Vestal Conference: 1996
Table of Contents
Colossians 1:1-8
Reading
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Colossians, Chapter One.
All the apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God and Timotheus our brother.
The Saints and faithful brethren in Christ, which our philosophy grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Praying always for you since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and other love which He had for all the things, for the hope which is laid out for you in heaven.
Drug he heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel, which has come unto you as it is in all the world, and bringeth forth fruit as it does also when you since the day he heard of it, and knew the grace of God and truth.
As he also learned of Epifra, our dear fellow servant, who is for you a faithful minister of Christ, who also declared unto us your love and the Spirit for this 'cause we also, since today we heard it, do not need to pray for you. And the desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God.
Strengthened with Almighty, according to His glorious power unto all, patience and long-suffering with joyfulness. Given thanks unto the Father, which hath made us need to be partakers of the inheritance of the Saints in life, who have delivered us from the power of darkness and have translated us into the Kingdom of His dear Son, in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sin, who is the image of the invisible God.
The first born of every creature, or by Him were all things created. These are in heaven, these are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrown, or dominions, or principalities, or power. All things were created by Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the Church, who is the beginning, the first born from the dead, that in all things He might have the preeminence.
For at least the Father, that in him should all fullness dwell.
That haven't made peace through the blood of his cross by Him to reconcile all things unto himself. By him, I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven. And you that were sometimes alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked work, yet yet now has He reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you wholly and unblameable and unreprovable in his sights, if you continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the godful.
Would he have heard?
So which was priest to every creature which is under heaven, whereof I fall, and need a minister who now rejoiced in my sufferings. For you can fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh, for His body state, which is the Church.
Where Albine may administer according to the dispensation of God, which is given to me for you to fulfill the word of God. Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now has made manifest to his thing, to whom God would make known. What is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles? Which is Christ in you the hope of glory whom we preach, warning every man that heating every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.
Where I'm due, I also labor driving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily.
It has been said that in season one we have the highest truth, and in a sense that's true, the place of blessing that we are brought into. But in Colossians, in another sense we have the highest because it brings before us that Christ is all and in all.
It's the glory of his person that is particularly brought before us in Colossians as the head of the body, the church. And Mr. Darby translates it in the third chapter. For our translation is Christ is all and I'll he says Christ is everything. And that's what we need to learn, brethren. And if we learn that and lay hold of it in our souls by the Lord or everything else into its right place, our difficulty is when other things come in between and Christ is not given his rightful place.
00:05:01
Told me the result of these meetings and reading this chapter give us to give Him that place that is rightfully He is in our hearts and in our lives.
And I just like to also say that it begins in this chapter by showing the wonderful standing that we are brought into in Christ, in salvation, and then goes on to develop the truth of the Church because we need to enjoy the knowledge of our full salvation. And then we can enter into this wonderful place of nearness near to Christ as members of His body.
It's helpful to see what the impossible is trying to do in this epistle. He says in the season, he's telling the believers there what they are to Christ. And in this epistle their hearts are wandering a little bit and they're looking at other things. And so he's bringing their hearts back to go to their hearts, to bring Christ before their hearts, that Christ would be the object for their heart.
That was the tendency and we can see that it is fiscal the 2nd chapter in the first verse.
Or I would that she knew what great conflict I have for you, and for them that are at latest here, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh. And then in the last chapter he tells them to the 13 first for a bears and record, that he had a great deal for you and them that are in latest years. And then in Hierophilus these assemblies were not far from each other. And in the 16th verse he said, And when this epistle is read among you causes it all to be read.
And the church is the latest. Likewise, you read the epistle from later here. I think Mr. Darby, that is no, that is simple. That was athletic and he suggested maybe that would be a Pitbull to be a reason. But the point was that the need that there were similar latest amines after the tradition to the customs of the lay people. And so they got their eyes off of Christ and he's trying to turn their eyes back to Christ. If you want a wonderful object for faith we have.
In the second verse, let's be careful that we don't make two classes out of the people of God, the Saints. And then there's the faithful brethren. That's not correct, and it reads in the AMD translation to the Holy and Faithful brethren. It's true of the two things were true of the brethren.
No, even if you take the reading thing, uh, it isn't that some are Saints, uh, and some are faithful brethren. It's uh.
Really characteristic of all the Lord's people, isn't it? And that's not a question. We, we look at ourselves and say, well, holy and faithful brethren and far from it. But uh, this is looking at it in grace, isn't it? As God, uh, viewed them as holy and faithful brethren in Christ Jesus. I just say that because there's a great tendency and I heard a man not too long ago belabor the point that.
There are Saints and then there are faithful brethren and you have to, uh, hope that you're part of the faithful brethren as well as part of this thing.
As to our standing, we are all in that place.
Faith and, uh, faithful brethren, that is brought into that position by faith. It's by faith we stand. So there we are. And uh, we're holy and then we're told in faith and faith and to walk has become a thing. That's the practical side of it, but we need to see what our standing is first.
And enjoy that then the exhortation to walk worthy of the calling for what we are called for, as we have here worthy of God unto all pleasing.
That's important that it's now the officials are written and said he sent before them, they're standing and he brings practical exhortation at the end of the pitfall. And generally speaking, the world has a religion of somebody said a few to get and that's not Christianity. We've been placed in reposition by faith in Christ and therefore there are practical exertations that flow from that, but we need to be clear as to what our standing is.
You have that expression, Oh brother, any price does that bring before us in our privilege, and the expression sometimes in the Lord for our responsibility?
00:10:16
I just mentioned too, it says by the will of God, and it's good for us, for us, and to realize that the will of God in the heart of God are the source of all our blessings. It's not our will, but the will of God. We think of a back in the past eternity, God had eternal purposes and that was that His Son should have the central place.
The the head of all things, and there would be a people associated with him brought into that place of blessing, and we need to remember this.
And originally I would enjoy it. Every believer in this room can say the will of God concerning me is that I would be brought into the enjoyment of the fullest blessing that is in the heart of God for me. And that's the work of the Spirit. Now that's what the Word of God brings before us, that we might know it. And the work of the Spirit is to bring us into the enjoyment of it, that the love of God would be shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given unto us.
I noticed after the greeting in verse two that.
Paul says that he gives thanks to God, to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ continually.
And praying for them.
And I sometimes wonder, brethren, why it is that we get so critical of one another? I think we've stopped giving signs for the same. I found in my own heart what a blessing it is to be able to think of the Saints and think of something you can thank the Lord for. Thank them. Thank the Lord that they are His.
And it guards our hearts against developing a critical spirit. I just think that this is put here for our instruction, brother, that we might learn.
To thank the Lord for those Saints that God has privileged us to not.
I think that's a very good thought. Years ago, the certain brother was always, uh, it was another brother that was a thorn in his side and he kept condemning him and, and so someone said to him, have you ever prayed for him?
That was a that was a a touch to his conscience. Have you ever prayed for him? He said if you pray for him, you will see him in a different perspective. You see him as God sees him. So pray for him. Very good.
For them, we'll see the blessing that they are. David prayed that the Lord would require him. Good for Jimmy's railing on him. And the Lord, I believe, did that. And we pray and thank the Lord for the one that perhaps you think irritating us. This blessing will come out for us and for them too.
The only failure of an Old Testament St. recorded in the New Testament is what we have in Romans where it says Elias made intercession for God to God against Israel, not for them, but against them. And that's the only failure recorded in the New Testament of an Old Testament claim. We should indeed pray for the Saints, never against them. We may feel things false, felt things very deeply.
But he always interceded for the same, didn't he?
I remember saying your brother one time, he was falling into that kind of.
Period. I even I am left alone.
That when Elias got to that point.
Lord said I can't use you anymore, don't annoy Elisha prophet in your stead and took him up. And I believe that if we lose that spirit of praying for our brethren and thanking the Lord for them, I believe we're finished as far as earthly ministry is concerned. Now God is gracious. I realize that the brother I mentioned it too is still active in ministries, but.
00:15:13
Uh, it it strikes me that.
What happened here is that news came of the work of God in the heart of these Colossians.
And since Paul heard of it, he didn't stop praying for them and thanking God for them. And I think that's an important thing. So often I hear about a work and I, I thank the Lord for it, come back from Argentina with my heart full with thinking about mistakes and thanking the Lord for them. And in two months, I've forgotten even a lot of their names that I was praying for the first week. I don't know if anybody else has that problem, but I do.
And.
It's, it's sad because.
I know that Paul here didn't stop.
He prayed for them. Now, I used to think that it was against the rules to have a prayer list. I don't think that anymore because I think the Apostle Paul must have had a very large prayer list. I'm not talking about you got to be formal about it. But not everybody has been. I realize it more and more as I get older. No, not everybody has a good memory. And you begin to forget names and people and and things that you really want to present before the Lord.
Now the word is a way of reminding us about it, maybe through a sad circumstance that we hear about or whatever, but it should be a fresh daily exercise to pray for the different ones that we've heard about. Now we all pray today about Mozambique. How many of us will be praying about the work in Mozambique 3 months from now? When the Lord took Michael Walsh be home, everybody was praying for Theresa.
But are we still praying for Teresa Washy? She still needs it, doesn't she? And there's a lot to thank the Lord for in her, in her pathway. I just mentioned that as a practical thing rather than not. Maybe nobody else has this problem, but I get four months away from an event or, uh, people and.
They're out of my mind. There's new things I'm praying for and, uh, I think it's nice to keep remembering that they still need the, the prayer, the enemy is still busy and the prayer that Paul prayed for them was a very specific prayer. If you go on further here, you'll see that, uh, that, uh, if you go down to first, uh.
10/11.
Uh, you see very specific prayers, you know, we have a tendency to say blessed Harry and.
Well, what does that mean by tiring? Uh, it's nice that the word request hiring Mary or whatever, but I believe there are specific needs that the Lord makes us aware of and goals that need to be prayed for, things that need to be presented to the Lord.
Sexual circumstances that our brethren are passing through.
I'm very interested in one of the things. Of course, it doesn't mean that we're not aware of things that need to be corrected. Paul was very aware of this situation there in Colossi and he prayed particularly. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit and so on. And so there are particular things and it isn't contrary to the mind of the Lord that.
We've mentioned all things and feel them and exhort in connection with them, pray in connection with them too. I say that because what we love all the same, umm, we're aware of certain needs, help the president are aware of needs that they see a million praise especially for them. And so we have that side of things that we don't make intercession against the faith. So we do notice things that require special prayer.
An intersection the Lordy on the with dear Peter, he said, I have praised for thee that thy faith fail not. He saw Peter treading a slippery path, and he was perfect in all things.
00:20:06
I think so. I'm just a lot of things, doesn't it?
1St Corinthians 13 says love seeketh not her own. And the big thing is, is that, you know, we need to, we need to see them as one instead from the top of the rock with the vision of the Almighty. And I really believe rather divine love does that.
Receive God's people and and then we can pray, I believe, for those specific things because we see them as He sees them. And that's so very important. You read that chapter and what does it say? Love never fails.
And if our hearts are really occupied with the love of God, I think our prayers are going to be specific for things that need to be, need to be said, need to be asked for credit growth.
Also, I mean their colostomy. He saw faith, he saw love.
And you saw and it's good for us to remember that that these three things fit in the the reading through the epistles to find Paul usually grouping those things together. Faith, hope or faith, love and hope. And I think the three things are brought out here, as it says, and we give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Pray all for you. Pray for whom since we heard of your faith.
In Christ Jesus.
And of the love which you have to all the things, and for the whole food is laid up for you in heaven. Beautiful, isn't it? To think that if you look back at that faith in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and love goes out to those around, as he says here, we're off the earth. The love for the hope which is laid up in heaven, whereof you heard before the word of truth, and the love which you have to All Saints.
And then that hope of the soon coming Lord. Well, are there gonna be any fault there? Do we need any prayers and glory?
No, I think he's calling our attention to the fact that if Christ is the object, if he is a, if he is truly our life, then we're gonna be directing our thoughts to the Lord Jesus, to God our Father, for the Saints of God.
With homework suspenders, countless ages of eternity. Very interesting.
Just taking the measure of that love is brought up naturally in first Peter one, isn't it? And loved one another first Peter one and verse 22.
They, uh, purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren. See that you love one another with a pure heart fervently. I was thinking of that verse, the first part of that we're seeing. You have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit. That's important, isn't it? While we're living in the good of enjoyment of Christ in our souls walking in the truth then.
This other follows through, doesn't it? Allow this manifest and then it gives us the measure with a pure heart improvement.
That's like I mentioned too in the second verse.
Is exhortation and almost all the pistols that are to an assembly raised beyond the UNT from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
If we remember that we ourselves are the objects of grace and grace is the undeserved favor of God is not one of us in this room, but if we got what we deserved, it would be eternal judgment. We're not one bit better. It's only what grace has done for us. And if we live in the sense of that, so he says grace be unto you. And I believe, brethren, that in the measure in which we appreciate grace, in that measure there is peace.
Not only peace with God, as long as the Sinner is looking in for feelings or feeling that he has to do something in himself, he's he never finds peace, peace with God. But when he rests entirely upon the work of Christ and the salvation is totally undeserved. It's by grace alone that he has peace with God. And isn't it true also in our practical circumstances of life?
That if we ourselves are walking in the enjoyment of grace, that every favor that we have had since we are saved is all undeserved. It's pure grace. And then when difficulties arise, we don't say, why did this happen to me? I thought I deserve something better than this. Instead of this, we recognize that all God sways with us are undeserved in the goodness toward us. And this is what gives us peace in the midst of.
00:25:30
UN shall I say, unpleasant circumstances that come in our lives.
We are peace because we know that you know a God of love who is abounded toward us in his grace, and now grace in the enjoyment of grace has to salvation. And as to our floss, since we are saved, it's all undeserved, and that gives us peace in the midst of difficult circumstances.
When our brother Charles was reading about the love to all those things, I was thinking how easy it is for our hearts to become sectarian in love and how careful we need to be that that doesn't happen now. I have no doubt the Lord has told us to have passed. It involves the being apart from many of our brethren in a practical sense.
But does our love flow out to them?
When you hear somebody use the name of Christ, does it warm your heart and do you love them because of it? I think that's an important thing, and I feel the need in my own soul to be kept in that.
Uh, in that spirit that the Lord might.
Increased my love towards those even that I can't talk with. In fact, sometimes I was just remarking to my wife about some Christians I met a couple of weeks ago. I said, you know, I'm very, very thankful that I'm going to be an eternity with those dear ones, even though we don't walk together here.
But I'm also glad the Lord has called me.
To a path where I can carry out the truth of God.
You see, that's the thing, we sometimes become very narrow in our affection towards the Lord's people.
And the Lord has a way of, of, uh, admonishing us about that. Here is the love to all the Saints.
And that's not a sentimental thing. That's a very real love, isn't it?
It's not sentiment, it's just not, uh, going up and throwing your arms around and kissing them and everybody's standing up and hold hands together and that sort of thing. That's much more than that. Judas did that. Yes, yes, I was thinking too, Uh, brother Richard, love is not just a word.
It's an exercise of heart.
We use the word all the time. We're all I love. Do we really love you? The first thing the search is the heart, doesn't it? Where is my heart? What is my affection for that individual? Are those those ones that may be in the wrong path? We, we can't go along with them, but we certainly can love them. That's a fine line, isn't it? And that line means that we've got to be near to the Lord Jesus himself to see his.
Uh, his love, which was an unrequited love. He did not require something from us. His love sold out to us when we were so unloved.
Did they say that the uh.
One and the two are brought together. The fact of it and the enjoyment of it in John chapter 15 and verse 9.
As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you. Continue ye and my love. That's an absolute, unconditional love. As a Father hath loved me, the Father loved the Son perfectly. And he said so have I loved you. That's unconditional. That's grace and grace alone.
But now the uh, 10th of 11 First, bring the practical side of it, if also the word if, if he keeps my commandments, he shall abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things have I written unto you, have I spoken unto you that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full? That's the practical side of it. Let's put it in a simple way. We understand that in family relationships.
00:30:25
If you're a father, you love everyone of your children. You love the most disobedient and rebellious child. You love that child because he is your child and you love him. But that child doesn't enjoy your love. If he self will, he perhaps will say, I don't think my father loves me as much as somebody else because he's not walking in your will. He self will. And so if we're going to walk in the enjoyment of that unchanging love, there needs to be obedience. There needs to be that walking in communion with the Lord.
And then as it says, our joy will be full. No human love is perfect, but the love of God is so perfect, so wonderful. It's like a vast ocean. You can never, never measure it, but it's toward us present, and it's toward everyone in this room. And if I'm not enjoying it, it's my fault, not the fault of the heart of God. That's unchanging. And said that obedience and.
Submission are the healing principles of Christianity.
Why are there so much? Why is there so much hatred and, uh, diversity? Because the love isn't there.
So submission and obedience are the healing principles of Christianity, and I believe it's something to take into consideration, isn't it, that we might be found walking in that manner?
Is it not as cool on earth either that can't know in that kitchen work those things better, you know?
That's that's a great thing. I'm thinking the the second Peter chapter one, uh, before we turn there, I'd just like to look at the third chapter of the Colossians and the expectation in there.
First step 12 put on there for is the elective God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercy, kindness, humbleness of mind there.
Interesting point. Meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another and forgiving one another, that any man have a quarrel against any. Even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. Verse 14 And above all these things, notice that put on charity, which is a bond of perfectness. There it is. So we have to grow up in these things. I got saved, but I have to grow up in these things.
And let's turn over now to Second Peter chapter one.
Uh, let's start here from verse 5.
Second Peter chapter one and verse five. And beside this, given all diligence, head to your face virtue and to virtue knowledge and to knowledge, temperance and to temperance, patience and the patience, godliness, and the godliness, brotherly kindness, and the brotherly kindness, charity. For if these things be in you and abound, they make you that he shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But.
See that lack of these things is blind and cannot see a far off has forgotten that he was purged from his old skin. Wherefore the rather brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, he shall never fall. For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But thinking too of of the end there of first Corinthians chapter 12. What does it say It says Speaking of the spiritual gifts it says.
And yes, show I am to you are more excellent way. And what is it? It's divine love, isn't it?
One time I was challenged on that verse and mentioned in the 13th Business Love Never failed and.
This man, I don't know whether he doesn't think he was large, he said. It does fail. Look at all the breakups, look at all the all the divorces, look at all the animosity that man is going through.
00:35:02
I said love never fails.
And you looked at me and I said, you know why? Because God's love, not to say that man fails, but God's love will never fail. Never. He's not turned aside because of the wickedness of man's heart. It's still God's love is still there.
That's how the apostles are heart attacked him because that's where he is. That was in John 15 and in the chapter first. If you just read in the first Peter. We also find it on our chapter in connection with our standing in the second verse of state and faithful brethren. But when it comes to a possible state in the 22nd verse, 21St verse, 22nd verse, first chapter in the body is blessed reconciled.
Through death to present you wholly and unblameable and unreprovable. The land of sight, if you continue interface ground is settled. So again, it brings in our responsibility. The Lord doesn't change because love doesn't change.
We have to continue in these things.
Speaking of that expression, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.
We have a very.
Hard semantic problem in our minds with the word host.
Immediately we think there's doubt in connection with it.
If I say to you, I hope that next Tuesday we're gonna head up to Saranac Lake that has doubts connected with it, A lot of doubt because I may get sick or my wife might get sick or, umm, the car might break down or the piece might go up instead of the whole family's sick. Don't come. Uh, there's many things that are doubtful about it. But hope in Scripture, and this is something we ought to take firmly into our souls. Hope in Scripture is deferred, certainly.
It's deferred certainly because it doesn't depend on us or on any circumstances. It depends on God. That's why in Hebrews 6 it says we hope we have as an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast.
Hope can be an anchor.
Yes, because it's God who does the the doing Christ has entered in for us, and therefore our hope is an anchor, the grip, the rock. And there's nothing doubtful about it. I just say that because I think in general our minds are accustomed to think of hope with a doubt connected with it.
Umm, are you going to go to the Sunday School picnic tomorrow? I hope.
What do you mean by that? You mean there's a doubt? You might not. But if you say you're going to be in heaven, I hope to be there and I will be there because that hope is dependent on God, doesn't depend on me. He is faithful who is promised. So I think that's important to get a hold of it. I just stress that especially some of our young people will get a hold of that concept in their minds. Hope.
In Scripture is a deferred certainty. It's something we don't have yet.
Why does the man hope for it if he has it?
But the hope we have has no doubt connected with it whatsoever. That hope is reserved up there for us, and we're kept down here for it. This is a beautiful good thing, that.
Whether whether it's faith, whether it's love, or whether it's hope.
Where did we get it? Who gave it to us?
Even the faith to believe we've given you a God.
And God's love has been important to you. Put in your heart, and the hope of glory is before us. As you mentioned, those verses in Hebrews 6, I believe, are very, very good verses. Our hope is there. Either it's an anchor of the soul and it's the person of Christ business. Can anything happen to him? Can that hope be turned aside in any way? Never, never.
It's all God, isn't it? And what he wants us to do is to lay hold of this.
Embrace it as we find in, uh, that's, I think it's Thessalonians, the love of the truth. Or is it Timothy, the love of the truth? Make it good to your own soul. I'll say, well, that's the truth and I believe it. That's not enough. We should embrace the truth and make it good to our souls. Well, then those three things, faith, hope and love, The question is where they are centered.
00:40:26
If I have faith in my fellow man that he's going to do something, that's faith in man. I may disappoint me, I may have love towards another person, but something may happen. And if it's not divine love, activity may spoil the enjoyment of that love, and so is the hope. So the words are properly used with uncertainty whenever they have to do with man, but whenever they have to do with God, then there is absolute certainty. Does God's love ever change?
I love you with an everlasting love. Having loved his own, which were in the world, He loved them unto the end. And so with the hope that we have been Speaking of when it's a man, why there is an uncertainty. You may not be able to fulfill what he promised, but everything that matters in God that is pure and certain. And so whether it's faith or hope or love, if it's connected with man, there's uncertainty.
I was connected with God then there's absolute certainty the eternal God is thy rescued, and underneath are the everlasting arms.
So very important to see that because we live in a day and age, you know, where people have a tendency to look at God through circumstances. And ourselves were guilty of that too. And somebody had said when we look at God through circumstances, we're really acting in unbelief.
What we need to do is we need to look beyond the circumstances, so to speak, the second causes and see the one who has ordered everything. Sometimes in the shaking of our world, you know, we turn and and we realize that it's the Lord who is shaking it, that our confidence, you know, might be in him and not in ourselves or in anyone else, but in the living God instead, who gives us rich, we all think to enjoy.
Where do we hear about this? Oh, I think it's important to see here in this verse, verse five that we heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel. It isn't something that came out of somebody's imagination. We've been enjoying second Peter in our readings in Mount Tabor and, uh.
We've just specially been enjoying that. We have not followed cunningly devised fables. Then there'd be no UN, no certainty at all if it was a cunningly devised fable. But we heard about it in the word of the truth of the gospel, The word of the truth of the gospel. If you're resting on experience, forget it. There's no place to rest. And, and the sad thing is that thousands and thousands of living Christians are resting on experience today.
Rest on the on the word of the truth of the gospel. God's word is reliable. I know some of objected to that little hymn of the Bible stands like a rock undaunted meets the raging storms of time. I want to tell you it's one of my favorites. Uh, it's pages burned with the truth eternal and they glow with the light supply.
Bible stands of the hills may tumble, it will firmly stand on the earth shall crumble. I will plant my feet on its firm foundation for the Bible stands, It's the word of God that gives assurance to our souls. And uh, there's been a tendency to take the emphasis off the word of God and put it on to experience. That's a very shaky place to rest because our experiences are subject to many influences.
Other than the Word of God. But if you're resting on the Word of God, what can you shake it? Nothing can shake it. It's a rock. It's the word of the truth of the gospel.
Someone has said that Colossians brings this the positive side of the gospel. Although Paul was writing to the Colossians, there was a there was a problem there. They were they were going a little bit into heresy. They were turning away. They were not holding the head. And so I think it's beautiful. As you mentioned here at the end of that fifth verse, notice the opening of the sixth verse.
00:45:01
The word of the truth of the Gospel, which is come unto you.
Every child of God hears come unto you.
And also in the world that has the world received it? No, the world has rejected it. Does that take away from the truth of the gospel? No, it does not. It says here, which is come unto you as it is in all the world. Now notice the next clause and bring it forth root. God is looking for fruit in each one of our lives and the only way that we can bear fruit. Someone has said true fruit is what our affections are for the person of Christ before God.
True fruit. Repeat that charster. That's nice. A true fruit is our affections for the person of Christ before God. That's what truth would be. That's what God is looking for. And I think of it here. He says and bringeth forth proof as it does also in you, since the day he heard of it. And know the grace of God and truth. Well, it's an assured thing, isn't it? Beautiful and beautiful, precious truth.
I believe there's an emphasis here too, laid out for you in heaven, not on earth, because very much of Christendom is involved in world government, taking part in big movements to try and improve the conditions of the world, and that they feel that Christianity is intended to do this here in this world. Well, in a certain sense it may have that effect, but that isn't what our hope is. Our hope is laid up in heaven for heaven. We have to expect that things in this world are going to get worse and worse. The world is going to ripen for the judgment of God.
There's no use painting the sinking ship. It's going down. But we have this whole thing in our blessings are all heavenly, not particularly brought out here and collage and so much as in Ephesians. Ephesians were seated in heavenly places, blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies, but we're still here on earth, umm, in Colossians. But our hope and ours, our brother's been saying it's sure uncertain hope, no doubt about it. It's not here.
Hello Snoopy. Disappointed if we see the breakdown of things in this world and shall I say with sadness, even among the people of God. The last state of the church is not like the day of Pentecost. But the hope is laid up for us in heaven and we can enjoy these things and we can seek to encourage one another as we look at what we have in Christ and walk in the enjoyment of it. Rather not so important for us and that will enable us to go on an evil day.
I mentioned that because it is quite surprising to see how much of, uh, Christian effort is put into, uh, improving the world and trying to stop the, uh, course of evil that's going on. What they need is the gospel. It's the power of God unto salvation. When they believe it, they won't be improving the world. At least that won't be their effort. It will have some effective improvement, but that isn't the effort. The effort is to bring sinners to Christ. They might know salvation.
And then have a hope laid up for them in heaven, which they're in the enjoyment and good up.
You mentioned the fact that the evil surgeon said, my Lord, the latest was coming and began to beat the men's servants. I was thinking of why were the children of Israel 400 years in Egypt? Because the iniquity of the Amorite was not yet full. And so we may try to restrain them in the progress of evil in the world. But it really is until the full manifestation of it is that that was why the children of Israel were in Egypt in that last period of time because.
