Address—Don Rule
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20.
Farewell to this world's fleeting joys. Our home is not below.
There was no home for Jesus here, and tis to him we go.
To him and Yonder home of love, where he has gone before.
The home he changed for Calvary's cross, where all our sins.
He bore, He bore our sins that we might be as partners on the throne.
The throne heal shortly share with those for whom he did atone.
Up to our Father's house we go to that sweet home of love, many mansions that are found where Jesus dwells above.
And he who laughs at home above To be a sufferer here, has left this world again for us, a mansion to prepare.
His errand on the earth was love to wretches such as we, to pluck us from the jaws of death. Nailed to the accursed tree. The accursed tree was the reward.
Which this sad world did give to him, who gave his precious life.
That this lost world might live. We'll start singing at verse 8.
We didn't hear anything about that problem.
That's great.
General.
The rain, the weather and water.
Flash.
There's a little while, There's a while, Go away and legend world.
Living the whole night, woes and swords.
Will not happen anywhere.
Where it has gone?
The nursery.
Do it. I'm going to read before we pray Galatians chapter 6 and verse 14.
God forbid.
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That I should glory saving the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
By whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world, Let's pray.
Our God, our Father, we do pray as we open thy word and read from it, that Thou would speak to us, each one of us.
We thank our God for the love that does speak to us from thine own heart. We thank Thee, our Father, that Thou does perfectly know and understand us as well. And that which is needful for our good and blessing we do return thanks most of all for thy beloved Son, whom thou did send to save us, to deliver us.
And we thank the Lord Jesus for coming and for faithfully doing the Father's will, being obedient unto death, that the death of the cross.
And so, Lord Jesus, we pray that Thou would speak to each one of our hearts this afternoon to draw us to thyself. We do pray, Lord Jesus, in thy precious and worthy name, Amen.
I guess it was one of the men of the world.
Said I never met a man I didn't like.
And I'm sure he would like to have thought of himself as somebody that didn't have any enemies.
And I suppose each one of us, in our way, would like to think of ourselves as somebody that doesn't promote any enemy against us.
But brethren, we do have enemies, and it's important for us to recognize it and deal with it.
Uh, it's been said of us that we have three of them. I think they're more than three, but there are three primarily primary ones that have been brought before many of us for many years. One is the world, one is the flesh, and another is the devil.
God has enemies as well. He says that death to him is an enemy that he is going to remove and so on. And this afternoon, uh, I would like to take up our enemy, the world.
And to do so, I would like to go back and begin where the world begins. It's found for us in the book of Genesis. There are many different ways that this could be brought out the subject, but in the time we have.
We'll only look at perhaps a few of the ways that we can see it.
But if you go to Genesis chapter 3.
Umm, and verse three. But as the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest ye die.
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
And then, uh, we're gonna assume common knowledge about these things, so we're just gonna look at a verse here and there as we go along. And, uh, so it says.
Uh, in the end of the chapter and verse 22, the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become as one of us to know good and evil. And now lest he put forth his hand and take also the tree of life and eat and live forever. Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man, and he placed at the east of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword, which turned every way to keep the way.
Of the tree of life. Then in chapter four we have the story which we call it of Cain and Abel. And in the end of that story.
It says in verse 13, Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth, and from the face from thy face shall I be hid, and I shall be a fugitive and a Vagabond in the earth.
And it came to pass that, and it shall come to pass that everyone that findeth me shall slay me.
And the Lord God said unto him, Therefore, whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.
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And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived in Barry Knock, and he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son Enoch, and so on.
We all know these stories.
But we're gonna refer back to some of the things that we've read later on, but we're just reading them now.
But to begin with.
When man disobeyed God, it caused, of necessity, really a separation between man and God.
And because man had disobeyed God, he was God, if you will, was forced to take him out of the Garden of Eden, he said, lest he take of the tree of life and live. Because if he'd taken the tree of life, he would have continued indefinitely to live, and he would live, perhaps in his sinful condition, which God could not, would not allow to have a man. Go on, imagine yourself as you are.
On this earth and living forever in that condition. And so God prevented man from partaking of the tree after he had disobeyed. But in the Garden of Eden, a tempter comes into him, one who has conflict with God, one who was opposed to God's purposes, and man becomes the center of a conflict between God and Satan. And so.
Satan tempts man into saying.
You want to be like God.
Satan tempts man by the very thing that Satan wanted to be.
He wanted to be like God.
