Address—Bruce Conrad
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We start our meeting this afternoon with singing hymn #5 in the appendix.
And #5 in the back of the book, prone to wander, Lord, I feel it prone to leave the God I love. Yet thou, Lord has designed to seal it with thy spirit from above. Some brother could start attuned to five in the appendix.
Alright, Good. Good, good, good.
Roller coaster.
Lord, I fared away.
Great.
Our God and our Father, we look up to Thee this afternoon.
For a portion from thyself, that would be a suitable food for us.
Out of snow, the needs of our hearts.
The needs of conscience and the needs that we have in every aspect of our life. And we look to Thee that Thou provide, meet and due season for Thy people. Especially think of those that are younger in the faith and younger in life are a word in season for them. We know our God and Father, that having given us gifts and having given us knowledge is not sufficient.
We are dependent upon Thee and the leading and liberty of I, Holy Spirit, to take these precious things.
And put them before us for our help and blessing. And so we look to Thee for this. We thank Thee, Lord Jesus, for Thy love, for living for us on high. And we acknowledge Thee as we've had before us today as Head of the Church, which is Thy body. And we are so relieved that Thou art still providing nourishment through all the joints and bands.
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With yet a fine building up of the body of Christ, thine own body. And so we just count on thee for thy help, and ask for thy blessing, as we would open thy word.
Our God and Father, and the worthy and precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
We could turn, uh, to start with to John chapter 13. John chapter 13.
And verse 3.
Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God. He riseth from supper and laid aside his garments, and took a towel and girded himself. After that he poured water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples feet and to wipe them with a towel wherewith he was girded. Then cometh he to Simon Peter.
And Peter saith unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet?
Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now, that thou shalt know hereafter. And Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. And Jesus answered him, If I wash, or really it's bathy not thou hast. If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me. Simon Peter saith unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.
Jesus saith unto him, he that is washed, or really bathed.
Needeth not saved to wash his feet, but is clean every wit and ye are clean, but not all.
Subject I have on my heart today.
Is is one of those tools in our tool boxes as Christians that we do well to understand and that we need to be aware of.
For the preservation of our own souls and for those of others.
It's not my thought really to take up foot washing per SE, but to take up the care of the Lord Jesus Christ over us as we go through our journey through this life.
You and I will put our trust in Christ.
Have an eternal relationship already. It's not gonna get any closer than it is right now. We are brought into God's family.
And.
It's it almost feel embarrassed to say it, but we've been assigned a place that only Christ deserves him right or put it. We stand accepted in the place that none but Christ could claim we're joint heirs with him.
Of all that he has won as a victorious man.
Where members of his body.
We have his life, we're loved with the love that the Father has towards him. We're sons of God. We have that now. Nothing can change that or nothing can break that tie.
It's eternal and He is the one who.
Assures us in his word.
That nothing can ever take us away from that place of closeness and acceptance we have with him.
We were noticing recently in visiting with a brother.
And a couple of brothers and sisters.
And Leviticus chapter 21, I think it is. And we started to notice the 12 blemishes that would prohibit a priest from being able to exercise his priestly privileges and responsibilities.
That any one of these 12 blemishes would keep him, disqualify him from being able to offer the bread of his God. You and I know, I suspect that we are all priests and all the children of God now have this highest position here in this life as being priests. And so as you go down through those things, there are things that I believe different parts of the body.
Or different nutritional issues that that were pointed out in that list of 12 and you can look it up at your leisure.
Our mention there and I think in picture, they have to do with discouragement or they have to do with aspects of our walk that might disqualify us broken handed or broken footed or or hunched back. Or you can you can kind of put the picture together yourself. But my point here in mentioning it is that what is not in that list of 12 is anything pertaining to the ear.
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Or anything pertaining to the mouth. You and I have heard the Shepherd's voice.
That's never gonna be undone. And as believers, no matter how far we may wander from him, we'll always have that ear. He's always the Lord. He's always the shepherd. He's never gonna leave us or forsake us. There's always going to be that Ave. between him and us to hear his voice. And so that's not on the list at all. And of course, the other thing is the mouth. We have confessed with our mouth. Jesus is Lord.
And by putting our trust in Him.