Evil is not God doesn't judge a thing until it's right, and so it really has a practical effect of trying to set the world straight is really practically is delaying the Lord's coming.
It only magnified his grace when you stop and think that here we are in 1996 right down at the close and every day that the Lord doesn't come in just one more one more statement to this world in grace. This world is responsible to accept and and to believe that which God has set forth in connection with the person of his son. But I I just thinking of the grace of God in that way.
If it's, if it's even possible to turn back the hands of time that the center might be saved, God would even do that. Absolute confidence in the grace of God in that way. And uh, but it's wonderful to see that every day that goes by just one more statement to this world of his love and grace be seeking the Sinner to come. I love second Peter chapter 3 long-suffering to us word not willing that any should perish, but all should come to repentance.
00:50:16
I'll prepare the unbelievers too. We must through much tribulation enter into the Kingdom of God, he said. He doesn't say get saved and your life will run smoothly and everything will go wonderfully. No, He said, we must through much tribulation enter into the Kingdom of God. This is not our rest. We're not to expect it. So Lord said to the disciples in the world, he shall have tribulation, but be a good cheer. I have overcome the world.
And if these difficulties turn our hearts heavenward, make us enjoy our heavenly portion, the Lord, But then they're used to God for a divine purpose. But let us not be weary in well doing. There is a service for us to perform, but it's not hating the ship. It's telling sinners that there is a light bulb. There is an escape from the judgment, and it provided, it's a full and free salvation. It's a great salvation to whosoever will.
Seems, uh, interesting here to note that the Lord had used other than the Apostle Paul for the blessing of these people.
Paul doesn't say, well, that's not my work, I won't get involved in it at all. There is a sense in which one doesn't build on another man's foundation, and that's a biblical principle too. But I believe that as a true servant of Christ, Paul rejoiced in whatever work God was doing.
And this dear man, Mephipurous, a fellow servant of Paul's, was for them a faithful minister of Christ. That's an expression that just blows my mind. I just think about it and I think of how unfaithful I am. And I think, wouldn't it be nice if that could be said, a faithful minister of Christ? Does that mean that apricots never made any mistakes? I don't think that's it. I think he went on faithful in what was given to him to do.
In the service. That's what ministry means, ministering Christ to these dear ones. And the fruit of it was.
This company of Christians in Colossae, the as the assembly in Colossae, uh.
And, uh, it's nice that, uh, I prefer it's not only ministered to them, but he carried the news of the work of God in their hearts to fall and told him about it. And, uh, he said, Paul, you want to see they're loving the Spirit, how God has worked in that little company there. And, uh, there's real love in the Spirit there. What does that stir and fall?
Jealousy. Envy. No.
It says verse 9 for this cause also. Since the day we earned it, we had ceased to pray for you.
And then he outlines what is specific prayers were.
Now just let your mind go to some place.
Near or far where God has worked and, uh, you've heard about the work of God?
The steer ones over there. Mozambique. When shall we forget about them now?
No, we want to pray for them, don't we? We've, uh, in our prayers, we kind of emphasize heights, I think because we know Heinz. But, uh, you must not forget Lineo either. Uh, whether the worst son-in-law, who, uh, is a faithful man of God and I believe, uh, has a real desire for those Christians. What are we going to pray for, for them? Look at us that they might be filled with the knowledge of his will.
What a wonderful prayer.
That they might be filled with the knowledge of His will. Sometimes we kind of narrow in His will in our minds to being gathered on scriptural ground. That's part of His will. But let's not think that's all of His will. His will is all that He's expressed for us in His Word. His will is that we might walk in a holy path.
That we might walk separate from all the evil around us. That's part of his will too, isn't it?
Beautiful. The thing is apartheid. He must have been a very outstanding, uh, person because it says in our verse, as he also learned of Epipress, our dear fellow servant, who is for you a faithful minister of Christ. I'm just turning over to the 4th chapter what was part of his ministry.
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4th chapter and the 12Th verse. Epiphone, who is one of you, a servant of Christ.
Deluded, you always laboring.
Fervently for you in prayers, that you may stand perfect and complete in the will of God. Was God gonna answer his prayers? Indeed he was because he stood firm in the truth of God. He was a man of prayer. He just didn't go out and say, well I've got to get everybody saved and the whole world is going to get saved. Didn't say that. He was a man of prayer. He prayed and God answered his prayers. He gave us verse 13, two. So if you don't mind.
For I bear him record that he hath a great deal for you, and them also that are in the play of the piano, those in Hieropolis. So it's the deal of of one who.
I, I believe mainly his ministry was the ministry of prayer. That's very important in our Christian life. If you're not praying, if you didn't pray for these meetings this morning.
I feel sad about that. You should be praying about it. God is the one that can, can make arrangements for meetings like this. And if we're not praying about it, sometimes we, we, we make the arrangements ourselves and, and there's, there's failure, but not with God. So it's good to remember to be in prayer before God before we do any, any acts at all.
His name comes up again.
And Philemon and where Paul is writing there uh, uh, epipress, that is in verse 23 of Philemon.
It says there, so look, the Epipress, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus. Now obviously this man must have suffered some hardship. It's quite possible that he was imprisoned or whatever too. So it's interesting, you know, sometimes people say, well, the trials of life, why does God allow them, brethren, God allows them to make it that we might be more cast upon him, that we might realize that true, our world may be turned upside down.
But he's using, he uses these things.
That's what we've been looking at there next, you know, through much tribulation and so on, we enter into the Kingdom of God. You know, wherever the cross is, the shadow of the cross, that that's like the Kingdom of heaven. But the Kingdom of God is, is righteousness and joy and peace in the Holy Ghost. We might have that joy in faith, in believing, but the mountains in our Christian experience, and God put them there and by his grace, he can help us to climb over them.
Jacob's Life
The Heart
Of This Country
Colossians 1:9-14
Reading
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See about the ninth verse.
Colossians chapter one beginning at verse 9.
For this 'cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. That you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all, pleasing being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness.
Giving thanks unto the Father which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the Saints in life, who have delivered us from the power of darkness, and have translated us into the Kingdom of His dear Son, in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sin, Who is the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature. For by Him where all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be Thrones or dominions, or principalities or powers, all things were created by Him and for Him.
And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the Church, who is the beginning, the first born from the dead, that in all things He might have the preeminence or please the Father, that in Him should all fullness dwell in heaven, made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself. By Him I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven.
And you that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked work, yet yet now has he reconciled.
In the body of this flesh through death, to present you wholly and unblameable and unreprovable in its sight. If you continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven. Whereof I Paul, and made a minister.
Who now rejoice in My sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh, for His body's sake, which is the Church, whereof I am made a minister according to the dispensation of God, which is given to me for you to fulfill the Word of God. Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to His Saints, to whom God would make known. What is the riches of the glory of His of this mystery among the Gentiles, Which is Christ in you, the Hulk of glory whom we preach?
Warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. Whereunto I also labor, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily.
I believe it was the burden in the heart of the apostle that the dearest Saints, that colossi, and not only David ourselves too, would see what Christianity really is and that we would see that we are a heavenly people. We're not here to make things better in this world at all, but we are here to walk in the enjoyment of the the loveliness and worthiness of Christ, to see him at the center of all God's counsel, to see that we are a heavenly people.
And to walk worthy of that vocation wherewith we are called. We know that much of Christendom is very busily occupied with trying to set up institutions and set things right in this world. And his desire was that the things that colossi and not only David ourselves would have the full knowledge of his will and walk here as heavenly men in the enjoyment of the place that we have been brought into all through the glorious work that the Lord Jesus.
Accomplished.
There's an order in that prayer too, because.
We cannot really walk.
Worthy worthily of the Lord. We don't know his will. And uh.
00:05:01
It's the communication of His will to us that forms the basis for our walking. Now, one without the other is not good either. Uh, that is to say that we could, uh, have the full knowledge of His will and not walk in it. That wouldn't please the Lord at all. But it's interesting that the prayer progresses first. He laid the foundation. They might know the full knowledge of His will and all.
Wisdom and spiritual understanding so as to.
In order that you might walk worthily of the Lord unto all. Well, pleasing. And it's, uh, it's don't, don't think about pleasing the Lord if you don't know his will, because that is the foundation for walking to please the Lord is to know what his will is. In other words, if I don't know that the Lord's will isn't to paint the ship, then I'm going to get involved in painting the ship. And I'm not gonna be the sinking ship and I'm not going to be.
Pleasing him in what I do, Uh.
Uh, that doesn't mean that those people who are painting the ship don't love the Lord, does it? Some of them have more fervent devotion to the Lord than you and I have, but He wants it to be based upon a knowledge of His will.
Not at the end. Ambassador from Canada was down here trying to set this country along the lines of what they thought was right. They would immediately acknowledge that he was entirely out of his place because he's not intended to do that, just to represent Canada in this country. And if we see our position as heavenly man, the hope which is laid up for us in heaven, that where our citizenship is in heaven, that we're ambassadors in this world.
Why, it sets us, shall we say, our right line of things to know what our responsibilities are. But if this ambassador from Canada to behave very badly, that would be a very poor testimony for his country. I only speak of this to illustrate, if we know his will, and know what our position is in this world, it lays a basis for our whole conduct of walking worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing.
What a privilege, what a responsibility.
That's why the epistle begins when we start standing and what's positioning place with him? Because we can't act properly unless we know where the Lord is placed looking. So my wife is sitting next to me, but if I don't know whether she's my wife or my sister or my mother or my daughter, how can I act in a right relationship to her? And so many believers take up the doctrine of the church and these things, and they seek to go on and these things that they don't really know what the church is and what our relationship to Christ is. And so they can't walk right. It's not as if they're not affectionate there.
Is it dead? But it really is what governs the practical side of things which come out later in the epistle.
There's something else in connection with this. You mentioned the order, but we may know what the will of God is, but we it says here.
In wisdom and spiritual understanding, and I believe that Jacob knew what the will of God was, that he would get the blessing of the first born, but he went about it entirely the wrong way. And it was God's desire that he gets the blessing. And at the end of his life it was happier than at the beginning. He had a very happy ending. He worship leaning on his staff and he learned the ways of God. When he blessed Joseph's sons, he crossed his hands and he gave the blessing of the first born.
The younger one, and we may want to see our children gathered, we may want to see our children saved, and that is the will of God. But we need the wisdom of God as to how to walk in connection with these things. And just as often what brings us into strife and into difficulty is that we know what the will of God is, but we don't have the wisdom of God. And spiritual understanding is how He will bring these things about.
The large ship of Christ is brought in here, isn't it? I was thinking of it says that, uh.
That she might want worthy of the Lord unto all places over in the First Thessalonians lungs or two. You don't need to turn to it, but I'm just thinking in verse 12 he says that she would walk worthy of God. Why the difference? I suppose maybe in other translations may be the same, but I believe it's because these Thessalonians have turned.
00:10:05
From to God, from idol turn to God from idols. So God was the supreme there. Wasn't he walked worthy of God whereas here?
It's more holding the head, recognizing the lordship of Christ, so he says that you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all, pleasing and so on. I was thinking too about.
His his desire is he says that the verse 10 that you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work and increasing not so much and more by the true knowledge of God. You know, there are a lot of people have some great knowledge and we think fire really, umm great people, they have a lot of knowledge. Well, is it the true knowledge of God? That's that's the key here to me is increasing by the true knowledge of God.
Not by something that I've conjured up or by some great, uh, theologian that has given me something. I wanna know what the word of God says. And that's Paul's prayer, wasn't it?
I think of two men who said to God, I knew thee, at least in tight. There's one in the Gospels.
Who hides the talent? And he says, I knew these are the most fear man.
Did he really know?
Then there's one who says, I knew you, I knew these, that was pardon this people if I preach to them. And that's Jonah, of course, I believe he knew him, didn't he? He really knew the heart of God. And I think it's important for us to know God in that way and to be in communion with him in regards to not only our ministry, but to all those about us too. So that increasing by the true knowledge of God, growing by the true knowledge of God is, is a wonderful way to grow.
Now in, in the second Peter one where we were looking at those things that Ed brought before us earlier about having your faith, uh, such and such, uh, goes on and made a series of things. It goes on to say these things being in you that you should neither be barren nor unfruitful. And, uh, I think I saw Mr. Garvey Gibson Baron nor unfruitful.
You see, it's one thing to.
I oh, I don't run truthfully, what is that? The King James and starring are unfruitful.
You see, there's a lot of activity that doesn't really produce fruit, does it? It's just motion, a lot of motion without fruit. And then we're at about fruit. I think sometimes we can find fruit to the number of souls that get saved. That's an important part of it, isn't it? But it isn't all there's a.
Fruitfulness for the Lord, I think. What was it? Who was it, you, Charles, that gave us a definition of that this morning?
Apprehension of the Person of Christ.
Umm, everything forward from that, doesn't it? By occupation of Christ.
What you were saying this afternoon, Brother ****? Uh, Second Timothy, chapter 2 and verse 14 the way, at least in the, uh, new translation.
Just like to read it as it is in the new translation, Mr. Garvey.
But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in praise, and make us manifest the odor of His knowledge through us in every place, for we are under God, a sweet odor of Christ.
Uh, not an odor of praise to God in the saved, and then those that perish. And he looked upon me proclamation of the gospel as the March of triumph through these, even the heathen cities.
Here they were in slavery, and he said, We're carrying on a March of triumph, just as when a Roman general had won a great victory. Then there was a March of triumph held in Rome. Everyone could see that a victory had been won, and all the displays of that victory were before the people. They might hear or they might blame, but at least there was a March of triumph. They knew that a victory had been won. It isn't a wonderful brethren, especially the brother who tells of the Gospel this evening.
00:15:07
It's gonna hold a March of trial. He's gonna tell to this world that a victory has been won by which everyone may profit, because the gospel is for every preacher which is under heaven, and all they know and enjoy the results of that victory that has been won. To the one, that's the Savior of life unto life. To the other, the Savior of death unto death. But there is a March of triumph. And isn't it lovely that that's what we Christians are doing? We're holding a March of triumph. We're telling there was a V1 of Calvary in which every man and woman and child in this whole world.
You can share on the fruit and blessedness of it. If they receive it, they'll share on it. If they reject it, it's to their eternal loss.
Then the last thing that he prays for is that they might be strengthened.
Uh, with all power.
According to the glory with almighty, according to the glory, his glorious power in order to cast out demons and, and, uh, cure people and, and do all sorts of marvelous exploits. No so.
Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power unto all patience.
And long-suffering with joyfulness.
Blood of that's a wonderful aspect of the power of God.
I have to say a little about.
What did I do more? Well, I think it flows from these other things that he prays for not knowing his will and walking worthy of them, being fruitful, growing by the knowledge of God and then strengthened with all.
Might or power?
According to his glorious power.
Unto.
For all patients.
And long-suffering.
Many years ago, brother told me when I was young, before I was gathered, he, he told me that I didn't say that word right. I clipped it off and it says it's secret to, to, uh, putting it into practice is to say it right. And so he sat with me a little while and taught me to say.
Long-suffering, not long-suffering. We we said real quickly, don't we? long-suffering. Well, I've done that now, but.
The power of God, beloved, is not so much manifested in exploits for the Lord as it is in patient bearing with things and with people. What is the result at the end of that verse? I'm just noticing that.
If you do this, that's the will of the large person.
07 Truly, the signs in the past that were bothering me in all patients, we wouldn't have expected that either. We would have thought that the signs of an apostle were all those great things that he did, that God had called him to do. But it was his patient spirit in which he met all kinds of situations, both from the world and even among the people of God. And he went on and the spirit that he showed toward those.
Who even had, you know, feelings toward him was most beautiful the writing as as he did to those in Corinth and so on. There was long-suffering of joy from this, wasn't it?
Extent too which God took him and if you turn to 2nd Corinthians chapter one, I just want to point this I believe this is important accepting that Corinthians chapter 2 and chapter one rather 2nd and fiscal spring.
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I'll pick it up here from birthday.
So we would not, brother, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were cracked out of measure above strength in so much as we despaired even of life, But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God, which raises the dead.
And and, and so on. It was right to the point where you could say we were oppressed beyond measure. You know, these are these are the, the great victories that were won.
In connection with the apostle and those days, you know, we have a, a movement of what today where people actually claim, you know, that they're apostles.
We lost a sister in one of the meetings up home, you know, to this so-called Vineyard fellowship. You know, said when you stop and think about it, I didn't think that the glamour, you know, somehow they think was connected with apostleship. When you take a look at this and you realize what the Apostle Paul went through, the suffering that that he passed through and so on, and yet it was done with joyfulness. What victories were won in the early church in those in those early days?
It seems that as if the word that I'm just noticing that Dandy's translation there says that we were impressed excessively pressed beyond our power, beyond our power, not beyond measure in the sense that God doesn't measure everything that's needed that's given to us. He measures it all. But it's as if God says, I'm going to get you just to the point where you can no longer trust in yourself.
Beyond your power.
Then I'm gonna show you who I am. And you know, that's a wonderful experience in our lives because we love to be the masters of things. And it hurts us sometimes when the Lord brings us to the point where we're pressed beyond our power and where there's nothing we can do whatsoever. There's nothing We're absolutely.
Uh, at a point where we often call it which end corner.
And yet it's a great place to be at which Angora corner, because then we stop relying on ourselves and we start relying on the one and the God who raises the dead, and that changes everything. Then it turns despair into.
Tramp to be trusted in the one who raises the dead. So he says that we should not trust in ourselves in verse 9, but in the God who raises the dead.
That's a great lesson. It's one that I, I struggle with. I have trouble dealing with it in my mind because I'd like to be able to, to deal with things that come across my path. And all of a sudden the Lord says, I'm gonna put you where you can't deal with anything. And especially dealing with some of these deer fellows in the jail. You know, I, I come to a point where I said, Lord, there's nothing more to tell them. There's nothing to teach them. There's nothing that.
No convenient, convenient paper I can give them, giving them everything I can give them that might help them. And here they are still right back in the in trouble again. Divorce is I want you to trust in me, not in intelligence, not in yourselves, but in the God who raises the dead, and that changes everything there.
I'm thinking right now you're speaking to him there. I'm thinking of a brother that I know and I.
He is afflicted with three things. He's an hemophiliac, he has rheumatoid arthritis and now because of the blood supply in Canada, he also has aches three things and yet he loves the Lord and those things that have you know, you look at you look at a person like that and you say well, what? And yet when you look at these verses you say why not when you think of.
The ways of God and the way in which God works through his people and so on. It's absolutely refreshing to be in His presence because of what he's gone through, because of what he suffers because he's gone through.
You look at it and you say insurmountable mountains, but God's opportunity, it's just refreshing to be in his presence and as you hold his hand and talk to him and just listen to the Spirit of God, sometimes he speaks through.
00:25:02
Umm and uh, one of the men in there was, we used ice cream and uh, there was a man in there. His name was Carl West.
And if you ever saw anyone that was crippled with whatever it was, he was warped to no end in terrible, terrible pain. He had. He had bulges on his neck like this and his hands and his arms were just twice in size and his knees. He was in a wheelchair. And we'd go in to visit him.
How are you today, Brother Carl? Well, I've got a lot of things to do tomorrow for me. Pain. His pain was greater than anything I could ever bear. He did it off. That dear man knew nothing of the proof that we know. And he was the happiest suffering man I believe I ever saw. I thought of that first time. That was it. Many times. He was just. He was rejoicing in the margin office.
Charles, don't you think maybe he do secrets that we don't know anything about?
I mean, it's one thing that they didn't know the truth of gathering, which is what I think you read right in our heavenly calling. But some of those people have secrets that I wish I knew.
Good. No. Good. No. No question of soaring knowledge. It's not what we know. It's whom we know. Oh, that's that's.
What follows here isn't it yet giving thanks for the four things that we have that can't be taken away through sickness or trial or mouth of man or anything. There's four blessed things. Giving thank you hath made us meet. He has delivered us in the power of darkness, and He has translated us into the Kingdom of His dear Son.
And we have redemption through his blood. How wonderful. That's what he was rejoicing and not the, uh, trials that he was going through, but what he had as his portion. And until we enjoy that portion, we're not able to bear all the difficulties away. But when we enjoy that portion, what we already have, we know there's a lot more or less in the future, but what we already have right now, every believer is entitled to enjoy these four things forever given to us because of Christ. Glorious work.
Seems to be, Gordon, that your father used to have an expression that all the light of God's glory will never discover anything, that the blood of Christ is not fully, uh, cleansed.
A problem. And that's really the secret of this little expression here. Umm, who has made us meet to be partakers, or as grandly says, fit for sharing the portion of the Saints in life? If I had a dirty shirt and I was supposed to get up and make a speech, I hope the lighting was poor in the place, wouldn't I? But as I look forward to the portion of the Saints in life.
I don't have to fear anything.
Because all has been.
Suitably and forever removed from the presence of God. I used to think, uh.
Chuck Hendricks was down in Woodbridge a few years ago and talked about, uh, that God.
Will not remember. And I said wow I never thought of that before.
All in my life I thought that God forgot our sins. But if you do something against me.
I might forget about it, but then again, something may jog my memory and I'll remember.
God is not a forgetter, is he?
It cast them behind his back.
Is fully removed, all of it in a righteous basis, and he chooses not to ever remember him again. I can choose not to remember something that someone did against me. I can make that choice.
But, uh, God is not a forgetter. He's a chooser not to remember.
00:30:03
150 years ago, he perfects everything he touches. And you think of the cross of Calvary and what that has done and how the work of Christ has glorified God when a Sinner is brought into that blessed relationship of sins, forgiven and born again by the Spirit of God and so on. Uh, it's a work of grace and the work of power And it, it, well, it's, it's like, it's, it's been stated a piece of work is a signature of the person who did it. When we look at the work of Christ.
All we can do is stand back with our mouth open and see how wonderful, how glorious it really is to perfect everything he touches.
This is an expression giving thanks unto the Father, because the heart of God is the source of it all. His blessing. Son came to and did do His will and do it perfectly, but the heart of God not as you were saying, an austere man, but he's seeking the blessing of man. And man as we often see a little Him. God be teaching and refusing to be made forever glad, so giving science unto the Father.
Which has made us neat or fit to be partakers of the inheritance of the Saints in life. We'll never be more fit than we are right now. We have Christ as our Savior and our sins put away in his precious blood.
In the 13th verse, the expression who had delivered us from the power of darkness.
I think we need to understand that there are two words that are translated power in our Bibles. One has the sense of capability.
It's connected with our word.
Dynamite.
The other one has to do with the card.
Now, darkness has both over us when we're unsafe, it has power over us, and it has authority over us. But it's wonderful here that I think the thought is that we've delivered and delivered from the authority of darkness. Darkness has no more authority over us. God has made us fit for the portion of the Saints in life. He's brought us out of darkness into his marvelous light.
And he's delivered us from the authority of darkness. To me, that's wonderful and triumphant that darkness has no power in that sense over us now. Uh, we know that there's darkness such as maybe felt around this today. And there is a certain power in the sense of, of, uh, capability or dynamics in connection with how that power without authority.
But.
As to our position before God, we have been.
Totally, completely delivered from the authority of darkness in our lives. And to me, that's a wonderful statement.
What we've been saying is we're waiting for the timeline to deliver from the presence of something.
Of Ephesians 5 there.
Verse 8 beginning at verse 8. For ye were sometimes darkness.
Uh, this, this verse to me digs pretty deep.
It just doesn't say that we're in the darkness we were darkness itself darken our souls toward God as it says sometimes darkness. But now are you light in the Lord and he brings in the responsibilities walk as children of men. He puts us in the position first then he says now the only way you're gonna enjoy it is to walk in and so I think it's so beautiful to see that because then later we're told that just in verse nine for the.
Proof. I think I understand. It's the fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and fruit proving what is acceptable.
Under the Lord, how do you prove it? By walking in it, by walking in that marvelous light, as I thought of the verses here where he says who hath delivered us? That's past, isn't it? That's a in past tense. Have to look at us from the power gardens.
Translated us into the Kingdom of the son of his love. Well, and that brings before a stand responsibility, doesn't it? In order to enjoy that and enjoy the position that he's brought me into. Now he wants me to walk into not be caught as we find in Ephesians, uh, caught in sleep or being in a sleepy condition like the rest of the world.
00:35:19
The latest Good for us to realize that there are two powers that are superior to man.
The power of God and the power of Satan. Satan's power is inferior, of course. God's power is the greater. Man likes to think he's a free moral agent. He can do as he chooses. So he talks that way. He acts that way as if he had absolute freedom, that he could do as he liked. But if you want to do something, if there's a power superior to yours that's holding you from doing it, then you're not free. And man is not free. He needs to be set free.
And that's what the gospel does. It's the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believe us. And so I believe it's important to realize this because man likes to think this. And sad to say, even many Christians don't realize the power of Satan. They like to think they're free just to make any choice. But unless the sun makes us free, we're not free indeed. But He has set us free from the power of darkness. He not only saved our souls and made us fit for heaven, brethren.
But there is a path through this world, as Mr. Darby put it. There is there is a path through this world where Satan cannot touch us. That is the path where the Lord Jesus walks. And it says in Psalm 17, By the word of thy lips have I kept me from the path of the destroyer. If you and I think that we can step out of the path of obedience and be preserved from Satan's power, we're mistaken. There is only one path through this world where we're safe from the power of Satan.
That is an obedience to the word of God and the Lord Jesus was a perfect example of that. He could say, I do always those things which pleased him, and he could say the Prince of this world cometh and asked nothing in me, nothing for me. Bless the deliverance because he's delivered us and he's given us a new life, a very life of Christ. Christ himself is a believer's life and His word is the instruction for our pathway.
You see that when I say the cancer, though, I don't get so read it. It's coded that verse in the Psalm. So to, uh, keeping him in his way. It's just that part out. Maybe we should just look at that Matthew 4.
How much is 406?
There's five. Then the devil taketh him up into the holy mountain, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, and step on to him. It shall be the Son of God. Cast thyself down, for it is written, He shall give his angels charge over the concerning thee. He leaves the part out here, and then he says, and in their hands they shall bear thee. Uplift at any time thou dash thy foot against the stone, for the part that he left out was to keep thee in my way.
And it's, uh, Lordy, kept in the way that God had appointed for him.
And, uh, outside of that path, we were in danger.
About darkness, it speaks of the unbeliever as being dark, and I never realized that until recently. That be in darkness, you know, that means that you know that there is no light. What we have as believers that you know, is really come to us by way of revelation.
You know, it's been revealed to us and.
