Address—Bill Prost
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Could we sing together the 1St 3 verses of #77 in the appendix?
Very beautiful hymn written by a woman by the name of Anna Cousins, Anna Ross Cousins, but really inspired by a man who lived 200 years before she did, or 250 years. Samuel Rutherford who lived way back in the late 1600s or mid 1600s I suppose.
Very, very Godly man who didn't know nearly as much truth as most of us know here today. But.
Wonderfully devoted to the Lord number 77, the 1St 3 verses.
The sands of Christ.
Mas.
The hell are you strong?
Let's look for the Lord for yourself.
Our loving God and our Father, we look up to Thee now this afternoon, and we thank thee again for the words of this hymn that we have been singing. We know indeed that the sands of time are sinking, and we thank Thee that as this takes place indeed, the dawn of heaven breaks.
And we thank you for that bright prospect, Lord Jesus, of thy near return. Perhaps today, but while we are down here, we know that as we have also been singing together, though we're measuring everything in our lives and putting it before us according to Thy perfect wisdom.
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Help us to recognize this. Our God. Give us help as we open Thy word together. We pray that Thou will encourage our hearts this afternoon, but if necessary, that Thou wilt stir them up too. But above all, Lord Jesus, that Thou mightest be glorified and that we might be drawn closer to Thee. We ask all this now, and also look to Thee for those whom we know are already.
We pray for thy care and keeping over them each one.
Ask all in the precious and worthy name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Turn with me, please, to Second Timothy, chapter one. Second Timothy, chapter one.
I'd like to read just a few verses this afternoon and dwell on them a little, although we may refer to others as time goes on. But what I have before me is particularly in this chapter, verse 7, Second Timothy one, and verse 7.
But in order to get the connection, we'll read from verse 5.
When I call to remembrance now, this is of course the apostle Paul writing to Timothy, a relatively young man.
Whom he could call his own son in the faith.
When I call to remember the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois and thy mother Eunice, and I am persuaded that in thee also.
Wherefore I put thee in remembrance, that thou stir up the gift of God.
Which is in thee by the putting on of my hands.
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the Gospel according to the power of God.
Who hath saved us, and called us with a holy and holy calling?
Not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.
We've often made this remark before, but at this point in his life, the apostle Paul could have been.
A broken man.
He had labored very strenuously for the Lord, and suffered greatly too. Labored fervently in the gospel and in the truth.
And here he was knowing that he was not at this point going to be released from prison. We know that he was in prison prior to this, and we can presume that he was released, perhaps for a short time. It's not totally clear from scripture just how or when that took place, but very likely he was released.
But this time, he says later on in the 4th chapter.
I am now ready to be offered up in the time of my departure is at hand.
He could have been a broken man, because later on in this same chapter he has to say, all they which are in Asia be turned away from me. The scene perhaps of his most, shall we say.
Beneficial laborers, particularly Ephesus, where he had spent a long time, two years, and where there had been such a bright testimony that went out to all Asia.
Both in the gospel and in the truth. And now he has to say all day which are in Asia, be turned away from me.
But as we've often said before, and pardon my repeating it, although Second Timothy dwells on how we are to conduct ourselves when there is a departure, when the days are dark, when the truth is being given up, when there is.
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That which is potentially discouraging, if we can put it that way. Although that is the character of Second Timothy, there is not one hint of discouragement in the whole book.
And if you and I had been privileged to go there and meet with the apostle Paul in prison?
We would not have found a broken man. We would not have found a man who was saying it's no use, I have done so much and look what's happened.
Sometimes we can get that way, you know, sometimes perhaps, and I'm looking into the faces of some and perhaps many who have sought to please the Lord. I know that. And perhaps you have worked hard seeking to preach the gospel faithfully, seeking to carry on in the truth, and you don't see what you would like to see as a result of it.
Remember, you are not alone. The Apostle Paul who was a most faithful man.
And a man who labored, perhaps more than he could say.
I labored more abundantly than they all, and yet we find at the end of his life that things were not the way he might have expected. Yesterday we had a good word in Ephesians 5, and particularly in Ephesians 6, where it was pointed out that sometimes parents and husbands and wives and maybe masters.
