Address—Bill Prost
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Could we sing together part of hymn #25?
#25 And we'll sing the last four verses beginning at verse 4.
Eternal ages shall declare the riches of thy grace to those who with thy Son shall share.
The Sons eternal place #25 beginning at verse 4.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah.
What did you call her? Getting away with her?
Through all the joy of God.
In the heart of giving snowmobiles no more.
Umm, let's look to the Lord, our loving God and our Father, we look up to thee this afternoon.
We thank Thee for the truth of this hymn, that although we are absent as yet from that place which we can confidently call home.
Yet we rest in hope, treading the desert path.
And twice over we have referred our God and Father to Thy Holiness.
And we pray that Thou will keep us in that pathway until Thou dost call us home through Thy beloved Son.
Our Lord Jesus Christ.
But now we ask for help as we open Thy word together, praying that thou speak to each one of us through it, for we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
I don't know how many others paid real attention to the letter from this assembly that went out inviting us to the meetings, but I couldn't help but notice in their first paragraph.
A reference to the moral slide that is very prominent among us. I say us in reference to the lands in which we Live Today.
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They mentioned how that public opinion varies and the tolerance to evil.
Increases in the world that is around us.
It got me thinking a little bit about that word tolerance, and I'd like to speak somewhat of it this afternoon because I believe we get as we know everything that we need for life and godliness in Christ and through His precious word.
We hear a lot about tolerance today.
But sometimes it becomes almost a paradox, doesn't it? Because sometimes people are very tolerant of things that affect God's honor and glory, and yet on the other hand, perhaps increasingly intolerant of that which seems to affect.
Their being and their welfare.
How do we handle all that? How do we handle the tolerance in the world?
I had a conversation with a believer some time ago about something that I felt I could not tolerate.
And his answer was, well, I have learned grace over a number of years.
Hmm. How do we handle that? Our grace and holiness in contradiction to one another?
Again, let's look into the Word of God. I don't think we need to define tolerance. I think we all know what it means. It's an attitude, maybe not of acceptance, but of permissiveness and going along with something that may be contrary to what we believe or what we have been led to believe.
It's a.
An attitude of going along with that which is not exactly the same as what we are or what we would see.
And we all understand that in the world today.
But I would suggest, and although these words are not in Scripture in exactly the way I'm going to say them right at the outset, I would suggest that at least for the believer, and probably in a general way, there are two aspects of tolerance that we need to understand.
First of all, there is the tolerance of what we might call respect.
What is the tolerance of respect?
It is a tolerance that recognizes that although everyone doesn't do things exactly the way I do.
That different nationalities, different cultures, different races.
And even different people within the sphere of my own nationality and acquaintance.
Do things differently, have different outlooks on life, see things in a little different way than I do, and rather than recognizing that they are necessarily wrong and I am right?
I respect what we might call an equality of differences where I say, yes, diversity is something that exists both in the world and in the Church of God and.
God can use that.
But then there is also the tolerance of what we might call judgment.
Where perhaps I go along, at least for the moment, with something that I do not agree with.
Why? Because I have formed an opinion in my own mind that I do not like it.
No, because I have formed a judgment about it that hopefully for the believer.
Is based on the absolutes that we find in the Word of God.
Those two forms of tolerance are very important, and I believe at various times and in various ways in our lives, we all ought to exercise both of those types of tolerance.
Let's talk a little bit, first of all, about the tolerance of respect.
Turn for a verse to Acts chapter 17.
Well known verse.
Paul speaking to the intellectuals of that day in the city of Athens, the center of culture and learning of that day. And what does he say?
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Oh, I knew I might do that. But anyway, I guess it's only water.
Never mind, let's go on Acts chapter 17.
And verse.
Uh, 28.
For in Him we live and move and have our being.
As certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
For as much then as we're the offspring of God, that's the phrase I wanted.
As certain also of your own poets have said, Or rather we ought not to think that the God that is likened to gold or silver or stone, graving by art and man's device, and then going back up in the chapter a little.
Verse.
25 Middle of the verse he needeth. Thank you John, much appreciated.
Verse 25. Middle of the verse. He needeth not anything, seeing He giveth to all life and breath, and all things, and hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth.
And hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitations.
