Toledo Conference: 1969
Table of Contents
Wheresoever
Address—W. Blennerhassett
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General Meetings, Toledo, November 1969, Addressed by Walter Blenner, Hassett.
Shall we open our meeting by singing Hymn 193?
Jesus, my Savior.
Thou art mine, the Father's gift of love divine.
All thou hast done, and all thou art.
Are now the portion of mine heart, O Savior, teach me to abide close, sheltered at thy wounded side, each hour, receiving grace on grace, until I see thee face to face 193.
As one listened to the faithful.
Telling out of the glad tidings the last few evenings.
Oh, how our hearts were solemnized.
To think that.
There might be.
Some boy or girl, Some young man or woman who would leave.
After hearing that matchless story of love and grace.
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And go out of the door.
Still in their sins.
One is reminded of that incident in the life of Mark Twain.
During his triumphal tour of Europe.
And on this particular occasion he was accorded a great banquet, And at this banquet were the mighty, and the noble and the great.
Many honors were heaped upon him.
Also at that banquet was.
His little daughter.
And after the banquet was over.
She said to her father, she said Daddy.
You know everybody, don't you? Except God.
Oh, I wonder if that is true of a boy or girl here.
That you do not yet know the one who loves you and gave his son to die for you.
You know we read of Samuel when the Lord called him Samuel. Samuel. Or what does it say about Samuel? It said that he did not yet know the Lord. Oh, is that true of anyone here that you do not yet know the Lord, after the faithful warnings of coming judgment approaching so rapidly?
And yet you're still in your sins, still on your way to a lost eternity. Oh, how sullen one of the last nights in the gospel tent in Sackville, NB. There was a young man who would come quite a few times, and several remarked how intently he listened as the gospel of the grace of God was proclaimed.
And as he went out the door, 1 spoke to him.
And we could see that there was a definite exercise there.
And he was asked whether he would like to sit down and read God's word together. Well, he says, you know what? I'd really like to. But he said, I have some friends.
Right in town. And I promised them I'd be there. The meeting was from 8:00 to 9:00, and it was 915 by the time all was over. He said. I promise them I wouldn't keep them waiting. I'd be there at 9:30.
Well, we looked at him and we quoted him that verse in Revelation, the third chapter.
And the 20th verse, behold.
I stand at the door.
And knock oh, is there one here?
Who is keeping that precious savior waiting?
Who has been knocking at your heart's door?
You might willingly keep an appointment with some friends, but all that friend that loved you unto death.
Boys and girls and grown-ups.
Are you keeping him waiting?
Oh, we trust if you have been doing so, that you will not do so any longer.
But right now, as you sit in that chair.
That you will realize.
That that blessed Savior is still saying behold.
I stand at the door and knock.
All we trust that you open your heart's door. Why to that blessed one, and not keep him waiting?
Because there's a day coming when you may knock and the door will be forever closed.
As we sat under the sound of God's precious word, oh, how our hearts leap for joy as we heard the wondrous truths unfolded.
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That are our portion in Christ.
And the light that has been given to us to walk in this dark scene.
And one thought of that verse in Job the 22nd chapter.
The light.
Shall shine upon thy ways.
Oh, how blessed it is that in a dark scene, a scene that is darkening.
You and I have light for our pathway.
And it reminds. It reminds one of the little boy.
Who was walking on this very dark evening?
With his father.
And the little boy was holding a Lantern.
And the black darkness around. Oh, he said. Daddy.
It gives so little light.
And I'm afraid.
All his father said to him, son, just keep on walking in the light and you'll find that that light will guide you.
Right to the end of the path.
And so it is with you and I, dear child of God.
There are times when we feel that we only have light for one step.
But oh, if we take that one step in the light that he has provided, we'll have light for every step of our homework journey.
Well last night as our brother spoke of that wonderful grand word whosoever.
And as one thought of what it means.
What it meant to you and me to know that we were included in that whosoever the blessing that that precious word encompasses.
One thought that today.
There's another word.
That brings much meaning, much blessing, and much encouragement to our hearts. And one felt led to speak on the little word whatsoever. We know that word whosoever takes in everyone in this room and everyone of Adam's race.
And that word whatsoever.
Takes in everything in our pathway. There isn't one thing that we can think of.
One problem, one trial. No everything is included. So let us look first in the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew the 21St chapter.
And the.
22nd verse.
And all things.
Whatsoever he shall ask in prayer believing.
Ye shall receive.
Oh, our brother Barry was mentioning about the promises of God during the reading meetings that the Lord has never failed of one of his promises. And today we're going to look at some of these promises.
And all things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer.
Believing ye shall perceive.
Oh, what a promise for these dark days.
How? At times, we feel concerned, Perplexed.
Some might even say frustrated and disturbed, but how blessed it is.
When we turn to the promises of God.
However.
We need to be taught by the word of God as to these promises.
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And we enjoyed so much in that first epistle of Peter.
As to that precious word, faith, faith, faith that lays hold of the promises of God, faith that brings them into every step of our pathway and applies them to our walking ways, and so we find with prayer.
That the word of God promises us the answer, But let us look in the first epistle of John.
The third chapter and we see something there that should characterize.
The Prayer of Faith, The First Epistle of John, the Third chapter.
And verse.
22.
And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him.
Because.
Oh, never overlook the because of scripture, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.
So here we find that.
One of the blessings.
That we learn in prayer.
Is obedience.
Obedience to the Word of God.
Because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.
Oh, isn't this a lovely state of soul to find a Christian? A Christian with an exercise heart?
And conscience to do the things to keep the commandments of the word of God, not the 10 commandments, but those things that we know that He has asked us to do.
And.
Do those things that are pleasing in his sight, so if you and I would desire to be.
In the blessing of answered prayer.
Oh, oh, the path of obedience.
The path of obedience is the path to answer prayer.
Well, now let us look also in the 5th chapter of this epistle, the 5th chapter of this epistle and the.
14th verse.
And this is the confidence that we have in him.
That if we ask anything according to his will he hear thus?
It always rejoices my heart.
When either joining another brother in prayer or at the prayer meeting.
We hear this expression according to his will.
I can remember a prayer meeting many years ago.
It was in the dear brother's house. It concerned one of his family.
And he had asked some to join with them at that prayer meeting.
They all prayed.
They prayed for that the Lord would give an answer to the prayer according to His will and in His perfect wisdom and love.
This dear brother prayed last.
There was number mention of according to his will.
But there was.
We say a demanding.
Of the Lord that he answered the prayer. The Lord did answer the prayer.
But all how much better it would have been if he prayed according to his will. Oh, dear child of God, dear young person, may we each learn this lesson to pray.
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According to his will.
All sometimes our own wills.
Are so manifest in our prayers. Is there that submission?
Is there that obedience to His word?
And are we praying?
Do we mention in our prayers according to his will? Oh, here we have it. How blessed is this?
And this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us. Oh, he knows what is best.
And sometimes the answer is.
No. Oh, may we seek grace to pray according to His will. Now let us turn to John's Gospel, the 15th chapter.
And the seventh verse.
If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you.
Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
Oh, here we find that abiding in him brings us into the current of his thoughts.
And we will be praying not only in the spirit of obedience.
Not only in submission, not only seeking to abide in him.
But we will be praying in the Spirit, praying in the Spirit.
Oh, how important it is in these dark days.
But what we have before us.
In this whatsoever connected with our prayer life.
That what we have brought before us would characterize us as his children.
Or how the enemy seeks to come in and hinder us.
And so occupy our time and so fill our days.
That there isn't a time.
For individual prayer, there isn't a time for family prayer.
Well, let me ask any young couples here, do you have family prayer?
Has this been a matter of exercise that you and your dear ones would start the day?
Giving the Lord the first place.
Oh, I mentioned this to a dear young couple.
And the wife spoke up immediately and said, well, you know, my husband has to be at work at 8:00 and we live, She mentioned it was nearly an hour's drive and the school bus comes for the children at about.
The same time at a quarter rate, and is such a rush that we've never seemed to have found time for the reading of the word of God and prayer in the in the morning. Oh, I handed my wristwatch to her and I opened the.
To the second chapter of Ephesians and read 8 verses. Read the almost half the chapter.
And I said, would you just see how long this takes?
And I read it. Not quickly, not slowly. It wasn't quite 2 minutes.
And I said, Oh, dear ones.
Can we not? Only he alone could save us.
And now we're his, That he alone can keep us.
And it doesn't need to be a long prayer. One has often mentioned that the longest prayer in the Bible.
Is Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the temple? That's a long prayer, and if you'll see how long that takes, it's approximately 5 minutes. Oh, can we not spend a few minutes to start the day with the one who loved us and gave himself for us now? Should we look at the 14th verse?
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Of this chapter.
And here we find another whatsoever.
He are my friends John's Gospel of 15th chapter.
And the 14th verse, if ye do whatsoever I command you.
Oh, how lovely it is when we see.
In the heart and the desires of a child of God.
That same desire that was in the apostles Paul, the apostle Paul's heart. Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?
Oh, how many sad, bitter lessons we would be saved from if there was that?
Earnest Desire.
Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever.
I command you, and the Lord has taken us into his counsels.
He has told us all his mind.
And oh, how he cares for us. No, friend like Jesus.
But how often in our willfulness we turn away from His love, and there isn't the exercise.
If ye do, whatsoever I command you, I'd like to turn now to a verse in Isaiah, the 48th chapter.
Isaiah 48.
And the 18 verse.
And here we have God's earthly people.
And oh how he sought to bring them into blessing.
But they like you and I.
Displayed willfulness.
There wasn't a submission to his word, and so he writes he speaks to them in the 18th verse.
All that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments.
Then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea.
Oh, what a wonderful expression of blessing.
Thy peace had been as a river, oh as we see.
The mighty river flowing on in all its depth and blessings.
Wherever its waters flow.
And thy righteousness as the waves of the sea.
All the power in those waves, and how you and I, if there is this desire to walk in obedience to his will, we'll have that peace and that righteousness.
That will preserve us from the paths of the Destroyer.
Oh, how sad it is today.
When we see dear young Christians and some that are not so young.
Walking in the paths of the Destroyer.
Walking in the paths of the Destroyer.
Oh, how subtle is the foe? How clever is his attack?
In school and in college.
And in every aspect of our life, how everything that we see and hear.
Would teach us concrete what the Word of God would teach us.
Would take us from the path of dependence and obedience.
But oh, how blessed it is.
To seek to be exercised as to His commandment, commandments in His word.
Is my heart exercise? Is your heart exercise to learn His mind and His word?
And then seek grace to walk in it. Or am I just drifting along?
Drifting. No exercise. Oh, yes, I may be at the meetings.
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But there's no exercise to do those things that are pleasing in his sight.
One was talking to a dear Christian not long ago who was in great danger in the paths of the Destroyer, and one brought before them that verse in James the 4th chapter. Let's turn to it, please.
James 4th chapter.
And the fourth verse.
He adulterers and adulteresses.
Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
Oh, what very, very strong language. Could that be true of a child of God here? Yes.
That according to scripture, you're seen as an adulterer or adulterous. Yes, if you are going on in friendship with those.
That are in the world.
And.
Those that have carried on friendships with those that they know they knew before they were saved, who are still unsaved, those that have kept up a very close and.
Intimate association with their relatives who are still unsaved.
Oh, how often we've seen that this has been a terrible hindrance even to turning them aside.
Oh, if you and I.
Are seeking to do those things that are pleasing in His sight. Our friends won't want our company if there's even a little outshining of Christ in our walking ways. Our relatives won't want our company.
Oh dear child of God.
One is not speaking now that you wouldn't be courteous to your friends.
That you wouldn't.
On occasion, show love.
And the natural relationships in the.
Family circle, But oh if you can enjoy a whole evening or a whole day.
In company with these ones whose interests are all down here.
And yours are all up there, and you can go on in company with them. Oh, you're in grave danger.
And if you're seeking to let your light shine before men.
Oh, you won't have to.
As there might be a danger of not showing wisdom and speaking to our friends and relatives, but seeking wisdom from the Lord, if you seek to be faithful all you'll find that they won't want your company.
No, they'll soon leave you.
Adulterers and adulteresses Know ye not that the friendship of the world?
Is enmity with God. Oh, if there are those here.
That have friendships.
With their unsafe friends and relatives that are a hindrance to them.
May they remember this solemn word of warning from the word of God. Now shall we turn to Philippians, the 4th chapter?
So often, you know, when we think of these things, we own.
How much we fail Philippians? The 4th chapter and.
We long to do better what we find. We just don't have the strength we just don't have.
In ourselves, what is needed to stand up to the attacks of the enemy?
Well, in the 13th verse of this chapter.
The Apostle Paul gives the secret of it all.
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Oh, may we learn.
To be in the enjoyment and the practical power of the 13th verse.
I can do all things through Christ.
Which strengtheneth me. Oh, how blessed is this promise? I can do all things through Christ, which strengthened me.
Oh, do you need more grace? He has stores of grace, but you're going to find it on your knees. You're going to find it in His presence. And oh, I was struck with the remark as to self judgment in our reading meetings, that self judgment is so important.
In the pathway of a Christian that each day that we would seek by his grace to exercise.
Self judgment. And it was mentioned that self judgment is not merely.
My shaking my head and saying, well, I shouldn't have acted that way, no.
I must seek grace to do better. Oh, it's going back to the point of departure and in the presence of the Lord owning.
Our failure and owning the point of departure.
Had we been neglecting?
The reading of his word. Had there been that lack of obedience?
Had that desire to do those things that are pleasing in his sight been set aside, and other things that have taken that place, that alone is his the preeminent part.
Oh, how wonderful is this statement. And you and I, without boasting and by grace, can echo these faithful words in our hearts and on our knees, seek grace to carry them out. I can do all things through Christ which strengthened me.
Now let us turn to Romans 14th chapter.
The latter part of the 23rd verse.
For whatsoever is not of faith.
Is.
I'm going to read that verse again, for whatsoever is not of faith.
Is sin.
Oh, the enjoyment of this verse and The Walking in this verse.
In the power of this verse, we will preserve you.
From the Destroyer.
How often things that are not of faith come into our pathway.
But here again, we have that little word whatsoever.
Is not a faith.
Oh, what about our conversation as young people?
What about our department?
What about our walk?
Is it characterized as a walk of faith?
Is there an earnest desire that there would be that walk of faith?
Oh, he'll give us the strength that it may be so.
And.
He has.
Won my heart.
Has he won yours?
Oh, how blessed it is when we remember that we no longer belong to ourselves, but we belong to one who, as we were praising and adoring Him this morning, has redeemed us to God by His precious Blood and how it delights His heart. When we gather, as we did this morning, when there's that portion for himself, that alabaster box appointment that we can pour out.
In worship and praise as our hearts, well up in Thanksgiving to that one that called a sort of darkness into his marvelous light.
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I often think of that little verse Sunday morning in Isaiah 43 chapter.
Isaiah 43.
And verse.
24.
Isaiah 43, verse 24.
Thou hast bought me.
No sweet king.
With money.
Now we know if we read in Jeremiah, I think it's the 70th chapter, that the sweet cane came from a far country. It cost something.
And oh, there is no commandment in God's Word that they would bring to the Lord.
This sweet cane.
This.
That you and I Sometimes when we've been away, we might delight to bring to our dear ones.
Something special that would remind us, remind them.
Of our hearts, affection for them, and always you and I come together on Lords Day morning. We have that privilege to bring this sweet cane.
This that has cost us something and so often the reason why there isn't the sweet cane on Sunday morning.
On Lord's Day morning, as we gather around himself, is that we haven't been willing.
To pay the cost.
To be before him, to be in the enjoyment of that one who is filled our hearts and thoughts, and around whom we gathered this morning.
Thou hast brought me no sweet cane with money.
Oh, are we willing to make the sacrifices in our lives that are needed and necessary to his honor and glory?
That in our lives there would be that sweet praise.
That ointment poured forth.
Oh, what a blessing it would be in each of our assemblies.
If there was the exercise.
As through the week, we seek to walk in company with that one and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.
That there would be the exercise that there would be that sweet gain.
To offer to him in.
Praise and worship and Thanksgiving.
But you know, sometimes.
I have felt this way.
And I've heard others express themselves, you know, I feel the need of diversion at times. Diversion.
Oh, I well remember when Doctor Dashwood was in Montreal. Doctor Dashwood from Atlanta, and he was telling us of a little incident in his own meeting.
Of this dear Christian, this brother who came so faithfully to the meetings, and this night he called him up, He used to pick him up in his car.
Because he had no car of his own, he used to pick him up in his car and bring him to meeting. And Doctor Dashwood phoned him this night and said, brother, I'll be over in 10 minutes and he said, Doctor Dashboard, not tonight, not tonight, he said I I've been feeling the need of a little diversion and he said there's been a very, very beautiful and fine opera come to town and I'm going to hear that operation night. I just like to have a little diversion.
Well, those of us that knew Doctor Dashwood.
Can almost hear his words as he spoken to that telephone.
Diversion from Christ.
And he hung up the receiver.
He started towards the door.
And he hadn't quite got out the door when the phone rang and the dear brother said, oh, Doctor Dash would come for me. No, no, I don't want that. I don't want that. I don't want any diversion from my precious Savior who loved me and gave himself for me. Oh dear child of God.
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You might not put it in those words, but I have. I'm sure each one of us would own how often we have allowed these diversions.
That which would remove our eye from that blessed one and fill our hearts and thoughts.
With that which the world enjoys. Not necessarily that which is gross or evil, but oh, just that that robs him of the portion that is his.
For whatsoever is not of faith is sin.
Well, how nice it is in our daily pathway for us to.
Heed the word of God to listen to its admonitions. And when these things come into our thoughts and minds, the suggestions, the planning, whatever it may be to say, is this a faith? Is this a faith?
Oh, you might say, well, you know, young people are only young once, and that's true. And there are many happy ways in which we can enjoy ourselves together in Christian fellowship. But oh, if we find ourselves, as they say down in Laurenville, they have an expression down there, world, bordering world bordering just that, which is on the edge of the world, enjoying what they enjoy. Oh, how quickly.
Our natural appetites lay hold of those things.
And the love that should be for him alone.
Wax is dim and cold. Well now, shall we turn to 1 Corinthians, the 10th chapter?
First Corinthians, the 10th chapter.
And verse.
The latter part of verse 31.
Whatsoever here again we have that little word whatsoever, whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.
Oh, how many are the safeguards that are put in our pathway? How faithful is the word of God?
And how good it is to apply these tests. The Word of God says, prove all things hold fast that which is good. So often we find our life filled with rubbish.
