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.
Let's start with our meeting this afternoon with him 168.
I confess that I gave this out on Friday night, the last two verses, and immediately thereafter I felt really, uh, smitten that I didn't, uh, suggest the whole hymn, and my eye went to the top of the page and saw those words. Rejoice then, ye Saints, as your Lord's own command.
Rejoice, for the coming of Jesus draws nigh.
So we have that injunction rejoiced in the Lord Alway, it's on my heart this afternoon to speak about some things that are, uh, at first blush, not all that encouraging. Uh, but it's, it's where we are today and I believe we need to understand it. So no further comment. Let's sing just the 1St 3 verses of 168 If some brother would be.
Kind enough to start that for us, please.
Oh.
Umm.
The Lord together, Lord Jesus, we thank thee that.
We have this hope that that was given us.
To see these soon.
In heaven's glory.
Look forward to that happy moment.
Not only we shall be.
Removed from this.
Present scene of glory.
This present scene of of trial and sorrow.
Into heaven itself with thee, to see thee as thou art.
00:05:01
To look upon thee, and see thee and thy joy.
We know thou art the Man of Sorrows once.
A man of patience thou art now.
Soon thou shalt be the man of joy. Thou shalt look upon the fruit and the travail of thy soul.
And be satisfied.
And so, Lord Jesus, we look to Thee as we.
Have a little while here to open thy word.
That would provide for us that which would be for our encouragement, instruction, our comfort.
Pray thou would guide us into that which would serve that end.
We thank thee that thou art still the head of the Church, which is thy body.
I work still ministering nourishment and refreshment to us, and we thank thee for this.
So we just ask for thy help. Thank thee again for all thy love to us, Lord Jesus, for being willing to be the sinner's friend.
Taking our guilty place on Calvary's cross, that we might have an eternal part with Thee. We give Thee thanks, we bless thee. Precious Savior, we ask thy help, my worthy and thy precious name. Amen.
Well, let's turn to get started. Back to First Chronicles 12, where someone referred us today.
As a matter of fact, I think we were just a verse away from.
Verse I was thinking of.
In First Chronicles chapter 12.
Brother Stephen.
I'm going to set the table that these were.
The tribes and the men that were resorting to David after the death of Saul.
Soon to make him king.
In verse 32 is a verse that has been on my heart for a few days.
And of the children of Issachar, which were men that had understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do.
The heads of them were 200, and all their brethren were at their commandment.
I believe the other tribes are numbered. There is no number here.
How many of these men there were?
What distinguished them was that they were men that had understanding of the times.
My exercise this afternoon is to speak about our times and hopefully.
Remind ourselves the backdrop for the benchmark.
Of what is our particular portion in our day?
No, when I was younger like these guys over here.
And we we valued so much the advice and experience of our older brethren.
If I could be 110th.
Of the encouragement to any of you that they were to me.
I would be very thankful.
So we said, well, what, what are you, how should we do this? How do we serve the Lord and how do we do this and how should we do that? And what do you think of this and, and.
I remember Brother Gordon.
Chuckling and smiling like he would when he was asked a question.
And he would often quote that verse in the book of Acts. David served his own generation by the will of God and took on sleep.
And so.
As the men who fight wars for a living learn.
That you can't fight or prepare for the upcoming war with your father's generation who fought a war. It's a different time, a different enemy. There are different resources for them.
For you and I, it's the same enemy, the same resources, but a different time.
My exercise is to go through a little bit of that this this afternoon.
Now it occurs to me with a subject I really would like to take up. Has to do with the House of God.
Subject I have never spoken on before.
You know.
00:10:00
Years ago I heard a brother in a reading meeting exhort us and say, you know, brethren, we we shouldn't beat a cow path through scripture.
And he said he was speaking about the Pentecostal brethren.
And they have had it at that in that era, they had, you know, three or four verses and they kind of hop skipped and jumped through, you know, Acts, uh, Joel 228 and Acts 2. And they had three or four scriptures and they went right across the pasture with these couple verses. If you've encountered the believers of that persuasion.
And we need to be exercising careful that we don't do the same thing.
Now, I grew up in a little house on the edge of a pasture.
