were, perfectly safe, just as safe as we are, because God was looking forward to what the Lord Jesus Christ is going to do on the cross. So David is safe, Samuel is safe, all of them are completely safe. But not one of them knew what brother Dave, what brother Steve been talking about. None of them knew how God was going to do it. And if I can put it this way by way of illustration, and I don't know if you follow it.
If you ask Isaac on the way with his father to Mount Moriah, when he looked at his father and he said, where is the lamb? And Abraham responded, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering.
Isaac had no idea how God was going to do that, but on the way back, if you had asked Isaac where did the land come from that your dad was talking about, then he knew. And so often till the time of Christ, David did not know how God was going to wash his sins away, but he counted on God to do it.
Same thing with Samuel. And they were perfectly safe. They were never at risk. God had given them new life. They're going to be in heaven forever, just like we will be. But the difference is they don't have a relationship like you and I do with Jesus Christ as their own personal Lord and Savior. They don't know how their sins are going to wash away. You and I do. And it's amazing privilege we've been brought into you to know that our sins are washed away, that we're accepted in the beloved Son of God.
And God looks at you and me, and we understand that, that we're accepted in His beloved Son.
And we can have such incredible confidence, and it should motivate us to live the kind of holy life and be the holy person and try to walk in the Spirit and not fulfill the lust of the flesh. So I just wanted to make that point and underline what's been said this morning and this afternoon. All of those Old Testament Saints are perfectly safe. They're not going to help.
But they didn't know salvation the way you and I know salvation with Jesus Christ as our Savior and our sins washed away in exactly how that's good, brother. Think of the ark. Noah and his family were on the ark. The waters of the flood had come up. They were safe.
But when he stepped off that ark onto the new Earth, he could say we've been saved.
Different.
Eternal life is a life that was known and enjoyed in the Godhead from a past eternity. And you and I have been brought into that life, given that life, and into that circle of fellowship, of communion with the Father and the Son, highest Christian privilege. And that is what is the essence of eternal life and no, the only true God.
And Jesus Christ, whom he has sent, implies that He's the Father. That is the circle of fellowship we have been brought into, far beyond anything any Old Testament St. ever knew.
Sorry for interrupting you, but I just like to make this one comment is that it couldn't be just any man.
It couldn't be just any man. There are good men, and some men would die for you. A good man may die for you, but it couldn't be just any man. Why?
Well, with the If there's a spotless, sinless man in this room, please stand up.
01:10:01
If you could have did it too.
But I'm thankful to see that nobody's going to stand up. And so it says.
And no man has to send it up to heaven, he that he down from heaven.
But he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man, which is in heaven.
It had to be a spotless, sinless man. And there's only one. There's only one.
As we sing together hymn #70.
Suffering.
And.
Deep thy don't sound it the way it's like no more brightness and town.
May I cry, swear, bring it all around.
See any players?
That I have no more life, nor our parents ever. Jesus are strong.
Gospel 1
Gospel—John Kemp
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Good evening.
We're going to.
Open our gospel meeting.
With one of these children's hymns that you have here, that's all we have available. That's fine.
They're well known to us and.
They're good for young or old. So we're going to start with #8 I am so glad that our Father in heaven.
Tells of his love in the book he has given on. I think we all know this, do we not? So some brother would start us with #8 please.
Jesus loves me. Jesus loves me for me.
No, I forget him. I want you to run away.
Spending like one thing wherever I stray activity of most likely.
When I remember that Jesus was me.
I'm so glad that Jesus loves me. Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me.
I am so glad that Jesus of me, Jesus of.
Me.
Must not be and my God, I love you.
We're going to look to the Lord in prayer now.
Well, you have your hem sheets there. We're going to sing another one.
At sea now I think you boys and girls know most of these by heart. Almost they.
I like number.
Number six, OK, come to the Savior. Make no delay.
00:05:21
Well, I wonder if everyone is going to be in that eternal home. Here it is now at 7:10.
Maybe by 8:00.
The Lord will have come, and I hope that this room would be vacant.
I see quite a number of people and I know that many.
I know them personally for many years myself also, but I'm wondering if there's one boy or girl or older one.
Looking around for your friends?
What has happened? The Lord has come.
Now he's delayed his coming.
For a long time, boys and girls, for nearly 2000 years.
He's still waiting.
We wonder why we are still here in 2022.
But I'll tell you why.
Here's the bottle of water.
I'm going to get reversed from the word of God.
Found in the book of Proverbs, chapter 25, verse 25.
As cold waters to a thirsty soul, soul is good news from a far country.
And how thirsty I had a good suffer and enough to drink. But there's a spiritual thirst in many men and women in this world today. Not a physical thirst, a spiritual thirst. And the news comes from a far country, it comes from heaven.
There the Gospel has.
Comes from the heart of God. In fact, the Lord himself came down to tell us the gospel. He.
Left his beautiful home in the glory where he was from a past eternity, The delight of the Father's heart.
For this Dark World.
Where he was not once.
You boys and girls feel wanted that moment yours you have that, the comfort of the mother and father. But you know the Lord was a solitary man down here. No one really understood him. He was.
Despised and rejected of man, A man of sorrows as he walked through this world, and he saw the results of sin everywhere.
His heart roamed.
Your sorrow and compassion and love and grace.
But he's still the same.
Dive and control.
Bringing the good news of salvation to you tonight.
Are your ears open? Because let me tell you, it may be the last time the gospel will go off.
I don't like to.
Tragic stories, but in my country, I come from Canada, I come from the capital of Canada, Ottawa.
In the country of Saskatchewan, the state of Saskatchewan.
One of these Indian reserves.
A man went in with his brother and they stabbed.
10 people.
In that reserve where I have visited, not that particular one, I visited different reserves with our late brother Harold Hagen.
They stabbed them in 1010. People went into eternity.
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About a week ago.
I was practically at work.
How many if they were ready or not, I don't know, but their opportunity to believe the gospel is over.
They're not going to have, you know, these facts.
Because if you die without price.
We don't have a second chance regardless what people say. God doesn't give you another opportunity if you've heard the gospel and refused the message.
Leave this ground because life is real life in furnace and the grave is not gold that is after death. There is a judgement if you uncertainty who is on the Lord's side tonight.
I enjoyed the biography of Sandra Evict.
Strange character, but he's a powerful creature of the gospel and the bizarre of India. He was fearless and in those days there were contentments of British soldiers all over the country.
I'll pick up my story now. Samuel Hebeck.
And he went to India and lived there about 40 years before he took a retirement. And he preached the gospel all over the southern part of the country and people were afraid of him.
And he was able to speak to many of the military men, and I believe that he brought many of those soldiers to Christ.
One day there was a soldier.
And his delicate wife. She was a believer.
And in those days, they would have great balls. You know where?
They would have dancing and music and all the rest of it. Well, she was a true believer and she really didn't want to go to that sort of an event. But her husband was a military commander and she felt she must accompany him. But on the way she heard.
Did you hear, dear, that Mister Hebeck?
Is going to be here or Her husband said that what did you say? Mr. Hebeck is coming to the dance yes, he's going to be there Well, you're sure to hear him and so they went there there was all the lights and the people dancing and.
And then there was a lull they stopped for to get their breath, you know, and.
This man, he had his Bible in his hand. Small.
Small, strong character. He walked out into the middle of the dance floor. Every everyone knew him. They were quiet. No one made a move. He held up his Bible in the midst of that large company and he shouted out, Who is on the Lord's side?
What a challenge. They all knew Mr. Hebeck. They respected him, though they didn't like the message. But there he was in the center of the auditor of the ballroom, and this lady, she was trembling. She said, I know I'm on the Lord's side, but all of these people and they all know my husband.
And.
You have to make a decision.
Trembling, she came out to the center of the auditorium.
With her face white and trembling, she stood beside Mr. Hebeck, and he went on to preach the gospel. Who is on the Lord's side? So tonight, dear friends, boys and girls, are you on the Lord's side? Are you trusting Him for salvation? We're not talking about turning over a new leaf.
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We're not talking about going to church. Oregon trying to be good.
As we have had in our readings, we are talking about a new life.
A divine life.
We're talking about a person.
Who loves you, knows all about your lives. It's like an open book. All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Let me ask you, do you? Are you on the Lords side? Have you trusted him and received him as your savior? Or are you just floating down the stream?
Having a profession because my parents are Christians.
Therefore I must be saved.
In order to verse in the word of God.
That we don't often quote. We're going to turn to it now in Second Corinthians, First Corinthians chapter 16.
And.
Near the last of the chapter there verse 22, If any man loved not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anasima Maranatha.
Well, those are big words, not English derivation. If any man loved not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be. What does it mean? It means a cursed when the Lord comes. That's a solemn word. If any man or boy or girl does not know the Lord as Savior, you still have your sins upon you.
Your you would be left behind if the Lord came tonight.
You don't really love him.
You will be cursed when the Lord comes.
Luke shut was a young man of about 15 he went to a gospel meeting like this and he heard a powerful message by John slavell, one of the greatest evangelists of the 18th century. Luke shut was 15 years of age and this verse was burned into his soul if any man.
Loved not our Lord Jesus Christ.
Cursed. When the Lord comes, he understood it. He was convicted.
15 years of age.
You know, he lived to be 100 years of age and he still.
Was in his sins, he was out, he had pretty good health. He was out plowing his field at 100 years of age and he stopped and that verse came back to him 85 years ago. He remembers the earnestness of John Flavo as he pleaded with souls to close in with God's offer of mercy as he probably wept like George Whitfield.
Wept when he preached the gospel. Tears flowed from his eyes because.
He knew the destiny of a soul without Christ.
Luke shut remembered those words when he was 100 years of age and he got off the plow and I think he bowed the knee and he was saved out there in the field and he lived another 10 years to show that he was really a Christian, really a believer. Think of the long-suffering mercy of God.
Well, dear friends, tonight we've spoken quite a bit about John Chapter 3, I don't think.
We will go into that again tonight. It has been brought before us clearly and the reading meetings that.
Man needs a new life. It's not reformation, it's not cleaning up your life, it's not turning over a new leaf that'll get just as dirty as the other one. It's a divine life.
It is repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Repentance, the teardrop in the eye of faith. Repentance was preached by the Lord Jesus, by John the Baptist, by the apostles to repent and believe the gospel. Repentance is taking sides with God against yourself. Dear friends, tonight, if you haven't repented of those sins that you have done.
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Then you have that burden upon you.
And if you should be taken away suddenly?
Where would you be?
In a lost eternity.
How solemn.
I remember teaching school in London some years ago. I taught school for four years in London.
There was 2 girls in my classes.
One girl used to read the scriptures in the morning for me.
The other girl was quiet, not really too academic, but she was no problem in in the science class.
Those two girls I knew well. One girl read the scriptures for me in the morning because I had that.
Privilege of reading the scriptures and I would bring in some gospel and she would read it.
11 afternoon. I forget what day it was. This was in Kenton.
Northwest London. They were walking to school or walking from school.
And a truck on the busy St. there not far from Wembley Stadium, where all the great sports events take place.
That truck driver lost control and the vehicle that heavy truck.
Right into the paths of these girls on the sidewalk.
And both of them.
Were killed instantly. I went to the wake of that girl that had been in my class Thursday afternoon. Friday. She was in eternity.
I sought to bring some condolence to her, to her parents, the other girl. She had read the scriptures, as I said many times. So those two girls were suddenly taken the prime of life.
Some of those classes were difficult to handle. They were not the academic stream and.
But I can remember that the whole school surrounded the roads there, as the coffins of these girls pass by. And they stood there in respect. They weren't laughing, they weren't making fun, they were difficult to handle in the classroom. But death was speaking to them in the death, in the sudden passing of their friends whom they knew well.
And what a voice to that whole school from the hand of God. Life is uncertain. But dear friends, I want you to know tonight.
That God has a deep love for your soul. I don't want to get complicated because.
Actually, when God speaks about salvation, He uses words that are very simple that you boys and girls can understand.
Come unto me and I will give you life. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved and.
Other simple verses.
Put your trust in the work of the Lord on the cross and you will have eternal life as we have been speaking about it and.
A hope beyond this world.
You know the last invitation that we have in the Word of God. The last time that God wrote gave an invitation before He closed. The Word of God is in Revelation chapter 22. Whosoever will let him come and take the water of life freely.
Isn't that a wonderful verse? That water of life, dear friend, is flowing down?
From the heart of God, tonight the gospel is for you.
Personally, have you tasted the water of life?
I remember a story of a man that Gordon Hayhoe met who was in the war, and he was not saved, but when he entered the service he was given a New Testament. So he took the New Testament. He didn't have much interest in it, and he put it into his pocket like this and he was on the front lines.
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I think it was the last World war and the bullets were flying.
All over and a bullet hit him.
It did, and it went right through the New Testament. He had it right here in front of his heart. It went right through and stopped.
A couple of millimeters from his heart.
If that New Testament hadn't been there.
He would have been gone. So he kept that New Testament and he opened it up and showed it to brother.
Gordon Hayhoe and.
Gordon opened it up and looked. I wonder where that bullet stopped. Do you know where it stopped?
The last invitation in the Bible, whosoever will let him come and take the water of life freely, that's where the bullet stopped. And that man, he had a miraculous deliverance from death. But up to the time that Gordon spoke to him, he still was not saved. He still had not taken the water of life.
Even though God had.
Miraculously saved his life. Well, dear friends, we want you to be clear about this because we're going to look for a few moments at a.
Had a woman in John chapter. We've looked at John chapter 4.
The John chapters 3, but we're going to make a few remarks about a woman in John chapter 4.
Which we didn't get to today.
Umm, the Lord Jesus. You know, the Gospel of John is a marvelous book.
Umm, it's really Christ transfigured throughout the Gospel. We don't have the transfiguration.
But we have the Son of God, the Messiah, the Son of Man. There's about 10 titles in chapter one that refer to the Lord Jesus.
And we have his incarnation. That's a big word. What does that mean?
God took the Lord Jesus, took deity into union with himself. He took a body that was capable of death, but not subject to death. So he was a perfect man, body, soul, and spirit. He never had a beginning when he came into the world.
That was not the beginning of the Lord's life. He was in the bosom of the Father.
From a past eternity, He was the delight of God the Father, and He still is. But God had such love for you that he said, I'm going to send the dearest object of heaven, my own beloved Son, to a world that I know will reject him, But I'm going to send him that babe in Bethlehem's Manger.
God manifest in the flesh, God of true human soul and spirit and body growing up in that.
Unclean city of Nazareth.
I remember when I visited Palestine, we went through a number of cities, but what marked me was the filth of Nazareth and it was seemed to be a rough, tough city as we passed through. That's where the Lord grew up as a boy.
Perfect man, but perfect God.
And, you know, he had all the feelings and all the sensibilities of man.
The same as you and I apart from sin. He had a human nature, but not the old nature that you have and that I have. No, He was not morally like man, but He was the eternal Son in manhood. And as the angels announced his coming from the. Glory, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill toward man. They look down upon their.
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Creator, and for the first time they saw their Creator, that they in Bethlehem's Manger in the arms of Mary God became man in the person of Christ.
He walked through this world. He never lived for himself, you know, He never performed a miracle to make things easy for himself, You know, we have certain.
We have certain.
Needs and we like to be comfortable and to please ourselves we do that often, don't we? The Lord never did that he lived to display the heart of God to man and he never.
Deprived himself of the wilderness circumstances that we go through, sin apart.
And he healed, and he raised the dead, and he opened the eyes of the blind, but he never did a miracle to make things easier for himself.
And there he was, distributing the water of life.
And he had compassion on the multitude. You know, I visited many.
Foreign countries and I wouldn't put my hand on a leper. I've seen them in Nigeria, I've seen them in India with their open sores and very.
Sad looking creatures because there's no no cure for leprosy. It eats away the toes and the fingers and the extremities and it's an awful disease.
But the Lord, in Mark's gospel, he put his arms around the leper.
You wouldn't do that.
If you were there in Nigeria, you wouldn't do that, but the Lord.
Put his arms around and heal that leper in Mark's gospel.
The Lord was willing to.
To stoop down to the lowest level, we're going to look at a woman here in John chapter 4.
She's a woman that you probably would not want to be walking down the street with. She didn't have a good reputation. Let's look here at John 4 for a few moments.
Because we want to get the story here from the Word of God.
We come down now. When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John.
Though Jesus himself baptized not but his disciples.
He left Judea and departed the gate into Galilee, and he must needs go through Samaria.
Now the Lord here was on traditional ground. The Samaritans were not really Jews. They were sort of a mongrel, a mixture. And the Jews didn't have dealings with the Samaritans. They despised them.
In fact, an Orthodox Jew would not have walked through Samaria. He would have bypassed it. But the Lord had a purpose here. He had a soul in view, a soul that was steeped in sin, an outcast.
Ruined a wretched creature.
Living in open sin, the Lord stopped at the well of Samaria.
Weary in his compassion in reaching men with the gospel, He was wearied, His body was weary.
And he sat there for a little rest on the side of the well. The disciples had gone to buy food, and he must have been hungry too. But along comes this woman of Samaria, and she recognized him right away as being a Jew by the fringe around his garment.
00:35:02
She knew he was a Jew, but why did she come into the.
Heat of the day 12:00. That's not the time when women in these foreign countries that I have visited, they go to gather the water with a big jug on their head. They go out in the cool of the evening or in the morning. But she was coming out in the middle of the day. Why? Because her sin had isolated her. Her sin made her solitary. She.
She shunned to meet men.
Because she knew her life and others knew her life as well.
And the Lord Jesus was sitting there on Sikar's well.
The creator of the universe, the creator of the universe was there to unfold the heart of God to that woman. What a marvelous scene. I sat by thy that well myself and the guide, if I remember correctly, had AI think a penny or something and he says listen now.
And he dropped it.
We counted the number of number of seconds before we heard the splash.
The well was deep, the well was deep, and it was getting deeper every year for this poor woman.
Who was trying to find her satisfaction in sin, living in open sin? Would the Lord have an interest in her? He had a deep interest in that woman. He came all the way from the glory there. He went through Samaria. He had a purpose. That woman was going to be saved from her sinful life.
That was God in the person of the Lord Jesus.
You know, sometimes we speak of the Trinity and, well, we don't.
Fully understand what the Trinity means.
There's God the Father, God the Son.
God the Holy Spirit.
But we can't understand the Trinity. It's really beyond our understanding. When I was visiting Mexico with the gospel.
I was going around to the towns and.
I came to this Mexican village or town and I had all my gospel literature with me. And I said to the headmaster, the principal, now will you let me go and give these gospel texts and tracks to the boys and girls in grade five and six? Boy says, no, you can't do that. That's that's against the Mexican constitution. We don't allow that.
