Things Concerning the Kingdom of God

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Address—Bill Prost
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All those mercies for exceed all we can do.
Our thing.
I see.
My people.
I will give you.
Honourable friend.
For the.
Brethren, there's.
Dragging a hymn. Keep the temple, please.
Praise.
And give my state our goal.
Great day, Lord.
Man.
I suppose no one would argue with the comment that we are living in the last days.
And our brother Dawn in his prayer, and our brother Bob, Tony mentioned it too.
Concerning the fact that we are witnessing moral corruption around us.
Of an unprecedented extent.
I don't think any would argue with that. And more than that, the pace.
Of degeneration is accelerating.
What does that mean for you and me?
Oh, I have a burden on my heart for something very fundamental, because I believe that while on the one hand God would have us to hold very tightly to the precious truth of the church, thank God for it. Thank God for the precious truth of the heavenly calling of the church, for the truth of the one body of Christ.
For the privilege of gathering to the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Oh, let's never let that go.
But when the apostle Paul summarizes his ministry in talking to the Ephesian elders.
In the book of the Acts.
He mentions three things. He mentions the Gospel of the grace of God. This is in the 20th chapter of Acts. He mentions the things concerning the Kingdom of God. And then finally he mentions.
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Let's turn to it just to read it accurately.
He mentions all the counsel of God accurately, but I want to get that second phrase.
Just as it appears here. Acts Chapter 20.
And it's at the end of verse 25.
He says.
Ye all, among whom I have gone preaching the Kingdom of God, shall see my face no more.
And it's about those things concerning the Kingdom of God that I want to speak today because as we know, once we are saved through the gospel of the grace of God, God looks for a moral state and a walk that is in keeping.
With the position into which he has brought us.
Many years ago in a Bible reading, and I mean many years ago, long before my time, probably about 150 years ago, there was a small Bible conference here in the United States.
And there was a very well known.
Brother there whose writings we esteem today.
And he said, what shall we take up?
And a brother suggested Ephesians, which they proceeded to take up.
The brother who had said, What shall we take up was very able to expound the book of Ephesians, and they had a happy time. But.
But his comment afterward? He said.
I wondered whether we should get into Ephesians because I thought perhaps our state would have rather dictated that we should take up Romans, something far more basic.
But he said, after all, it really didn't matter because no matter where we go in the epistles, we always end up in Romans anyway.
What did he mean?
He meant, I believe that when you get into the book of Ephesians with all that high truth, the highest truth I suppose, concerning the believer's blessings that we find anywhere in the Word of God.
You get to the 4th chapter and if we could use the expression, you come back to Romans with rather an uncomfortable thump.
Because you find that the Saints have to be exhorted of all things, not to tell lies.
Really, a man who is risen and seated in heavenly places has to be told not to tell lies.
Yes.
Not to steal.
He has to be told not to steal. Yes he does. Not to get angry with one another and all the rest of it, yes he does.
And what I want to talk about today is something very basic and that is dealing with the roots of sin that caused so many problems in our lives.
Let's turn to Romans, first of all, chapter 5.
Romans chapter 5 and verse one.
We aren't going to dwell on this verse except to bring it out because we have already mentioned the gospel of the grace of God. But in Romans 5 and one we read, Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Oh, let nothing ever cloud that precious truth that once and for all God has settled the question of sin.
On the cross, through the finished work of Christ, let nothing ever take away from the precious truth that through the blood of Christ you and I are once and for all cleansed from all sin. The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin. I don't think in this company I need to belabor that truth. I don't think there is anyone here that would raise a question about that.
I suppose it is possible that there is someone here that is not truly saved. And if you are not, God's word makes it abundantly clear that you may come to Christ, repent of your sins, and know that God through Christ has once and for all settled the issue, and that you can know that you have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
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But that isn't the end of the matter.
I've mentioned this before, but not too long ago.
I was told about a little boy who very happily and very brightly confessed Christ as his Savior.
But about a week later, he came to his father very distressed and said, Daddy, I'm saved. I accepted Jesus as my savior.