He wanted to have the honor and the place that God had. And so he then gets into a conflict with God over his creature man and he tempts him and he says, you know, God's keeping something good from you because if you had this, if you took of this tree, you would be like God.
And no good and evil. And so he immediately exposes his own character as a liar.
Because God said to man, if you take of this tree, you will surely die.
And in the conversation with the woman, Satan says to her, You will not.
Surely die. And so you have two statements, from God and from the liar, and they're in direct contrast to each other. They can't both be possible or true, but man chooses to believe the lie he commits.
Sin against God, He's put out of the garden and.
Then we have Cain and Abel.
And we know the story of Cain and Abel. We don't have time to tell all these stories and get through much of the subject matter. And so we do. We know the story. We know Cain rises up and slays his brother Abel. And God talks to him about it. And, and he says, now I'm going to be a fugitive and a Vagabond on the earth. I'm going to have to wander around because, well, he'd murdered. And if you do something, you'll think others will do it to you.
You ever lied, then you believe people will lie to you. Have you ever cheated? Then you'll know in your heart that people might cheat against you. So anything that any of us have done, we will also recognize within ourselves that somebody may do that thing to us. And so Cain was afraid that he was going to be murdered by somebody else and a consequence, he thought he was going to have to wander around and kind of be a Vagabond, move away from people.
Lest he suffer the consequences of his own behavior.
God in mercy says to him, no, I'm gonna put a mark on you and that isn't gonna happen to you. Does he respond to the mercy of God? No, he doesn't. He takes the mercy of God.
And it goes out from the presence of the Lord and builds a city. A city is a place where people can come together and live. Not as vagabonds really, but as people who have community.
And it's the beginning of the world. It's the beginning of the very principle of what we call the world.
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The world is a place where man lives in separation from God.
For his own will and wishes and purposes. And so M Cain went out from the presence of the Lord. He builds the city. He begins to build it with a reputation for himself, because he's now man is for his own interest and his own good. And so he names it after his son. That is in honor of his family tree. And that's man, and that's the world.
But remember from the beginning.
Satan is behind it.
Satan is behind it.
Now let's go over to the New Testament briefly to the book of. We could do multiple places, but we'll go to the book of Luke.
And go to the 23rd chapter of Luke.
Luke chapter 23 and verse 18.
And they cried out all at once, saying, away from away with this man, release unto us for Abbas, who for a certain sedition made in the city, and for murder.
He's one of Cain's descendants, was cast into prison. Pilate therefore willing to release Jesus, spake unto him. But they cried, saying, Crucify him, crucify him. And he said unto them the third time, Why, what evil hath he done? I find no fault cause of death in him. I will therefore chastise him and let him go.
And they were instant with loud voices, requiring that He might be crucified. And the voices of them and of the chief priests prevailed. And Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they required any released unto them Him that for sedition and murder was cast into prison whom they desired. And He delivered Jesus to their will.
God in love.
Multiple times visited Mann and his condition and in his world, and as we all know, God for so loved the world that in the end of the course of time He sends the greatest of all his own son.
And he presents his son to man to deliver him from his condition that he had been brought into and in his world.
And so the Lord Jesus and love from God is presented to man. He's presented to the world itself, and this is the result. We will not have this man.
We prefer Keynes descendants, the murderer. And so Mann chooses a murderer. He chooses to perpetuate the condition of his world and refuses the love of God in sending his son into the world.
Solemn, isn't it?
The verse that we began with before we prayed. God forbid that I should glory saving the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom this world is crucified unto me and I unto the world. The world is an enemy. I would like to think we didn't have to say anything more this afternoon, that that's enough.
Who of us would dare wanna have anything to do with the system of things that said to the Lord Jesus, Crucify him.
But God has told us that's the world, that's the world, It has said to the Lord Jesus, crucify him. We will not have this man.
So we sang in the hymn.
Uh, farewell, Farewell, poor faithless world, with all thy boasted sore. We do not have joy where he had. Woe be rich where he was poor.
But sadly, we need to go on.
We need to go on with the subject.
Turn with me over to 1St John Chapter 4.
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First, John chapter 4 and verse 14. We have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him and He and God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love. He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him.
And then over in chapter 5.
Verse 18 It says we know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not, but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one, that Satan toucheth him not. And we know that are of God that the whole world lieth in wickedness.
Something important here for us to understand.
The world.
Is dead toward God.
Death is separation. The world is a system of things which is totally separated from God.
Satan has established it to keep Mann away from God and to keep man as he can for himself.