And, uh, as a little kid, you don't worry about who owns anything. So we played in the past year and when the brother made the comment, I can recall, I can see it in my eye, how those cows would always walk in this little narrow strip from one end of the posture to the other when the, when the farmer, when they heard him rustling about to bring him water or throw hay out or whatever.
The great big pasture, little tiny past.
They would always walk in.
We have a huge, huge pasture here.
And brothers especially, and the sisters, it ought to be our exercise.
To familiarize ourselves with the whole Council of God.
And a concern that I have in particular is we that are gathered to the Lord's name have become so familiar and conversant in the truth of the one body.
As wonderful as that truth is that I think we neglect the truth that we're in the House of God.
The truth of the one body.
Is connected with foundational, vital Christian doctrines.
We're not members of the one Body because we have faith necessarily. We're members of the one Body because we have the Spirit of God indwelling us after we believe the gospel of our salvation.
God formed that body on the day of Pentecost, and when you got saved and believed the gospel of your salvation as it says in Ephesians, you were sealed without Holy Spirit of promise and added to all the others already in that body.
So that's a wonderful, wonderful truth, and we're united by that spirit to the Lord Jesus himself, who is the head of the body.
That's a wonderful truth, and it brings responsibility, and it points to functions that have been referred to a little bit obliquely today when the brothers read in First Corinthians 14.
But the truth of the truth of the one body, as exalted as it is, is just one aspect.
Of how we are to take stock of our times that we're in, our responsibilities and our privileges, and what the Lord looks for in you and me.
And so if we could say that the truth of the one body or the body of Christ brings before us the the the principle or truth of unity, what does the House of God bring before us? I believe it brings before us behavior it brings before us.
Our behavior and our conduct, especially that which is visible to men and women around us.
I'm not. Please don't. Don't take away from this the impression that I am in any way not appreciative of this wonderful capstone truth.
That we have this special portion that Old Testament Saints, men and women of God never foresaw.
That we are one with Christ, members of his body.
We're joint heirs of the same body.
Joint part takers of his promise.
But the truth of the House of God, you know, it brings before us a line of things that we don't talk about all the time, I think.
In my observation.
It's a little bit easy for us to get complacent.
To get as a brother brought before us, not that we're like ehood, but we could get a little bit complacent and a little bit, you know, that way because we have that truth down. And if that truth speaks of of unity, we say, well, I'm endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit and I know the Spirit of God has gathered me together to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:15:05
And so that's where I present myself, and I'm in fellowship there, and I go along with my brethren as members of one body, and those are the brothers and sisters that show up.
Because the scripture has said for men and women of faith, the man of faith says I am a companion of all them that fear thee.
And of them that keep thy precepts. So we don't really choose our friends or our companions. The Lord chooses them. I think, brethren in general, we we have that.
But the danger that I fear in myself and in all of us is that we get a little too content with the fact that this remnant of that one body that has been stirred up as the Israelites were stirred up in the Book of Ezra to go back to Jerusalem, that those of us who have been stirred up about this truth, that we get a little.
Complacent and easy about it. And we just feel like well.
I'm I've checked that box and I checked that box every week because I go to meeting and I'm gathered together to the Lord's name.
Being gathered to the Lord's name is a tremendous, tremendous privilege.
Tremendous.
So many times.
I just have to say, why me? Do you ever ask that question? Why me?
I I think it's a question we'll rhetorically ask when we're at home, when we're glorified to Why me?
When we're in the presence of the Lord, why me? Why would He set us upon me? Because He loved me and He loved you, and He gave us that special privilege.
But when I think of the House of God and I think of behavior and public behavior.
Then I it's. That's not a box I can so easily check.
That's a box that I have to be and I am more exercised about.
Brother gave out to him. My note was yesterday or today.
36 In the back we go to meet the Savior, his glorious face, to see what manner of behavior.
Doth with this hope agree?
Indeed, what manner of behavior?
I grew up in a little house.
30 by 30 matter of fact.
And my dad worked three jobs, so he wasn't there all the time. When he was there, he was really there. We loved loved that and loved him. We didn't think there was anything unusual about working three jobs and only being home a night or two a week.
So my mom wrote. She ran the show.
In the little Scottish Lady with the Lord now.