But he said I still do bad things. He was shocked and surprised. He thought that somehow all that was going to be behind him and that life was for that, from that point on, going to be a victorious life. And he realized that the old sinful self was still there.
Let's turn over to the next chapter of Romans.
Verse one.
What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid, How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?
Know ye not that so many of us, as we're baptized into Jesus Christ, we're baptized into his death.
Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death.
That like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, Even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man, excuse me?
Is crucified with him.
Let the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.
Verse 11.
Likewise, reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Now to that familiar verse in Galatians 2. Galatians 2.
Verse 20.
I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh. I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
I suppose once again that what we have read in these last verses in Romans 6 and in Galatians.
Two are familiar to 99% of those sitting here.
Because not only has God at the cross made provision for my sins judicially to be washed away through the precious blood of Christ, but through the death and resurrection of Christ, He has made provision for you and for me.
No longer to have to be the servants of sin. No longer to have to live continually under the threat of sin in our lives.
We can have the victory through the Lord Jesus Christ.
But how many of us live, at least to some extent in our lives, in ******* to sin?
I remarked a few moments ago that we are living in the last days and some of us who grew up in more, shall we say, conservative days and in times that were, at least outwardly, more godly.
Are I suppose the word appalled is not too strong when we see the moral breakdown that is overtaking us in this world and especially in these Western countries which have had a gospel testimony.
And an open Bible for hundreds of years.
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All this I have to point out, and you know it as well as I is having a serious effect on us. And if I may be allowed, may I speak particularly to those who are younger, because you are being bombarded with all of these things. And it is a fact that the condition of things in the world around has always been that which dragged down the condition of the people of God. And that moral breakdown is having an awful effect on believers.
I have to say in my own personal life that I have been acutely aware of it in the last little while by seeing those who name the name of Christ and yet going on with what you and I would well recognize as serious sin in their lives. And yet somehow the awful moral breakdown around has caused them to have such a callous approach to that awful sin that no longer does it seem to bother their consciences.
And with one breath they can talk about the Lord's things, and yet a few moments later they can be engaged in that which the Word of God would strongly condemn. I say to your heart and mind, What is going on? Oh, the fact is that we are in danger of doing just what Romans 6 brings to our remembrance. Shall we then continue in sin, that grace may abound?
More than once in Paul's epistles he talks about turning the grace of God into lasciviousness.
We don't use that word lasciviousness in common language today, but it simply means unbridled lust or unbridled permissiveness, which literally says I have been forgiven and the work of Christ has looked after my sins. And because of that, I can afford to take a very casual approach to sin because after all, the work of Christ has looked after it all. Oh, what an awful thought.
And don't think for a moment that I am preaching at you. Don't think for a moment that I am not affected by it. Some of us that are getting older, as I said a few moments ago, are appalled at what we see going on around us. And yet at the same time, don't think for a moment that we don't feel the awful effect of it in our own lives. Don't think for a moment that we don't feel the awful effect of all of this dragging us down to the level of what we see going on in the world.
What does that do for you and me as believers? And I know all this sounds pretty negative, but don't worry, we'll get to the positive side in a few minutes. But what does all this do for me and for you and me as believers? First of all, it spoils our testimony in this world. Because if there is anything that is going to stand out in this world today.
And which is going to support back up and lend credibility to your life and mine and your testimony in mind. It is the way we act, as Paul says, concerning the things of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is an expression in Scripture that brings before us the moral character that is suitable to God's Kingdom. Now, today, there isn't a visible Kingdom.
We know that that has to wait until the coming day. The rightful king has been rejected. But nevertheless, if God has raised up those like you and me in this world who recognize the rightful King, who know who he is, who know that.
He is going to have his Kingdom. Then he looks to you and to me.
To exemplify in our lives the moral character of God's Kingdom. And that is what is going to lend more credibility than anything to what you say. That is going to bear a witness to this world more than anything else, because they will say there's an individual who is different. There is an individual who doesn't succumb to the tide.
Of everything that is going on around them, I can remember reading a story a few years ago in a secular magazine about a young woman.