With things that are time consuming.
And things which rob our souls of the enjoyment of the Lord's person.
Sometimes at the end of the day, that verse comes before me.
For our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son, Jesus Christ.
And one has to bow his head in shape and oh.
That at times there's been very little enjoyment of that fellowship.
Oh, it's going to cost us something to buy that sweet cane. It says with money, with money. It's got a price. And if you and I are going to give the Lord the 1St place he's called us to share his eternal glory. Oh what a future lies before.
Are we willing to pay the price now?
For a path of blessing, a path of happiness, a path of joy.
And a path of peace. I'd like to turn now to Isaiah rather Second Chronicle.
The 29th chapter.
And the 16th verse.
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And the priest went into the inner part of the House of the Lord, to cleanse it, and brought out all the uncleanness that they found in the temple of the Lord into the court of the House of the Lord. And the Levites took him to carry it out abroad into the book, into the book Kedron. Now they began began on the first day of the first month to sanctify, and on the eighth day of the month they came they saw.
To the porch of the Lord. So they sanctified the House of the Lord in eight days, and in the 16th day of the first month they made an end. Then they went to Hezekiah the king, and said, we have cleansed all the House of the Lord and the altar of the burnt offering and all the vessels they're off and the showbread, all the vessels there off.
Oh, here we find that in the temple of the Lord, because there had not been a daily cleansing, it took them 16 days.
To carry out.
All the rubbish, all it defiled.
And oh, how often sometimes we find that there hasn't been the daily cleansing in our lives.
The cleansing that we receive from the water of His word, and through the exercise of unsparing self judgment.
16 days to carry out the rubbish.
Oh, how much rubbish and defilement is there in our temples? Let us look in Second Corinthians, the 7th chapter.
Two Corinthians, the 7th chapter.
And the first verse.
Having therefore these promises.
If we read in the previous chapter, we see the wonderful promises in the 18th verse.
And I will be a father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perpetuating holiness in the sight of God.
So how often we forget this perfecting holiness in the sight of God? Because if you and I will read in First Corinthians the 6th chapter.
And verse.
19 I think it is.
Yes. What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?
Which you have of God, and ye are not your own.
For ye are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are gods. Oh, here this body that you and I have are now.
The Temple of the Holy Ghost.
Know how needful it is that we would remember that we are back with a price.
Dear young Christian, From the youngest boy and girl to young man and woman, do you realize, oh, how we need to remind ourselves day by day?
That you're not your own.
You're bought with a price, I heard a young person say a year or two ago as they stood outside the hall. I was just inside the door and this particular assembly, and evidently that one had been spoken to faithfully and graciously. I know the one that spoke to them, and I heard him say to another.
Nobody's going to tell me what to do. That dear young person was one of the Lord's Table, was a Sunday school teacher.
But the things of the world were coming in.
All we need to remind ourselves that our bodies are the Temple of the Holy Ghost. And you're not your own. You're bought with a price. Oh, how blessed it is when we remember as we did this morning. But we are not our own.
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That we've been bought with a price.
As by faith, we gazed back to that scene of Calvary and those three hours of darkness.
When the Lord poured out his soul unto death.
He was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
Oh, you're not your own. The world would tell us to live our own lives, our lives. We see the throwing off of self restraint.
You and I, We need the Word of God and the Spirit of God within us to guide us and lead us.
And oh, it tells us we haven't got time to turn to it in Isaiah, the 30th chapter in the 21St verse.
It tells us, when thou turnest to the right hand or to the left, thou shalt hear a voice behind thee, saying, This is the path walk in it. Oh, what wondrous provisions have been made for our pathway here? May we seek grace not, as we see around the spirit of disobedience, unrest.
And everything that is causing the terrible condition. But may we seek by His grace to bow to His word.
And do those things that are pleasing in his sight. I'd just like to repeat the story that I've often told about Captain Dunlop.
He used to stay in my father's home and when I was just a little chap, about 6 or 7.
He started out. He would tell us in the morning.
To preach the gospel and to visit the Lord's people. He started out with his horse and buggy and he said, you know.
The further I got away from home.
Why, I'd have to take out the whip and give that horse a little flick to keep him going on.
Said the moment I turned that horse's head towards home. I never, never, never had to take out the whip again. And he said, what does that horse have at the end of the journey?
A bag of oats.
A bag of oats. And he said, What have you and I got at the end of the journey? The unsearchable riches of Christ, His love, his smile.
His likeness through all eternity. And he said how sad it is that even we who are on our homework journey.
He has to take his rod and touch us so that we walk in the path of faith and obedience all. May we seek grace as a result of these meetings to bow to His word, because the telling forth of the truth in these meetings is going to have its rich and eternal blessing in your heart and mind, or it's going to have the effect, dear child of God.
Of hardening your heart to the truth.
And the enemy, as we are hearing in the Reading meetings, those that gave up faith in a good conscience, they made shipwreck. Oh, may we seek by His grace to bow to His word.
And to give him the first place in our lives shall we sing that hymn. Praise the Savior, he who know him.
156 Praise the Savior he who know him.
Oh, excuse me, 256.
Numbers 10-11
Open—M.W. Smith
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General Meetings, Toledo, November 1969. Open meeting.
Close to thy Pearson side is only there same team we can apply with Moe's and Snares around us a month.
The conflict can endure Thine arm, the victory cadence, or every hateful bow thy love our hearts sustain it and all their cares and will soon shall I behold thee with raptured face to face, and resting there in glory will sing thy power and grace.
My beauty, Lord glory, the waters of my law, shall be the endless story of all my faith above 318.
Oh.
God.
I can't play.
Will you please turn with me to Numbers, Chapter 11?
Or we might read the 33rd verse of the previous chapter, Numbers 10, verse 33.
And they departed from the mount of the Lord three days journey. And the ark of the covenant of the Lord went before them in the three days journey.
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To search out a resting place for them.
And the cloud of the Lord was upon them by day. When they went out of the camp. They came to pass when the ark set forward that Moses had Rise up, Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered, and let them that hate thee flee before thee. And when arrested he said, Return, O Lord, unto the many thousands of Israel.
And when the people complained, it displeased the Lord. The Lord heard it, and his anger was kindled in the fire of the Lord, burnt among them, and consumed them. They were in the uttermost parts of the camp. And the people tried unto Moses. And when Moses prayed unto the Lord, the fire was quenched.
And he called the name of the place Tabara, because the fire of the Lord burnt among them, and the mixed multitude that was among them fell a lusting. And the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely, the cucumbers and the melons, and the leeks and the onions and the garlic, And but now our soul is dried away.
There is nothing at all beside this manner before our eyes.
And the manner was as coriander seed, the color thereof is a color bedellium. And the people went about and gathered and grounded in mills, or beaded in a mortar, and baked it in pans, and made cakes of it. And the taste of it was as a taste of fresh oil. And when the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the Manor fell upon it.
We will possibly refer to the other parts of the chapter. We won't take time to read them now.
Children of Israel at this time have just been something a little over a year.
Out of Egypt.
In the land of Egypt.
They saw the hand of the power of God upon their enemies.
They saw the salvation of the Lord in the Red Sea and.
Coming out of the Red Sea, they sang unto the Lord.
The power that he had triumphed gloriously.
And they spent some months.
At Mount Sinai.
Where the Lord made his presence manifest to them.
They saw the power of God.
They manifested, or His presence was manifested to them, as we know, in the mount and in the giving of the Law.
God had made himself very much known to his people.
But now we find them leaving the mount of the Lord.
And going on in their journey through the wilderness.
We find that God went before them.
Guiding them.
Presence of the Lord was still with them, and very much in evidence.
But oh, how hard is a heart?
Of man.
In three months time.
We find here that the people become a murmuring class of people.
How sad it is.
When the people of God began complaining after the ways of God with them.
But you know, the children of Israel were not any different from you and me.
And how well we know it, if we're honest in our hearts that we are.
Just the same.
How many times we've seen the?
The blessing of God and his gracious dealings with us.
And how soon we forget it.
And we start complaining as to our pathway.
How it becomes burdensome to us.
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The people began to complain.
It displays the Lord.
We have been hearing much.
In these meetings.
Of how God has blessed us.
How he has sustained us.
And how God desires to have a people separated to himself, He's made every provision for it.
For us down here in this scene, in his word, he's getting marked out the path for us, and yet how much we complain as to our path.
But now we find.
Just to touch very briefly on these points, we'll look at another chapter in a few moments.
We find here that the people.
Were not completely separated from that with which they were mixed up in Egypt.
As we know that when the children of Israel left Egypt, there was a mixed multitude that came with them.
There were those which did not belong amongst the people of God.
But they accompanied the people of God and partook.
Of their blessings.
I trust there's none like that here in this company.
We are speaking to those who are the Lords, and we trust that there are none here who go.
As a Christian, as a child of God, but is not one of the people of God.
We find there is a mixed multitude.
That.
Started.
Complaining.
And manifesting the lust.
For those things of Egypt.
You know, it's only the flesh that desires the things of this world. For Egypt is.
A picture of this world.
Hello dear fellow Christian.
If we're going to go on in the path of faith, may we go on in the path of faith and not look back to those things from which we have been saved.
They fell a lusting, desiring.
The things of Egypt.
They forgot that there were slaves in Egypt. They forgot that they had been under *******.
Under cruel taskmasters.
The only thought of those things which would satisfy their natural hunger.
They say now our soul is dried up, dried away.
They couldn't find anything.
In their journeys to satisfy the natural heart.
Now, I don't believe we need to speak of the manner particularly. We know that it's a picture, it's a type of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The one upon whom we may feed and never hunger.
He spoke himself, as we know I am the bread which came down from heaven.
And it was that food. It was angels food, as we find in the Psalms.
That was given to the children of Israel.
They had had it through their journeys after this time.
They say our soul is dried away.
There is nothing at all beside this manner before our eyes. Oh, how soon they got tired of the manna.
And you know, if we get our eyes on the things around us and thirst after the things of this world, how that Christ is going to lose his attraction for us, We'll lose our appetites for Christ.
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We find in the 16th chapter of the book of Exodus.
How that the manner?
Was like coriander seed. It was white.
And his taste was as wafers made with honey.
The very sweetness of Christ.
In it.
And what a delightful thing God had given to his people.
And how precious for you and me to be able to feed upon Christ. We've been feeding upon him these last days, and we trust that each one here has had a precious time in feeding upon Christ.
But you know there is in this world the present time.
Amongst those who don't value Christ, as possibly we should.
And they seek to alter that which God has given us of Christ.
To change the character.
And so the children of Israel, they went about to change the manner. They got tired of the manner as God had given it to them.
And so they.
When they gathered it, they grounded in mills.
They beat it in a mortar. They baked it in pan.
And the taste was changed.
It would no longer sweet as honey, no longer like wafers made with honey.
But it had the taste of oil.
Oh, how different and how Christ.
When the sweetness of Christ is tampered with.
When we get something else before our eyes and seek to alter that which God has presented to us in His Word of His own beloved Son.
Or how it changes it and we soon become tired of it.
But to know that is what happens when we get our eyes off of Christ.
Now we find in the rest of the chapter of how it infects others.
To find here how that it affected that man of God, Moses himself.
Moses becomes discouraged.
And so Moses himself complaints to God. He complaints about the burden of carrying.
All this people.
So with the 12Th verse he says to God.
Have I conceived all this people? Have I begotten them that thou should have say unto me?
Carry them and thy bosom. At a nursing father beareth a second child unto the land, which thou swearest unto their fathers. When should I have flesh to give unto all this people? For they weep unto me, saying, Give us flesh, that we may eat. I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me.
Moses Himself.
Forgot for the moment that it was the Lord Himself who was bringing up this people from Egypt, and who had promised to bring them into the land of Canaan.
Moses Himself.
Becomes discouraged.
And you know, dear fellow Christian, when we get our eyes off of Christ.
It affects others too, not only ourselves. Not only do we lose the joy.
Of being in communion with the Lord, but others are affected by it.
Although we may not allow our hearts and our minds to be turned away from Christ to the things of this world, because this world is going to be burned up and all that is in it.
But may we have our minds set on things above where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God.
Now let's turn to the 21St chapter of this same book.
Now I might say before we read in it.
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That here many years have passed.
From the time we've just been Speaking of.
In the eleven chapter of Numbers.
The people have been out of Egypt.
A year and three months.
Now they're about to enter into the land of Canaan.
Some 30 years or more, possibly 3536 years, have passed.
From the previous chapter.
Miriam has died. Aaron has died.
Yes, and those that came out of Egypt.
That generation is gone.
They've all died.
God the Lord had told them they would wander through the desert, through the wilderness, until those that came out of Egypt 20 years old and upward would die. The carcasses would lie in the wilderness.
But their children would enter into the line of Canaan.
Now there's a new generation come up.
And we have in the company here before us.
At least.
2 generations.
So if what we've been seeing in the 11Th chapter speaks of those of us who are older.
The 21St chapter may speak to those who are younger as well.
Verse 4 numbers 21.
And they journeyed from Mount Hor by way of the Red Sea, to compass the land of Edom. The soul of the people is much discouraged because of the way.
And the people speak against God, and against Moses. Wherefore have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, neither is there any water.
And our soul loathe this light bread.
The Larsen fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people and much people of Israel dying.
Therefore the people came to Moses and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against thee. Pray unto the Lord that he take away the serpent's from us. And Moses prayed for the people.
The Lord Senator Moses make thee A fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole, and shall come to pass at everyone that is bitten, when he looketh upon it shall live.
And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole. And it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld a serpent of brass, he lived. And the children of Israel set forward and pitched. He knew both.
The second generation of the children of Israel.
Were no different.
From their parents.
Oh, solemn it is.
That how poorly we learn the wilderness lessons.
Those that have gone before us have been through these exercises.
And how little we learn.
From the ways of God, with those that have gone before us.
They have seen now through many, many years the faithfulness of God. He's fed them all these years with the manna.
He is given the water out of the rock.
And we know that rock was Christ.
They've had refreshment along the way, and God has sustained that people miraculously through a desert.
They hadn't planted any crops.
No.
They hadn't done anything for their own sustenance.
But God took care of that. Numerous people, millions of people in the desert.
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Going through it, wandering through the desert, God sustained them in their flocks.
All the way through.
Oh, how good is our God?
To sustain his people.
You and I are sustained by the power.
And by the mercy of our God.
How good he is to us.
And now we find that the people.
Are discouraged by the way they just gained A notable victory over their enemies.
The first three verses of this chapter tell us of how they had gained the victory over the Canaanites.
They had looked to the Lord.
And he gave them the victory over their enemies.
And now they're discouraged again.
Oh, how little we remember the goodness and grace of our God to us.
As we go through this scene and when difficulties come, if the way seems long to us, how we complain about it?
There are much discouraged because of the way.
And you know, I believe was remarked in these meetings.
That discouragement.
And the lack?
Of desire for Christ. These two things go together.
They were discouraged by the way they loathed the Manor.
Oh, you know, we can't get along without Christ.
We can never go through this scene.
If it were not for the goodness and the high priestly work of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Peter tells us that the righteous are with difficulty saved.
The path for us is so difficult that if we're not for the high priestly work of our Lord Jesus Christ, we could never get through this scene in our pathway onto glory.
He sustains us every moment of the way.
Oh they find the hand of the Lord upon them.
And you know, when we get our eyes off of Christ.
In the governmental ways of God, he allows us to go through trial.
Difficulties. We've been Speaking of these things the last two days.
About the Garden brings us through these things in order to preserve us, to sustain us in the path of faith.
The Lord sent fiery serpents among them.
You know, we use this passage often in the Gospel, and rightly so. And our Lord Jesus Christ, referred to this very incident, is speaking to Nicodemus.
But I believe that it has an application to you and me.
As the people of God.
What is it will restore us and our souls to God?
Always to go back to Calvary.
To go back to that.
Which was a foundation.
Of our life.
As being born again.
Oh, as the work of Calvary, the work of our Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross.
That has brought us into relationship with God as his people.
And so the Lord.
Has to bring before the people.
The picture.
Of the death of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He sent fiery serpents among them.
And they have to confess.
Their failure. They confess to God how that they have sinned.
Oh, how it's good to own, to confess our sins.
To keep short accounts with God, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just.
To forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
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And so we find here that beautiful the wonderful picture.
Of the Lord Jesus Christ lifted up on the cross.
The serpent of brass lifted up.
Reminding them.
Reminding you and me.
Of the fact that all our blessings come through our Lord Jesus Christ.
We are reminded of it here this morning.
We have, through the grace of God, the wonderful privilege of remembering.
Of calling to mind.
The work of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Christ suffered for us.
The just for the unjust.
That he might bring us to God.
We know that the work of Calvary was that was glorified God as to the question of sin.
Put our pressure to our souls to know that the work of Calvary.
Was in order that he might bring us the unjust, he might bring us to God.
Have we ever thought of it in that way, that it was to bring us to God, we who were dead in trespasses and sins, candidates for the lack of fire?
But the work of Christ suffering the just for the unjust to bring us to God.
And it meant him going into death for us.
Yes, he had to go into death for us being put to death in the flesh, but all God has quickened him in the Spirit.
And now the Lord Jesus, whom you and I have remembered this morning in his death.
We don't remember him as a dead savior. We remember him and his death. But He is living. He is up on high in the glory now.
Blessed fact, that is a glorified man at the right hand of God.
Well, the people in tight are brought to that very plate.
To the death of Christ.
And now, have you been brought to that place?
They were enabled by the grace of God to go on in their journeys. So the last verse that we read brings us to the point.
Where they set forward again.
And pest an oboe.
Now, there's a great deal of which Rick is big of and the rest of this chapter, but it won't relieve time for someone else.
But I might just say this that oboe brings before us.
The refreshing.
Refreshing water.
That comes to having been brought.
Into the place of remembrance of what the Lord Jesus has done for us. For oboe means water skins that was carried the water for the people along the way, refreshment for them as they go on. By the way, so may we each those of us who are older.
And another generation coming up as we see.
May we each go on in faithfulness.
To our Lord Jesus Christ.
Not to become discouraged by the way, but to remember that our God is able.
And will keep us through the whole journey.
Individual Faithfulness in a Day of Ruin
Open—A.M. Barry
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Problem. There are just a few thoughts on my heart.
That I feel the Lord would have me bring before us.
And the subject I feel laid on my heart as this.
Individual faithfulness.
In a day of ruin.
Or you might inquire what I mean by a day of ruin.
Well, I simply mean this, that when God has set up something on the earth.
And man has spoiled it through his failure.
Well, I then had looked at in that way.