Religion in the schools. Oh, I said. I'm sorry. I'm.
I'm not going to preach. I'm just going to leave a little message of the gospel. No. Well, I was getting ready to take my bag and go out disappointed.
When he said Sir.
I see you're a missionary. Well, I seek to do a little work for the Lord, he says. I have a problem with the Trinity. Well, I said that's not easy to understand and explain.
Mr. Principal, But I see you've got a light in your room here. Now I'm going to give you a little illustration. See that light up there? Now there's three things in that light. One, there's light. Okay, Now, if you go up close to it, boys and girls, you'll find that there's heat there.
If you happen to put your two fingers in the socket, you'll find that there's power there too.
So I said, Sir, there's three things in that light, and I want to use this as an illustration. God the Father is the light.
But you know, he wanted to make himself known to men and women.
And the only way he could do it was to send his beloved son like the warmth, the warmth of the heart of God is reaching out. It's it's the the revelation of God's heart to you, Sir.
And it's all by the power of the Holy Spirit, who you cannot see him because he did not become Incarnate. He didn't take a body, but he's here working and he wants you to believe the message of the Gospel. Oh, he said, he says, I see what you mean.
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And I think it made an impression upon him. Go ahead and visit the classes. That's all right. You go ahead. Well, that's just an illustration, but the Lord Jesus.
Was the eternal Son he did not become.
Son when he entered the world, he was Son from a past eternity in the bosom of the Father. John's gospel he's rejected from the very first.
He's transfigured throughout the Gospel in a marvelous way.
He came to reveal the heart of God to this poor woman.
At the well of Sikar, He was there to speak to her, to win her Amazing Grace that the Lord Jesus would sit beside that sinful woman that perhaps you would not want to associate with. If she was there, you would want to walk on the other side of the street.
The Lord sat there and He was unfolding the grace of God to her. First of all, showing her that she was a Sinner. She knew that already, but the Lord impressed that goal. Call thy husband and come hit her. Not often the Lord told anyone to go, but.
He did in this case. Go call thy husband.
And come hit her, because the conscience had to be reached. And we trust if you're unsaved here tonight, my friend, that your conscience will be awakened to your need of the Lord Jesus. And this woman, she had a deep need.
And the Lord goes on, and he speaks to her.
About living water, whosoever shall drink of this water shall thirst again.
But whosoever shall drink of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst. Man is an unsatisfied creature. Solomon had everything that heart could wish. Wisdom, Women.
Every pleasure that you could think about, Solomon had it all.
Gold was like sand along the road in the days of Solomon and he had he tried everything. You young people say, oh, I don't don't have the money to to travel and try these various things, but I'd like to. But Solomon tried everything and.
You read in the book of Ecclesiastes he came to the conclusion all.
Is vanity vexation of spirit? Man cannot be satisfied with the things of this world as he gets older.
Hopelessness gets into his soul. If you visit among the elderly people without Christ, it's very disappointing. They have nothing to look forward to. And so the Lord here is going to reveal himself to that woman and you know the story.
God became a seeking God as soon as man sinned. That we read in this same gospel, the Lord worketh hitherto and I work.
And the Lord Jesus.
Was down here.
To umm.
Seek men and women who were in their sins. I think those blessed feet went through every town and village of Palestine. I have been there. Those dusty roads, there was no buses or vehicles. The Lord walked.
Miles reaching souls and dispensing the grace of God. Amazing Grace. How sweet the sound.
Couple of weeks ago.
Forgive me, I went to the Highland games.
Every year.
In Almond, which is about 40 miles from Ottawa.
A brother told me he said the Highland games, the Scottish games are going to be on.
00:45:03
Thank you, Philip, I will be there. Well, I went in the afternoon with lots of tracks. I got on the grounds and with the Lord's help I started to distribute all the tracks that I had among.
The regiments there they were in their traditional kilts, playing the bagpipes. Regiments from all over Ontario.
Grandstands were filled with people and there they were out on the grounds and I used all the tracks I had.
And.
I had a good reception. I have to go back to the car to get some more, but I'm going to wait until the end of the program.
And see what happens.
So I waited. The announcer was telling.
They all the different regiments in their kilts, their bands, they all walked out into the.
Middle of the grounds in front of the grandstand playing their black bagpipes. Quite impressive.
I said to myself, I'm waiting to hear something.
You know what I was waiting to hear?
I sat there and I was waiting to hear something.
I wonder if anyone knows? Well that's not the first Highland games that I've been to. I went to another one which is much larger in Knoxville, Ontario.
I was waiting to hear Amazing Grace.
I thought maybe they won't sing that now.
But sure enough, before they close the program, all the regiments in unison, they all joined in Amazing Grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wrecks like me. Well, dear friends, that's the grace that we're talking about tonight. And we want to time is going. We want you to know that that grace is reaching down to you tonight.
That God is offering you a full.
Salvation which cost him the sufferings of His beloved Son.
Look at the scene of Calvary. I want to take you there for a moment.
The blessed Son of God, He felt those nails that were put through his hands and his feet. He had a human body like you and me, apart from sin, but he felt the rejection. Reproach has broken my heart. I am full of heaviness. I look for some to take pity and there was none and for comforters, but I found none. He was alone really the Lord was.
More solitary than that woman were speaking about here.
No one seemed to understand him, but in love he went to the cross.
And I was. Our brother Bruce spoke this afternoon. I thought it was very good.
A sacrifice was put on the altar. The flier consumed the sacrifice. It was dead. Of course, when the Lord died, he was living. He was living. The fire of God burnt itself out in the person of the Lord Jesus for your sins, those filthy sins that you have committed.
They were all placed upon Christ when he died. Some people say, confess your sins and come to the Lord.
I'm sorry, I can't do that because I have too many. They're like the hairs of my head. But the Lord knew every one of them. He knows all your sins, boys and girls, men and women. Your whole life is known to Him. And those sins were taken as a heavy load of me, a real burden, and they were placed, every one of them.
On the head of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And there, the hours of darkness, oh, how deep were those sufferings. Sorrow, sadness, anguish, hours of darkness. For the first time in eternity, communion was broken between God and the Son. Now I know we often hear the Father didn't forsake the Son. Well, be careful there.
That scripture doesn't say that.
God did not address the Lord, did not address God as Father during the hours of darkness. But that's not the point. The point is God was dealing with sin, A God of holiness who hated sin.
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Who abhorred evil? Who cannot have it in his presence?
He was pouring out the unmitigated judgment of His holy nature upon His Son. He didn't pass over sin some people talk about.
God being.
Reconciled to us. That is a misconception, they think now.
We have to propitiate God in some way. Maybe if the Virgin would pray for us, or even if the Lord would pray for us, then God would be merciful to us. That's a misconception, brethren.
God didn't need anyone to bring forth the love of his heart. It was pouring out from a from a past eternity. It couldn't be fully revealed until the Lord came into the world as the proof of that love, but it was there in the heart of God. Right now, tonight, the heart of God is is pouring out to you. He wants you to be saved.
God did not need to be reconciled.
To us, because He was never against us, we needed the reconciliation. We were enemies by wicked works, every one of us enemies far from God in spiritual darkness.
God is reaching out with His love to you tonight. We are the ones that need reconciliation.
To God, not with God. And so, dear friends, tonight we're coming.
Near the close of our meeting, but we want you to know.
That God has a deep interest in your blessing tonight.
One thing, you leave this room without the Lord Jesus.
You leave the room more responsible than when you came in. The gospel has been presented.
Very feebly, I have to admit, but the gospel of the Lord Jesus.
And how he saved this poor woman, revealed what was in her heart, filled it to overflowing. Read the rest of the chapter. We won't have time. Her heart was won that day and she went into the town where she was well known by the men. Come see a man that told me all things that ever I did. Is not this the Christ?
Oh, she was a witness. What a testimony. It was natural. It was the outflow. And the Lord speaks to her of worship. Worship. Worship is the natural outflow of the heart to God.
With Thanksgiving that was, that was what the woman was showing her heart was one for Christ as your heart been one through the Lord, yet remember.
She went in to the city and.
Everyone, they heard the message from her. Many believed on the Lord, and they persuaded the Lord to stay a few more days so that they could hear more of that wonderful message of pardon and forgiveness. And he stayed a couple of days. More and many more believed. Go to the book of Acts, chapter 8. Philip reaped nearly the whole city that turned to Christ. The Lord had sown the good seed there.
But Philip had the privilege of reaping the harvest in Samaria. The Jews couldn't do anything with the Samaritan. They were a dead failure. But when the Lord met them?
He transformed that woman.
And.
And her life showed that the the gospel was the power of God unto salvation.
So, dear friends.
Tonight, I want to just remember that. I want you to remember that, however.
Far you have gone away from the Lord, you might be ashamed of your sins. I was still am when I think of them. But when I think of the grace of God that reached down to me when I was a boy and.
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The gospel before me. I remember a young boy that was in my class. His name was Eddie Smart.
He was from a very good family. His father was a doctor. He lived one of the.
Very good sections of the city, high class houses. I remember Eddie Smart well. We used to play hockey together and one night Eddie Smart phoned me on the telephone and asked me about this religion and about salvation. I was only about 14 or 15, but I explained the best I could.
To Eddie about how he could be saved.
And he seemed to appreciate it. Shortly after, he was cut off.
His wife was taken in an accident. He was from a very wealthy family.
He was one of my schoolmates and Eddie heard the gospel. I do hope that he is in the glory.
Dear boys and girls, tonight is the night for you to be saved. I can't stop without telling.
One more short story, if you'll just bear with me. It's at 8:00.
I had a hobby class in Ottawa for years.
Some of you boys and girls have gone to a hobby class. How many have you gone to a hobby class?
Well, I started off. I said to my mom, I don't think we're going to get anyone, but I'm going to canvas around here, Westboro. I'll go door to door and see if I can get any children to come. I got three girls to come. Well, you say that's a little disappointing. Those girls came faithfully, faithfully. But the problem was.
The class began to grow.
This was an area of Ottawa where there was a lot of rough, tough boys and girls, French Canadian background. I don't speak disparagingly of the French, I love them, but they were they were difficult to manage.
It was like sitting on a powder keg, but they started to come to the hobby class 50607075. I think it reached nearly 100.
And we had the hobby class and I remember 1 little girl there.
I can't forget her. She was maybe 10 or so. She was a lame girl. She would come into the hobby class with problems. She had to have crutches to get up and down the stairs. And her whole family came. It was a large French Canadian family. I can remember that little girl and the bright, the bright smile as she heard the gospel preached.
I said boys and girls.
You can talk during the painting, but when I'm giving you the message.
You don't say a word. Well, that was a very difficult thing to enforce. But they listen to the gospel. And year after year I met these children on the streets of Ottawa who have come and heard the gospel at the hobby classes, and they always show respect and appreciation for what was done. Let me finish my story. This dear little girl, she would come.
Hobble in with their crutches and do the painting and listen to the gospel message that I presented and go home. She was it was a large family. I think there was six or seven children one night in December.
Cold Ottawa gets very cold, 10 below 0 or more. I know the house very well that was there. Something happened in the evening, a pot of oil.
Spilt over on the oven and the whole house went up in an inferno. One of those children in that family got out. Everyone else went into eternity, including the little girl I'm talking about. I'm looking forward to seeing that dear little girl in the glory. Probably it'll be part of my crown. It'll be all the grace of God.
And her brothers and sisters, too.
01:00:00
It was a large family, but anyway.
There they were.
The whole, the whole family suddenly taken.
Into eternity. How many were ready I do not know.
But let me tell you now as we close.
The Lord Jesus is giving you one more opportunity.
Maybe the last opportunity.
To look to the cross of Calvary and I don't want to close the meeting without speaking.
About the precious blood of Christ.
Not only did the Lord cry, it is finished. There was something else necessary. The blood must be shed.
And that soldier was a spear in hatred he hurled that spear at the Lord's side. And as we had this today force with came their out blood and water, and that precious blood that slowed from the riven side of my Savior has power to cleanse you from every stain of sin to give you.
A passport. A flawless title to eternal glory.
Have you accepted Him? Are you trusting Him tonight? Have you put your faith in that precious blood?
It's affected the very memory of God.
And justice think.
That for all eternity, when we're with the Lord, not one word will pass His blessed lips.
That he remembers our sins. Just think of that. Not one word will pass his lips.
Their sins and iniquities I will remember no more.
Tomorrow morning. I'm glad that our brother Bruce spoke along that line. The Lord's Day morning meeting.
I have to be careful here. It's not really called a worship meeting. It is a meeting when we recall the sufferings of the Lord and the cost of our redemption. Now it should bring forth worship from our hearts.
But.
I just want you to remember that.
The Lord's arms are wide open, and in those hands are the marks of the nails which he will keep.
For all eternity and.
The side that was pierced we will see.
And tonight his arms are wide open as when he was here on earth.
Come unto me, all ye that labor under heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
God has no pleasure in the punishment of sin.
In Hebrews chapter 10 it says he delighted to do the will of God.
We better turn to that verse. Umm.
There's just a remark here that I want to make in closing because Hebrews chapter 10.
Verse 7 then said, I lo, I come to do in the volume of the book, it is written of Maine to do thy will, O God, but you notice here that.
The words I delight to do Thy will are not given here. Why is that? Because it's a quotation from Psalm 40. No doubt it comes from Psalm 40. Why is it that I delight to do Thy will is left out here?
I believe it's because God has no pleasure in the punishment of sin. It was terrible for the blessed Lord Jesus to be made sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. He's his soul deprecated contact with sin. They're in the Garden of Gethsemane. He sweat, as it were, great drops of blood. Was he fearful of the crucifixion?
No, that was terrible in itself. He was What was the fear that the Lord had? He was heard and that He feared. Hebrews chapter 5. What was that fear? What was the fear that is spoken of there in Hebrews chapter five? It was the fear of being made sin and the communion between God and the Son.
Being interrupted in those three hours, it was that sorrow that the Lord felt so deeply, the waves and billows of God's judgment. I'm sorry I've gone over time. Let's sing a short hymn and pray. Number. We're just seeing a short one here, number 12.
01:05:12
LEAV.
Will you ask me? And then why do you now are saying anything?
How do you tear me in your heart? Sorry. The joy of dreaming.
Never mind.
Pardon me for delaying the meeting beyond 8:00, but let's have a word of prayer.
Clean on the Inside
Children—Wally Dear
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Good morning.
Everyone.
So nice to see.
You dear folks.
But really, what's good about it?
I got these.
Healthy.
Suits, rags, this is not nice and you are all dressed up so nice.
Nice clean white shirt.
Nice blouse.
And you have your hair combed and you look so very nice.
I don't feel very comfortable in this room.
But here I am.
I'm in a mess.
What are we going to do?
I don't even feel like singing. I see you got your hem sheets you want to sing but.
I don't think I can see.
Because.
I'm in really bad shape.
Well, one thing we can do.
We can pray, so let's.
Just bow our heads, close our eyes and we're going to talk with the Lord.
Our God and our Father, we thank thee this morning that.
We have boys and girls sitting on these seats.
And they're here.
To listen to thy word, the Bible.
And we thank you that they have these hymn sheets in their hands and they're ready to sing.
And they look so very nice in their clean clothes.
But here I am.
In this dreadful filthy.
Despicable.
Suit.
And we just pray, Lord, that you would help us today to understand.
Something from thy word.
And then we might come to realize that even though we look very nice on the outside.
You look on the inside.
And you see into the hearts of these dear boys and girls and older ones too.
And you see.
Either a heart it's stained with sin or a heart that's been cleansed.
Washed in the precious blood of Christ. And so we do pray very specially for any who are still in their sins in this fall, here today.
That they might come to realize.
They're in trouble.
And we asked if they might come to realize.
Their true condition before thee are God as a helpless hopeless.
Hellbound Sinner, that they might come to the Lord Jesus and put their faith in Him and find joy and peace through believing.
So we ask for thy help here today and wherever the message of the Gospel is proclaimed throughout this world.
We know that desire is that all boys and girls, men and women, should be saved, so we thank you for that love.
And we help seek help to make it known. Today we ask this, and I worthy precious name, Lord Jesus, Amen.
What are we going to do? I don't feel like singing.
Anybody want to come up and give me a nice big hug?
Anybody.
No volunteers.
You want to come and hug me?
OK.
You can come right up here and give me a hug.
What's that?
Why am I dirty? I thought you were going to give me a hug.
You don't want to give me a hug because I'm dirty, right?
Well, I don't blame you.
00:05:04
Only a flight.
OK, she says. Only if.
Anybody's clean. She gives out hugs.
All right.
So you probably hugged the little girl next to you, wouldn't you?
He looks nice and clean.
Or maybe the girl on your right.
Well.
Why are we here today, boys and girls, in this conference?
We've been learning about the importance of being born again.
And.
To be born again is to get a brand new life that God gives because we're born into this world with a bad.
Nature. We call it a bad nature. You know, it was David that said I was shaping in iniquity. He's talking about when he was still inside of his mother.
And in sin did my mother conceive me.
You know what?
This nature that we're born with, it's bad.
It's not clean. It's like this suit that I have here today.
And many of you, boys and girls.
And I would like to thank all of you. You're clean on the outside, your faces are nice and.
Bright and shiny. Your clothes are clean, your shoes are shined. Everything looks so nice on the outside.
But you know what the Bible says it says?
That man and this is mankind. Women are included, men and women.
They look on the outward appearance, and that's boys and girls too.
They worked on the outward appearance to see what people look like on the outside.
God looks on the heart.
And so God looks down through this ceiling, right down.
Inside of you, into your heart.
And even though you may look very nice on the outside, how do you look on the inside?
Do you look like this on the inside?
Now, if you've never asked the Lord Jesus to be your savior, if you have never come to Jesus.
Your heart is stained with sin.
And when God looks down, he's looking at a mess inside of you. I don't know if you ever thought about this, but this is so important to think about.
Some don't think they're all that bad.
But even the Queen of England.
Queen Elizabeth.
And she just recently died.
Somebody wrote to her. I don't know if it was a little boy or girl, but they wanted to know if the queen was perfect.
Because they thought so very much of the Queen of England and she was very highly respected, the Queen. But you know, the Queen wrote back and she was very honest.
And she said, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not perfect.
I am not perfect, I've made mistakes.
I've done things that are wrong.
And I believe she went on to say that there was only one who was perfect.
And that's Jesus.
Jesus. So I hope you are willing to admit that you're not perfect.
Is there anybody here of you boys and girls that are perfect?