Young, to me anyway, she was about 35, who undertook to teach in an inner city school in one large American city, and I just forget which one it was. And during the course of her time there, she ran into a lot of bad behavior and a lot of things that went on. I have no reason to believe that she was a Christian. She might have been, but at any time, at any rate, at one time or other.
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Some of the students were to cost her and say you don't act the way we do. You don't do things the way we do. You talk differently, you act differently, you do things in a right way. Why?
And she said.
I do things because of the way I think and the way I believe, not because of what I see going around going on around me. And as some of you young people can imagine, the inevitable response was oh.
That's cool, that's cool.
She didn't bring the name of the Lord into it, but they recognized that was interesting. Here was someone who didn't do things just because everyone else did it that way.
And you know, you and I have an even higher motive than just.
Swimming against the current. Oh, there was one up there in the glory who has made us his own.
And who has given everything in order to have us for His own? Who's paid a price that I don't suppose anyone of us can possibly understand, in order to make us His, in order that we might spend an eternity with them. And He is glorified, He is honored when there are those in this world who walk to please Him.
We take a popular American magazine in our home called Newsweek. Not that I believe everything it says, it has a decidedly liberal bent much of the time, but it gives an in depth analysis of news around the world and tells you what people are thinking. And they ran an article in a recent issue having interviewed a woman in Saudi Arabia who was a Muslim and who had a number of children, including a number of daughters.
And they interviewed her as to how she was raising her family and how she was dealing with what you and I would consider the ultimate strictness of Muslim life there. And her attitude was, she said, I hope all of my daughters will grow up to live the kind of life that I live. She lived very strictly. She never drove a car. She never went out of her house unaccompanied by a man. She never went out in public without.
Wearing the burka and everything that went with it, so that she just had kind of little slits out of which she could see. And sometimes she even had some mesh over that too, so that it was a very restricted as to what she could see and yet.
Her son, who was only about 8 years old when he met up with this woman who was about to write the article, who had come from America and who in order to conform, was wearing all of these things as a woman has to there in Saudi Arabia.
This young boy at 8 years old was attempting to convert this American reporter to Islam and was telling her how to say her prayers and how she could attain salvation by believing in what Mohammed said and all the rest of it.
There was no shame involved in that. And when I read that article I thought to myself, Oh my, how Satan loves to counterfeit what God would have believers do, and how Satan will take that which is utterly false.
And yet make its adherent so fanatical that they will live more closely and more religiously according to what they are taught, than those who have so much in the life and liberty of Christianity. Well, let's go on. The point we want to make here is that.
God has called you and me not to live under the ******* of sin, but to live in liberty before God. We don't have to live with that old sinful self constantly causing problems in our life. Yes, you and I, each one of us knows that it rears its ugly head more and more.
And let me tell you, the more you want to live for the Lord, the more the old sinful self.
Will try to assert itself. Don't look for anyone, particularly if you do at some of those who are older and perhaps whose lives you think, and I'm not talking about myself, but if you look at some of those who are older and you say perhaps they've gotten to the point where the old sinful nature is burning itself out. If this meeting could be a little more informal, I would pinpoint a few older ones here and ask them if the old nature gets burned out so that they never have to worry about it anymore. And I know full well what their answers would be.
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As would mine, it does not get burned out. In fact, it was very interesting that back 100 and some years ago in the 1800s when there was a very godly man who had been much used of the Lord in ministering the word of God and who was well known to for his godly walk.
Someone who was an intimate friend of his made a rather unusual remark.
He said. I don't remember ever meeting a man in whom the two natures were evidently so strong.
What did he mean by that? Did he mean that that brother exhibited on the one hand the life of Christ in a wonderful way, but that he acted in the flesh equally as much? That wasn't the point. The point was that when he saw that man seeking to live for Christ.
And in all that he did in his exemplary life for the Lord. And don't think for a moment that I'm singling out men, we could just as easily talk about godly sisters. But what he meant was that when he saw that man's godly life and knew him as an intimate friend, he recognized how often that man had to deal with the.
Fleshly desires that constantly reared their heads. And how often he had to judge before the Lord, that old sinful self.