And he's a It's opposed to God.
And as such instead.
Another characteristic of the world is it's a lie.
It promises things that it cannot fulfill, and Satan knows it cannot fulfill it, but he deceives man into using man's loss.
Using man's fallen nature as an entry point, he presents things to us that it's very easy to spend our whole lives or waste our whole lives and at the end have nothing for God come out of them.
The Flash, as another has said.
Engaged in evil, feeds on sinful desires and wastes itself without fruit. And Satan presents the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. Man feeds upon that and he wastes his life without fruit, and he comes to the end of his life and there's nothing for God in it, and there's nothing for him but the judgment. And so it's significant. It's important to remember the enemy.
Is a liar, a deceiver, and he can only work with the dead things toward God.
But what we just read is the contrast to that.
That God spoke to dead people on the earth and those that here live tells us in John. God's not limited by the fact that man spiritually dead when he speaks to him. And God has spoken to dead people. Some of us, all of us at one point in our life were dead spiritually toward God. And God spoke to us and we heard. And now God has given to us life and the character of the life that God has given to us, which we call eternal life, we read about it.
And as it says of that, that life itself, whosoever is born of God, sinneth not.
The life that God has given us.
Is not tempted.
By anything that is wrong.
There's absolutely nothing that can be presented to the life that has been given to us, the life of Christ that will respond to any temptation.
It Satan has absolutely no thing that he can present to that life to make it sin.
Nothing, and that's why it says the wicked one toucheth him not because in that life he has nothing that he can appeal to that that life is attracted to. On the other hand, God feeds that life with his beloved Son as as food for that soul for that life, and it finds perfect satisfaction in it.
And further than that, when there is that life in a person, the source of God's love is God, and you can think of that person as a vessel or a pool of water or something like that in which God's own love flows, as we have in first John four. It flows into that life, it fills it, and it overflows in love to others.
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And in that there is a character of life which is perfectly unselfish. We're gonna talk about selfishness or self love in a little bit. And so remember that, that the love of God working, flowing into that heart that has that life. And from that heart flowing out the love of God. God dwells in US and we dwell in God in a practical sense, in that way.
So are we OK?
Everything is all right, right? We, we live sinless lives now. We have the love of God working in us. We have the life of Christ, which is a perfect life. We have a connection to our Lord Jesus Christ in heaven. We have a perfect object before our souls. So everything goes good all the time without exception, no.
Well, I think we need to go on.
Turn with me and I'm going to spend much of the rest of our time to go over with you.
What's brought before us in Revelation chapter two and three?
In a specific way. And that's how the world, it's an example, it's an illustration of how Satan works through the world in this case to destroy the testimony of God's church on earth. But in doing so, the church is composed of individuals. And so it's the work of Satan to destroy our lives as to a life for God.
So we have here in Revelation it says in just to get the connection, chapter one and verse 20, the mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in thy right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks.
The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest, are the seven churches unto the Angel of the Church of Ephesus, Right these things, saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand. We're just gonna look. We could never go over the seven churches in a short moments of time, but we're gonna trace a thread through the seven, with special emphasis on Satan and the world.
And how Satan and the world have interacted with the church to destroy its testimony on earth and by illustration because the church is individuals that compose it. How he works in the lives would work in our lives and does work in our lives if we allow it. So here we find in this first Church.
Umm, it says.
Verse 4 Nevertheless, I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember, therefore, from whence thou art fallen, and repent.
The one thing that we want to get clear out of the first church out of Ephesus is.
The fountain of life and every soul is the heart the way Scripture presents it to us. Keep thy heart with our diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. That heart in which the love of God is free to flow is a heart that Satan can't access.
The life itself he can't touch.
But if anything is allowed in the life.
To stop up the flow of the love of God and the enjoyment of that love.
And Satan has a point of access.
He has a point of access if anything is allowed in your life or mine. That stops the enjoyment of our fellowship with God on a daily, hourly basis, anything that comes between us.
Us, Satan has a point of access. The world has a point of access. We become, in a certain sense, powerless to the power of Satan to deceive us.
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And so in this first church and this first picture of, yes, the church's history, but potentially an individual's history as well, we talk about the first law of a person and the first enjoyment of the Lord Jesus. And they can't have enough of him. And life goes on beautifully at first.
But then some some little things, some tiny things, some small little thing causes.
Break and fellowship between the soul and God.