You know, God first set up Israel as a nation on the earth.
He brought them into that good and promised land.
And gave them every privilege. He gave them his sanctuary. He gave them his priesthood.
And we find that.
They turn to the idols of the heathen.
They corrupted the land. They defiled his sanctuary.
And they broke his law until at last God had to take that people, scatter them out of their land.
Well, there we see the time of ruin.
And you'll find if you trace the history of the children of Israel in the Old Testament.
That the time of ruin was the very time when individual faithfulness shone out in its brightest way.
We could speak of the time when Israel were divided into two warring people.
10 tribes and two tribes.
Well, at that very time you have such men raised up as Elijah and then later Elisha. Well, there was individual faithfulness.
At a time when God's people had.
Departed from.
The privileges.
He had bestowed upon them.
But we learn a lesson in Elijah that is well for us to remember.
In connection with individual faithfulness, there is a danger of legality.
And of getting into the spirit of a light when he said that, as though he was the only faithful one that God had left in Israel, he said they are broken down 9 altars, and I alone am left.
Lord reminded Elijah that he had 7000 that had not bowed the need to bail.
So, and bringing before our hearts, beloved, this subject that I felt laid on my heart individual faithfulness. May we not get the thought that we're the only ones, the only faithful ones.
That God has.
Among his people.
Well now after Israel had so sadly failed.
That they actually crucified their own Messiah, put him to the shameful death of the cross.
And it was a religious leaders of that very nation.
How that condemned him to that death.
Then God begins anew work on the earth.
When the Lord has risen and gone back to the Father, He sends the Holy Spirit down into this world.
And the Holy Spirit has been here in this world ever since.
Marvelous, wonderful subject to consider that God the Holy Spirit.
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Who is just as truly God as the Father, God the Son.
Is actually here in this world dwelling in believers.
And what has engaged God's Holy Spirit?
Is the gathering out of a people?
To Christ himself.
So instead of a nation, we have a people scattered all over the world.
That take the name, the precious name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But we love it. That very people.
On whom the name of Christ rests.
Have fallen into just as grave, and I could say even worse, failure.
Than Israel as a nation.
We see what we speak of now as the Church of God on earth.
And I'm considering it in its widest, broadest application.
We fear today in terrible and awful ruin.
Now when we think of the way the Church began.
When they were all together and had all things common, and no man called anything his own.
And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of Christ.
What a glorious day that was in the history of the Church of God.
But it has been often said and rightly said that whatever has been committed to the hands of man, he has made a total and dismal failure of.
And the Church is no exception. Of course I'm not speaking now of the Church.
That Christ builds.
And as it's now seen in his counsels, A glorious church, it will be without spot or wrinkle soon in glory. But I'm looking at the whole testimony that takes the name of Christ on the earth.
And beloved when we consider the church in that way, or we might call it Christendom or Christianity.
It has become an even greater failure.
Than Israel in their day, For it has been often said that the corruption of the best thing is the worst thing.
Nothing is so wonderful, so marvelous, as the Church of God, to think of a people called out of this world to confess Christ as Lord and to take the name of Christ upon them.
Turning to the ways and the conduct and the corruption.
With guilty Evil World, so terrible has been the downfall of what is called Christendom.
That given the infidel historian made this remark, he said the annals of Christianity are the annals of hell.
The very solemn accusation, isn't it? But when you read Church history and trace down that which is set here.
As a vessel of testimony for Christ on the earth, and see what terrible failure is coming has come in.
Its most solemnizing, indeed.
Well, and considering this subject, beloved.
The Second Epistle of Timothy comes before me.
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Now again I'll mention the.
Subject was on my heart.
And that is individual faithfulness.
In a day of ruin.
And now, in the early days, we were Speaking of following Pentecost. There was no need of an epistle like Second Timothy to be written. It was after failure had come in.
Among those that confess the name of Christ.
And we can be thankful, beloved Saints that God permitted failure to come into.
The professing church before the apostles were off of the sea, so that we have full instruction.
Guidance and help in this very time of ruin of which we're Speaking of.
Now when Paul was writing to Timothy on the first Epistle that he wrote him the First Epistle of Timothy.
He could speak of the Church as the House of God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
And you get in that epistle.
Order in the House of God, Timothy was told. How we used to behave himself.
Things were in order when he writes that epistle, but it's a solemn thing how quickly failure can come in.
Among those who hold the truth.
For when we come to the second Epistle of Timothy.
You will find that the church, instead of being looked at as a house in order, it's looked at as a great house where there are vessels of wood in the earth and some to honor and some to dishonor.
So as the subject of this epistle is what I had on my heart to bring before us, and that is individual faithfulness.
In a time of ruin.
How different the conditions were now and even when Paul was carrying the gospel from 1 Country to another, and the spirit of God was mightily working in the conversion of sinners, now he has to write to Timothy in the first chapter of this epistle.
The 15th verse he says for thou knowest that all they which are in Asia.
Be turned away from me.
When you consider Asia, that province where Paul was so mightily used, you know when he was.
Holding forth in the House of the school of 1 Tyrannus, it says that all they which were in Asia heard the word of the Lord. Just think of it. The whole province heard the word of the Lord.
And emphasis was the.
Was the capital of that province. And when Paul even was a prisoner at Rome, he wrote them a letter and gave them the very highest truths that you'll find in the word speaks of being raised up together and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
But here he says all day in Asia.
Are turned away from me.
All that doesn't mean that they had given up Christ, but they had given up the special ministry of the apostle Paul that had made him a prisoner. Or it was Paul's faithfulness and maintaining that you and Gentile were no longer separated.
If if he had been satisfied to just make the Christian testimony a certain branch of Judaism.
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It would have been acceptable to the world because Judaism was recognized as a religious system. The world understood and accepted, but when he brought in the wonderful truth of the heavenly calling.
That we're not of this world and there are there are no, there's no middle wall between Jew and Gentile. That's all broken down. All one in Christ Jesus, that wonderful mystery.
That's when Paul was made a prisoner at Rome.
And as time went on, even at Ephesus.
His separate walk.
And a testimony that separated Christians from every phase of this world system became something.
Something that they refused.
And they actually deserted the apostle from whom they had received.
The truth of God.
Over a terrible what sad failure had come in.
Well, now, Timothy, a servant of Christ, is receiving instructions for a day like that.
Well, we noticed one thing in the in the.
First chapter in the eighth verse.
Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord.
Nor of Maine as a prisoner, but be thou art partaker of the afflictions of the gospel.
According to the power of God.
Rather than in a day of ruin, let's not be slack at all in connection with the outgoing of the glorious gospel of the grace of God. But if it's a gospel according to the mind of God, the gospel as Paul speaks of it, it will carry its afflictions and its persecutions with it.
It will not be a popular gospel. It will not be a social gospel to make the world better.
But it will be the gospel that separates from this world.
For Paul says in connection with his preaching, that the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness.
But unto us that are saved, it is the power of God, you know, when the gospel of the Kingdom goes on.
Out after the church is gone, it will not be the preaching of the cross, because that will be a gospel that will prepare the world to receive its king and to set up a Kingdom here on earth. But now the gospel carries with it the character of what brings reproach and separation from this world, that is, if it's preached according to the mind of God.
Whenever we all look at a little at the second chapter.
Where we get special instructions to Timothy, and as we said before, it's individual faithfulness.
In the time of Ruin.
So he says, Thou therefore, my son, the first verse, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
That's the first instruction. Be strong in the grace.
Other than the grace that's in ourselves, we may be very gracious and affable and kind and considerate. That's not what he's sitting before us.
And telling Timothy to be strong in it's the grace.
In Christ Jesus.
Well, beloved, how we need to trace the pathway of our Blessed Lord to learn more of the grace of our Lord Jesus, who though He were rich, yet for our sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich.
I remember that the grace we see in our Lord Jesus Christ.
00:20:04
Is not a grace. That's at the expense of holiness.
John in Speaking of that blessed one, he says that the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
There was a perfect blending of grace and truth.
We either lean one way.
Or the other ourselves we may be over gracious and neglect holiness.
Or we may become legal and neglect grace.
Blessed it is to trace the pathway.
All that one in here is gracious life of service in this world. When the Lord spoke so plainly there in the synagogue at Nazareth about how the gospel would go beyond their their people, they took him up and were ready to throw him headlong over the hill on which their city was built, Lord quietly passed on.
Carrying his mission of grace elsewhere and in the 9th chapter.
Of John where they took up stones to cast at him or the 8th chapter last verse we find the Lord passed by and as he passed by he saw a man that was blind from his mother's womb and the Lord sent it to the pool of Siloam and his eyes were opened.
Thank God of his mission all through that whole land.
Healing the lepers.
And cleansing the lepers, healing the sick, and raising the dead never recall that he refused.
Oh beloved, in a day of ruin, may there be that individual faithfulness in going on like our blessed Lord.
In his mission of Grace.
In this sad and guilty world.
Then he says in the second verse.
The things which thou hast heard of me among many witnesses the same, commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.
I believe this verse is very important because it gives us the way that the Spirit of God would perpetuate.
The truth of God.
Instead of a Bible school.
The way that the Spirit of God has instructed us.
First it comes the truth comes through and inspired source like the Apostle Paul.
And he communicated that to his.
His beloved Timothy. And he was to commit that to faithful man who should teach others also. That's the way the truth of God is maintained.
That is, we pass it on from one generation to another. The older ones teach the younger and the younger ones teach the next generation that is coming on. No thought of taking a Bible course or?
Or an education that's simply giving out.
The truths and communicating those truths to others, and especially here. And that's what is important to faithful men who shall teach others also.
However beloved, we see how Timothy was encouraged to not give up the gospel testimony.
He's also encouraged not to give up the work among the people of God.
And I believe, beloved, as we go on, whether it may be in our local assemblies.
When we're encouraging those that have a heart to for Christ.
To strengthen them and to encourage them to go on.
00:25:03
In this evil day that we're living in, I believe that is a very special service for Christ, of course, where there is an exceptional call to go out.
And for one to spend his time serving the Lord, I believe that that is one of the special fields of service that we need to consider.
Committing the truths that we possess, our beloved. When we think of the precious things that have been before us in these meetings, we surely do not want to keep them to ourselves.
We want our brethren to enjoy them, and especially where we find maybe a young brother or young sister coming along that have a desire after the things of Christ. Do all you can to strengthen their hands and to encourage them to go on.
There's individual faithfulness, beloved, and then we get further down in the chapter.
Where he says about this great house in the 20th verse.
There are not only vessels of gold, and of silver, but of wood and of earth, and some to honor, and some to dishonor. If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the master's use, and prepared unto every good work.
I'll just say this, that in this portion there's nothing about assembly discipline. Here again, our remark is the individual pathway of a servant of Christ.
And the testimony has become such that they're not only vessels of honor, but there are vessels of dishonor, and Timothy is told to separate from these vessels of dishonor.
Now if one is in a man made system.
Such as we see in Christendom, it's very clear.
What this scripture would teach us is to separate himself.
From that which is contrary to God's word.
Although it may cost him a lot.
I knew, dear brother, that he and his wife were breaking bread together in a small town.
And the preacher in the town would come over to the Bible readings of this brother. He just delighted in the ministry he was receiving. But he said one day to this brother, I think I can do more good to remain.
In the place where I am.
That if I go out well, I'm going to cut myself off from.
From service.
This brother just called his attention to this.
If a man therefore purged, or really purged, by separating himself from these, the vessels of dishonor.
He shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the master's use. And here's what he set before him, and prepared unto every good work.
Or don't be concerned if there's any here that are in the system of man that's contrary to God's word. And you think you can carry on the work of the Lord better by remaining in what you know is contrary to the Scripture.
Be afraid as to God giving your abundance of service.
Never forget years ago in Ottawa visiting with Brother Tracy in a home, and sister made very much the same remark, said she thought they could do so much more by staying where they were. Brother Tracy had a rather a weak and squeaky voice. And I'll never forget the way he answered them, he said. Cease to do evil, I'll not imitate it.
Because I don't like to cause a smile for it, but to imitate him. But he has ceased to do evil, learn to do well. Well, that's a very important principle. Is it? To go on where they were was evil because it was something that was contrary to God's word. But when we look into this farther into this subject.
00:30:20
We find that.
It's not just something ecclesiastical.
That is to come out of a man made system.
For he goes on in the 22nd verse to say, flee also youthful lusts, but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
Now it's the company that he speaks of here. How are those that call on the Lord out of a pure heart?
And beloved, that may cut.
Very closely, even into our own ranks.
It doesn't say to go on with those that are breaking bread, but those that are calling on the Lord.
Out of a pure heart.
So there's no thought here, whatever of.
Separating from the truth of God.
And I think we should be warned. Sometimes we have seen dear, useful brothers.
That God so grieved over the state of things among the gathered Saints that they just withdrew and separated.
And I never knew a case of that kind that didn't end up a tragedy.
Brothers that could have been most useful had isolated themselves, and then they were too proud to judge themselves and ever return honourable. And don't leave the place where the Lord has put his name, even though there's so much that grieves the heart in what we see around us.
Well then, the word here is flee. Also youthful lust. Oh, they are youthful us. And I'm sure we could consider this and ask our own hearts the question, is there a youthful lust that I'm harboring? If so, you're going to hinder a blessing in your soul. You're going to leave yourself liable to the.
Subtleties of Satan.
But we're to follow righteousness.
As uprightness among men, faith going on in the path of the truth, charity.
And with them that call on the Lord.
Out of a pure heart.
I'm sure those who will call on the Lord of the pure heart are going on in obedience to His word.
And I believe too that.
That they are indeed seeking to please their blessed Lord couldn't be a pure heart that was divided.
Going on with what is contrary to his will.
There's one thing, beloved, that is a danger for us all, and I take the warning for myself as well as Speaking of it for others.
And that is of talking one language when we're with our brethren in the meetings.
And then talking an entirely different language when we're with people of the world.
Using the very slang the world uses.
What a danger that is. That can't be a pure heart, can it? And anything that is covered up and not thoroughly judged is not partaking of a pure heart. Well, that's our company, beloved, and I believe that.
That it can be felt more, that it can be expressed in words. We all know that when we're in company with one who is truly separated and following with a pure heart, the Lord, we feel something that we couldn't describe, something that's very blessed indeed.
00:35:13
Well, now we we live in.
In a day when?
There have been those that are gathered to the Lord's name, come out from the systems of men, and gather to the person of Christ.
And, beloved, there is much failure coming among us.
And I want to just say this because there have been things written admonishing the young sisters. And I think the young brothers need to be admonished too. For some of their ways of dressing are just perhaps as unbecoming as the young sisters. And some of the older brothers and sisters too are can cater to ways that are certainly dishonouring to the Lord. But I'm sure that we find unless the heart is right.
It makes a little change, regardless of how much.
Warning and admonition, there is but oh, what I want to press upon our hearts, beloved, at this time.
Is individual faithfulness.
In a time of ruin.
Our each one here can act before the Lord and set an example.
To others it will let the matter now surely of individual faithfulness.
And one thinks that this time of Daniel, you know Daniel found the very company that we read of here when he.
He would not defile himself whether the King's meat he found three companions, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.
And they go on together for many, many years. A bright testimony. And at the end of the life of Daniel, he was given wonderful visions. One time an Angel came down and visited him. You know what? The way he addressed him.
Old man, greatly beloved.
Now think of how he was beloved up in heaven. There was a man that was.
Faithful in separation going on with those that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
All there were those that hated him, succeeded in having him thrown into the den of lions to get rid of him.
Well, about the thoughts of heaven.
O man, greatly beloved, and I'll say in conclusion, beloved Saints, this parting word, which do we prefer to be recognized above as whole, greatly beloved, because we're going on with those that call on the Lord, with a pure heart, a testimony in the midst of all a corruption, and what is contrary to the word of God around us.
Or we would rather have the applause and approval of others in this world, or even of careless Christians. It must be one thing or the other.
Which do we desire to have, that in the heaven above us to be recognized as, oh man greatly belonged? Which will it be?
Shama Defending the Field of Lentils
Open—A.C. Hayhoe
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Could we look just very briefly to a passage in connection with what our brother has just said from Second Samuel?
Second Samuel, Chapter 23.
This thought is with apologies to our brother Christopher Willis. If he is here for I've heard it from him and would like to pass it on. Second Samuel, chapter 23, verses 10 and 11.
He arose and smote the Philistines until his hand was weary.
And his hand clothed unto the sword. And the Lord brought a great victory that day. And the people returned after him only to spoil. And after him was Shama the son of Aggie the Heraite. And the Philistines were gathered together into a troop, where was a piece of ground full of lentils.
And the people fled from the Philistines, but he stood in the midst of the ground, and defended it, and slew the Philistines. And the Lord wrought a great victory.
A young man whose name was Shama, and he's faced with the responsibility of defending a field of lentils, the Philistines. The enemies of the Lord, are gathered together against him in a troop, and the people who were with him, who ought to have shared with him in this responsibility, fled.
From before the enemy, an occasion when this dear man Shama might well have felt he had a just excuse to do the same. Everybody else has given up. Nobody else seems to feel that this field of lentils is worth defending, and I believe our brother told us that lentils were a form of beans. In fact, he called it a bean field, and you really wouldn't think it was worth risking one's life to stand and defend that.
In the face of a mighty enemy. But it was part of a God-given heritage, and he wasn't going to see it taken by the enemy. Oh dearly beloved brethren, we have a God-given heritage of truth, and the very last epistle in God's word would tell us earnestly contend for the faith once delivered.
To the Saints, here's a young man named Shama. He finds this God-given heritage, is challenged. He looks around to see who's going to stand by him, and he finds himself all alone, individual faithfulness and a day of ruin. But he stood his ground. He defended that field of lentils, Oh dearly beloved young people, particularly as I think of what has been.
Entrusted to us.
What has been handed down to us so easily? Most of us have been spoon fed on the truth of God and it's being challenged today. You know, I speak the truth. It's being challenged in many cases in a practical way and it's not a very popular thing to stand where others flee. It's not a very popular, in fact it looks a very ridiculous thing to defend a field of lentils in the face of the enemy.
This man's name was recorded. I don't know the language, but I know the word Shama is found in the last chapter of Ezekiel Jehovah Shama. The Lord is there, so I would suppose. Perhaps that word simply means.
There where there was something to be defended, this man Shama was there to defend it. Are you? Am I?
Are we willing to stand for the truth of God?
Practically in our lives, as well as when we hear it mocked and ridiculed in the verse before we find that young man whose soared clave onto his hand.
That was the first that stirred my heart to serve the Lord.