Here we see plainly in Scripture what is practiced largely at least in the Western world today.
The tolerance of respect to other races, nationalities and cultures.
God is calling His church today out of every race and culture and Kingdom and tribe.
And what happens when we come together? We are, in the words of Scripture, all one in Christ Jesus.
Remember quite a few years ago now, this was in Romania talking to a dear brother in Christ not gathered to the Lord's name, and he was telling me about how there had been real blessing among the so-called Gypsies in Romania.
And he said, yes, a lot of them are getting saved and we've even started a gypsy church.
Hmm, I said. Pardon me, but where do we read of such a thing as a gypsy church in scripture?
Well, they're so different from all of us. They're different culture and different language. And, you know, they have to have their own church.
That's not the way we find it in the Word of God.
Yes, God has made men different in this world, and we recognize that and we recognize different characteristics of different races. But it's very interesting to notice that when the early apostles and others preach the gospel, they did not attempt to change the local culture and the local practices.
Unless. Unless they conflicted with God's claims.
And then the Word of God judges every culture.
I have been in some countries of the world today where they have defended certain practices in Christianity, saying that that's our culture and that's the way we do things.
More about that when we get to the tolerance of judgment.
But there's another tolerance of respect that hits closer to home. Let's turn to Philippians Chapter 2.
And we're having to go over this a bit quickly because the address is only 45 minutes long, but we'll do our best.
Sorry.
Yes, Philippians chapter 2 and verse 3.
Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory, but in lowliness of mind. Let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own.
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Things it says here, but in the Darby it reads qualities. Look, not every man on his own qualities, but every man also on the qualities of others.
Oh, how necessary that is. God has taken a widely differing group of people. In fact, as I look around the group here this afternoon, I can scarcely think of any of you that I would know if I were not a believer.
I don't think there are any of you in this room, with maybe one or two exceptions that I would know.
If I weren't a believer.
I probably know Wally because he's my first cousin, but I might not even know him because my parents might not even have met each other if they weren't believers.
What a difference being among the people of God is. But oh, how often these differences cause difficulties, don't they? And we know what we're talking about.
How difficult? Sorry, Tim, are you trying to make a point? No. OK.
Do you want me to help or?
Do you want me to put a little more punch to it?
All right. Uh, the fact is that many times among believers, there are real difficulties there among the people of God. Why?
Because we have different personalities, different outlooks, different ways of doing things and so on, and I have been in foreign countries where these things became even more marked.
And yet, when you think about it for a moment.
Often times it's nothing really all that vital, is it? It's just a different way of doing things.
God has given us an object that supersedes all of that, and how wonderful that is the tolerance of respect.
May we all embrace that very, very fully. And you might say, well, Bill, you hardly need to say that, but we do need to say it, don't we? I can still remember, and this is probably well close to 50 years ago now. In fact, it yeah, it's 45 years ago anyway.
And at that time, and I guess it doesn't hurt to say so.
My wife and I were moving for a couple of years to the Assembly in Cuyahoga Falls, OH, where we were for two years while I took some postgraduate training in Cleveland, OH and.
I got into a conversation with my late father-in-law, Albert Hayhoe.
And he talked about how it was going to be an adjustment to go to a new assembly with brothers and sisters who, for the most part, I had not met before and whom I did not really know.
And he made a remark that I have never forgotten.
He said, you know, most of the time in my experience, when dear brethren have a falling out, he said they put a scriptural construction on it as if it's the principles of the word of God.
But he said underlying at all the real problem is that they just plain and simply do not like one another.
Ouch.
I have to say that 45 years later, his statement is true from my experience.
What is the answer? I'll just tell one story. This comes from the mouth of our late brother Eric Smith, whom some here are old enough to remember. And he told of how being in his home in Bolivia, down there in South America, and.
Forgive the racial reference. I'm only repeating what he said. And we all have racial characteristics. But he said this dear brother came into my home, a dear brother in Christ, but he was a fiery Spaniard.
All right.
Maybe some of us that have. I've got English blood and German blood in me and both have their characteristics that we could run down to, so don't anyone take that the wrong way, but this man said in so many words in Spanish referring to another brother within the sphere of his acquaintance. I just can't stand that brother.
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Whatever he did, I don't know to rub him the wrong way.
But something was radically wrong.