But I can remember, and it's been coming back to me lately, you know, my brother and I, and we'd be rambunctious, and my sister is probably more athletic than two boys even. And we'd get, you know, messing around in the house.
And she, you know, like a Bantam rooster. And she'd not in the house.
Or she'd say, not in my house.
And she had it in her mind.
What we were supposed to do, when we were supposed to do it, and how it was supposed to be done.
And sometimes there were things that.
You anyway I I think I've made the point.
The Lord Jesus, his Son over his own house.
And he has in view how we're to conduct ourselves in his house. So let's trace briefly.
A few aspects of the House of God.
And I think we'll see that there's almost two parts of it, two parts of it at least that are connected if we go back to, uh, Matthew 16 to start.
The Lord Jesus asks in verse 13 of Matthew 16, Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, AM?
Verse 16 Simon Peters answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
And Jesus answered and sent him. Blessed art thou, Simon Bargona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed unto thee, but my Father, which is in heaven.
And I say unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.
And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
00:20:04
The church had not been built yet. It was a new thing.
He hadn't even started to build the church when he said this.
He said he would build it in the future without specifying when, and the foundation of it was himself. And the foundation is also the confession of who he was, the Christ, the Son of the living God.
And that Peter was able to see that and to know that because our God and Father had revealed it unto him.
Enos read in First Corinthians this afternoon how that is so.
And so we turn over now to Ephesians chapter 2.
And just to pick up in verse, uh, verse 19 of Ephesians chapter 2.
Now, therefore, you are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the Saints and of the household of God, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom all the building, fitly framed together, groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord.
In whom he also are builded together for inhabitation of God through the Spirit.
Peter also speaks of us in this capacity as being part of God's building, God's temple, God's house, and says that we are living stones.
In this aspect of the house, we are part of the house.
In this aspect of the house, Christ is the builder and everyone that's put into that house. Every material, every every stone is good.
He does it with divine wisdom and power.
In verse 22 of Ephesians 2.
We read that this building is inhabitation of God through the Spirit.
And the reality is that when the Lord Jesus glorified God on Calvary's cross and laid down his life and death.
That God.
Responded to what he did by raising him out from among all the rest of the dead, causing him to ascend to his own right hand.
That was God's response to the work of the man Christ Jesus.
But it didn't stop there. The man Christ Jesus, the glorified One, sent down the Holy Spirit of God.
To take men and women of faith and for the first time, unite them together into one.
And on the Day of Pentecost, that's what took place.
And now for the first time you have a a, a, a body. Now for the first time, you don't just have individual children of God scattered where they might be, or men and women with faith, but you have that one thing, the church. But also this verse, this 22nd verse teaches us that this ye are builded together for inhabitation of God through the Spirit.
It's God's habitation.
The Holy Spirit of God has taken up His habitation in this house that Christ has started to build and is still building today.
When I was first saved and and gathered to the Lord's name, I'd be driving with a brother through a little town where I lived in Maine and, uh.
Drive past the Baptist Church.
My brother would say the Spirit of God is not in there brother.
And I'm like.
I am saved maybe six months, eight months or so. I'm like.
I don't know. I have this place in my brain where you where you put stuff that is kind of like pending.
Like OK, I took it in.
That is, this was my my spiritual father.
OK, let me weigh that before the Lord.
The Spirit of God takes has taken his residence and his his habitation on earth is in the house. There's only one house just like there's only one body and the local assembly gather to the Lord's name is never referred to in Scripture as the house. You can put that in your pending place in your mind and you see if you agree with that statement. I think you'll agree with that statement. I cannot think of a single.
00:25:23
And I know men and women have this. You know, when I was a little boy and they took me to the Methodist Church and you take your hat off in the House of God. And that's what they called the church building.
Great. Big thing.
But Scripture doesn't speak of the local assembly that way. It speaks of the house. There is a house and the Spirit of God.
Has taken up his residence there.
And the first aspect that we take up is that Christ is the builder, the materials are all good, the workmanship is perfect, and sooner or later it's gonna be done.
But there's another aspect to it that I think perhaps 1St Corinthians 3 we'll we'll illuminate.
Ross.