Anybody what?
00:10:00
You're perfect. Well, isn't that interesting?
OK, you're perfect, but you still wouldn't hug me, would you?
Should I ask your mom if you're perfect?
What?
Yeah.
You know, I'm sorry I'm not acquainted with you boys and girls better than I am. I really wish I knew your names and your parents and so on.
Did I hear something back there?
Oh, OK.
No. Who said that? Michael Conrad.
I don't know if I've ever doubted what Michael Conrad has said.
But anyway.
I'm not going to ask you this question.
And expect you to answer.
But if?
I was to ask.
How many here told a lie?
How many have told a lie?
It's sort of hard to.
Put up your hand and to admit that you told a lie.
Well, I will ask you this question. I want an answer on this one. How many lies does it take to make a person a liar?
What do you think?
You got it right.
11 lie.
I wonder if anybody here has ever stole anything?
It's hard to admit. That's why I'm not asking to prop your hand.
I don't want to expose everybody here.
But I think if we were honest, we'd have to admit we've all taken something.
When we shouldn't have taken it. Maybe it was a cookie?
Or maybe it was a pencil I took from the desk over there. It wasn't my desk and I took the pencil.
Maybe I took a paper clip off the teacher's desk.
And that's on my paper clip. That's not my pencil, but I took it, so I I stole it.
How many?
Times.
Does a person have to steal to be a thief? What do you say?
One time, that's all. You mean if I steal something, I'm a thief, all right?
Well now boys and girls, stop and think about this.
If you told one lie, you're a liar, and if you stole one item, you're a thief, and now you're a lying thief.
Does it make you feel good?
You say what?
I got all these nice clothes on and I'm all shined up and base is clean and.
But what about inside? What about your heart? This is what God looks at.
And you know, the Bible says that we are all.
As an unclean thing.
Now I'm going to take these gloves off because I'm going to.
Open up my Bible here.
I don't want to get my Bible dirty.
But this is what it says in the Bible.
And if you have a Bible, you can look this up.
It's easy to find in the book of Psalms.
Psalms is the longest book in the Bible, so you can find it really easy. Just open up your Bible.
Almost to the middle there and you'll be in the Psalms. OK, now see what it says here.
Psalm 14.
Psalm 14.
The Lord in verse 214 Two the Lord looked down.
From heaven upon the children of men.
And so.
The Lord is looking down.
This morning he's looking down from heaven.
And he's looking at you.
You and you, because you are children of men.
00:15:02
And he's looking at you. The Lord is looking at you right now, just like I'm looking at you.
But he sees more than I do, and he's looking at you boys over here, you girls, He's looking. It says the Lord looked down from heaven.
On the children of men, which is who you are, to see if there were any that did understand and seek God.
And what did he find? What did he see?
And this is the verse that I want to emphasize.
They are all.
Go on aside.
They are all together become filthy.
There is none that doeth good.
Know not one.
I read it in Mr. Darby's translation and the way he put it was.
No, not even one.
Now if we return order job.
Which we referenced this conference. Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? What's the answer? No one.
You see this?
Suit and I've done a lot of jobs in this suit, which is obvious.
And I made a mess.
And do you think I can do something about this suit?
Do you think I can make this suit nice and clean?
And white.
OK, maybe I can put it in the washer.
And.
What's going to happen?
Do you think that if I put this suit into the washing machine and I turn on a washer and I put it on three hours and I put a lot of soap in there?
And.
The washing machines going around like this.
The dryer? Well wait, we got to get this clean first.
Washer, dryer and put it on. I wish it was that simple.
But if I sit that washer for several hours.
And I put a lot of soap in there.
And I turn it on and I come back say 3 hours later.
You think this suit is going to be nice and white and clean?
You think it will be?
No, Evelyn, you got a good answer. I don't think there's any possible way.
To make this suit nice and clean and white.
It's not going to happen. I need another suit.
I need to do away with this, forget about this suit.
You know.
What the Lord has said.
Even though you wash yourself with neither.
Boys and girls, we're talking about neither. Neither is a very strong cleaning agent. I suppose maybe it's like Comet or Ajax, or it's some kind of a really good cleaner.
But the Lord says, even though you wash yourself with neither, and you take much soap, your iniquity, your sin is still marked before me. He still sees your sin.
Now I'm going to turn over.
To Isaiah.
What does it say here in Isaiah?
Isaiah Chapter.
64.
Isaiah 64 in verse 6.
Isaiah 64 and verse six. I see some here are looking up the.
Scripture.
00:20:01
Would somebody like to read that for me? Did you find it OK? Has anybody found it here?
By the way, I got some treats in that bag too for.
Everybody.
But maybe I'll give an extra treat to somebody that can.
Read the portion. Would anybody be able to find that and read that for me?
Isaiah 64 and verse 6.
OK, would you read it? OK, I'm going to just hold this.
Six, OK.
And we are all become as.
An unclean thing and all our righteousness are as filthy rags. And we all fade as a leaf. And our iniquities like the wind have have carried us away. Thank you very much. That's good. It tells us here we are all.
It's an unclean thing.
And even the good things that we do to try to improve this old wretched nature that we have.
It doesn't work. It doesn't work. It's like somebody standing.
At the door of an airplane, it's 10,000 feet in the air.
The door is open.
And they say, well.
I'm going down to the ground. I'm going to take a jump.
And somebody said, well, here you need a parachute. Oh, no, no, no, I'm OK. I don't need a parachute. I just slap my arms in my hands.
And so he jumps out, and he's flapping his arms and his hands as hard as he can. Is it going to help him out?
He's going to hit the ground, he's going to die. But how many there are that think?
Yet through their own effort, they can obtain. Salvation doesn't work. We're all as an unclean thing, and our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.
Well, I got some look at these here.
You like this?
Would you like me to wash your face?
No, of course not. What about over here? You need a face wash.
Terrible, unclean, filthy. Just like this suit. That's more rags back here, I think. Whoa, that's even worse.
That's a terrible, terrible wreck. Or another one back here.
I do.
There it is.
That's bad news.
You think if I put those in the washing machine and get them clean?
Well, you're really optimistic.
I don't think it's going to work.
So here we are.
Unclean. We need help outside of ourselves.
We need to look to God.
God is able to give us a brand new life. We call it being born again and the life that He gives is Christ.
His own dear Son, Christ becomes our life.
And it's wonderful. And so this is the good news that we have to tell boys and girls and older ones that even though we're so bad, God has made a plan whereby you and I, we can be saved and we can receive a new life and we can become new creatures in Christ. And it's all by way of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
You know, always sing a song.
About Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Where was it that Jesus shed his blood? It was at the cross.
Well.
We need to move along because I've got something to show you in this bag.
And this tag.
As something.
00:25:01
That's very nice.
Very nice.
Whoa, isn't it nice?
This is such a nice suit.
I just love it.
I can't even see a spot.
You see any spots in that suit?
Now if you can't see a spot, I don't think there's any spot on this suit.
Look at that. That's a nice suit.
That's so nice.
It's white.
And it's clean.
I wonder if I could put this suit on.
You think I could put this suit on? I would really like to do this.
Because I don't like this filthy old.
Suit that I have on.
All right.
Make sure.
I know this isn't white, this little microphone, but that's OK. You want to be able to hear.
Oh, isn't that nice?
I love it. Oh.
I don't like what I see down there.
That's not nice.
I got to do something about that.
Boys and girls.
What happens is.
When we accept the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior.
God.
Does something for you and for me. And what he does is to forgive our sins, save our souls, cleanse our hearts and make us whole. This is what God wants to do for you today and.
I'm going to you mind if I sit down next to you here.
I'm gonna, I'm not gonna put these on standing up because somebody will be picking me up off the floor.
Oh, I like that.
Whoa, is that nice?
That was quite a change in appearance.
Now I'm going to read a verse.
I gotta watch my time.
Try not to go over now. We're going to back up in Isaiah.
And we go back to chapter 61 of Isaiah, and I wonder if somebody be willing to read this verse for you.
Who has the verse?
Who would like to read it? Would you like to read it? OK.
So now this is Isaiah.
Chapter.
61.
Ten Sorry 10.
Go ahead you, you just looked at the verse. I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall be glorified in my God, for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation. He has covered me with the robe of righteousness.
As a bridegroom decks himself with ornament, and as a bride adorns herself with jewels.
Thank you. That was very well done. And so here we find.
A change, and now we find somebody that's rejoicing.
They're so happy.
Why?
Because.
The Lord. See, the Lord does all the work. What does he do?
The Lord.
Has made me joyful.
00:30:02
My God has made me joyful because he has clothed me with the garments of salvation. He has covered me with the robe of righteousness. And it reminds me of the prodigal son. You recall when he came back from that far country, He had been feeding the pigs, and I suppose maybe his clothes smelled like pigs because that was his job.
But when he was, he had a great way off. His father saw him.
And the father runs to him, and he throws his arms around him, and he just covers them with kisses.
Even though he was smelly and dirty, I would suppose he was willing to give that boy a hug. You wouldn't give me a hug, would you?
But the father gives that boy a hug.
And he brings him to the house, but before you get to the house, he says, bring forth the best robe and put it on him, and put shoes on his feet.
And put a ring on his hand because the father wants that boy to feel comfortable.
In the house. And so the boy, he just stands there and the Father does everything for him. That's a picture of what God does for you and for me. We're talking about grace. We don't deserve any favors. We don't deserve any kindness, but God has smothered us with kindness we've been talking about in this conference, and it's just so uplifting. Come to a conference like this and to enjoy the things.
That are not seen.
As our brother Bruce often refers to, these are things that are eternal, and these are eternal riches that we have in Christ. Well, the Father and the Son, they go into the house and what happens? They throw a party.
Bring forth the best the calf. Kill the calf. Let us eat, drink. Let's be merry for now, my son.
He was lost, but now he's found he was dead, but he's alive. And it said they began to be married. It was a happy time.
Don't tell us that they ever stopped being married.
And this is making me really happy.
Should be jumping up and down for joy.
Now you know.
Each and everyone of us that have come to Christ and found in him salvation.
We find it him satisfaction and he ought to make us to rejoice. He know the apostle Paul he said rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice. Why because we are clothed with the garments of salvation covered with the robe of righteousness. It's God's providing and.
All we need to do is accept what God has to offer.
It's a free gift.
Well, I feel like seeing we've got a little time.
You know in Isaiah 53 it says there.
Well, we like see if we've gone astray, we've turned everyone to his own way. And that's a very sad statement. That's bad news. We've all gone our own way. We all are in trouble. But then it goes on to say the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of this law. Well, that makes a big difference. We believe that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.
He was buried, but he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.
And these are the scriptures, the holy Scriptures that we have in our hand today.
How wonderful.
How wonderful.
So.
If there's somebody in your seat here today.
And you're still in your sins, and God looks down and he sees you in a suit.
Like that old filthy dirty suit that I had on just in your seat.
Call upon the Lord, you'll save your soul. Right there on your seat. You sang a song, I believe it was last night I think It's not a huge seat.
TRUST in Him while you now.
Are seen.
Do it while you're sitting.
It's so easy, you know, It says whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. You can be saved today and become a new creature in Christ and you've got a new life. They cannot sin. Even though we still got the old nature, God gives us the power to keep it in the place of death, and that's the power of the Holy Spirit.
00:35:07
Well, I got to stop talking.
Because I want to sing. OK anybody have a number here we can sing?
Yes.
Six. All right.
All right, let's do #6.
Come to the Savior.
Joyful will come into me when I'm sails. Our hearts are going to create.
And we shall die.
OK. Hey, we'll just sing first, first in the course on that. Anybody else have a number? Yes.
9.
OK #9.
Let's sing the 1St.
Verse and course into a temporary.
Nobody ever has told me before.
What?
Isaiah 53. We get the bad news about ourselves, we get the good news that the Lord Jesus took the punishment for our sins, and I believe in the next chapter, Isaiah 54.
The first word is.
Sin Singh. Anybody else have a number? Got time for maybe one more here.
Five. Well, I'm so glad you gave out to him. I was thinking about it #5 now I noticed they left off a verse.
And the verse that they left off kind of goes along with what we're talking about in shining robes.
Of spotless white.
Each one will be arrayed.
How many know that?
Do you know that one? So can you help us? Anybody that knows it? Let's sing the 1St, 1St and then we're going to sing about in shining robes of spotless white. Each one will be arrayed around the throne of God.
In the athletes.
Rope.
90 year old.
Spotless swimming one with rain by the 8th in heaven. And I've seen the Viking joy to never play singing glory glory.
Is the problem.
High.
Boys and girls, I'm sorry.
We ran out of time and I think there were probably some here that really wanted to see that verse.
You learn to verse.
Is there anybody that's really disappointed because they didn't have an opportunity to say their memory verse? Anybody really disappointed?
Well, I don't see any hands.
OK.
OK.
All right, we don't want to.
Disappoint you?
OK. So would you like to say it?
If you don't mind, I'm going to.
00:40:00
Yeah, she just doesn't.
OK.
Oh yeah, light your light. Shine onto men that they.
Might glorify.
Is that right? Yeah.
Verify your father. Oh yeah, and go over your fire, Father in heaven.
Matthew. Oh yeah, Matthew.
Five, 16516, OK.
Anybody else?
OK, let's pray.
Gathered to the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ
Address—Tim Ruga
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Could we begin the meeting this afternoon by just singing 2 verses from 231?
231 just versus 2:00 and 3:00.
With Fallowfield.
Let's ask for the Lord's help.
God and our Father, we thank Thee again for another opportunity to open Thy word and to consider it together. And we pray that Thou would bless his time. We pray that Thou would bless the words spoken. And above all, we pray that the Lord Jesus would be glorified and thy people would be blessed and encouraged. And so we ask for Thy help in the name of of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Let's turn first of all, to Matthew chapter 18.
And verse 20.
I want to take up just a certain line of things with what we have here, but we'll start by reading this verse.
For where two or three are gathered together.
And or unto my name, there am I in the midst of them.
Now maybe to introduce what I want to talk about.
I'll just recount something that happened a number of years ago.
To me a brother and the Lord came to me and he said.
Tell me, said.
Do you believe that the Lord is with you and no one else?
That's a good question.
And I'm going to answer today what I told him then.
That is that I don't like to answer a question like that because I don't think it's the right question.
I believe the right question is, does the Word of God teach that the Spirit of God gathers believers together to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ?
And if the answer to that question is yes, then it just leaves a few other questions, and that is.
The first one might be if it's yes and where is that place?
And the next one might be then am I in that place where the Spirit of God?
Is gathering believers together to the name of the Lord Jesus.
And so I want to take up things along that line and probably end up really with what was a little bit behind the question that this person asked and.
That is, that sometimes I'm afraid that we act as if we are the only ones.
00:05:06
And insofar as we do that, that is to our approach. But the main exercise I have in this meeting is to take up this truth of what the Word of God says, that the Spirit of God gathers to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's what we have here in this verse. It says where two or three are gathered together in my name there.
Am I in the midst of them? And just to try to explain a little bit about this, I'm I'm not going to go through.
All the positive teaching of this truth, I tried with the Lord's health to take that up at Carrollton, and there's a number of of good, excellent pamphlets and meetings on that subject. You can go listen to that. But we do find this truth presented extensively in the New Testament, and it really is what we have here.
Two or three gathered together. It's not any two or three what is presented in this verse.
Is that?
It's the assembly that is spoken of here, and we get that. If you read through all these verses in context, you see that in.
In verse 16, it's a matter of personal trespass, and there's two or three that are taken to go and to speak to the person who's done the wrong, and those two or three are not the two or three gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus.
That is spoken of in the 20th verse because it goes on in verse 17 and says if he neglects to hear of them, that is those two or three Christians, then he says tell it to the church, the assembly.
And so it's plainly talking about the assembly, because it goes on to say, if he does, he doesn't hear the assembly. Then he says, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican. And then it goes on to talk about the assembly binding and the assembly losing. And the authority given for that is because.
Where two or three are gathered together unto my name, there am I.
In the midst of them. And so it's plainly here talking about the assembly of believers gathered together to the name of the Lord Jesus. And this thought of what we have here is brought out all through the New Testament. First of all, it says.
Whither gathered together? It doesn't say where they get together. There's an act of gathering force implied here, and we know.
That that's true because the Word of God teaches us that we are not left here to get along the best we can just to gather together. But there is a divine person on earth who is doing that gathering and that is the Spirit of God. That truth is brought out. I'll just refer to it briefly in John chapter 14 where the Lord Jesus when he was going away.
Referred to the fact that there was another one coming and he says is another comforter another.
Pericles one who will take care of all your affairs, just like when the Lord Jesus was here. They didn't decide where they were going to get together and expect to have his presence. They went to him. He was the gathering center. Now he was going to go away and he was still going to be the gathering center, but he was going to be a gathering agent and he introduces that in John chapter 14 and says.
Another.
Comforter, he was the one, he was the Paraclete those. He was the one who governed their affairs. But now and going away, there would be another one who would come in and do that. And it's very important to see that. And I'm not going to say more about that here. We've taken it up before.
The next part is gathered together. You say, well, they're gathered. That should be enough to say that they're together, but it puts it in the double form here to emphasize that.
It's oneness. The Spirit of God is not gathering them in some way that isn't together. And the thought of oneness for believers today is brought out right through the New Testament as well, beginning with the Lord. I'll just refer to one example, John chapter 10. The Lord is speaking there in that chapter about the fold of Israel.
And he goes on to say, other sheep I have which are not of this fold.
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Them also I must bring, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. Not going to be many flocks and many shepherds, but only one. And the Lord emphasized that in other ways as well.
You turn over to the epistles, you get this again, over and over again. Ephesians chapter 4, verse four. There is one body, one of many places where it says that.
But there's only one.
So we have this emphasize that we are not left here as believers to get together in any way we want, but we're formed into one body by the Spirit of God, and it's also that same Spirit of God that takes us and gathers us together to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The loaf that we had on the table this morning expressed that same thought. We being many, are one loaf, one body, and so it expresses this truth that there is only one.
Not many different bodies.
And in fact.
We're called to keep this practically. These things are true and there's nothing we can do about the truth of them. Thank God there is only one body. Christ only has one body, but that's not good enough. We are called to act practically on that truth that there is one body and let's just turn over to Ephesians chapter four. We already referred to it, but let's just look at that again often mentioned but.
It's just good to look at some of these key points again.
Ephesians 4 and we.
We can read from verse one.
I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that you walk worthy of the vocation we're with. You are called with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavouring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.
Here, it's spoken of as a responsibility that we have, that we are, every single one of us, to endeavor to keep that unity of the Spirit. Why? Because.