Yes, we do on the one hand reckon ourselves to be dead. We have the right to do so because Jesus died and rose again, as it says here in Romans 6, our old man is crucified with him.
God has seen the end of the first man. We don't want to be technical about it, and we're not going to go into a long explanation of it here, but don't equate the old man with the flesh. They're not exactly the same expression. The old man is what we are as born as children of Adam, and God has seen the end of that at the cross, and now we are called upon.
To reckon ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God.
The flesh will continually rear its head, but I can say it has no rights anymore. I am dead to sin.
I can well remember being at a facility in New Jersey quite a few years ago now, 20 years ago I suppose, with our late brother **** Gorgas. And it was a facility where men went to be rehabilitated from drug addiction and alcoholism and many other things like that. It was a Christian facility. **** used to visit there many times and he and I went there because we had an opportunity to speak to the men, but one of the men that was introducing the evening before.
**** and I got up to speak, was a believer and he had himself once been seriously into drugs and alcohol and had been delivered from it. And I'll never forget his words as he in a 5 or 10 minute introduction said to those men in very strong terms. He said men you need to come to Christ and he said man, if you have come to Christ and I know many of you that have.
And he wasn't speaking perfect English, but he said, man, a dead man don't do drugs. A dead man don't get into alcohol again, a dead man don't have any attraction for those things anymore.
We all know that.
We're to reckon ourselves to be dead, but if we were to go over to 2nd Corinthians 4 we would find that it's a daily thing, always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus. It's not something we do once and for all. In one sense we do. We reckon ourselves to be dead and we take that position, but daily we have to come to grips with the flesh.
Can we do so? We can.
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Do we sin? Yes we do. But what I want to talk about this morning?
Is dealing with some of those issues.
Because what we sometimes see in a believer's life is, on the surface, an admission of what we have here in Roman 6. And perhaps, if I could call it an intellectual ascent to this truth, and a recognition that, yes, not only has the blood of Christ put all my sins away, but, as brother Harry Hayhoe used to say, in his inimical way, the death of Christ has put me away.
Meaning that what I was as a child of Adam no longer is there before God, but that God sees me in all the perfection of Christ himself and now calls me to let that new life exhibit itself practically in my everyday walk.
We may well believe that.
But we may not be applying it in the proper way.
Let's read a couple more verses again, most of them very familiar. Turn to 1St John chapter one.
First John one.
And verse 9.
This is the way to restoration if we have sinned, and we all know this verse if we confess our sins.
He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Now turn back to Philippians Chapter 3.
Philippians 3.
Verse 2, Philippians 3 and verse 2.
Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers. And here's the expression Beware of the concision.
To get at.
What I'm talking about, I'm going to use an illustration that I've used before. Many of you know that I grew up on a farm. My father was an avid gardener. I guess I've inherited a measure of that, although I don't do as much as I used to. And when you keep a good garden, you have to pull up weeds. And I don't know how you call those weeds down here, but we had plenty of them up home. We called some of them pig weed.
We called some of them lambs quarters and those weeds for the most part had a long taproot that went deep into the ground.
If you went out after a rain and gave the weed a good careful pull, it would come out by the root, but if you tried to pull it out when the ground wasn't moist, it wasn't unusual to snap it off at ground level.
And leave the root in the ground.
Was that a good thing? No, my father wouldn't allow that. No, you didn't pull a root. You didn't pull a weed up that way. You had to get that root out, otherwise what would happen? That route would send out shoots more and more.
Couple of years ago a tree, fairly good sized tree, came halfway down in our backyard as a result of a violent storm.
And after somewhat disconcerting attempts to get a tree service to take that tree out.
I ended up doing it myself.
Took me a long time because I'm not as young as I used to be.
And I took the stump out.
Was a big job.
I thought I'd gotten rid of that tree, getting that stump out.
Some here have no doubt done that. It's quite a job. Leave about 6 feet of trunk for a bit of leverage. I didn't have a tractor at my disposal without going up the road and borrowing it, so I used our Jeep with four wheel drive and it did the job. But I had to cut those roots off with an axe and so on when they surfaced and eventually I got the stump out.
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Covered it all over, but what happened?
