Talk—Steve Bambauer
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Cube and I don't know if some of you that are 20 years old or less.
Remember the Rubik's Cube?
Most of you know what a Rubik's Cube is. You ever see one of these or play with a Rubik's Cube that's a square?
Movable parts and the different sides are, they have the different colors on them. And when you mix the thing up, then you're supposed to get it back together. I, I took one once and it was all in order. And I thought, well, I'll give this thing six turns, try to remember how I got there and then see if I can't get back. And I gave it six turns and I was hopelessly lost. I, there's no way I could get back.
And the more I turned that thing out, the the worst shape I was in.
I never could figure those out. I think that they had advertised that a person with average intelligence could figure it out in a few weeks and I that was 10 years ago. I never figured that thing out.
Brother Linnea from Brazil, I watched him work it in. His hands were just a blurring. Bingo. All the sides were the right color. I don't know how he did that. I think it was luck.
You know the reason why I'm I'm not talking about Rubik's cubes exactly tell you all about Rubik's cubes, but what we have here in the Rubik's Cube is a little analogy.
Things have gotten out of order. They weren't always out of order.
Everything is upside down, inside out, topsy turvy. This poor world is in a shambles.
And who can sort it out? Who can get it back to the beginning?
I can't, man can't. He would like to try. He's working at it. So he develops programs and governments and politics and organizations with the idea that.
He will come to the point where perhaps man can govern himself.
And he will be able to live happily and peacefully ever after. He's still working on it.
It can't be done and so if we want to see how we got to where we are.
Where everything is at sixes and sevens, and everything is out of order, and the whole creation groaneth. As it says in Romans 8. We have to go back to the beginning and in Genesis chapter.
One, we see that every time. God.
Had made something he beheld verse 31, and it was good.
Evening and the morning were the 6th day every time. It was good. So things didn't start out the way we see them now.
And then in the second chapter, God makes man and he puts them. He puts him in the garden. There's just Adam. Eve has not been taken from his rib yet.
And so God tells Adam in the 16th verse of the second chapter. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.
And you might speculate as to what that tree was and so on and so on. But God speaks to us in a language of accommodation. And what this means simply is that God had placed his creature, man, in that place of submission and obedience. And that's what he wanted from this man Adam, that he might have fellowship with this man Adam, for that was why he was created. And that's why you and I are here too.
And he put him in that place of submission and obedience to this simple command. And Adam didn't have to refrain from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in order to in order to gain life, because he already had it. The law was to give life that man had lost.
But he couldn't keep it. Adam was under command not to gain life, but to retain what he already had.
The last Adam, the 2nd man came into a world that was cursed by sin and nothing was perfect like what we see here where God could pronounce upon it. It was good. The 2nd man came into a world that was cursed by sin.
And full of tears and sorrow and temptations, and really under the hand of the Prince and power of the air, and he lived perfectly before God.
In every step that he took in a place that was adverse.
So then in the third, in the end of the second chapter.
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The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept, And he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall leave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
Now Gaughan had told Adam about this command, about the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil before Eve was formed. But now in the third chapter we have another character come up on the scene.
Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.
It was more subtle. Who is this that takes the form of a serpent in the Garden of Eden there?
And approaches Eve has something to offer.
The serpent What do we know about this serpent? Who is that serpent?
What's happening here?
And the serpent is more subtle.
We're no match.
And there is the common idea, especially in what we have experienced.
Of the democratic experiment, that man has this.
Right to free choice, free will. That he is the master of his own destiny, and he certainly is a responsible moral agent.
But he's not a free moral agent.
But man has the idea that he will make his own course. Does this sound familiar?
Do you have in mind that you will make your decisions as just to what you're going to do and you're going to lay your life out before you and this is what you're going to accomplish in order for you to attain satisfaction in your soul or to get what you think life is all about?
The serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field.
And he said unto the woman, Yeah, hath God said, And this is the first thing that the serpent does, is call into question the word of God.
And he is still effective in that way. He is still working in the same way, his technique is the same.