There is one body and one spirit. There aren't many bodies to which we can go. The Lord only has one body and there aren't many spirits gathering us to different places. There's only one spirit and you find three times over in John chapters 13. I'm sorry, 1415 and 16.
That he is called specifically the Spirit of Truth.
And the spirit of truth does not go against the Word of God.
Here it speaks about it as the unity of the Spirit. The Spirit is this Holy Spirit of God, and as God we're told in James chapter one, he cannot deny himself.
And So what he says in the word is what he does in practice and what we're called to do in practice, and that is that there is a unity to keep.
The fact is we haven't done a good job at this and the troubles with it came in very early and we can just look at that quickly in First Corinthians chapter one.
And there we see troubles that came in contentions that were there.
And verse 11 it says, It hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, of them which are the House of Chloe, that there are contentions among you.
Now this I say that everyone of you saith, I am of Paul, and I have Apollos, and I have Cephas and I have Christ.
And I of Luther, and I of this name, and I of that denomination, it went on and on and on.
He says, is Christ divided?
Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? No, it's not possible. Christ is not divided.
There's no one who could take that place of him. There's no other name you could put there.
He's the only divine gathering center.
And so that's the argument. It's true. There's one body. Nothing can be done to come in and change that, that wonderful fact that there is one body. But we can do plenty to mar the outward testimony of it. We can do plenty to spoil the unity of the spirit with regard to it. And it came in early and it's still here today. And the reason why I had this truth in my heart is because there's so many growing up.
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And I'm afraid we don't know it well.
And so we do, with the Lord's help, try to present it from time to time. And like I said, what's really on my heart today is to try to take up some of the objections to it. It's what we call apologetics. It doesn't mean that you're apologizing for something. It means really that you're contending for the faith as you have in the book of Jude.
To contend for the faith which is once delivered unto the Saints.
And that's what we're doing, is trying to go back to the scriptures and say this is what is really taught.
And here it is, and to present it so that those who haven't heard it yet or those who are questioning it can go back to the Word of God and take it out and say is it here or not?
Don't look at me, don't look at other brethren and try to say, well, you're not a good example, Shame on us. No doubt that's true. But you individually here in this room.
Right down to the youngest who's following what I'm saying. Have a responsibility to go back to the Word of God and see what is written there and to see if these things are not written to you and are not for you to follow.
Today. And so we had in Matthew 18 and verse 20, where two or three are gathered together unto my name.
There am I in the midst of them. The Lord Jesus Christ is that one who is the gathering center, and the Spirit of God is the one who gathers believers together to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's the truth that I'm going to now just speak a few words about. As to defending some of the things against it, I'm not going to go further to try to explain it. I hope you can take it up further on your own.
My first thought here this afternoon is to go back to the Old Testament and look there because, and this is often been done, I'm not original by any means with this, but what you have is an example of this truth there that is very helpful, especially when it comes to the objections. Not that it's the same thing, it isn't.
In the Old Testament you had Israel. They were the people of God, and Israel is not the church, and we cannot confuse or confound those things.
But in that day God had a divine gathering center, and it was a physical place on earth. We don't have that today. This is very, very clear from John chapter 4. The Lord is speaking to a Samaritan woman, and He tells her, I say to you that neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem is a place where men ought to worship. But God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship.
In spirit and truth. And so a whole new thing has been brought in today where it's not a physical place on earth, but instead it's a person that the Spirit of God gathers together to. And I'm going to go just a little bit further.
In my definition, because based on what I've already said here this afternoon.
Necessarily, if the Spirit of God is gathering together to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and there is a practical fellowship to that expression that there is one body, there are.
There are not more than one.
And that's where the trouble comes in. And that's why I think it is helpful to go back and look and see what we have in the Old Testament, what's presented there. Let's go to Deuteronomy chapter 12.
Deuteronomy chapter 12 we have.
And the Lord giving instructions about what would happen when the children of Israel came into the land.
And.
He gives instructions in this particular chapter as to the offerings that they would bring to the Lord.
And I just want you to see what he said.
The beginning verses here the first three speaks about the idolatry that was in the land.
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And how that idolatry was to be put away. And again, I want to be clear here. I'm not going to in any way imply that those who are together to worship the Lord in the place, in a place where the Spirit of God hasn't gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus or in idolatry. I'm not saying that at all. That's not what this is talking about. This is talking about.
Heathen worship that was there before the people of God came to the place.
This would be similar to what happened when Christians were first saved and gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus. There were no other fellowships at all in those days. They were saved out of idolatry and brought into that wonderful privilege of being gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus. And that would be similar to what we have here. But I want you to notice the language that is used. He says that.
You're not going to go after their gods or anything like that. First four, he says. You not, shall not do so unto the Lord.
You're a God. Then he gives the positive instruction.
He says, but verse 5 Unto the place which the Lord your God shall choose out of all your tribes, to put his name there.
Even unto his habitation shall you seek, and thither shall you come. See speaks here of the place that he would choose, a place where he was going to put his name.
Very specific you go on a little further. Verse 11 Says, Then there shall be a place which the Lord your God shall choose to cause His name to dwell there. Thither shall you bring all that I command you, your burnt offerings, and your sacrifices.
And so on. Verse 14. But in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose.
And one of thy tribes there shalt thou offer thy burnt offerings, and there shall I do, thou shalt do all that I command thee. Verse 18. Thou must not eat them before the Lord thy God in the place, or thou must eat them before the Lord thy God, in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose, and so on.
Verse 21. If the place which the Lord thy God hath chosen to put his name there be too far from thee, and so on. Verse 26.
Only thy holy things which thou hast, and thy vows shall thou take and go unto the place.
Which the Lord thy God shall choose, and thou shalt offer thy burnt offerings.
The flesh and the blood upon the altar, and so on.
Over and over again six times Here we have this repeated the place and if we go on in Deuteronomy, we'll find this continued. You go on in chapter 14, we've got the ties brought out three times over. He uses the same language in the place which thy Lord, where the Lord thy God shall choose to put his name there.
Chapter.
16 with the Passover, where they were to eat, the Passover was to be in the place where the Lord thy God shall choose three times over. It says it there.
Chapter 17. When it came to judgment, very similar to what we had in Matthew 18. The authority of the Lord to act.
That judgments brought out in chapter 17 there two times over. It's the same language in the place where the Lord thy God shall choose.
You know what was left out there?
Any thought of them choosing they had nothing to do with it.
And we don't today either. You simply don't find that in the New Testament. The choice is the Lord's. The Spirit of God is the guide. He's the one who gathers to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ today. The principle that we have laid out here in the Old Testament for different people is the same principle that we have today. And it's important to see this because when you come to the failure.
And the objections to this truth?
The objections are the same today because the failure is very similar.
We go on. We find out where that place is. Second Chronicles Chapter 6. Just turn there.
Second Chronicles.
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Six verse five. Since today I brought forth my people out of the land of Egypt, I chose no city among all the tribes of Israel to build and house in that my name might be there. Neither chose I any man to be a ruler over my people Israel, but I have chosen Jerusalem that my name might be there, and I have chosen David to be over my people Israel.
Let's go over to Chapter 7.
Verse 16.
1St for now have I chosen.
And sanctified this house, that my name may be there forever.
And mine eyes in my heart shall be there perpetually.
Why did God choose this? I don't know, but He did. It was His sovereign choice and I just like the truth that we had before us yesterday. I don't have to understand all the details.
Or all the reasons that we're in the heart or mind of God. But what I am responsible to understand is that these things are important to Him because He put them in His Word. And so we have it laid out here over and over again. He said it shall not be any place.
But the place that I have chosen. And now finally we get to that point where his people were in the land.
And he says here is the place, it's going to be Jerusalem, and my servant David is going to be the one that I have chosen there in that place, and it's going to be this house. And he says here that it's going to be that place where my eyes and my heart shall be perpetually.
The truth that we're talking about is important because it's important to God.
It's important to Him and that's sufficient reason for us. Do I see it in the Word of God? Do you see it in the Word of God? Then that's sufficient reason to act on it. Many say, is it really that important? The answer is yes, it is if it was there one time.
It would be important, but here we have a truth that is given to us over and over again, that God has a divine center and it's important to Him. The Old Testament was different. Yes, it was important to Him. And if you go on, you find with this that there's failure that comes in, and it was still important. Let's look at that. Let's go over to 1St Kings.
Because the vision comes in after this, and not long after this either.
What we just read was in the days of Solomon.
First Kings, chapter 12.
We get to Solomon's son.
First, Kings 12, we have the end of what happened. I'll just refer to it briefly.
Solomon's son Rehoboam.
Did not act wisely as a king, and he treated many of God's people harshly. And as a result, there was another man who rose off whose name was Jeroboam, and he led the majority of God's people astray. And division came in. And I just want to read about the end of that. And it says here.
What Jeroboam, this one who is leading in division, said in verse 26. It says Jeroboam said in his heart, Now shall the Kingdom return to the House of David.
If this people go up to sacrifice in the House of the Lord at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again to their Lord.
Even unto Rehoboam the king of Judah. And they shall kill me, and go again to Rehoboam king of Judah.
He had no thought of the Lord who actually had put his name there.
Verse 28 Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem.
Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And he set the one in Bethel, and the other put He and Dan. And this thing became a sin, for the people went to worship before the One, even unto Dan.
Now again I want to be clear.
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Something happened here, and that was gross idolatry.
But something else happened here, and that was.
The majority of God's people were led away from God's divine center into division.
Not all of what we have here applies to the situation today.
I don't in any way mean to say or imply. In fact, I reject that this is saying that those who are not gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus are in idolatry.
But the fact of the matter is that when these tribes went away and this.
And this King Rehoboam successfully LED them away from the divine center and away from the Lord's presence that was there and into a place that was wrong.
And were they still the people of God? They were. They were the children of Israel, with the blessings of the promises still theirs. They were.
They were as much the people of God as Judah and Benjamin were.
But they didn't have God's divine center anymore. And that's where the analogy is for us today.
There is such a thing as going away from the divine center. We didn't continue on to read that in First Corinthians. We just read chapter one there where it spoke about the fact that there was all these contentions there, and these contentions were getting worse and worse until they were following leaders and they were getting to the place where there was schism there in that assembly.
Fractions were some were coming here and calling themselves by one name and others going there.
And calling themselves by another name, but they were still together.
If you were to continue on in First Corinthians until you get to Chapter 11, you find the Spirit of God speaks about a time that had not yet come but would come. And he says there there must needs be divisions among you that the approved made me made manifest. There was going to come a time when it was going to go beyond that and there were going to be some there in that place that were approved and others that weren't.
It was going to be a full blown division to where they were no longer together in any sense.
And that's where things very quickly got into Christendom.
It's followed down from those days all the way till today where things are fractured all over the place and the majority of Christians are not gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, just like the majority of God's people.
We're not at the divine center in what we're reading about here.
Say, how could you make a claim for Judah and Benjamin? Wasn't there plenty of fault in that side? Didn't Rehoboam go and act unwisely? And can you say that he followed the Lord as he went on from that time in his life? No, you can't say that. It was terrible failure there. He said, well, there's failure on both sides. It's true. Let's look at that. And I just especially want to notice, first of all, what it says about Jeroboam. First Kings chapter 15.
He says in verse 30.
And because of the sins of Jeroboam, which he sinned and which He made Israel sin by His provocation, wherewith He provoked the Lord God of Israel to anger. I do not believe this is just because of those calves that He set up, not just because of the idolatry that He introduced. This is because just as much, or perhaps more seriously, that He led the majority of God's people away from the divine center.
They were no longer going there to Jerusalem. And so ever after, whenever there was a bad king in Israel, he's compared to this man according to the sin of Jeroboam, by which he made Israel to sin, terrible thing that he did to divide God's people.
And there's no way that we can say because of failure that that's OK God never looked at it as being OK, and he always called out failure in that place of division.
By that original point of departure and the one who caused it. But what about Ribo? People say, well look at him, he was Number Jam and that's true. Second Chronicles, chapter 12.
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And we'll just read verse 14 speaking about Rehoboam.
He did evil because he prepared not his heart to seek the Lord.
So he wasn't good either.
But as we're going to see going on, it does no good to say, well, they're wrong here, they're wrong there, therefore everybody's wrong. And there's no longer a divine center. God didn't count it. So then, and he doesn't count it. So today he has a center, He has a place, and we're responsible for it. And they were then too.
And so if you just go back up to verse 13, I want you to notice the language of the Spirit of God.
Here says so. King Rehoboam strengthened himself in Jerusalem and reigned. For Rehoboam was one and 40 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 17 years in Jerusalem.
What city was that? The former place of God's choosing.
No, the city which the Lord had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel.
To put his name there.
And there was a statement a brother made many years ago. I found it helpful and I want to repeat it today, he said. With regard to this, he said I'd like to separate Jerusalem from the people in Jerusalem.
I found that helpful.
God had chosen a place. It was His choice. Should that have had an effect on this King Rio bomb or the people who live there? Absolutely it should. Should they have been a reflection of the fact that the Lord was there in that place? Yes, they would. Should have been, and it was to their shame that they weren't. But it didn't change anything about this truth. You know, if you go on from this.
You find.
That.
Many years after this.
The Lord still valued this place and faith still valued it. In fact, let's go on just for time. Let's go on to Second Chronicles chapter 30, just a few the end of this book.
From this first king in the division of Rehoboam, let's go to one of the later ones.
One of the last ones when there was still two parts of the children of Israel before the 10 tribes were carried away. And this is Hezekiah chapter 30. We have what Hezekiah did, and verse one it says Hezekiah sent to all Israel and Judah, and wrote letters also to Ephraim and Manasseh that they should come to the House of the Lord at Jerusalem to keep the Passover.
Unto the Lord God of Israel, you remember we we saw that they were to bring their offerings and we didn't read it but in I think it was chapter 16 of Deuteronomy.
The Passover three times over was to be eaten in that place very clearly and definitely laid out by the word of the Lord.
And so we have verse 5. And so they established a decree to make.
Proclamation throughout all Israel.
From Beersheba even to Dan, that they should come to keep the Passover unto the Lord God of Israel at Jerusalem, for they had not done it of so of a long time, in such short as it was written.
It was still written there. They hadn't done it. That was their fault, not God's. Verse 10 So the post pass from the city, from city to city, through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, even to Zebulun. But they laughed them to scorn and mock them. Nevertheless, divers are some of Asher and Manasseh and of Zebulun humbled themselves and came.
To Jerusalem, verse 26.
And says so there was great joy in Jerusalem for since the time of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel, there was not a life in Jerusalem goes all the way back to the beginning when God had first said this is the place, this is the king now, this is the house. And all that time since those days they hadn't done it.
Now they did it by faith, and the Word of God shows that God sanctioned what happened there that day.
And it wasn't just at this period, it wasn't long after that even more failure came in and those people got carried away captive into Babylon. And then after seven years they came back again. And I just want to notice what it says in the prayer of Nehemiah, if we go to Nehemiah chapter one.
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Just a few pages over.
And.
We have in verse.
Nine if you turn this is Nehemiah reminding the Lord of what the Lord has said and taking it up by faith. If you turn unto me and keep my commandments and do them, though we're have you cast of the other most part of the heaven yet will I gather them from thence and we'll bring them into the place that I have chosen to set my name there. The prayer of Solomon and he's taking up the Lord on that because the word of God hadn't changed.
The Spirit of God again showing that this truth hadn't changed in the mind of God.
The failure went on from here.
Worse and worse, until the Lord Jesus came and He was rejected, and on His rejected rejection we already referred to it in John. The police was changed to no longer be an earthly divine center on earth at that time, but to be a spiritual place where God is worshipped in spirit and in truth and with the Spirit of God gathers together to the name of the Lord Jesus.
And that's the day that we find ourselves in with these principles still applying as to God's value of what that place is. It may have changed in its form, but God's value on it is still the same. And whether failure comes in or not, it doesn't change the principle, just like we saw in the Old Testament and God's choice.
Is true and it's unfailing and if we were to take the time and turn it over to the last.
Verse of the book of Ezekiel, we would find that when it speaks about that millennial temple and all the glory that's going to come in for Israel.
In the coming day, when we're gone.
It says about the name of that city, Jerusalem, the name of that city is the Lord is there never changes in the mind of God. He's going to take up with that again with that people. That is the place that he chose still is with with regard to those people and he will make it happen.
So this truth is for us today, it doesn't matter about failure or division or anything else like that. This is still what God has given for us to walk in and in the few minutes that we have laughed, 15 minutes.
I just want to take off a few of the objections that I have heard. I took up one question at the beginning of the meeting, but I wrote down some of the questions that I have heard over the years and I just want to suggest some answers to them. And if I don't give the best answers to these things, that doesn't change the truth of the Word of God.
Come and ask later, maybe I can give a better one, or if someone else they probably can give a better one. The word of God has answers to these things if it is the truth of God.
And we're not afraid of it. We want to go back and try to answer every question that there is when it comes to this wonderful truth of being gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus. So the first question that I just wanted to bring up, it's really a statement. It's was implied in what was said. To me, this sounds so exclusive.
When you talk about Spirit of God gathering through the name of the Lord Jesus, and then you look at those who are gathered, it sounds really exclusive.
And in a way I can see the point of what they're saying, but it is always. I have to admit it surprised me a little bit that Christians would be bothered by the idea of something being exclusive, because all Christians are exclusive when it comes to salvation. We all agree there is none other name given among, under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved. Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the.
No man cometh unto the Father, but by me. We all agree on that when it comes to salvation. Problem is, when it comes to acting on this practically as Christians, it seems to exclude all kinds of other Christians.
And I would just say to that.
I don't believe that's the way that we should look at it at all. This is not an exclusive truth. God never meant to exclude Christians. He never meant to exclude any of the children of Israel from Jerusalem. It was man that did that. This is a positive truth. When we talk about exclusion and Christianity, the only thing that I can immediately think about is evil.
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And yes, there is exclusive truth. Evil is to be excluded from God's people. But when it comes to this truth of being gathered to the Lord's name, it's for everyone.
Are you gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ? If not, why not?
It's the work of the Spirit of God to gather to his name, and it's for every single believer. The table of the Lord is a place there for every single one who's redeemed by the blood of Christ, and all should be there. And so in no way is this an exclusive truth. It's an inclusive truth, and it's the work of the Spirit of God not to exclude, but to include everyone.
According to the word of God.
The next one is that the Holy Spirit is working with believers everywhere, and there is so little gift among those who claim to be gathered to the Lord's name.
I would just say to that yes and yes.
No objection.