You know how we need to value that and then to think that, you know, we walk in a pathway in this world like we have in the book of Jehovah path, which no, you know, the vultures I have not seen because it didn't even the key misperception of of human ability of human wisdom or reason cannot trace this fast. It's only the pathway of faith and it's it's the only way in which, you know, in which it can be walked. They mentioned this morning, you know, about experience and we're here in this, you know, a lot of Christians remember someone saying to a brother in Christ one time, I'm not interested in the word of God. All I want is experience for the pathway. This is what this young man said.
00:40:01
Well, if that's true, he better go back and read the life of Eliphaz, the team. And I did Joe, because he steps before US1 who was acquainted with experience. I had a spirit stand at my bed at night, and it set all my bones to shaking, he said, and so on. What's the Lord has to say about that? He said very simply, Thou hast not spoken that which is right concerning me as my servant. Joel half now he'll pray for thee, and he'll offer these sacrifices. Let I deal with thee and thy friend according to thy folly. God calls that thing folly.
Because there's only one pathway.
It's the pathway of saying obedience, admissions of the Word of God. And as the brother among us said, we don't learn by experience, We learn by the Word of God. That's how we learn.
It said that in fact a riot if they came back and he said it did not belong to the proper state. Take hold of you. And we think we learn by experience, but we don't really have it. We learn by experience and come back and say, well, I made a mistake because we wound up in the wrong path. And once we come back to the point of really acknowledging the point of departure that the word of God said this and I departed from that and we don't we may think we've gone back into the past and what we've really not made a full recovery.
We simply learn things by experience.
People are very determined on that point too. Where?
It's been exasperating sometimes to try to deal with souls who claim they've had this experience or that one and, and, uh, I've stopped trying to prove that they did or didn't have it. I don't really think it matters very much whether they have the experience or not. I think the real issue is what's up the scriptures and.
We need to bring all our experiences to God's Word and judge them by God's Word. Otherwise we get into my decision.
And that's what's sweeping over evangelical Christians, Christendom today is, is a form of mysticism. And if there's no arguing, you guys, you can't say anything because they don't accept the basis. And the basis is what does God say about it? Uh, I use an example. It's perhaps a very obvious one, but, uh, you, uh, say, well, it isn't right for a woman to speak in assembly and ecclesia. And, uh, they say, yeah, but I got a blessing from that sister that was speaking, you know, and, and she spoke with power.
And uh.
Prophesied. And, and so you go back and you say, but here's what God's word says about it. Yeah, but what about my experience in, in listening to that? And, uh, you know, you just, you just shake your head, you wonder how can you ever get through? Well, you can. The only way is God's word that can, can Vanquish that sort of thing. Uh, the strongholds that are pulled down are the imaginations of man's heart reasoning.
A man's heart and what pulls them down.
It's God's work, God's work.
And I think we have an answer to that. Deuteronomy 13.
If there arise among you a profit or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, for I'll be spake unto thee, Let us go after other gods which thou hast not known, and let us serve them. Thou shalt not hearken unto that the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord your God prove with you to know whether he loved the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. And ye shall walk after the Lord your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice.
And you shall serve him, and came unto him. The great test was not whether the thing happened, but whether it was according to the word of God. That was what was to settle it. Because I say again, Satan has more power than man, and he is a great imitator. In deceiver tells us that he's an Angel of light. And so whenever you hear these things, always test them not by whether it came to pass they could.
Create, create some limitations like you did with the, uh, the, uh, ones in Egypt, you know, the, uh, the, uh, false prophets in Egypt, but here it says you're detested the Lord your God. Prove with you to know whether you would love the Lord your God with all your heart. He shall walk after the Lord your God and keep his commandments, while may the Lord grant that we will test things by the word of God.
00:45:07
Mother and Tyrol and are in the Middle East. Year old neighbor St. Her daughter and her daughter said that she was going to Our Lady of Lourdes and our friend's mother made this comment. She said if the devil can turn himself into a serpent, he can turn himself into a woman.
And, uh, the devil appears as an Angel of light and deceive. And so if we're looking for experiences and things, we're going to be deceived.
I love the expression that says in verse 13 at the end.
He had translated us into the Kingdom of His dear Son, or the Son of His love.
I marvel at that because it really is the same.
I think he was at one moment he was here on earth, and the next moment he was translated into the presence of the Lord. And I like to think of that sometimes we tell the fellows in the jail, you can pass from this moment, from Satan's Kingdom into the Kingdom of the Son of Islam by a simple act of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, by receiving God's salvation offer and obeying the gods.
Modern obedience isn't it obeying the gospel, and in that moment that person is translated.
Into.
Kingdom of the son of his life and they they no longer have many loyalty, allegiance or connections with that old team. They've been taken out.
Remember Gilbert Christensen little thoughts on this trans translation and thought he spoke it put it this way. He said I will turn to the scriptures, but he said if we're occupied with the one who was transfigured.
Which was priced, we're going to be transformed.
And eventually we're gonna be translating.
Entertainment of the son of his love. So he used that. He went over that with us quite quite a little bit occupied with the one who was transfigured were then transformed and we're going to be translated.
Is that future or something that's already been done?
Well, we know we're still here.
The purpose of God is there, isn't it?
We haven't been in spirit. We're already translated. I mean, that's God's purpose, but as to its reality, we're still here.
As we know it says he was translated that he should not see death, but I believe here is our rather saying if the present thing we're already in the Kingdom of the son of his love to enjoy it, we're going to have the same thing as happened to translate it into.
The license of Christ that is coming. But here is something that we can enjoy. The word half and half are brought in here, something that we presently know, the Son of his love. It's a wonderful thing when we think of this because.
Lord Jesus said iniquity and accept a man be born again. He cannot see the Kingdom of God. There is no fixing up of the first man, no change made in the first man that was just born of the flesh is flesh, but God has brought us.
And brought, brought us by new earth into an entirely new position. And every believer, brethren, here has a very life of Christ, tells us in this very epistle, when Christ, who is our life shall appear, then shall we also appear with him in glory. And we have the life of Christ, we have the Spirit of God as power for that life. This is a present thing. So this man that you were talking about it all these physical things.
That were so hard for him to bear. By a natural sense. He was enjoying these four things that we have and that's what will lead us to be happy Christian. God may take us out of difficulties or He may leave us in them, but we can always enjoy these four things, brethren, Maybe enjoy them more than our presence portion.
00:50:08
I was thinking of the Romans, to whom Paul wrote. They were under the most despotic government of all.
And then he could say government started any thought and so there.
Relationship to the government entirely changed because they were translated out of the authority of darkness to the authority of the under the authority of the Son of his love. And so a completely different set of motives. The government didn't change, but they're the one who they were seeking to please now have changed. And so we gave them the power to walk in a very difficult situation. And we often think that we're going to show the character of Christ when there's great answers to prayer and people like to get their testimony. And it is a wonderful thing when the Lord answers the prayer. He finds exactly the right car or gets us a job or something like that.
But I really believe that the Lord really shows his power, umm, in this long-suffering and all patients with long and long-suffering with joyfulness. I think that's what we see in Paul and Silas are singing in the prison is that there was a real deliverance there. And I wonder if that's not what touched the conscience of the jailers. I think even a Moses coming down and seeing the people that he was really grieved and inspired by what he saw. But it says he whisked not that his face shone and so on the difficulty that we need.
The Lord can give real, perhaps more powerful testimony than we think.
When we're getting great answers to prayer and great deliverance. Is that brother there that you're referring to showing far more, I think of the character of Christ and perhaps we do when we think or he's answered a great prayer. We've seen sold things and this kind of thing that that we see that in in in this way.
The power of God is much more shown, I believe today, and faithfulness to go on in a day of weakness than it was a Pentecost. I believe we're living in more privileged days than they were in Pentecost. It was easy to go on with 3000, breaking bread from house to house.
And so on. And it's a much more difficult thing to go on in weakness where there's just perhaps two or three and just a faithfulness to the Lord and having the Lord sanction of that, if that takes really more power than it did to go on in a day when there were great numbers being saved and great encouragement in that way.
When I was first gathered not long after.
The Lord raised up the testimony in Lima, Peru, and there was.
Umm, wonderful blessing in that little company down there became a rather large company and I remember that the Lord allowed that.
Some charismatic influence came in in the assembly.
And I'll never forget a letter we got from Brother Valderrama.
The Lord had cleared things and shown them a lot.
He said the power of God in that in, in, uh, today is manifested not so much in signs and wonders as it is in resisting evil doctrine and carrying on the truth. And I thought what a wonderful lesson for them to learn at the beginning of their and for me to learn at the beginning of our experience with walking with those gathered in the name of the Lord Jesus.
Because the natural heart wants to see all these demonstrations, but the power of the spirit and energy of the Spirit of God is put forth in resisting evil.
And resisting evil often has a doctrinal sense, doesn't it? We recognize more quickly morally. You see that in judges. They were already what an infamous deed is done here. We're going to rise up and we're going to deal with Benjamin. We're going to.
Deal with and that wasn't that wasn't as quickly discerned in the case of the, uh, the the man who had a House of gods wasn't.
Uh, so we we very much more quickly recognize morally, but the Spirit of God raises up a voice against doctrine of evil. More subtle, isn't it? Far more subtle and more.
I'm thinking of Roman 12 and verse two in the next month. Umm, do not confirm to this world that we transformed by the renewing of their mind that you may approve whether that's good and acceptable and perfect will have gone well. The mind is occupied because it seems to be Speaking of there and bringing in that which is not a part of the truth of God and the thing that may appeal to the mind, but it's pretty sure about the renewing and why.
00:55:11
And back to Christ and His Word.
But I see our time is about one, but maybe further, Gordon, can you tell us why in Ephesians, the expression that we have in verse six, uh 14 is umm in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins for as I believe it doesn't belong here in Colossians.
Yes, and Mr. Darby translation is left out. It isn't entirely omitted from the chapter, as we see from the 20th 1St, it's properly there.
Having made peace through the blood of his cross. But the emphasis here is on the person that did it, not on what it cost him. Because I sometimes illustrated by a great depth and I say it's paid and you say who paid it? I say, well, Henry Ford paid it. It wouldn't be how he paid it, but it was the man that paid it that that he was actually that interested in me to pay a debt for me. And that is the point in Colossians. The Spirit of God is occupying us with Christ in fact.
We might have already noticed that there's no mention of the Spirit in this whole book except the one love in the Spirit, because the Spirit is occupying us with Christ. That is his word. He, he said, when he has come, he shall glorify me. And so it, it threw his blood, certainly as the 21St show. But when it's talking about the great deliverance, who did it? The Son of God's love, the one who was the delight of his heart, is the one that loved me enough to pay my debt, put away my sins by his glorious work at Calvary.
Thank you.
The Flood
Gospel—Keith Gorgas
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You'll have to tell me if and you can do it by going right like this. I have awful clogged ears and I'm not sure just how loud I'm speaking. If I get too soft I guess you can just go like this and if I get too loud, go like this.
OK. Can you hear all right in the back over there? All right. Can we start the meeting with singing #2 we'll sing the 1St and the 3rd verses of #2 on our hem sheet.
Somebody else starts that please.
Come to the Jesus, stand by.
Him with air and fly about the house with a dead Air Force and he had to get a lot of power and there were all this all the way. I don't know, I don't know. I don't like, I don't know what happened to my wife and all those. I'm just going to go to get some stuff to do with that.
You know what I don't know. You don't have to do anything together. You know, all that kind of thing. Oh, well, I don't know what's going on.
Here I don't know what to do.
Umm.
You forget it's a bit of a.
I had an interesting thing happened to me the other day on the 4th of July. We said it had been raining about between 4:00 and 6:00 inches right around where I live and as we were eating our supper.
A lot of boats came into the harbor, the little Bay of the lake, to watch the fireworks. And there were so many waves that my neighbor's boat and my boat, which had been filled with quite a bit of water and I hadn't been thinking about it, why these, all these waves came and went over them and our boat sunk. And it was quite a task to get them up out of the water and get them clean, get the engines running real quick before damage set in. I had to dive down into the water to get my photos in about 10 feet of water and tie some ropes to it.
And I was thinking to myself.
This is on a very calm lake. This is quite a task just to hold my breath for a few moments.
And it's a calm lake just to accomplish that in 10 feet of water, what it would be like to have so much water coming violently out at you from both from above and below.
Can you think of what we're going to speak about this evening? Let's turn to the Book of Genesis.
And the.
6th chapter we're going to speak about the flood.
In many places, but little. I've had the chance of traveling in different parts of the world, both in the Alps and the Rockies, in the deserts.
You go on tours and they tell you the same thing in each place. And probably if you took a tour right around here, they tell you the same thing. They'll say at one time this whole area around here was covered by a vast inland sea. Have you ever heard that in school and different places? Yes, it was. We'll read about it now.
Chapter 6 of Genesis. And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters, daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair, and they took them wives of all in which they chose. And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man for that He is, for that He also is flesh, yet his face shall be in 120 years. And there were giants in the earth in those days.
00:05:18
And also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children unto them, and the same became mighty men, which were bold men of renown, and God saw that the wickedness of man was great.
In the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord, that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, and the creeping thing and the fowls of the air, for it repented me that I had made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and no one walked with God.
And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
And God said unto Noah, at the end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with violence.
Through them, and behold, I will destroy them. With the earth Make thee an arc of Gopher wood brooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shall pitch it within and without. With pitch. Somebody want to tell me what pitch is?
How many young scholars here that could help with that? What's pitch?
Yes, SAP, right. Sometimes it's thought that it was tar, but I think tar is a product of the flood.
Pitch sapped from trees to make it waterproof.
And make the and I shall pitch it with in and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of. The length of the ark shall be 300 cubits, and the breadth of it 50 cubits, the height of it 30 cubits. A window shelter I'll make to the ark, and in a cubit shall tell, and in a cubit shall tell. Finish it above, And the door of the ark shall thus set in the side thereof with lower.
Second and third stories shalt thou make it three stories inside this giant.
Container.
And behold, I even I do bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh.
Wherein is the breath of life from under heaven, and everything that is in the earth shall die.
But with thee will I establish my covenant. Thou shalt come into the Ark, thou.
And thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons wives with thee, and every living thing.
Of all flesh, two of every sort shall thou bring into the ark to keep them alive with thee. They shall be male and female, the fowls after their kind, and if cattle after their kind, and of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, and thou shalt keep them to keep them alive. And now and take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten.
And now she had gathered unto thee, and it shall be food for thee and for them. Thus did Noah, according to all that God commanded him. So did he, and will stop there for a few minutes.
There was an earth on which it had never rained, a land that probably was quite a bit different from the.
Figure that we see of the land today may have been all one continent, one land mass.
Probably the mountains we're nowhere near as high as there are mountains today. We're reading 104th Psalm that during the flood the mountains rose, the valley sank into the place that thou was founded for them. Now a set of bounds that they turn, turn not again to pass, they passed not again to cover the earth. That was something that God had.
A great change that God ordered during the course of the flood.
Right. So here was this land. This earth probably had a very high covering of ice, clouds, water. The firmament was separated into the upper waters and the lower waters. And then we read that it never rained. It had never rained once. The Lord God watered it every day by mist.
So it was a probably somewhat they speak now of a greenhouse effect. It probably was. The earth was probably more or less a big greenhouse when trees have been growing for a great period of time now.
00:10:08
High, excellent. Perhaps civilization developed the details of which we know very little, except that they were filled with violence and corruption.
If you were to go back to your hotel or go to a house and turn on the TV set, you would not have to watch on any channel very long before you saw those two elements, violence and corruption. Could you go very long at all without seeing that? Could you go through to a newspaper stand and pick up some magazines and not see very quickly violence and corruption? So there was this civilization that came before God.
And the Lord looked down from heaven, and he considered it. He saw the condition of it.
Any purpose set about to destroy the whole thing?
Now, I don't mean to suggest by that, that it was a contingency or a reaction on God's part known to him or his works right from the beginning. Every every act in it, every work was known and just as sure as if they had been already accomplished.
God looking down, seeing this scene, what does he think when he looks right now down here on this town, on this country, on this world, What does he see anything different from what he saw then? He sees violence and corruption, doesn't he? And it is just now just as abhorrent to his nature now as it was then. And so he's in the world stands much more guilty, will come to that later on. The world stands far more guilty for having crucified the Son of God.
But that's the scene that God looked down on and he said that I'm going to destroy it long.
But a man is introduced to Noah. He found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
Right in this chapter that we read in the 6th chapter.
Verse 8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and so he had.
Three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth.
They had wives.
And Noah had a wife and God took up in his wondrous counsels to bless this family, the family of Noah. And isn't that God's way that he loves to do to blessing households? He doesn't just say, Noah, I want you to be safe. He says, no, I want you and your whole household.
What a comfort to us parents, isn't it? We look around and we see children, some not nowhere near having any conception of what's being said.
Right now.
Some in various states, some older, some younger. To know that God delights to bless in households and that a wonderful thing to have confidence in.
Well, we can be thankful and we can listen to God's Word in this when he says, come, it's come now and thy house.
Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and so the Lord looked down. So it was all corrupt and provided for Noah here a way of escape.
System making arc, gotta go for wood. Pitch it.
Make it waterproof, make rooms. I went recently some time ago in my job I went out to uh.
Outside of Lancaster, PA, where the Mennonites have a sight and sound. And I brought a busload of people to it to see a display of the ark, a pageant, so to speak. And it was very, very lifelike, very scriptural. Live animals came in and it gave you a real sense. You came into this room and it was a giant room. Think about how big? How big was it now? 300 cubits, a cubit being about a foot and a half, to be about 450 feet long. That's what 1 1/2 football fields is that.
Do I have that right? About 1 1/2? That's a big vessel, isn't it? And how hard was it?
Uh, the breadth width was 50 cubits, so that would be what, 75 feet, So 450 feet long, 75 feet wide. And how tall was it and the height of it? 30 cubits, so it'd be about 45 feet high.
No person that perished in that flood could have ever said I couldn't come in because there wasn't room for me, could they?
There was plenty of room in that vessel. You know, before this story took place, there was a man that walked on this earth. His name was Enoch, and he walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.
In our kind of sun, you know when he named his son, who knows? Somebody here would know.
00:15:01
Who knows? Does anybody in this room know what a sun snake is?
This is open to the older folks too.
What was that? We heard masseuse away. You know what his name means.
And it's a declaration of the long standing patience of God. When He is gone, it will come. That's what His name means. You know who was the man in the history of this earth that lived the longest? God is not willing that any should perish. He gave that man. I think it was 969 years. God held off bringing judgment, but just as surely as when the day that he was born and his father named him, it was sure that that flood would come.
Just that surely it was at the end of his life.
You know what happened? My Souza died and the flood came right away. But that man's long life, the longest life, is a testimony. Where is the promise of his coming? Is it because God is lazier that he's forgotten about?
His promise to step in and judgment on this earth? No, it's the love of God. Why has God not taken your life away? Why does He continue to allow you to take breath those of you that are outside of Christ?
Why? Because he's not willing that you should perish. He's pleading gently with your soul. And so this man knoweth set about.
To build this giant container with three stories in it and assemble all the grain. It's an awesome amount of things, the provisions that needed to be taken in and get it all together. And it was about, I think 120 years. He was busy with this project preaching. There's a flood coming. It's going to rain. It has never rained. But the God of heaven who has made this planet has said that he is going to destroy it with a flood.
He preached that for all that time.
There probably was some that some days thought about it and said, you know, maybe that guy's right. He's very convincing. He's stuck at this project for such a long time. And the accumulation to cut down those Timbers that would have been needed to transport them to one place, they would have needed a very large place, a place much bigger than a football field just to build it.
So it was quite a project to erect those Timbers masses to get that amount of SAP. How many trees had to come down for that or to be blood, perhaps? You know, to make Maple syrup, you've got to get many gallons of SAP out of the Maple trees and boil it down and boil it down so you can just get it to the consistency of Maple syrup. Now, I don't know what kind of tree this came from.
But, uh, the so much had to be collected to go over this entire entire, uh, I won't say a vessel because it wasn't really designed to travel to different places. This big barge had to be covered inside and out with the SAP. How much had to be gathered a long time He went. Don't you think that every time as Noah came in. Mr. Noah, what are you doing with that big project you got going on? Oh, it's not a big project. It's the way that the God of heaven has said that you can be saved.
Why don't you come? There's plenty of room. We have enough provisions. I've gathered enough.
Please come.
How do we know that he was preaching? Because it tells us in first Peter, that the Spirit of Christ was in him, preaching to those spirits which are now in prison, pleading with them for that length of time.
No, we can't judge things by the results. We leave the results up to God and let him account for the whole matter. In the end, He knows just how to just how. A dear Christian, if you've given the word of God out and nobody's being saved, don't think you have to change your tactics.
The Fort wasn't with Noah. It wasn't that Noah wasn't preaching the word right, he was faithfully telling him. The problem was that their hearts were hardened against it.
They had no that they would not come, that they might be saved. So desperately wicked is the heart of man. But let's go on a little bit with the story here.
And uh.
We'll go to the 8th, the 7th chapter.
The Lord said unto Noah, Come thou in all thy house into the ark, for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.
So the Lord told him, come on in now, it's time.
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You know Noah's daughter in laws probably had family outside of the ark.
Can you imagine, as they would call perhaps for the last time, to Sister, Brother.
Father. Mother.
The different ones, please won't you come and be safe? And our message tonight is nothing different than that God has appointed a day wherein He will judge the world, and it is appointed unto man once to die, and after this the judgement.
There is judgment coming. You can reckon on it, it's sure.
When this world hung the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary and knelt in there and lifted him up so meanly and cruelly, treated him and spit on him and punched him, and so on, God would have been very just and very righteous if He had right at that time, immediately sent the whole world to hell.
But he's been long-suffering, hasn't he?
But don't count it to be laziness on God's part.
Because the sentence isn't speedily executed, the heart of the children of men is fully set to do evil.
Don't be foolish in that.
So the time came when the Lord said, come on in. And then with them came, and what an amazing thing to see too. Of every kind of animal come, the Lord brought them there. What a testimony to those people as they were assembled.
Here's this one, here's that one. Hell, Noah just held them together, kept them together. That's mere conjecture to try to picture. But there were rooms in that arc. There was a spot for each of those things. God had made ample provision. And then they came. And if any creature that there was, there was a spot for now there's many. And it's, it's alarming in a sense to read the statistics on how many different kinds of animals have become extinct. But that hasn't taken God by surprise. But he saw to it that there was for each animal that was living at that time.
Room to bring them in and provision made to keep them alive. I'm sure some of them when they came out into a climate that was so vastly different in the landscape that was so vastly different. We read that the we'll see at the end of the flood that the Lord sent a great wind probably dropped the temperature considerably and so on. And probably the earth wasn't as suited for some of those creatures and God sought to it that they passed on into extinction. But here they came into the ark and.
For yet seven days.
Let me verse three of the fowls of the air by 7 male and female to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth here God had the seed for everything else that would pay. It's a wonderful type. God has made provision with a whole new earth. We'll we'll talk about that a little bit later. If we get the time for yet seven days, I will cause it to rain upon the earth 40 days and 40 nights.
In every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.
How old are the oldest trees that are alive on this earth right now?
I think there are several places in the world that there's trees about the same age.
North America, I think the oldest trees the the bristlecone Pines, if I'm not mistaken, about 4500 years old. No trees anywhere on the earth that are older than that. You know why? That's about how long ago the flood was, about 4500 years ago. There a testimony there's nothing living on the earth that goes back past that. For all the conjecture of men of thinking things went on for millions of years, there's nothing that's been able to adapt.
To live more than 4500 years God's testimony to this world.
For yet, uh, I will destroy.
Every living thing that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth. And know it did according to all that the Lord commanded him. God now commands all men everywhere to repentance. That's God's command. You know, if you're not saved, if you're outside of Christ tonight, God only has one thing to say to you, not to clean up your act, not to be a better husband, a better wife, a better child, a better citizen. God doesn't say any of those things to you.
There's only one thing to say to you, and that's repent.
The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord. The prayer of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord. The plowing of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord. God has no delight in any of those things. He has only one thing to say to you if tonight you're outside of Christ, and that's to repent. Turn around. Do the things just as Noah did, according to all the Lord commanded him. That's what the Lord says to you. Repent.
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Noah was 600 years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth and all went in and his sons, verse seven, and his wife and his sons wives with him into the ark because of the waters of the flood. But it still hadn't rained. It still had never rained.
Mr. Noah, you're crazy. We used to have a record when we were a kid that kids that told the story of the flood. And as Noah preached, they were the wise men of that time, walking around behind them saying there will be no flood. And there's a lot of people walking around speaking in all kinds of.
Through various elements today that are going to tell you there will be no flood, there will be no divine intervention of judgment.
Things will go on. It's up to us to save the planet for ourselves. You ever hear that?
We are the future of the world desires. It's up to us to do whatever is going to be done about it.
No, there will be a flood, but it'll be a flood of fire rather than a flood of water. That's what this the earth that now is, this world is reserved for judgment by fire. And it's absolutely just as sure, in spite of anything that those gainsayers would say against Noah, everything they would say against them, God's word stood. It would be a flood.
And, uh, no one went in and we'll skip on them to, uh, tenth verse. And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.
Up to that time it had never rained. But here at the appointed time, Justice God said sure enough.
Can you imagine the horror within the hearts of this world when the first waters, the first drops of water, came down out of that sky that had never yielded one drop before?
It's true what Noah had said is true, but it was too late. Now let's read down. Came to uh in six hundredth year of Noah's life. Verse 11 in the second month, in the 17th day of the month, the same day we're all the fountains of the great deep broken up in the windows of heaven were open.
The rain was upon the earth 40 days and 40 nights, and the self same day entered Noah and Shem, and Ham and Japheth, the sons of Noah and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them into the ark. They.
And every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
After his kind, and every fowl, after his kind, every bird of every sort. And they went in unto Noah.
Into the Ark, two by two, all flesh, wherein is the breath of life.
And they that went in went in male and female of all flesh. What a gracious God to see to it that there would be provision to carry on life God's plans us and count councils. His plans were just beginning as far as this earth. Although he was wiping the slate clean. He still had and there was a wonderful mystery hidden God. Well, we've enjoyed this afternoon some of the blessed truths of it. You know, as said in the book of Job can set up buying the sweet influences of the Pleiades.
The seven stars. The Seven Sisters.
Can you bind that all through God's counsels from the beginning, whether he might have a bride for his son?
The mystery of the seven stars that there would be a church period and God would take out of what the Gentiles of people for his name have a bride for his son for all eternity to share and to be with him and it's not good for man to be alone. He said when he first made man and that was a type the longings when in the heart of the Lord Jesus and so that plan within God's counsel affected everything else that happened leading up to it, whether it's the story of Rebecca the story of Abraham of Abraham and his.