Seek by the grace of God to do things properly and things don't always work out right. Yes, we have to be prepared for that.
But here in second Timothy chapter one, what is Paul seeking to do to Timothy? And allow me, if I may be so bold, to seek to do that for my own heart and for each one here this afternoon. He says in verse 6, wherefore?
Why the wherefore? Oh, because he was speaking to a young man who had a good background.
Now, that isn't true of everyone here in this room. I don't want to center him out, but he said it out of his own mouth. Our brother Bruce said that he wasn't saved till he was 23, and even now he told us that his own father at an advanced age is not the Lord's.
Yes, we are thankful when there are those who are saved.
Out of homes where they didn't perhaps have a good background, but many here have a good background. Timothy could look back to a mother and a grandmother who had been godly people.
I remember not too long ago talking to a young man and we started to look back in his genealogy.
And I said to him, just think, just think, you have the privilege of being the 8th generation of a family gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Oh what a privilege. And many here share that privilege. Maybe, maybe not 8 generations, but many here have been brought up.
Under the sound of the word of God.
Now, sometimes you and I might look back on our past and say everything wasn't always said and done properly and maybe there was failure. But let's always remember that we are, I hope, where we are. Not so much because of our background, not so much because of the brothers and sisters, although we are thankful for everyone of them.
But for the Lord and who he is, and Timothy has that brought before him here.
But what does Paul say here? Wherefore I put the in remembrance that they'll stir up the gift of God, which is in thee.
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If you look in the Darby translation, it's an even more explicit word. The word there I believe is rekindle.
Rekindle.
You know, Timothy, it seems, was a somewhat reticent man. He wasn't one of those. Go forward.
Face to the wind, if you like. Type of individuals. He was somewhat reticent, and no doubt he felt it very keenly as he saw the one who had been his mentor, the one who had done so much for him, shut up in prison, and perhaps even more.
Hard on Timothy was to have to look around and see what we mentioned a few moments ago that.
Those to whom Paul had been used in most blessing, we're now turning away from them and saying, Paul, your brand of Christianity doesn't suit us. That heavenly calling, no, that's too difficult. And everything that goes along with it. Yes, we want to live for the Lord and we want to do in a general way what's right.
And you see that exemplified in what the Lord has to say to Ephesus 30 years after this.
In Revelation chapter 2, but the spark, the real.
Inner motif for it all was missing, wasn't it? Thou hast left thy first love. And so Paul here says to Timothy.
Re Kindle.
I wanna say that to each one here today, there is an opportunity to rekindle and we are going to look a little bit at this seventh verse. We won't worry too much about the excuse me.
We won't worry too much about the last part of verse six, except to say that the gifts were given from a risen Christ in glory. And I believe in the days of the early church, the apostles in some cases had the administration of those gifts. And so Paul could say the gift which is indeed by the laying on of my hands. Paul had recognized in Timothy a godly young man recognized one who had potential, who had.
To follow the Lord. And that gift in that sense, had been communicated through Paul. But that's not the point we want to make today. The point we want to make today is that Timothy, I believe, was beginning to be a little cast down. He was beginning to flag a little.
Have you ever felt that way? I have. I don't mind confessing that I have felt that way.
Where are things headed? What is going to happen?
But then there's encouragement here, tremendous encouragement, and I want to look for a few moments at verse seven and see how Paul addresses the issue.
First of all, he says.
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear.
Fear is often spoken of in the Bible and we don't intend to go through the whole question of it. Just as an aside, if any have read, uh, the magazine The Christian, there was a recent issue on that whole subject and we aren't going to try and recap everything that was there. But the point is, fear is mentioned many times in the Word of God.
And there are if we can use the expression.
Good kinds of fear. There are good kinds of fear.
The fear of God is often spoken of in Scripture, a very important thing, and it was commented on in the reading so that we don't need to be.
Going over all of that, but as was very aptly explained, fear for the believer, the fear of God is the fear of doing that which would displease the Lord. Very, very good. The fear for the believer of the Lord is the fear of doing that which would displease the Lord. That's a good, healthy kind of fear.