We've received the only kind of salvation God has, an eternal salvation. If you don't feel you have that salvation, you don't have God's salvation, the only one He has to offer. And if you put your trust in Him, you have the best that God has to offer. There's nothing better, there's nothing more except glory so that can never be broken.
That relationship, but what can be broken is what?
I have it on my heart to speak about today and that is the enjoyment of that relationship. When I was younger and and living up in northern New England, the brothers, we were kind of on the on the highway between Montreal and Quebec and Ontario and the Maritimes when there was so much gospel work going on there. And so we were kind of right on the literally about a mile off the highway between.
Those two places, we got so much helpful ministry and it seemed like back then a lot of the brothers spoke about communion.
We always heard about communion. I don't hear the word where I live mentioned that much or where I've been and maybe you hear about it still out here today, I don't know. But communion really is the enjoyment of the relationship and.
That as brother quoting brother Barry today, but he used to say that communion is like a spider's web. It can be easily broken. The energy of our communion and our actual practical enjoyment.
Of the favor and love of God comes through the Holy Spirit that indwells you and me, and when we grieve the Spirit. As someone has mentioned today, that communion is broken. So my exercise today is what causes that. Why does it come like that into our lives? And then what happens next? What are the options?
We turn in in this portion before we turn in John 13. I believe what the Lord was telling the disciples when He went to wash their feet.
Is that I am going to be and your brethren are going to participate in maintaining you in the enjoyment of your relationship. And then I'll walk through this life that is suitable to that relationship, IE to be washed, to have, so to speak, clean feet. We need our feet washed. And Peter, of course, lovable Peter.
That first says, Oh Lord, you're not you a great one as you.
To wash my feet. This is inappropriate. And then the Lord tells them as we read, if I don't wash you, you don't have a part with me. It's practical. And then Peter goes to the other extreme and he says, oh, and wash, wash every. Wash my head, wash my hands, wash it. No, he said, it's just your feet. You're bathed already. And as believers, we're already bathed. We have been judicially forgiven.
Through the work of Christ, we have believed on Him.
And all the value of his work, which he fully understands, has now flowed out to us for our eternal blessing.
You don't have to understand all about the gospel to get all the fruit of it in your life. It's an enjoyable study. But he knows, as one brother put it, I read years ago, he knows what he did, and he applies all the goodness of that to you and me. So we need the maintenance of this relationship. Turn, let's turn quickly to Romans chapter 5.
Romans 5 and verse 9 much more than being now justified by His blood.
We shall be saved from wrath through Him. This is what we've been speaking about. As to our position in Christ, that can never change.
For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.
And then over in Hebrews, I think it's the 7th chapter, a similar passage I'd like to refer to.
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In Hebrews Chapter 7.
And verse 24.
But this man.
Because he continued with ever hath an unchangeable priesthood, wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him.
Seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. For such an high priest became us who was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens.
The Lord Jesus Christ lives for us on high.
Having died for us on Calvary's cross.
Been raised out from among all the rest of the debt.
He's a glorified man and he's in heaven and there he intercedes for us all the time. It's a continuous service. You don't have to ask for it, you can count on it.
And he delights to exercise it for us in love.
It's not something that kicks in only when we need it, because we need it all the time.
That lovely him, his hands uplifted in sympathy and love.
And yet it says in this 25th verse he is able.
Also to save them to the uttermost and I believe that aspect of saving has to do with our life here.
To save them to the uttermost or forever evermore.
That come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth.
And so I read a a pamphlet.
Where the brother raised this question, I thought it was excellent.
And the question was, well, if the Lord Jesus serves as our high priest always and he's always able.
Why then do we fail? Or why then do we fall?
Peter wrote in his epistle, We are kept by the power of God unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last day, last time.
But on the other hand, we read in Jude, Keep yourselves in the love of God.
And like with many of the aspects of our position and of our life, there are two sides to it.
There's God's sovereign prerogative which he exercises.
And as a sovereign God, He's exercised the prerogative to give you and me responsibility.
And so, yes, he is our great High Priest.
But he wants us to come unto God by him.
Yes, he said. I'm gonna keep you. But he says keep yourselves in the love of God.
And this is an exercise for us.