Or the story of Jacob and his two wives. Any story you read in the Bible there?
The love stories of Ruth and Boaz. The story of Adam and Eve.
And all that was the sweet influences of the seven stars that planned that God had to bring out A to have a bride for His Son. And all those things happened before, were they for their sake? No, altogether for our sakes, upon whom the end of the age has come, all those things happened and are recorded.
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And as we as we look back, we see God's gracious provision here.
And male and female they went in, and the verse 16 and the Lord shut him in.
Up to this point, for seven days I think it was.
Here, there still was chance the flood hadn't begun.
Noah had preached for all these years and still gone as it were, lingered said, won't you please be safe? Won't you come? The word still was come, come into the ark. The Lord Jesus Christ said I am the door by me. If any man enter in, he shall be saved.
That's the way into God's salvation. So here was here we were at this point, verse 17.
And the flood was 40 days upon the earth, and the waters increased and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.
There's a hymn that says.
Jehovah lifted up his rod. O Christ, it fell on me. Thou wast forsaken of thy God. No distance now for me.
Not only did the fountains of the Great Deep open up on this ark, but the windows of Heaven opened up on it.
So I opened. Bosom was my ward. It bore the storm for me.
As this awful unleashing of this water that had been stored up for this long period of time and great amounts of water, virgin water from within the crust of the earth broke. What a catechism. I can't say the word cataclysmic thing. This was something that had never happened before. With awful fury rains came down the top soil being lifted off, everything swirling around a tremendous eruptions of water coming out from inside the earth the the fountains of the great deep and with them probably all kinds of.
Minerals and salts and whatever was inside the earth, everything now exploded on this world in the ark was lifted up.
Was knowing any danger in that arc?
No, it probably may have been such a large thing. Even it's shaking and moving. Moving would have been pretty slow. I don't think they got thrown around inside there. They were safe inside that arm. But what an awful storm came on this earth, you know, by my grandfather's old cabin, which is now near my house. That's ground.
We can get out there in a few minutes by boat. There's a rock on which I used to climb and it is by where we used to have our gas tanks that were the propane tanks. Uh, the, uh, propane tanks for the lights in the refrigerator is a rock that a couple of years ago I discovered something about this rock and I've taken, I took Jonathan Sacks out there and had him try this and I think he came to the same conclusion as me.
Rock is about this big, and in it is the perfect print of a hand.
That you can put your hands in and it's just like this and it drags a little bit like that. It's very clear and very distinct. I believe that was the hand of one being swept away and reached for that molten bit of material that had been just ejected from the crust of the earth. And that imprint has remained for 4500 years. What a chilling thing it was when one of my children said to me, Dad, that's the Prince of a hand, and I put my hand in.
And it was a man with the same size hand as mine.
What an awful thing to be swept away in that flood.
But to those within the Ark, they were safe.
An arc was Christ in picture.
Safe in Christ they were because the waters feed on the ark, all the fountains underneath is all the hatred within the heart of man. The Lord Jesus went before Pontius Pilate and confessed the good confession and was let beaten there and punched men covered his head and punched him and said prophecy, Who was it that hit you? And they smote him with a Reed, and they took together a crown of thorns, and.
A bunch of thorns of thorns. Big thorns. Not little prickers. Big thorns.
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Of woven together and in horrible hatred of man against Creator, smashed him down on his blessed head.
How is the Fountains of the Great Deep being opened up?
As they let him, he went bearing his cross, condemned an innocent man, condemned to die. The world said, we will not have this man to reign over us. Away with them.
Get rid of them.
No indignity was too bad to heap on him. They spit on him. His face, it tells us in the book of Isaiah. His face was marred more than any man, and his visage more than the sons of men. We sometimes see people that are pretty beat up in black and blue and punched, but the Lord Jesus is faceless, marred more than any man.
As the fountains of the Great Deep.
As they brought them out and up Calvary's hill and took big spikes.
Not little nails, the big, awful, probably jagged, no concern for cleanliness or to ease his pain with whatever implement they had drove them into those hands that had only done good, and into those feet and in a cruel way hoisted them up.
That was the Fountains of the Great Deep opened up.
And all day that passed by reviled and made fun of him. He was the song of the drunkard. Lover and friend were put far away from him. His own familiar friend betrayed him. The fountains of the great deep energized by Satan and the heart of man. My heart and him says. I see the crowd in Pilots hall, the taunting cries. I hear the crowd shouts have crucified of all their curses fill my Mir yet of that.
Raging multitude, I sensed that I am one, and in that voice thin a voice is rude. I recognize my own, the fountains of the great deep, But it also says the windows of heaven were opened up.
Awake, go sword against my shepherd.
As the Lord Jesus, after hanging there for three hours, darkness covered the face of the whole earth.
During that three hours he was made sin, the Holy One who knew no sin.
He did no sin.
He knew no sin.
And in him sin was not the Prince of this world came and had nothing in him.
The Lord Jesus, the Holy Lamb of God, was made sin for us, the just, for the unjust, and there alone and forsaken of God. For three hours all the punishment that was needed to put away sin to fully satisfy God's heart concerning the whole matter of sin was taken care of. We can only stand as worshippers stand back in amazement and stand and behold on it. We can't enter into it.
During that was the windows of heaven were opened up.
The cries that are recorded through the Psalms and the various poetic books of the Lord Jesus, they refer to water deep calleth unto deep at the voice of thy water Spouse, all thy waves and billows have gone over me. He went down to the lowest part of the earth and typified in Jonah. When Jonah speaks of going down and the waters came, encompassed his soul there, and the weeds wrapped around his head. All these horrible things that the Lord Jesus endured.
Was as the waters beating Let's read about it the.
The arc was lifted up above the earth as the serpent Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. Even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, and here the ark is lifted up.
The earth says we will not have them, and God in His Holiness has to hide his face from him. So here he has suspended. The ark was lifted up.
And the waters prevailed and were increased greatly upon the earth, and the water went up, and the ark went up upon the face of the waters, and the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. Does that mean that the flood was higher than at Mount Everest is now? No, it doesn't necessarily mean that it the waters were higher than Mount Everest is now. It says that it covered the mountains, but it tells us in 104 Psalm that the mountains rose in the valley, sank into the place that they had found it for them.
Whatever land that there was, whatever was the highest mountain, was covered completely. This whole earth was covered.
00:40:00
A few years ago there was bad flooding out on the Mississippi River. Maybe some here even experienced it. And I was on a bus tour and we were supposed to go over to Iowa and we couldn't for about 200 miles. You couldn't get across the Mississippi. And we had to redo our trip and go down to Saint Louis. And we went up in the arch there just as the on the day when the floods were cresting and the waters came up just to the foot of the arches there. And it was quite a sight to see such awful amounts of water. And one of the politicians of our country went and toured it and made the statement. He said this is a flood of biblical proportions.
This foolishness is a drop in the bucket compared to a flood of biblical proportions. It's a little stream is all that that was the flood of biblical proportions covered the entire earth. And that's why in every place they'll tell you at one time this land was covered by a vast inland sea. And why there's fossil records on the top of all the highest mountains that there were is because they were all under this water.
And all the high hills, 19 that were under the whole heaven were covered 15 cubits upward did the waters prevail And the waters were covered. So even the tallest men on the tallest stilts couldn't have escaped nor the savage force. I don't think we really have a sense of the awful force that this water as it was rising, it would it's swirling power where whole land masses were or whole huge amounts whole forests, that's they find areas where there's now fossil fuels that were just tremendous amount of vegetation rolled over and covered in a moment.
And sunk down into the crust of the earth and back up very quickly, and God thereby providing fossil fuels for people to go on for a period of time. The mountains were covered and all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both a foul that's the birds and of cattle and of beast and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth and every man. They find caves, which there are many, many bodies found in these caves.
And the thought is you hear all kinds of theories, 7810 thousand years ago there was groups came here to bury their dead. And so I don't believe so. I believe they tried to take refuge. There's those waters came up not realizing that they'd be covered and were sealed there. I believe every bit of fossil record that there is on this earth points to that awful time when God overthrew the world that then was and that you can't walk more than a few steps on the face of the earth without seeing testimony to that.
It's a solemn, solemn thing. God did step in and intervene with the whole direction things were going, and he will again.
And every living substance was destroyed, which was upon the face of the earth, both man and cattle, and creeping things in the fowl of the heaven. And they were destroyed from the earth. And Noah only remained alive, and they that were with them in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon the earth, and 150 days.
But then there came a time in the 8th chapter, and God remembered Noah in every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark. And God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged, and the fountains also of the deep, and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained. There came a point when God had been satisfied with all his righteous claims, were satisfied as the Lord Jesus hung there on the cross.
You know, he said, no man takes my life from me. I lay it down on myself. It was like that burning Bush that although it burned, the fire burned. The Bush was not consumed. The Lord Jesus in full strength, at one moment cried with a loud voice.
At that moment is it where the flood stopped.
They come in the 22nd Psalm. The Lord cries, Save me from the, uh, let's read it, Psalm 22.
Stop.
Verse 21 Save me from the lion's mouth.
There came a time.
God no longer had to forsake the Lord Jesus when it was all finished.
And immediately the character that song changes. He says, for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns, from the water bottles and God immediately he reached from above he drew me, he took me out of many waters. It says in the songs thought as it were came to us. There was God didn't allow him to hang there and to suffer one minute more. And when a calm voice, the Lord Jesus said Father into your hands I commit my spirit and he willingly gave up his spirit.
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Although man stands absolutely guilty of the murder of the Lord Jesus, him being delivered by the determinant, council and foreknowledge of God, you've taken him with wicked hands of slain.
So there came a time when the flood would stop. God sent a wind then.
And we know that when, uh.
Wind blowing over the face of waters, evaporation causes cooling. It may very well have been that there was very, for brief time, large ice caps and so on. We're reading job that he stored up those waters. It may very well have been, but it wasn't a series of thousands of years of glacial advances that did all this. No, it was an awful, cataclysmic flood that turned everything upside down.
So the Lord sent the wind, and.
A very big win. And you can imagine things got kind of restless there in New York after this amount of time. I can picture that. But I start to get on each other's, under each other's skin. Maybe a little bit might. I can just imagine one of the boys going and saying if I could just find a quiet corner where I didn't hear an animal longing to be out.
And we'll, uh, for time's sake, we'll skip on.
321 Well, let's just look the fourth verse. And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the 17th day of the month upon the mountain Savara rat, and the waters decreased continually until the 10th month. So here they are, and they're stuck, stranded on this place, and the waters are still going down, but they're still stuck inside of it.
Still waiting inside there by now. The food may.
Not taste as fresh as it did the first day. Maybe a real desire to get out there and see what what's going on came to pass at the end of 40 days. Umm, most good on the first day of the month with the tops of the mountain scene. And it came to pass at the end of 40 days that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made, and he sent forth a Raven which went forth to and fro until the waters were dried up from off the earth. What are the Ravens? Their young pride of God for food. But what is it?
Carrying it dead things. So there was plenty for them to eat, and there was plenty for this Raven to eat. It could sustain itself. There's plenty of dead things floating around here.
But he sent forth a dove from him to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground. But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot. While for time's sake there's a lot we could get out of this next mountain, there's a lot to see both of the death of Christ and the work of God within a soul in this next portion. But we'll skip kind of quickly through it. Uh, he sent out the dub again.
And uh.
The dog brought back the olive leaf, and so no one knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. It was already things taking seed, things beginning to come up, things blooming, and no 13th verse. And it came to pass in the 601St year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, that the waters were dried up from off the face of the earth. And no one removed the covering of the ark and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry.
There's no more flood now for no one to go through. There's a lovely thing. Let's look at it for a minute. And 104th Psalm.
Or it speaks to the flood.
And the.
46 10-4 Psalm. I've covered it with the deepest, with a garment. The water stood above the mountains. At thy rebuke they flooded, the voice of thy Thunder they hasted away. And it's really, if I believe I'm quoting from a more correct translation, the eighth verse is, The mountains rose, the valley sank into the place which thou hast founded for them Thou has set a bound that they may not Passover, that they turn not again to cover the earth.
Now what happens to those waters?
Those waters that were so where are they now? Where are the waters of the flood now? Why aren't they covering the earth here?
Matter can be neither created nor destroyed, but leaves God out. But where are they now? What happens to those waters? Well, He sends the springs into the valleys, they run among the hills, they give drink to every beast of the field. The wild ***** quench their thirst. But the Lord Jesus endured on the cross of Calvary, now can produce for us for man is this a wild *** is cold?
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Stubborn. Senseless.
Are there any wild donkeys here?
Wild dances.
Any people who haven't yet had their thirst met in Quench Your Thirstiness? Do you have a thirst in your soul?
Do you know what it's like to have a thirst in your soul?
I heard the voice of Jesus saying, Behold, I freely give the living waters, thirsty one, stoop down and drink and live. I came to Jesus and I drank. If that life giving stream. My thirst was quenched, my soul revived.
And now I live in him.
Whatsoever will let him come and drink of the water of life freely. Are you thirsty in your soul? Have you tried all kinds of things that you have hoped would quench that thirst inside of you, that longing for something that would really, really work for you had different things. You thought this might work. This will satisfy me if I do that, if I try this, if I go here.
Sometimes people get the idea if I could just go somewhere where it's peace and quiet and beautiful, then I'd be at rest and my soul would be the the thirst would be quenched. I live in an area where it's kind of like that and a lot of people come from all over the country, actually, from around the world. There's Olympic skiers and things like that that decided this was a great place to settle down and live at the end of their career. They're looking for refreshment and it doesn't. It's a miserable people that night by night.
Brother Jeff and I went on New Year's Eve, and we walked through the town as the clock struck 12, giving out little calendars with gospel verses. People throw them on the ground, and yet they dove headlong into the bars, hoping to quench the thirst in their souls. But here's where you'll be. You're thirsty. They give drink to all the beasts of the field. The wild ***** quench their thirst. These streams, the storm of the waters of judgment, are now streams of refreshment. All you have to do is come and quench your thirst and go back and just finish up with the story here of the flood.
So finally he can come out.
Verse 15 God spake to Noah, saying, Go forth of the ark, thou and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons wives with with thee. Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both fell of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and that that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth. And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons wives with him, every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth.
After their coins went forth out of the ark. What a different world. Now, instead of a flat, rather perhaps humid situation, he's up on a mountain top for the first time in his life. He's seen blue, sees blue sky, clear blue sky. No longer the vapor, the covering of water above. There wasn't no record of idolatry before the flood, no record of astrology, because they hadn't seen God, hadn't intervened in the course of man, so Satan had nothing to copy.
There were no stars to start worshipping. No, it's not that they weren't there, but that they wouldn't have been visible through. We don't see the stars on a cloudy night. Maybe it's just some of the brightest ones. All of a sudden here, he's out and it's a whole new world.
If any man be in Christ is a new creation.
Baptism is typified in the story of the ark. We go in, we come back out, and it's a whole new terrain.
Everything is different. Behold, I make all things new. All of a sudden there's high peaks, valleys, and all of a sudden there's a rainbow. So that when instead, well, let's just read about that and Noah building an altar unto the Lord. Oh, Mr. Noah came out, he said, God, isn't this the earth has been cleared away, but they're still sin inside me and I have sons and they're sinners.
He still had to present because the Lord Jesus had not come to once for all offer a sacrifice yet. And so this again looked forward to the death of the Lord Jesus. The blood of another animal has to be shed. Keep on going until that blood is shed once for all. Because after the Lord Jesus Christ finished and said, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. And he willingly left his body, His spirit. He gave up the ghost, a soldier in one last act of hatred.
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Came to him, you know, the Lord had said to David, the sword will not depart from your descendants from generation to generation in the government of God. But it was also in the grace of God because when that soldier came in fulfillment of that and took the spear in, thrust it into the side of the Lord Jesus, what came out? Blood and water. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin. And there that blood was shed for David's sins, for Noah's sins, for my sins.
What about for you? Will you put your trust in that?
And so we built an alt, an altar, and the Lord smelled a sweet saver, an odor of rest. God was completely satisfied when the Lord Jesus had offered up his life. Never another sacrifice will ever be needed when we come together on the Lord's Day. It's not to offer the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's a blasphemous, wicked doctrine that came into Christendom along with all kinds of Pagan things that appeared in time. The notion of that a priest can magically make God.
In the Lord Jesus and once again time and time again they crucify a fresh the Son of God. It's an awful thing. That isn't what we do when we come together. It's to look back and to remember the Lord Jesus Christ in his death to show forth his death until he comes either testifies these things say surely I come quickly. Amen, Amen. So come Lord Jesus. Well, let's sing the 2nd and the 4th verses.
Of that hymn that we started out with. Hymn #2.
Come on.
What you can do, I don't have any condition and that's the last holidays. You can't remember today and I don't know if you're getting anything, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Mm-hmm.
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Now it's the accepted time. Now is the day of salvation. God doesn't offer you any more time than right now. And I want to plead with you.
Any that are in this room, young person, old person alike.
In Christ there be a reconciled to God come. God does not guarantee you one more breath, but his message today is cometh. The Spirit of God is tugging, knocking at your heart's door.
All you have to do right now is bow your head, say Lord Jesus, I want to come into the ark. I want to come in and be safe. Save me, him that cometh to me. I will in no wise cast out. Very simple thing just to ask and you shall receive. Just bow your head, ask him to come to save you, confess him as Lord of Savior and you're saved. You're safe, you're in the ark for all eternity. Let's pray.
Some Shields
Children—David Mearns
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.
Somebody have a number #8 that's thing #8.
That's a good one for us to start with.
The coming of the Lord Jesus #8.
Shall we go around here coming?
I don't think it's on.
Yeah, yeah, I'll go over the road. Come on, I'm getting.
Oh man, can't call everyone ready to go. I'm, I'm, I'm happy to say anything. Can I have your plans to get started at any time?
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You know boys and girls.
Last night we had a gospel meeting, and it was a gospel meeting that I think everyone could understand. It was for boys and girls and it was for older people. But this morning we're having a gospel meeting and it's just for boys and girls, the only people listen to, but it's just for boys and girls. Now, why would we have a gospel meeting just for boys and girls? Who can answer that for me? Anybody know that?
Sunday school, That's right, that's Sunday school. But why would we have Sunday school? Probably have Sunday School for Boys and girls.
Anybody know why would we? We would have a Sunday School for Boys and girls. You know, we had some meetings yesterday. We had a reading meeting and we had an open meeting and maybe that was a little hard to understand, but this one is just for boys and girls. Anybody know why we would have one just for boys and girls?
So they can understand, that's right, they can understand. And is there another reason maybe somebody else had their hand up?
00:05:06
Yeah, the same reason. That's right, you know. Well, I'm sure the mother in here and girls to understand how to be saved, but you know why it's for boys and girls. I went for a little walk this morning and I pasted out. It was about 300 feet away from where we were staying at the Comfort Inn, and there's a little graveyard there, and it's called the Nimensburg Cemetery. And I went to that little graveyard and I went around and it's not very big. It's only about the size of half of this room right here from where I'm standing to that back wall. That's how big that little graveyard is.
And I went through that graveyard and, you know, there was a man's grave there, and he was 74 years old when he died. And then there was a lady's grave there, and she was 58 when she died. And then, you know, there was a lady there and she was 26 years old when she died. You know, that was the same age as my grandma when she died. She was 26. And I went a little further and I saw there was 2 graves side by side. There was a little boy and a little girl.
And they were seven years old when they died.
You know, there was another grave and there was a little baby there that was 11 days old when that baby died. And then there was another grave and there was a baby that died the same day it was born.
And there's all different ages. You know, I have two little babies in heaven that died the same day they were born. They were born to my wife and I, and then the Lord Jesus took them home. But you know, we have Sunday school because we don't know when we're going to leave this world. None of us know when we're going to leave this world. And it's important for us to understand how to be saved and to understand that we need to have our sins washed away in order for us.
To be in heaven as we've been singing. Shall we gather at his coming? Well, let's just ask the Lord for his help.
Who has another hymn for us?
Somebody else have one for us?
Sorry, which one is that?
41 You have to speak up.
#41 I like this one, it's about the gypsy boy.
No, I'm sorry #41.
Around the throne of God in heaven will many children think #41.
Around the.
World for a given will have everything.
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#44.
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Who else has one for us?
#2525, James.
#25.
My first person.
Like the fighting of the year?
Is my God, I'll be fine and silence the Lord of the makers.
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00:15:10
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You know, it's so important to be in time. You know, we heard about the ARC last night.
And there were some people that went into the ark and they went in on time. They went in just on time.
But, you know, there were some people, I'm sure, when those drops started to fall.
They realized that it was too late and they may have even have knocked on the door of the ark to see if they could come in. But they weren't in time. They weren't in time. And we want to be on time, don't we? I'm so glad that I came to know the Lord Jesus. You know, there was times when I sat as a boy and I sat in gospel meetings and I sat in Sunday school just like this. And if the Lord had taken me, you know, I wouldn't have been on time. I wouldn't have been on time. It's such an important thing to be on time. I was talking to a man.
This time last year he was in bed, he was sick with cancer, and he was preparing his family for leaving this world. And you're the doctor had told him the day before that he had about six months to live. And you know, in four days the Lord took him, in four days the Lord took him. And I don't think he was on time. I don't think so. We want to be on time. Don't we be on time? Let's think one more, somebody else have one more at the end #46.
This is a nice one. Glad tidings. Well, it's certainly glad tidings we have here this morning #46.
00:20:22
I'm going to speak a few minutes this morning.
About some Shields, you know, in Ephesians 6 it says above all, taking the shield of faith, who can tell me what a shield is? What a shield?
Anybody tell me what a shield is?
What kind of a person would use a shield? Would a doctor use a shield?
Or would an accountant using a shield? How about a soldier? Would a soldier use a Shiite stand? What's a shield? That's right, a soldier would use a shield. That's right, a soldier would use a shield. Well, you know, the first shield, I want to look at it in First Samuel and the First Samuel chapter 17. And you know, it's kind of sad when we read about this shield because you remember the story of David and Goliath. We all know that story. Well, where David went, he was up on the top of the mountain and he went down into the valley where that big strongman, that big giant was.
Goliath and you know, we read about that Goliath and how he had armor and he had a big beer and he had a sword. We're gonna read something about his shield that I think is very sad and that is in First Samuel chapter 17.
And.
And in verse 7.
It says on the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam and his spear had weighed 600 shekels of iron and one bearing a shield went before him.
No, that's kind of sad because here Goliath, he had a shield, but you know, Goliath didn't carry it. Goliath didn't carry his shield. He let somebody else carry his shield.
Now, that's a solemn thing. You know, there's lots of boys and girls here, and you know, your dad's saved, and you know your mom saved, and you know, maybe your brother's saved or your sister. They're all carrying a shield. You know it's not good enough for them to carry your shield. You have to carry your own shield. You know what happened to Goliath? Because he didn't carry his shield, he perished on the battlefield. He perished on the battlefield because somebody else carried his shield. He didn't carry his own shield.
You know in Ephesians 6 when it says above all, taking the shield of faith.
The translation says besides all this taking the shield of faith, in Ephesians 6 we read of all the army and then we read about the shield and it's in a place by itself. And the Lord Jesus speaks of our faith and he speaks of the grain of mustard seed. You know what's not? What's important is not how much faith we have. What's important is what our faith is linked to at the other end.
Here, Goliath, you know he didn't carry his own shield. Well, you know, there's another shield in Second Samuel.
And this is a sad shield too in Second Samuel chapter one.
We read about a man, he had a shield, but it's a sad commentary as well.
In Second Samuel, chapter one.
We read in verse 21.
The mountains of Gilboa Let there be no dew, neither let there be rain upon you, nor fields of offerings, For there the shield of the mightiest violently castaway.
The shield of Saul, as though he had not been anointed with oil. Now here was a man that had a shield. And when he was on the battlefield, what did he do with his shield? Did he hang on to it? You know, a shield? Is that what she can preserve life? And this man, he carried a shield, but on the battlefield, he threw it away.
You know, I think that.
King Saul was a pretender. He was a pretender. You know, he pretended all his life to know the Lord, and he carried a shield. But on the battlefield he showed, he showed his true colors, and he threw that shield away. You know what? I'm afraid that there might be boys and girls here, and you're just pretending that you're safe.
You're just pretending that you know the Lord. You know, that's a sad thing. You know, there was times when I was a boy and people asked me if I was saved. You know what I said? I said, yeah, I'm saved. You know, I was just pretending to be saved. I was just pretending. You know, we don't want to be like Saul, who was pretending to be saved. You know, I'm going to tell you a story about another time that I was pretending.
00:25:05
Boys and girls in our.
OK then we have heard this story, but when I was a boy.
I was becoming a young man and I played in an orchestra.
And I played the violin in an orchestra.
And, you know, we used to play, we used to practice every week. We all get a whole orchestra would get together and the the conductor would stand up at the front and he'd have his baton there and he'd start and everybody would start playing. Well, you know, this one week.
He gave us an assignment and it was a very busy week for me. It was a very busy week. And I didn't have time to practice at any time, to practice the violin. And you know, the next week when we came together, you know, I pulled the violin out-of-the-box. It hadn't been out-of-the-box all week. And the conductor stood up at the front and we were all preparing. We were tuning our instruments and.
I had the music in front of me and I looked at it, you know, and I hadn't practiced that piece and I didn't know it at all. I didn't know it at all. And the conductor, you know, when he starts, he taps his baton on the podium and then everyone starts. And, you know, if you've ever watched an orchestra and you've looked at the violins, all the bows go up and down exactly the same way, just like that, you know? And I was, I was sort of afraid because I didn't know the piece and I didn't know what to do. And so I just kind of looked at the other bows that they're going up and down. And I made my up and down just like theirs, but I didn't touch the strings.
I didn't touch the strings, you know, I was just pretending to know the piece. I was just pretending. You know, boys and girls, we don't want any pretenders here. We don't want anybody that's pretending to know the Lord. We want you to be in the ark. We want you to go right in the door of the ark and not to pretend that you know the Lord Jesus. Well, you know what happened while I was playing there?
All of a sudden, the conductor, he stopped everybody. He stopped everybody from playing.
And he says, I want all the stringed instruments to play well. That meant all the violins and the violas and the cellos and the basses. And they all started to play well. I started to make my bow go up and down just like the others. But I didn't touch the strings. I didn't touch the strings at all. I was pretending again, you know. And after a couple of minutes, the conductor stopped everybody again. And then he said, you know, I just want this group of violins over here to play, you know, And that was about 12 violins, you know, I was in that group.
And you know, well, we all started to play and again my bow went up and down just like all the other bows.
But I wasn't touching the strings.