Because to have fellowship with God, it has to be in all the standard that God is light and God is love. There's no in, there's no character of fellowship with God that comes short of perfection really, the completeness that God is light and God is love. Tiniest little unkind thought is inconsistent with God and will break fellowship with God because he can't have fellowship with it. And so if it's allowed in the life, it takes the smallest little thing to create a disconnect.
And consequently a door is opened for the enemy.
So that's the first church and the second, uh, we find it says.
And umm, the church to Smyrna, verse nine. I know thy works and tribulation and poverty, but thou art rich. And I know the blasphemy of them that say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan. Fear none of those things which thou suffer. Behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, and so on. We're going to have to keep going quickly.
God in mercy.
Allows trouble to come into our lives.
To draw us back to himself.
If trouble comes into your life, we call it trial or tribulation, one of the first things you wanna do is stop and say thank you.
For it.
It's a mercy of God.
To us that he loves us enough.
To sometimes allow the enemy of our souls, in this case Satan, to persecute.
Because persecution is a time that freshens up the soul, if it turns to God that which may recover it from a loss of its character of love, the love of the heart of God toward us.
And so God allows it and uses it for good.
I would also notice in it he says about the same church and its history. He speaks about, uh, the synagogue of Satan.
Verse 9 Let's say they are Jews and are not. We're of the synagogue of Satan.
Satan's an imitator.
He imitates God for the purpose of evil. He substitutes something for God that's similar or looks the same and it isn't.
But he sets up shop, if you will. He sets up what God has established. He will set up something that imitates it in some way, and in this particular case, in a very subtle way. God had set aside Judaism because it didn't work to bring man to God. He had finished the test with man over whether man in responsibility could live up to what God wanted and get blessed by it.
So he sets it aside, and as soon as as soon as God sets aside the principle of law and what the Jew lived by and responsibility to God, Satan is immediately ready to set up shop to re to start it up again.
To put man under it as a basis of His blessing.
After God had put it aside and that's the way that the that Satan works and that's and often this case with the world. It presents something that looks just as good and maybe in some little respect to my flesh better.
And it promises me liberty. The word of God says as a believer, I'm a creature that's been delivered and I get into liberty. And what does the spiritual world come along and say to me?
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Promises me liberty.
Doesn't tell me that the people that promise it to me are slaves of corruption, but it offers it to me as if it's real and if it's good, as we have in Second Peter.
Now let's go over to the.
3rd Church, Bergamos.
And it says there, verse 14, I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam.
Which thou has taught. They like to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication.
I think most know the story of Balaam Balak, a man of the world feared Israel and he wanted to them to he wanted the profit BA Balaam to curse them. And so he he hired him with that intent, cursed the people of God. He couldn't do it. God didn't allow it. He had to turn around and tell them that they were blessed.
So what does he do?
He says I can't, God won't let me curse them.
But I like money.
So I'll tell you how to get them. I'll tell you how to get them.
You go on the outside of them.
And you present yourself to them, and you get them to come out to where you are.
And then you present your idols, your fornication opportunities to them.
And so you tempt them into the your place. And Satan has very successfully tempted individuals in the church.
To come out.
And to partake.
And to be destroyed.
In their relationship with God.
Let's go on to the 4th, 1:00.
Verse 20.
Nevertheless, I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess to teach.
And to seduce my servants, to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.
And I gave her space to repent of her fornication, and she repented. Not verse 23. And I will kill her children.
Very solemn.
Time passes.
And instead of Satan getting the church, if you will, the separated people, the heavenly people to enjoy and be a light for God in the world, which was their responsibility, that's being judged here.
He says the doors open, go on in, so the world comes into the church. The world doesn't just tempt for man to come out.
But he says no. Come on in.
Come on in. So the Church brings into itself the world and its principles, and worse yet, it allows the principles of the world to be taught as if they were good in the Church.
Sad, isn't it? We don't like to live a life that leaves us in any zone of uncomfort.
Not have comfort in the character of our lives.
So what do we do if we're gonna go on with something that is not of God? We will change the way we look at it. We will change our teaching, if you will, to accommodate it after a while. So then we can go on and say it's all right. And consequently, when the world was allowed to come into the church and start to teach it, it starts to teach it to live by the principles that the world loves by.
The woman, Jezebel, was a worldling. She's allowed in. She's allowed to teach. She's allowed to corrupt and defile and to produce idolatry within that had once been only outside.
And worse than that, worse than that to my soul.
I'm gonna call it the older generation, except that the teaching.
And what did they do with it? They taught their children.