When I was newly saved as a young man, there were some older brothers next generation up. My dad's generation took me under their wing.
And some of the things, many of the things they said were prophetic in the sense that I didn't understand the need and import for them at the time. But as the years went on, boy, did those words just keep coming back and coming back and coming back.
Brother Royce Temple, maybe some of you have remembered, was kind of a father to me. You say Brother Isaiah is going to come a time in your life when you're just going to be.
When you kind of feel two weeks of pray.
So he says, what do I do? I just look up to the Lord, and I say, Preserve me, O God, for thee. Do I put my trust? That's a pretty short prayer.
Another prayer he suggested to me was.
One of those shorter versions was hold down me up and I shall be safe.
I can't remember how many times I've been in that exact situation, probably through my own lack of, of, uh, managing budgeting my time and spiritual diligence where I felt when I get up, I had to really get moving and go and everything pressed on me.
But how many, many times you know as you feel a little bit neglectful of your spiritual life?
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And I've had to.
Utter that prayer and how thankful I am that the suggestion was made.
These are great high priest and we want to come unto him to be preserved. It's amazing to me and natural things.
Sometimes how little it takes to keep something where it belongs.
We build things for a living and the things nowadays are getting bigger and bigger.
And you can build a big structure, a temporary structure to build another structure, or you can build a big column, say for a bridge or something like that, or a big set of forms. And it just takes a few cables in the right place to keep all that heavy load, all that mass, and it kind of stays up there.
But if it just starts to go out a little bit, oh boy, that gets really heavy. If it goes out a little further, oh, it gets so heavy, so heavy. That's the way it can be. In our spiritual lives, it's our wisdom to seek to keep things centered, Paul said. I keep keep under my body. In other words, I keep my balance about me. I keep myself oriented properly.
He didn't want to be after he preached to others like a castaway.
And so God has given us responsibilities in our spiritual life.
Paul wrote to Timothy. We have two epistles.
And he mentioned many times in his epistles to Timothy the need for faith.
And a good conscience.
And we need both, don't we?
A brother nicely put it this way.
Faith really brings God into our circumstance and into our life. A good conscience is the result of keeping things out of our lives that don't belong. It's kind of a front door and a back door, kind of a right hand and a left hand.
When I was, uh, newly married and just starting to have a couple of children, we moved back to our to the assembly in Palmyra where we had been and I had been transferred for.
Three or four, maybe four years or so.
And we had a few more kids and we needed, uh, more space, we felt. And so we added on to our house and, uh, was working in an office at that time, which was kind of easy duty. And so I would come home at night and, uh, and have, uh.
Have dinner with the family and then the little ones would be off to bed and my wife would, uh, take over there and I'd go into that part of that. They used to call it Daddy's house because I wouldn't let them in there. I didn't want them getting hurt. And uh, into the evening I would, uh, I would tape sheetrock because there's no saws, there's no hammers, there's no noise. But it's a lot of man hours to spackle these joints and tape them and all that stuff. And I listen to tapes.
And I can remember listening to that tape by, uh, Harry Hayhoe, who I'd never met.
And in the tape and I'm just kinda in my own world listening like I was sitting in the meeting and taken away there and, uh.
He made this comment at least once and it kind of stuck with me. He said I wouldn't be able, brethren. He said I wouldn't be able. It was in an address. I wouldn't be able to stand before you today if I didn't get down on my knees and ask God for help to carry on something like that.
And here I'm 30 something 30, I don't know, 33 or 34. And I'm saying, come on, I have heard of this guy. This is Harry Hale. I've met Gordon, I've met Albert and uh, these men are giants in the faith. You know, he kind of exaggerating this kind of making it dramatic.
As I was, I was a young, untested, probably half of an irritant to my brethren at that time, I'm sure, and I just couldn't see it. But as time went on, Oh my.
Those words have come back to me so many times.
If you haven't hit that stage in your life, young believer, I hope you never do. But if you do, remember what he said. He got down on his knees and he asked Lord for the strength to carry on. Put one foot in front of another, as we say, because there is an adversary. It's not just that we go out spoiling for a fight with the new armor that we've gotten as believers.