That's true. And I just remind you of what we took up about Judah and Benjamin on the one side and Israel on the other side. I've got 2 tribes versus 10. And when you go back and you read through the Old Testament and you look at first of all, you've got the the numbers, but there's the GIF, the GIF that was mentioned, the great works of power that was done.
In those days was in Israel.
You remember with Elijah and Elijah and all the mighty works of power that were done there, It wasn't in Judah. You don't read of it there. It was in Israel.
But what of that? It doesn't affect the truth of God. God had said where He would place His name in those days. And yes, the Spirit of God was free to act wherever He chose. He's sovereign, He's divine, and He will act where He can. And so He did in those days when there was such great evil and wickedness there with King Ahab. And he took Elijah and he worked, and all the prophets of Baal were slain.
We saw those mighty works of power that were done in those days, and with Elisha too, and the dead being raised and so on.
This was all done in that place where there had been the rejection of the divine center. The Spirit of God is not bound, of course He can do that. And we find these things presented in Christianity as not being the same thing at all. The Spirit of God works wherever the Spirit of God is allowed to work, and he'll even work where he's not permitted to work. He's free.
He's sovereign Spirit of God comes in the moment of soul.
Turns to Christ and accepts the Lord Jesus as Christ as Savior as we had in Ephesians one verse 13. Then that one is sealed.
And then we find, as presented in a number of places, that the Spirit of God comes to dwell inside that person individually.
But God takes up his dwelling in the church, not just those gathered.
But the whole Church of God by the Spirit, the Spirit of God is living among the whole Church of God collectively, and as such, he acts there. He is not found there. He will act and he will do what he will do there. And the fact that the Spirit of God is working.
And many different Christian groups all around this world thank God.
Many are being saved, many are being blessed, and I'm so grateful for that. But it does not affect this truth that the Spirit of God is gathering together to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. So you want to separate those things.
You might say another objection is, isn't the Lord everywhere?
Yes, the Lord is everywhere.
He's omnipresent. If he wasn't everywhere, he wouldn't be God.
And so we have to separate that too, says in the end of Matthew. He says, long with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
Hebrews 13 And he says, I will never leave thee, no, forsake thee individually. Every believer has that promise. But when it comes to the collective gathering of His people, we only find in Scripture that the Lord is with them collectively when they are so gathered by the Spirit of God. If you can find another way, that Scripture speaks of the Lord being present.
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Then show me because I haven't found it.
I see it very clearly and definitely there in Matthew 18. You find it again in First Corinthians chapter 5. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together in my spirit with you. The Lord had promised to be there for those gathered in His name. They were. He was there.
And that is the promise still today.
Just say.
That night when the Lord had the disciples come, He told them where they were to meet.
They came, and they found, as he had said unto them.
There were many other places that night. It's been pointed out before that the Passover was.
Eaten that night, and the Lord was in every one of those places because he was omniscient for omnipresent.
But only one place that night was the Lord personally there. There is a difference. Even in scripture you say, well, OK, so they could see him, He was there, but we didn't see him here this morning. That's true. We didn't because the Lord has gone away, back to heaven. We are left here on the principle that we walk by faith and not by sight.
If the Lord could be visibly seen in the midst of those gathered to His name, then that principle would not apply to us today. But that is the principle that is given to us as Christians by which we are to walk while the Lord has gone away into heaven, till he comes again to walk by faith by and not by sight. And so we take these things up, not by seeing the Lord physically there, but by the word of God. And we insist on that we have to go back to the Word of God for every.
And that brings me to the next one that I want to mention. I don't feel like the Lord is present in any special way.
Good.
He shouldn't the Lord. You should feel the Lord, no question about that. Every believer should feel the Lord.
But the fact of the matter is, this is not about feelings, it's about what the Word of God says. I have known Christians that have come from other fellowships and there are some of them who are gathered today and they can tell you that they can bear witness to this to you as they have to me, that it felt no different where they were from how it feels here. It's not about feelings, it's about the Word of God. What has God said?
And of course, once you take up with the Word of God and you understand what God has said and you act on it.
By faith, other feelings will come. Then yes, you understand that the Lord is there.
And your heart is drawn out to him, but it's not because it's some special thing that can be felt that takes away from the fact that we're called.
To walk by faith according to the word of God. That faith comes by hearing, and the hearing by the Word of God.
It tells us in Romans chapter 10.
Just a few things because our time is gone here.
Maybe I'll just end with one that is pride of place.
There's many, and this is maybe a word of excitation at the end for those who are gathered, I believe.
By God's grace, I am gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ by the Spirit of God.
And that I met together this morning with others so gathered. And I'm thrilled for this truth. And I'm thrilled to be so gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But it's possible for those of us who are gathered, if indeed we are.
To practically deny this truth.
And we need to be so careful. And so I just want to look at something. We had our Sunday school class in Dorothy not long ago. It's in Luke Chapter 9.
Because some form of this often is thrown up.
And sadly, justly so, it was a little bit What was behind the question that was asked to me that I mentioned at the beginning of the meeting. Do you believe that the Lord is with you and nobody else?
So I'm coming right back to that Luke 9 and verse 49.
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And John answered and said, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and we forbade him, because he followeth not with us.
And Jesus said unto him, Forbid him not, for he that is not against us is for us.
And so the argument goes.
We saw others who were gathering not with us forbid them because they gather not with us. And the Lord says no, forbid them not because those that don't gather with us or with are for us. Sort of the the argument that I've heard advanced on this first.
Which is entirely a wrong application of this verse, not at all what the Lord was saying here.
First of all, you have to understand that the disciples were wrong here.
Just before this, they were arguing about.
Who was to be the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven? It's really in verse 46, there arose a reasoning among them which of them should be the greatest. That was what filled their thought themselves, Who's going to be the greatest here? And that's how they worded the question here. He doesn't follow with us.
It didn't say. They didn't say to the Lord he doesn't follow you. They didn't say that they put themselves at the center and we're so apartment to do that.
Even in that place where the Spirit of God is gathering through the name of the Lord Jesus, we can so easily come in and say we are the center and those other ones don't gather with us. But that's all wrong. The Lord Jesus Christ is a divine gathering center, and the object of the Spirit of God is to gather to him. And if you and I are by grace are in that place, it has nothing to do with us. We should pray to the Lord that will be kept in that.
Because we're just as apartment to fail and fall and go off as anybody else.
Precious privilege to be there, but we've got no guarantee of it and we need to stay humble about that.
The next thing was that the disciples had failed in gift.
The gift wasn't there.
You see, there was somebody.
And no doubt was their spirit, no doubt was their own personal failure. There was someone who brought their child to the Lord to cast out a demon, and the Lord did it. But they said in verse 40I besought thy sifles to cast them out, and they could not. And now what are they doing? Complaining to the Lord? And they're saying, they're saying we saw somebody else doing that same thing that we couldn't do. Well, that's pretty mean, isn't it?
And we're apartment to fall into that same problem too, of be looking down at other Christians when they're trying to serve.
The Lord be judgmental about them. It's not about that.
It's about what has the Lord asked you and what has He asked me to do?
And so the Lord says, don't forbid them.
They're not against us, they're for us. And so it is. There's one body we need to pray for, every single one of her brothers and sisters in Christ that desire their blessing, desire their good. We're all going to be together in heaven. In the meantime, if they're not gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we can pray for that.
And we ourselves can take up with this truth and go on together expressing it, endeavoring to keep unity of the Spirit. One final thing I want to point out before we pray.
Did those other ones who are casting out those demons have the immediate presence of the Lord in this story?
No, they didn't.
They were for Him, but it was these disciples with all their failures that were actually with the Lord on this occasion. They were the ones that actually got the enjoyment of His presence. Is that true for us? Do we have that? Then let's value it, brethren, and let's go on and take off these things as the Scripture gives it to us. And if you're not gathered to the Lord's name or if you're questioning these things.
This truth is for you. It's not against you.
The Spirit of God desires to gather you together.
To the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, may it be so. Let's pray. Our God and their Father, we thank thee. For the Lord Jesus Christ, we thank thee.
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That we will all be perfectly gathered to Him, and at that moment will be perhaps even today. We do thank you for the professor's privilege. We have to be gathered to his name even now. And we pray that Thou would lead us each one on more clearly in these truths. That we would hold them not only according to Thy word, but in a right way from the heart. And we pray that in all of this, our God and our Father.
We would bring glory to thee and to Thy beloved Son, and we ask it in His name. Amen.
The Life of Elijah: Having a Right Spirit
Open—Josh Stewart
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Lord, thou hast drawn us after.
Every time I presently shine heart comfortably my swell powerful hearts all daytime.
My friend feels good.
And won't toss him on every.
Time.
Irene 25th, 1St.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your Spirit.
This is an expression that we have a number of times, usually at the end of an epistle.
I think it comes up three or four times.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ with our spirit. I've been thinking recently.
Feel like the Lord has put it on my heart over the last year or so.
The importance of having a right spirit.
You know, we can do things that are technically right.
But we can do it in a wrong spirit.
And it's very interesting to see.
How God is in His ways with us. He's working with our spirit or our attitude.
In Hebrews chapter 12, where we have the subject of the chastening of the Lord.
It speaks about being in subjection to the Father of Spirits.
It's a wonderful title, or a name I should say, of God the Father.
Of spirits and, you know, and his ways with us and working with us in our lives. He is not just looking to get certain behavior from us, He's looking to produce a change in our spirit or our attitude.
And those of us who are parents.
We know.
A little bit about this and we fail so much in this. I speak for myself, I failed so much in this. But you know, it's, it's one thing to get a child to do a certain thing.
To come when you call them to come, it's.
I'm not, I'm not saying it's easy, but it's one thing to do that.
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But it's much more difficult to get them to do it with a good attitude.
Very, very difficult. But that is what God is aiming for. He's aiming for our heart.
He's aiming for our spirit.
And I've been thinking about that recently.
And so I would like to, with the Lord's help, just turn to an account in the Old Testament and don't want to, don't want to take a lot of time, but.
Been looking at the life of Elijah a little bit and.
I feel that in the life of Elijah, we really have God working.
With a man.
Seeking to correct his spirit and that there is so much in the life of Elijah. For our blessing and for our instruction, not only.
In what he was doing in the life of Elijah, but with the people of Israel at that time. And so just we don't have time to hardly develop.
This subject but just a few verses throughout a few points and leave time for others.
First Kings, chapter 17.
I'll just read.
The first.
1St says an Elijah the Tishbite, who is of the inhabitants of Gilead.
Said unto Ahab.
As the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand, there shall not be due, nor reign these years, but according to my word.
As Brother Tim mentioned in the previous meeting.
The prophets Elijah and Elijah were prophets of the 10 northern tribes.
That had gone off in division in the days of Rehoboam and Jeroboam, and yet God was still working with those people.
It's a wonderful thing to think of them not in, you might say, a right position. But he's still working with them. And he raises up Elijah Petishbite. He was to the east of Jordan, on the other side of the Jordan River.
And he raises up this man. His name was Elijah.
And it struck me that his name means Eli.
That is God and Jah, which is short for Jehovah or Yahweh.
The one true God.
His name means Jehovah. He is the God.
I wonder if his parents gave him that name.
Because they were burdened about a problem that had come in.
Among the 10 tribes.
The problem was they had forgotten who the one true God was.
And they were serving idols.
They were worshipping Bail, a false God. They have lost sight of the One.
Thing that God had called Israel.
To above all other things, to be faithful to that truth that there is one God in his name is Jehovah.
They have lost sight of that.
And the hot iron of idolatry had seared their conscience to the point where they didn't really know who the true God was.
And so they named this boy Elijah.
And we don't know really anything about his upbringing, but.
One day.
He comes into wherever Ahab was, maybe into his throne room and Samaria, and he he pronounces judgment. There is not going to be due nor reign these years according to my word, and he pronounces a famine.
Uncle Dave Mearns is.
Reminded me and others on a number of occasions to study Famine's in Scripture.
And it's a good, it's a good subject to look into. You know, that there was a spiritual famine in Israel that had been going on for many years.
But the people.
Were not touched by it.
And so Elijah announces a physical famine.
Sometimes God needs to send a trial that's physical into our lives to call attention to a deeper spiritual problem that we won't address.
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It's amazing here that there's two other times in this chapter where it says the word of the Lord came to Elijah, but it doesn't say that here.
It doesn't say the word of the Lord came to him if this wasn't a mere prophecy.
This was Elijah in the presence of God.
Discerning.
That this was appropriate because of the condition in Israel that there be a famine.
This is what they needed.
And so in faith, he speaks on behalf of God. And he was right.
We know from the book of James that Elijah prayed. He prayed that there would not be.
Raining and for 3 1/2 years it rained not.
You know, with Elijah.
He seemed to have.
A very good appreciation for a certain aspect of who God is. He seemed to understand the holiness of God.
He seemed to understand separation from evil in a very special way.
And I hope I don't forget at the end of this little talk to return to that, because it is very important. Holiness is very important, separation from evil very important. And I believe God vindicates his servant Elijah for that.
But.
There were other aspects of who God is that Elijah did not understand.
And in his life we see that.
And God seeking to work with him and show him who he really was. Isn't it wonderful that God doesn't leave us in our own ignorance? He doesn't just say, well, Josh has a really mixed up idea about who I am, I'm just going to let him live out his days in ignorance. No, he wants me to know who he is.
And he's done more for us than he did for Elijah. He sent his son.
To declare the Father to us. And so grace and truth have come to us.
By Jesus Christ.
Well, the Lord teaches Elijah a number of things.
In this chapter he has to feel, along with the people, the famine.
And his deed for dependence he teaches him grace.
Coming to a widow of Zarephath outside the land.
And I can't take the time to develop these things. There's much in it for your own meditation.
Chapter 18 and verse one came to pass after many days. This is as James tells us, 3 1/2 years.
The word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year, saying, Go, show thyself unto Ahab.
And I will send rain upon the earth.
And so Elijah went to show himself to Ahab. So the time comes now for there to be rain.
But you know something?
Although there were 3 1/2 years of famine.
Women, just like that widow that I skipped over ate their last meal.
And died.
The suffering went on for 3 1/2 years and yet the people did not turn back to the Lord. Isn't that solemn?
How long is the famine going to go on in your life?
In my life before I turned back to the Lord.
We'll skip over the matter of Obadiah.
Elijah meets with Ahab.
In verse 17 of chapter 18.
And that came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, Art thou he that trouble with Israel?
And he answered, I have not troubled Israel, but thou in my father's house, and that you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Balaam.
Ahab and Elijah had a very unique relationship.
He sees Elijah and he says you're the problem. You're the one who's causing trouble in Israel.
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And we know how that is today, don't we? Those who stand for the truth.
Are blamed for the problem when the real problem, as Elijah correctly pointed out, was Ahab.
As really the leader of the people, but it was really the people at large.
And it was the sin of disobedience and the sin of idolatry that was the cause of this famine.
Well, we like to blame individuals, don't we? But ultimately the blame has to be pointed to ourselves. As Solomon rightly pointed out in his prayer at the dedication of the Temple, there is no man that sinneth not. And he said every man knows the plague of his own heart.
We need to address the plague of our own heart before God will address the physical famine that He's allowed in our lives.
Well, he says to gather all the prophets of Baal 450.
And the profits of the Groves 400 which eat at Jezebel's table, and gathered them to Mount Carmel.
He tells him what he's going to do. There would be this contest. You all know the story very well and I don't want to leave room for others, but.
Each would have an altar, each would have a Bullock, and on one side there would be the hundreds of prophets of Bail and Ashtaroth calling on their false God to bring down fire from heaven. On the other side there would be one man.
Elijah and he would pray, and whichever God answered by fire, he is the God.
What does he say to the people in verse 21? And Elijah came unto all the people and said, How long halt G between two opinions. If the Lord be God, follow him. But if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.
Again, to think of the people in a state.
Such that.
They were going back and forth between two opinions. Who was the true God?
How could they be in this state?
Is their state really so different from ours?
Do we not have?
False gods that we have made.
That we are following.
And we're halting between two opinions.
Are these things going to bring us satisfaction? Are they going to bring us what we're looking for?
Or is the Lord going to be that one for us? Are we going to be 50% for the God of entertainment?
For the God of education, for the God of sports or whatever it is, and 50% for the Lord or some mix of that.
You know we have a problem with worldliness. I do.
How long are we going to halt between two opinions?
Elijah knew what the problem was. There's a difference between knowing what the problem was and knowing what the solution was.
He knew what the problem was and so he called for a contest of the gods. Think of it, do we need to have a contest?
Where we have two goats on altars, and we pray to our false gods, and we pray to the true God and see who answers by fire.
That is where the people were.
Elijah felt that that's what was necessary, and it was. That's where they really were.
Do we need to have a contest this afternoon? I speak to myself as well as to you.
You know, young people and all of us, we are forming our lives. Our lives are taking a path. They're going one way or they're going another way.
Have a contest. Think about those that you know.
In your own life.
In your acquaintance who are building their lives on the foundation of the word of God, who have a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, who are living their lives for Him.
Think of them.
And then think of others who have followed the false gods that are the making of their own hands.
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Where have they ended up? What direction is their life going?
And where do you want to end up?
Moses said I have set before you.
Two paths, life and death, blessing and cursing. The time to choose is now. Don't wait.
Well, they have this contest.
And it's really sad to see how long it goes on Elijah mocking the prophets of Baal.
There's nothing there. He doesn't really exist. He's just a false God.
And then he says to the people in verse 30, Come near unto me.
And Elijah builds that altar of the Lord.
He doesn't take 10 stones, he takes 12. Brother Tim brought that out. It's nice to see the faith of Elijah that he still saw one nation of 12 tribes.
That's beside the point. He builds the altar.
He pours water on the altar. If this thing is going to be a contest, let it be a real contest.
He has that thing soaking away.
The water fills up the trench around the altar.
And then he begins to pray.
Verse 36 And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near and said, Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that Thou art God in Israel would have been good if he had maybe just stopped there.
And that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things if I were.
Elijah brought himself into this, and he should have left himself out of it.
That first prayer.
It was true he was the Lord's prophet and he did do these things at Jehovah's Word, but.
There's no answer.
He brought himself into it.
And so he prays again. Verse 37 Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that thou art Jehovah God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again. Then the fire of the Lord fell. He took himself out of it.
The fire of the Lord falls. The contest is over.
The people can see who the true God is.
The people fell on their faces and they began to say verse 39.
And they said the Lord, he is the God, the Lord he is the God.
They were saying essentially what Elijah's name means.
Jehovah, he is the God. Jehovah, he is the God.
Mission accomplished. The people knew that Jehovah was the one true God.
But the Lord has more to do with Elijah.