They taught their children.
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They were I will kill our children. The Lord says He's not speaking physically, but spiritually. You bring up a generation that was born and bred on the principles of the world. What do you expect from them? What can you hope for them when you've done that to them?
Solemn, isn't it?
The next step downward, if you will, is found in Sardis.
He says there verse three of chapter 3. Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.
Umm and then in verse two I missed it. Be watchful and strengthened that are ready to die.
Here we see a condition in which you look at the world and you look at the church and they can't be distinguished.
They live alike, they act alike, they follow the same desires and the same interests. And they're so alike that when the Lord looks at them, he has to say to them, I'm going to have to judge you like the world. I'm coming on the world like a thief. You all have to come like a thief because you're no different. That's how you live. That's how you act.
Sad.
He said.
Things are ready to die. What's different between the world and the church is the world has life. I'm sorry, the church has life. The world is dead.
But if you animate the members of the body and feed them on the principles and activity and interests of the world, you can't distinguish, because that's the character of the life that's lived.
And so that's what he's saying in Sardis.
Go on to Philadelphia.
Inverse.
Nine chapter 3, Verse 9. Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews and are not, but do lie.
Hmm.
Things degenerate.
To a point where Satan starts to use the church to accomplish his agenda in the world. He not only corrupts, it, defiles it, makes it like the world so it can't be distinguished. But having brought it to that condition, he then says I can use the church for myself.
I can make a servant out of it.
And he's done that and it's done with increasing force in 2011. It's going on right now in this world. I don't know how many here are familiar with terminology that's common to Christianity and so on, but some of you have probably heard the words replacement theology. That's what this verse is, replacement theology and its principle. It says as we had in Acts chapter.
Umm.
One yesterday in the reading, we're a heavenly people with a heavenly hope, and we don't have a connection to this earth because our head is a glorified man in the glory, and Our Calling is heavenly and our hope is heavenly.
But what's this talking about?
This is a what's come inside the profession of Christianity that Satan is now using is saying the church replaces Jews and Judaism. And all the verses that you see in the Bible about the Jew now have been Christianity has replaced them before God. And the place the Jew once held with God is now held by Christianity, and therefore Israel has no claim to the land.
And so say uses that.
False teaching, that false belief, those who say they are Jews, Christian Jews if you will, that Judaism has been replaced by Christianity. So we're the Jews today, we Christians. It's a lie. But he's used the lie to have Christianity, or at least part of it, support his agenda to destroy Israel in the land and say they have no place and no right there.
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They're not there in belief, they're not there the way that God is going to have to bring them into blessing.
But it's still a lie, and it's still against the way God is going to work for blessing for his earthly people.
Before we take up the last one, which is the one that quite honestly, brethren, it scares me.
The more I've meditated on it, I don't even want to speak about it really in my own heart, but I believe the Lord wants me to. But before we take it up because I think it's it's an incredibly bad.
Where the the world as an enemy has taken individuals and the church as a whole. Turn back before we go there to Luke's Gospel chapter 12.
We're going back to where we were in Sunday school this morning.
Umm Luke, chapter 12.
And umm, I'm gonna read the 15th verse in the new translation. And he spoke a parable unto them, saying, the Lord, umm, the land.
And I'm sorry, verse 15. And he said unto them, take heed and keep yourselves from all covetousness. For it is not because a man is in abundance that his life is in his possessions. In other words, the parable applies to every man, regardless of whether he has money or not. It's not because you're rich, literally rich, that your life can be taken up in your possessions. And yet it still can be. And so he tells the parable of this man.
And uh, John read it this morning. We won't read it again except the end of it. It says in verse 21, So is he that layeth up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.
And he said unto his disciples, Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what you shall eat, neither for the body what you shall put on, And then going down. Verse 32 Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. Sell that you have, and give alms. Provide yourselves bags that wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approaches, nor moth corrupted.
Verse 34 particularly. I hope you'll remember it when this meeting is over.
Umm, verse 34. And where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Now over to Second Timothy.
Second Timothy.
And chapter 3 and verse one.
Know this also, that in the last days perilous times should come, for men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters proud, and so on. And verse 4 traders, heady, high minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof from such turn away.
Now let's go back.
To Revelation chapter 3.
Verse 15. Revelation 315 I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot.
I would that thou were cold or hot.
So then because our lukewarm and neither cold nor hot.
I will spew thee out of my mouth.
Lukewarm.
Half hearted.
Apathy.
Without zeal.
Just kind of take it or leave it.