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In the 6th chapter of Ephesians, I got this great armor. I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna swing this thing around here.
No, the fight will be brought to you.
And the armor is largely defensive, and it's for the front of you.
And it's needed because your adversary, the devil, walketh about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
And he'll find and look for the ***** in your armor. And whether it's spiritual, doctrinal, emotional.
Whether it's through the lust of the flesh or the lust of the eye, or the pride of life or whatever it might be, those ****** will be explored.
We have a text on the wall of our house. We've always kept it wherever we've lived. Near the near the door, everybody goes out. Usually the back door says greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. I don't mean to frighten anyone because we have the resources and capacity to withstand the Wiles of the devil and to stand.
He's he. He fits us and will fit us.
But how? We need that resource. And I can tell you, I've been so discouraged in my life and I don't think a soul knew it.
And across my mind, why don't I just give up?
Why is it that older people, sometimes their children get to a certain age and they leave the large table?
He said, well, that's disappointing.
Then the parents leave.
Why would you do that?
It happens, you all, everyone has seen it.
And you say getting back to our.
Question that was raised, if the Lord is able to keep us to the uttermost, why does he even allow failure in our life?
Why didn't Peter? Why didn't Paul, why didn't the Lord Jesus say to Peter?
I prayed for the.
And you're not gonna fall.
Why did he say that? He could have said that.
He could have made that situation not happen.
But he saw in Joel something he wanted to perfect. He has such aspirations for you and me, higher than we probably even have for ourselves. It has such aspirations.
Wants us to enjoy. He's a Potter and we're the clay and He wants to enrich us now. Not when we get homes merely, but now.
So Job, a righteous man, he said Satan came and Satan thought he had going to have his way, and he did to a certain extent.
But God allowed all those trials in his life.
And so I suggest to you, and I think I found it so in my own life, that the Lord has allowed me to fail. And he's just stepped back a little bit and pulled that protection away, that hedge like Job had around him. Because we need to learn lessons that we were, as we say in slang, we are a little bit too much of A knucklehead.
To learn in a better way.
I ought to have been able to learn a lot of the lessons I've learned in life from the lessons I have in this book.
Because all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable and the things that were written aforetime were written for our learning.
Well, I've had to go through some things in my life that are very humbling.
Things I should have learned from this book and from the experience of David and Joel and Peter, but I had to learn them in my life, and perhaps you'll learn them in your life that way.
If we turn to 1St John chapter 2.
We see that there's another aspect.
Of the Lord Jesus living for us on high.
And that is, uh, we'll pick up in first John for John's first epistle.
And verse 7.
I'm sorry, verse six, if we say that we have fellowship with him.
Communion with him, fellowship with him, and walk in darkness. We lie and do not the truth.
But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another in the blood of Jesus Christ. His Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We say that we have not sinned. We make Him a liar, and His word is not in US. My little children, these things right? I answer you that.
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Not and if any man's sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
And He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.
When the Lord Jesus and his wisdom with in his special care in your life and in my life.
Determines that we need to go through some experiences.
To do us good at our latter end.
And we fall or fail.
The Lord Jesus.
Is there as our advocate with the Father because as we started the meeting with, we're in relationship, the relationship Joseph doesn't change. God is now our father. We are sons of God. We are children and his family. It's not a question of kicking us out of the family.
It's a question of working with us to address the failure to restore us into communion, into fellowship with him practically.
And so if we I believe we read the verse about Christ as our high priest, He's a merciful and faithful high priest to us, merciful and faithful to us. But here it says he is faithful.
Looking for the verse if any man sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
I'm sorry, it's verse nine. We are confessed our sins. He is faithful and just to forgive us, to forgive us our sins.
And the truth of propitiation is brought in here, I feel, to show that that our Father is faithful to that work which has been accomplished for our blessing. It's not faithful and just to us because we deserve the fruit of our deeds. God is not mocked as a man's souls, so shall He also reap.
So it can't be faithful and just to us. It's faithful and just to Christ in that sense, faithful to that work that has been accomplished for God's glory on Calvary's cross, faithful to the position he's put us in, and based upon the value of that work.