1St Corinthians 3 and verse 9.
For year our labor, we are laborers together with God. Ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building.
According to the grace of God, which is given unto me as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation.
And another bill that's there on. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.
Her other foundation can no man lay than that is laid which is Jesus Christ.
And we'll just stop there for a minute.
Now we have another aspect.
It's not Christ personally speaking about Him directly building, but the Apostle Paul who is writing this refers to himself as a master builder.
In the olden days an architect that was designer builder.
And not only so, he's writing to the Corinthians, implying that they also were builders as well. So now we have another aspect of the house.
Now we have an aspect of the house where you and I are involved in the building and an aspect where the believer is not part of the house. The believer is in the house.
And so now there's the challenge. Are the materials right? Is the workmanship right?
Does it meet the requirements of the one whose house it is?
And so, as it says there in verse 10, let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.
And so God wants us to do the right thing.
In accordance with his word and with his mind, and he wants to do it in the right way. Us to do it in the right way.
Now if we turn to First Timothy.
In chapter 3.
More about the House.
And you know, I should say that I haven't studied this out myself, but I think almost every New Testament book.
Especially the epistles have something about the House of God. It's kind of interesting we don't speak about it more.
Romans refers to the.
To the body of Christ, somewhat obliquely, I think.
First Corinthians.
Ephesians, Colossians, and perhaps nowhere else. It doesn't mean that you that you look upon principles or precepts or things addressed in Scripture as if the more times they're mentioned, the more important they are.
What I'm just saying that that exalted truth is not mentioned in every place. The House of God is more frequent in that way, and so in First Timothy 3 verse 14.
These things write I unto thee, Paul writing to Timothy, hoping to come unto thee shortly.
But if I tarry long that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the House of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth, and without controversy. Great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit scene of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received.
00:30:02
Up into glory.
And.
Again, the House of God connected with behavior.
The House of God is the Church of the living God. There's no question that it's the figure used.
It's the pillar and ground of the truth.
Now sometimes we might think as a pillar that holds something up.
But other times in Scripture, a pillar is something that's meant to mark out something publicly, to make a public statement, or to put something before others publicly.
Like people have memorials today. I suspect that that's more the thought here of the pillar.
God doesn't need us to hold anything vital up.
And this day is kind of like what you and I in English would call the footing.
It takes that pillar and it displays that it it displaces that load of that heavy pillar to where it hits the ground.
In English, we have told Manuel I wouldn't use figures of speech for his translation, but we have that that that that expression where the rubber meets the road.
And to me, that's the stay, the pillar.
In ground or stay of the truth?
And we learn in connection with behavior that there are two chief concerns.
And we probably don't have to go far to find them if you turn the page in your Bible in chapter four of First Timothy.
Verse 16.
Well, let's go back to verse 15. Meditate upon these things. Give thyself wholly to them, that thy profiting may appear to all. We're talking about what is seen by others.
The character of the house is more public.
Your house on the street of the road where you live is seen by everyone, is seen by your neighbors.
If I come home at the end of the day at 6:00 and my trash cans are still out there, I'm I feel a little bit unhappy about that with a 17 year old boy in the house.
And I drive, we want to be respectful to our neighbors and we want to be orderly and we want to cut our grass and we want, you know, it's, it's, that's the, that's the house.
And if you stop and think about how Paul communicates with Timothy in the lines of things he takes up.
He takes up that which can be seen and tested and viewed by others inside the house as well as outside.
And so in verse 16, take heed unto thyself and unto the doctrine.
We're in doing this. Thou shall both save thyself.
And then that hear thee.
Paul had I had had referred to various errors in corruptions which were already coming into the Christian testimony and profession in the first epistle. They're full blown and more dominant and powerful in the second epistle, but they're already on the on his radar, so to speak, in this first epistle. And so the word save here does not refer to the saving of the soul.
But to being delivered from the corrupting.
Influence of these things.
But take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine.
If I remember right in my old Bible and I because of its tattered state, I've got this new one.
I think I wrote in the margin, What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.
Referring, of course, to marriage.
But we can apply it to these things. Take heed unto thyself and to the doctrine.
This has to do with our behavior.
And we need I need to never stop being exercised about my behavior.