His hand clave under the sword. A brother held up this book.
00:05:01
And he said, thank God for those whose hands still cleave to the sword. What does your hand cleave to? What does my hand cleave to? Oh, it's so easy that our hand cleaves to the books of knowledge that men put within them. It's so easy for our hands to cleave to the necessary parts of our daily toil. But does our hand really cleave to this book? The sword of God's Word? Are we really there?
When the time comes for these things to be defended with our heart in it, are we ready, as shaman did, to stand and defend that which God has entrusted? I thank God for the privilege of being at meetings like these, of hearing the truth of God presented. But we go home more responsible, and we came. May each one of us individually take this to heart, to be faithful to him in a day of ruin.
Hey, Cortana.
I love you so far.
Away through the way the yelling sounded.
God is Able
Address—W. Smith
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Will you please turn with me to Numbers Chapter 11 or we might read the 33rd verse of the previous chapter, Numbers 10 verse 33. And the departed from the mount of the Lord, 3 days journey and the ark of the covenant of the Lord went before them in the three days journey to search out a resting place for them.
And the cloud of the Lord was upon them by day when they went out of the camp.
They came to pass when the ark set forward, that Moses said, Rise up, Lord, and let an enemies be scattered, and let them that hate thee flee before thee. And when arrested he said, Return, O Lord, under the many thousands of Israel. And when the people complained, it displeased the Lord. The Lord heard it, and his anger was kindled in the fire of the Lord burnt among them.
And consumed them. They were in the uttermost parts of the camp.
And the people cried unto Moses, And when Moses prayed unto the Lord, the fire was quenched.
And he called the name of the place Tabara, because the fire the Lord burnt among them.
And the mixed multitude that was among them fell a lusting. And the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat?
We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely, the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic.
But now our soul is dried away. There is nothing at all beside this manner before our eyes.
And the manner was as coriander seed, the color thereof is a color of beddellium. And the people went about and gathered and grounded in mills, or beaded in a mortar, and baked it in pans, and make cakes of it. And the taste of it was as a taste of fresh oil. And when the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the Manor fell upon it.
Will possibly refer to the other parts of the chapter. We won't take time to read them now.
Children of Israel at this time have just been something a little over a year out of Egypt.
In the land of Egypt.
They saw the hand of the power of God upon their enemies.
They saw the salvation of the Lord.
In the Red Sea.
And coming out of the Red Sea, they sang unto the Lord.
How that he had triumphed gloriously.
And they have spent some months.
At Mount Sinai.
Where the Lord made His presence manifest to them, they saw the power of God.
They manifested or His presence was manifested to them, as we know, in the Mount and in the giving of the Law.
God had made himself very much known to his people.
But now we find them leaving the mount of the Lord.
And going on in their journey through their wilderness.
We find that God went before them.
Guiding them, the presence of the Lord was still with them and very much in evidence.
But oh, how hard is a heart.
Of man.
In three months time.
We find here that the people become a murmuring class of people.
How sad it is.
When the people of God begin complaining after the ways of God with them.
But you know, the children of Israel were not any different from you and me.
And how well we know it, if we're honest in our hearts, that we are just the same.
How many times we've seen the blessing of God and His gracious dealings with us?
And how soon we forget it.
And we start complaining as to our pathway.
00:05:06
How it becomes burdensome to us?
The people began to complain.
It displays the Lord.
We've been hearing much in these meetings.
Of how God has blessed us.
How he has sustained us.
And how God desires to have a people separated to Himself. He's made every provision for it.
For us down here in this scene and his word is getting marked out the path for us.
And yet how much we complain as to our path, but now we find.
Touch very briefly on these points. We'll look at another chapter in a few moments.
We find here that the people.
Were not completely separated.
From that with which they were mixed up in Egypt.
As we know that when the children of Israel left Egypt, there was a mixed multitude that came with them.
There were those which did not belong amongst the people of God.
But they accompanied the people of God and partook.
Of their blessings.
I trust there's none like that here in this company.
We're speaking to those who are the Lords and we trust that there are none here who go.
As a Christian, As a child of God.
But is not one of the people of God?
We find there is a mixed multitude.
That started.
Complaining.
And manifesting the lust.
For those things of Egypt.
You know, it's only the flesh that desires the things of this world, for Egypt is a picture of this world.
Hello dear fellow Christian.
If we're going to go on the path of faith, may we go on in the path of faith and not look back to those things from which we have been saved.
They fell a lusting desiring.
The things of Egypt.
They forgot that there were slaves in Egypt. They forgot that they had been under *******.
Under cruel taskmasters.
The only thought of those things which would satisfy.
Their natural hunger.
They say now our soul is dried up, dried away.
They couldn't find anything.
In their journeys to satisfy the natural heart.
No, I don't believe we need to speak of the manner particularly. We know that it's a picture. It's a type of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The one upon whom we may feed and never hunger.
He spoke himself, as we know I am the bread which came down from heaven.
And it was that food. It was angels food.
As we find in the Psalms that was given to the children of Israel.
They had had it through their journeys up to this time.
They say our soul is dried away.
There is nothing at all beside this manner before our eyes. Oh, how soon they got tired of the manner.
And you know, if we get our eyes on the things around us and thirst after the things of this world, how that Christ is going to lose.
00:10:03
His attraction for us? We'll lose our appetites for Christ.
We find in the 16th chapter of the Book of Exodus.
How that the Manor?
Was like coriander seed, it was white.
And his taste was as wafers made with honey.
The very sweetness of Christ.
In it.
And what a delightful thing God had given to his people.
And how precious for you and me to be able to feed upon Christ.
We've been feeding upon him these last days.
And we trust that each one here has had and a precious time in feeding upon Christ.
But you know there is in this world at the present time.
Amongst those who don't value Christ as possibly we should.
And they seek to alter.
That which God has given us of Christ to change the character.
And so the children of Israel, they went about to change the manner. They got tired of the manner as God had given it to them.
And so they.
When they gathered it, they grounded in mills.
They beat it in a mortar. They baked it in pounds.
And the taste was changed.
It was no longer sweet as honey, no longer like wafers made with honey.
But it had the taste of oil.
Oh, how different.
And how Christ?
When the sweetness of Christ is tampered with.
When we get something else before our eyes and seek to alter that which God has presented to us in His Word of His own beloved Son.
Oh, how it changes it, and we soon become tired of it.
But to know that is what happens when we get our eyes off of Christ.
Now we find in the rest of the chapter of how it infects others.
We find here how that it affected that man of God, Moses himself.
Moses becomes discouraged.
And so Moses himself complaints to God.
He complained about the burden of carrying all this people.
So in the 12Th verse he says to God.
Have I conceived all this people? Have I begotten ever thou should have say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom as a nursing father beareth a second child unto the land, which thou swift unto their fathers.
Should I have flesh to give unto all these people? For they weep unto me, saying, Give us flesh, that we may eat. I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me.
Moses himself.
Forgot for the moment that it was the Lord Himself.
Who is bringing up this people from Egypt and who had promised to bring them into the land of Canaan?
Moses himself.
Becomes discouraged.
And you know, dear fellow Christians, when we get our eyes off of Christ.
It affects others too, not only ourselves, not only do we lose the joy.
Of being in communion with the Lord.
But others are affected by it.
Although we may not.
Allow our hearts and our minds to be turned away from Christ to the things of this world, because this world is going to be burned up and all that is in it.
But may we have our minds set on things above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God.
00:15:00
Now let's turn to the 21St chapter of this same book.
Now we might say before we read in it.
That here many years have passed.
From that time we've just been Speaking of.
In the 11Th chapter of Numbers.
The people have been out of Egypt possibly a year and three months.
Now they're about to enter into the land of Canaan.
Some 30 years or more, possibly 3536 years of past.
From the previous chapter.
Miriam has died. Aaron has died.
Yes.
And those that came out of Egypt.
That generation is gone.
They've all died.
God, the Lord had told them. They would wander through the desert, through the wilderness, until those that came out of Egypt 20 years old and upward would die. The carcasses would lie in the wilderness.
But their children would enter into the land of Canaan.
Now there's a new generation come up.
And we have in the company here before us.
At least.
2 generations.
So if what we have been seeing in the 11Th chapter speaks of those of us who are older.
This 21St chapter.
Speak to those who are younger as well.
Verse 4. Numbers 21.
And they journeyed from Mount Hor by way of the Red Sea to compass the land of Edom. The soul of the people is much discouraged because of the Way.
And the people speak against God and against Moses. Wherefore have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?
For there is no bread, neither is there any water.
And our soul loatheth this light bread, the.
The Larsen fiery serpents among the people, and the bitter people, and much people of Israel dined.
Therefore the people came to Moses and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against thee.
Pray unto the Lord that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people.
The Lord Senator Moses, make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole, and shall come to pass at everyone that is bitten, when he looketh upon it shall live.
And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole.
And it came to pass that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld a serpent of brass, he lived.
And the children of Israel set forward and pitched the noble.
The second generation of the Children of Israel.
Were no different from their parents.
Or Solomon is.
And how poorly we learn the wilderness lessons.
Those that have gone before us have been through these exercises.
And how little we learn.
From the ways of God, with those that have gone before us.
They have seen now, through many, many years, the faithfulness of God.
He fed them all these years with the manna.
He has given them water out of the rock.
And we know that rock was Christ.
They've had refreshment along the way.
And God has sustained that people miraculously through a desert.
00:20:03
They hadn't planted any crops.
No.
They hadn't done anything for their own sustenance.
But God took care of that numerous people.
Millions of people in the desert.
Going through it, wandering through the desert. God sustained them in their flocks all the way through.
Oh, how good is our God?
To sustain his people, you and I.
Are sustained by the Power and by the Mercy.
Of our God.
How good he is to us.
And now we find that the people.
Are discouraged by the way they just gained a notable victory over their enemies.
The first three verses of this chapter tell us of how they had gained the victory over the Canaanites.
They had looked to the Lord.
And he gave them to victory over their enemies.
And now they're discouraged again.
Oh well, little we remember the goodness and grace of our God to us as we go through this scene. And what difficulties come if the way seems long to us, how we complain about it.
There are much discouraged because of the way.
And you know, I believe was remarked in these meetings.
That discouragement.
And the lack.
Of desire for Christ. These two things go together.
They were discouraged by the way they loathed the Manor.
Oh, you know, we can't get along without Christ.
We can never go through this scene.
If it were not for the goodness and the high priestly work of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Peter tells us that the righteous are with difficulty saved.
The path for us is so difficult that if we're not for the high priestly work of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We could never get through this scene in our pathway onto glory. He sustains us every moment of the way.
All they find the hand of the Lord upon them.
And you know when we get our eyes off of Christ.
In the governmental ways of God, he allows us to go through trial difficulties. We've been Speaking of these things the last two days.
About the garden.
Brings us through these things in order to preserve us, to sustain us in the path of faith.
The Lord sent fiery serpents among them.
You know, we use this passage often in the Gospel, and rightly so, and our Lord Jesus Christ referred to this very incident, is speaking to Nicodemus.
But I believe that it has an application to you and me.
As the people of God.
What is? It will restore us and our souls to God.
Always to go back to Calvary.
To go back to that which was a foundation.
Of our life as being born again.
Oh, it's the work of Calvary, the work of our Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross.
That has brought us into relationship with God as His people.
And so the Lord.
Bring before the people.
The picture of the death of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He sent fiery serpents among them.
00:25:02
And they have to confess their failure. They confess to God.
How that they have sinned?
Oh, how is good to own, to confess our sins, to keep short accounts with God? If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just, to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
And so we find here that beautiful the wonderful picture.
Of the Lord Jesus Christ lifted up on the cross.
The serpent of brass.
Lifted up.
Reminding them.
Reminding you and me.
Of the fact.
That all our blessings come through our Lord Jesus Christ.
We are reminded of it here this morning.
We have, through the grace of God, the wonderful privilege of remembering.
Of calling to mind.
The work of our Lord Jesus Christ Christ suffered for us.
But just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.
We know that the work of Calvary was that was glorified goddess to the question of sin.
But our precious to our souls to know that the work of Calvary.
Was in order that He might bring us the unjust, He might bring us to God.
Have you ever thought of it in that way, that it was to bring us to God, we who were dead in trespasses and sins, candidates for the lack of fire?
But the work of Christ suffering the just for the unjust to bring us to God, and it meant him going into death for us.
Yes, he had to go into death for us, being put to death in the flesh, but oh God has quickened him in the Spirit.
And now the Lord Jesus, whom you and I have remembered this morning in his death.
We don't remember him as a dead savior. We remember him and his death. But he's, he's living. He's up on high in the glory now.
Blessed fact that is a glorified man at the right hand of God.
Well, the people in tight are brought to that very place.
To the death of Christ.
And now have you been brought to that place?
They were enabled by the grace of God to go on in their journey.
So the last verse that we read brings us to the point.
Where they set forward again.
And Festan Oboe.
Now, there's a great deal of which we could speak of in the rest of this chapter, but it won't. We'll leave time for someone else.
But I might just say this that oboe.
Dreams before us.
The refreshing.
The refreshing water.
That comes to having been brought.
Into the place of remembrance of what the Lord Jesus has done for us.
For oboe means water skins that was carried the water for the people along the way.
Refreshment for them as they go on, by the way.
So may we, each those of us who are older.
And another generation coming up, as we see.
May we each go on in faithfulness.
Lord Jesus Christ, not to become discouraged by the way, but to remember that our God is able and will keep us through the whole journey.
Faithful to Him
Address—A.C. Hayhoe
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Could we look just very briefly to a passage in connection with what our brother has just said from Second Samuel?
Second Samuel, chapter 23.
This thought is with apologies to our brother Christopher Willis if he is here, for I've heard it from him and would like to pass it on. Second Samuel chapter 23, verses 10 and 11.
He arose and smote the Philistines until his hand was weary, and his hand clave unto the sword. And the Lord brought a great victory that day, and the people returned after him only to spoil. And after him was Shama the son of Aggie the heroite, and the Philistines were gathered together into.
Where was a piece of ground full of lentils? And the people fled from the Philistines, but he stood in the midst of the ground, and defended it, and slew the Philistines, and the Lord wrought a great victory.
A young man whose name was Shama, and he's faced with the responsibility of defending a field of lentils.
The Philistines, the enemies of the Lord, are gathered together against him in a troop, and the people who were with him, who ought to have shared with Him in this responsibility, fled from before the enemy an occasion when this dear man Shama might well have felt he had a just excuse to do the same. Everybody else has given up. Nobody else seems to feel that this field of lentils is worth defending.
And I believe our brother told us that lentils were a form of beans. In fact he called it a bean field. And you really wouldn't think it was worth risking ones life to stand and defend that in the face of a mighty enemy. But it was part of a God-given heritage and he wasn't going to see it taken by the enemy.
Oh dearly beloved brethren.
We have a God-given heritage of truth, and the very last epistle in God's Word would tell us earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the Saints. Here's a young man named Shaman.
He finds this God-given heritage is challenged. He looks around to see who's going to stand by him, and he finds himself all alone. Individual faithfulness and a day of ruin. But he stood his ground. He defended that field of lentils. Oh dearly beloved young people, particularly as I think of what has been entrusted to us.
What has been handed down to us so easily, Most of us have been spoon fed on the truth of God and it's being challenged today. You know, I speak the truth. It's being challenged in many cases in a practical way and it's not a very popular thing to stand where others flee. It's not a very popular, in fact it looks a very ridiculous thing to defend a field of lentils.
In the face of the enemy. But this man's name was recorded. I don't know the language, but I know the word Shama is found in the last chapter of Ezekiel. Jehovah Shama the Lord is there. So I would suppose perhaps that word simply means.
There, where there was something to be defended, this man Shama was there to defend it.
Are you, am I, are we willing to stand for the truth of God?
Practically in our lives, as well as when we hear it mocked and ridiculed in the verse before, we find that young man whose sword clave onto his hand.
That was the 1St that stirred my heart to serve the Lord.
His hand clave under the sword.
A brother held up this book.
And he said, thank God for those whose hands still cleave to the sword. What does your hand cleave to? What does my hand cleave to? Oh, it's so easy that our hand cleaves to the books of knowledge that men put within them. It's so easy for our hands to cleave to the necessary parts of our daily toil.
00:05:24
But those are hand really cleaved to this book, the sword of God's word. Are we really there?
When the time comes for these things to be defended with our heart in it, are we ready, as shaman did, to stand and defend that which God has entrusted? I thank God for the privilege of being at meetings like these, of hearing the truth of God presented.
But we go home more responsible, and we came. May each one of us individually take this to heart, to be faithful to him in a day of ruin.
New Testament Inns
Address—C. Willis
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I wonder if we might read a few verses in the second chapter of Luke's Gospel.
2nd chapter of Luke's Gospel we might read from the seventh verse.
Seventh verse. The 2nd chapter of the Gospel of Luke. And she brought forth her first born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in an Angel, because there was no room for them.
In the end, oh, what a sad thing.
Here was the Son of God, the eternal God. Come down, visit us, come man. There was no room, no room for him.
Oh, lovely friend, you dear young people.
Whom I longed me. Have you ever found room for Him? You know we have a hymn that goes room for business, room for pleasure, but for Christ the crucified, not the place where he may enter in the heart with which he died, no room for Him.
And tonight, this afternoon, I wanted to talk to you a little about.
In in the New Testament we read of several Inns.
You all know about the Holiday Inn, don't you?
Will the Holiday Inn is a very different kind of an inn, the Ian I want to talk to you about. And yet you had some things alike and one of the things that the Holiday Inn has got, I think.
I don't speak with any authority. I think it has plenty of room, but the end that I want to talk to you a little tonight, this afternoon. Is this in where there was no room for Jesus, no room for them. It is in the in the Scriptures, no room for the mother or the father.
If he was known, no room for the that little child.
Who came down from the glory, and there was number room for him.
Oh, what about you? What about you, dear friends? You dear young people, have you ever found room for Jesus? Have you ever found room in your heart for Jesus?
Oh, if not, May God help you this very day to find room in your heart with Jesus.
The.
There is another other route ends in the New in the New Testament besides this inn, and strangely enough, they have two different names for them. We're going to read of another in in a little while. We're going to read of another in that was quite different.
To this in and yet we're going to read again about this in so it had the same name, but it wasn't like the end that I want to tell you about lately. But for now, first thing that I want to say to you each one, May God help you.
May God help you to take it home to your own heart that when the Savior.
Came to this earth.
There was number room for them. No room.
Oh, May God grant that those few little words, no room, only two words, and yet what? Full of how full of meaning they are, No room for Jesus.