To call into question the word of God. If this can be destroyed as the word of God, man is without revelation and therefore without responsibility to God. But the fact that God has come out in revelation to man and shown Himself puts us all into that place of responsibility to him. Had he not revealed or shown Himself, we wouldn't be responsible.
And that verse, and I think it's Genesis 15 or 16 where Hagar is out in the desert there and God approaches her.
And provides for her that verse you all learned in Sunday school at one time or another that says.
Thou God seest me. And the other translation that says Thou art the God that revealeth thyself.
It could be rendered that way. God had revealed himself to Haggard out there in the desert.
And now he is revealing Himself to each one of us in this desert, and He has revealed Himself to us in the person of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, For no man hath seen God at any time.
The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared him, so that we know who God is by the revelation of His Son Jesus Christ. God, who at sundry times, in various places, I've spoken to the prophets.
Different ways, dreams, visions, appearances, now in these last days speaks to us by His Son, it says in Hebrews by the sun. The full revelation of God who He is is given to us in the person of His Son, and we find that that revelation of Himself, His introduction of Himself to us, is on a moral basis, not an empirical basis.
It's not something that you're going to see or feel or touch or run through a formula and get an answer.
God has created man as a moral being. He didn't create the dog that way. Dog does not have moral consciousness before God, but you do and I do, and God thus has revealed himself to man on that basis, a moral basis. Would you change the rules and ask for a miracle so that you can believe? Do you want some other evidence than a moral?
Introduction of God to man.
That the Lord Jesus when he met man as a man and spoke with man.
Here on this earth, it was always to man's conscience.
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He did not form a debating society or a Mensa or anything else. He approached every man.
On a moral basis. And that puts us all on the same level. Now if we're going to reject that, it's all over. There's no hope.
There is no reconstruction of your life. The Rubik's Cube is hopeless.
We have to settle for that. Why? Because God sensed the rules and when he told man Adam here that in the day that thou eatest thereof.
Thou shalt surely die. God has put this on a moral basis. He has formed the rules, just as He has in the natural creation with gravity. If I drop this book off the end of this shelf, gravity takes that at a certain particular speed.
And it reaches, perhaps if it's dropped, tying off a terminal velocity, and it hits the ground and there is a certain impact. It works every time. God has established the rules. And so also in moral things. In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. He didn't leave it in a nebulous form. He spelled it out exactly the way it would happen.
And so the book is full of these moral ordinances or precepts.
That if we think that we can break, we are going to have to suffer the consequences. It always works that way. If you go out tomorrow on the baseball field and hit a ball left field and run the first base and back home.
John Iwaki will be on 3rd and he's going to go like this and he does it with professional acumen. I like the way he officiates a baseball game.
And you're going to be out and you might say, but I didn't want to go all the way around there.
But you have to. And if you do it any other way, Doubleday is going to have something to say about it because he wrote the rules of the game and you got to play according to the rules. And so when God lays down these rules for us, for our lives, it's for a purpose. And if we break the rules, we're going to suffer the consequences. And it happens every time.
Now Satan comes in and he says you can break the rules.
That's exactly what he says, and that's what he's telling you today at school and at work and from your neighbor, and everybody around is singing the same song. You can break the rules. God doesn't see it. God doesn't care. God isn't there. God is dead, whatever they have to say about it.
Not so.
And that's why this world is like a Rubik's Cube. And when, when Adam, when Eve and Adam sinned here as we go on with this, well, that was the first twist of the Rubik's Cube, but there's no getting back. And now we see things compounded and geometrically.
Progressing into further chaos and disorder because of sin.
And every sin is another twist of the Rubik's Cube. And there may be somebody here that can master a Rubik's Cube, but if you put 1000 numbers on a side, it's out of our realm. And that's where the world is. It's out of our realm to correct it. But what is God doing? Well, the enemy comes in and does his work.
Thou shalt.
Yeah, hath God said, ye shall not eat every tree of the garden? The woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, Goddess said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest you die. And I said already that this instruction was given to Adam before Eve was taken from his rib. So you know that Adam passed this on to Eve, gave her this instruction, He gave her the answer.