And the first thing the Spirit of God mentions is to take heed to myself, as we had a little bit before us about that today. This isn't a box that we check off and we say, got that one?
I'm saved. I know the Lord is my Savior.
I'm saved. Got that? I am gathered to the Lord's name. I understand the truth.
Of the one body, and how I can give practical expression to it as much as I can in my own responsibility, and I'm gathered to the precious name of Christ.
00:35:04
You're in the House of God all the time. We all are. If you've been baptized, if you've made a confession of Christ, if you've been disciple, if you've been raised in a Christian home, you've been discipled and may be baptized too. From your earliest days, you're in the house.
And God dwells in this house.
And we're gonna hopefully, with a little bit of time, address some of what that means to us in our responsibility.
But in our behavior, it's not just doctrine, it's not just knowing the right thing.
It's following the pattern that we had at the end of Chapter 3.
Great is the mystery of godliness. What is it? It's the pathway of the Lord Jesus Christ himself.
We are not left to just abstracts in the Word of God. God has been pleased, as we had this afternoon, that He would raise up a man, that he would send his own Son to display everything that God is in perfect measure.
And display it always at the right time and in the right measure, in the right way. And that's the pattern.
We want to think about meekness or loneliness.
Which we can see that in perfection in the man Christ Jesus. That's the pattern for godliness.
And that's what he wants to see.
In my behavior, no matter what my last name is, no matter how long I've been saved or how long I've been at the Lord's Table, or how old I am or how young I am.
Everyone of us shall give account of ourselves before God.
Everyone of us.
So let's just turn over to Second Timothy.
In Second Timothy we have if, if in First Timothy we have.
The apostle taking up order in God's house. In Second Timothy, the apostle takes up by the Spirit of God more the line of things of how disorder has been attacking the order of God's house, which is for the display of God's glory.
And the student of Scripture sees that if Peter takes up practical godliness in his first epistle and 2nd epistle, it's of Peter. It's the breakdown of that.
If we read in First Corinthians the apostle bringing forth order in the Church of God and the place and authority of apostles, in the second epistle we see the breakdown of that.
If we read about the highest truths that we have in Ephesians, and then we read the address to the seven churches in Revelation 2, he addresses the church at Ephesus. You've left your first love.
And so we can say what is man? They aren't mindful of him.
But how wise of God?
To allow these things.
To allow.
The failures of men and women like you and me.
To happen so early.
And in and in similar character on every hand, so that we have the actual Word of God addressing it directly.
What a resource think of where we would be.
Think of where we would be if the if the Canon of scripture ended and everything was going along so nicely.
And the prophets were speaking two or three, and the others were judging, and there was liberty of the Spirit and prayer, and the evangelists were evangelizing, and the pastors were pastoring, and everyone was happy in taking in sound doctrine and walking in personal communion with the Lord. And that's all we had.
And now we look around us when we get saved.
And when we grow up maybe in a Christian home and we start to think about these things and we say this just doesn't look like that at all.
And we would be strongly tempted to just say, you know, I have to put this aside. I'm not sure. I don't see how it applies. But in the wisdom of God, he allowed this failure to come in in the early days of the apostle as sad. I can remember the first time I read through the New Testament. I was older when I was saved. And I can remember for the first, I didn't know the end of the story. And I'm reading through and it's like, oh, man, you don't want that to happen.
And there it is happening.
00:40:00
Think of how the apostle Paul, when he met the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 20, he didn't say to them, I think that there's going to be a strong tendency for men of your own selves to rise up and lead men astray, believers astray. I think this might happen. No, he says. I know.
Let me find it and read it.
Quickly verse 29 of Acts 20.
For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter, and among you, not sparing the flock also of your own selves shall men arise.
Speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them. Therefore give up, no.
Therefore, watch.
But by the space of three years I ceased not to warn everyone night and day with tears. Now, brethren, I commend you to God.
And to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up.
And to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.
It's to me.
A wise provision of the Lord that He allowed this so early.
That we have the inspired Word of God to address it.
And we have the Scriptures, myriads of them, addressing all different aspects of it. For our instruction in a day that adds to its principal characteristics are no different than that day. There's still men rising up. There's still grievous wolves.