Later on I found out that that tree had sent little roots out here and there in the yard and little sprouts started to come up because it was a locust tree and they're famous for that.
Well, the lawn mower looks after that pretty well, and that tree isn't as we would say. It isn't going anywhere. But at the same time, it reminded me of what sin is like in our lives.
In Psalm 19.
We have the expression, Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me.
I have to say.
That in a remark that our late brother Harry Hajo made many years ago, has come back to haunt me many times, because as an old man at the time he made the remark, he said, brethren.
And let me lay some emphasis on this.
Please young people, don't take this the wrong way.
But let me lay emphasis on it, and I'm going to repeat what he said. The sins that I refuse to judge in my younger years will have dominion over me when I get old. I may be able to keep them under control with human energy when I'm younger, but when I get older and that human energy isn't what it used to be, those sins will have dominion over me.
And many times you see individuals, sad to say, in a nursing home, where those presumptuous sins have gotten dominion over them.
It's sad enough in an unbeliever.
We don't expect them to deal with sin the way you and I have the ability to, but it's even worse when you see it in a believer whose older days are characterized by.
A presumptuous sin having dominion over them because they are no longer able to control it.
What does Paul mean by the concision in Philippians 3 the thought of concision is that I.
Snip off the chutes of sin without dealing with the root.
In one John 1:00 and 9:00 It's not enough to confess our sin. That is important.
That is important.
But there's an end of that verse. And to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
First of all, let's deal with the beginning of the verse if we confess our sins.
I think it's OK to tell this story. It happened so many years ago.
But I remember very well in an assembly and it wasn't where I lived. There was a dear brother who had been out of fellowship for a number of years. He hadn't been put away, he had just left.
When he came back, his local brethren felt.
That this should be at least some admission of failure in having walked away simply because of a condition of thing in the things in the Assembly.
And the attitude was Well, brethren, we've all failed, haven't we? We've all failed.
Was that really getting the root? No, it wasn't.
If you read Leviticus 5 and don't turn to it now, but you can look up the verse, it's in Leviticus 5 when a man was guilty of trespassing against the Lord and he brought a trespass offering, he had to confess that he had sinned in that thing, in that thing. Is that difficult to do?
Tell me about it.
It isn't easy, is it? It's harder for some than others.
But it's difficult, and especially if someone else has sinned, because my natural reaction if I have been faced up with a sin is to do several things. I may blame someone else for it. I may say, well, circumstances this and circumstances that, and you don't realize the pressure I was under and you don't realize what happened and you know the story.
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The other reaction is to find fault with those who are laying the sin before me and to say well, you, blah, blah blah, blah or whatever it might happen to be and that way the heat is taken off me and placed it on someone else. That tendency is in my heart too.
But that again is not getting at the root of the problem.
A worse tendency was exemplified.
By what I read once.
Where a Christian man was attempting to.
Take an individual who had actually come to him for help down a road. He was trying to take him down a road to help him to deal with a serious sin in his life. And it wasn't in his case, a particular overt sin in the sense that we would think of it, but rather it was an attitude that was casting a long shadow over his whole life. And that attitude and spirit, which in itself was sinful.
It was like tree roots, it was like tentacles. It was invading like a miasma every area of his life.
And he knew that that man would never be able to get free of it unless he was willing to deal with the root.
And so he was trying to take him down that road to make him see.
That route.
He was skillful, he knew the man well, and he didn't simply blurt it out and say you did this, this is your problem.
He made him by questioning and by carefully working with him.
To go down a road where he would realize where he was.
And when they got to the point where the man would have had to admit, and he was a true believer, that this is what the root was and this is what he needed to deal with.
The story went that the man put his hands over his ears and ran literally out of the office shouting no, no, no.
He didn't come back.
Why would he act like that? Why did he do that?
Because facing the awful truth of what his old sinful self was capable of and what he really was.
As a natural man was so painful for him that he would not face it. The truth was so painful that he could not face it. And before you and I say too much against him and shake our heads.
Let me take a long hard look right here.
Have I been guilty of that in a lesser way?
I can well remember a dear brother many years ago who was faced up with a sin in his life and his attitude was But that's the way I made. That's the way I made.