If there's one here.
Afternoon, one of you boys or girls, or one of you older one who've never made room yet with Jesus.
May these may these little words in the New Testament, these little words that tell us so plainly of our Saviour.
00:05:11
May they sink down deep into your heart, and may you.
Find room for him. May you make room for Him. You know, we read about some other people later on and they didn't, they didn't make room for Jesus. And it tells us that they did not know that he was the Lord of glory. For had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of Lords. And I think you, dear young.
Here this afternoon, I think if you knew that it is the Lord of glory.
We're talking about passage. You know, I think that you would surely not go out of this room without making room in your heart or him. And it is the Lord of glory of whom we're speaking. It is not only a good man, not only a great man.
But the Lord of glory himself, and he, he is the one who has come.
You and the me.
And questioning, have you any room for Jesus?
Have you any room for the Lord of Lords? Oh, May God help to take down. Let's go down deep into your heart.
These these few words, the Lord, Lord.
The word, the Greek word that tells you about this.
I think I have to tell it to you.
Help you to understand, there's a word called cataluma and it means a resting place.
And the blessed Lord Jesus, the Lord of glory, did not come down into this world to rest. He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. And so when I read this story, and when I remember the name of the inn where the Father and Mother went to.
Then I'm not surprised there was number room for Jesus. Indeed, I might go further and say when I remember that the name of this inn was the name that means a resting place. I'm not surprised that the Lord of Glory turned from that end to some other.
Because he did not come.
To rare he came to work, he came to labor, he came to die, to die for you and for me. And so as I read this story in Lukes gospel more often I read it, the more beautiful it seems. Strange. Isn't it strange that the Lord of glory.
Turned aside from that end.
Turned aside from that end to another which we read later, but they're saying was no room for him. And so they laid him in a Manger. You know what a Manger is. A Manger is just the through the cows and horses eat their food out of them and that's all they had to give to the Lord of glory. That's good enough for him.
Just the Manger, old friends.
That's what they thought of the Lord of glory. What do you think of him? What do you think of him? Have you found room for him? Or would you just turn him aside to the stable and say you can put the baby to sleep in the in the in the in the Manger. Old friends, may you, may you get a sight of the Lord of glory.
And everything would be right. One sight of the Lord of Blood.
And you would find room, room abundant for Him, because you knew He is the Lord of Lord. Remember, had they known that He was the Lord of glory, these other people would not have crucified Him.
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And if you really knew that He is the Lord of glory, I'll tell you this, you wouldn't go out of this room.
Without making room for him? Indeed you wouldn't. Queen Elizabeth came, or you're the President of the United States came. You'd find room for him quickly enough. But what about the Lord and glory? Have you found room for him yet? Now I want to go over to Mark's gospel.
Mark's Gospel, the 14th chapter.
Blessed Lord, he live on this earth about 33 years, then the time came when he was about to leave it, and again we find him in an inn or in the same words that are used for the in and the second of Luke.
The 14th chapter of Mark's Gospel.
And the 12Th verse.
And the first day of unleavened bread, when they killed the Passover, this disciples said unto him, Where wilt thou? Where wilt thou? Could we go and prepare that thou mayst eat the Passover and his end of forth? Two of his disciples, another place tells us they were Peter and John.
He send the fourth two of his disciples.
And says unto them, Go ye into the city, and they shall meet you, a man bearing a pitcher of water. Follow him, and wheresoever he shall go in, say ye to the good man of the house. The master says.
Where the submission is the guest chamber. For I shall eat the Passover with my disciples, and he shall show you a large upper room, furnished and prepared. There make ready for us. And his disciples went forth.
Who came into the city, and found as he had said unto them, and they made ready the Passover.
Wanted to.
Talk to you especially a little bit for those questions, two questions that we get in this these verses we've read. His disciples said unto him, Where wilt thou that we that we go and prepare.
Saddam is eat the Passover and the blessed Lord asked the next question, the 14th verse. Wheresoever he that the man they met on the road, wheresoever he shall go in say ye to the good man of the House, The Master said, where is the guest chamber?
Where I shall eat the Passover with my disciples? Where is the guest chamber?
Network guest chamber is exactly the same word as the word in back in the second of Luke. Where is the inn where I shall eat the Passover with my disciples?
Now, boys and girls.
Here's a question for you. This question was asked by the Lord Jesus Christ himself.
Perhaps I ought to go back and tell you a little more of the story, in case you don't remember it.
But the Passover came about the time of our Easter, you know, and it was the time when the lamb was killed. The little lamb reminded the people of Israel of the time when they were slaves in Egypt and.
The God was going to send his Angel through the land of Egypt and the eldest child in every house was to be killed. But there was a way of escape. They could take a lamb and they could kill that lamb and take the blood and put it on the two side post, the upper door post.
Of the house where they live.
And when the Angel came to destroy the eldest in that house, he passed over that house and did not go in to destroy it. And so that day onward, it was known as the pass over because the destroying Angel passed over this house where the eldest child would otherwise have been killed.
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Well, ever since that time onward right up to today.
I don't know about Toledo, but in most cities, in Toronto, for instance, you'll find the buildings put up by the Jews and they'll remember this day. This kept when they were their eldest children were saved from death.
And.
It was a it was a chief day, perhaps in a year to be kept by the Jews and.
There are different things about it. First of all, the disciples asked, where do you want us to go and prepare the Passover for you? And the Lord tells them that they would go.
Into the out, into the street, and they were going to meet a man.
Carrying a jug of water. And the Lord said to them, You are to follow that man who is carrying the jug of water, and wherever he goes in, you follow him into the house. Now this has a wonderful meaning in it.
That water in that jug is a picture of the Word of God, the Bible that you've got there now.
That water speaks of the word.
And the jug, the water. The jug held the water. The jug speaks of the people who cried to tell you about the words in the Bible.
The last days there, the jug only on earth and jug, that's all they are and.
The water is the important part there, and wherever they they were to follow the man with the jug of water, whatever he entered in, they were to enter in two and.
They were to they were to ask the the man, the good man of the house that was like the the the the host in the in the in the.
AM we will read about the host and the end later on. But you can remember this Goodman of the house is just the same word, the Goodman of the house. You'll ask him, where is the guest chamber? For I shall eat the Passover with my disciples. But I made a mistake there. This, this verse is not written that way, really.
In the Greek Testament, it's not written this way in Mr. Darby's.
Testament. There you'll find this written instead, and it's very, very nice. Where is my guest chamber? Not where is the guest chamber. Where is my guest chamber? Where I shall eat the Passover with my disciples?
Not nice. It was my gas chamber and it was my disciples. The Lord said He claimed that guest chamber for his own. He claimed those disciples for his own. My guest chamber, my disciples. I wonder, has He ever claimed you boys and girls as his own?
Name I wonder.
There's a brother in this room.
This afternoon and I'm going to tell, I hope I won't hurt his feelings. I'm going to tell you a story about his grandmother when when I was a boy of 13, we lived in a little town on the North Shore of Lake Ontario and.
We all of us hated towns and we loved the country, especially the woods, anything like that.
And so, because my mother felt the same way, we used to go away out of the town as soon as the school holidays came.
And we went away out into the country, far off we'd be away from the noise. And the bus went all. And when we went away we gave, we used to land our host some of the Lords, dear people. And this summer we lent it to Mr. and Missus rule.
The grandmother, I suppose, of your dear friends here in this in Toledo. And it so happened that Missus Rule came out to visit us at the place where we were living. We were only camping in tents, but she came out to visit us.
00:20:17
And she stayed most of the afternoon, and when the afternoon was getting along, it was time to get back before it got dark.
And my mother said to me, Christopher, you get the horse and buggy ready and take Missus Rule home to her where she staying to our house. So I got the horse and buggy ready and we started out to go to Port Hope about 7 miles.
And we were driving along and we didn't talk very much. We came to a very steep hill and we went up the hill rather slowly. All of a sudden, Mrs. Rule said to me, Christopher just shocked like that. Christopher, why aren't you at the Lords Table?
And I didn't know what to say.
I was 13 and I had thought about it too, but I thought a boy of 13 isn't old enough to be at the Lords Table and so I just didn't say anything and I left. The reins go on the old horses back. I remember we were going up this steep hill and the horse stopped dead. Mercifully there were no motor cars in those days or I suppose you would have been killed. But we stopped there. Missus rule.
The horse and me with with three of us out there.
Just thinking, and I thought a good deal in those few minutes. And that was in, I think in the latter part of August. Well, by the time April came around, I found out the answer to Missus Rules question. And you know, all my life since that time, I've been very, very thankful for Missus Rule's question.
That she put to me that afternoon so long ago.
And so I'm going to ask, I'm just going to pass on Mrs. Rules question that Mister Rule won't be offended. I wonder if Missus Rule were here to day and she were to ask you, call you by your name, perhaps talk to you quite sharply the way she did to me.
Why aren't you at the Lord's Table? Why aren't you at the Lord's table? Why aren't you at the Lord's table?
Ah, what would you say? What auntie would you give? Have you got a good reason to tell you why you have to say no, old friends?
The Lord Jesus asked this question could be himself. It was to put the put the put the question. Where is the gas chamber where I shall eat the Passover with my decision?
You know when you walk into the meeting you've all seen the loaf of bread mustn't be cut.
So a whole loaf of bread, it mustn't be, mustn't be broken. It's a whole loaf of bread and the cup of wine, mind you, had done. I don't think it tells us it has to be wine 'cause if it did, some of us would be very hard put to when we wanted to have the Lord's Supper out in some parts of China.
If it had dead wine, we couldn't have done it because we couldn't get any. But we can use, it's called the fruit of the vine. And we can take raisins and we can boil raisins and we can use those instead of the wine. Because in the in the New Testament, I don't think anywhere it says it has to be wine, but it does say to be the fruit of the vine. That's just by the way.
Now then.
Come back.
To Mrs. Rules question all I want, you boys and girls.
There this afternoon, I want you to put that question to yourselves.
Why am I? Why am I not at the Lord's Table? I hope you are. Then, of course, you can gladly say the reason I'm at the Lord's Table is because he asked me to come.
Oh, look back. Look back at that. The 26th of Isaiah, I think it is.
The book of Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah. I think it's for chapter 26.
00:25:01
26th chapter of Isaiah and the.
The eighth verse.
Yeah, in the way of thy judgments, O Lord, have we waited for thee now these are the words. Listen to these, the desire of our souls.
Is to thy name, and to the remembrance of these.
That's why I hope it is. That's why you're at the Lords table, you boys and girls, older ones. It's because you're the desire of your soul is to the Lords name and to the remembrance of thee. Isn't that wonderful? Little way back in the book of Isaiah the Lord told us.
About this very thing the desire of our souls is to thine name.
And to the remembrance of these oh boys and girls.
We've had the other question about no room in the inn, but here's this lovely, lovely question. Is it? Is it true that the desire of your name?
Is the desire in your heart and His name and to the remembrance of Him? Is this something that you want more than anything else in all the world?
That is to please the Lord Jesus, please the Lord Jesus, to remember his name, to remember him.
Oh, boys and girls.
Again, again, let me ask, if you're not at the Lord's Table here, why aren't you just like Mrs. Rule? Put it to me, Christopher, why aren't you at the Lord's Table? And I couldn't give a good reason.
Could you give a good reason if somebody asked you this afternoon? Didn't give you time to think about it?
They just asked you suddenly like that. Why aren't you at the Lords table?
Oh, may you, may you indeed ponder that question that I pondered for a good many months before I found out the answer. And the answer wasn't a very good answer either. It was the answer. Nothing wrong with the answer, but it was very wrong with me that took so long to find out.
So you boys and girls, what a blessed privilege.
But the Lords desire is to have you remember him. He wants you to remember his name. As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you to show the Lord there until he comes. Well.
That's the second, the second in that I want to talk to you about. The first Ian is the Ian where there was no room for Jesus. The second inn that I want to talk to you is about where, where does he want you to remember his name? I could say it this way. Where does he want you to keep the Passover but the Jews keep the?
Over now, but we keep the very same one that the Passover and reminded them all. We have the Lords Supper to remind us of what the what the Lord has done for us. We take the bread and we break the bread and it tells us that his body bruised and broken for us and we take the cup and we pour the fruit of the vine into the cup.
And we pass it around.
And as the Lord Jesus himself said, drinky all others. And we do the same and.
Every Lord day, pretty nearly from that day.
After I was able to answer Mrs. Rule's question almost every every week from then, I'd have the joy of remembering the Lord there, and I hope it's true. This verse in Isaiah.
That the desire of all my heart is to Jesus and the remembrance of Him now.
Don't forget about the, the, the, the picture of water. Don't forget what it means. It tells us of the word. And that's where you're going to find out where the Lord wants you to keep that, that that feast.
00:30:04
Whereas Jesus wants you by through the, through the.
Word of God, through His Word, He wants you to learn to know the place that He has chosen to put His name there, the place that He has chosen to remember Him in the bread and in the wine and the cup. Now I want you to go over.
To another another in this in you'll find in the 10th of Luke I'm not mistaken the 10th chapter of Luke.
Gospel and we'll read.
From.
No, I'm sorry, I'm wrong.
I wanted the the the in yes, I want where the where the Good Samaritan put the took the poor sick man, not the 10th charity.
34th verse.
I've got I've I've turned to the wrong page. 34th verse. Yes, thank you very much.
The 30th verse will read Promise. I think that's enough.
And Jesus answering said, a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. Jerusalem was the city where they had the beautiful, beautiful temple and where the gold was and the cherubim and the the this wonderful, wonderful temple. And by chance they came down.
That was a Jericho at at Jerusalem.
Believing this man, this man was leaving Jerusalem. He was going down to Jericho and that was a long walk. Down, down, down. Every way he went, he's going down. And it's very bad when we always go down because he generally get into trouble. This man got into trouble too. He fell amongst thieves and the thieves.
This is very strict into his clothes.
And they beat him. They left him half dead. There he was in the ditch, I suppose, half dead. And.
By chance they came down a certain priest that way, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.
He didn't even go over and look at him, he just saw him as a passing glance and passed by on the other side.
And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him and passed by on the other side.
But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was and when he saw him.
He had compassion on him and went to him and bound up his womb.
Foreign oil and wine and set him on his own deeds.
And brought him to an inn and took care of him.
He brought him to an inn.
Now what do you think?
What do you think happens when they got to the end? Use the kind Samaritan and he got off his own donkey. He lifted the other man onto the donkey, and I expect he gave him some of his own clothes and he bound up his wounds and he poured in oil and wine, and now he he brought him along.
To the end, do you think that there was number room in the inn for the poor man fell among the thieves? You think this another question that I should ask you. Do you think that the man who looked after the inn, you think he came out and said there's no room?
Now another question, what about the man that told the Lord Jesus mother and Father?
But there was number room. What about that man? You know, when we came here, Toledo, to the Holiday Inn, we went down there and there was lots of room in the inn. But that wasn't enough. We had to have something more. So do you have to have something more? We had to have somebody to receive us and to tell us what room number to go to and all the rest of it.
00:35:07
Called in the New Testament is called the host and.
The kind Samaritan, he took this sick man, wounded man, he took him to the inn. And the name of that inn, the beautiful name, it's the name in the Greek is Panda Pan. Some of you are, perhaps nearly all of you will know what Pan means.
Pan means all. You remember when I I can remember when I was a boy.
They had a big, big.
Fair. I think it was at Chicago. They called it the Pan American Exhibition. That pan meant all. All America was supposed to send samples and things up to this exhibition. That pan meant all. And the name of this inn was the Inn that Receives all. Nobody has ever been turned away from that inn yet.
The inn on the second of Luke was no room.
In the second of Luke for the Lord Jesus Christ, no room for him but the room in the 10th of Luke.
Room for you all.
There's room for everyone in this room to come to that end, and you'll never be turned away.
Never.
Oh, the name of that in in received all. Oh, I love that. I love that name.
Nobody was ever told. There's no room here for you. Never.
Whosoever cometh unto me no wise cast of never was anyone.
Cast of because there was no room in that room. What about you now, friends?
The the the kind Samaritan brought him into the inn, and he took care of him.
And the next day to go and read the date was so beautiful. And on the Morrow when he departed, he took out two pens. It was about 222 days wages there and gave them to the host. That's the man that we were that we missed in the second chapter. Why didn't it tell us about the host in the second of Luke when the when the mother and father, Mary and Joseph.
Went to the inn and the second of Luke widened. The host come out and say we're very sorry but the rooms are all full but we could try and find a place for you. We don't hear of a host at all. That host. There wasn't any host as far as I know. Well it was a host in this one.
And you know, you know who the Good Samaritan tells us all. You know who he is. The picture of you boys and girls. Did you tell me who was the Good Samaritan? The picture of? Can you, Can you say?
Who hugged Jesus? Jesus himself, The picture of the good and the Good Samaritan. But now another question. Who is the host? Who is the host? The Good Samaritan told us of Jesus.
And who is the host? But they when when he went away, Good Samaritan went away the next day and on his journey down the road. But before he did, he took out two pins, two days wages and gave to the host and said to him, take care of him. He'd taken care of him for a time before he was going away. He'd taken care of him. Tells us that when he brought him to the when he brought him to the inn, he took care of him.
And.
The next day you had to go on his way and he didn't leave him just without anybody looking after him. He had the host and he got hold of the host and he said now I host your to take care of this poor man. Here's here's money for you for for the time and you're to take care of him, watch over him, protect him and whatever more you spend when I come back again.
I'll pay you back.
Oh, what a picture. What a picture. Where was the blessed Lord Jesus Himself?
There he come down, you know, Lord, come down and die and fall for you and for me. And now he is.
00:40:03
He stayed for a while after he rose from the dead. He didn't go right back to heaven.
Stayed for a few days, a few weeks and then he went there to him before he left, going back to heaven. He took out the two pen and gave them to the host.
The holes with the holiest spirit.
It's so God has ordered now that Jesus is back from His throne in the glory, the Holy Spirit is down here in this world taking care of His own.
Taking care of you boys and girls, you men and women who've been won and purchased by the blood of Jesus. The host is looking after you. You know the host. You know the whole that you ever thank God for the host Jesus left here for you to take care of you.
Oh friend, what a blessed picture it is. And so.
They he he took care of him and then he said, if whatever you spend more, when I come again I will pay you. What does that mean? When I come again? What does that mean?
Oh, I think you know that poor man who fell among the seeds.
The kind of Madison had been so good to him. He just won his heart. And I think he used to go out every day and stand and look down the room to see whether the Good Samaritan was coming back again. Old friend, he's away now. He went away after they crucified him and he rose again. The time came for him to go back, went back with throne, the glory.