There's still strange doctrines, there's still superstition, there's still legality, there's still careless. There's all these things and we have the word of God that addresses it.
He's made provision for us.
Let's turn to Revelation chapter 3.
God's ways are so different.
From man's ways.
When I left the first company I worked for after school.
And went to hire on to a different company, a company for which I now work for over 20 years now.
Nobody met me at my interview and said.
You're applying to a business unit, a business group.
That is the most dysfunctional in the entire company.
The boss is crazy man.
Umm, he drives us all crazy.
We're all demoralized. We can hardly do our job.
He's vicious to the young people trying to learn the business.
None of the other business units want anything to do with them, so our opportunities are limited.
And oh, by the way, the reason that they want somebody's senior like you is because all the other senior guys have pretty much had it.
And they have enough money stashed away to retire.
So good luck. Nobody met me at the door like that.
He said, oh, wonderful company.
Everything positive, everything good. God doesn't do it that way.
God saves us and he doesn't paint a rose colored.
Picture of something that is not.
That he tells us the end of the journey. He tells us we have all the resources that we'll need.
But he's honest with us and says in the world he shall have tribulation.
But be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. If you live godly in Christ Jesus, you're gonna suffer persecution.
He says this is the way the church is.
Isn't it instructed that in Matthew's Gospel in the 13th chapter where you have the seven, uh, parables, six of which are simil similitudes of the Kingdom?
He leaves the house and he's going to do a new thing, and so he souls instead of looking for fruit for man, now he's going to do something new.
And you know the end of the story because you've been familiar with it. So you're reading through it, but you stop and think for a minute. And the first three, uh, that have to do with the Kingdom of heaven are all kind of, they're not like that flattering of how things are going to go.
00:45:01
So he said.
Well man, so does sweetness feel but gets overgrown with tears and the Kingdom of heaven is like.
A woman hides 3 measures of meal and the whole thing becomes leavened.
And the little mustard seed just becomes this ridiculously huge tree with all kinds of.
Creatures in it that are undesirable.
That's the way it's it's is this striking that that's the way now the next three are God side.
And that's the Pearl of great price and the treasure found in the field.
And the net is brought to shore and there's good fish in it. That's the other side.
But God is honest, God is faithful, and God puts before us this benchmark of the status of the House of God in our day.
And though I felt that, I was fully persuaded in my mind.
And in my soul, when I took my place at the Lord's table a couple months after I was saved.
It wasn't really until I worked my way through the Old Testament and saw the failure of Israel. Well, actually it starts with the failure of Adam.
And then it goes to the failure of Noah, and then it goes to the failure of government and priesthood and the kings, and all right through.
And there's a little remnant brought back in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. And I said, of course.
That's where I am today. That's the benchmark.
Because all these things were written for our examples, for our instruction.
The things which are written before time are written for our learning.
And God has gone to such an effort to instruct us as to the lay of the land in our day.
So in Revelation chapter 3.
The last church that God addresses in verse 14.
The Angel of the Church of the Laodiceans write these things, saith thee, Amen. The faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. I will that thou art cold or hot. So then, because thou art Luke warm on either cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth.
Thou sayest I am rich, and increase with goods that have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind naked, and so on.
If we were to read in Second Timothy chapter 2.
We would read the fact that this house that God is building and has already constructed has become a great house. And I know you're probably all familiar with Second Timothy chapter 2. It's become a great house, but it's still his house.
And the sobering thing is that God holds us, you and me, responsible for our behavior in this house because it's His house.
And if we were turn to Luke chapter 12, we would read that to whom much is given of the same as much required.
And to whom men commit much of them? Will they ask them more?
How much more could God have possibly committed to you and me?
How much more?
I don't know how much more.
We stand accepted to him, writer says in the place that none but Christ.
As well.
I don't know how.
My I don't know how we could be more.
Privileged and blessed than we are, we are accountable and responsible. And brethren, my exercise is.
That we don't use the truth of the one body that is precious and that we enjoy.
To put ourselves to sleep.
As to our other aspects of our responsibility, that we are all in the House of God.
If we speak about Christendom as if it's everybody else, we are missing the point. It's you. It's me. We're in the house. There's only one.