Well, those of us that remember Eric Smith know how.
His demeanor and his way of answering often had a calming influence on.
People who were fired up over something.
And he quietly, quietly said to that, brother, brother, I just would like you to go home, and I would like you to look at that dear brother through the eyes of Christ.
So all he said, he didn't give him a long lecture about things. He just said, You look at that brother through the eyes of Christ.
Solve the problem. It solves the problem.
Oh, the brother began to look for Christ, and that other brother that he could not stand.
And brought them together.
The tolerance of respect. Recognizing the differences.
But recognizing too that there is an object before us, and that I cannot look at any other brother or sister in Christ without seeing a quality that is better than what I have.
That is true. I can look at every other brother and sister in Christ and say there is a quality there that I wish I had more of.
It may be hard sometimes. Remember reading about a Scotsman who was very disturbed about his next door neighbor, a woman who I guess was the most irascible woman and caused him a lot of grief and so on. But she was a believer.
And he went to the local preacher. Both of them went to the same church at Gaston, complained about her and.
Oh, the preacher said she's.
One of the Lord's dear children, he said, All glorious within.
Well, the man said. I wish somebody would turn her inside out then.
He had a hard time seeing that quality that he was looking for.
I don't say that to make jokes, but the point is if we look, we will see it. Let's go on.
The tolerance of judgment.
Well, that becomes a little perhaps more more difficult.
A little more difficult.
Are we entitled to judge?
I believe we are.
I believe we are. Let's turn over to 1St Corinthians chapter 2 for a verse. We don't need a lot of verses to make the point here, and this one will do. First Corinthians chapter 2.
Verse 14.
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him.
Neither can He know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth or discerneth all things, yet He himself is judged or discerned. It could read of no man.
For who hath known the mind of the Lord, and who hath been his counselor?
But we have the mind of Christ.
I say to you and me that there are absolutes in this world because we live in a moral universe created by a moral God.
Our brethren, in writing their letter of invitation, quoted a number of verses. They quoted that verse from Malachi 3. I am the Lord, I change not.
They quoted that verse from one Peter one about the word of God that liveth and abideth forever.
Those moral absolutes do not change, and I might mention that the moral absolutes of God, the moral ways of God, do not change from 1 dispensation to the next.
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Yes, God. For example, can we use the word tolerated plural marriages in the Old Testament? But was it the mind of God? Did God change his mind when Christianity came on the scene?
No, when the Lord Jesus was questioned by the scribes and Pharisees, he said.
Because of the hardness of your hearts, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives. But from the beginning it was.
Not so.
And so there are moral absolutes and they are being set aside, and it is very important for you and me.
To be able to exercise righteous judgment.
And the judge judgment can only come from the Word of God.
What is the problem in this world today? Why do I say that to a group of believers?
Where we're addressing you as believers anyway, because that.
Attitude of tolerance to what is morally wrong.
Is in danger of creeping in among believers. And you and I live in a world where there has been a precipitous moral slide even in the last five or ten years that most of us, at least in my generation, never thought we'd live to see. And yet here it is today. It's on top of us, and we have to live and move in that scene.
And all this going on in nations that were founded at one time and still do in one sense embrace the principles of the Word of God. And yet there is a tolerance toward that which is very serious.
The tolerance of judgment.
However, I want to emphasize that that does not mean that I exercise that tolerance of judgment based on my own thoughts. It must be based on the Word of God.
And our brethren quoted those verses at the beginning of their invitation, because the Word of God is being set aside today, as if somehow it was irrelevant. And I have to say that I have heard, dear believers.
When the word of God was presented to them as governing a certain situation in our lives, set it aside by saying well yes, that's true, but and then proceed to rationalize around it because supposedly.
My situation is different.
My situation falls outside the pale of the principles of God's Word.
To quote another older brother that some of us can remember, Clifford H Brown, I can remember him well saying to us as young people remember, we are never wiser.
Then Scripture. Never wiser than scripture, but sometimes we think we are. And I won't go into detail about it, but.
The tolerance of judgment ought to be a very real thing in your mind and mind.
But if I form a judgment of on something.
There are two dangers, 2 dangers, one I have already mentioned.
That of lowering God's standard.
Let's turn over to the Psalms for a verse. Solemn. I think it's Psalm 93.