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There was also a fear.
And we will only mention it in passing. We tread on very holy ground that the Lord Jesus felt as He was going to the cross. We get it in Hebrews chapter 5. It says there that he cried to His Father. It says with strong crying and tears to him that was able to save him from death.
And was heard in that he feared.
Yes, he feared the prospect of being made sin for you and me. He feared the prospect of going into death.
A prospect which he didn't have to face as a sinless man, but he would end to death with all its terrors, so that you and I could have the sting of death removed. There was a fear there, a right and proper kind of fear.
But there is a kind of fear, more than one kind of fear that we should not have.
We don't want to dwell on it, but very often fear in our own lives is the product of what is unjudged in our own hearts. He who is afraid is often afraid because there is that which is in his or her own heart which is unjust.
We don't have to go very far in man's history to see that, do we? Adam hid behind the trees of the garden with Eve too. Why? Oh, because they had a bad conscience and they were afraid of the presence of God.
Going on, we find in the book of Job, here was an upright man, a man to whom even the Lord himself could pay tribute. And Satan himself, it doesn't seem, could pick holes in Job's character.
But when the Lord allows Satan in one fell swoop to take away everything that Job had.
We find there in the very early chapters of Job, this godly man who walked before the Lord in integrity.
Is brought to the point where he says that which I feared have come upon me. Oh my, why? So Joe, what's wrong? Ah, deep down inside, Joel knew somehow that there was something that was not right that needed to be dealt with. And it takes 40 chapters to get to the root of it, doesn't it? But the Lord does the work until finally Job gets clear of that route.
And going on down further, we find the Lord Jesus standing before Pilate.
Here he was, as far as this world is concerned, the prisoner.
And there he stands before Pilate, having endured that awful Roman scourge and having been ill treated and humiliated in every possible way.
I've seen videos and maybe you have two and pictures of those who perhaps in Eastern countries and Muslim countries have been let out to be executed.
And as they are let out, what kind of a posture and attitude do they have? Oh, they have a posture of being utterly beaten, don't they? Their heads are down like this. Some of them are in tears, totally humiliated and shamed and just waiting for the executioner's sword or whatever it might be. But here the Lord Jesus stands before Pilate, knowing full well what is ahead of them.
And who's afraid?
Who's afraid?
Pilot, pilot, He was already afraid. And then when the Lord Jesus speaks to him.
Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice. When he heard that saying, Pilate was the more afraid.
But not the Lord Jesus. And how many times has the Lord given believers down through the ages that boldness to stand there?
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While their tormentors were afraid.
Maybe I tell too many stories, but it takes me back to a time well over 500, maybe close to 600 years ago now, when a man by the name of John Huff from Bohemia, what is now the Czech Republic, stood before the German Emperor Sigismond.
There he stood, behold, before that August body of leaders of the Roman Catholic Church and civil leaders and everything, knowing full well that he was very likely and was eventually LED out to be burned as at the stake.
And he quietly stood there in all the dignity that Christ gave him, and reminded Sigismond of the safe conduct that he had been given to the conference, and of how the Emperor had broken his word. He reached his conscience.
And that emperor blushed to the roots of his hair in front of that man, and quailed before him. Why? Oh, because there was moral power there, and he was afraid.
And 100 years later, when they tried to get the emperor of Germany at that time to do the same thing to Martin Luther, to break his word, offering Luther a safe conduct and then breaking his word. Oh, no, he said. I'm not going to blush the way Sigismund had to blush. No way.
He wouldn't do it. But anyway, what do we have here? God hath not given us the spirit of fear. I want to impress that on our hearts today, because the spirit of fear can take many forms.
Sometimes we are afraid of what is going to happen. Shall we say it?
For the testimony.
Are we afraid for that?
Concerned. We ought to be burdened, yes, but afraid? No. Why not?
Oh, because you and I are not gathered to numbers. We are not gathered to one another. We are gathered, I trust, to that one and to His name, the Lord Jesus Christ.
And if we have him before us, there is no room for fear.