He takes the profits of bail and tells them to take them and they're brought down and they're killed.
And I do want to leave time for others. I'm going to skip through this.
Elijah prays the rain comes.
But then in chapter 19 and again, I'm skipping over so much rich detail.
I hope you meditate on those things and sure the Lord will bless you in it.
Verse 19 or chapter 19 verse one. And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done.
And with all how he had slain all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger unto Elijah, saying, So let the gods do to me, And more also if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time.
And when he saw that, he arose and went for his life, and came to Beersheba, which belongeth to Judah, and left his servant there.
Jezebel. Jezebel made a threat, and it was no idle threat. She fully intended to carry this out. She was going to kill Elijah.
And here this man who had displayed such boldness to come right into Ahab and tell him no more do nor reign these years, except by my word, to tell the people how long halt she between two opinions to call down fire from heaven, to say, take the prophets and bring them down and slay them that now at a threat of this queen.
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He runs for his life.
We are never more vulnerable to attack than after we've had a success.
We find in this chapter that Elijah was thinking about himself.
And so he runs, and here we have someone who is discouraged, someone who is depressed.
Someone who is full of thoughts of themselves. Someone with a legal attitude.
It's very interesting how someone with this spirit of self-righteous pride is like a roller coaster. They have thoughts of how great they are and the next moment they're down in the dumps and the next moment they're thinking how great they are and comparing themselves to others and the next moment they're depressed again. It's weird how these things go together.
Pride.
And depression and discouragement. But.
We see them in this man, Elijah.
He flees. He goes a day's journey into the wilderness. He's going. He ends up going hundreds of miles away from.
The northern Kingdom where he was, and he lays down under a juniper tree. A day's journey and he is exhausted.
You know, I found out from the book of Job chapter 30, I believe it is that in times of famine that people will actually take and eat the roots of a juniper tree.
You know, he was, his head was probably a few inches from something that he could have eaten for food when we're discouraged.
What we need to sustain us can be just inches away from our head. And yet.
We give up completely.
And he requested for himself that he might die.
He requested for himself that he might die. He wanted to die to get out of the trial that he was in.
You know, sometimes we can thank God for unanswered prayers. I.
Actually, the Lord did answer this prayer. He said no, you're not going to die. I'm not going to take your life away.
And I think what's ironic about this is that Elijah, not only did he not die here, he didn't die period. He was taken up in a whirlwind and chariot of fire. That's a a no in all capitals with a exclamation mark.
No, Elijah, I'm not going to take away your life.
That's not the solution here.
He gives him refreshment, He gives them that bread. What do we do when someone's discouraged?
We give them food, we feed them with Christ water to drink, we give them rest. But what they do with that, that's up to them.
Are you going to use the encouragement of your brethren when you're discouraged just to press forward in your bitterness and self righteousness?
That's what Elijah did. He continued in the strength of that bread 40 days and 40 nights, and he goes all the way down to Horeb, the Mount of God. He goes to the place where the law was given. He felt comfortable there. I mean that place that that shook with an earthquake and smoked and was on fire and the people were were afraid to touch it.
And go near to it and they wouldn't even look.
And they begged that the voice would stop, and the Lord would speak only with Moses instead of with them. Yes.
He was comfortable there. He went right up onto that mountain, into a cave. Sounds very familiar, doesn't it? A cave on the top of the mountain.
Where the law was given, he was comfortable there.
But he didn't really know the Lord.
He knew some things about the Lord, he knew an aspect of God's character, but he didn't really know the Lord's heart.
And we can seek to do a right thing.
But in a wrong way if we don't really understand the Lord's heart.
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And what does the Lord say to him when he comes to this cave? He says in verse nine he says, what doest thou hear?
Elijah, what are you doing here? That's quite a question, isn't it?
It can mean so many different things. What are you doing at this conference? But Elijah, what are you doing here?
At the Mount of God.
And he sold all of himself. He begins to speak about himself.
I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts, for the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars.
Slain thy prophets with the sword, and I even I only am left, and they seek my life to take it away.
You know, I believe Elijah thought that the Lord was going to pat him on the back and say you're the only one. Elijah, a good job for being faithful.
He didn't get that response from the Lord, did he?
You know, it was in a certain sense it was true. Elijah was the only one standing in a public way faithfully for the Lord.
It was tremendously difficult what he did.
But he wasn't the only one, and the Lord had to remind him of that. And you know when we're full of ourselves and our own.
Standing before God and approaching to Him on the ground of our own works and our own godliness. You might say we don't see others.
We don't realize that.
We are not we do not stand alone that there are many others and we and faith always looks to.
Have fellowship with others and to speak on behalf of others and to include others.
And that graciousness was just missing in this.
Spirit of Elijah, he was blind. He really thought he was the only one, but he was blinded by self.
Grace produces humility in.
And humility leads to discernment if we don't have grace.
It leads to pride, and pride leads to spiritual blindness.
So the Lord tells Elijah to go and stand.
Upon the mount before the Lord doesn't say that he went and stood before the Lord.
He stayed in The Cave.
And the Lord passed by upon the mountain.
And the great and strong wind rent the mountains, and break in pieces the rocks before the Lord. But the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind and earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire a still small voice.
These were symbols of judgment, God's judgment, the wind, the earthquake, the fire.
You know, Elijah was prepared to see the judgment of the people of God. You know, I just imagine him saying, yes, fire, yes, earthquake, yes, wind. This is what we need more of this. This is what these rebellious people need.
But the Lord was not in those things.
The Lord's hand is in his judgment, but the Lord himself is not in those things. Judgment is his strange work.
But after all of that, a still small voice. It really speaks to us of the gentleness of God in grace. A still small voice.
I don't think Elijah expected that.
But that's how God spoke to him, a still, small voice. And that's what drew Elijah.
Out of The Cave.
The judgment wasn't going to draw him out and judgment, although Elijah would have.
Maybe Wish for that wasn't going to restore the people. It was really Grace.
And that's what Elijah lacked in his spirit. God called him out. He comes out. He knew this was the presence of the Lord. He knew that the that the Lord was there in that still small voice. And he puts the mantle over his face. He knew it.
And the Lord speaks to him, and he gives him another opportunity. And how gracious the Lord is with us that he gives us.
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A second chance, a third chance. How many times when he gives Elijah another chance and he says, What doest thou hear, Elijah?
But Elijah still has not learned.
And he says the same thing. I have been very jealous. He says the same thing.
He just could not learn.
I suppose we might think of this as a negative story, but I think it's tender to see how the Lord worked with him. May we learn from the still small voice. May we learn to have grace, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ with our Spirit.
He didn't learn, so the Lord just says go return.
But on her way.
It tells them three things. Anoint Hazel to begin of Syria, Jihu the son of Nimshi to be king over Israel in Elisha the son of shepherd of Abel Nihola.
Anoint to be prophet in thy room.
Elijah was going to be replaced.
His work publicly was done. I don't say his work was done. He had years to go and I think Elijah still did wonderful things for the Lord, especially when it comes to his work that he did in training his successor Elisha, who is characterized.
Not by law, not by judgment, but by grace.
Elisha, as Elijah was about to be taken up to heaven.
Ask for a double portion of his spirit, I do think.
That Elijah learned. I know it's not recorded, but.
I believe in the years that followed.
That Elisha could see something.
That changed in the spirit of Elijah. He wasn't able to be used in a public way. So let's not follow the pattern of Elijah. But Elijah, the prophet of grace, asked for a double portion of the spirit.
But let me just say one thing.
The Lord never rebukes Elijah for his zeal for the holiness of God.
Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
And he was taken up in a chariot of fire.
And he has a special place in the annals of.
Good divine history and he's seen on the Mount of Transfiguration with the Lord.
I believe God valued that man's devotion, that man's holiness, that man's separation from evil. It was a beautiful thing to the Lord.
And so I don't mean to say that we shouldn't appreciate the holiness of God or that we shouldn't separate from evil.
Because that is something that God vindicates in his servant Elijah. It's precious to him and it's very important. But.
Let's have an understanding of who God is. Let's have the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ with our spirit.
Confidence in God
Open—Phil Barela
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Well, I appreciate so much what our brother brought before us and.
As I was listening to it, my heart was just boiling, you know? I just like, wow.
You know and think of these mighty men of God, Elijah.
King David.
And the list goes on, Daniel.
Peter.
Paul and the list goes on and.
I was just thinking maybe as to a caption of what's been brought before us just now.
Of of a return of confidence, the return of confidence in God.
You know, we the Savior is so long-suffering and patient with us and he sees us along the way and and some of us have been in the assembly for many a year. And I look at the Gray hairs around and I think of my brother in 50-60 years, 70 years in the assembly, so thankful.
And we've been to conferences and we've had the ministry brought before us and we have the books on our shelves and we read them and we know them and we have the knowledge and it's sometimes it's sustaining to us to have that.
It keeps us enlightened, as it were. But as far as walking in it, we we feel our our deficiency. As far as being spotted by the world, we know that we find that sometimes we are. And as far as making provisions, we find that sometimes we're making a provision for the flesh.
And but somehow we kind of roll out of those situations and on we go. And there's another meeting and there's another encouragement. And I'm so thankful for it. Yes, I am.
But what about confidence in God? And as our brother was bringing before us, you know that that that God touches this mighty servant and he rehearses with him and his mind grasps a hold of what's happening and he gives consent to what God wants and he does what what God wants. But he he still is hard in in his spirit. He.
Still.
Not really entering in to.
The heart of God.
So you say, what's the solution?
What does God have to do? Sometimes it's very hard for me to say this, brethren, but.
I do feel that there's only one thing left that God can do.
With us.
And that is, he breaks our hearts.
He brings something into our lives.
That breaks our hearts.
Go annoy Jehu. Go tonight, Hazel.
Elijah couldn't do that.
That broke his heart.
It broke his heart to the point where he realized.
That God must have his way.
That grace must have its way.
And that.
Elijah must take his place.
And he anoints Elijah.
And in a sense, then he's off the scene.
He's carried up in the glory.
But that breaking of the heart, you know, there's a verse I'd like to turn to. Just I know where there's like, like many things in the scriptures, we just don't have enough time in an open meeting. But there's a verse I'd like to turn to. It's in the 90th Psalm. And I hope that I can present this in a way that that maybe it'll touch our hearts and, and, and we'll get a hold of it And our confidence once again will be.
Strengthened in the Lord.
You know, sometimes we think that we can develop our own mind and our own desires and our own ways and we develop that and we say what's wrong with it? And, and we get things to be condoned in a way that it, it suits us.
It suits us and that's fine. We'll go on in that then and.
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But if I was to really get some honest answers, and I'm not making any accusations about dishonesty or anything like that, but to really ask ourselves, are you happy?
As has has what you have allowed in your life made you happy?
Do you feel nearer the Lord?
Because of.
Has it really brought you nearer the Lord?
And so you get in the 90th song, you get the prayer of Moses the man of God in the Psalms.
The prayer of Moses the man of God. And I don't know if there's another one in here by Moses. This is the 4th book.
Where the 4th book of the Psalms begin and if you know, there's five books in the Psalms and we have sort of a Pentateuch.
So that would close Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers.
His book is Numbers.
This is where the Book of Numbers starts.
Numbers is God taking account of the people.
And.
He has an account of every single one.
He knows every single soul.
Of his own.
And none are ever out of his sight. But all this Psalm also is a Psalm of death. The next Psalm 91 is a Psalm of life. And if you read this song, you will find that death is brought in.
And really, death is is often the pathway to life, because unless we die to certain things, we never come alive to others.
You know, a lot of times God brings trials into our lives and we're not like the Lord in the sense that.
When God brings a trial into my life, he sees that there's a condition that I'm getting farther away from home. I'm getting away from those things that should govern a Christian, and I'm getting away from the place that I should be living and that is home, heaven in heavenly things. And I'm getting occupied with a lot of other things, and I'm getting away from home. So he brings a severe trial into my life, and what does it do?
We pray, we turn to God.
We're like driven home.
We know that the only resource that we can get now is home, Home heaven.
That's where it's at for us as the Lord's own. But you know when the trials came into the Lord's life?
And he had more trials than any of us. But when trials came into the Lord's life, did they drive him to home? No.
They found him at home.
Isn't that something? They found the Lord at home. The trials that came to him, they found him at home. And so he always did those things that pleased the Father. He never, if I could say to speak a word, He never disappointed the Father because he was home all the time. He lived in the atmosphere of heaven. He never left it.
Why do we sometimes want to leave it? Why do we leave it?
Wandering hearts.
And a lot of times God does bring a lot of trials into our lives, but it seems like until he breaks our hearts. I remember I I know of a very dear brother gathered with us for years. His wife was in the assembly and he just kept resisting the Lord. He didn't want anything to do with the gathered Saints. He didn't want anything to do with the Lord.
It was, yeah, yeah, it's okay, sweetheart. You go to meeting, you can, you can go. I don't mind though. And she went.
Deep down it finally was discovered that he was resisting the Lord.
You know.
God brought a severe tragedy.
So severe into his life.
That it took his only son.
And.
He said. I bowed my head.
And they said OK.
He had to break his heart.
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He had to break.
And so.
When we read, if we were to read this whole Psalm, and I'm not going to, but you read it over sometime and you'll find out how I connect death with this Psalm. But there's a strange verse that here in this Psalm and it says.
In verse nine it says, For all our days are passed away in thy wrath.
We spend our years as a tale that is told.
Verse eight. Let me read verse 8 two. Thou has set our iniquities before thee, and secret sins in the life of thy countenance.
Well, sometimes we have to be brought.
To the place where we realize that we're deserving of the wrath of God.
But the desire of the psalmist is that the Lord would establish.
Their joy.
To match.
The years that the wrath of God has been that they have felt the wrath of God.
Let me just give me a minute here, brother.
OK, here's the verse I was thinking of also.
Verse 15 Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us.
In the years wherein we have seen evil.
I think the thought in that verse is Lord.
As I think about how thou art toward me, that thou art for me, that are not against me, Thou wouldst preserve me. The days of sorrow are there.
Would you please?
Match those days with the days of joy.
And bring me into an appreciation of thy love, as long as I've been under thy wrath in sorrow.
Bring a match of days of joy to number the same as the days of sorrow.
Confidence in God. You know, sometimes we think the Lord is really being hard on us.
But he's not. We don't think that he loves us. He does. Think of all these ones. I've been mentioning King David. I've often looked at King David and I've, I've said, why did David have to have sorrows all the way to the end of his life?
It seemed like he always had trouble. He'd go from one thing right to the next. And there's a lot of times you find with King David that he silent. He silent in the midst of the most severe and and and devastating trials, the most, the most corrupt circumstances. He's silent. And you all feel like saying, David, why don't you say something? Why don't you do something about it?
Well, that man had learned that only God could.
And sometimes you want to straighten out. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't be exercised about the way that we carry on and seek to turn to the Lord like our brother was bringing before us. But realize this, brethren, that it's got to be the Lord. It's got to be the Lord that's going to do it.
And we've got to have confidence in him Even so that if we go to him and say, you know, Lord, I've had days of wrath on me, I've had days of sorrow, would you please?
Days of joy to match the number of the days of sorrow.
I don't know if I can make that understood, but but it was a it was a real contemplation in my heart to think that there needs to be a confidence that the Lord is for us and he will establish us if we just will recognize that it's him.
And and it's it's, it's got to be, it's got to be. Look at read that Daniel Chapter 9. Read that chapter.
What kind of place does Daniel take? Does he say I'm the man that God says he's that's greatly beloved?
He is.
But he says, we have sinned and we have done wrong, and we have not followed the Lord and our fathers.
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Blessed man that he was.
And when you get to the, to the, is it the 6th chapter of Daniel, he's, he's a, he's a, a soul that has been prophesying concerning others, but then prophecy comes to him personally.
And their prophecies that are given to him at the beginning in the night.
They're not like circumstances and things that are going to come upon the people of God and they're given to Daniel in the night season.
And he has to get before the Lord about it. And he even gets to the point where he says I was much grieved.
Don't be afraid to be much grieved. Don't be afraid to be much grieved.
To hang our heads and see Lord.
Have mercy.
Have mercy.
To have confidence in the hand that has had to discipline us that that very same hand is not unequal.
He indeed wants to bless us.
Very much.
Well, that's all I had on my heart, brother. And it's, it's just something to think of.
What a God we have.
One who sustains this and is going to see us all the way home. We know it's not going to be long. It's not going to be long at all. We'll be home.
Gospel 2
Gospel—David Mearns
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Hardly want to spoil what we've had before us.
But it is the exercise of.
The brethren here to have.
The gospel now. So let's just ask the Lord for his help.
Our God and our Father.
We thank thee, it's our privilege to have been here over these days.
And to have Thy precious word open to us. We're so thankful for the Lord Jesus.
We're so thankful for his work on Calvary that has brought so many of us into blessing and now our God, our desire is if there is perhaps someone here.
That hasn't been brought into blessing.
It hasn't realized.
The knowledge of sins forgiven, we just would pray our God and few minutes that we have as they always touch their heart. We just would ask this our God as we give thanks in his alone most worthy and precious name. Amen.
OK.
Quite a bit before us.
A vote.
Sovereignty and responsibility.
We're going to talk about.
Our responsibility.
How much is?
God's sovereignty and.
How much is our responsibility?
We have 100% responsibility.
100%.
Just this past week.
I had the privilege of being with three marks.
Mark Jennings, Mark Cell, Mark Steikle. Four of us.
Was mark cells exercise? He does this often. He goes to.
A crossroads in Saint Louis.
Very very busy intersection.
And he holds up signs.
And he goes at rush hour.
And he's calculated that during rush hour.
2000 cars.
Past this corner every hour.
So here we were with our signs. The signs are about.
Half the size of this door, four of us with science.
Well, there's a lot of responses. These people come to to lights, they stop big long lineup of cars. I'm holding a sign like this very easily to read twice as far as that wall away.
Marks exercise is you hand a track. People won't read a track, but they glance at this sign and it's stuck in their minds. It's stuck.
You can't hit the delete button.
It's there.
Well, there's all kinds of responses.
There's people that beat their horns. I was standing there and a girl rolled down her window and she had a big smile and she held her Bible out the window.
There are people that.
Send out obscenities.
There was one man rolled down the window.
And he looked at me angrily. He says that slang is offensive to me. It's offensive to me.
You know there's a turn with me to Galatians, please. The 5th chapter.
Because we read there.
In Galatians chapter 5.
When he's speaking to those that were seeking to add something to the work of Christ.
For the salvation of a soul.