A rather important verse which is just as relevant as it was when it was written in the Old Testament, Psalm 93.
And verse 5.
Thy testimonies are very sure. Holiness, become a thine house, O Lord, forever.
And then Ephesians chapter 5.
I'm sorry, Chapter 4. Ephesians chapter 4.
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And verse 26.
Be angry and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.
Now you can take that scripture two ways, you can say, and I believe it's a wise, wise way of looking at it.
Yes, righteous anger is dangerous and don't take it to bed with you.
Don't go to bed with an unkind thought or an angry thought toward anyone in the world, no matter how you are treated.
But equally true, and this is again a Psalm back in the 7th Psalm. I think it is. It tells us.
God is angry with the wicked every day and letting the sun go down upon your wrath.
Is lower in God's standard by becoming so accustomed to a tide of evil in this world that I lose my sense of what is right and what is wrong.
That is one danger, but the other danger, which is so rampant in the Christian world today, is to look around at the tide of evil that is engulfing this world and say.
I have to fix it. I have to get out there and do something about it. America is going downhill because we're in the United States and we have people in Canada saying that about Canada, too. We have to put this country back on track.
Admirable thoughts, no doubt.
But may I say, dear brethren, that that is beneath your heavenly colleague. The Lord has made it clear that vengeance is mine. I will repace, saith the Lord, And he has made it clear that today is the day of his grace.
And in that respect, we say that God exercises the tolerance of judgment today.
Does God see what's going on in this world? Indeed he does. Is he oblivious to it? Does he lower his standard? Absolutely not.
But it is a principle, as we know with God, that He allows evil to come to its full.
Before he judges it.
Long before Israel entered into the land of Canaan, he purposed that they should go there.
But he said at one point the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.
The iniquity of those inhabitants of Canaan had to reach a zenith before the Lord would.
Step in with Israel and deal with them, and the Lord is allowing the evil in this world to increase.
We wonder sometimes how it can get any worse.
And yet it is.
But it is not our job to go in there and straighten it out.
What is our responsibility?
Oh, to call souls out of it by the grace of God.
Oh, what a privilege that is. And so I say, and I say it again because we've issued this warning before, but it's needed. so-called Reconstructionism or Covenant theology is sweeping North America today in Christian circles.
Why is that?
It's very respectable. It gives the Christian a place in this world, something he can do to straighten it out.
Get this world ready for God's Kingdom. Do something about the mess that the world is in.
It looks right on the surface.
But it's absolutely out of character.
With the dispensation that you and I are living in.
And if you and I want to be effective in this world, the tolerance of judgment is best exercised in this world by bringing in this precious book.
What does an ambassador do? He represents another country.
And he represents it by giving his countries position on something.
Right now, Canada and the United States are having a very difficult time over a new NAFTA agreement, North American Free Trade Agreement.
And neither side seems to want to budget.
The deadline was Friday to have that agreement hammered out and they couldn't reach it. They had to postpone it till next week.
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But they're doing their best to try and come to a meeting of the minds, but each one has the position of their government.
You and I cannot afford to budget, if I could say it reverently, on our government's position.
But when we give it that way, as coming from the Word of God, it carries weight and power.
The world throws out 1000 different opinions.
All because men have different ideas about things that emanate from their own thinking and their own minds, their own backgrounds, and all the rest of it.
What a wonderful thing it is if a believer can speak with the sublime, solemn authority of the Word of God, the tolerance of judgment, but at the same time.
The Clarion tones of what God's Word says.
God is tolerant today, but.
Is there intolerance that has to be brought into the picture?
Yes there is, Yes there is. We've already read that verse. Holiness becometh thine house, O Lord, forever.
What we may tolerate out in the world as believers should not be tolerated either in the local assembly or in the Christian home.
May our standards always be according to this precious book.
Yes.
It's not easy sometimes to be intolerant.
Because then we are accused of being ungracious.
How do we bring that together?
I've never forgotten William Kelly's comment on that very point.
He said if you ever get to a very sticky point in Scripture.
Where it's hard to find the answer, simply bring Christ in and the answer will be clear.
And it is clear, isn't it?
No one was more gracious than the Blessed Master as he walked this earth.