But sometimes, you know, we are afraid for ourselves and maybe we don't want to admit it, but as someone has remarked in the past, and it's a very good word, he said, often we are afraid of ourselves and for ourselves. Why is that? Why is that?
Oh, it's because shall I say it? And.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not pointing the finger anywhere, but right back here that kind of fear comes.
From being occupied with myself and what is going to happen to me? What is going to happen to me?
Fear.
Yes, it's a healthy thing to be afraid, as we said, of displeasing the Lord, To be afraid for myself that I may end up being lured away by the power of Satan because I haven't got my eye on the Lord and taken down a wrong path.
Some of us are old enough here to remember a brother from the Chicago area by the name of John L Erosman.
You have to be old to remember him. He went to be with the Lord in 1965.
And I can remember well his ministering.
He always had very connected thoughts, very, very orderly.
And he wasn't a man given to emotion. Those who remember him, he wasn't given to that kind of thing.
The only time I ever saw tears in his eyes.
And it really went to my heart as a young man because he talked about being faithful to the Lord and he talked about going on faithfully for him.
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And he said, I believe the Lord will have those who answer to Philadelphia.
Until he comes.
And then he got a few tears in his eyes and he said, and I trust by his grace that you and I and he spoke. He said, and I, I trust I will be among them. The time he said those words, he was probably even a bit older than I am now.
And I thought, are you afraid? Are you afraid of that really? Because he was a kind of a man that sat behind the mics in the front row and took part in conferences. He was a kind of a man that even Armstead Barry would defer to. And he said one time, you know, whenever we get a really tough question, we just look at Brother Arrowsman. Maybe that was a bit misplaced, but I don't think so. The point is.
None of us are immune to those influences. But what do we have here? God has to not given us the spirit of fear.
But of what?
Of power.
We wanna talk about that for a couple of minutes because it doesn't say God has given us power. Now He does give us power.
But we can interpret that in the wrong way.
Sometimes we want power as a display when we really aren't equipped to use it properly.
And it's important to be able to use properly the power the Lord gives us.
That's why it says in the address to Philadelphia in Revelation chapter 3, thou hast a little strength. Why that all because you and I have to recognize that with all that the Lord has been gracious to give us in these last days, we are a testimony to the ruin of the church and we have to remember that we can't start, if I can use the term, throwing our weight around as if we.
The times that Paul lived in, as if we lived in the times of Pentecost. No, Paul in Second Timothy is showing us energy, if you like, but in the last days?
Why do I say we have to be careful about power?
I mean, do you use an illustration?
As most of you know, my wife and I moved a couple of years ago from our home in Hamilton where we had lived for over 40 years. We moved to the Rio Ferry area and in that area, especially in the summer months, of course, boating is very popular. And a little while ago they had a regatta in Rio Ferry there with all kinds of boats on display, sometimes some old ones that were very interesting and sometimes some.
New ones and some big ones and so on. But among other things, they had some races, boat races, and I didn't see it happen, but others who were eyewitnesses told me about it, about one man who was.
Anxious to race his boat. And he wasn't that young. I think he was probably in his 60s. And he had a really speedy boat, tremendous motor in it. And of course, when the signal was given, they all took off and he was really moving, I guess. But what happened? Oh, that motor was so powerful that eventually, I don't know whether he crested a wave or just what.
Happened, but anyway his boat became airborne.
The wind caught it from the underside, took it up into the air, spilled him right out of it into the water, smashed the boat to pieces as it hit the water and killed him instantly. Oh, there was plenty of power, wasn't there? Lots of power. But it didn't do what he expected it to do, the boat.
Had it gone on, its course might have won the race, but somehow that power was his undoing.
You know, we have to be careful about asking for power, but I believe the spirit of power is this, the spirit of power is this.
That in everything that you and I undertake with the mind of the Lord.
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All the power of God is behind us. Isn't that beautiful? And that's why the Lord says to Philadelphia, Thou hast a little strength. Why all? Because the Lord is the same, His word is the same. The Spirit of God is still here, and there is no reason. And we have said this before.
Why any one of us cannot enjoy the Lord individually?
Just as much as anyone did right at the beginning of the dispensation.