He speaks in the end of verse 11. Then is the offense of the cross ceased, suggesting that there's an offense to the gospel and there is an offense. I understand that man that says this is offensive to me. There's a man that my wife and I.
We worked with for years.
Many actually have been in this room. I've actually been to his place of business.
If you were at Jim Highland's funeral, you're at this man's place of business, runs a He's a funeral director.
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Worked with them for years. He's asked me to, when my wife and I go down to Florida, if we would please drop drop by and and touch him with him, which we did a short while ago. It wasn't exactly on the way, but we stopped at his place and we we had lunch with him. We spent the afternoon with him and then we went on our way. My discussion with him, it was offensive to him.
The concept.
That our brother Tim brought before us in his last meeting, the exclusivity of the gospel.
That's offensive to me, he says. I can't understand that. There's only one way as far as I'm concerned, he said. I have. I have.
Funeral sessions for all kinds of religions. And he says, as far as I'm concerned, they all end up in the same place. They all end up in the same place.
Well, I told them.
If you're right, I'm good.
But if you're wrong, I'm still good.
He didn't like that. I'm not suggesting that's the way we present the gospel. It seemed to be the way for him.
But we've been speaking a little bit about.
In the last couple days, the concept of God's sovereignty and man's responsibility, and there is such a tendency naturally for all of us.
To be.
Like the Pharisee, we looked at the Pharisee in John 3.
There's another Pharisee in Luke 18.
And the Pharisee in Luke 18, he points the finger and he says, I thank God I am not like other men.
There could be such a tendency.
For us to have that spirit without realizing it.
That probably the worst person that any of us knows is ourselves. And why do I say that?
Because we know more about ourselves than we know about anybody else.
Well.
What did I hold up in this sign?
Turn with me.
To Philippians, chapter 2.
Philippians, Chapter 2.
On my side.
I had.
Verse 10.
And it was just part of the verse it says in Philippians chapter 2.
And verse 10, at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow. That was on my side. I want everybody just to pause for a moment and I want to want you to look at your knees. Look at your two knees.
You know, we often hear this.
Concept that.
We either bow the knees here or we're going to bow the knees there. I don't believe that's accurate. I believe we are all.
Going about in that coming day, I appreciated our brother Sam Orange after he had his knee replacement. We were gathered for the prayer for the gospel. He was his first time after his surgery. We were sitting there. We all kneeled down. He was. He stayed seated up and he said, brethren, the next time I kneel, it's going to be in his presence. I love that.
But for anyone here.
Who has not?
Bowed the knee now.
What a solemn thing.
Like all the rest of us, you are going to bow the knee, those knees that you just looked at.
This is not something I've dreamt up.
That every knee should bow.
Things in heaven.
Things in Earth.
Things under the earth that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God.
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The Father.
The brethren have given me 15 minutes here. I've got one left.
Turn with me to Romans.
Chapter 10.
Romans, chapter 10.
My wife and I started a trip this trip that we're on a week ago this past Thursday.
On Thursday morning I was loading the the suitcases into the car.
And a woman stopped by our house.
She helps my wife out with a few things that she can't do anymore.
Buses around the garden a little bit, does a bit of house cleaning. It was her day to come. She stopped by, She came in distraught. She said my cousin just dropped dead of a heart attack.
I had lunch with her just a few days ago. Just a few days ago I sat down in the town of Perth and had lunch with her and she just dropped dead of a heart attack.
Well, she carried on with what she was doing and.
I went to my back.
Office desk and I ripped off.
Christian calendar and I wrote on the back of it, Romans 10.
9 stuck in my pocket finished loading up the car.
We said goodbye to her.
She gave my wife a hug, She gave myself a hug and I reached for the door and I turned to her and I said.
Your cousin.
What if that was you?
Where would you be?
She looked at me. She said, oh, Dave, we've been through this before. You know, I don't know.
I don't know.
You know, this afternoon we can know we had a lovely gospel last night. The blood of the Lord Jesus Christ shed.
We had in our previous meeting the thought of the wrath of God.
As God laid on him the iniquity of us all.
We can know.
Do you have full assurance of your salvation here this afternoon at the end of these meetings?
Do you let's read this verse. I handed her that. It wasn't even. It wasn't even. I didn't even write at the verse. I gave her the reference. I said, do you have a Bible? She said, yeah, I have three of them. I said go home and read those. I expect she probably found a Bible in our house and read them. I don't know where it lies now. We'll find out when we get home. But we have here in Romans 10, verse nine, if thou shalt confess.
With thy mouth.
The Lord Jesus and shall believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead.
Thou shalt be saved. I handed that paper and I said to her, There are no strings attached, but you do have to be all in.
Pray for her name is Susan.
But if anyone here, if anyone here has come to this conference and you're lost and in your sins.
Put your faith and trust not in the feelings that our brother spoke about in the address.
But rather on the word of God, if thou shalt confess with thy mouth.
The Lord Jesus and shall believe in thy heart.
That God hath raised him from the dead, thou.
Shall be saved, Let's pray.
Our God and our Father, we thank Thee that it's our privilege to have been here these last couple days. We think of that which we had before us.
Concerning the life of Elijah, we're so thankful for this, our God.
We pray that each of our spirits would be touched.
We think of that which we had before us, having confidence in thee, our God.
And we thank thee for this, but in a special way. We just would pray for anyone here that has lost it in their sins.
That they might indeed.
Confess Jesus as Lord.
And it would be to the glory of God the Father. We would ask this our God as we leave ourselves like here, and the worthy and the precious name of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
John 3:12-16
Reading
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191 one 9/1.
Seems to.
It would be kind of wrong to abandon John 3 before we even get to 1516 and that area.
Is that OK to continue on a little bit?
It's going to be good.
Should we start?
Why don't we start at?
3012.
And and get through 21.
To keep up our pace.
Stop breathing in 20 women. Yeah, OK.
John, chapter 3, verse 12.
If I have told you earthly things, and you believe not, how shall you believe if I tell you of heavenly things? And no man hath to send it up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man, which is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the servant in the wilderness, Even so must the other man be lifted up. And whosoever believeth in him should not perish and have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him.
Should not perish, but have everlasting life. 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 who is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
For everyone that doeth evil he gets polite. Neither cometh through the light, lest his deed should be reproved. But he that doeth truth come up to the light, that a disease may be made manifest, that they are wrought and gone.
Her old brother.
Harold Krauss some here knew years ago in vessel and took this chapter up and.
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At verse 12, the question how should he believe? If I tell you of heavenly things, he says the rest is grace. Is it going to stop there?
How she didn't believe I tell you heavenly things. But he said he went on to tell him heavenly things, so that's great.
No.
There's no mention of faith or believing for the 1St 11 verses in the chapter.
I think that's been stressed in the first couple readings that the work of God in a soul begins with his work by the Spirit and by the water.
And communicates life in a way that is inscrutable to us. As someone read an Ecclesiastes, we don't even know how life you know for everything man has figured out.
Even natural life is a puzzle to man.
More and more they're digging inside of cells and they're they're just fascinating themselves that a cell is just, it's like the most complex factory.
No man has ever built a factory the way God has built one human self.
And the mysteries of life, natural life are beyond men. And I think someone read in Ecclesiastes about and how unknowable it is, the way the body forms in the womb. And of course, it's, it's the same in the spiritual life. So we, we went through that already how the the wind blows where it lists and we see the outward effect of it. But what really takes place for God to produce life, you know, soul is inscrutable to us.
But one of the aspects of life is that it is faith. And so we have the word in verse 12. We have this word for the first time in the chapter.
Earthly things, heavenly things. And how shall you believe I tell you of heaven and things?
People can get all twisted up theologically.
And.
Some think well.
You have life, then you get faith and some say, well, you have faith and you need faith to get life. But in the word of God, life and faith, faith is one of the aspects of life. And so we have to see from Scripture that they are, they are united there together. It's just like a baby comes out of the womb and it breathes. That's what it does. No one is speaking. And so the life that we have.
A life that believes.
So we start to see the proof of it here in chapter in verse 11 and 12.
But the words of Lord Jesus spoke for his Spirit and truth, weren't they? They need the Spirit of God to disturb the spiritual things. Without that, someone can have Bibles and textbook and study at university and come up with theological solutions to what they think that what represents miss the thought entirely mixed with faith as you mentioned, and then we need the Spirit of God.
The Lord Jesus said departure that was going to come was going to show us.
Revealing to us no matter we have no need. That man teaches.
Experience the diet of some of our troops.
John's Gospel furnishes us with a beautiful picture of.
The the truth that progress is just brought out.
You know, cable companies like to sell you what they call a bundle package. You know, you get your Internet, you get your phone and.
Whatever else.
Is a bundled package, and in a certain sense life from God comes as a bundle package.
It comes with a ear to hear of faith, to believe where there was nothing before, and that example is given to us in the account of Lazarus and Chapter 11. Just turning to that.
00:10:00
In Chapter 11 of this Gospel.
Verse 43.
And when he had the spoken, he cried with a loud voice. Lazarus come forth, and he that was dead came forth, found hand and foot with grave clothes. His face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith of Islam, loose him and let him go. He was dead, says he that was dead came forth. How? When did he come forth? When he heard what the Lord said.
How did a dead man hear?
The hours coming when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that here shall live. It's a bundled package. When he works, he gives life. He gives a hearing here, and he gives faith to believe. And it's really seen in the raising of Lazarus. The dead heard and he came forth.
Mind following along in the first part of the chapter?
Understanding that he has received new life.
That in itself doesn't say the soul and that's where we're starting to get into in this chapter as as I think we referred to briefly in the readings in first John, this is he that came by water and blood, not by water only, but by water and blood. And so because of what we were and because of the the massive offense of sin before God, the blood had to be shed for God.
Interesting, and I know people.
Scratch their heads a lot about propitiation, but it's a wonderful and not that complicated truth to get hold of. But it's a wonderful truth. It's and Simply put, it's God's side of the cross. Speaking of Elijah.
You remember when he showed up at the widow woman?
And is that is that the same chapter we were in with you 17 I just want to read a passage out of that.
So he arrives in verse 10, first king 17 to the widow woman.
Gathering sticks. And he called to her, and said, Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel, that I may drink. And as she was going to fetch it, he called her and said, Bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread. And I have. And she said, as the Lord let God liveth, I have not a cake, but a handful.
Of meal in a barrel, and a little oil and a cruise. And behold, I am gathering 2 sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my sons, that we may eat it and die.
Dire situation. And Elijah says unto her, You're not go and do us. Thou hast said, but make me thereof a little cake 1St and bring it unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son. Now you have to conclude just on a human level. This is the most self occupied, selfish, disconnected human that he would run into this woman that's about to prepare. She's down to the very bottom.
She's about to prepare her last meal for her and her child. And he says, yeah, go do that. Indifference, it seems like. Make me a little cake first. What is that all about? I believe it's about this, that God's side comes first. And Elijah is a picture of God there. Make me a little cake 1St. And that's what the Lord Jesus has done on Calvary's cross, because he has addressed the outrage of sin before God. And this is, this is the foundation.
When you preach the gospel, take this side up primarily and 1St, or I should say 1St and primarily because it's the foundation of all the blessing that can flow from it.
Essence of propitiation is he is as as John writes in his epistle, he is not. He was. That's interesting too. He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, not for the whole world.
So it's for appreciation has nothing to do with the transfer of guilt.
It is God's side.
And God has God is the one against whom all sin has been committed. And when the Lord Jesus shed his blood from Calvary's cross, Gods and Majesty was vindicated. God has been horrified by that. And God is now free in righteousness to be the justifier of the Sinner.
00:15:09
And so when you preach that, then you can follow up and say to the Sinner, all things are ready.
God is now free to come out and bless you, no matter who you are or what you have done, because He's been satisfied, vindicated by the work of the Lord Jesus.
This of course leads us to verse 14 and not to jump ahead if others have comments on 13, but.
As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness.
Even so, must the Son of Man be lifted?
So we realize it's not just a question of giving me new life and sending me on my merry way.
That's water, but that the blood has to be there too. And in John 19 it's blood and water, and then the effect of it is the opposite. It's water. We've had that already in the readings, and now it's the blood. 21 is that the, you might say, the timing or the sense of our experience? The other course is historical in John 19, blood and water.
Two aspects of the wonderful work of Christ to vindicate God.
Glorify Him, and also glorify Him in the blessing of the city.
Back a little bit rather as you were missing there about the woman.
And that was, uh, gathering sticks. It's interesting that God wants to give us something better.
In the in the heavenly things that's only mentioned three times in scripture.
It's mentioned here, and then it's mentioned twice in Hebrews.
Where it it calls it better things.
And and it it says that meant Moses was to.
To make be sure that he made the the the articles of the Tabernacle after the pattern of heavenly things used to.
To make it exactly after that so heavenly things are better things. Heavenly things are life and I it just strikes me that that it says here that you read there in in first King 17 it says.
This is the little woman in verse 12 and she said, as the Lord thy God liveth I I have not a case but a handful of me on a girl and a little oil in a cruise and behold I am gathering 2 sticks.
That I may go in and dress it for me and my son. Now wouldn't you think she would have said that we may eat and sustain our lives?
But she doesn't say that. She says that we may eat it and die. I don't. I don't know if you eat to die, but we eat to sustain our lives. But even in fact that it, it makes an emphasis there is to let us know that Elijah was going to give her something better.
Some better things, something that would surpass.
What she was.
Gathered for just a little bit deep and as she as it burned her heart and mind, it was good and dust. That was it.
The lysis says the lychee says to her.
Fear not, go and do as Alice said.
And then of course, you know the rest of the story and she comes into a portion that doesn't waste, it just keeps going.
In pattern. So I I just wanted to bring out the thought of heavenly things. You get into Hebrews 8 and and five and then you get even 9 and 23 and it might be helpful to recall versus.
Equally, 85 is.
Well, if I start with first three, for every high creases or danger you also give some sacrifices. Wherefore it is necessary that this man is to have something somewhat also to offer, for if he were on earth, he should not be a precede. There are priests that offer gifts according to law we.
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Served onto an example of shadow heavenly things as Moses was admonished.
This is 8.
85 Osmosis was admonished of God when he makes the Tabernacle.
For foresee sanity that thou make all these things according to the pattern shown me in the mouth, but now happy of being the more excellent ministry.
But how much also is he in the media of a better covenant, which was established on better promises? So it's it's really encouraging to our hearts to realize that there's a heavenly things are better things. And that's what God wants to bring us into is the better things.
How thankful we can be for the Old Testament.
Some perhaps would not place importance on the Old Testament, saying that the New Testament you have the revelation of God, the person of Christ.
But I do believe that your testing is written. The 4th kind is written for our learning. And so we have this account of Elijah and Little woman.
I believe the oil is Speaking of the spirit of God. That's the meal and speak of Christ and these were available to this woman this loyalist meal and they told God send rain upon the earth. And so how wonderful that you and I we can.
Enjoy person's birth of our Lord Jesus Christ through the power.
And thank you, thank God, this goodness provide for us as we hope the rapture. But now we have also account from the Old Testament about how Moses scripted up the serpent.
In the wilderness.
And so we can look back at the, I believe it's Numbers 21, but we find there that the people state against God, against Moses.
That was sin. As a result, there were these fiery serpents that.
Slithered about among the people and they did the people much people died. It was a toxic fight and they prayed to Moses that you know, Moses would pray and ask God to remove these serpents, but actually God, he did something far more wonderful.
Not only did we move the surface, but he healed the snake bite.
And how could a person be healed? Just look.
They're always so simple.
What were they to look at?
Raisin, serpent and Hope.
And I agree to set up in a position in the camp that was easy to see.
So if one had been bitten, all they needed to look.
Look and live.
And how often we see that him, you know, there's life in a book that they crucified.
And it's a look of faith.
And that's what counts. I I believe here in this gospel, we get records to faith and believing about 100 times.
His faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Salvation.
I just appreciate the fact that we have another.
Lesson in the Old Testament the Old Testament in all this revealed in the new and helps us to understand that.
The work of Christ is required for your salvation and money.
So the importance of new birth that we had.
Without that man has no faith, would have no faith to look at the lifted up Son of God and believe. Without that new life there is no capacity to believe.
Man is totally bankrupt. Who's not over that? There's no capacity for it. He can't. He can't come to God. He can't produce anything for God. He can't have faith. And what's being presented now is the Lord Jesus Christ lifted up on the cross as the object of faith.
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And in believing.
Then the possession of eternal life. So there has to be new birth first for there to be a life that would believe God's testimony and have faith in the Son of man lifted up in Calvary's cross, his finished work. So that's why that has to come first in the chapter.
And then we come to this part that shows what faith does, or that faith has an object, and that object is the Son of Man lifted up. I if I be lifted up, he said in chapter 12, we'll draw all men unto me. He's the object of faith in that way, saving faith.
And so.
All that believe on him will not perish.
You know, it's an interesting word, isn't it? Perish.
We have foods we call perishables. They get spoiled and they're no longer any good for what they were intended for.
What a horrible thing.
For man to go into a waste eternity and never.
Never fulfill the place that God had intended him to fulfill.
Paris ruined eternally.
So those who believe.
Not only received eternal life, they'll never perish. They're going to fill the place that God intended them to fill in half.
We tend to fill in details, don't we, of in passages because we know other passages and we in our minds we pull them in.
So there's really not too much here about the work of Christ on Calvary's cross. It's just kind of suddenly implied lift it up. Well, does that mean raised up like I raised up Pharaoh or I raised up this king? No, it's lifted up and then over in John, I think it's the 8th chapter, the Lord said when ye hath lifted up the son of God. And so again, who did it did it? Man did it in responsibility. And these things are always woven together, but it's it's.
Yes, it's the work of Christ prefigured as Wally has quit before us in Moses lifting up the serpent, but the direction of faith is to the person.
Whosoever believeth in him and in verse 16, whosoever believeth in him, verse 18, he that believeth on him and it's it's just such good. It's good advice for us to when passing on the gospel to others to point them to a person and all the value. I, I read this years ago and it's I just, I just have enjoyed it ever since.
There's only maybe two times.
Where we're told in the New Testament to believe on his work for every 100 times we're told to believe on himself and the brother that was putting that out in a in in a book I was reading, he made this comment. He said all the value of his work is made good to the believer when he believes on his person because he knows what he did. It's wonderful. You don't even have to understand reconciliation to be reconciled.
You don't have to understand hardly anything, but you believe on God's Son and you're not going to believe on a dead person. And that's why resurrection is connected with believing in his person as we know from many gospel verses. But we point a soul and I know my neighbor who led me to the Lord who pointed me to Christ. And then as time went on after I would say I learned what he had done for me. So it's it's amazing that.