And as Christ is our advocate, he works with us in a different way, works in our souls if we were to read in he in Romans chapter 8, the Spirit itself makes intercession for us, and Christ intercedes for us in this way when we fail to restore us. And I'd like to look briefly as our time is left to a situation that we have in the book of Second Samuel with David.
With which I'm sure most are familiar and I think we can see in a practical picture.
Evidence of this work with one who is.
So strikingly called a man after God's own heart.
We pick up the accounts in Second Samuel 11.
And it came to pass after the year was expired at the time when kings go forth to battle.
That David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel, and they destroyed the children of Ammon and besieged Rabbah, But David tarried still at Jerusalem.
It, it can be a humbling lesson for you and I as Christians as we become young adults and we start to take hold spiritually and start to grow and start to feel like we're making some progress and some traction to realize that our flesh, that fallen nature that we have, that John said we have that sin in US and if we deny it, we're a liar. It never gets any better.
And whenever we go back to it, it always acts the same way.
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Never improves.
Another statement I found hard to swallow at first was when our late brother Clarence Lundin, and I can't remember whether it was in a, in a, in an address or whether we were just standing in line for our meal and he looked at us younger brothers. We were all kind of hanging on his words. We loved him so much.
And he says, you young brothers don't know what sin is.
And I thought to myself without saying anything.
I thought I knew what sin was. I wasn't saved till I was 23. I was a pretty prodigal. Prodigal. Well, I thought I knew what sin was before he said that with such conviction.
I stash that away and you know he's right.
You think you know what sin is as a young person because you see this world's display all around you.
Fall around. You can't. Can't ignore it and you can't. It's just there.
But as you grow spiritually and as the Lord, if the Lord tarries and you have more experience, you look back from a perspective that you didn't have when you were young, and you'll see that same flesh which has not gotten a bit better.
In in such a more deeper and profound context, and I think that's what Brother Londin was referring to. Doesn't get any better. Here's a man after God's own heart.
Here's a man that slew the lion and the bear as a young as a youth he went out after Gath when when hundreds of thousands were petrified.
He behaved himself wisely.
He was.
Be sought to the point where This is why it why bother to chase me? What am I?
And he had the opportunity to do away with his his adversary, and he deferred in holy respect to the authority the Lord had put on that King's Hall, and so on. All these beautiful things we see in David.
But we see in his life in weaknesses too.
And here we get to this chapter and we see that instead of going out as the warrior king, that was really his portion, he's hanging back in Jerusalem. He's complacent.
And like I said, with that great big structure that you're holding up.
It will be loss of life and limited falls.
And it doesn't take much to keep it there, but when it starts to go out, Oh my, it can really go and snap cables and cause death and destruction when it gets away from its center.
I'm old enough to have remembered the first time since I was saved later in my as a young adult, I can remember the first time I read many passages and what my impression was, and I can remember reading through this story for the first time And you're following the story along and, and you just have to stop and say, I can't believe this. I can't believe he would do that.
But we believe it. We're made of the same stuff.
And so with Scripture in in our New Testament knowledge now says walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill flesh's lost. There's practical instruction for us to look to the Lord to be preserved in the enjoyment of Christ.
That we don't get complacent, that we don't say this armor is a little too hot or this armor doesn't isn't really needed today. And the next thing you know, you've got some arrows in you and you're on your heels and things can snowball.
And so it was in David's life.
So it was in David's life.
It's hard to I'm not gonna read the whole account.
It's hard to imagine that a man that was favored in such a way and had such a a a godly and upright man as we would say today, working for him.
To steal a man's wife.
And you know, once, once, once we get out of center.
As the old brothers used to say, Sin doesn't travel solo.
Sin usually travels in pairs and one thing leads to another.
And David's conscience was so hardened at this point. Maybe that's too strong a word. His conscience was so inactive.
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That he just starts dealing with things as if he's playing with Legos or something rather than people's lives.
And so he's going to cover it up with the taking of the life of Uriah.
And on he goes in his sin.
Why do we get away from the Lord? Because we get away in our heart.
Keep thy heart, the word of God says above all keeping or everything that is kept for out of it are the issues of life if you have something very fragile.
And very precious and very important.
You wanna protect it?
I've seen men in military and other special circumstances protect special things and man do they go to a lot of extreme.