And if the Lord gives you and me something to do?
We cannot limit what the Lord can do.
When we are in the place where he can do it.
That is in the recognition of the ruin of the Church. That is in the recognition that we cannot pretend to have the power of Pentecost.
And allow me to say this, because this is not specifically a young people's meeting, but I wanna say this to the young people here, and maybe those of us that aren't so young needed to. And that is that, as Timothy is told in the first epistle, the real power in his life starts with a godly walk.
A godly walk. That's where the power is.
The power is in a godly walk.
I say this very kindly because God is using many in the world today, and we are thankful for it. We are very thankful for it. He's using many here too, and we are thankful for it. We are thankful, for example, for what the Lord is doing in Brazil and what and those whom He is using in that work and so on. We're thankful for that.
But.
It starts.
With a godly walk and the recognition of where we are in the church's history. And so the Lord says to Timothy, let no man despise thy youth, That's good, but be thou an example of the believers. And then he details all of that. And it's only later on at the end of the chapter that he talks about being a help to others.
And teaching others and so on. Very, very important.
And so if you and I perhaps wonder, well, what would the Lord have me do? And where would he have me go? And I'd like to serve him, but what would he have me do? I say to my own heart, as I say to you, start out first of all with a godly walk and walking according to God's Word, and then do what's right in front of you.
Simply do what's right in front of you, and I can assure you that if you start out that way.
You will never find that. You have to say, well, I I'd like to do something for the Lord, but I haven't any idea what he would have me do. No, the Lord doesn't do that with us.
He wants willing servants, but he wants those who are serving because they have walked before him in the right way. Well, our time is going.
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power. One more little word. The word for power. Here is the word that is often used of God's power. I don't know Greek, but anybody can look this up. The Greek word used here for power is the root word of our English word dynamite.
There's real power there. If you're walking before the Lord, don't worry about the power.
And of love. And of love.
Power and of love. Why does he have to emphasize that? You and I would think that in a day of ruin when there was a giving up and some unfaithfulness, that perhaps Paul would have used a different word and might have said the spirit of power and of truth or something like that. But he says love.
And notice the first verse of the next chapter, chapter 2.
Thou therefore, my son, be strong. In what? In the truth.
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No. In the grace, in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Why does he say that?
Oh, I believe Paul recognized, and I speak again to my own heart because the tendency is there that when there is a giving up, there is a tendency sometimes to use human energy to try and control things and bring things back into line. Isn't that true? That is our natural human tendency.
And human energy has always been the vein of the Church.
When the spiritual power declines.
I can well remember.
When my late father-in-law told, he told me a story that happened when he was a relatively younger man and he had gone to a Bible conference at which his own father, Harry Hayhoe, whom I remember well, he was there too and sad to say.
There had been an open meeting where there was.
A very evident lack of the leading of the Spirit in some of the ministry, and an evidence, sad to say, of the flesh being exhibited.
And he told me of how he went up to his father afterward and said, father.
Don't you think now he had his tongue in his cheek when he said this? Needless to say, said Father, don't you think that maybe we need to organize things a little better and control things a little better here so that all this doesn't happen?
And he told me what his father said. And of course, having known his father, I can just imagine the way he said it. And he knew very well, of course, what the answer would be. The answer was, son, it's far better to be reminded of our weakness than to cover it up with human arrangement. Very definitely, Very definitely.
But at the same time, we need to remember.
That the strongest power to keep us walking before the Lord is not human energy. It's not a legal standard. It's not a list of do's and don'ts. What is it? It's the power of the enjoyment of Christ in the heart and the understanding more and more the deeper understanding of His.
Grace.
And that's why I believe love is mentioned here, because the word for love here once again is the word for divine love, Divine love. And that's what ought to be operative among us. And as we've often heard, and it bears repeating, true divine love on the one hand, does not pass over that which is a dishonor to the Lord. Natural love may do that.
Divine Love does not do it, but at the same time Divine Love keeps on loving.
Even when the object of that love does not naturally seem very lovable.
This morning, our brother Rob was asking the children, do your parents like it when you're bad? And they all said no. And then he said, but do they love you when you're bad? And I was glad to hear them. Those that he asked say yes. They knew that they came from that kind of a home.