There's a little detail in Hebrews that said says almost all things in the law are purged by blood.
Because a really poor person could just bring some meals. That's just looking at Leviticus 5 and go ahead and read it. And that was the sin offering. And I'm one of that. That's how I came there. I came in with meals and I learned about the blood later on. Go ahead.
Because 511 But if you be not able to bring 2 turtles out, which is just the very least of the animal sacrifice offerings.
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Or two young pigeons. Then he that sin shall bring for his offering the 10th part of an Ethel fine flower for sin offering.
So it's it's the minimum, but it if it's the person of Christ and the fine flower, it's his personal.
Just as a textual note, this King James switching back and forth between eternal and everlasting, Just go with eternal. I think there's only two places in the New Testament where it's a different word, kind of a on forever everlasting ones in Jude. I can't remember what the other one is, but you can go with eternal all the way through here. It's the quality of the life that existed.
Before the world was in the sun himself.
He was that eternal life and I thought it was well explained by a couple of the brothers, the difference between the Holy Spirit quickening giving life new birth and Old Testament times to have life. But now we're talking about a different thing here because we're looking forward to the whole to the effect of the Son of God himself offering himself taking a new place on the other side of death and.
Communicates now the character of life that men never had before, and the Word of God calls it eternal life.
So verse 16 would would show us how God loved the world.
This is how God knows the world. He gave His only begotten Son.
You know God so loved the world.
Well, how? How do you still love it? He loved it in giving the dearest off because he caught his son.
And and as the previous verses.
He's the one that would lift it up. No man took his life from him. He laid it down with himself.
He gave his life and that's.
The emphasis.
God, that's how God what you know to give yourself.
So God loves.
And she did as a result of that love.
Yes, the first part of the verse I believe is about God, but the last part of the verse is about you and Lee. When we believe, then we have.
And that's wonderful. But right in the center of this verse, believe in King James Version is 25 words.
Have the word son, son, and that just speaks my own heart that God's desire is that our thoughts might indeed centered in his son. It's like yes, UN is at the center of the solar system. Yes, ON is at the center of God's voice.
You would have us.
Taking this thoughts about this son.
But I also enjoyed that.
I was listening to you again.
Podcast I think it was Sandy down he was bringing out that this verse John 316.
Was what the Lord spoke at the beginning of his ministry. 3 1/2 years of ministry and it's as though the Lord Jesus couldn't wait to reveal what was in the heart of His Father. He's talking about the love of God and he want to make it known. And I just really enjoyed that thought.
Put a a magnanimous subject.
Considered the love of God.
Sleeping.
So let's ask a question.
If new birth is life from God.
And the Old Testament Saints were born of God and they had that life. And they're surely because as I already had the basis of God giving life to begin with, even in new birth is the cross. And they're going to be in heaven. They're going to be caught up.
With New Testament Saints, why does God give eternal life?
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Now why isn't that life that he imparts at new birth in US?
What's the point?
John 17, verse 3.
New life doesn't bring us into fellowship with.
Father and the Son.
Internalized is what is the enjoyment of that fellowship, and so he wants far more than.
Those who are safe, who wants those that are in relationship with himself to enjoy that community of John 17, three, and this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. And that's really what He wants is communion with the Father and the Son, and also refine us by the power of the Holy Spirit that we communion of the Holy Ghost, that we enjoy it. And that's been his plan.
That's not a backup plan, that's that's the original.
Titus, I think Bruce, you mentioned this verse acknowledging Titus chapter one and verse.
To and hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie promised before the world began, but half in due times manifested his word through preaching and.
Give it again in a second, Timothy one.
Fallen apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus.
A promise made between the Father and the Son in a past eternity. They enjoyed that communion, a holy loving.
Sweet communion for all eternity and a promise was made in that inter trinitarian communion. We're going to bring others into this. Let's share this.
Now you get into the stratosphere. We're beyond, yeah.
Beautiful.
So we have.
Some titles here.
We have Son of Man in verse 13.
So the man lifted up first. Fourteen months.
We have God in verse 16 giving his only begotten Son.
That's I think something we only hear from John, that title only begotten Son.
We have we move on to verse 17. God sent his son.
Then in verse 18.
He that believeth not is condemned already, because he had not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
When you're a school boy or a school girl and you're writing a little essay.
And you tend to use the same word for the same concept.
And then your mom or your dad or your editor of the Internet or whatever you do these days, oh, you just, well, we'll just change that word to me. You know, we'll get the thesaurus out and we'll switch to word. So it's not tedious, right? So I'll say stop saying the word BUI bye bye. You use the word purchase and you just change it up just to make it read better, right? Not the way the word of God is. These titles mean things.
And I'll let somebody else.
Only begotten is.
I believe this might be wrong, but I believe the only other person in the New Testament.
That is called The only begotten is Isaac and Hebrews 11. By faith, Abraham offered up his only begotten son.
And we will look back in Genesis to find that God tells them to offer his only son. I'm only Isaac. Was it his only son?
No, yeah, wasn't his only son the way we would talk, but it was his only son. It was his only Isaac.
And so it was the one who occupied the chief place in his heart.
And so when you get the term only begotten, it speaks of the place that that one occupies, and the Father part.
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It's it's a term of wonderful affection. First begotten is a term of preeminence. He's the first begotten as well. That's a term of preeminence. But only begotten is the term of the place he has in the Father's affections. He's the only begotten.
Why was there no other way?
Because what was forfeited?
Was man's life.
And the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.
So man forfeited his life and sin.
No animal could give its life for a man's life.
It's not a mess.
Only a man can give his life for another man's life. What man could give his life for my forfeited life you couldn't do. Yours is forfeited too, not yours to give.
Only one.
Spotless, Perfect, holy.
Man, but there's more.
A mere man could not bear.
The judgment that must fall to vindicate the throne of God. He must be God to be able to bear it.
He must be a man to give his life for a man. He must be the God man.
Eternal Son Incarnate.
So you have the the the title husband.
These some of these young brothers married. You weren't a husband until you got a wife. Husband and wife are terms that go together.
And the term.
Son goes with father.
And the sun was the sun from all eternity.
There is an ancient heresy that resurfaces and gets recycled every once in a while.
That the sun only became the sun in time.
And.
I it was an older brother that Steve and I kind of grew up spiritually under.
He left fellowship, you know.
Difficulty. I heard he was taken up with a fellowship characterized by this error. I couldn't believe it.
He was on his deathbed. I went to see him.
I stood at the foot of his bed in Connecticut.
And I said you are in this such and such a fellowship from the city. Yes, I am.
He called it a different name than I did.
I said I've heard that there are two, two heresies connected with that.
One is the the fact that.
You hold that the sun was not the sun from all eternity, that he became the sun in time.
And I said the other is that the believer doesn't possess presently eternal life.
He started to give you. I was astonished. He started to give me scriptures to support both those ideas.
And I looked to the Lord, and I said quickly, you know, and.
I said it says for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. How do you give something you don't have?
How does that happen?
There are other verses I'm sure you might think of different ones, but some sober.
But these verses meanwhile, he has been preaching the gospel in a simple manner to children for decades. Probably uses this verse all the time.
And it can be grasped by a little child. And yet these things are so deep with that.
We could take this up every night for the rest of the year and we still have. You'd still be looking down deeper, yet the coin would still be going down, as John Kemp said. And so we have the Father and the Son both in eternal existence even before the world. But then there's the term the Son of God.
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That seems to me.
1000% positive on this, but when it says Son of God, it says a man who's the son of God.
And of course, Son of Mine is a different title that has to do with the place that God has now assigned him. Because remember, there's that ancient question, what is that?
And could have taken this up the other day, but when, when Joe Bretton, what raises the question, what is man? He starts to talk about man and his weakness and in his depravity drinks iniquity like water, et cetera. And he goes through that in the subsequent chapters. But then when you read it in Psalm 8 and you read it in Hebrews too.
It takes on an entirely different character. What is man now?
Like they hint at him we have I think it's 216 takes on a totally different character because it's the man after God's counsel is Christ. It's the last Adam, the 2nd man, the Lord out of heaven.
So that title, Son of Man, and I know I've heard you comment on Steven helpfully.
He seems to like to refer to himself in that way in light of the imminent rejection that was that was darkening around him.
There's a sense in which God raised the Lord Jesus up from amongst the rest of the dead in defiance of man.
He raised him up for his own glory.
And because it was the righteous thing to do.
What the world world said, but you know.
Heathen rage and the people imagined the vain thing they were against the Lord and against his anointing. God said no that's not I'm going to raise him in spite of war. Your rejection of him instead of that one. That's a beautiful side of things to the renewed heart we we love to think of the reward that God has already given the Lord Jesus and So what is man is the one who's.
You see, already crowned with glory and honor, seated on the right hand of the majesty. So there's connected that two sides of that coin, rejection as as God's man, and exalted is God's man.
So in a sense, there's only two men. You say what about me, what about us? You're hidden away in that second time.
Your life is it with Christ and God. You're all set. You're in that second man.
There's a lot in the slog that might be saved is easier.
Lord our God sent sent his son. There was there was no other way. It was it was the only thing that he could do in in sending the son to send this one.
To pay the price to clear the debt.
But it says.
In verse 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world.
Didn't want to condemn the world, but there was only one way, one thing to do in sending the sun that.
The world through him might be saved.
Might be saved and, and I think it's wonderful to think, brother, just take a little time sometime just to think of the wonderfulness of being safe.
So you're safe. This there's what's coming upon this scene is undescribable.
Sometimes we get a little, a little smoke of the pit, you know, and it comes before.
We see things in there in a in a horrible state of things, but it is it hasn't even begun when the Saints were taken home.
It's going to be horrible. It's a wonderful thing that God sent his son, that the world might be saved. So think about it sometimes, what it is to be saved, to be saved.
That's AI think you brought up a four brother that.
Verse 16 shows how much God loved the world. That's what that little word. So it's a qualifier. In other words, here's the measure of how much God's love to this world is.
What is the measure he gave his only begotten Son? Can you measure it? It's infinite.
Nonetheless, that little word so as a qualifier.
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Those are the end of the chapter and you get the love of God again.
There's the Father, verse 35.
The Father loveth the son.
Doesn't say the father so loved the son.
As infinite as the love of God is, and giving his only begotten Son, and has a qualifier.
But when the Father's love to the Son is brought up, there is no soul, there is no qualifier. It's like it's beyond infinite nothing to qualify it. The Father love of the Son. There is a parallel way of taking that up on another side of things in Ephesians 3 when it comes to the truth of the mystery and the prayer of the apostle.
He prays that verse 17 Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, and you being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with All Saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, all qualifiers of what?
The mystery.
Jew and Gentile, joint heirs, joint partakers in Christ by the Gospel. So on Mystery length, Brett Jensen height. And it just trails off into Infinity.
But they're qualifiers. Length, breadth, depth and height are dimensions, the word. So it's a dimension. What's the next verse? It's a separate thought. And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, No dimension.
No dementia. As wonderful as the mystery is the truth of Christ and the Church.
The love of Christ has no dimension comes to you and I, and it's the same with the love of God to this world. It has a dimension infinite as it is. So when it comes to love of the Father to the Son, there is no qualifying.
You can't put dementia on it.
As to the character that that love takes?
It takes on a different character that it's the same word as John 316 as it is in John 335I think it's both agape, but in John 316 it's the love of compassion. I think we were talking about this the other day. It's the love of compassion. But when it's the Father in love with the Son or the when the Lord Jesus says to you and me as believers, the Father himself loves you.
It's the love of complacency.
It's a love of of enjoyed relationship. That's a different thing.
It doesn't say that I am aware of, even though we sing it. Jesus loves all the little children. He says suffer the children to come unto me, and he does love them, love them because he's God. But the love of Jesus of Christ is the love of relationship with you and me, but it's God in his fullness of his entire.
Multiple personhood, if I could put it that way, for lack of good words, that has come out in compassion to Mass. He loves math.
He loves man Man is his masterpiece.
Not even angels are as glorious to God as men. They have power. But none of this is masterpiece.
This word condemned I.
I I misunderstood that for many years.
Told my dear father before he was saved and we had a lot of heart to heart conversations.
Said.
Dad here. It's not that you're waiting for condemnation. You're condemned already.
You know I was wrong really, and it wasn't till I started to.
Recently to look up words more with this little tool here, you know, you can look up words so easily rather than the old concordance which I still have, but and I learned something from J&D and that is that.
When it's the word crema K in in English letters for Greek words KRINA prima.
Which is like our word crime. It's an it's like an indictment. You are indicted. I properly should have said to my dad, you've been indicted and and the record of your indictment exists because condemnation is fine.
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And so in some verses like enrollments, you don't have both in there. It'll have indicted, you'll have prima, and then it'll say judgment may lead to condemnation of the Sinner. That's fine. There's no appeal in that court. It's Kata Karima, and you can look them up on your little phone there if you have a, you know, have strongs on it and it's very helpful. And so you see those things together. So in that hymn where it says once we stood in condemnation.
We're not really accurate.
It it sounds, it's poetic, it's properly speaking, once we stood in judgment or indictment. And so J&D uses the word judgment for crema for indictment and and condemnation for the final thing.
It's just helpful to see that that little difference.
A condemned criminal is just waiting The execution of the sentence. He's condemned the trials taking place. It's done.
Just back to that thought of eternal life and communion and.
Godhead in that circle of fellowship we've been brought into.
Umm, it's been touched on in the meetings earlier. The place God is bringing us into a communion and fellowship is one of being a worshipper.
And as we go on in John's gospel, we find then in chapter 4 that there's the water that the Lord offers that woman be a well of water in her springing up into eternal life. And he takes up the subject of worship, this eternal life we have.
It's it's a similar thought. And in this way with due birth, there's a capacity there.
Oh well, a spring. Let me put it this way. A spring. You know what a spring is? A spring of water. A springs power.
Is not measured in its capacity.
It's measured in its power to overflow, because if it can't overflow, it doesn't give you anything. It's not a well can't overflow, it doesn't give you anything.
What the Lord was offering that woman was not another well.
He was offering her what was really going to be future the Spirit of God that would be given to those who put believed in him who possessed the eternal life of the Spirit of God would be the power for that spring to overflow and worship. May that worship God must worship him in spirit and in truth. That's the power of overflow and worship and so.
We have eternal life and then we get the thought of the Spirit of God as the overflow. The object is that it brings us into the place of worshippers. I want to connect that with a verse in Mark. I've got this from someone else and I still enjoyed it. March 14.
We know the account of the woman that anointed the Lord's anointment.
Verse eight. She has done what she could. She has come before him to anoint my body to the very end. Verily I say unto you, wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she have done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her. What had she done? It was worship. Wherever this gospel is this wonderful.
This story is going to be told of a worshiper because that is the true object and end of the gospel.
Is to take.
Lost sinners.
And bring them into that circle of communion, the Father and the Son, in the enjoyment of the life eternal, and the power of the Spirit of God to be worshippers for the joy of His own heart, His.
The object of the Gospel. So the Lord forever links this worshippers.
With wherever the gospel will be told, and because she is an example of its true object.
And when we're all there worshippers in His presence, the full object of the gospel will be realized and the full satisfaction of the heart of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
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But he wants that from us now.
It's a present possession of eternal life.
The Father seeketh such to worship Him not later on down the road.
So there are. Let's see, our time is up. But.
Getting back to the brother's comment at the very beginning of the meeting about the Spirit of God.
The Spirit of God as a divine person.
Brings new life to us, we read in in Ephesians 2.
That were dead have been quickened together with him.
And there are verses like we could read 2nd Thessalonians 2. I'm not sure I read this the other day.
2nd Thessalonians 213 and there are verses of similar character in Peter.
That expresses the work of the Spirit of God to bring life.
Verse 13 of 2nd Thessalonians 2 We are bound to give thanks all the way to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you who spoke about that to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth, whereas we called you by our gospel to you obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Those two verses kind of link up with Romans 828 through 31 or two where you have the whole, the whole carrying out the the actualization of what God has chosen us for, chosen us. He's picked out a destiny that he has chosen us for. He calls us, he justified. He sanctifies us, justifies us.
Process.
But the work of the Spirit of God, as we read earlier in John 3, is that wind that blows where it lists it. It produces life by the water and the Spirit. But now believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, since the work of Calvary is completed, beholden the Lord Jesus is glorified. When you believe to the saving on him, to the saving of your soul, there's something else the Holy Spirit does. He indwells you.
You have a divine person dwelling. That's something different.
And that is the source of our union with Christ as our head in heaven. Union we have with one another. And He is the source of understanding, discernment of holiness and worship, and understanding and being guided into all things. Yes.
Privilege that testament sense did not happen.
And the proof of that is in John 7.
Fact that it's exclusive. Tim was using that word today. Exclusive. This is exclusive.
Verse John 7 and 38 he that believeth on me as the Scripture have said out of his belly shall flow as Steven was saying this is the spring type action flow rivers of living water and then we have the exposition of Scripture by Scripture which is.
Extremely helpful.
But this big key of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive for the Holy Ghost was not yet given, was that Jesus was not yet glorified.
We've taken up.
What what we could call the Gospel, Wally.
And the gospel is.
We have, we sometimes have, while he doesn't have this adventure, but we sometimes have the attitude that the gospel is like Christianity 101 like when you go to college and they give you these entry level courses, 101 and then you move on to other things. And so if we have gospel meetings in the, in the, in the room and in the meeting room, all this, this young brother, he got saved last year. Let's have him take the gospel. I'm not a fan of that.
This is just me personally.
The gospel is not Christianity 101 and the gospel #1 There's a gift associated with telling it out publicly. That's one side of it, but also the gospel we spend.
01:05:04
I don't know. How many years have you been studying the truth of the Gospel, Wally? 50 years. 60 years.
60 years and for me it was only 45 or so, but it's I still I, I'm fast, I I'm fascinated with it, the aspects of it. Justification. What does that mean? My dear brother friend Nick Simon wrote a beautiful paper on it. I can see the 80 sanctification.
We could go on appreciation subsequent to all these things, aspects of the gospel.
So if you're in a little meeting and you feel like you're being starved and not enjoying the gospel, just to hold a night a week to taking up the gospel in a reading, we we did that during COVID. It was really edifying.
Started with Genesis 22 and went to Exodus 12. We went to Leviticus.
16 and we moved on through there.
Went to all the offerings. The gospel is not 101 it's it can be, but it's just a profoundly deep and edifying subject and it it.
Increase your appreciation of the love of God and.
Ability to bring a Bullock instead of, like I first did, a couple handfuls of flour.
Call number 93.