And you know, then the conductor stopped everybody. And then you know what he did? He looked at two of us and he says, I want you 2 to play.
And, you know, I was one of those two. And, you know, only one person played, you know, when I tried to hit the strings that time. And, you know, it didn't sound very good, but I was pretending. You know what? I talked to the conductor after and I, I spoke to him. You know, he said, he said, you know, I knew what the problem was all along because their ears are trained and they know just what the difficulty is.
And he knew what the trouble was. He knew that there wasn't enough volume coming out of that group of violins, and he knew which one wasn't playing. But I asked, So I asked him. I said, well, how come you did it the way he did? I said, why didn't you just speak it to, you know, speak to me? He said, well, you know, I did it that way so that it wouldn't happen again. And you know, the Lord Jesus, he speaks once, Yeah, twice. And, you know, the Lord Jesus has spoken. He spoken last night to you boys and girls.
About being in the ark, I have a feeling that there might be some hair this morning standing.
Pretender. You're pretending to know the Lord Jesus. You're at all the meetings, you're dressed nice like all the other boys and girls. You know just the right things to say. You're able to turn to all the and you're able to sing to him. But you don't know the Lord Jesus. You know that's a solemn thing for you to be a pretender. A pretender. We don't want to be a pretender, do we? Let's look at one more shield now in First Chronicles.
First Chronicles, chapter 12.
You know, when I read about these men here, I thought that was very interesting what it says about these men.
These men weren't pretenders that were going to read about in First Chronicles 12. They didn't pretend.
They didn't pretend at all.
In First Chronicles chapter 12, it says of the Gaddite. In verse eight it says and of the Gaddite there separated themselves unto David into the hold to the wilderness. Men of might, men of war, fit for the battle that could handle shield and buckler, whose faces were like the faces of lions and were as swift as rose upon the mountains. When I first read, I read about that, I thought that's interesting. And when we think of a warfare back then, we would think of those that were able to use the bow and they were able to shoot an arrow and they were able to hit the mark right on.
Or we think of those who are able to use the sword and they're real good at it, but it doesn't say that about these men.
It said that they could handle the shield. Now, why would it say that? There's something important about being able to handle the shield. You know, these men, they had an appreciation for that which could preserve life.
They knew what could save their life, and it wasn't a bow. You know, if a man had a bow and he was shooting an arrow and there was an arrow coming at him from this way, could that bow and that arrow save him? No. Or if he was shooting an arrow and someone was coming up to him with a sword, could that bow and arrow say them? No. You know, these men, as I said, they had an appreciation for that which could preserve their life. And you know, I thought about the Gaddites there and I thought about those men, how they would go into a battle.
And you know, we perhaps if we were standing there, we would look and see what's happening and there'd be lots of dust flying and there'd be bodies and there would be all this activity, and then all the dust would all settle. And you know what we'd find? We'd find a Gaddafi standing there with their shield. So we'd find them standing there with their shield. They knew what could preserve life. Well, you know, boys and girls, you know the way of salvation. You know what can preserve your life too? But we don't want you to be a pretender. We don't want you to be a pretender today.
00:35:29
We want you to lay hold of that shield of faith. We want you to have your sins washed away in the precious blood of the Lord Jesus. We're going to turn to another one, but how about we sing to Him first?
Somebody having him for us.
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Well, I'd like to look at another shield in Genesis.
Can you, Sir?
Genesis chapter 14, you know, we read about Abraham and we read about Lot.
We only read about.
We read about Noah last night and Noah's been a real encouragement to me. Noah's a father because no one had the testimony that when he spoke to his children, they went into the ark with him. And when Locke spoke to his children, you know his sons in laws, they, they mocked at him and what didn't have all his children go with him. But here we find Abraham and Lot in the 14th chapter. You know what transpired? There were some kings. There was 5 kings I believe that came down against 4 kings and there was a battle.
And a lot of them in the Sodom were taken away and a lot of their goods were taken away. And one of the people that was taken away was Lott.
You know, when when Abraham heard that his nephew Lot was taken away, Abraham decided he was going to go and get him. And so Abraham went and he went with his little army. You know, when I thought about his little army, he had 318 men. And that army wasn't really too much bigger than Gideon's army, but he went against the enemy and he went against them at night time. And we know he was victorious and he came back and he had Lot with him. And you know, he started to think about what he'd done. He started to think that, you know, this king Cheddar Leomar, he might realize that the one that came came against him was Abraham. Now, Abraham didn't exactly live in a big walled city.
00:40:30
He didn't exactly have huge army. You know, he lived in a tent and he had flocks and herds, and they were scattered around on the countryside. And you know, Abraham, I think he felt like a sitting duck. If Cheddar Leomar decided he was going to come back, because, you know, when Abraham went against Cheddar Leomar, he went against them at night. And Cheddar Lee Omar would have had no idea how big the army was that was coming against him. But, you know, while he's thinking about these things, you know what the Lord says. Let's read the first verse of the 15th chapter.
After these things, the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abraham, I am thy shield. If you're not Abraham, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward for boys and girls here this morning. Can you say that the Lord is your shield? Can you say that the Lord is your shield? You know, I'm so thankful I can stand here and say that the Lord is my shield.
I went through a time in my life where I wasn't sure if I was saved or not and I.
Maybe you know what, I get saved and I go to another gospel meeting and the speaker would, would, would preach a real solemn message and I'd wonder if I was saved, you know, and I asked the white asked the Lord to wash my sins away again. And I wonder if there's boys in here, girls here that are wondering if if you're really saved. You know, there are those that are pretenders, but there are sometimes those that are just not sure. You know, our house, we had someone come to us in the middle of the night once and they said, umm, you know, daddy, umm.
I want to say, but the devil's telling me that I'm not saved.
I'm wondering if there's boys and girls that are saved and you really are not sure that you're saved. You're not real sure. You know, Abraham, Abraham was fearful here and and he was a little bit afraid. We know that because the Lord says to him, fear not Abram, fear not. And I'm wondering if there's someone here that's a little bit afraid. Well, can you say like Abram was able to say that the Lord was his shield. You know, the Lord, the Lord could say to Abraham at this time, he could say fear not Abram, I am thy.
Shield, I am thy shield, and exceeding great reward.
Well, boys and girls, let's remember these thoughts about the Shield. And I'm wondering if we could sing one more hand before we close. Maybe someone has it for us.
I'm gonna have a hymn for us.
Number 42.
That's a good one, a little child of seven.
Or even three or four may enter into heaven thru Christ the open door.
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Well, let's just pray.
Mansions or Abodes
Pair of Knees
Rejoice in the Lord
Colossians 1:15-29
Reading
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.
On the 15th Earth, or perhaps begin at the 14th to get the connection.
Colossians chapter one, beginning at verse 14.
In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.
With the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature. For by Him we're all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be Thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created by Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the Church. It was the beginning, the first born from the dead.
That in all things He might have the preeminence we're pleased the Father, that in Him should all fullness dwell, and having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself. By Him I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven. And you that were sometimes alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now happy reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you wholly.
And unblameable and unreprovable in his sight, if you continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven.
Whereabout Paul and native minister, who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body's sake, Which is the church whereof I am made a minister according to the dispensation of God, which has given to me for you to fulfill the word of God. Even the mystery which has been hid from ages and from generations, but now has made manifest to a St. to whom God would make known. What is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles?
Which is Christ in you, the hope of glory, whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. Where unto I also labor, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily.
The thought and the word image is representative and, uh, the first born of all creation. The way Mr. Darby translates it, that is the Lord Jesus when he takes his place in his creation, for He has created all things. He must be the first. He's the one who is the head. It's not a question of time. It's a question of position and honor. That is his. I just mentioned this because we know this person's been used, You misused to teach that.
He was a creative being, but thank God, we know from many other scriptures by him all things consist in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was God was with God and the Word was God. Well, I just mentioned this. So he's the one who came into this world. He's singing a little hymn. Thou lost the image in man as well as dies of the invisible to mortal eyes. And I think that expresses that very nicely as to his position of image.
And then in the Psalms it says I will make him my first born higher than the kings of the earth. That's a position of honor that belongs to the Lord because of who he is.
And we say that no matter where the Lord enters, he is the first born, that is in coming into the creation, the first creation.
By necessities the first born of all creation.
When he rises from the dead, he's the first born from the dead.
And when we're talking about the new creation, he's the first one of the new creation. So the Lord must have that place.
And I think that borne out in our verse, uh, 19.
Umm or 18 rather than he might have the preeminence.
00:05:00
There's one of the little joys of visiting the assembly in Lima, as you walk into the door and the door of the meeting room, right up on the wall, very prominently it says that in all things he might have the preeminence and that all things is very broad. Beloved, I'm glad our brother Gordon emphasized that and I just stressed to young people get a hold of that concept that the umm.
First born is not a time statement.
It's a physician statement. Uh, it's, it's, uh, a place of honor and don't let anybody misuse that with you, whether it's Jehovah's Witness or anyone. The Lord by necessity in every place that he enters, takes the places first board versus the Psalms is most useful on that. What, what's the reference for it again?
Oh, you're not. Which phone? It is myself. I will make them my friend, you know.
Umm, so we.
OK, verse 27 looking at it.
8989, I'm sorry.
Verse 27.
I think what's interesting too is in uh.
Isaiah Chapter 9 and verse 6. So we can just turn there for a moment where we have that well known verse. We just turn over there to the 9th chapter of Isaiah the prophet.
That well known verses that is often read.
People often speak of the accuracy of the Word of God.
Here's one verse where we can really appreciate just how accurate the Word of God is. Uh, Isaiah Chapter 9 and verse 6.
For under what the child is born, here's the phrase here unto us a son is born. Is that what it says? It doesn't say that, does it? Under what a son is given is given.
How accurate the word of God is. It's true He was a child born, but he was a son. Given that means that he always existed.
I think through we need to go over these things.
Again and again, because the attack of the enemy is very subtle and continuous on that truth. And it was right from the bosom of those gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, or in the bosom of those gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus, where the idea was, was advanced that He was not the Son who passed eternity. And you know what Satan did to one of the best.
Expositor, Expository creatures and evangelical Christianity Today.
Is, uh, John MacArthur, and John is not clear on that at all.
Does not hold eternal sonship with private. If anybody has a doubt about it, I have written documentary proof of it. Be careful what you listen to and who you listen to because, uh, you'll find that Satan won't use a fellow that doesn't know anything to advance his thoughts. He chooses someone who is clever and and, uh, gifted.
Very often to advance what he wants to advance.
I just mentioned that not to down the brother because he's a very capable expositor of the Word of God, but when it comes to the person of Christ, which is everything, isn't it? Who doesn't see that basic thing that our brother is bringing out and giving us so clearly from Isaiah 9:00 and 6:00.
He was the Son from all eternity.
This is Darby wrote a little paper about 1855 I believe it was, and the manuscripts available in his own handwriting. I hold it vital to hold the sonship before the world. It is the truth.
00:10:11
And if you give that up?
There's no telling where you wind up.
I was just thinking the First Chronicles 5 because it gives something of the thought that we're talking about there. First Chronicles 5 and verse one.
Now the sun is, uh, proven, the first born of Israel, where he was the first born. But for as much as he defiled his father's bed, his birthright was given unto the summons of Joseph, the son of Israel.
And the genealogy is not to be reckoned after the birthright. In other words, in course time. Reuben was the first born, but he was not recognized as the first born. The honor was given to one who wasn't actually, as far as time was concerned, the first born, but the honor of the position was given to him. And that's the thought that the honor of the position is given to the one who was from all eternity. Therefore, if he comes into time, he must be, he is the first born.
We use that term in that way if, uh, the president's life was called the first lady and she occupies that place, not the oldest or the first one in the country, but she occupies that place of preeminence. I would like to point out something though, because the young people about the, the, this attack on the internal sonship of Christ, the NIV and translation of second Psalm and Hebrews were told that they say.
I almost hate to repeat it, but it says you are my friend and you have become your father. It's blasphemy. God never became the Father of the Lord Jesus.
Christ, thou art my Son this day I'll begotten you. What the Son is given. God did not become the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was the Son from eternity. And so they, they, it's not, and it shows too. It really reveals that it's not a translation at all because the word Father isn't in the verse at all. Thou art my son this day I begotten thee. I did not become the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's something we want to belabor the point that.
It's self contradictory when you think of it. How could one who, who is created be God? And think about it, it's impossible, right? It's just impossible. I think of the verse in Isaiah that says from everlasting.
To everlasting thou art gone, everlasting a past eternity. To the present time everlasting the the present eternity to come from everlasting. To everlasting thou art God. Who is that?
What was it? It's it's it's a simple childcare could could state it. That's our Lord Jesus Christ.
Was the view that was pointing out yesterday that in that mercy district from Isaiah that it's not the everlasting Father, but the Father of eternity?
Thought that is the fact is, is that he is the father of eternity and we speak of them there in Revelation, you know, with Alpha and Omega. Yes, he's that. He's everything outside of that too. You know, the first and last and last letter of the Greek alphabet, that he's everything outside of that too. The beginning and the ending. He had no beginning. He will have no ending. But think of it that that blessed One came into time.
He came in to time, and He assumed flesh and blood with the children, but it had been said in manhood he never ceased to be God. That glory with veiled brethren, but he never ceased to be God.
Hebrews chapter one verse eight also makes it very clear.
Hebrews one verse 8 but under the sun he said that God the Father addressing the Son.
But under the sun he passed. Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of thy Kingdom.
The Father addressed him, The Son of thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. Well, as the divine mystery, brethren, it's beyond our mind. No man knoweth the Son, but the Father. He is, uh, has an unscrutable mystery, just as we can't understand eternity. So that it's just vow and worship at the revelation that God has given, and give him the honor that the word of God and that God gives to him.
His Son, His eternal Son. One other clue that might be a help to some who are puzzled about these things is that in our way of thinking, sonship implies in inferiority.
00:15:11
Now, that isn't always true in an absolute sense, but in fact it's not at all true in an absolute sense. But.
In the Scriptures, the idea of son and father is an idea of relationship. It's not a question of who's on top.
In human relationships, simply from the fact that the sun comes from the father.
And the father brings up the son. There is that thought with it a submission and.
Umm and uh, we acquire a thought in our minds that there's an order of things, father and son, but don't press that on the divine relationships because remember that the relationship of father and son.
In human relationships derives from the other, not the other way around. And there's a very key verse in Hebrews that I think is a clue.
Like it gave me a lot of help when I was a teenager and struggling with the idea of umm, the sun being inferior to the father. Look at Hebrews chapter 5.
All right.
Reverse hey.
Though he were sons, I'm reading out from Jamie's translation. Though he were son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered, which he suffered. I think if we were writing that we would have put because he was son, he learned obedience. But God knew that that thought, that evil thought would be intruded of the fact that sunship requires.
Obedience. And so it says, though he were Son.
In the full glory of the sun.
God the Son.
He came into this world.
And I like the way Chuck Hendricks puts it. He who always commanded learned what it was to obey. It was a new experience. He didn't have to learn how to obey, did he?
Doesn't say he learned how to obey, but he learned experience. That is, I mean obedience. It was a new experience for it.
That person was a great help to me. I hope it perhaps is to others too, to see that sonship does not per SE involve obedience in human relationships. It does because of various things, age and who brought up whom and who provides whom and that sort of thing. But I think we, we approach it as our funds achieve maturity and have their own families.
There becomes a, uh, perhaps an increased understanding of the. Is is, uh, an almost an equal situation?
And divine things, of course they were, Go equal with the eternal God.
And, uh, the Lord Jesus says that one who was equal to.
One with the Father, he came into this world.
And learned obedience through the things that he suffered and.
He it was a, as I say, a brand new experience for him. Not something he had to learn how to do, but it was something he had never experienced before.
And in so doing.
He becomes.
Uh, having been perfected, he becomes to them that obey Him the author of eternal salvation.
That's us to his priesthood. I like to think of it that he learned, but obedience cost. That is when he refused to turn stones into bread. He was still hungry. He he refused in perfect obedience to his Father's will, but there was a cost to that obedience. And the Lord Jesus having become a man taken that holy place. He was still hungry, thought he was obedient and he was now he can sympathize with us.
00:20:13
He asked us to do something in His word. He knows what it's called. He's been through the pathway before. Not that there was any other desire or thought. And it's hard to be anything else but pleasing to his Father. But he learned what obedience cost and he enters into all that we've passed through and loving sympathy in our pathway here. So I think that's beautiful. That's the way He was suited to be a high priest to us.
He learned obedience, and now he's become a merciful and faithful high Priest.
In some parts you can see those two things, merciful and a faithful, a faithful high priest. If man would belittle him to the point where he's not God, how would these things ever mean anything to us? I think about what I'm saying. How would it ever mean anything to us if one who was so perfect is not what they claimed, you know?
Or he, he is what they're not claiming. And and, you know, they're just belittling the whole thing. I wanna ask the question. Yeah. In connection with the Philippians Chapter 2. We just turn over there for a moment.
Maybe somebody could explain what this means here in verse 6?
Uh, chapter 2 and verse 6.
Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God? What? What does that term mean?
Well, that was not created in the image of God, but it was robbery for him to want to be equal with God. But the Lord Jesus really was and is and always will be God. He was God the Son, but he made himself a little lower than the angels. Adam tried me, Adam tried to climb up. He wasn't equal with God. But Satan's suggestion is he shall be of God, knowing good and evil.
It was broadly for him to desire that place. It didn't belong to him, but the Lord Jesus was and always is. I say again with reverence, equal with eternally the Son of God and all the glory of His person in Godhead. But He made himself a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death. He took on manhood form. But it wasn't, shall I say, it wasn't beyond what belonged to Him to be God. It was His place that He never left that.
But he became, if I could illustrate it, if the King's son went out to be an example to a group of workmen how to work, he would still be the King's son in all the honor of his position. But he has put that aside and put on overalls and works now. He's still the king of his son. And the king would be very hurt if somebody said he's not the King's son. He is that. And so if one of those workmen said I'm gonna be equal with my employer, now he's out of his place.
And that's the thought in the past. He's just marvelous, marvelous grace.
Worship that he made himself a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death. What a marvel of God's grace. Well, let's try with unshod thief when we speak of these things. But they're there for us to know, to enter into, to understand, and to enjoy. Could we say he was always be fun?
Uh, I was thinking of a simple verse of you say simple verse of John 316. So God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.
When was he not respond? He was always the son, but I think one of the writers, I'm not able to quote it exactly, but I'm one of the writers, put it that he took into his bosom or into his heart humanity with the end of his work. I don't know whether I'm quoting that correct that this writer quoted, but I thought it was beautiful to think that he became a man in this world and took took into his bosom.
Humanity so we have a divine person. We also have a true man. We have a true true solidness because you hear something of the of the words who being in the form of God. Perhaps if he had to write, he might write Christ Jesus thought enough robbery to be April with God, but it doesn't say that. It says Christ Jesus who being in the form of God Father, not robbery to be equal with God.
00:25:26
I'd just like to say a word about the UMM.
Following verse verse 16.
In this sentence that sometimes young people say, why don't we say the Apostles Creed? Everybody else seems to know the Apostles Creed and.
Reducing the truth of God to creedal forms always brings error, Always, because we can't say it better than God has said it.
We cannot express it correctly apart from the language of Scripture. So what? What about the Apostles Creed? Well, it starts right out on a wrong basis. I believe in God the Father, Maker of heaven and earth.
Is that right?
No, there is a sense in which the entire Godhead was involved in creation.
Certainly it was God's thought what God the Father thought, wasn't it? And yet the one who is expressly said to have done the creation, and this first makes it so plain by Him were created all things.
Things in heaven, things in there, visible and invisible.
Rose Lordship, principalities, authorities, and then it ends the verse. All things have been created by him and for him. So don't lust after a creed. Somebody asked Mr. Darby one time to write a paper on what the brethren believe and he said no, we don't believe in in making creeds. He said they're all subject to human error.
He said, what I will do is tell you what I've learned from Scripture. And he wrote a little paper, which is a nice little paper, but don't take it as a crease. What have I learned from Scripture? We're always entitled to say that. And there's always a freshness about that, isn't it, When we can state clearly, this is what I have learned from Scripture. And I put it out and the brother Gordon says, well, that's not quite right for *** ****. You know, it should be this here. Notice this scripture that says this.
Thank you brother. That's that's the principle of statement of what we believe and we want to be ready to state what we believe. Watch out for a man who won't tell you what he believes about things.
Every false teacher.
Is squirming. He won't. He won't pin down. You can't get him to be pinned down. I'm sure it happened back in the Apostolic days. We know what happened during the Reformation.
BW Newton was one who wormed and weaseled his way around in the early days of the testimony of those gathered together to the Lord's name and others later. Mr. Raven was very hard to pin down. Mr. Taylor and others. Let's be very careful about people who won't state what they believe clearly. Let them do it humbly and say this is what I've learned from Scripture. Correct me, brethren, if I'm wrong.
But.
You better have a you better have thoughts formed by the Word of God and don't rely on credible statements. Almost every Protestant, evangelical, denominational or inter denominational board or organization power, church organization has a doctrinal statement. Some pride themselves on a very long way.
I believe in the premillennial pro, uh, pre tribulation rapture of the church and then be because they disagree with others who don't and others say no, I'm gonna be very broad and I'm gonna say I just believe that price is coming again. Be careful of those things because, umm, I have to tell you that my wife was gonna teach one time at a Christian School.
When we were, we didn't have, uh, when I had lost my job and she was gonna help out with things and she went to this general association of regular Baptists at the Christian School in Parsippany, NJ and, uh, they passed out a statement of faith to her to sign before she could teach. She brought it home and we went over it together.
00:30:27
And she says I'm not comfortable with this and this and this. I looked at them and I said I'm not comfortable either with. Was it that it was fundamentally unsound doctrine?
So one, one example, one thing is you have to say, I believe in believers baptism by immersion. Well, we don't personally, uh, we believe in believers baptism by immersion, but we also believe in my wife and I in Christian household baptism. So we, we, we couldn't sign that statement. Ruth couldn't sign it and get the job. Umm, I just mentioned that that be careful because there is a tendency.
To want to reduce the truth of God, the creedal statements, you can't do it. You can't do it. It took God. All of that has set out his truth for us.
Later on in this chapter, we read that Paul rounded out the outline of the Word of God. He completed the Word of God.
But that's a very full book and.
Gordon, you've been studying that a good many years, haven't you? Reading it, re meditating on it. I've been exhausted.
No. Is there any points on which you think you might get corrected by the Lord before He comes?
I was wondering mention was, uh, referred to the book of Hebrews in chapter one. And I, I think it's so very, to me, this has been the most clear statement as to who created the heaven, who created it all. He was one very, very plainly written, uh, speech, speech here about God with some New Times and in diverse manners and fake and time passed under the father by the prophets.
Passed in these last days, spoken unto us in the sun.
Now.
Now it says.
Whom he has appointed heir of all things, By whom also he made the world. Who made the world?
Uh, yeah, I, I, I'm sure we revelation or, uh, Genesis one, I think that you find that there's the, the triune goddess there in that creation also, but definitely here, as it says.
Whom he has appointed heir of all things, and whom also who made the word? The simple statement isn't it? But it's a profound statement, and it's a statement that men have wrestled with and set aside and turned upside down and inside out.
And as you say, brother, they, they don't know where offers and they don't know where they're from.
May our brethren at least take my question to be. I know we're in Colossians, but the brother brought up Philippians chapter 2 verse six and I said something that I wasn't making a comment, I was asking this question. The question I was asking is what is the meaning of the word who being in the form of God?
As we will provide Dolby Mites write down Christ Jesus or Father not robbery to be equal with God, but it doesn't say that my question is.
What is the meaning of the words who be in the form of God?
I don't know if I can stay in God is a kid and so that the Lord Jesus did something when he came into this world and took a body that had never been so God had before, but now here was God himself, the creator of all things in this world as an invading fashion of the man and to me that's what who be in the form of God says in John chapter 4. God is a sin and worship him must worship him in the spirit and truly he's spoken of here in our chapter as the invisible God, but he became a man.
And that blind man, it's the worst I do best. I believe in the Son of God, that's who is thee Lord, that I might believe in him. He said thou let's both see him, and it will be the socket with me. There was God himself in human quantity fell down worship.
00:35:11
Thinking of that man who was Luca John Chapter 9 you know, umm.
How the Lord?
I can reveal how he revealed himself to that, that man and by faith, he, he saw the Lord Jesus and yet the religious element of the day went right. It just went right by them. There he was, you know, down in the end of that chapter. Maybe we better turn to it and want to get it right, uh, at the end of, uh, John Chapter 9.
And I think by the Lord making this statement, he, uh.
He really exposes the heart of man, especially the religious element of what we've been talking about here. Uh, the 9th chapter of John's Gospel.
And I would just like to read verses 40 and 41, John Chapter 9. Some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words and said unto him, Are we blind also? Jesus said unto them, if he were blind, he should have no sin. But now you say, we see, therefore your sin remaineth. What a solemn statement is here. They said that they could see it. They weren't real in their hearts.
OK.
I was just thinking when just about the anything different from what's been said so far, but maybe just put it a little different way.
Uh, in.
All of the.
Creation.
You've learned to classify things.
There's mineral.
Has no light. It's inanimate. There's vegetable, has light.
No salt. And then there's the animal lines. And then there's man.
Man is a distinct element within creation, but outside of creation, outside of time and space.
There's the one who?
Is this spirit that we've learned?
Who is omniscient, Omnipresent.
And.
Is, uh, omnipotent?
And there is a word that almost every language has. I suppose I don't wanna be dogmatic and say everything. Every language I've been exposed to, that's a few.
Every one of them has a word to express.
That.
Being outside of creation.
Who is?
Eternal.
Find Richard Scott.
I was, uh, talking to a group of Albanian people.
Few years ago over in Switzerland.
And the refugees from the wars in Albania.
If you wanna do something hard, try to communicate with people who don't speak your language.
Who don't, uh, who have been told from infancy that there's no God?
They've just never been exposed to the concept of a supreme being. Everything is explained in material sentence.
And who had a smattering of French, some German.
I didn't know their language, they didn't know mine.
And I wanted to tell them they got lost.
When I asked the Lord I said help me to and finally I found out there was a word in Albanians or God. It's zogged.
So I was a little girl. Her story was in the Sunday school paper a few years ago, A little girl by the name of Sonia.
And she listened intently. We read verse after verse of the Scripture. I had to have them show them where it was and then have them read it in their language from the Albanian New Testament.
And I explained to them the best I could and the mixture of German and French and some English.
00:40:05
I explained to them that that God had sent his Son into the world.
To die for our sins on the trust of Calvary.
And one little girl, that little girl, Sonia, lifted her eyes to have an incident.