You know, the Sunday school with which I was connected for many years in Hamilton. If I had asked many of those children, they probably would have said no, my dad doesn't love me when I'm bad. He kicks me around, he beats me, and so on. Because many of them came from ungodly homes and from broken homes and from homes where alcohol and drugs and abuse and everything else was rampant.
I was thankful to hear those children very.
Confidently and in a good, clear, strong voice, say that.
That is what ought to be evident, and it's the spirit of divine love, the spirit of divine love. Do I always carry that spirit? And finally it says.
And of a sound mind.
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Sunny and on an unusual expression, and it doesn't occur very often in the Word of God. Some time ago I looked it up just to see and it's much easier now you. I can still remember having to go through Wigram's Greek, or in the case of the Old Testament, his Hebrew Concordance, to try and find out how many times a certain Greek or Hebrew word.
Occurred in the Bible and we were thankful for the tremendous input that he had the whole of Christianity owes a great debt to GB Wigram because as a wealthy man he spent his money among other things to do the research and produce that document long before the days when you could simply.
Grab it on the Bible program on the Internet or something like that.
But he had to do the work, and of course, being an eminent Greek and Hebrew scholar himself, he was able to do it. But anyway, I looked up this word and it doesn't occur very many times in the New Testament. It's a variant of it is often translated sober, sober.
A variant of it also occurs in the case of the man in among the Gadarenes. You'll remember who could say to the Lord, My name is Legion. And when the Lord cast out those demons, it is recorded that he was sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.
A variant of that word. So what does it mean to have a sound mind?
That means a number of things to me.
One thing that I suggest is important is to recognize that all around us in this world we are seeing those and it affects us too, who do not have what Scripture calls a sound mind. Jay and Darby uses the words, I believe, wise discretion.
But he also makes the remark in his ministry that I have never forgotten. He says we talk of common sense, but man often forgets that it is God that gave it to him and God that preserves it to him. That is true. And when man departs from God, he often departs from common sense.
Let me use an illustration.
When I was in university, I had to study briefly the theory of evolution.
And I can remember at the beginning of the textbook. Excuse me.
The author of that textbook, who was evidently otherwise a brilliant man with a PhD from Harvard University.
Said the evolutionary theory is a fact. It has the same status as every other scientific fact.
And then in the very next paragraph he says we may well assume.
And I remember looking at that when I was only 17 years old and thinking this man is somehow he's lost it with his PhD proceeding to call something a theory and then tell me it's a fact in one sentence. And then the very next paragraph tells me that relative to that fact, he has to start assuming something.
Common sense not there. And so with many other things in this world.
And I say to you, on every moral and spiritual subject you will find the world has lost its common sense, because as our late brother, and again I'll quote Harry Hayhoe, every time you and I think we think wrong on every moral and spiritual subject, unless our thoughts are founded on the language and on the wisdom of Scripture.
Absolutely true.
Having a sound mind means to have our thoughts formed by God's wisdom in every moral and spiritual subject Yes, I can learn computer technology from a man of the world yes, I can learn mathematics from the the man of the world. And in my case, I could study medicine and learn much from those who were not believers because they knew a lot having.
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Uh, been in the medical field.
And studied very aptly the particular line of things that they were in but.
On moral and spiritual subjects, if we want a sound mind, we cannot have our thoughts formed by the wisdom that is of this world.
But there's another thought I'd like to bring in with a sound mind, and that is this. As I say, J&D uses the term wise discretion. How does that come in in spiritual things? It comes in in this dispensation by a walk with the Lord.
I can learn much of the Word of God, I can read it, and I encourage each one here to read the Word of God as much as you can.
But I've told this story before, but it bears repeating. Way back about 150 years ago, a young man was writing letters to a well taught brother.
And he had some very difficult questions.
And the brother in question was very well equipped to answer those questions. But after about the third or maybe the 4th letter, the brother in writing back to him after having answered the question said I want to make a comment. He said, based on the way you are writing to me and the content of your letters, I suspect that you.