No man was more approachable, No man was more, shall we say, relevant to the wickedness around him. The publicans and sinners gladly heard him.
I just read this morning in the 7th of Luke about the woman who anointed his feet.
And the Pharisee looked down on her, because he said this man, if he were of God, would know that she is a Sinner.
Yes, she was a Sinner.
But she admitted it.
What the Pharisee didn't realize was that his heart was no better.
Yes, but on the other hand, did the Lord Jesus ever mince matters when it came to the reality of sin? No, he did not.
Did he ever compromise? No, he did not.
For example, he would go.
For a meal in a Pharisee's home. But do we ever find him in a Sadducee's home? No, we don't. Why not? They held and taught bad doctrine. The Pharisees had wrong ways. That was bad enough and the Lord condemned it. But bad doctrine was far worse. And the Lord never graced the threshold of a Sadducees home. The Lord Jesus was faithful.
And yet gracious at the same time.
Can you and I do that? Can we exercise, on the one hand, the tolerance of respect toward that?
Which is diverse in this world and diverse in the Church of God, and yet at the same time exercise the tolerance of judgment.
And at the same time, the intolerance within the sphere of the House of God, within the sphere of our own lives, exercise that intolerance to that.
Why? Because it bothers me. That's not the point. If I bring myself into the picture, I am lowering the standard to what I think and the way I look at things. It must be according to.
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God's standard and for His honor and glory.
Her time is nearly gone. But let me look at one last verse. We want to end on a note, a right note. Turn to second Peter.
Second, Peter is a very solemn epistle.
It brings before us the government of God, largely in the world, and the awful end that is going to be for those who reject the gospel of the grace of God.
Very, very solemn book.
But what does Peter say at the end in the 18th verse, second Peter 3 and verse 18?
But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
To him the glory, both now and ever. Amen.
Why does he say that? He has been telling them several times over.
To beware lest they fall.
To beware lest they give up being LED away by the air of the wicked, he says.
Verse 14. Seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent, that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot and blame.
And unblameable and blamable and blameless, and so on and back further in the chapter, he says.
Verse 11. Seeing that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be?
In all holy conversation and godliness, why does he end on the note of grace?
All because, as we've often said before, grace is the strongest force.
To keep you and me in the pathway of faithfulness and holiness to the Lord.
A sense of grace. Why is it that way? Because a sense of grace in my soul as it deepens, makes me realize on the one hand.
That my old sinful self is at least as bad and may be worse.
Than everybody else's and that I am capable of doing everything that I see either out there.
Or among fellow believers, I am capable of it and the only reason that I am not doing it.
It's not because I am keeping myself, but because of the grace of God and the keeping power of Christ.
Secondly, a sense, a deepening sense of the grace of God makes me realize.
More and more, the price that was paid for my redemption and how much my blessed Savior suffered in order that I might not merely be saved from an eternity in hell, but that I might be brought into such blessing. As one brother used to say, every Christian blessing is a mountain peak beyond which even God Himself could not go.
A sense of grace in my soul.
And that sense of grace will keep me.
Will it keep me from sin? Yes, it will.
But it will have another effect too. It will make my heart tender.
Not only to an outside world that is on the way to destruction. It will keep my heart tender to a fellow believer who has failed.
It will make me realize that but for the grace of God, I could at least have done that, and probably much worse.
And it will make my heart tender, so that in my heart, yes, I will have no sympathy with the sin. I will have no lowering of God's standard.
No lessening of that judgment that I make of evil in the sight of God.
But at the same time, there will be the recognition that the grace of God not only saves, not only keeps, but also restores. We had that before us this morning, but it doesn't hurt to mention it again. God's restoring grace is a wonderful thing, and God delights to do it.
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Let's pray.
Our loving God and our Father, we have talked about something.
In very brief terms.
We have talked about.
Thy unchanging standards.
And we have talked.
About how that thou dost go on with this poor world.
On the one hand, until the iniquity is full, and on the other hand until thy house is full.
We bless Thee for that. We pray that Thou wilt give us grace to exercise.
Tolerance.
Of respect, tolerance of judgment, and intolerance of that which would stain the name and glory of Thy beloved Son, which would bring disgrace upon thee, our God and Father, and what is due to thee.
We commend Thy word to thee and ask all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.