Boucher Zoo.
A mixture of French and she was going to school in in Switzerland and learning French. If you didn't know the word in French for God so you used the Albanian word. Thank you God for Jesus.
Couple of years later we went back and I asked how is Sonia doing? Oh, she's telling everyone about the Lord Jesus.
What a joy. But I just mentioned that.
It's a concept of a spirit eternal who has.
Doesn't live in creation, but who entered into creation.
In order to redeem our souls.
And the Lord Jesus was in the form.
Of God, or soft or good or whatever you however you want to put it. And that God has a personal name.
His personal name is.
We say Jehovah the Lord.
That's his personal name, but the Lord Jesus was in the form of God, that he didn't think it was something to be grasped after, to be equal with God.
Made himself with no reputation. All right, so here's the ghost story about the man he met on the ship going to England.
He he was one who liked to get into a conversation with others. He wasn't that. He wasn't much on giving out facts, but he'd like to break into a conversation. So he walked up to this man and the man couldn't understand a word he was saying. He couldn't understand him. So he thought somehow I got to communicate. So he says Jesus, Jesus. And he said he put his arms wrong. We had a great time after that.
Understand each other. But we need, we need to. It seems that he's quite happy with that.
Umm.
Sweet part of what it is too, if you think that He not only entered creation, you know. But the sweet thing is that after He shed His present blood, He ascended in that same body and is needed there today in the majesty of the heaven. Think of it. A glorified man burying in His body the marks of the servitude while He was here in this world. Think of it. And He's there, and He's going to come again in that same body and receive us to Himself and for all eternity. And I believe that's the truth.
Of the Revelation chapter 5. And they saw in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts and the elders, a lamb. And it had been lame. Now to God, as if the cross took place two days ago. When you and I are raptured to heaven, you and I are going to look into the faith of Jesus someday, and we're going to see Him as He is. What a thought that is.
So we say that there's only one true man in heaven right now.
As in body.
The Saints are there in spirit.
I don't know whether that's a broad table or not, but the Lord seems to be there. Puzzled how to answer. Sometimes they have. People have asked me. Well, Brother Nick, where it's been on that night.
Amanda.
He's the first one there in a glorified body, isn't he? And uh, I think we, we must hold on to that firmly that he's there and he's there and body.
And neighbors 15 You'll have both aspects of his divinity.
And this command Thou art my son. There's no time element whatsoever. That is the first spoken in eternity. That was always true.
When you come to this day, you see anywhere in time this has to do with this humanity and it says why do you bring it then the first forgotten the world that all the ages of God pushing them. This man, this human man is so important. Every single Angel with that exception is kind of Washington, but then you come to this, I will be to him a father. We have future Transformers and we're on holy grind. We've got to be very careful because it primarily requested his humanity.
00:45:19
But you know, there's just relationship that I can't explain.
There's the eternal relationship and there's this relationship as a man, which did have a stop. And we're on such holy ground that they've got to be very, very careful.
3:15 We can turn over there for a moment, Mr. Smith. What tremendous person. First step, Timothy 316.
No, there's many 316 in the Bible like John 316, but here's first Timothy 316. That's one way in your memory because it's a beautiful verse mode of controversy. Great is the mystery of godling of God was manifest in the flesh.
What a statement. What a powerful statement that that God was manifesting that what? When did that take place? When did that happen?
When we read in John chapter one and the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld her glory, but glory is not the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth. There's only one person who can meet that, that's our Lord Jesus Christ. Think of that then what else does this say? Justified in the spirit scene of angels preached under the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in the glory. Mark 16 the same thing and after he had accomplished these things.
He said he he attended there and sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, and that's where he seated this afternoon. And brethren, one of these days he's going to rise up off that throne and he's going to step into the air and he's going to get one call.
And we're going to be gone. He's going to wrapped her up out of this control. That's the one that we're gathered to. That's the one by grace that has paid us and brought us into this place of blessing and savor. Oh, how could we ever tolerate anything that would belittle him or put him down on the level of a man or whatever? Peter tried in Luke Chapter 9, but the father wouldn't have it. He said, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased here.
Him. Hear him.
Verse 17 says he is before all things.
And by him all things consist.
And these translations is substance.
And what's the difference?
Well, this chair consists of metal, doesn't it?
But that's not the thought. Everything is held together by that blessed One.
Even when he was down here working.
I don't wanna be too speculative, but.
Very nails that held his hands to the cross. So sister through it.
The soldiers. The soldiers who?
Uh, nail them to the cross through his breath.
It's persistent through the Lord Jesus Christ.
Can I explain that I validated? I believe that's important that we learned the valve before the truth of God.
Not saying that our human minds can explain them. The the mind is a wonderful thing.
God gave us our minds.
But the mind is nothing unless it's subject to God's truth as contained in His Word.
I think someone remarked about.
Uh.
About, uh, J&D that he had one of the greatest minds of his time, but like a fully subjected it to the word of God. No, that's the secret of of his usefulness.
Down through these last couple of 100 years is that that was a mind that was subject to the word of God. It wasn't saying, well, I think I can explain this.
There's many things I can't and won't even try to explain. They're not my I'm. I'm not capable of explaining. I am capable of believing.
And bowing at his feet in adoration. And that's where I am.
00:50:04
I think that's a, that's a good thing. Uh, there are young people here that I'm sure that, uh, may be wondering right now, what are we talking about? I mean, all these are deep truths that God has made known in his word, and it takes years for us to read them and to enjoy them. But the one thing that you must remember is this.
You've got to believe it, though you may never, never, never always understand it. So faith is that which takes God of this word, doesn't it? So we don't need to be able to expound on the you say about the the person of Christ in that way or to dissect it in any way, but just to believe it in simple faith and it's yours. You can have it upon simple faith believe.
On the Lord Jesus Christ.
Who is he? He is, he was God. He is God. He is the creator. He is the savior. Hebrews one tells us that. And so I think it's just a nice force to remember. We, we get into deep things and and we, we wrestle with many things, don't we? But The thing is that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So we need just to believe the simple truth.
When Christ died for us, He lives for us and coming for us. Nice business.
But I'd just like to go back to Revelation chapter 4 and 11. Thou art word thee, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power.
For now, has created all things and.
For my pleasure they are and were created and men are very unhappy today and they don't know why they're here, but we were created for God's pleasure and he gets no debt pleasure in the death of the wicked. A man once said to me, he said, what is this to God if I go to hell? And I said you were created for God's pleasure and you get no pleasure in the death of the wicked. And the Lord when he came into the world, he said, I come to do thy will. O God, our brother spoke to us of rejoice in, but that's why he was always happy and his soul, he never had the sense of his father's disapproval and what he did never at any time.
Right up to the time that he said farther in the right hands. I commend my spirit. He had the sense of His Father's approval. He came to do as coming into creation. And so this is what will make us happy. And so he was. He's created all things and they were created for Him.
Your brother, I think your brother's cold one years ago, I'm sure some of us knowing very well I mentioned about the, uh, I think it is created by him and for him. Uh, he mentioned this, he said, you know, the orchid grew in a remote places of the jungle. It's just in recent years that man has been able to, uh, be able to.
Grow the market, uh, in a.
In a setting you might say a man's inventions or man's thoughts, but he said that orchid. Orchid grew in the dense, remote places of the jungle, he says. For whose eye was the beauty of that flower?
I always thought of that, dear brother.
Breathing by him and forth.
And this glorious person is the head of the body, the church. What a thing to hear people say sometimes. Who's the head of your group? All that's never, never think of anything left or anyone left. And this glorious person we're talking about the eternal Son ever with and equal with God. This is the person who's ten of the body of the church and is finding is going to find his eternal joy in making us eternally happy in his presence with all that he provides him.
Back in 1951, I was I got a letter from the President of the United States.
Uh, I don't know how many of you have received a letter from the president, but I have.
Told me that I ought to report on such and such a date to the draft board.
To, uh, be inducted into the service.
Well, I prayed and read many, many pamphlets on the subject, and I became convinced in my own soul that I could not ever share arms.
00:55:10
And I filled out the forms as provided in the United States for conscientious objector status.
And they don't just let you get away with it. I mean, they you've got to defend your position. So one day they called me up and they said you're going to have a hearing in Jamaica, NY and such and such a street before draft board #63.
That was probably because I was the eldest in the family and the first one they had in that, uh, in that district that had taken that stand.
And I had known that, uh, two others had suffered for that stand and I prayed much before I went, prayed, read scripture, and finally I went And they, one of the first things they asked me, they said, when you filled out your form, we asked you who was the head of your church and you put the Lord Jesus Christ. We're not looking for games, They said, we want the facts.
So I said, excuse me, but that is the fact. There is no other head but the Lord Jesus Christ.
Oh no, every church has a.
Well, I said, the one that God has joined me to is the Lord Jesus Christ is the head of it. And so they said, well, it's just something you just invented yourself. I think. No. And I read this first to them. He is the head of the church.
Goodbye.
All right, and we'll move on to some other question, but I don't want to get into that whole hearing. The Lord was merciful and they granted that the status and feeling an awful lot of potatoes in the next couple of years.
It was.
Uh, you can see that men's thoughts just don't jive with gods, do they? How does it work without a head?
Brethren, right in this epistle, we're worried about the need to hold his head. That's to make it practical and real. One thing to go tell the draft board that the Lord Jesus is the head of the church. It's another thing to sit down in a care meeting and act as if he said.
And I, I just mentioned that this truth, the fact that he's the head of the assembly or the church.
The body is fundamental to our practice. It's not just a doctrine.
It's not something we put on some statement of doctrinal beliefs. It's real. And there has been disaster among the people of God every time we have gotten away from the practice of the fact that the Lord is the head. They said, well, I don't think he can handle this problem. We better try to handle it ourselves.
And what happens? We get it. More mess. This is real truth of God. He is the head of the body and He has all the righteousness that has the body.
How often we learn that jump into our own chains.
That, you know, here we are, we we confess that we're very a testimony to the truth that there is one body and who is the head of it? It's Christ. In Ephesians it says that he's not only the head of the body, he is head over all things to the body.
It's wonderful when you see that. So here I am, as one gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus.
I have to ask myself a question. Am I at this moment taking the direction from the head in heaven?
God's Time is Now
Gospel—Al Coleman
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.
Return in our Bibles first of all to Acts chapter 17. Acts chapter 17.
Acts chapter 17 and verse 30.
And the times of this ignorance God.
Winter. But now command us all men everywhere to repent, because he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained.
Whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he raised him from the dead.
Turn to the Book of Ezekiel.
Chapter 33.
Ezekiel, chapter 33.
The last three words of verse 3.
Form the people.
Turn the page verse 7.
The last four words of verse 7 warn them from me.
Turn to Matthew, Chapter 11.
Verse 16 Fell Wherein to shall I liken this generation? It is like children sitting in the markets and calling to their fellows, and saying, We have piped unto you, and you have not danced. We have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented.
That.
The responsibility for the Gospel.
Tonight the Lord has laid heavily upon my shoulders a gospel of warning. A gospel of warning.
And as a view, uh, especially you young fellers here sitting in the front row.
And reminded of a very solemn thing that happened not too long ago in Vancouver.
I got called to the emergency ward of the Royal Columbian Hospital ICU ward.
And we were.
I went with my uncle.
And we were to find out what was wrong with this young man.
We went into the ward after much, uh, rigmarole of getting into the ICU ward.
And we saw him, this young man who was wired.
He had oxygen mask.
He had every thinkable instrument on him.
He was half propped up in bed.
His eyes rolled. He was heavily sedated. Morphine.
He could barely talk. He was under oxygen. He talked to us through an oxygen mask.
And dairy sauce.
This young man.
Was brought up in a Christian home under the sound of the gospel. Heard the gospel many times. Godly Christian parents.
12 hours later, that young man was in eternity.
He was the most awful sight that I had ever seen and I hope I never want to see another site like him.
00:05:01
I don't know where that young man went to heaven or hell.
But you know.
Dear ones, tonight, do you have the opportunity here tonight to accept Christ as your Savior? What an opportunity do you have tonight if you're still in your sins. So I want to give this warning from the Word of God.
Solemn thing to step out of this world and in to a lost eternity.
So let's think that well known gospel hymn is 102. But I guess it's #25 In our gospel hymn sheets, life at best is very brief, like the falling of a leaf, like the binding of a sheath. Being time fleeting, days are telling fast that the dye will soon be cast and the fatal line be passed. Be in kindness.
The fourth verse Sinner, heed the warning voice.
Thank the Lord your happy choice, then all heaven will rejoice Be in time #25.
Lipids.
Believe in his daily turn out of his back and I can put all that fulfillment fulfilled in six hours.
Yeah, it's it's, it's still a bottle of their weight. You may find no clothes and get it.
And your pride he just to let it.
Mm-hmm. Uh.
Uh-huh. I mean, maybe, maybe $500.
Here in the arms of chains as far as some of the music against my.
Oh I pray you have to go there for a day of life to grow.
And your pride must all be lost and.
Mm-hmm.
And there is a warning body and the water is not high face darkness and having them on the House in the middle of the trees, go home that way it is ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
I don't know why, I can't say. It's been a lot of fun and that's the name of the product.
00:10:01
Umm, and starting to find a happy Easter. Uh-huh.
Mm-hmm. Let me see if you can get in front of us. Why don't, I don't know why that's the reason that's all you're seeing is, uh.
The the the way you don't know anybody, follow up and get away.
90509383 if you need anything else umm.
Shall we pray?
Turn to.
Uh, uh, Jeremiah 52. Jeremiah 52.
I want to say that one of the most favorite books that I love to preach the gospel from is the book of Jeremiah. And Jeremiah was a tremendous inspiration to me. I think of Jeremiah as the weeping prophet and how he kept on preaching and kept on preaching and kept on preaching the same thing over and over again. What an inspiration is. And so may we never tire of this wonderful message.
That we, that we, that we can proclaim and.
Let's go to the very end of Jeremiah, the very last chapter, and here we find the very first verse. Zedekiah was one in 20 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 11 years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Hammetto, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libna, And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.
According to all Jehoiakim had done, for through the anger of the Lord it came to pass in Jerusalem and Judah, till he cast them out of his presence, that Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in an attempt month, in the 10th day of the month, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, came he and all his army against Jerusalem, and pitched against it, and built forts against it round about.
So the city was besieged on to the 11Th year of King Zedekiah, and in the fourth month and the 9th month day of the month, the famine was sore in the city, so that there was no bread for the people of the land. Then the city was broken up, and all the men of war fled and went forth out of the city by night by way of the gate between the two walls, which was by the King's garden. Now the Chaldeans were by the city roundabout.
And they went by the way of the plain, But the army of the Chaldeans pursued after the king, and overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho. And all his army was scattered from him. And they took the king, and carried him up under the king of Babylon to Revlon in the land of Hamath, where he gave judgment upon him. And the king of Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes.
He slew also the Princess of Judah in Ribla, and he put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and the king of Babylon bound him and chains, and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison till a day of his death.
Now turn over to the next chapter, Lamentations of Jeremiah.
The weeping prophet weeping for the condition for the state of Israel and Judah.
Look at the very first word that we have here in the in Lamentations of Jeremiah, and we have this word How, how, how did the city sit solitary that was once full of people? How would she become a widow?
Well dear ones, we have just, uh, read the story of Zedekiah of how Nebuchadnezzar's army came and besieged the the city of Jerusalem for 1 1/2 years. Nebuchadnezzar's army was was up against the the city of Jerusalem and it finally broke up and we find of how Zedekiah tried to escape, but he was caught by Nebuchadnezzar's army and carried away captive.
Into Babylon and his eyes were plucked out. His eyes were plucked out. That was the judgment that was upon Azekiah. Had Zedekiah heard what Jeremiah had told him? Yes, he had. He had. And dear one, tonight you have heard the gospel. Yes, you have. Each one of here in this room have heard the gospel, just as that young man.
00:15:13
That I just told you about. Had heard the gospel over and over again.
In.
It had been.
Brought up in a Christian home of gathered Saints. And that young man died and I know not where. And he died of the worst disease that this world has ever known because of his what lifestyle.
And so the word, the gospel gives warning. Tonight. Zechaiah had a warning. And so we find and I and I, and I'd like to think of it this way tonight.
If the curtains could be drawn tonight, I had in time, you know, we do have it in the 16th chapter of Luke of how the rich man and Lazarus, and it says in hell. He lifted up his eyes.
Being in torment, the curtain was drawn aside to look in to that awful scene, that God does not want to send one person there. He says, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked would turn from his evil way. Then he says, turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die? It's the heart of God pleading for this world tonight. He's not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
It's God's heart of love lingering over this world and how wonderful it is that He's lengthened out the day of grace and to this very day. Here we are. What is it? July the 8th, 1996. The gospel has been going forth Lord's day after Lord's day, day after day.
Men have been presented with the gospel, God be seeking man refusing, but one day, just as we heard last night.
The door will be shut forever.
And many there will be that say Lord, Lord, open to us. And you'll have to say, depart from me, for I never knew you. I never knew you. Oh, but if you're in Christ tonight, if you know the Lord Jesus Christ is your own personal savior, if your sins are all washed away in the precious blood of the Lord Jesus, you're safe for all eternity.
You can calmly face the future when the blood is on the door. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sins. And so we find here this awful scene. Jerusalem completely ravaged the the, the population of Jerusalem was completely decimated. And you know, that's just exactly what is going to happen to this world after the church is taken home.
This world will be decimated.
How does the city sit solitary that was once full of people because they didn't listen to what God had to say to them. And here was Jeremiah, the preteen Jeremiah who preached this message over and over and over again. And you know, you go to the very first chapter and I challenge you young boys here to take up the book of Jeremiah and read his read what he did.
And read what God told him to do. You know, when in the first chapter he says I am but a child, I can't do this. But you know, God gave Jeremiah the strength and he and he and he told the children of Israel. He said judgment is coming, judgment is coming and judgment is coming because we read that verse. It says God now commandeth all men everywhere to repent because he hath appointed a day.
And that which you will judge this world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained. And so we find here, uh, in the, uh, 36th chapter of Jeremiah, we'll find there that, uh, Jeremiah was told to, uh, uh, take a role of a book and, uh, and, and this write the words that I told you.
Write the words and it was passed from one to another, and it finally came to the king.
00:20:06
And can't you see the king there, there he is sitting there in his winter house and he's enjoying, I say the pleasures of sin for a season. And many there are that are like that, enjoying the pleasures of seeing first season very comfortable in this world. And you know, that's what the God of this world wants to do. He wants you to make comfortable in this world and forget all about God. You know, it says in Psalm chapter 10, it says.
God is not in all their thoughts. No, you know, that's what the God of this world wants you to, wants to, wants you to do.
He he doesn't, he doesn't want you to think about your soul salvation. He doesn't want you to think about the Lord Jesus, just the pleasures of this world and he can present so many pleasures and in this world and and put them before you.
But Oh dear one, there's one that is bleeding for your soul tonight, it's the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, think of it in the wonderful that God sent his beloved Son here into this world, and he went to the cross of Calvary and there to die for you and I, for four lost, perishing sinners like you. And I think of it of how that blessed One, God's beloved Son hung there. And Calvary's cross could say, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. What?
What? What love that held Him there in that cross for you, for you, for you. Why? Because He wants your company of mine with Him in the glory. That's what He wants. He wants you in the glory with Him. You want to go? Do you want to go to that wonderful place that He's prepared for you? He says in my Father's house are many mansions. There were not. So I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you.
Unto myself that where I am, there ye may be All Souls. And so we find that what did what did, what did they do there when they received the role of the book. And there he is sitting there in his, in his in the winter house there sitting in his chair and the fire. Oh, nice comfortable scene. Nice comfortable scene. Oh yes, isn't that the way Satan is? Just make yourself comfortable in this world. Forget all about God.
And that's what he did. And you know what they did? They took a knife and they just put that role in the fire and burnt it up.
Fact that we don't have to worry about that anymore. We don't have to worry about that anymore. And it says they weren't even afraid. There is No Fear of God before their eyes. They weren't even afraid. What a solemn thing. Oh, no. You know, I know that each one here tonight would never take this precious book and put it in the fire. No, you wouldn't. I know you wouldn't.
Did you ever take it off and read it? Do you ever take this book off and read it and read about its wonderful author, the Lord Jesus Christ? Oh, he has wonderful things to say to a boy or a girl here tonight. Just take it up and read it any page. He's got some wonderful things to tell a boy or a girl, man or woman, to. Oh, wonderful words of life in this wonderful book that we have here. What a legacy.
Here the precious word of God that lives and abides forever, you know, did that hinder Jeremiah?
God says never mind Jeremiah, just write it again. Just write it again and you know, we have a song that we sometimes sing. Tell it again, tell it again salvation story repeat or and or until none can Save the Children of men. Nobody ever has told me before and so.
Tell it again and warn the people again of coming judgment. And you know, that's what he did. He told it again, told it again. And so we can tell it again and warn the people again tonight.
All we get in the next chapter I think is chapter 38 and you know, Jeremiah is put in a pit. They trying to get rid of Jeremiah. They were trying to stop him from preaching.
Jeremiah, be quiet. We don't want you to hear all those things. And so they put Jeremiah down in a pit and it said Jeremiah sank in the mire. Jeremiah sank in the mire, and Oh dear, 10 let's turn to it. Psalm 69.
00:25:34
Psalm 69.
Save me, O God, for the waters are coming to my soul. I think in deep mire where there is no standing. I am coming to deep waters where the floods overflow me.
Some 45 I believe it is.
Umm, no.
The all lightweaves and my bills have gone over me. Oh yeah. Psalm 42.
Psalm 42 verse 7 Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water sports all thy waves, and thy billows are gone over me. Oh, and you think of Jeremiah thinking in that pit, and it says in Jeremiah sank in the.
That pit in that mire. But all what? What is this here in Psalm 69? It's the sufferings of our blessed Lord on Calvary's cross. It says, I think in deep mire where there is no standing.
Save me, O God, where the waters are coming to my soul. I think indeed mire, where there is no standing, I'm coming to deep waters, where there is floods over to flow me. All I waste my billows are gone over me.
Oh, this is the sufferings of our blessed Lord Jesus at Calvary's cross and those 3 long dark hours and Calvary's cross when He was made thin for us in the door, our sins in His own body in the tree. Think of what He suffered there for you and me, bearing my sins in His own body on a tree, thinking of me a Calvary's cross.
To bore my sins, so that He might have my company with Him in that coming scene of glory.
He had me and you, and he has you and you, dear one, tonight, if you have him as your own personal savior. Jeremiah Sanction Mayer But here we find again that there is a man, a black man, a black man.
A wonderful place that the black man has in the word of God.
The Ethiopian eunuch and this and this. Evette Malek, the Ethiopian he was he, he, he was a eunuch too.
And you know what he did?
He was thinking about Jeremiah, say, have you thought about the Lord Jesus?
Ibad Malek, the Ethiopian, this black man, he was thinking about that man that was put it down in a pit and he wanted to be identified with that man was was put down in the pit. Have you identified yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ, that man that was sunk indeed Mire, God's beloved son, have you identified yourself with him and the holy spotless Lamb of God? And So what did Yvette Malik, the Ethiopian do? He got all cast clothes and rotten rice and he said.
Jeremiah down there in that pit, he looked down there in that pit at Jeremiah and he said, Jeremiah, you put all put these under your armpits and it says they drew Jeremiah as part of that pit. And you know what it says in the next chapter? It says, uh, I better read it. Uh, it'd be 30.
Umm, 30.
39.
What a wonderful thing this is what God said to be ebed men like the Israel. I think this is sweet, this is beautiful. Could God say this of you?
Verse 16 of chapter 39.
Go speak to Yvette Melody Ethiopian, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts. But God of Israel, behold, I will bring my words upon this city for evil and not for good, and they shall be accomplished in that day before the but I will deliver the in that day, saith the Lord. What day was that?
00:30:19
That coming day when judgment was to fall upon the nation of Israel, that we read off in chapter 52, that Zedekiah never escaped. But who escaped?
Ebed Malek the Ethiopian. And it says here for I will surely deliver thee, and thou shalt not fall by the sword, but thy life shall be a prey unto thee, because thou put has put thy trust in me, saith the Lord. Have you, dear young friend, here tonight I'm speaking to you.
Dear young ones, have you put your faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as your own personal Savior? Do you know Him personally as your Lord and Savior, as Lord of your life, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in thine heart, that God hath raised him from the dead?
Thou shall be saved. I think that's so beautiful. Because God doesn't ask you to do something complicated to get saved. No, he doesn't. Because everything has been done for you. At Calvary's Trust. It is finished. Yes, indeed. Finished. Every Jot Center. This is all you need. Tell me, is it not simply it says to a young boy so many years ago, So many years ago.
The song was this. It was number 10 in in our Echo, the great hymn book. It only says a simple thing, believe and live, believe and live. And I know as a young man, you know, I was on into manhood before I accepted Christ as my Savior.
And those were wasted years in my life. Wasted years, and I'll repeat that again, wasted years in my life.
Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Behold, now is the accepted time, the old. Now is a day, a day of salvation. God is offering man salvation full and free tonight, so whosoever will.
But that one condition.
Now, now, you may not have a better opportunity than tonight, tonight, tonight, he says. Boast not thyself up tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.
And he wants you to come tonight, right now, right now.
And so years ago, there was a little boy that sat in a gospel meeting. Tennessee.
And sat in many gospel meetings, just like you. Many, many gospel meetings. I went out the door each time. Unsafe. That's sad, isn't it? That's sad. Those were wasted years. Wasted years. Oh, I warned you, dear young boys and girls. God, time is now. You know, my brother, when we were young, brought up in a Christian home.
A godly parents. I thank God many, many times for my father.
For my mother.
I thank God many times my father was a very godly man. Some most of you didn't know.
But he's home with the Lord now.
And I thank God for him. You ever thank God for your parents?
For the word of God that you have opened before us, that every morning that your dad opens before you, but you know you're responsible for what you know, you're responsible for what you hear. And God, if you go out of this room and say tonight God will re hold your responsible for it. Perhaps you'll say that you were in that gospel meeting on July 8th, 1996 and you went out of the door unsafe. You heard the gospel.
00:35:13
He'll hold you responsible. Solemn, isn't it?
Zedekiah was held responsible. His eyes were plucked out. What an awful judgment was and was pronounced on Jeremiah. And it says, what shall he hand be of those that obey not the gospel of Christ. What shall he end be in the lake of fire for all eternity. Does God want to send you there? No, he doesn't. No, he doesn't want to send one boy or girl here tonight, But you know he's got no other choice if you don't accept him as your Savior. No, to the Lord Jesus.
Tonight, come.