Was true. He was made that way. I knew him well, although I wasn't the one facing him up because I was young enough to be his son. It was someone who was older than he. That's the way I'm made.
That's the way I'm made too.
Whereas someone has put so succinctly.
Yes, God accepts us the way we are. He accepts us the way we're made. But he loves us too much to let us stay that way. He wants to see growth. He wants to see us become more like Christ.
Shall I say it in another way? Is the Lord Jesus Christ not worthy of the fruit of His sufferings in your life and mine down here? Does it have to wait till the glory?
You know, dealing with the root can be a difficult thing and we find it in Scripture.
Our time is going and we don't have time to go back and read about it, but let me refer to it refer to a couple of occasions.
When Abraham went down into Egypt.
You will recall that he said that Sarah was his sister instead of his wife.
And it caused trouble.
And eventually things got straightened out, but it caused difficulty.
What was the root of the problem? Oh, you say he had a penchant for lying. He was telling lies without the root of the problem. Abraham didn't know what you and I know, but let's use it in Christian terms. Suppose Abraham were to have come to the Lord and said Lord, I've lied and I confess that as sin. Would that have gotten to the root of the problem?
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No, that wasn't the route. The route went deeper than that. Why was he in Egypt in the first place?
Oh, it was a lack of faith. Abraham, the man whose life is characterized by faith.
Failed in his strong point.
Excuse me?
He went down to Egypt.
Because he didn't have faith to face the famine in the land of Canaan. And one failure leads to another.
Until he had to realize that he had failed in his faith.
Another example when David failed in his adultery with Bathsheba.
Would it have been right for David to go to the Lord and say, Lord, I have been an immoral man, I have committed the sin of adultery and I confess it as sin. Was that the root? No, the root was deeper than that. And it's instructive that when Nathan, with the mind of the Lord and with the Lord's instruction, comes to David to speak to him, he doesn't even mention the initial act of adultery, but whether he dwells on the cover up and everything that took place subsequently.
Yes, the adultery was involved, but the deeper sin and the root of the problem had to do with Davide abuse of his power and authority as a king. No one could have manipulated events, including the adultery unless he had the power and authority that David had. There was a deeper root and often the root of sin in our lives is not perhaps so readily discernible. But I say to you and to me if that.
Terrible fruit continues to manifest itself in my light.
Young people, brethren of any age, dig for the root. Let's ask the Lord to show us what the root is and pull up the root.
Now, I hasten to say that pulling up the root of a particular sin doesn't always mean it'll never surface again.
Just as I got out the root of that locust tree.
Didn't mean that never, never. Little shoots coming up here and there in the lawn again, there had been old roots under there, which obviously I wasn't prepared to deal with because I wasn't going to tear the whole backyard up, down to about a depth of two or three feet to make sure that there was no root of that locust tree anywhere to be found. But once I'd gotten the stump out, once I dealt with the root.
Those little shoots are easy. They could be mowed down with a lawnmower. They were no problem. They aren't going anywhere because.
They can't. I can nip them off quickly and they're gone.
And once the root is identified, once it's confessed before the Lord, oh what a difference it makes. Then I have faced the issue, then I have gotten it out between me and the Lord.
Out of Morning Star Camp, people sometimes like to get up and perform on Talent night and sometimes they sing a song.
And I can remember a song which I had never heard before, but which some girls got up and sang, and some here will recognize a few lines from that hymn. The hymn starts out My Heart is Like a House. And in the course of that song, and I can't repeat the whole thing, but the Lord wants access to all of the rooms in that house, and he wants to go into a certain room.
And the individual says Lord.
That room in my house.
I don't want you to go because I've got some things in that room that I don't want no one to know. Not such good English, but you get the point. Do we have rooms in our hearts that we don't let the Lord into? Sometimes we're afraid because we say that place is so black, that sin is so awful, that part of my character is so bad.
That I can't even bear to let the Lord in there. Oh, I say to your heart and mine, He knows what's there. And not only that, but He's dealt with it at the cross. It's been dealt with. We don't need to fear in admitting how bad that old sinful self is, because we can reckon it to be dead. God see the end of the old man, never mind how bad it is.