It's God's house and he has an order in that house. We didn't have the chance to develop it much today.
00:50:02
In Revelation chapter two and three, with the seven churches, the last four, it's pretty clear they go on. They kind of.
Stem out from each other, and they go on until the Lord comes.
And it's that aspect of the Church of God that is again, it's a book of judgment. And so God has committed privilege in this time of the Gentiles and committed special privilege to you and me as as part of the body of Christ and and and in the House of God. And he holds us accountable. That was a true believer going to be poor and wretched and no.
But this spirit of our of the Christian profession in our day is the backdrop against which you and I walk day by day.
One day at work.
When I was on a project building a project.
Dam.
The vice president flew in. I was one of the number two guys on the project.
He got the other #2 guy together and me.
At the end of the work day and he said.
I'm firing your boss tomorrow morning.
This is not going to make it.
That's what I gotta do. I gotta fire him in the morning.
So that's what I'm gonna do. So you guys wanna go to dinner?
And so the other man said, well, you know, Lou, I'm kind of busy. I'll pass. And I said I'll pass.
I'll pass. Thank you though. Thank you for the offer.
So we came in in the next morning.
You know, you could. Construction offices are not like, like real engineers offices. Everybody is so polite and courteous and quiet. They're more raucous and loud and.
It's just the way the culture is. You could have heard a pin drop in there.
That morning you could have heard a pin drop. We're all kind of going about our business in that, not fearful ourselves, but we had a feeling of being so sober.
You know, I I like that man and I try to help him.
So the boss went in and closed the door and fired him. He came out and said goodbye and wished us good luck and all he went.
But I've always, I've often remembered that just that tone of things, knowing that judgment was about to fall and how it affected everybody else.
And there's a certain aspect that you and I.
Part of the House of God and the responsible testimony on this earth. Knowing that if we were to trace in the Book of Revelation the most awful and serious judgments that fall upon the various peoples of this earth, and various responsibilities fall upon those who had the most light and never responded to it.
Grace accepted, they say. Light accepted brings more light. Light rejected brings darkness.
And grace slighted.
There's nothing left but judgment, God's strange work.
And these solemn judges that we read about in the Book of Revelation fall.
Upon men and women who thought like I did when I was a young teenager, there's really nothing to this. It's just kind of going to church and you have your name and you go through confirmation and there's nothing real.
And there's thousands, if not millions of people in that condition, and judgment is going to fall.
How we need to be exercised about our own behavior. Because judgment begins at the House of God, it begins now.
And we call on God as our Father, if you call on God as your Father, who without respect of person, judges according to every man's work.
Past the time of your so journey here in fear, not fear that we're gonna fall into condemnation. There is no condemnation for them that are in Christ Jesus.
But an exercise that our ways, that we would take heed to ourselves and to the doctrine which we haven't really addressed this afternoon, that we would be pleasing to him.
That we had conduct ourselves properly in his house while we wait for his soon return.
You know, I don't want to, I don't need to be a let's turn back to second chronicles again. I'm sorry, First Chronicles where we close to where we started and, uh.
00:55:07
Chapter 11 of First Chronicles.
I was going to say.
And I, I think it's important to bring this up. I know our time is about up.
You know, I, I remember a brother coming to our meeting when I lived in Palmyra and he was, he was a laborer.
And he said I met this Christian in, uh, somewhere on the way, and he says I brought the truth before him.
And I thought, wow, you were quite AB. I didn't say this, but irreverent streak I have. I said, wow, you're quite a brother. You could meet somebody casually and bring like the truth before.
This person was a believer.
To be fair, I know what the brother meant to say was I told him about the ground of gathering and being gathered to the Lord's name.
In Brother Dear Brother Bruce Anstey's book.
He doesn't need my advertising.
And I just met Bruce maybe five years ago in in Lovin.
And so then I started to read his books.
But he's got this book. I, I think it's about unsound doctrinal statements or something like that. But if you read the preface to it.
He makes a point to say and to list a long long list.
Of aspects of the truth of God that were lost sight of from the earliest days of the apostles and not recovered until the last 150 years or so. When a bunch of young men in Ireland and the UK were responded to the Spirit of God and came outside of the established churches and left clerical positions some of them and started to meet together simply as believers, members of the Body of Christ.