And now she is being tested on the answer.
We're always tested on the answers. It's not the questions. You can get the questions in the philosophy classes at college, but you'll never get the answers. God gives us the answers and then he tests us on the answers.
And Eve had the answer, and now she's under the test. Did you ever flunk a test where you already have the answer?
How about before God? You know the answers.
You know that God is holy and God is righteous. Have we ever flunked the test?
But the fruit of the tree, which is in verse four. And the serpent said unto the woman, the.
He said. Come on Eve, you don't believe that, do you?
Ye shall not surely die, take it from me.
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He's subtle. He knows just how to get in there. We're no match. We are not free moral agents, and the only safety that we have is independence upon the one who is greater than this one.
Dependence upon the Lord Jesus, submission to Him.
For ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. And if Christ therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.
And there's no other freedom.
We are not free moral agents. Left to ourselves, our only freedom is in Christ, and we are to stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ.
Have made us free and there is no other alternative.
There's no other way out.
Serpent says Ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened.
The eyes you shall be as gods.
Knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, the lust of the flesh, and it was pleasant to the eyes. The lust of the eyes. And a tree to be desired, to make one wise the pride of life.
And the enemy is still working in that way. And so he did with the Lord Jesus in the wilderness when he tempted him. And so he does on the billboards today and through the medias, the advertising.
Techniques uses these same 3 techniques.
For when she saw that.
Free moral agent. She was better off than we were, or she was in that place of innocency. She didn't have a fallen nature.
She took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave also under her husband with her, and he did eat. And it doesn't say anything about a dialogue between Satan the serpent.
And Adam?
There's no dialogue there.
She gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat. Why?
While he knew the answer.
And he knew exactly what was going to happen.
That he was going to die.
You know the Lord Jesus came down and the only way that he could redeem us.
From death is to go into death himself.
That's his heart toward us, and that's why he came.
I'm just going to suggest that in this, and I'm not going to be dogmatic and limited to this, but Adam loved Eve.
You can imagine it. She was a helpmate. He could commune with her, he could talk to her. He loved her.
Well, the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked.
They knew that they were naked and the last verse of the last chapter, they were both naked and they weren't not they were not ashamed. And if we have a good conscience before God, we're not ashamed. But if we have a bad conscience, we're naked because neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight. We're all laid naked and bare before the eyes of him with whom we have to do, and it's embarrassing.
For an offender to get into the presence of God when he's not at peace with God, listen, it's hard, it's embarrassing.
Henness and Henna's prayer in Samuel she says the wicked shall be silent in darkness.
You know why they're silent? This is outer darkness.
Cast out.
Because they have nothing to say. They have no rebuttal, the arguments over Mantle argued today. But in Outer Darkness, there's nothing, there's nothing to say.
It's like.
Probably happened to you, but when my children did something wrong, it's been a long time ago. It may happen again.
And I said, no, why did you do that? They were probably four or five years old. And, and they stood there on one foot and the other and they were looking down at the ground. I said, why did you do that? Did you hear me? I said, why did you do that? And they didn't answer. They look at the ground. I don't know what was so intriguing about their toes, but they wouldn't look up, couldn't look at me, you know?
And they had nothing to say.
And I've done the same thing.
And so do the wicked.
In darkness, silence. Nothing to answer.
They were naked, they were embarrassed, so they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.
Well, I want to talk a little more about this serpent. What do we know about the serpent?
In First Timothy three, I think it's the sixth verse, it says not a novice.
Lest being puffed up, they fall into the same condemnation of the devil.
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But a window for us to look into and see something about what happened to this created being the serpent.
Where he went wrong?
Being lifted up, he falls into condemnation.
Turning to Ezekiel chapter 28 and we will look in on a conversation.
That God is having with Satan.
And he is having this conversation with with Satan.
By speaking to him through the King of Tyre.
Ezekiel 28, verse 11.
And we'll see what happened here. I don't know when Satan was created. He's a created being.
And perhaps it was the beginning of the creation of the universe. I just suggest that doesn't say as far as I know.
Moreover, the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus.