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Never mind how bad it is.
Years ago when they were building a railway in Uganda, there were lions that came out.
And they killed all kinds of people that were working on that railroad. I've mentioned this before, but a couple of those lions are in a museum right here in Chicago now. They eventually got them, but not before they'd gotten a good many people who were trying to work to build that railroad and after those lines had been shot. Excuse me.
Some of the Ugandan natives didn't even want to approach the carcass of that lion because they said it's done so much damage. They didn't even want to go near it. And they had to realize it's dead. No matter how big those fangs were, how powerful those claws and everything to do with that lion, it was dead. And Christ has suffered for all of that in order that you and I might have the victory, in order that we might lead Vic.
Lives, I say to your heart and mind, this is ever more necessary today, ever more necessary that there be careful watchfulness, ever more necessary that you and I.
Be on our guard more and more as we see the moral tone of this world going down. Allow me to say this, that I am very shocked.
And it's not only, in my experience, among those gathered to the Lord's name, but in meeting up with and speaking with and getting to know other believers at what dear believers are willing to pass over in their lives because, quote, everyone's doing it. Everyone's doing it.
Does this mean that we adopt A legal attitude? No, we don't adopt A legal attitude. That is not the answer. We don't make a whole list of do's and don'ts.
But what we do?
Is recognized.
But I have a new life in Christ.
Recognize.
But God does not want me to be under the power of sin.
Recognize.
That I can come to Christ, I can confess that sin before Him.
Whether it's something I've done or whether it's a deep root that is there that is taking over my life, that is causing me untold difficulties.
And I can say Lord.
You have already dealt with this at the cross.
I am dead and risen with Christ. I reckon myself to be dead, and now by the power of Thy Holy Spirit, give me grace.
Not to succumb to those desires, but to be dead to sin, but alive unto God. Will He give the grace for it? Indeed He will. He wants to see you and me become more and more like Christ.
As time goes on down here.
That's going to have a wonderful effect on you and me and on our testimony in this world.
I hasten to say that we shouldn't be occupied with our testimony.
We should be occupied with Christ. But as we go on and the days get darker and as the pathway gets rougher, we're finding many dear believers are not only giving up the precious truth of the church, but they are giving up that godly walk which ought to characterize the believer in this world.
And you and I need to pay attention to all of that. We need to be on our guard lest we fall down to the level of the way that the world is going so that the world says, well, they talk very well, but look at the way they live and look at the things that they do. It counts on everything in our lives, whether it's our appearance, whether it's our talk, whether it's the way we conduct business, whether it's the way we deal in our family lives.
00:55:12
God looks for everything to be in conformity to his beloved Son. Well, May God give us grace. And again, we want to dwell on the positive side of this because it is not, I repeat, it is not to take a harsh legal attitude in our walk through this world. That is what false religions do. And it has been the bane of Christianity right from the very beginning when the Judaizing principles.
And the influence of those who tried to put believers under law constantly dogged the Apostle Paul steps and over and over again he has to minister against it. That is not the answer. Rather, it is that.
Moral likeness to Christ. And what will it do? It will not only keep you and me from evil, but it will give us that which is positive. If I can say it this way, it'll put a smile on your face because you are enjoying Christ. You aren't occupied with the negative, you're occupied with the good. And the strongest, shall we say, power to keep you and me from evil is not so much a set of do's and don'ts.
But rather the contrast of the good with the evil. And so the energy of the Spirit of God on our souls occupies us with Christ in a sense of grace in my soul will put a smile on my face. It'll put a spring in my step, it'll put joy into my life. So that not discouraged.
Burdened, Yes. Occasionally weeping over the condition of this world and even the condition of things among believers? Yes.
But at the same time never discouraged, but rather going on with that which honors the Lord, and realizing that His coming is near.
Let's sing a hymn that exemplifies our place in Christ #67.
Like thee, O Lord, how wondrous. Fair Lord Jesus, all thy members are a life divine. To them is given the bright inheritance of heaven.
#67.
Like.
They all.