That's what you and I need to do with our own hearts.
And the heart grows cold.
And then things start to tip.
And our affection towards him starts to dial down. Still going to meeting.
Still going to meeting.
Still reading the word.
And then we start effects our relationship with our brethren, with our family.
And then effects how we walk in this life because our feet are not washed.
And separation goals. And then things begin to snowball. And pretty soon this is the story of you and me, and we're just going along this way like sleepwalkers.
Instead of walking in the in the sensed presence of God.
And that's the way we can be.
And so Nathan comes to David in the 12Th chapter and relates to him this.
Parable.
With the.
Verse four. There came a traveler onto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock, and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him, and took the poor man's lamb, and dressed it for the man that was come to him.
And Davide anger was greatly kindled against the man, And he said to Nathan, As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die.
And he shall restore the Lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.
Nathan said to David.
Thou art demand.
What David did not lose in his state of soul, as we would say, is his sense of righteousness.
He called it right academic or theoretical. When this happens, you do this.
When the local assembly gets that way, brethren, we're in trouble.
Things get routine. Where's the rule book? This happens, so we do that.
Brother said to me the other day, he quoted to me, He said, you know when a person gets away from the Lord in their heart.
There's the display of two things, self will and self righteousness.
What a what a couple of what a what a couple of those two are.
You don't wanna meet a person that is driven by self will.
And full of self righteousness.
To stop and think about it, it's a bad combination.
David was self-righteous, he had no clue, insensitive to how he was going on and this is one of the worst problems of us. When we get away from the Lord in our heart is because we have no sense of it anymore.
Isn't that true?
The way the children of Israel got.
Lord had to say to them through Jeremiah, Thou hast forgotten me days without number.
Wow, have you ever done that?
You can do that.
You can be going to meeting and walking in and out of meeting and taking part in the meetings and everything in your life can be OK. You're not doing what David did.
But in your heart you drifted from the Lord.
You're a sweet Walker.
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I've been in that situation. I have sad to have to confess. I can remember laying down in the dark, putting my head on the pillow and the Lord saying to me, hey, Remember Me?
What a what a sobering verse.
Days without number we can get at a distance from the Lord.
And it's characterized by the lack of enjoyment.
It's characterized by self righteousness and indifference really to our brethren and a careless walk that mingles with things that we shouldn't be involved in.
And it's characterized by indifference to all of the above.
Who me? The Lord says that the book I can remember that when I finally got to for my first time reading through the book of Malachi. I'm about to finish the Old Testament for the first time and get to Malachi and the book starts. I have loved you, saith the Lord, and I just got done reading all that stuff.
And the Lord says I've loved you and I just, I think I had to just stop after that. Man, that's really something.
And one of the children, did you say where it?
We're indifferent.
But oh, Nathan's words affected David.
And this is a picture, really, of what the Spirit of God will do with us.
When God graciously.
Through the work of his son as our advocate.
Intercedes for us when we failed.
In Psalm 23, even the young children know the verse that says He restoreth my soul.
You can't restore yourself.
You can't wake up one day because somebody, finally the Lord, used one of your brethren to finally touch your conscience.
And you say you know, and you feel there's a word from the Lord. You just have to get by yourself and digest it. Just a passing comment a brother or sister might make.
So I wanna get back to the enjoyment of the Lord. I wanna get back to the way I need to be living in personal enjoyed relationship with Christ.
OK, so you go to bed, get up the next morning. How does it go?
What's it like when you've, uh, neglected your personal care? When you don't exercise?
When you eat too much.
When you, my daughters are all kind of healthy people now and so you're not supposed to eat at this time of night and all the rest, what happens? Say, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to get healthy now. You can't get up in the morning.
OK, I'm going to go jog 2 miles, I'm going to eat some granola or something and all of a sudden boom, here we are. Doesn't work that way. We all know that it doesn't work that way spiritually either.
But there is a way back for us.
He restoreth my soul.
If we were to turn and time is about gone, so we won't. But in Numbers 19 we see that there was a waters of separation for when a person had become unclean.
And the person was supposed to do something on the third day. Let let, let us, let us do. Turn to it and hold your finger. Turn some numbers 19.