You know, Zedekiah had a chance. Zedekiah had many chances. I believe it's in, uh, chapter 30. I guess I got my chapters a little bit mixed up, but that's all right. But in what in, I think it was in chapter 37, Jed, Zedekiah comes to Jeremiah and he says, Jeremiah, come here, come here. I want to talk to you. I want to talk to you privately. And he says, is there a message from God for me?
Is there a message? Is there a message? And he thought that maybe Jeremiah will make changes too, and he might change the message and he might say, oh, no, you're all right. You're all right. There's no adjustment coming. Uh, but I'm not, it's not going to come anymore.
You think that's what Jeremiah said? No, he said no faithfully. He said yes. He says judgment is coming and you're going to be carried away captive into Babylon. And that's just exactly what happened in chapter 52. Was carried away captive and his eyes were plucked out and then the street of Jerusalem were completely decimated of people.
And what a solemn thing for this world and what is going to happen to this world in this coming day, You know, that it could start tomorrow. Perhaps the Lord would come tonight. The Lord would come tonight. Think of it wonderful you waiting for that time to, for the Lord to come. You know, it's an inspiration to me. I go and visit my uncle all the time. He's in the rest home in, in, uh, Richmond. He's only about three blocks from me and I go down there. He's 96 years old.
A dear godly thing. I, I've, I've, I've been under here the sound of his word and we've been richly blessed in Vancouver by his ministry down through the earth. A dear godly thing. And, you know, he just says, I just want to go home. I just want to go home. And, you know, that's an inspiration to me. Oh, have we got the same desire? Do we just want to go home? I do. I do.
It's all very well just to say it. Oh I, I, I hope the Lord comes tonight. But do we really miss?
Do we really mean it? Are we like Uncle Norman? I just wanna go home, you know, to be done with this world. To be done with this world, neither the presence of our blessed Lord. Think of it. To spend an eternity with that Blessed One there to praise and to thank and to bow at His feet. Give Him the Thanksgiving and praise of our hearts that so weak and so feeble in this thing that in the coming day one loud, eternal burst of praise to Him, the one who alone art worthy. Well, think of it.
How wonderful. It's just before us. Do we really lay hold? Do we really grasp that? Just to be in His presence? That's very nice. Think of it, we might be there at home in the glory tonight. Oh, how wonderful.
You wanna be there, You know, you can't come with all your sins on you. You can't. I was telling them last week in the gospel, you know, hundreds of children, that we had the opportunity of presenting the gospel to a Newfoundland, Hundreds of children. They had the gospel. They heard them. Sometimes there would be a, a, a when we had a, a, a Sunday school or a hobby class, one child would come in and they'd never see them again. I had the opportunity of telling them just once.
Just once. And many of those children, they're so sweet, so, so beautiful, those children. I used to say, I wish I could just take you all in my arms and take you home to heaven with me, but I can't. You've got to come as an individual, as an individual responsibility toward God. You have sinned against God and those sins that separated you from a holy God.
00:40:13
But all thanks to the end of God. The blood of Jesus, praise God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin. Isn't that wonderful, wonderful news of the gospel? Have you received it? Have you received it? Do you know him as Lord and Savior? Is he Lord of your life you know as your own personal Savior?
Lamentations, chapter one.
Mm-hmm.
Lamentation, chapter one.
And verse 12.
Of earth that we re read so many many times, Speaking of the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary's cross. Is it nothing to you?
Is it nothing to you?
Dear young boy, dear young girl here tonight, Is it nothing to you?
Is it nothing to you?
All you that pass by tonight, you're passing by. You're passing by, You're hearing the gospel, Even those people you're passing by. Is this nothing to you?
Indifferent in your soul to a God that is just yearning to save you.
Is it nothing to you? Let me tell you about this first. You know, in downtown Vancouver, I'm reminded of this first, over and over again. You go down Hastings St. and you walk down Hastings St. amongst the row of stores there, and you come to a park and then you come to the three big pillar.
At the bottom of the pillar there are re at the bottom of that pillar there's two dates 1914 to 1918, nineteen 39 to 1945. It is the remote a War Memorial for those that gave their lives in the 1St and 2nd war for the cause of freedom. And you know these these this very verse is at the top.
Is that nothing to you all ye the pass by? And so we pass by that War Memorial, umm, and, and uh, we're busy. Uh, we say, Oh yeah, that's the War Memorial for the, for the war dead. And you keep reading on going on your shopping free or whatever you're doing, indifferent, indifferent. And so he says, is it nothing to you all ye that pass by? But this is not a War Memorial. This is our blessed savior.
This is the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ and Calvary's Christ. He says here that nothing to you owe you that passed by, He's speaking to you, dear young boy, dear young girl, here tonight he's speaking to you. Is this nothing to you that the Lord Jesus suffered on Calvary's cross for you? He says, Behold and see. Is there any sorrow like unto my sorrow which was done unto me, where with the Lord hath afflicted me?
In the day of his fierce anger. Oh, think of it, dear one, tonight what he suffered on Calvary's cross for my sins, all my sins so great, so many.
And his blood were washed away. Oh, think of it. Is it nothing to you as you view the cross tonight? The Lord Jesus there hanging on that cross? It was for you, dear one, that he hung there on that cross for you, for you.
For you think of it, what a savior is my savior is the years. Is it yours? Is it your savior tier one tonight, pleading for your soul? Won't you come tonight?
Tomorrow may be too late. It may be too late. He's pleading for you to come. You, you. You know what? I there's no age limit to come to, to, to Christ.
A little child of seven or even three or four may enter into heaven through Christ the open door. Have you ever confessed the Lord Jesus with your little lips? Won't you come tonight?
He's pleading for you. I wanna give you one last verse before we close this first.
00:45:05
I quote at every gospel meeting I preach at. I wanna do it again tonight.
John, 737.
John 73710.
And I believe that in this chapter we have possibly a picture of this world today. Here they were, the Feast of Tabernacles. In this chapter they were celebrating. They were having a celebration here, but not according to the word of God, I believe.
Everything that man was given to do, he failed in.
And here's his feet and we're getting down to the very last day of the feast, the very last day. And think of it, here it is. This is the last meeting and the last day. And probably, and it could be the last gospel meeting. Think of it solemn, isn't it? This could be Alaska. Have you ever heard of that before? Probably you've heard it every gospel meeting you've been in. But can you be sure? Can you be sure this wouldn't be the last gospel meeting?
It says the last day, that great day of the feast.
And here's Ben tonight, feasting, feasting, having a great party, having a great time, leaving God completely out of his life. As we came down here on the freeway on #81 I was mentioning to Bruce that said Bruce, I said, look at all the RV's going down here and the, and the car trailing behind, and then all the, all the luxury and everything else going down the highway. Big 5065 seventy $1000 mobile homes. Where are they going? They're going to their vacation.
But uh, what about God? Have they left God out of their lives?
That great day of the thief. Ah, and what do we got here? Jesus, Jesus.
Is the answer to this world tonight the Lord Jesus Christ? No other answer. Christ is the only answer for this world tonight. Jesus stood and cried. Think of that. Think of the compassion of his heart as he stood there that day.
Jesus stood in Christ and today his heart is still the same, still beseeching man to come to him, He says here. Jesus stood in Christ if any man first, oh you know, that's this world.
This thirsty world in which we are living, you know, it says.
He satisfies a longing soul and filleth the hungry soul with fatness. You know there's only one person that can satisfy you.
You know, that is what finally ended me. Before I came to Christ as a young man, the world, there was nothing to satisfy me in it. I was, I was fed up with it, fed up with it.
All the pleasures of team first season.
If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink. Think of that. What a savior standing there that day. Let him come to me and dream. Oh, you don't have to come to meetings. You don't have to.
Do all kinds of other things. It's coming to a person, the Lord Jesus Christ he says in Matthew 11 I love this verse and 28 he says come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden and boy without as a young man with light heavy lady, and I will give you rest. What a Savior. I mean give rest and he gives rest.
What you know, I say this often, you haven't lived until you found Christ as your Savior. He satisfies the longing soul. What a Savior. He'll look after you and care for you and bless you every day of your life. What a savior brought into a family. The, the, the, the fellows that I that I used to come around with as a young man, I lost them. They didn't want me anymore.
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They didn't want me anymore, but I got a whole new family, a whole new family and that wonderful and that's what you'll get a whole new family brothers and sisters in Christ. What a wonderful thing it is to know Christ is your own Savior and know that your great question of your soul salvation has settled once and for all that the Lord come tonight to be go up to be with him in the glory If we were to go into the article of death.
Hi Steven. Oh dear one, thanks. See. Are you safe tonight? If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink and drink and drink. How wonderful that is. Do you know this wonderful person? Do you know this wonderful person that we presented the United even though it's been table? Do you know him personally as Lord and Savior? If you don't really come tonight.
Tomorrow maybe.
Too late. All those first verses that we read warned the people. God now commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because He hath appointed a day in the which He will judge this world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained. Dear 1:00 tonight to go out of this room unsafe and into a lost eternity, you have nobody to blame.
But yourself behold now, now is the day of salvation. Come back from Behold the Savior at the door. He said they not, did not before, had played as long as waiting. Still do you have no other friend, So I'll open the door. He'll enter in and talk with you, and you with him #20.
See how the?
World.
Jacob's Life, The Heart, Of This Country
Open—E. Wilson, E. Covell, D. Gorgas
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On her brethren, if we might turn for a little while to uh.
Book of Genesis we've had much before.
This morning and in the last two hymns that we've sung together about pilgrimage.
I think it's interesting too that Spirit of God has had on my heart for.
Quite a few weeks now the life of Jacob a bit and I'd like to look at his life for a few incidences in it.
So if we could just quickly turn to the 28th chapter of Genesis.
The things which were written before time, we learned were written for our learning.
And we look at the life of this individual, Jacob, and we say his life was just like ours. We're so much like him.
But I want to uh.
Read from verse 1020, eighth of Genesis.
And verse 10.
And Jacob went out from Beersheba and went toward Heron, and he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set. And he took of the stones of that place and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed. And behold a ladder set on the earth, from the top of it reached to heaven, and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father.
And the God of Isaac, the land whereon thou liest to thee, will I give it unto thy seed.
And I see shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the West, and to the east, to the north and to the South, and the And in thy speech shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land, for I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of. And Jacob awakened out of his sleep, and said, Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not, and he was afraid.
And said, How dreadful is this place? This is none other but the House of God, and this is the gate of heaven. And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it. He called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of that city was called Love at the 1St. And Jacob vowed to vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house, and peace, then shall the Lord be my God.
And this stone which I have set for a pillar shall be God's house, and of all of thou shall give me, I will surely give attempt unto thee.
I wonder, too, if we might take the liberty to go over to.
Another chapter here.
Uh, chapter 35.
And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there, and make there, and altar unto God that appeared unto thee, when thou fled us from the face of Esau thy brother. And Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments. Let us arise and go up to Bethel, and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress.
And I was with me in the way which I went.
Well, I suppose you maybe have guessed on a little bit of what I have in my heart to speak about this afternoon.
We've had this morning.
Much about our standing before God and our state and so on.
So I find this interesting, this story of Jacob.
He goes from Beersheba and he went toward Heron. Beersheba was the well of the oath.
Was at this very place that God, that Abraham called upon God that tells us and it tells us there that he called upon God, the everlasting God. Now the Hebrew there is the word hello lamb, which means God, the everlasting God who presides over everlasting things. And you know you and I have enjoyed a little bit of that this morning, the fact that we were chosen in him before the foundation of this world, uh, from Genesis 22 Through to Genesis 25, we see the ways of God with.
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Israel and the ways of God with ourselves.
How timely these things are. How we need to, uh, appreciate and love these things.
But he lights upon a certain place, and he carries there all night because the sun was set. This is a moral picture.
It doesn't rise. His sun doesn't rise again until 20 years later.
After he comes back out of the land of Peda and Iran.
You know, this period of 20 years in his life was not necessary, was not needed.
Any more than the travelings of the children of Israel in the wilderness were not necessary, but God allowed it to show Jacob what was in his own heart. And God does that with us. He allows us to go through these things to show us what's in our own hearts. But blessed be His name, He does it too, to show us what's in His.
You know, it's interesting that for 20 years he had his wages changed 10 times.
And you know, he was deceived by his uncle Laban.
Who cannot fail to see in these things a picture of our own life, you know?
How often we've proved the truth is adverse. That uh says that the steps of a righteous man are ordered by the Lord.
But here he is. He, he's, he's there and he tarries because the sun was set. He took of the stones of that place sometimes the assembly, and always liked that. We like, we think of the assembly as a place of stones.
Difficulties. Problems.
Whatever it may be.
Sometimes their circumstances and we like to rest in them. That's what he does here. He lies down on the stones.
Set him up for his pillows, placed his proposed, you know.
We've often we've sung in those two hands how this is not our rest.
Heavens are home.
And he lay down in that place to sleep. What does Ephesians tell us?
Time to wake out of sleep, Roman says. Ephesians 5 tells us that awake thou that sleepest, and arise from among the dead in Christ shall shine upon thee. But here he is, He's asleep on top of the stones, isn't he?
Behold the ladder set up on the earth and the top of it reached to heaven, and the all the angels of God ascending and descending on it. Picture of Christ John chapter one tells us that the Son of man he could speak to Nathaniel how you see the Son of man ascending and descending upon the Son of man this this ladder reaching.
And behold, the Lord stood above it.
He's above it all, isn't he? He's above our circumstances. He controls everything. He's head over all things to the church, which is his body. There he is standing.
He stood above it all, said I am the Lord God. I want you to notice this phrase right here. I am the Lord God of Abraham, thy father.
Naturally speaking after the flesh, Abraham was Jacob's grandfather.
But in the things of God, the relationships that we know, Abraham, he could tell us, is the father of the faithful. Now we have to say here that Jacob was not acting in faith.
And yet, uh, God would remind him.
He would remind him very clearly that there is a pathway for faith.
God of Isaac, the land were on their lives to thee will I give it and to thy seed and a wonderful to think that the promises of God have nothing to do. They have nothing to do with us in in in you know and us somehow thinking within ourselves that you know we can keep them. They're unconditional. They're unconditional promises.
Going to give them.
And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the West, the east, to the north, and to the South, And then thy seed in thee, and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with thee.
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What comfort this is. He is with us, He's with us.
He was with Him here, and will keep the in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land, for I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to. The Isn't that what He has done for us? Not going to leave us or forsake us? He loves us, brethren.
He desires our good.
How often we fail in realizing this.
Jacob wakes out of his sleep and he says surely the Lord is in this place and I knew it not.
Uh, sometimes, you know, we're gathered to the Lord's name and it's many years before. Sometimes we wake up in our soul. So the realization of whose presence it is, we're in.
Remember, brother in Christ.
Speaking at a conference and I remember him telling us situation where a man had been at the Lord's table for 50 years and he when he asked him the question, he said when did you realize? He said that Jesus was the Son of God? He said not until last Tuesday. Think of it, breaking bread all those years and not realizing in his soul this glorious and precious truth. Yes, we can go to sleep spiritually.
Like Jacob did here.
Surely the Lord is in this place and he was afraid. Are you and I afraid?
Are we afraid?
Yes, he's too irreverence of all them that are about him. It tells us in the Psalms.
But is that fear born out of love?
To him, that's the thing, isn't it? That's the key, you know, in reading recently the life of Joe.
He was a man of fear, wasn't he? You see it in the first chapter, my children, her adventure of cursed God in their hearts. And so we sacrificed this for them as well. He was not made perfect in love, but it's interesting how God works with him. He was a righteous man. That's what it tells us in the first chapter.
But he hadn't really acquainted himself with him to be at peace, and we need to do that too.
He was afraid.
What's his response? Sometimes we say this too. Those of us that are younger, we say the same thing. Those of us that are older, how dreadful is this place?
Well, we need to see brethren as the place of safety. It's a place of blessing. It's a place that's to be coveted.
It's a place.
Absolute blessing, not because of what it is, but because of who is there.
Who is there?
None other than the House of God. This is the gate of heaven.
1St 18 is interesting.
Spiritual energy, you know, comes in now and we find them getting up early. Very often this happens when a person is energized by the Spirit of God. Things happen. And you know, what's good about it is this, that sometimes we think that we have to arrange things. We think that, you know, that it's up to us to decide where we should visit or what we should do or what we shouldn't do or where we should go or where we should not go. Why don't we leave that decision up to the Spirit of God?
Why don't we get into His presence and say, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do for today? Because we learn in Luke Chapter 9.
That were to take up the cross daily. The thought there in the original Greek is moment by moment. Really, it's the thought that we get into his presence and say for that day, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do today? What is the cross that thou would have for me to bear for this day? And when we get into his presence and we seek his face, he's going to tell us what the cross is for that day.
And if we couple that up with other verses like we have in Matthew.
Where it says be careful for nothing.
I was thinking of that one too, where it says, you know, and Speaking of our bodily needs, you know, consider the lilies of the field, not that they grow, but how they grow and all of these things. It's precious. Rather than to realize that what we need to do is we need to place our lives more in His hands.
We try to arrange things for ourselves and and we just get frustrated and disappointed.
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He took the stone that he had put for his pillows. He set it up for a pillar. You notice here that the stone is singular. Now. It was stones previous to this. Now it's stone. No wonderful. When you and I get past the point of looking at our circumstances, the stones, and we realized, you know, that the stone.
Is where we're really at.
It's Christ. It's Christ, isn't it?
God blessed one, you know he, he loves us so much.
And he could say in First Timothy, he could say, There till I come.
Know how thou Artest to behave thyself.
In the church.
In the House of God, which is the pillar and base of the truth, here we have it, here in Taif, I believe. What does he do? He takes.
And he pours oil upon the top of it.
Oil and scripture, as we know, is picture of the Spirit of God. Picture the Spirit of God. What a wonderful thing this is, Spirit of God, Abel, to reveal to us that one who is the truth, that one who is the rock of our salvation.
And he called the name of that place Bethel, the House of God.
The House of God.
But the name of that city was called Laos at first. Or, uh, an almond tree.
Not interesting that you know, when you and I got saved, we saw the beginnings of life and the beginnings of these things as we go on in the things of God.
Who not only realize about God and that order, but I trust we're being led on, as we'll see in chapter 35 of L Bethel, God of the House of God, that one who is there.
And it's interesting now to pick up as we look at his life, to see how far these little threads of faith had led him along.
Jacob vows about saying if God will be with me, told him he would.
That's just like us if God will be with me, God told him he would be with them. Hey, that's this is just shows us now the Spirit of God by the word of God is just kind of opening up before us just how much advance he had made in these things that he had revealed to him and he noticed what he says.
If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go.
Oh, we're so selfish as Christians, aren't we? We're so selfish. We think, you know, that because I did a good deed last week or I did something, you know, to help another Christian or whatever, that God should, you know, somehow come in and do something for me because I've done that. That's how we think. We think that way. I know I think that way.
Will give me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat in raiment to put on.
Oh, we've got to get beyond this. We've got to see that the body is more than meat and drink, but it's more than rain and we've got to get beyond this.
It says in Matthew that he knows that we have needed these things. I think he's going to deny them to us. Romans 8 tells us that he had delivered up his own son for it. How shall he not with him also freely give us all things?
Will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my Father's house in peace. Then shall the Lord be my God, not something.
He's our God, anyway.
Even if we slip off that pathway, he's still, he's still with us, he still loves us, but he would seek to have that sweet communion to draw us to himself. This is interesting, succeedingly interesting, because I see my own heart mirrored in all of this. That's why it's so interesting. I'm sure you see your heart mirrored in it too. This is the way we think.
And this stone, which I have set up four pillars, see the whole, the whole emphasis is on himself. We think that, you know, because we don't go out to meeting the assembly is going to fall apart. We think that, you know that because of arrangements that we're making that if this or it's that way, oh, may he bring us to the realization in our souls that he can do without anyone of us.
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He can do without any one of us, but He loves to have our company with Him, that He might feed us with himself. The stone which I have set up for a pillar shall be God's house. And of all that thou shalt give me, look at this, I will surely give a 10 unto thee.
This is interesting, isn't it?
You know, actually there are groups today who believe in giving 10% to the Lord.
What is, what is Psalm 50 say? Lord says, if I was hungry, I wouldn't tell you. The cattle on 1000 hills are mine. I know all the beasts of the field, they're all mine. What can you and I give to this one who has given everything for us? Absolutely nothing except one thing, and that's our hearts.
And he wants our hearts that he might fill it with himself. You know, you young people go, the devil will take your heart and he'll break it and he'll never give it back to you.
That the Lord Jesus can fill that heart of yours to overflowing. He can do it and He will do it. But oh, may we give our hearts to Him 10%.
We owe him our very light. We owe him our very life. Everything that we have has been given to us. I don't own my car, I don't own my house, I don't own my property. It all belongs to him. He just simply made me a steward of what he has entrusted to me. That's the way I look at these things. That's the way we need to look at these things. What we have is not our own, It belongs to him.
I've said enough on this. Let's just quickly now go over to the 35th chapter.
From this period in Chapter 28 until this period in Chapter 35, approximately 20 to 25 years have rolled by.
Do you know what happened in this period of time? I wanna say to you, dear young people this afternoon, do you know what happened to Jacob in this 20 years from this period of time that we've just read about until what we're going to read here in Chapter 35? I want you to get this. I want you to get this. And if you don't remember anything else that said this afternoon, I want you to remember this.
So whatever an individual souls he reaps, it's a universal, a universal principle that applies to the saved and to the unsaved alike.
This speaks deeply to my own heart, and I trust that it will speak to yours as well.
20 years, he had his wages changed 10 times. You can barely count it on two hands because you got you know, you got 10 fingers and you know, you know you got 10 fingers.
Had him changed 10 times, he was deceived concerning his wives twice. He had to bear the brunt of what was torn in the field. You can just take those chapters that are in between here and you can just write right over them. The government of God.
That's why the you know, you read about peeled poles in the water troughs and all of these things. You know, you look at them and you say it's just so mysterious. You know why it's mysterious? Because when we lack the light of his countenance, everything is mysterious.
But when we lean upon him, we get the answer for the pathway. That's what I want. Is that what you want? Do you want to be guided in this pathway? Do you want the sunshine of this countenance? Do you wanna be able to get up in the morning and look in the mirror and say life is worth living? Because I have one, I can live 4.
Chapter 35.
God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there, and make there and alter unto God that appeared unto thee when thou fled us from the face of Esau, thy brother, you know, back there in Bethel, that's exactly where he should have stayed, but he didn't have the faith to stay there. He thought that he was taking the advice of others. He goes off now to pay Danoram, and he to a sorrow, he, you know, he has to reap all these things.
Well, it's interesting.
Jacob said to his household and to all that were with him. Put away the strange gods that are among you. Be clean and change your garments. What a lesson this is. What a voice this is for us in our day.
We have idols in our lives, you know.
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We ask little things that are coming in, the little foxes that are coming in.
They're ruining things.
You know what it is in your life. I know what it is in mine. Some little thing. Let's get rid of it. Let's put it away.
Be clean.
Follow after holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. We need that personal, that personal holiness. You know we need that.
That personal sanctification.
And then it says and change your garments. The garment is what is seen, you know, outwardly.
People look at us. When they look at us, do they see? Do they see a real believer?
Do they see a real Christian? So they see one who desires to please the Lord, Who our brethren see that in US.
And let us go, arise, and go up to Bethel, and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me.
In the way which I went.
I can hardly read these verses without we think sometimes.
In spite of his unfaithfulness.
In spite of the fact that all of these things happened to him and sometimes these things happen to us, he's still with us. He still loves us.
That fills us with grief and with shame as we think of the wasted years, don't we? But he still loves us.
Her brother read to us that verse and Joel last night how he can and he will restore to us the years that the locust is eaten. So on he will do it.
Put it away. Change your garments.
And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears. And Jacob hid them under the oak, which is by Shechem. The only way we can get rid of these things is by turning our face toward the cross, and looking at that cross, and say, Lord Jesus, I will give this up for thee.
You young people, you may be carrying on with things in your lives that you know are a dishonor to the Lord. The only way you're going to be able to get rid of them is to look at the cross.
You see that one who died there for your sin?
And of one who died there to bring in the blessing, to bring into the fullness of what you have.
As they journeyed, the terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob. What protection? What protection there is. You know when we look to the Lord, there will be that protection.
He'll keep us, you know, The enemy, the enemy, the devil of your soul and mind would kill every one of us in this room this afternoon if he had his way.
But he loves us, the Lord loves us, and he he protects us. That's what we learned from Hebrews chapter one. Those angels sent his ministering spirits and so on.
Umm.
Verse six So Jacob came to love, which is in the land of Canaan, that is Bethel, he and all the people that were with him. And he built there an altar and called the place El Bethel, because their God appeared unto him when he fled from the face of his brother. See, he's made some progress in his soul, and that's the desire of each one in the room this afternoon, for for all that we might make progress.
In our souls, it's not Bethel now, it's El Bethel, God of the House of God, the assembly, you know, and coming out to the meetings, that's not what's going to keep us. It's our hearts being occupied with the one who is the center. That's what's going to keep us. And nothing else will. And I'll tell you this, that as the days continue to darken around us, as things continue to get worse and deteriorate, and when things even in the assembly seem to, you know, be not what they should be.
It's only occupation with the Lord Jesus that's going to keep our poor hearts. Are we seeing Him?
El Bethel, God of the House of God, that one who has the right to order his house.
That one that has the, has, has the, the authority to, to, uh, do as he wishes. Do we see that brother? Are we seeing him? I trust that it's so.
Because there God appeared unto him when he fled from the face of his brother. He knows how God goes back to that instance. He could have stayed there. He could have enjoyed this communion. He could have had the blessing of God had he stayed there. But I'm thankful that in faithfulness our God has given us the life of Jacob.
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Because God did it in this way to really show us, give us a true reflection and a true mirror of what our own hearts are really like. We get away. We get away.
Maybe there's some here in the room this afternoon and you've gotten away. You're not at the Lord's Table anymore. Maybe you've left.
Maybe it was because you had your eyes on people.
The idea is, is that we have to get our eyes off of people and we have to look at Christ. He'll never disappoint us, it says in Galatians, Speaking of Peter and James and Cephas, it says, who seem to be pillars who seem to be.
That there's only one who's worthy of our attention. There's only one who's worthy.
To be our object and it's our Savior, the Lord Jesus, though, may he fill our gaze, brethren, as we look into his face, may we become more like him so that we're able to say this God of the House of God, El Bethel.
One more thought and I'll stop.
But Deborah, Rebecca's nurse died and she was buried beneath Bethel under an oak and the name of it was called a lawn becuse.