And the Lord started to show them things.
And you read that preface sometime at your leisure in that book. It's worth reading. There is such a long list of true the priesthood of every believer, the truth of the of the flesh and the spirit in a new and an old nature.
The prophetic outline of things, of the mystery with with Christ having his glory in a future day in earth and in heaven, the future restoration of Israel, and on and on. There's just a long, long list. I tell you, I I was, I suspected that was true.
And I've meet a lot of Christians and enjoy it immensely. And, and I think I think Bruce is right. And so there's all of this legacy, this wonderful truth. And if you think being gathered to the Lord's name is simply knowing that it's Matthew 18 and 20, there's just this huge pasture.
Full of the wonderful truth of God that has been recovered.
And that is your and my spiritual legacy, not to just enjoy for ourselves.
But to share with our brethren wherever we might meet them.
To share with our brothers and sisters that are in the house.
So that they may learn more and grow more and increase by the knowledge of God.
And so when we read passages like this and enjoy them in First Chronicles 11.
Speaking of the mighty men whom David attracted, verse 12 and after him was Eliezer, the son of Dodo the Hawaii, who was one of the three mighties. He was with David at Pass Damon, by the way, that was the place where David fought Goliath. It's very interesting. And there the Philistines were gathered together to battle, where was a parcel of ground full of barley.
And the people fled before the Philistines, and they set themselves in the midst of that parcel.
And delivered it, and slew the Philistines, and the Lord saved them by a great deliverance.
We turn to Second Samuel and our time is up. You read about Shama and there was a field of lentils. The Spirit of God takes it up that way. And he stood in it and defended it, and the Lord gave great deliverance. That's what I aspire to for myself.
And I look at young people in here, I don't know where the time went and I was you and now I'm me. And life is swifter than a weaver's shuttle.
And we blink twice. And here we are in our last of the of the seven decades.
01:00:06
And so it was. It's so much my desire.
Not just that you defend the truth of Matthew 18 and 20, but that you get and you stand in the field and you value it because of what it is, the precious truth of God. Your hands have been filled. You are a priest of God, and your hands have been filled with these precious things. You've been given all these treasures.
When the Lord comes and we are up and we are glorified with Him, He is going to weigh out what He committed to me and what I have done with it.
It's, it's, it's, it's the way it is that's our gone. And so if the Lord tarries him, we older ones go the way of all flesh. My desire is that you would enjoy the truth more than we ever did and stand in it and defend it and enjoy it and share it with others. Christians that you meet, bring before them these wonderful, precious things of God.
May the Lord encourage us.
That we might behave ourselves a right. That we would be here for His glory.
That we would walk softly.
In light.
Of what is all around us.
In failure of outward testimony that we would walk softly, it's still his mind and will that we rejoice in himself, Because in spite of all the ruin. I don't mean this to be doom and gloom. In spite of all the ruin around.
There's still the precious truth of God that can be enjoyed by every soul who wants to enjoy these precious things. May it be so for you and me. Let's just commend ourselves to the Lord.
Lord God and our Father, we give thee thanks, Thou saith thy.
Art upon us and.
Extract us from this, the broad Rd. that leads to destruction and.
Put our feet upon a heavenly Rd. We thank thee for the assurance that we have, the assurance of faith.
Our shed and I love abroad in our hearts and given us the assurance that soon.
We will be delivered from this world into the presence of thy beloved Son.
Lord Jesus, we have to confess.
How distracted we can be.
Help us to have a single eye.
Help us to be as those ones that knew how to keep rank, that were not of a double heart and was read to us today.
Help us to be a encouragement and blessing to our brethren. Help us to value the things which are really life, young and old. We pray for the young people here. Pray for each one of us, young and old. Lord Jesus, so we'd be here for thy glory, that we will be drinking deeply of those precious things that thou hast brought before us. We might have the enjoyment of Thyself that we will be a light in a dark place.
We would walk in thy steps. We thank thee, Lord Jesus, for all I love. We thank Thee, our God and Father, for the gift of thy beloved Son.
We give thee thanks in his worthy and precious name. Amen.