In numbers 19.
And verse 11, just to pick it up in the middle there he that touches the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days. He shall purify himself with it on the third day, and on the 7th day he shall be clean. But if he purify not himself the third day and the 7th day he shall not be clean.
On the third day, they're sorrow.
The 7th day, figuratively speaking, there's joy again.
On the third day.
We are led to feel the magnitude of the distance we've allowed between us and our Savior.
On the 7th day, we're brought back into the enjoyment of our Savior.
And we marvel at the grace he shows to us nonetheless.
And so if we were to turn to Psalm 50, not 51, which is a Psalm that is directly connected to this experience, and we won't read it for the sake of time, but we see there that that the exercise of the psalmist of David was not just to have things made forgiven.
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But that he might.
Have a restored sense of holiness, and then he might have joy again. And as you go through that Psalm, you can see those steps. And so in our passage in Second Samuel 12, we see.
As Nathan had said to David.
Thou art the man, and this is the beginning, you might say, of the third day with David. The first sign of a turn in David's soul is he confesses his sin.
But confession isn't restoration. Confession is an act that you do.
And despite the fact that David said the man that did this thing shall surely die, Nathan says thou shalt not die. He was forgiven.
That's an act that God chose to do. Is it all over now? Everything good? No.
There's a process that David needs to go through. There's a process that you and I go through. There's a process that Peter went through.
In that process whereby we arrive at a deeper sense and we restored to the joy of our salvation.
And so if you turn down to for example.
To verse 20. It's a little picture here. Then David arose from the earth after he.
Finds out that the child has died.
David arose from the earth, and washed and anointed himself, and changed his apparel, and came into the House of the Lord, and worshipped. Then he came to his own house, and when he required, they set bread before him, and he did eat.
Confession is an act.
That David did repentance was a process that probably followed.
And worked in his heart for the rest of his life.
Forgiveness was an act that God did at that moment, pronounced by Nathan, but the restoration of the soul of David was a process that went on.
And this is what our brethren go through when they have a fall, and we should be aware of it.
And if the Lord has to pull back the hedge and you and me and we go through something like that, let's be intelligent if that's what we're going to go through.
And a person that decides, you know, I need to take care of myself. This is not upright for me to live this way in a natural sense, What do you gotta do? You just gotta put your head down and just day by day, just start. Cease to do evil. Learn to do well, even in natural things.
And so, as it says in the 16th Psalm, I have said, the Lord always before me.
You can do that. It's what I call priming the pump. She's got cold in your soul.
Get the one of the gospels open or an epistle open before your soul and just start priming your pump. You can do that. You can't change your heart, you can't warm your own heart, you can't do any of those things. But you can set the Lord before yourself.
And that's what this man in the psalmist in the 16th Psalm did.
I have said the Lord always before me. Isn't that beautiful? And guess what?
That sense of the Lord's presence started to work in his life, and he regains confidence. Because thou art at my right hand, I shall not be moved. And eventually at the end of the Psalm, it brings joy. We don't function properly as Christians when we're not happy.
My wife, you know, you haven't seen us much for the last seven or eight years. She comes walking in and she looks all down and dreary and everything like that and say, what kind of a life are you living? What kind of a husband you have?
I don't know exactly how you feel about it, but I feel when I'm not happy in my soul, and I don't mean to be giddy jumping up and down, but if you're not happy in your soul, I feel, I feel it's a reproach to the Lord because He died and He has made everything necessary for me to be happy even in the midst of every circumstance He could bring in my life. Doesn't mean I'm not experiencing difficulty.
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As the apostle Paul could say, as sorrowful and yet always rejoicing.
Only a Christian can understand a verse like that as sorrowful yet always rejoicing. So David goes through this process in type here where he's cast upon the Lord, and he goes through the third day and he feels the weight and his eyes are open and he sees the horror. But I can't, you can say I can't believe how I got into this state and judges that.
And self judgment is is is one of the old pamphlets put it. What does it say? The inescapable condition.
Of a walk or a life in communion with God.
If we don't judge ourselves, God will step in and judge us.
Yes, we are all the recipients of the grace of God, and the grace of God has brought us into God's family, and now he's our Father. And Peter says, if you call on not God, if you call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's works past the time of your sojourning here.