Attitude.
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Here's somebody the Lord describes as lukewarm, or a collection of people also that are described as lukewarm.
What do they say about themselves? I'm lukewarm.
Shrug. Don't care. No, they say.
I'm rich.
I'm increased with goods.
And I have need of nothing.
The Lord says about them.
Thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind naked. You know these verses take pondering. They don't seem to.
That's when you look at them, they seem almost impossible to believe.
How could a person be blind and not know it?
How could a person be miserable and say I'm rich?
But that's what the divine testimony of the situation is. How can it be?
What causes it?
You might say, oh.
Well, they profess to be believers, but they're not.
Peter, when some of these principles in another place were being said, Lord, are you talking to us or I'm gonna say the unbelievers?
Notice it says a little farther along verse 19, As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Does he say that to an unbeliever? As many as I love, I rebuke and chase them. No, he doesn't.
There are people in this condition who are real. That is, they'll be in heaven. This isn't simply unbelief in the profession of Christianity. This is a condition of soul that anybody in this room who belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ can get into.
And it makes me tremble for my own soul.
How does it geek?
God is, if I can use the expression, he's hot.
Satan, by contrast, is cold.
And if you try to mix.
What's of God and what's of Satan?
You're going to get into this condition.
It's the end of the road.
A life lived halfway for God and halfway for Satan is going to end up in this condition.
Not only that, it's a condition of.
Self deception.
It's a condition that when a person gets into it, they're the last ones to know about it. Really, they're not aware of it.
It puts the soul in the condition of not even knowing. They say I'm rich.
I don't need anything.
Why? Because.
They don't have an appetite.
For what it is. So what they've got is seemingly satisfactory.
They don't know that they don't have the true riches, they have a substitute for them, or they have something that mixes the two together in such a way that they're apathetic.
And yet, seemingly at one level of the life, satisfied with it.
Brethren, it's a serious, solemn situation. So it's when you when you take what's of God and when you take what's of Satan, and you get him so mixed together it's nauseous to the Lord.
He uses the strongest, some of the strongest language that could apply to his own people. So I'm going to spew you out of my mouth.
There's nothing for me in it.
And so he he puts this terrible serious condition on before them to, she says, wake up.
Listen, Hear. See.
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You're blind, yes, but you have eyes to see. You need isav and so on that you can see.
Umm, so he counsels them. Verse 18I counsel they to buy and make gold tried in the fire.
We could look at this in a gospel application. I don't believe that's the primary intent or force of it here, but it's the practical side of it.
The Lords, the guld as in its divine righteousness that he brings to us. It's been tested in the fire, He says. Make that the treasure.
Make that the treasure of your soul.
The rich man, he was rich, but he wasn't rich toward God.
His heart was in his this life and in this life in his possessions earlier on to the second church, he said.
As it were, you're poor.
But you're rich because they hide the gold. Tried in the fire, they were rich.
In truth, they were rich, but here is a condition.
Where there needs to be the white raiment, the separation raiment often in Scripture connects us with the walk and watch the associations. And he says get rid of the mixture.
Get rid of the mixture. Don't try to have both or you'll have nothing.
You lose everything as to this life.
Thank God if he allows chastening.
Or discipline to come into your life if this is your condition, because sometimes God uses that to bring about the needed awareness of the miserable condition of which one might sound rich.
When you're not. When I'm not.
And finally in verse 20.
Somebody knocks at your door. At my door.
Will you let me in?
I have no place in the mixture.
You won't have an appetite for me.
Sometimes it's it's astounding almost the choices that people will make between something that's for the Lord and something that's for the flesh and not want it.
You feed the flesh and you strengthen its desire, and then you don't want the good, the old corn, if you will. It takes the appetite away. And so I'm satisfied with what I've got.
I don't. I have as much as I need and it destroys.
Any heart for God and the and the Lord Jesus, he stands at the door and he says.
Will you let me in? I wanna have fellowship with you. Let's sit down. Let's enjoy each other's company.
Will you accept me as the treasurer of your heart?
If you do as it says, where your treasure is there will your heart be also in. In that way the treasure is chosen and the heart follows.
The world gets chosen, and the heart follows it.
Christ gets chosen and the heart follows it, and we make conscious choices as to what we value and what we value in life.
And the Lord.
Loves us in such a way that.
He he comes to us and he knocks and he will let me in.
Can we enjoy one another?
May we allow him if we need to open the door, Let's pray.
Our God, our Father.