And.
Left the host to take care of us in the meanwhile, and he's provided the host with all he needs. And now you and I, are you looking and watching and waiting see whether the Good Samaritan is coming back again. Day by day you've had enough to eat, enough to put everything in all your needs.
You'll come and you've said in the bread of life here.
All the doing of the host, the host has prepared everything for you, and now he sells us. The last thing he did before he went away. He told the poor man had fallen among the sea. He told him I'm coming back again, I'm coming back again when I come back if I host.
This or have spent more than I left you. Whatever else, he stands.
Ira Pain, I'll give it back to him. So now we're looking for the we're looking for the Good Samaritan to come there. He promised he'd come and we know that he always keeps his promise. He never never failed a promise yet. And we're looking for him. We're watching for him. Are you looking and watching for the kind man, the kind Samaritan who?
Took care of that man who fell among the thieves. Oh, what a blessed thing.
To have one that we love the way we're looking for him. I used to have a cousin and she, she lived in a house on a hill and the the house looked right over the railway track and her husband went away up into the far north of Canada, way up with all ice and snow.
And I remember going when I was a child, I remember going with my mother once that to visit that Lady.
And.
As we as we parted.
My mother said to her what a nice place you have to look at the station and she gave a little laugh and said yes I have. And every day when the time comes round for the train, every day I go and stand and watch the train come in until all the passengers have scattered. Cause although I don't think it possible he could be here yet, yet I'm watching for him every day.
Oh friends, are you watching for him every day?
Are you watching **** every day? You boys and girls? You boys and girls? What about it? Remember 3 Inns they've talked about Ian where there was no room. Where there's no room in that room. Oh, I hope there's not one of you boys or girls live in Madison, Don't you? Don't you live in Madison? There was no room. No room. And then.
00:45:10
There was the inn where they remembered the Lord's death.
They told the Lord before the Lord went away. He told them exactly what to do.
And how to do and there that was the 2nd in and then came the third in the the the.
Man who fell among the thieves? I don't suppose you ever fell among thieves? I remember very well when I fell among thieves once we were in South China and.
We we were out giving away tracks from the gospel.
And.
Trying to get to know the people. And before we went out into this park, the governor of that part of the country said to us, you know, this is a very dangerous place. You're going to just pull up with robbers and you better be very careful. But he said, I'll give you my card and I'll write something on my card to the robbers.
And the the head of the head of the robberies is my brother. And so I write a little note on the back of my card to my brother. Then they won't hurt you so much they catch you. So we went along, and we the country got wild and wild and blasted with no more path to walk on. And we just had to wade in a river. And then we saw a man coming out from the woods, and we saw they had guns and knew these were the robberies.
And we were pretty scared, I can tell you, And the head robbery who came, and I had a bag with my Bible and the cracks in it. And he took that away out of my hand. And he looked at all the things in it, but there was nothing he wanted there. And then I had a friend, a Chinese friend, and she looked at all his things. There was nothing he wanted there. And then my friend remembered.
The I've got the card, the visiting card of the robbery chiefs brother and we see if it works. So he said to him, you know, yesterday we came down this way and the governor said it would be a good plan if we had his card with us and that you would all help us in all every way you could.
And so.
The robbery chief said let me see it.
So he let him see it and his own brother's writing, I am very suggest he said you may go, you may go, it's all right. Said to all the robbers, give back everything you have stolen. And they didn't give everything back. And there we got away quite free now.
The blessed Lord has a way that He saved us from the robbery and those robberies that He saved us from.
With Satan and his hosts now the Lord Jesus Christ, he's found a way to save us. That's Bible 'cause he gave his own life to die for us. And so remember, remember from the time we tried to try to speak up today. Remember about the inn where there was no room and all boys and girls.
If there any of you here who've never yet made.
Made room for Jesus, won't you? Won't you make room for him today?
Don't go out of this room. Remember what we read later on or heard in Corinthian. Had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. All boys and girls, if you knew, oh, if you knew what the Lord of glory.
Means if you knew who the Lord of glory is, if you knew how much the Lord of glory loves you, it isn't one of you here tonight. Bigger little there isn't one of you here. Would go out of this to the doors of this room until you've made room for Jesus, won't you? Then it's true. It's all true that I've tried to tell you. We get it all in this blessed book.
The Lord of God.
And I want to make room for him. Won't you make room for the Lord of glory? He may come in.
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That's the first. That's the first thing. The second in the in makes gives us to remember his name, and the third in, the third in.
The man who fell among the thieves to be saved by the kind Samaritan. Oh May God help you to to remember these three Inns that we have.
And may you, O may you, above all else, may you make room for Jesus. Shall we sing #76?
In the appendix. 76 in the appendix.
Thine Jesus, thine no more. This heart of mind shall seek its joy apart from thee. The world is crucified to me.
And I am thine O boys and girls. Could you say that?
Thy Jesus, thy.
Oh, may you give me your little folks? Doesn't matter how young you are, how small you are, a little child of seven or even three or four may enter into heaven through Christ, the open door. And so you little ones, make room for Jesus. Suffer the little children to come unto me, he says.
#76 in the appendix.
No.
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The First Epistle of Peter, chapter one, verse 6. Aquarian.
He greatly rejoiced, though now for a season if need be, he are in heaviness to manifold temptations, that the trial of your faith, being much more precise than a goal that perishes, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ, whom, having not seen, He loved.
In whom though now ye see him not yet believing?
You rejoice with joy, unspeakable and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.
Of which salvation the prophets have inquired is searched diligently, testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.
Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us, they'd administer the things which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, which things the angels desire to look into.
Wherefore girdeth the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end, for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ, as obedient children, not fashioning themselves according to the former lust in your ignorance.
But as he which has called you as holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation, because it is written, Be holy, for I am holy.
And if you call on a father who, without respected persons, judges according to every man's work.
Past the time of your soul journey here in fear, for as much as you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold from your vain conversation received by tradition from your Father, but were the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world.
But was manifesting these last times for you who by him to believe in God that raised him up from the dead and gave him glory. Let your faith and hope might be in God.
Seeing you have purified your souls, and obeying the truth through the Spirit, under unfeigned love of the brethren, see that you love one another with a pure heart, fervently being born again, not a corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever.
For all fleshes and grass, and all the glory of man, of the flower of grass, the grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away, but the word of the Lord endureth forever.
And this is the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you.
Marks were made yesterday.
Of about the full salvation we have in Christ, not only the salvation of our souls that we're looking for, the redemption of our bodies.
And also being saved out of this world of sin and sorrow.
Well, in view of that salvation looked at in all its fullness, Peter tells us here wherein ye greatly rejoice.
And we should be constantly, continually rejoicing in thoughts of such a wonderful, amazing salvation, good and all its extent and greatness.
And the Saints were rejoicing in it, though, as he tells them. Here, though, for a season if needs be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations.
Full temptation is literally the many college temptations. If we turn over to the 4th chapter of First Peter 10th 1St, we get the many colored again.
The 4th chapter in the 10th verse. As every man hath received the gift, Even so minister the same one to another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. So it's very comforting and very cheering when we remember how we are beset on every side with manifold temptations.
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The same book tells us of the manifold grace.
That meets the temptations, I suppose. There's the right kind, the right courage, grace to meet the wrong colored temptation every time.
Comforting thought that regardless of how much trial we pass through down here in this scene, and we may be facing far more trials than we've ever passed through before, but we always have this to cure the heart and that is that they're only for a season.
The poor world has nothing except darkness, death before them. The Christian has the assurance and the blessed hope that the Lord is coming soon. So even in times when one is suffering.
A real bodily affliction and going through many and various trials. Yet he knows that in a little while it's all over.
And that he has positively gained blessings of for eternity because he was permitted to pass through this trial.
Of an example of this too, in the apostle Paul, he was given are born in the flesh, and he and his all human wisdom was beseech God that he might be rid of this thorn in the flesh.
But as our brother Willis points out, for that thorn in the flesh the Lord said to him, My grace is sufficient for thee.
All right, it's interesting to compare that with the attitude of others who also passed through trial at troubles times. In the case of Naomi, she said. The Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. What a sad attitude when a believer looks at that which the Lord allows with such an attitude.
The Almighty has felt very bitterly with me. Job, on the other hand, said. Shall we not receive good from the hand of the Lord, and not also evil?
In other words, part of what I receive is good and part of what I receive is evil. Well, it's a little improvement on Naomi's viewpoint, but still it surely isn't what we ought to say, that some of the Lords dealings with me are good and some are evil. So I'll just have to accept both. I think the Apostle Paul's attitude, as we were reminded, is so honoring to God.
That is, it was definitely a thorn in the flesh. He didn't just brace himself to ignore it, he recognized it for what it was.
But having received the manifold grace of God to meet it, he could go on and encourage others to rejoice in the Lord always. He doesn't speak of the Lord being dealing with him bitterly, nor does he say part of my pathway has been set with good and part with evil. But he looks up from the very difficult trials that he passed through and rejoiced. Well, he used to say, there's never a trial.
But there is a needs beyond our part.
And the purpose of love on God's part.
And that's something to recognize that there is a need to be or God in the years wondrous wisdom would not have permitted it.
I remember hearing our brother Potter tell a sister who was terribly afflicted.
He had arthritis until her legs were drawn up and she couldn't straighten out in bed.
For years she suffered in that condition.
He went to visit her one time. He read these verses to her.
And then he looked at her and he said, sister, is there a needs be? At first she was very much annoyed and and.
Offended over it, but after a few moments consideration her eyes dropped and she nodded her head. Yes, yes there was a need speech and you know beloved, that the submitting and bowing to the will of God.
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Producers, one of the greatest possible blessings in our lives.
Something like the Lord speaking to the Father in the 17th of John.
He says I am glorified in them.
Perhaps God was more glorified than that, their sister bowing to his will, than the brother out preaching the gospel.
Or a brother out preaching the gospel. It's certain attention and recognition from his brethren. Well, we can know that the one who is bowed down with trial and suffering.
Is not getting recognition.
Far and wide, but bowing to the will of God, the Lord says I am glorified in them. And isn't that wonderful to be glorified?
To bring glory to that blessed one. But you know the Lord doesn't say that to the ones who are going through it. He tells it about them.
Ask Brother Willis if the manifold.
You've mentioned all the many colors in connection with two thoughts, the trials and grace. What about that word in Ephesians 3? Manifold wisdom of God that also the same?
Many callers.
The first is the intent of now onto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church, the manifold wisdom of God, verse 10.
All buried. I think it's the same.
Same I think is the Joseph coat of many colleagues.
Mentioned that in the 6th incident of Exodus we find God's purposes for the people of Israel. He redeemed them. He was bringing them out of Egypt and he was going to put them in the land. There's nothing about the wilderness in Exodus 66 to 8. It's all God's purposes there. And in the 8th chapter two of the book of Romans we find that God justifies you and I and He's glorified us.
There is nothing about the wilderness, but the wilderness is there in the ways of God. And so we find ourselves through this epistle of Peter, we're in the wilderness, we are redeemed, we're the elect of God, we are sanctified. We have the sprinkling of the blood wrong, the way to glory. But there's the wilderness in between. And it's what? Deuteronomy, the 8th chapter.
It's in the wilderness that we find out.
What feeble creatures we are, how failing, but also we find in that wilderness scene the all abounding grace of our God. Well, dear ones, the Lord God, our Father, He has a he has a pattern. He has a pattern. He wants to form Christ.
In you and I and what the Crucible is to the gold in that the fire is refined, the fire is heated there to burn away the dross. You and I just have a little bit too much dross in our lives and our walk in our ways. And God wants us to be like Christ. And so in this wilderness scene, God is going to heat the fire. But all we have this comfort, don't we? From first Corinthians chapter 10.
There hath no trial or temptation taken you, but such as is common to man. But God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will with the temptation make a way to escape, that you may be able to bear it. In other words, God knows exactly your makeup and mine. He won't heat the fire.
One with more than it's necessary. That we can stand, that we can bear.
He doesn't want to drown us as it were, but all he wants Christ for him in your life and mine, so all to submit, to submit to the ways of God in this wilderness scene.
Saying, Brother, that the verse says here wherein ye greatly rejoice till now for a season, if need be, ye may.
If need, if need be, are in heaviness through manifold temptation. Well, how long is the is the trial? How long is this going to last? Not forever. It's just for the pathway, isn't it? I was thinking of the times of Elijah when God called for a famine upon the land.
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It was God who called for the family, but he limited it. It was only seven days, it says seven or seven years. There was a limit and I was thinking two of the of the Saints at Thyatira, remember.
The in the Revelation 9 two and verse 9.
The 10 there was tribulation 1010 days. God limits this, doesn't he? It's not forever. It's a comfort to our souls to know that the trial is now. The trials are just for a season.
They're not forever. Wasn't it three years and 1/2?
The famine Time of the Light, Elijah, 8th chapter in the first verse.
In the 5th chapter of our book, first Peter 5:00 and 10:00 But the God of all grace, who have called us unto his eternal glory.
That's the extent of the glory, unlimited, eternal by Christ Jesus. After that ye have suffered a while.
A while, a while, in contrast, the eternal glory.
We could refer to Hebrews chapter 12 in connection with these trials in Hebrews 12 and verse 5.
Ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children. My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou in rebuke of Him.
It's been mentioned that God has his purpose in these trials, which He allows to come to us, but how easy it is for us to either ignore the trial, despise them on the one hand, or to faint under them on the other hand.
Either as the world has the expression, we can print and ferret.
That's a favorite expression of the world.
Or we can say, well, God has put me under trial and so what's the use? I might as well give up.
So these are not the desire of God. But if we turn to the 11Th verse of this chapter.
There we find where blessing comes in in trial.
Now not chasing me for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous.
Nevertheless, afterward it yielded the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.
God expects us to be exercised and to fail the trial that He allows us to pass through.
He expects us to seek His mind as to the purpose for it.
I remember I've mentioned this before, that there was a brother who had an automobile accident one time in our city.
We went to visit him in the hospital.
And he said, Will you please pray the Lord that he might let me know why I've had this accident?
Well, that speaks of a healthy state of soul under trial.
And the result, if we are exercising seek the mind of the Lord, the result is the peaceable fruit, righteousness.
To them that are exercised thereby, well, how blessed it is when we are in trial and each one of it is.
That we seek the mind of the Lord as to it, and to seek to learn His purpose through it all.
I've enjoyed lately the words of Hezekiah after he was recovered.
In Isaiah 38, you'll probably remember the verses.
Oh Lord, by these things men leave live, and by all these is the life of my spirit, so God allows them for the growth of our spiritual.
Temperament our spiritual state if we're exercised but thereby.
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And.
So we we lived in the sense that these things are sent for a good purpose. Many years ago, in the First World War, I went to a prison to see a young brother who had been sent to jail on account of being a conscientious objective. And I tried to think up something that would comfort him, and I got there.
But when I found, when I got to him, I found it wasn't he who needed the comforting, it was I. And he said, you know, he said, I've been having such a glorious time here. I've been reading the 4th, 2nd class of the 2nd Corinthians. And he said it's just a pair of weighing scales there. And he, he read it to me.
The 17th verse, our late affliction, they said it's on the one side of the wing scales. It's right afflictions.
And we go on to the 18th verse, we get the exceeding weight of glory, the 70 end of the 17th verse to get the exceeding weight of glory. And the light affliction is but for a moment, but the exceeding weight of glory is eternal. It's a beautiful thing to see the weighing scales there.
And.
There the the the the the light affliction, but for a moment.
The exceeding weight of glory eternal. But more could be asked for. Quite a bit of light affliction too, from that man, wasn't it? He was taken outside. Was it a Derby or Lystra? When he visited there? Paul. And while he was stoned and then dragged out and left for dead, he could tell them in Galatians that he bore in his body the marks of the Lord Jesus. He was, he was.
Beaten with sticks and he was, he was left for dead, stoned and all of that, he says. I was reading it to the children one time.
And going through Acts and I said, now I said when Paul the Lord revived him there, I said, he said, I'm not going to tell anybody else about the Lord Jesus Christ. This is too hard a pathway for me. I'm going to go back and so I said Brian and Brendan did the did Paul say that and they.
Shook their head. Now he didn't say that, but he went right back, right back to the very city in which he'd been stoned to tell them about the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, he says our light affliction. I don't know that I would want too much of that light affliction. But whatever the Lord orders for us in our life, he'll give us the grace to stand it.
When we turn to the 119th sound, I think there's some.
3 verses I would like to read in this connection. Psalm 119.
First verse will be verse 67.
Psalm 100 and 1967.
Before I was afflicted.
I went astray.
But now have I kept thy word. Now go down to the 71St verse.
It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn thy statutes. And then the 75th verse. I know, O Lord, that thy judgments are right, and that Thou in thy faithfulness hast afflicted me. I've enjoyed this, brethren. It's a needs be, isn't it?
It was in His faithfulness. It's in his faithfulness that He has brought the affliction.
After, as we had yesterday, brought before us our strangership.
Now we get one who felt his strangership and his being a displaced person.
In the circumstances in which he was found, and he reckons the reproach of Christ.
Greater than the.
Little Hebrews there esteeming a reproach of Christ, greater riches than the trashes in Egypt, of these trials that we have in this chapter, are in view of coming glory.
Now young folks who want among us want to be identified.
And dear one, let us be identified with a rejected Christ and when we are we will suffer persecution. And this is what is crossed the forest here, identification with Christ and the realization of our strangership in this scene. Now we have in the second chapter.
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Something very practical in the 11Th verse.
Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.
A battle or a skirmish is just for a little while. A war is a continuous thing, and this is something that the Christians going through the scene suffers for, but it's just for a little while. These trials here are not because of our unfaithfulness.
But because of our lack of faith.
I should say these trials here are because of our identification with a rejected Christ. But we have this before us, the coming glory. He's going to be vindicated.
Be on His side. It doesn't cost anything to be faithful in the heyday, but in the day of rejection we are going to suffer reproach. But let us count as greater riches than what the world is offering. And this is the.
The trial that we have before us in this chapter.
Trial of faith, isn't it?
God gives the faith, and then he puts that faith through trials and testings.
And we need to remember that when some sorrow comes into our lives and we can't understand why God has permitted this trial.
That if we could know, if we could understand fully why this is permitted, it wouldn't be a trial of faith, the very fact that it is something we don't understand.
From a very sorely afflicted in their bodies.
And the sufferer and maybe wonder why others can go on so well without the strong bodies, healthy and one might say, while I'm stricken in this way. Well, the very fact that they don't understand it shows that it is definitely a trial of faith.