Not fear that I'll lose my salvation.
But fear that I will disappoint my Father, my Savior, myself, my brethren, and my testimony, my usefulness to my brethren, will all will fall.
And so David gets up, he washes, he anoints himself, he changed his apparel and the psalmist. And as we read in first, John.
Our conscience and our heart. We wanna know we're forgiven. We wanna know it's OK again. But more than that, we wanna be LED in paths of righteousness for His namesake. We wanna do right now because our heart is right and that's what He wants and we wants, and we're in fellowship together.
And that's why I believe the psalmist in Psalm 51 and in one John one and two goes on to the effect of restoration in the life.
And so these are indications in our brethren, in our children, and our brethren in our local assembly.
Of what the work of God is going on in their lives.
We should be intelligent about it.
Our time is up. Let's just turn in closing to Isaiah.
Chapter 57 Think it is chapter 57.
In verse 15.
The habitations of God. For thus say, at the high and lofty one that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy, I dwell in the high and holy place with Him also, that is, of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.
God obviously could dwell anywhere he wants to dwell.
Catalon, 1000. Hills or his?
He's a high and lofty one that inhabits eternity, but such is his heart that he wants to dwell with you and me.
He wants our fellowship. He could have saved us and not given us a new nature, just forgiving your sins and left us in a certain sense to go on the way we were. No, we wouldn't do that.
It didn't have to give us the capacity to enter into divine things now. He could have waited till we got home to glory. Couldn't you?
But He's given us that now, in the midst of this world of difficulty and infirmity, because He wants our fellowship now.
He has and dwells in the high and lofty place, but wants to dwell with you and me. And then in John 14, last verse.
In John 14, so very well known in the beginning of the chapter, the Lord Jesus speaks about His Father's house.
And how He has gone to prepare a place for us. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself. That hasn't happened yet.
But notice down in verse 23.
Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man loved me, he will keep my word. I believe that you'd say, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him, rather than that's now.
That's during this wilderness journey.
He wants to be with us on our way through. He wants to see our confidence. He wants to hear our voice because he thinks our countenance is lovely and our voice is sweet, and he wants our fellowship.
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When?
Joseph sent his brethren back to.
Get their father.
Says he gave them provision for the way.
When you and I fail, it's our fault.
Because He's given us all things that pertaining to life and godliness, and we don't have to fail. He's given us wagons full of provisions, so to speak.
It gave them provision for the way, but a couple of verses down from that, what does it say?
To see that you fall not out, by the way.
See that you're falling on it, by the way.
So, young young brother, young sister, there's no joy in this world like the joy of being able to walk along in simplicity in our everyday circumstances, enjoying the precious, sweet truth of God in fellowship with the Father and the Son. Let's be jealous of it.
You can't go through on Mom and Dad's exercise. Lot came out of Egypt, had a tent just like Abraham had, but he had no altar. And pretty soon Lot veered off and ended up not in a tent at all. And you know the rest of the story. And Abraham was preserved and he was useful and he was blessed and happy, and so were his sons.
So let's let's see that we don't fall out by the way.
And take advantage of God's rich provision that we might be preserved as we go on. Whether it's one day or 1000 days or how many. Until the Lord comes, let's just pray.
Our God, our Father.
We thank Thee for Thy love to us, that love that will never let us go.
We thank thee that thou so concerned with our.
Our lives, our hearts, our minds without us even allow these humbling circumstances with us at times to humble us and to do us good at our latter end.
We thank Thee, Lord Jesus, for living for us on high, and we thank Thee for restoring us when we get out of the way. We shall look back at the end of our journey, we're sure. And we shall praise Thee in fuller, richer tone for the way that Thou hast LED us through this wilderness. We thank Thee for thy love, Lord Jesus, We ask Thy blessing upon the portions that we've had before us.
We pray for the young people and those young in the faith that they would take hold at a young age of that which is really life.
Maintain faith and a good conscience, that they might be happy and fruitful. Or Jesus for Thy glory, while we wait for Thee to come to take us to be with Thyself. We give Thee thanks, blessed Savior, and thy worthy and precious name. Amen.