We are listening in now to a conversation that God is having with Satan.
Through the King of Tyre.
Thou shalt die the deaths of the uncircumcised by the hand of strangers. For have spoken it, saith the Lord God. Moreover, the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of Man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus. This is verse 12. And say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God, thou sealest up the sun, full of wisdom, and perfect and beauty, a high creation. Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God.
We've been reading about that every precious stone was like covering the Sardis, the Topaz, the diamond, the barrel, the Onyx, the Jasper, the sapphire, the emerald and the carbuncle and gold the workmanship of thy.
Tablets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.
Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth, and I have set thee soul. God put him in this place of authority.
God has established him there.
I have set thee so. Thou wast upon the holy mountain of God, Thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou was perfect, and by ways from the day that thou was created, till iniquity was found in the And what was that iniquity? I believe it's that that I mentioned there in first Timothy three. I think it's the sixth verse.
Till pride was found in him.
Puffed up and now under condemnation.
By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned. Therefore I will cast thee as a as profane out of the mountain of God, and I will destroy the old covering cherub. From the midst of the stones of fire thine heart was lifted up. Because of thy beauty, thy heart was lifted up. We saw that in Timothy.
Thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness. I will cast thee to the ground. I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee. Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the in multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffic. He was sent there over this creation of God as gods. You might say, Priest, to intercede to, to take up God's affairs in creation here.
Traffic to buy and to sell to do merchandise.
There was a certain amount of traffic which was committed.
To Satan.
On God's behalf, God sets one's in authority, sets principalities and powers in place.
Therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth, in the sight of all them that behold thee.
In Revelation.
Look at Revelation 12, verse 7.
And we are dealing now in a sphere, in a realm in a dimension that we can't enter into.
We don't function there.
We deal in the dimensions of height, width, breadth, time and space, and that's as far as we can go, and that's all we know.
But God speaking to us in language of accommodation that we can learn.
Is telling us of that dimension in which He dwells and things that are happening there. And so in Revelation 12 and verse seven, and there was war in heaven and we understand war on earth.
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Nations fight, people die some of us were talking last night about the Geneva Convention and rules of warfare and so on and so on made the comment war is not romantic and it's not we know a little bit about war as man well, there was war in heaven Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels and prevailed not neither was their place found anymore in heaven and the.
Dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the Devil and Satan which deceiveth, he's still deceiving the whole world. This whole world is a lie, a deceptive.
Attractive.
Lie, it's Satan's world. He was cast out into the earth and his angels were cast out with him. Now in Revelation chapter 20.
And I saw an Angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. We understand bottomless, we understand pit, we understand chain.
You might ask, how do angels fight?
There is Michael with his angels, and there is Satan with his angels.
And Satan is cast out of heaven. There's no room for him there. How does this happen?
Are angels slain like we understand warfare in the natural among men. When a person, when a soldier is slain in battle, he's neutralized. He's no longer a contestant. His will, therefore, is no longer active or engaged in the combat. We understand that.
We have a bottomless pit and a great chain, and he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him 1000 years. This is before the Millennium, before the.
Messianic Kingdom, the thousand year reign of Christ on earth. And he takes the devil and bounds and binds him. 1000 years we understand binding, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him that he should deceive the nations no more. So we have a bottomless, a pit, a great a chain.
Shut up. Set a seal upon him.
We understand these things and beyond that, I can't tell you exactly what's going on there, but I know this by this description that Satan is put in that place where he is no longer able to deceive. He is taken out of the battle, so to speak. He is removed. How does how does that happen?
He was not shocked. There was not a bomb, there were not the natural, the what we understand is weapons of warfare. There was authority, exercise.
And that's how that happened.
And he is bound here for this thousand years and then?
When we go to the end of the chapter in verse 11.
Well, start with verse seven. And when the 1000 years were expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison. He shall go out to deceive. He never changes. He was the same in the Garden of Eden. He was the same in the wilderness when he tempted the Lord. And he's the same today, the deceiver offering something that God hasn't offered. And Eve thought she was getting something better than what she had. And every time we deviate from God's order, we have the idea that we're getting something.