Putting faith into exercise.
Wonderful, isn't it, to think of what Paul speaks to the Thessalonians Saints about that your faith?
Growth exceedingly, and faith doesn't grow in times of prosperity in the same way that it grows in times of adversity.
And God knows that better than we know it. And so he allows adversity and trials, as it says here, manifold trials where everyone is not tried in the same way.
One may be here with weakness of body, like our sister Mrs. Vladimir, like our brother London at this time he's allowing them to feel physical weakness. Another it may be in their their circumstances someone may have lost a job.
And Mueller may have had a financial crisis and maybe lost their home and so on. How many and how varied are these?
Trials. But out of them all, we learned this most important lesson from this verse.
The trial of your faith being much more precious than of gold that perishes, though it be tried with fire, might be found on a praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.
Will use gold as a standard of wealth.
And the more one can accumulate of this world's wealth, the more he has looked upon as a prosperous man.
But here is something that the apostle speaks of.
Has much more precious.
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So the greatest prosperity in this world can never be compared to this trial of faith.
1 Peter 1:10
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Will keep my soul and Jesus abiding still with thee brought to mind birth Peter one then I think the prayer was along that line, for we surely all need.
The keeping grace of our Lord Jesus.
In these parallel times.
So if the brethren feel that the mind of the Spirit first Peter chapter one Peter.
An apostle of Jesus Christ to the stranger scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bathinia. The electric according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification of the Spirit under obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.
Grace unto you, and peace be multiplied.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which, according to His abundant mercy, hath forgotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled.
And it fadeth not away reserved in heaven for you who are kept by the power of God through faith under salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time, when you greatly rejoice. Though now for a season, if need be, He are in heaviness.
To manifold temptations that the trial of your faith be much more precious than of gold that perishes.
They will be tried with fire, might be found under praise and honor and glory.
That the appearing of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen ye love.
In whom, though now ye see Him not yet believing, do you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls, Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, Who prophesied the great that should come unto you, searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them, did?
By when I testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow.
Unto whom it was revealed, that none unto themselves, but unto us, they'd administer the things which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, which things the angels desire to look into.
Wherever good at the loins of your mind, be sober and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you.
At the Revelation of Jesus Christ.
As obedient children, not fashioning ourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance, but I see which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation, because it is written, Be holy, for I am holy.
And if you call on the Father, who without respective persons, judges according to every man's work past the time of your soul journey here in fear for as much as you know.
That you were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold from your vain conversation, received by tradition from your Father's.
But were the precious blood of Christ as an alarm, without blemish and without spot, Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifesting these last times for you, who by him to believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory?
But your faith and hope might be in God.
Seeing you have purified your souls, and obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that you love one another with a pure heart, fervently being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. For all flesh is grass, and all the glory of manners and flower of grass.
The grass weather, and the flower there falleth away, but the word of the Lord and doeth forever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.
And Paul and John's ministry and noticeably different doing the law gives us morality counsels of God, doesn't he? And John gives us the nature and it's Peter that gives us the ways of God. And so here in this epistle, we do have the ways of God in this first epistle.
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Pursued in relation to the believers we're called in that first chapter, and in the 5th chapter we wind up in glory.
But in between there are trials and difficulties. But we fought one who was able to sustain us and to strengthen us, to establish us and to help us all through this wilderness journey. We know that Peter was the apostle of the circumcision.
Or to the Jews, for as far as the apostles of the Gentiles. So Peter in the writing here he addresses the stranger scattered throughout protest. Galatians, Cappadocia, Asian dominion.
Remember when Paul was going about carrying the gospel through the heathen?
But he always went first to the city dog of the Jews.
My husband is rather interesting that Peter is following up in a certain way the ministry of the Apostle Paul.
For in these different countries mentioned here.
And podis Galatia, we know there are many assemblies in Galatia. The churches of Galatia were addressed in the book of Galatians.
Now, if there were Jewish believers in all these different.
Assemblies.
Real hard to receive the gospel.
Along with the Gentiles, well, the fall was more for the Gentiles and Peter for the Jews. Peter has a special.
Instruction for the Jewish believers Now when you read the strangers or the dispersion to see when the captivity took place.
The deals were scattered away from their land and there are many different lands so that they were found in all these different countries.
That's why it speaks of the stranger, Sir, the dispersant.
And if we just bear in mind that.
There is a certain Jewish cast about the.
The ministry of this successful, it will help us because the Jews have definitely.
Earthly prospects and blessings before them.
They look forward to possessing the land of Canaan and having.
Blessings in storehouse and barn. They had looked for the Messiah to come and deliver them from their enemies.
That they might serve God and righteousness and fear all the days of their lives as Tech arrived Thousand Speaking of John the Baptist.
Well, their hopes in connection with the Messiah had been.
Readily set aside.
Of course, because of the wickedness.
All the Jewish people who were murdered, their Messiah, their king, when he came, they only gave him a cross from the crown of horns.
And so they had sent back their king with this message.
We will not have this man to reign over us.
So that now they had to learn a lesson that was not easy for one trained all his days.
With travelling Jewish folks before him and that is that instead of having.
Earthly portions before him, he was to now have a heavenly portion before him.
So we notice that in the different epistles that.
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Very people to whom it suggests give U.S. special character to the writing in the epistle.
These.
Jews might have seen their national aspirations and hopes all dashed, and here they were scattered to these far off lands. But what a wonderful encouragement this must have been to them, to hear of a glorious hope through resurrection in Christ, if their hope had been drafted pieces when they were put taken into captivity.
You mentioned, Brother Barry, that this is a living hope that they have now.
Hope they had him nationally was dead as far as they were concerned, but now they have a living hope.
And not only so, but here the apostle reminds them that they were elected elect according to the foreknowledge of God.
This was number afterthought with God.
Doesn't mind all the time.
That there was to be a hope beyond the promises made to Israel.
This was a heavenly a living hope. I was thinking too that it's connected with the Trinity, isn't it? In this second verse it's elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.
Through sanctification of the Spirit.
Unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ we have God the Father, the Holy Spirit, as the Lord Jesus Christ brought before us here.
There are four areas of instructive.
Yeah, it's God the Father in connection with predestination and for ordination, for we were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.
But then we are brought into time when he speaks of sanctification of the Spirit.
No matter of important tools that before you have the gospel.
Brought before us in the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, you have the work of the Holy Spirit.
In sanctifying the believer.
I love forever sets aside.
The popular teaching that is taught far and wide in Christendom that sanctification is a second work of grace, that After Earth saved and know the Lord as your Savior, you can go through an experience whereby you'll become wholly sanctified, the old nature burned out so you can live a holy life.
But we find scripture teaches the opposite as to.
That's true. Well, the 1St work of the Spirit is to sanctify, and I'm sure we all are acquainted with the meaning of sanctification, that it means separation.
God hath set apart that which is holy unto himself.
So when God the Holy Spirit begins the work in the heart of the center.
So that he is brought to a conviction of his sins, sees his lost condition.
Where there is a new life imparted by the Spirit of God.
Just as the Lord told Nicodemus.
The man be born of water and of the Spirit.
As the true instruments, the word is the water.
The Spirit uses the Word, applies it to the conscience, and for a Sinner has gone anew, has a new life, but he may have little understanding of the meaning of the gospel.
Perhaps he couldn't give you a reason for the hope that's in him. And you notice here that the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ follows the sanctification of the Spirit.
Now I'm sure we are, we have been taught to that there is a progressive sanctification as well as a positional sanctification.
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We find them the 1St chapter of First Corinthians and the second verse.
Under the Church of God, which is a car to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus.
All the calls to be Saints or Saints by calling so that before he enters into their instruction he assures them that they are sanctified, while you say where they are very holy.
So a class of people compared to other Christians because he starts out Speaking of their being sanctified. Why we only have to read on in the in the.
2nd and 3rd chapter to find that they were carnal, many of them.
That was characteristic of them. They were walking as men. They were divisions among them. So it shows that.
Sanctification.
Has nothing to do with our walk, it has to do with our position. Then, of course, as we were saying, that there is the practical progressive sanctification.
And which one seeks through grace to be more separated from?
The ways of this world.
And that you have more in the 17th chapter of John's Gospel.
And the 17th verse where Jesus in prayer to his Father says sanctify them through the truth.
Thy word is truth.
Then he goes on in the.
The 19th verse. And for their sake I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. So that gives us the importance of the reading, the daily reading of the Word of God. For the Word of God has a purifying effect on our lives.
It discovers to us those things that are inconsistent.
In our Christian life.
And leads us to judge those things so that we become more separate from the waves around the files and the conduct.
Or this simple world is hasting on to its final doom and judgment.
We need to get those two subjects clearly in our mind, first our positional sanctification and then the practical sanctification.
That continues as long as we're here. And it's a wonderful joke that set before that, the blessed Lord says, and that addressed it in that prayer to his Father. And for their sakes, I sanctify myself.
That they might be sanctified through the truth. Just think, Thy glorious One is set himself apart in heavenly glory, saving us down here to keep us from the corrupt and defiling ways.
While this guilty sinful world.
But be careful to heed his general voice speaking.
To us when we are turning aside, and how often have we not experienced beloved?
That some scripture has come with tremendous force to our souls at a special time of need. How did that happen?
We are singing in our little hymn, you know no infants changing Pleasure is like my wandering mind. Now, dear. Mr. Darby wrote that, and yet he goes on to say, But thou dost recall my heart to joy in all the fullness of peace, its beams and parts. What else would be here today?
Under the sound of God's holy Word.
If it were not for that sanctifying service of our blessed Lord.
Only a very interesting fact, but it's a very, very beautiful truth for the believer to see that the whole dog head is, as always has been, interested in the blessing of his people.
And very repeatedly brought in Scripture and brought out very distinctly, that is, even as to the birth of Christ, the baptism of Christ, the crucifixion, the resurrection.
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The descent of the Holy Spirit, the conversion of a believer, the keeping of His footsteps, the calling of his people home. If we search the scriptures, we will find that in every one of these steps the whole thought and is distinctly and specifically mentioned.
And I say it's not only something to follow with interest, but it should be a tremendously stirring truth to our heart to think that in a day when men are boasting of such great things, that we can actually sit here and know that the whole dog has this wondrous purpose in due for us, that around us they have their systematic.
Theology and you take up doctrines. I know I was in them at one time.
So you study the doctrine of Lamar theology, you study ecclesiology, you study eschatology, their doctrine. How blessed though that in the word of God doctrines are very practical. They have their import in our walk and our wage in our lives. The the doctrine of the coming of Christ, of of the rapture. Is that a gig thing? Is that something that we just know theoretically that we have it in our mind? No, every man that has this.
Purified himself, even if he is pure. So as our brothers mentioned, we are the the Trinity mentioned here. Is this a cold, heartless doctrine that we only learn intellectually? No, but we turn to Luke chapter 15 and there we find that the Lord Jesus Christ is the one who goes and seeks that all sheep. We find the Spirit of God in in that symbol of a woman who speaks diligently.
Searching out that center. And then we find the Father's embrace and the kisses at the end, all triune God.
In operation on the behalf of receiving one Sinner. No, these doctrines are not cold, not unimportant, but they're related to our everyday walk in ways.
Notice tell that.
We next read Under obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Notice obedience precedes the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.
And I believe that.
Shows the operation of the spirit and the soul.
The first breath, as it were, of divine life.
Is a breathable obedience to the word. Think of a thoughtless.
On the way to Damascus.
The light show shine round about him from heaven. Father his first words. Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? Think of that rebellious man that hated Christ was trying to blot out His name from under heaven.
Submitting to his authority, ordering him as Lord, and inquiring, What wilt thou have me to do? Well, we know that he got the answer immediately that he was to go into the city, and there he would hear then.
God, for our talk to a man named Ananias, told him to go and visit Saul, for he says he's prayed and through him he hears what he is the instruction that he is inquired for at that time.
Then the next thing when there is that submission of thought to the will of God, then there is the entering into the sprinkling of the blood of Christ. But we now need to notice too that.
The obedience is the obedience of Christ, as well as the blood being the blood of Christ.
That is the character of obedience.
We see in the life of our blessed Lord. And what was it that characterized His obedience as a man down here?
It was this he could say, I do always those things that please him, that is, that please the Father. And so we're set apart to obey, just as our blessed Lord obey when he was a man going here among men in this very world of trials and dangers and sorrows that we're passing through.
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It was always a path of obedience.
For him, well, they are obedience there, that character. It isn't the obedience of the law with all the thunders and with all with condemnation, but it's an obedience that brings happiness and peace.
And left to the soul these the Lord says, Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. The powerful obedience is the powerful happiness the path where?
We find rest for our souls.
The application of the blood, is it not an everyday thing, the sprinkling of the blood?
This was all in quite contrast to the position that an Israelite had prior to this, wasn't it? He was, He was, he was set apart by Jehovah and to obedience to the law, as it were.
But how lovely this is to see to it is to see here that it's elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. What a relationship has been established now set apart by God the Father, and it's through sanctification of the Spirit, not.
Set apart to law now, but by the Spirit of God, set apart to obedience and unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, not the blood of bulls and goats, but the blood of Jesus Christ, that one that was obedient and always did the Father's will. So what a, what a portion, what a position these Israelites have been brought into now.
According to the elect, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father relationship.
And a position now not dependent upon their keeping something, but because of the obedience and the sprinkling of blood, who One of one who kept every precept one was perfectly obedient to the Father's will.
That there is definitely a reference here to the 24th chapter of Exodus.
They might turn to up their striking contrast there in the 24th of Exodus.
We get itself in the.
Third verse.
See Moses and Aaron and Nadab and the Bayou, and 70 of the elders of Israel went up the mountain and saw the Lord.
Then we get in the third verse. And Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord, and all the judgments, and all the people answered with one voice, and said all the words which the Lord has spoken. Will we do so? There is the obedience of the law, putting themselves under a solemn oath to keep that law.
In the fourth verse, and Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, and rose up early in the morning, and built an altar.
Under the hill and 12 pillars, according to the 12 tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings.
Of oxen under the Lord. Now notice here. And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar, and he took the blood of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people, And they said, All that the Lord has said will we do and be obedient. And those that took the blood and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant.
Which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words.
All you see is the sprinkling of the blood of of of calves. There was sealing judgment upon the people who had put themselves under the solemn oath of keeping all that the Lord had commanded, just as all Moses said. Now here's the sign.
That if you break that law.
You're bringing death and judgment upon yourselves because of your disobedience. Well, what a contrast here. And this written to those who were familiar with their own scriptures.
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About the giving of the law instead of an obedience.
That required judgment. If they failed in it, why It was the blood, the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.
That blood which John tells us, cleanses us from all sins.
So for they have he obeyed, and then to enjoy in one soul with certainty that the blood of Jesus Christ.
Has settled every question between the soul and the Holy Ghost God so that.
That there is no judgment of waiting. The one that's resting on that precious blood that flowed from the side.
About blessed Lord and death. Sprinkling of the blood in this verse refers to a daily repetition, but rather to the precious blood of Christ aside once and for all.
Every time they fail, they have to have a fresh recourse to the blood. They do not see the eternal efficacy of the blood of Christ. If we are viewed by God as blood sprinkles souls, we are under the value of that precious blood.
And this is wonderful to see. The value, the efficacy of the blood of Christ is such that once applied, the song is viewed by God is under the precious blood, and He is acceptable to God according to the value that God places upon the blood, not the value that we place upon it, but the value that God himself places upon it. And it does not have to be respratical.
One sprinkled, his soul is under its value for all eternity.
I for myself have always enjoyed the thought that came from.
Esteemed Brother Hayhoe, many years ago when I was talking with him about it, he says we all fail at times and Satan will approach us and he'll say, my, what a failure you'll be in.
You mean you're a Christian? Just look what you've done. All face can look up and say yes with the blood of Jesus has put that all away. The daily application of a brethren can be very precious to you.
Look at it in this way, Brother Wilson, in the way John speaks of it in his first epistle chapter one and verse 7 where he says the blood of Jesus Christ his Son.
Lenses out from all sins. You see, that is something that is ever and always true. We can rise them the morning and say the blood of Jesus Christ renders from all sins.
We can go on and happy enjoyment of His love. Will you go on in that same chapter? And we get the form of failure if we confess our sins. He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. As we know that is a matter of communion.
But even then we learn more of the infinite values of blood of Christ.
That way family of children that had settled every question. So every day that we're here below, no matter how Satan may kill us and he does he's accuser of the brother, we can always return to the assurance of God's love that flowed from his five there at Calvary. How settled every question between my soul and the holy God.
Well, remember writing, Mr. Darby.
Put it in a very simple and very nice way. He I don't remember the details of it.
An illustration like this that quinine puts away malaria.
And that's true, quinine does take away malaria, but you don't, you don't have to take it every day to have it taken away. And I that's what that illustration of, I haven't got it quite right, but that's the principle of it.
But there can be can and not the daily enjoyment of that truth. We can enjoy when we see that we have failed and we.
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Can rest in the assurance that our sins have been put away, and if we confess our sins, has already been quoted. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
I was enjoying your father Wilbur in a practical sense in this way to not only connected it with the chapter that has been read about Moses, but in this thought too. Remember in the consecration of the priest in Exodus the 29th chapter and that Ram was slave and then the blood was placed upon the right ear, the right thumb, and the right toe of the.
You and I have been redeemed by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, and what's true there is tight is good of us that we have been bought with a price, and therefore we're to have the ear that's opened unto the voice of God in the Scriptures and to be obedient.
Were to walk in his ways according to the word of God is impressed just the other day before we left the Dorothy NJ and a brother mentioned he said you know this past year he was at a conference up in Lawrenceville and he said I was there a year ago a year ago. This is a brother from the West Coast came in and had left the young people.
And he spoke about the deportment of them, he spoke about the hair, he spoke about the length of the skirt. He spoke about things that would exercise their conscience.
I went back this year and I saw the same things all over again. What happened? What's wrong? He says. Why wouldn't that earn out back here? He says what we're doing is we're coming together at such times as this for social time, times when we can be together and meet one another. Well, that's blessed.
But there is something else. We have been brought with a price. The blood has been placed upon the right ear, the right thumb and the right toe, and that were sanctified into the obedience of Jesus Christ. We're here, dear ones, in the presence of God to hear what He has to say. And if it goes current across what we are now holding on to, give it up, all for the glory of the blessed Lord Jesus. Oh, let's hear with an open ear.
Carry out his bidding.