Are studying your Bible too much and not reading it enough?
Kind of a mouthful, isn't it? Studying your Bible too much and not reading it enough? What does that mean?
Oh, I know what he meant. He meant that that young man was studying the Bible the way he'd go out of textbook in university or in high school. He was looking at it intellectually rather than reading it as if it were a revelation directly from God, addressed not to his mind, but to his heart and his conscience.
And if you and I go at the Word as an intellectual thing, what happens? We get it out of balance, because there is much in the Word of God that has to be kept in proper balance, and it can only be kept in balance by a walk. And we had that before us yesterday in communion with the Lord and walking in the power of the Spirit of God.
I don't mind admitting that I had to learn that the hard way.
Because of knowledge. A mere knowledge of the principles of the word is not enough.
We need the Lord himself, We need him to learn how to apply those principles properly in any given situation. As human beings, we like everything kind of in nice, neat little pigeon holes, don't we? We like to be able to say, well, if this happens and this happens, then that belongs in that pigeonhole. And we do this and we'd like a little.
Book that if a certain situation came up, we would turn to Chapter 4, Subsection 2, Part C.
And that would give us the answer about how to handle things.
No, the New Testament isn't written like that. If that's the way it worked, I could do that without communion with the Lord.
I have to walk with the Lord and a sound mind and wise discretion comes in that way. And then what will happen?
Oh, then I won't fear, as it goes on in verse 8, to be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of meet his prisoner.
Opal says I'm in prison, it's not a very bright thing. And later on in this very book he has to talk about Edemas, who formerly was a fellow worker. But now he has to say, Dimeth has forsaken me, not having loved this present evil world, simply this present world. And if I may say this, sometimes the prosperity and the.
Good life, if you like it, in North America can overtake us, can't it?
And there is a danger that those in other lands, as we had before us yesterday, are going to take our crown if we're not careful.
Let us not have either the spirit of fear in One Direction or the spirit of fear in the other direction. I can have the spirit of fear in One Direction by saying it's all over with. What's the use going on? After all things are falling apart. There's no point in contending for the faith once delivered to the Saints. There's no point in holding fast anymore.
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Or I can have a fear in the other direction.
That causes me to use human energy to try and do the things of the Lord. No, that will never work either. No, there is only one way and that is in communion with the Lord. And then I will find, as we have here, that God has not given me the spirit of fear. That has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power.
And of love. And of a sound mind.
Let's sing the last two verses of that hymn that we started out with.
Number 77 in the appendix.
I expose most here know that what we have in our little flock Him book is only a very small part of the original Him. The original Him has 19 verses and if you want to know what they are you can Google them on the Internet. But if you have any trouble finding them then I'd be glad to give them to you. Very very interesting.
Some of them are perhaps of are not because of the.
Uh, poetic license that Anna Cousins took their perhaps not strictly as scriptural as as they could be.
One of the verses goes like this. There the red rose of Sharon unfolds, it's gladsome bloom and fills the air of heaven with ravishing perfume and so on. Well, we know of course, that the Rose of Sharon and the Song of Solomon is really a type of the believer, not a type of the Lord himself. And so that verse isn't in here, but very, very beautiful.
Him and.
Well worth reading it for the nice sentiments that are expressed.
But let's sing the last two verses, showing us, I believe, what the Lord would have us to have before us above all things. Verse 4.
Oh, I am. I am.
Trying to find.
Radio in the world. I'm still in the middle of the night. Thank you so much on your head. And I'll talk about flying. I'll make all of you. Can't get this together. I'll have a day. How are you at all? I'm going to do it. I'm going to come to play. I'm going to say I'm going to. I'm going to have to do it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No.
Our loving God and our Father.
We give thanks for Thy precious word, praying that what is of thyself may take root in our heart and bear fruit. We thank Thee, Lord Jesus, that we can have thyself before Thee.
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But we own how easily other things get in the way.
We pray that Thou will give us the grace, and we thank Thee.
The doubt is delight to give us not the spirit of fear, but the spirit of power and of love, and of a sound mind. In these last days, help us, our God and Father, to put all this into practice, for we ask it in the name and for the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.