In some way that we can bless ourselves with, in a better way than God can do it.
And every time we deviate from God's order, we have the idea that we're getting something in some way that we can bless ourselves with in a better way than God can do it.
And if we realize that we don't get away at setting our will and pitting our will against God, we cannot get away with it. He has established the rules. Just like I said in the natural scene, we so we reap if we realize that we do not get away with pitting our wills against God.
And we realized what the consequences of such an action is. We'd be less apartment to try it.
But that enemy is more subtle than any beast of the field, and we are not a free moral agent, and our only safety is independence upon the Lord Jesus Christ.
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So Satan is loosed. He's up to his same operation.
Verse 10 The devil that deceived them was now he's taken again. Fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them. The end of verse nine. There wasn't a general rebellion at the end of this thousand year period that Satan leads again.
God comes in in judgment. The devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone. We understand fire. We understand brimstone, We understand lake. Lake has boundaries, it has perimeters. It is a confinement. We understand fire and brimstone. It's judgment. And I can't tell you any more than that. That's as far as God goes in this language of accommodation to us, speaking to us in terms that we do understand.
To tell us something about what is, what his purposes are, what is going to happen, and these are warnings.
Was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are and shall be tormented day and night, forever and ever, forever and ever, forever and ever. Everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. And God did not purpose that man would be there. He had purposed man for blessing.
And I saw a great white throne in him that sat on it. A great white throne. It's great. It's all-encompassing. Nobody escapes it. It's white, it's spotless, it's pure. It's a throne. It speaks of judgment.
And him that sat on it, who is sitting there? There is a judge there that has an all discerning eye.
And the lawyers, the best that man can produce, are down in Los Angeles, playing their games, trying to persuade, trying to.
Turn judgments to their favor concerning the case that's going on down there.
And people don't know for sure.
And in the court system, you establish a jury and a judge and lawyers, and they present their cases and you do the best you can because you don't know all the facts for sure. But here we're dealing with a great white throne and everything is known.
And nothing escapes.
And him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heavens fled away, and there was found no place for them.
And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God. And these are those who are there without Christ and without hope.
The righteous are not there at the Great White Throne. Judgment. We do not come into judgment. Verily, verily, I send to you. He that heareth my words and believeth on him that sent me shall not come into judgment. No judgment. This is for those who are standing.
There to be judged for all that they've done. And how do we know what was done? The books were opened. We understand books. Information is in books.
And the books are open now. It's information is going to be revealed. It's an open book.
And another book was opened, which was the book of life, and the dead were judged out of those things were which were written in the books according to their works what they had done. Would you like to stand before Christ at the great white throne, in view of everything that you have ever done?
And the sea gave up the dead which were in it.
When I was in Vietnam flying over there, I lost a number of comrades and some of them went into the ocean and they were never recovered.
And I'm sure that if you went there to where they crashed and started looking for them, I doubt if you would find a thing even if you knew where to look. But the sea gives up its death.
All are returned here.
And death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them, and they were judged every man according to their works.
This is the end. Now the final.
Judgment in which Satan is bound and all those who have not received Christ as Savior. And what a solemn thing because we're talking about forever and ever. And I didn't mention that several times because I was stuttering. I'm trying to impress you that this is forever and ever, and it is to the conscious soul.
Now we'll go back.
To Genesis 3.
We have seen here.
The creation purged.
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The Rubik's Cube is put back together there in the end.
Of revelation. Things are put back together in a new heaven and a new earth, and all is purged. Every sin in this earth is gone. As John the Baptist said, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. He's taken away our sins on the cross. Every sin that has ever been committed must be taken away by some form of judgment.
And so the Lord Jesus bore the judgment of the believers sins.
Stands on Calvary's tree. Those sins are judged and put away. God is holy to judge them. He would not be holy if he didn't judge sin, if he swept them under the rug. If I could speak that way. God and mercy has saved us not by sweeping our sins under the rug, but by judging the perfect substitute in our place. And all those sins are gone. But the sins of the world that continue in rebellion against God will be.