I like it very much, this expression. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and not with any thought of expounding on it at all, but just simply the fact that I believe fear soul expresses itself here. I know the words were written by divine inspiration, but Paul uses the same language in Ephesians 1.
Last would be the daughter and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings.
Well, if we omit the first few words of that verse, we still get the same thought, the same truth practically. But I just enjoy the thought that as this wonderful truth flows through the soul of the beloved apostles and through His pen to us, His own soul showed its enjoyment by the expression he uses. Now, I say it was written by inspiration, but I'm very sure it wasn't written as a stenographer would take down.
Peter was really enjoying it and Paul was really enjoying it. That to me it's a bit of a refuse to come to a verse like this and look at these words and say, did my soul ever feel this way when the truth of God has been unfolded?
Discover bit by fifth, the pit from which we have been digged in the wonderful place of blessing. We are ready for that. And what lies ahead? Have I ever once paused in all my life to look up and say, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? That sometimes, you know, even when a brother has oiled his heart in the most delightful expression of Thanksgiving to the Lord?
It can't even hear a whispered Amen when the brother is finished.
I think when we read a verse like this, we should be encouraged to say Amen, at least when our brother's done, pray.
Am I wrong? Brother woman, you're very nice and we get the scriptures for it too. If, if, if I speak to you in an unknown tongue, how can you say Amen? That's what the scripture says. And I, I screamed a very much.
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In a large meeting like this, you belong here. Two or three young men bring just as bad up at the soup. Where I live, it's only one person says Amen.
Of course, it may be we don't understand it, but it, it, it means, I think so too, doesn't it? Well, we're glad to say I say so too. When, when it's, when it's something that you truly can say.
Many years ago.
In up in central China, in the in the Hill Country, there was a what they called the Union Church and the missionaries from all sorts of societies used to meet there and have.
Have their regular services in this church. There was one, one point had to be permitted. Nobody was to mention the Lords coming. Well, there was no there was no primitive Methodist ministry there. And he came in.
See what it was like? And he grieved himself terribly that he he just, the next time he just left in the very back seat, not caring hardly very hard enough. And it turned on that way and he still kept going because he thought somebody had to make a protest.
And that last one day everything it was said was all right. And the old man with a loud voice, he said, Amen. All the people in the church jumped the the.
Interruptions, they thought, and they came to him to postulate with him. That wasn't the way to behave in church, where he said it's a pretty queer thing live an old primitive Methodist. When there's only one thing said in the whole service that he can agree with. It's a pretty strange thing that he can't even say Amen.
And all the people, all the people in, in the, in cooling where it happened.
They all got that story, and they all learned what Amen meant anyway.
Times Is it all right for sisters to say Amen?
Audibly so, I would like to ask that question. Nobody says Amen to that. Well, we need to go on and see what he was blessing by. He said blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and this was the reason.
But according to his abundant mercy, have begotten us again.
Until we that.
Living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, you say? The hope of Israel with Palestine?
And they had forfeited their land.
So that now he brings before them, that they were begotten again, but this time it wasn't a dead hope.
That they had previously entertained. But here is what has been brought into existence by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
And now he goes on with the inheritance to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not a wave reserved in heaven for you. Now we know that the land of Canaan was corrupted by idolatry.
And the sins and wickedness, all the very people that.
God had chosen and had given that country to.
But we're brought into an inheritance that can never be corrupted, can never be defiled. And instead of losing our inheritance as Israel lost their inheritance, we have an inheritance that paid us not away. But where does the Apollo direct their their thoughts?
Wade Rex there thought heavenward, reserved in heaven. That's where our inheritance is. It doesn't down here and whenever we try to settle down in this world and and.
And prepare as well. We're going to live for a century or more in this world. God blows on it. He lets us know that this is not our home.
Our inheritance is not here in this scene. My inheritance is up there.
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Hello beloved, when you look over this company and think in a few years how many will no longer be in this company? Should the Lord carry?
Our sojourn here is very short and in fact Peter continually mentions the time of your soul journey here in fear, the time of your soul journey. It may be even shorter than death coming in because the Lord may come and take us out of our homes and away from our occupation, away from this corrupt.
And defiled world.
In the very inheritance.
That is undefiled.
And the fate is not away.
And then how comforting it is to to know not only is the inheritance kept for us, but we're kept for the inheritance?
You who are kept by the power of God.
So the certainty of our being in that inheritance is just as secure and sure as God Himself.
For God cannot lie. You need to remember that. And if God cannot lie, we better pay attention to what he says.
Woman to the last clause in the second verse.
Grace unto you and peace be multiplied. Well, how much we've enjoyed in the second verse what we have in this second verse. And oh, how wonderful it is for our souls to be in a sense of all the grace is wrong. Grace is the source. How blessed and then.
Peace be multiplied, peace is the outflow, and we can go on in a dark scene that is filled with unrest.
Grace the outflow and in peace.
Peace grace the source and peace the outflow. We go on in this dark trouble, difficult scene enjoying our inheritance. Remember our brother Miss Cleaves saying one time that God likes multiplication. Peace be multiplied. God is a giving God and there's no limit to.
But he delights to be his fall upon the objects of his affection.
He doesn't want us to be going along just enjoying a major measure of spiritual blessings. He wants full of blessings enlarged and increased and growing continually. And if only our state of soul, that denies us the enlargement of our blessings.
Work first, when our brother Norman was picturing to us those who stood at the four points of Encompass, guarding the tension, the testimony to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled. And the debate is not away. Reserved in heaven for you. I thought of these four things by the Norman. When you spoke of these men and pictures of them standing at the four points of the compass, just think, there is absolutely no man on earth.
Who can provide for himself an inheriting protected against these things that are spoken out here?
He knows very well that within 24 hours his well planned future may all fall apart, but the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ can look at a verse like this. You can see every point of the compass completely taken care of and inherited the incorruptible. Undeniably the state is not a way reserved in heaven for you and then he went on to point out and we also by the grace of God reserved for that inheritance there's.
Opinion. And I'm afraid we're guilty of contributing to us that.
The believer is willing to have a bit of a miserable time here and do without a good many pleasures because he's looking forward to having something worthwhile in the next World, so he's quite willing to live a rather drab existence along the way. If I'm not mistaken, this is pretty generally considered to be our viewpoint on things.
Time I face this, I feel utterly ashamed, I think, what kind of testimony are we putting before the eyes of others that they would for one moment think that we have a Dr. existence, but we're just making the most of it because we've got something better yet to come. Brethren, of all the opportunities to show what it really means to be a believer blessed now with all these blessings, this is the day in which it ought to stand out more than every student before.
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Because the generation that's growing up today is, as you and I know, so restless and frustrated and trying everything to find that which will give them just a little spark of pleasure. And they ought to be able to look upon those of us who know the Lord Jesus and see see peace and the joy and the happiness that should arrest their attention, even if we didn't say anything to them.
Marvelous result Paul and silent praying and singing praises to Godhead on the prisoners. Remember hearing brother close tweets in the room. Georgia jail when I was a young fellow. He said many thought his birthday was shaking the pieces. He said how many of you would stay in this jail?
Foolish grin came over their faces with told the meaning that they'd get out of there as fast as they could.
But so Fitness didn't get out of that jail there in Philippi. They stayed there. And it must have been the happy.
Enjoyment of Paul and Silas singing and praising, singing praises to God that held them there. I'm not saved the jailers life because if he lost his prisoners it would have cost him his life. And I thought I never heard anyone else suggested that when Paul went into the House of the jailer that he speaks the word of the Lord.
To Oliver in his house. Perhaps all the prisoners came in there and heard the gospel.
I don't know if I'm right in that, but I've enjoyed thinking of it in that way. Then you get the household of faith that are all his mentioned.
We don't know how many were converted through that earthquake. They've been more than the jail because it was quite an assembly there when Paul writes from Rome in later years.
Cut by the power of God.
What a wonderful statement that is, that not only are we kept, but kept by the power of God through faith. That's important through faith, isn't it?
Because the soul that God isn't just taking us.
Like you would move some baggage to another city regardless of our our exercises, but the way we're kept is through constant exercise of soul and that's where faith.
Comes into the way God is keeping us.
For our inheritance, that's before us, and the faith in His blessed Word takes the Bible away from us. And what have we? We have nothing, have we?
We'll never have. We've never seen heaven, we've never met anybody that's been in heaven. And yet we firmly believe as we sit here together.
That we're on our way to our Father's house. We have no doubt in our minds at all. Where does that come from? Oh, that's the face. So every blessing that Christians possess is a matter of faith. In fact, our old brother Haley used to say that we have a religion of faith. Take faith out and you have nothing. It just falls to pieces.
On God in his wondrous grace is keeping.
His own along the journey through the exercise of faith.
So that.
The precious things become more and more important to our souls as we hasten on our way. Thinking of the connection with what you've been saying, Brother Barry, the.
In the end of that second verse, grace unto you, and peace be multiplied.
Well, this multiplication, isn't it? And then the thought of laying hold of this by faith was thinking of what Peter says in his second epistle. The privilege we have now of using addition, modification, that is grace and peace be multiplied unto you. This is is to each one of the children of God, isn't it? And as you were saying.
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It's faith that lays hold of this.
And the enjoyment of it is walking in it. But I was thinking of the addition in the fifth verse of second Peter one and beside this giving.
All diligence add to your faith virtue and to virtue knowledge and to knowledge, temperance and temperance, patience and to patience godliness, and so on. But I was just thinking of The Walking in this, making it, applying it, adding to it, adding to our faith, moral courage.
Telling others about that Blessed one.
What is the? What is the relation of faith to being kept? I don't quite get that point.
Were kept by the power of God.
I want you to think that the way the power of God operates in a believer is by keeping.
Eternal things before the soul, so that we're we're preserved.
All along the journey.
That is the most important part of the subject.
If we close our Bibles and neglect the reading of the word, personal things gets possession of our minds and thoughts.
And the sooner or later we begin to adopt the ways of the world, and the ideas of the world is rested teachings and fears, so on.
So apart from the word of God, my way just let her drift in this world. But as soon as we bring God's word to bear upon our.
Our hearts and our consciences and our minds. Why? It takes us all into an entirely different world, an entirely different realm.
So we can't.
Urge enough the importance of the daily reading of the Word of God. Never, never neglect the Word of God in your life or you'll soon get the thoughts of this poor, sad, guilty world.
Lord of the Rings, Peter, be perhaps a little bearing on this. The Lord said to Peter, I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not now He was in the Lords keeping and was going to be safe in that keeping right till the end of the journey. But as you remark, he doesn't keep us the way. Shall I say an individual might control a robot of some kind?
He says to Peter, I have prayed for thee, kept by the power of God, that thy faith fail not.
Faith unto salvation. Peter's faith was sustained, but it was sustained by the power of God. And I believe that both together, shall we say, brother Norman was a very great blessing of Peter, although he couldn't boast of it, because it was sustained by the grace of God.
Just said really applies to every child in car.
It's often applied to being kept in the past. We speak of it and be kept in an ecclesiastical position. Well, that's an application. But the real meaning of reverse is applicable to all Christians. That is, every child of God will be kept by the power of God through faith. They will not give up faith in Christ.
Is that true, Brother Mary? Is that the human? I'm sure you're right, Brother Hendricks.
Last, we could refer again to the first chapter of the 2nd Epistle of Peter.
It's already been referred to what is to be added or what we are to have in our faith.
Yeah, second Peter one and verse 8.
For if these things be in you and abound, that make you, that you shall neither be barren or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But he that like of these things.
Is blind, you cannot see a fire off and has forgotten that he was perished from his old sins.
That is, if one of the faith is not an exercise.
Where there is a going on in this world, we've lost sight.
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Of our heavenly calling.
Can I see a fall off that lost sight of the Lords coming and forgot?
First, from his old sins there's there is the possibility that one who has been saved actually has lost sight of the very fact that he is one of the Lords.
The solemn position to be in. But what Peter says here, that it is possible that one could get into such a position. But then you'd look at the next verse. Wherefore the rather brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure, for if you do these things, you shall never fall.
There is a going on in the good of what God has given to us in going on the good of the promises he's made to us in order that we can be in the daily enjoyment of these things. Written by a man who fell, isn't it? Yeah. Don't know. Have you ever read any of your books? Very beautiful things. And he was used, greatly used of the Lord.
Eastern states at one time, but he lost the assurance of salvation and he went out to the West Coast to get away from everything that he'd been connected with. And Mr. Heaney, you this man, and he knew what had happened.
May check out. It wasn't easy in those days to go out, maybe trip out to visit him and he put it to him one one verse.
You. You do not always. You do not only.
Assam.
How? How did it go? They only can start to cast him down from His Excellency and Mr. Europe.
Instantly that was the means of his restoration, while yet he said, I've completely forgotten that he's just been the devil all the time. He told me God himself, well, we'll have nothing to boast of when we get to glory. We can't say that it was.
There was my faithfulness, my consistency that dropped me there. For faith is the gift of God, isn't it? And Bob will keep us to the end.
As His faithfulness preserving us all, we're kept.
The inheritance is kept for us, and we're kept for the inheritance through the power of God, through faith.
Which we missed out. A very sweet thing there. I think you notice that this letter was written partly to the Saints of the senior. Well, you remember in the 16th of that Paul wanted to go to the senior to preach the gospel and the Spirit suffered enough, but he must have been very much disappointed.
When he wanted to go there, that needy field to preach the gospel. But now here Peter, the Spirit of God had just worked for Peter to do instead of Paul. And so Paul, no doubt, as Peter speaks of Paul, so doesn't Paul spoke of Peter.
That he had done the work that he had so long to do himself.
For salvation ready to be revealed in the last time, the Spirit of God would never forget for a moment that the coming of the Lord is not at hand.
It's always immediate hope before the believer. Although Peter doesn't think of the Lords coming except in the second epistle, The Morning Star rising in your heart, Peter has more of a thought of the Kingdom before him.
But.
He were there only writers and if instructive to go over the writings of the different inspired writers like James and and like Jude and.
4th Peter and Paul and John. They all have the immediate prospect of the Lord's soon coming before them.
So here this inheritance is ready to be revealed. Everything is ready. The one who has accomplished redemptions work, defeated Satan, and brought in forgiveness and salvation. He's already wearing the crown.
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He's crowned with glory and honor, the mighty victor over all the.
Efforts of the enemy to defeat the purposes of God. So now there's nothing between us and that place seems that lies before us.
Fulfilled the coming of the Lord to bring us there. It's ready to be revealed.
And it's in God's due time that it will be revealed that it has been the last.
Time ever since the Lord was here. Because God has nothing further to offer. You're right brother, divide them. Although it stretched out a long time and yet it was the immediate hope of the apostles in their day.
Paul says we which are alive and remain, he doesn't put himself among walls that will be sleeping in the dust of the earth, that among those that would be expected to be alive when the Lord came in the air.
Because it not.
Long-suffering of God that has delayed or put off the coming of our Lord Jesus till the present time, not ruling that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. I like to think too, that in addition to that wonderful long-suffering.
You and I needn't be marking time in the meantime, shall I say, and I don't refer merely to opportunities to present the gospel, but to learn something of the heart of God in wondrous love that we would have missed had we been called away, shall we say, immediately after our being brought to know the Lord. I remember visiting with dear old Mrs. Johnson in Smith Ball. Some here knew her pretty well.
She spent many years in a wheelchair.
And I was returning one day from the funeral of a sister 95 years of age, called in to see Mrs. Johnson on the way home. She was in her 80s. She said, have you come from Mrs. Andersons funeral? Yes. And why didn't the Lord stop on the way by and take me to now? She's with the Lord and I'm still here in my wheelchair. Well, I said, you mean that Missus Anderson is going to be with the Lord longer than you are?
She said of course.
Well, I said, Mrs. Johnson, could you put a few weeks under one end of eternity and make it a little longer? No, she said, I'll be there just as long as Miss Sanders. And I said that's true. And in the meantime, every day and every week that you and I are left here is not simply marking time while his long-suffering lingers, but opportunities to learn his patience, his love, his comfort, his encouragement in ways that we will not be able.
After we recall, I believe the thought of his long-suffering lingering is a marvelous thing, and may everyone who has a heart for the gospel feel it very deeply in the means I'm what a privilege it is to bear his name here for a little while.
Perhaps it might be helpful for a few, I'm sure most to know it, but when it speaks of salvation as a future thing.
It's not Speaking of the salvation of our souls in the end of verse 9.
It speaks of the salvation of our souls. That's a present salvation that we have now. But this verse?
And let's see in the fifth verse where it speaks of the salvation ready to be revealed.
There is no doubt more connected with what we get in Romans eight in the eighth chapter of Romans that speaks of.
Christians waiting for the adoption to whet the redemption of the body. And it goes on to say we are saved by hope or should read in hope. Hope here is something that's assured we have the assurance of the redemption of our bodies.
We're going to be given bodies fashioned like unto our Lord's glorious body, and in view of that it says Romans 8. We are saved in hope. That's something we're waiting for, but we have the assurance of it, and that's really the salvation referred to in verse five, is it not?
How is our salvation nearer than when we believe or when we believe we got our soul faith that that salvation that you're Speaking of when we get our glorified bodies.
01:10:08
Is nearing every day we're down here and then two, isn't there the thought of being taken out of this godless, evil, sinful world that is hastening on towards the judgment of God?
Getting the 5th of Rome, we shall be saved from Rock through him. I think that is we shall be kept safe. We I think that's the better reason. Not that the future, it's not a future thing. We're going to be saved, but we're kept faith day by day.
Making of that 8th chapter of Romans brings to mind just one thought wasn't commented on and that in verse four and Speaking of the inheritance, you know in this world.
People have parents who have very little of this world's goods, or relatives have very little. They don't think they have much of inheritance. There is much of an earthly inheritance to look forward to.
Those that are relatives of millionaires, why? They give a lot more thought to their inheritance.
What of an inheritance we have? I think of Romans 8. It says there in verse 17, those who are God's children were heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. My if we're, if we're God's ears, joint heirs with Christ.
What an inheritance is ours?
50 Bring before us one of the loveliest sites of the Lord Jesus Christ that we have in Scripture in the life of Joseph. And Speaking of this inheritance, again, I was meditating on just before the brothers spoke. But what is it? Is it just the fact of being in the Father's house? No, as he says, we're heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ. And that man Joseph, that one day was down to the pit. That one was a lovely type of Christ. One day he was exalted.
And he reigned over all. And who did he have alongside me? No prominence given to her, but he had a bride. Asian asked. Shared in all that glory. And so, dear one, that love that gives not as the world, but shares all it possesses with its love coheirs.