He knows how many times that the oak is mentioned here, right?
Whatever will be called the face tomorrow, whatever it may be.
It's a precious realization of the cross of Jesus is that which helps us to meet the problems that we're facing the pathway tomorrow, whatever it is, whatever it is the death of a loved one.
Disappointment or whatever it is, You notice how the oak is brought before us. It's a picture of the cross.
You know, wonderful with Israel's experience when that tree was cut down and thrown into the bitter waters of Mira. It's that those waters were made sweet, and the cross sweetens every bitter cup. Oh, may our poor hearts realize how much we owe to him, to his precious death.
That he longs to fill us with himself.
Perhaps your heart is breaking this afternoon over something.
Take it to him.
Take it to him.
Maybe it's some sin in your life. Confess it to them. Confess it to them.
And forsake it and follow him.
I'd like to open my remarks this afternoon and reading a well known verse in Romans chapter 10 and verse 9.
Romans 10 and verse 9.
That if thou shall confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus.
And shall believe in thine heart that God has raised him from the dead. Thou shalt be saved.
I like to make mention this afternoon of the heart in particular.
No, just to turn back to Jeremiah 17.
There we find the history of each one of us here this afternoon.
We were born in sin, as we read in Psalm 51, Jeremiah 17.
And verse 9, the heart is deceitful above all things.
And desperately wicked who cannot.
1St 10 I the Lord, search the heart.
I try the reins even to give every man according to his ways and according to the fruit of his doings.
Oh, how wonderful this afternoon.
Though our hearts were deceitful and desperately wicked.
We read here. I, the Lord, search the heart.
And soul in Romans 10 and nine, perhaps as many as this afternoon who've been brought to know the Lord Jesus Christ through this wonderful verse. The one who stands here this afternoon can claim that too, that wonderful verse. Not a thou shall confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus.
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And shall believe in thine heart.
Whole friend, this afternoon there may be many here, young people who believe all the facts about the Lord Jesus. They believe that he died on the cross to put away sin. Put all I ask you this afternoon in the beginning of these comments, have you believed in your heart?
You shall believe in thine heart that God has had raised him from the dead, and thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. To return back in the ROM book of Romans to the fifth chapter.
Romans 5 and verse five. And hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which has given us unto us. Oh, how wonderful that love one makes up. Christ as our Savior has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.
All we know full well this afternoon those who belong to Christ.
That there's no love in our natural hearts for our brethren. There's no love for Christ in our natural hearts this afternoon, but all the Holy Ghost, the love of Christ has been shed abroad. The love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. Connection with that love. To return to 1St John chapter 4.
One John. Chapter 4.
I'll read from the 16th verse.
And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in Him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as He is, so are we in this world. There is No Fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear.
Because fear has torment.
He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him because he first loved us.
How often we've heard that 19 first mentioned. How sweet it is, how precious. We love him because he first loved us well. That love of God has been shed abroad in your heart. You're on this afternoon by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us and so we love him because.
He loved us well in that same book here.
If we return back the page.
To the uh, first John chapter 2 and verse 15.
One John chapter 2 and love and verse 15 love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Oh my God, exercise our hearts each one this afternoon. How easy it is for any one of us be taken off of the things of this world and one way or another and perhaps not intentionally to be involved in it.
But older ones this afternoon, there's a danger there's a danger and it's all the spirit Father bring me for us this verse love not the world neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the father is not in him. Well, I think of the apostle Paul Speaking of Demas and uh, he's mentioned more than once steamers. But all we think of that verse that tells us deemless hath forsaken thee. Having love is present world.
Demons have forsaken me, having loved this present world and all.
This time here, this afternoon, we were a little older. There's the same danger for me as there is for anyone here this afternoon. Sometimes we speak of the teenagers, the young people. I'm sure that your young people this afternoon are confronted with things that I was never confronted with. But all the old nature within my heart is the same. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Can we turn back to Second Chronicles?
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Chapter 26.
The Second Chronicles, chapter 26 and verse one.
Then all the people of Judah.
Who was 16 years old and made him king in the room of his father Amaziah. He built Eloth and restored it to Judah. After that, the king slept with his father's 16 years old with Uzziah when he began to reign. And he reigned 50 and two years in Jerusalem. His mother's name, His mother's name also was, uh, Jekyll Iowa of Jerusalem. And he did that which is right in the sight of the Lord.
According to all that his father Amaziah did, and he sought God in the days of Zechariah who had understanding in the visions of God, and as long as he sought the Lord, God made him to prosper. It's not my intentions to read this whole chapter, but here, how commendable. This is that fourth verse that tells us that he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord. Well, I'm sure it's a desire of each believer here this afternoon.
In your heart to do that, but you're right in the sight of the Lord how good that is.
To be exercised, that's your, your pathway, your walk, your decisions from day-to-day. Your manner of life might be that which would be pleasing in his sight to do that which is right in the sight of the Lord. And then it tells us in the fifth version, he sought God in the days of Zechariah, who had understanding and the visions of God. And as long as he sought the Lord, God made him to prosper.
Always wonderful.
Tell the Lord takes care of his in all his mercies.
And there's care along the way, but all may we be found walking in dependence upon him. And how true this was of Uzziah and this portion of his life that tells us that as long as he sought the Lord, God made him to prosper. Oh, may we not trust our own hearts in any way or at any time in the pathway here below. We're sure to fail. We're sure to error. And so here we find that brought before us as long as he sought the Lord.
God made him to prosper well, he went on, and he was very industrious. He did great things as I did, and this look on a little farther in the chapter here.
Uh, verse 15 And he made in Jerusalem engines invented by cunning man to be on the towers and upon the bulwarks to shoot arrows in great stones with all, and his name spread far abroad, for he was marvelously helped until he was strong.
His name was spread abroad sometimes are those who really love the Lord Jesus and perhaps have gone on well and things of this life, and perhaps their name has gone spread abroad. What a danger, what a danger. His name was spread afar far abroad, for he was marvelously helped until he was strong. Yes, he had accomplished great peace because I with all we read on the 16th verse.
But when he was strong.
His heart was lifted up to his destruction, for a transgressed against the Lord as God, and went into the temple of the Lord to burn incense upon the altar of incense.
Just hold your place there and return to one verse and Acts chapter 20.
Acts Chapter 20.
This is connection with the Apostle Paul.
And he speaks to those at Ephesus.
I'll read from verse, uh, seventeen Act 2017, and from and from Alita's. He sent 2 emphasis and called the elders of the church, and when they were come to him, he said unto them, Ye know from the first day that I came into Asia after what manner I have been with you at all seasons. Who's this verse? Serving the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears and temptations.
Which befell only by the lying weight of the Jews. And how I kept back. Nothing was profitable unto you, but have showed you and have taught you publicly from house to house. Well, I was thinking the Manor here of the apostle Paul serving the Lord. With all humility of mine, who may not speak to our hearts, each one of us this afternoon, how easy for our minds to become affected and uh, to have high thoughts. But here the apostle, he was serving the Lord.
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With all humility of mine, oh, we just look back at our chapter then in Second Chronicles 26.
And verse 16 But when he was strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruction, for he transgressed against the Lord his God, and went to the temple of the Lord to burn incense upon the altar of incense.
And Azariah the priest went in after him, and with him four score priests of the Lord, who were a valiant man. And they withstood Uzziah the king, and said unto him, It appartineth not unto thee Uzziah, who burned incense unto the Lord, but to the priest. The sons of Aaron that are consecrated to burn incense, go out of the sanctuary, for thou hast trespassed, neither shall be for thine honor from the Lord God.
Then Uzziah was wroth and had a censure in his hand to burn incense, and while he was wroth.
With the priests the leprosy even rose up in his forehead before the priest in the House of the Lord, from beside the incense altered.
Solemn is it not here?
Uh, Azariah, the priest, uh, withstood Josiah. He warned him. He told him that it pertained not to him to do what he was doing. And he told him, and that's eighteenth verse.
Go out of the sanctuary, for thou hast trespassed. Neither shall be for thine honor in the Lord. Go on. Oh, was that not enough? Who was spoken to his heart, old friends, it wasn't. He was set. His heart was lifted up and pride all. How dangerous for anyone of us here this afternoon.
Universe, we just hold your place again and turn to Proverbs. I believe it's the 16th chapter.
Proverbs first chapter 16 and verse 9.
A man's heart devises his way.
But the Lord directed the steps. Who may remember that this afternoon? A man's heart devises his way. How many of us in our pathway, perhaps we'd have thoughts in our hearts to do certain things. We made decisions and we really didn't go to the Lord about it. A man's heart devises his way. But the Lord and directed his steps. Oh, how kind the mercies of God, you and I.
The Lord directed the steps. The Lord checks us up sometimes.
How needful and how blessed it is when He checks us up from a wayward path. Well, use higher than we read here in the 19th verse. Which law? He had a century in his hand of an incense, and while he was wroth with the priest, the leprosy even rose up in his forehead before the priest in the House of the Lord. From beside him he sent altar.
Here's the grace of God this afternoon, and there's the government of God, and here are God acts in government on this man in his.
His proud position, his heart lifted up implied. And Azariah the chief priest, and all the priests looked upon him, and behold, he was leprosy in his forehead, and they thrust him out from fence. He himself hasted also to earth, because the Lord had smitten him. And Uzziah the king was a leper from the day of his death, and dwelt into several house, being a leper where he was cut off from the House of the Lord. And Jotham his son was over the King's house, judging the people of the land.
Now the rest of the acts of Yousai have first and last did Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amos, write. So Uzziah slept with his fathers, and they buried him with his father's in the field of burial, which belonged to the kings, for they said he is a leper. And Jonathan Jotham, his son, reigned in his death. What a sad ending, a man who was so used, a man who was so, so capable in all ways, and yet when he was strong.
His heart was lifted up in pride. He returned in the New Testament to Second Timothy.
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Second Timothy, chapter 2.
We said that to us when he was strong his heart was lifted up and cried. Well, I thought she thought before me this first second Timothy chapter 2 and verse one Paul is speaking to Timothy could say thou therefore my son be strong in the grace is in Christ Jesus. That's where our strength should be brother this afternoon.
If we turn back to the book populations.
Not for a moment.
That was the 5th chapter of Galatians, the first verse. Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty, where with Christ has made us free.
Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty we're with. Christ has made us free. Well, the Lord has set us free, and may we indeed stand.
Fast in that race.
The verse I was sticking up to as.
Absolutely.
Thanks Romans five, first part of the chapter.
I'm wrong, I'm sorry, but the Greece were in the standard version. I was thinking of the grace we understand.
And then in that verse we mentioned in Second Timothy, therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Well, we read in Peter, he's a God of all grace, and we find who tells us that he give us more grace. How much grace do we need rather than this afternoon?
And we'd be strong then in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
And we look at Acts 13.
Another one.
In the Old Testament in the Spirit of God and bring this name before us here in the book of Acts.
Acts Chapter 13.
In action with the Children of Israel.
I'll read from verse 20.
And after that he gave unto them judges about the space of 450 years, until Samuel the prophet. And afterward they desired a king. And God gave unto them Saul the son of says man of the tribe of Benjamin, by the space of 40 years. And when he had removed him, he raised up unto them David to be their king, To whom also he gave testimony, and said, I have found David the son of Jesse a man.
After my own heart, which shall fulfill all my will.
Well, today, earlier we're we're Speaking of the will of God, you and I and of us are walking in that path, obedience according to His will, a path of submission. And here the Spirit of God would bring before us. David had one whom the Lord chose.
Samuel, the sons of Jesse passed before Samuel.
And uh, the answer was, the Lord hath not chosen any of these. But then David was brought forth, and so David here has a Scripture brings before us. I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart, which shall fulfill all my will.
And then a little further on in the same chapter.
Verse 34 And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption, he said on this wise I will give you the sure mercies of David. Wherefore he saith also in another Psalm, Thou shalt not suffer thy unholy 1 to seek corruption for David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God.
Fell on sleep.
And would lead to his father's and saw corruption. But he whom God raised again saw no corruption. While David indeed was a picture to us of Christ. What he did is the corruption. He whom God raised against saw no corruption. Oh, how wonderful. And he spoke of David, one that would fulfill all my will. And then the latter comment concerning David.
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Who having served his own generation by the will of God.
Fell on sleep and was laid unto his Father's. Oh, how blessed this afternoon you see those who have continued on in the path for many years.
And have fell asleep just.
Two weeks or three weeks ago.
My dear brother from Perth, we and it was known all our lives.
The Lord called him home.
One who has served the Lord.
Served his own generation.
Departing the will of God, he fell on stage. How nice to see those who finish their course, as the apostle Paul could say in Second Timothy again.
Second Timothy, chapter 4.
Second Timothy, chapter 4.
Verse 6.
Paul Speaking of himself here. For I am now ready to be offered. The time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight or the good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith.
One more verse.
Proverbs.
Proverbs, chapter 4.
I'd like to leave this first with us this afternoon.
Proverbs, chapter 4, verse 23.
I would speak this verse especially to those who are younger here this afternoon, and indeed each one of us needed to progress. 423 Keep thy heart with all diligence.
We're out a bit are the issues of life.
Hebrews, Chapter 11.
Just a few verses.
Beginning with 13 Hebrews 11 and verse 13. These all died in faith.
Not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and we're persuaded of them and embrace them.
And confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.
And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better that is in heavenly.
Country is in italics. Now they desire a better country, that is in heavenly. Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city.
One of the things that occurs annually in the town that I live in on the 4th of July.
Is a parade and I like parades.
My father-in-law liked the parades too. He was very fond of parades. He could didn't want to miss one.
But as we were standing in front of the old meeting room or sitting there in front of the old meeting room in Chatham.
Mrs. Hadley, let us all sit there and watch the parade.
I thought of a little poem that I learned as a child, and if I misquote it, please understand I'm haven't seen it in writing for many years. Breeze there a man with soul so dead that never to his himself has said, This is my own, my native land.
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You know, there's something stirring about seeing bands and flags and and fire trucks and and all those things marching down the street, hearing patriotic music.
But then as I was thinking of that little poem, I thought of these verses.
We don't belong here, beloved brethren.
I remember what it was like when our little family went over to Switzerland in 1967 and lived there for a couple of years, a little more than two years.
We participated in.
Celebrations went to some of their their, uh, national.
Umm, festivities. But we didn't really belong. We didn't really belong.
And I remember one time the.
Uh, Ambassador from the United States to the United Nations, Mr. Tubby.
Uh, who?
By the way, comes from Saranac Lake. He uh.
Was present at a a big 4th of July celebration. All of a sudden my heart started to beat. That's what, that's what I belong to.
That's what I belong to.
And we went there and we felt so at home with our flag and the American customs and things. But beloved, I say again, these verses put a check on that type of patriotism.
And, uh, Ed Wilson and I, who are totally different nations, we share a common goal, don't we? Common destination.
We seek a heavenly, a better country.
Better than Canada, better than the United States, better than the Dominican Republic.
We seek a heavenly.
And God is not ashamed to be called our God. And you know what? He's prepared a city for us.
I like the expression in verse 13. I just wanna call attention briefly through a couple of things here.
All these that went before.
Adam.
Abel, Enoch, Noah.
Abraham, they all, and Sarah all of them died in faith.
Not having received the promises that God had made to.
They were still ahead.
But what did they do? They saw them afar on.
And beloved, that is our privilege today because the Spirit of God is stirring our souls with promises that are far off.
They're not here.
And we've seen them, and I hope it's true as it was of them, and I hope it's true of us that we're persuaded of, we're persuaded of them.
If you have doubts about our heavenly calling, I know.
I don't. I often wondered what happens when a person gets to the very end. The Lord gave us the wonderful privilege of standing at my father's bed the day before the Lord took it.
And over and over again, he assured us of the reality of the things that we believe.
Over and over again, he told us.
And stress to us.
Our happy portion as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.
These things are real, he said. They're real.
In fact, I remember saying to us, it was kind of amusing. You know, he held on to the Lord's coming right up to the I'm almost beyond his death. He said, you know, you may not get to bury me. He said you might be on the way to the cemetery and the Lord will come and the whole thing will be over.
We'll all be taken home. We're persuaded of them, aren't we? Aren't they real?
Gordon, have you lost any of the reality of them as you get closer to the time? The Lord brings us to the end of our journey. Now I'm sure that not one bit, not one bit.
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And uh.
I, I remember visiting our brother Dodge just a few months ago, just, uh, back in, I think it was January.
He was lying in his bed, but there was no question about the reality of those things. To his soul, they were real. To him they were real.
Well, they were persuaded of them. And then there's another expression that comes after. That is what Charlie was telling us about earlier. Charlie little he was saying, they embraced them. They embraced them. They were dear to them.
You know, it's one thing to have it up here and be persuaded of it in your head. It's another thing to be to embrace something.
That's my desire to see my brethren and especially our young people and for myself first, that we might embrace these things. Everybody knows they're dear to us. There's no question about it. In our souls. They're real, they're dear, we embrace them.
And then they confessed.
I think that's both in words and actions. Verse 14 leads me to say that they're not just actions because it says they who say such things.
It's one thing to let your actions speak, that's important, but I think we need to give verbal.
Uh, confession to these things.
Confessed what? That they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth?
You know, these people had an opportunity, they could have gone back.
They could have gone back if they had been mindful of that country. And you know, there's a danger that we get mindful of the country from which we've been called out.
I don't think there's anything wrong with going to the 4th of July parade, but there's a little danger that our hearts might get called back to what we've been.
Set free from and I felt that tugging at me a little bit. I'm willing to confess that, you know, I stood up when the flight came by and, and, uh, I could feel a little trembling in my whole being when they started, I started hearing those songs like it's a grand old flag and those that sort of thing. But you see, if we're mindful of that, God would have us mindful of where we're going, not where we came from.
And then there's an opportunity to return.
Every once in a while there's an exodus of people from New York who go back to their native country.
And uh.
People go back.
But.
We're seeking a heavenly.
Now they desire a better that is in heavenly.
You know, Dave Hunt wrote a book a few months ago, maybe a couple of years ago, called Whatever Happened to Heaven.
And our brother was seeking to call Christians, especially back to the heavenly calling, he says. We've lost sight of heaven as our goal.
Is that true of you? Is it true of me? May the Lord stir our hearts toward the heavenly.
Country and uh.
Not get taken up with down here. This isn't our home. This isn't our country.
We're heavenly citizens.
Open Mtg. 7
Open—G. Hayhoe, R. Ruga, R. Farrell
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I wonder if we could turn to John chapter 13. John chapter 13.
John chapter 13 and the.
The third verse Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God, He rises from supper, and laid aside his garments, and took a towel, and girded himself.
After that he poured water into a basement, and began to wash the disciples feet, and to wipe them with a towel wherewith he was girded. Then cometh he to Simon Peter. And Peter saith unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet? Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter. Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.
Simon Peters saith unto him, Lord not my feet only, but also my hands and my head. Jesus saith unto him, He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean. Every wet and GR clean, but not all.
Well, we know in the Gospel of John we have the thought of God as our Father and that we are partakers of that new life that he has given to us. And this especially brought before us in John's ministry. In Paul's ministry, we are taught that we are members of the body of Christ. But in John's ministry, it's more particularly the family and the enjoyment of the relationship that we are brought into in the family. So John Paul speaks of adoption. You can adopt A child, making part of your family.
But you can't give him the life and nature of the family. But the wonderful thing is that when God brings us into his family, he gives us the very life and nature of the family. And every believer in this room who has received the Lord Jesus for such is a believer. We have the very life of Christ within us. We are in the family by new birth. We have Christ himself is our life. Oh, wonderful this is.
While in the end of John we see the Lord Jesus preparing His disciples, He was going to leave them and He wanted them to be in the enjoyment of this relationship into which we have been brought. It's not what we know that controls our lives, brethren, it's what we enjoy. We can know a lot of things and not mean very much to us, but can we enjoy them? Yes, we have the capability of enjoying the portion that God has given us. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given unto us.
And so the Lord is about to go away.
And he, the sufferers ended now, and he is going to wash the disciples feet and prepare them, I believe, for the ministry that we have brought before us in 1415 and 16, and then his high priestly prayer in the 17th chapter. And so he takes a towel and girds himself, pours water into a basin, and starts to wash the disciples feet. And he comes to Peter.
And Peter said thou shalt never wash my feet. I think he thought it was too humble a place for the Lord to take to wash his feet. But rather than every one of us do need this if we only realize that that is we need to have our feet washed When Peter said not my feet only, but also my hands on my head. He didn't need to be washed all over again the second time.
We see, we read in Titus chapter 3, the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost. That is salvation. We're washed all over. We're not only cleansed in the blood, but we are made new creatures in Christ Jesus. We are in the family. How wonderful that never has to be repeated. It was typified with the priests when they were consecrated. They were taken and washed all over.
After that they had constantly to wash at the labor, but not all over again, just their feet and their hands. That was all because that once they had been washed all over, they were sanctified for the office that they fulfilled. And isn't it lovely to know that every believer has been washed all over? We are new creatures in Christ Jesus. We're partakers of the divine nature. And indeed, Titus brings this before us as the ground of our whole Christian life. He says these things I will let thou affirm constantly.
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The thing which I believe in God be careful to maintain goods, works without making promises, but remembering the family that we're in. You and I are children of God. We belong to that family, and we are to display that character well. Peter said, thou shalt never wash my feet. The Lord said, if I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me. And brethren, isn't it true that we all need constantly to have this washing of our feet? We pick up the fileman.
Says the Umm, Song of Solomon, the bride, bridegroom. Looking at the bride, he's says how beautiful are thy feet with shoes?
Oh, Prince's daughter, you know, you can go through a defiling world. If you don't have shoes on, you'll pick up all of the file on. But if you have shoes on, you can go through dirt and math and still you don't pick it up. And that's what we need. We need spiritual shoes, feet shot with the preparation of the gospel of peace. But we do pick up the filament just the same. We sometimes don't have those spiritual shoes on. We're not acting as we should. And so we have to have our feet washed. And well, how are our feet washed?
It's the application of the Word of God to our walking ways. Are we willing to do that? Am I willing, brethren? Are each one of us willing to have, as it were, put our feet into the Lord's hands and say, if there's anything in my life, Lord, that is not pleasing to me, I want to apply the application of Thy word.
The application of thy word to my walk, Are we willing to do this? That's so important for us. So as the application and the Lord even said when he had done this, he said he had given an example that they should do so to one another. And so it is helpful. And there's something that another person points out to us from the word. Do we accept that? Do we say well?
I'm thankful you showed me what the word of God has to say about that. And the Lord was washing the disciples feet, but he gave them an example. And so we can be a help to one another in this. Well, the Lord had to show Peter that that was necessary. Poor Peter didn't realize his own heart and none of us do. Brethren, the heart's deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. And in the end of this very chapter, after the Lord saying this, he is so confident he would never deny the Lord.
He didn't realize how even though we are saved, the flesh profiteth nothing. It never changes. Every one of us as believers have within us that old man is capable of doing the violence things. And so we need this constant feed washing. And we find just speaking practically of dear Peter, after the Lord's resurrection, we see the Lord washing his feet, talking to Peter saying Simon the son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?
Peter had said that so all should deny the yet will not I? And so to restore Peter, he says, as it were. Peter, would you still say that you love me more than all the rest of the disciples? He said, Lord, the hunt also things thou knowest thy lovely. He wouldn't dare to say he had more love than all the others. And surely the great danger with us forever. Do you think that we're better than any of our fellow President? We think we wouldn't do things we're capable of anything if the Lord doesn't keep us.
Well, maybe you'd be willing to let Him apply His precious word to our walk and ways. And what is the reason for it? That we might have part with him. What a wonderful privilege. The Creator of this world, the blessed Son of God who gave Himself for us. We can have part with him. We're in the family, brethren, and we can have part with Him. And now I was just on my heart to say a few words.
About some of the things that the Lord imparted to the disciples here, I'd just like to speak briefly of them. Let's turn over to the 14th chapter.
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Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also. I just like to call attention in a few of these passages to that little word my, and this is the first one.
This is what the Lord was preparing the disciples to receive. Because we don't allow Him to wash, to wash our feet, we're not prepared to receive His truth. It's when we have thought to be exercised, to be desirous to please Him, then He can open up His truth to us that we might enjoy it. But this little word my is so precious. My Father's house, how wonderful that we are into such a place of nearness. The Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
As we often sing, Oh what a home, the Father's house, their love, divine death, rest.
Satisfy our heart of the of the hearts of those in Jesus bless in my father's house are many mansions or a bowls. It really is. I believe the Lord was lifting their hearts above what we have brought before us in Ezekiel in the book of Ezekiel toward the end we find a description.
The heavenly, the earthly portion of God's people, and the temple that will be built in the millennial day. For there will be a temple, a wonderful temple on earth. You can read about it in the end of Ezekiel.
And in that temple there were many abodes for the priests and I'm sure that perhaps the disciples who were looking for the Lord to set up the Kingdom, not seeing the heavenly side of things. No doubt we're thinking of the earthly Kingdom. And in that mansion that will be built, the coming temple in the millennial day. Why there were many abols. You can read about it. I won't turn to it at the end of Ezekiel.
And perhaps that's what they were thinking about, but the Lord is saying, and I think this is beautiful. If I didn't have something better for you than what you have anticipated by I would I would have told you, he said I would have told you if I didn't have something better because you remember the disciples said without this time restore the Kingdom to Israel. You can see their thoughts were still earthly. But brethren, God has something better for us.
If everything were set right down here wouldn't be half as beautiful as what awaits us. We have this place in the Father's house, in the eternal glory up there in the heaven with Christ. In my Father's house are many abodes. And he says, I will come again and receive you unto myself. We remember the Lord Jesus and his death here this morning. And it was in view of that, in view of the time when the Lord.
Would come again and receive us unto himself. Mr. Darby in his beautiful little hymn says, Who shall to me that joy of Saint throng? Courts declare, tell of that constant sweet employee My spirit longs to share. Before this little gathering here in Binghamton is over. We may hear the shout, We may be right there what we're reading about, Maybe our actual enjoyed portion.
Isn't it wonderful? In my father's house are many of old. If we're not so I would have told you.
And I'm not gonna send someone to get you. I'm going to come myself. The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout. And I like to think of that shout as being the shout of joy, because the Lord is anticipating that day with more joy than we are. Just like when you're waiting for something says, oh, at last it's come, you shout out. And the Lord comes with a shout, and then with the voice of the Archangel. I'd like to think of connect that with how the angels are taking care of us.
It says they're ministering spirits sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation. We experience that along the highways and how he's taking care of us. Brother pointed out too, I enjoyed his thought. He said the Bible doesn't say for those who are heirs of salvation, but those who shallow the heirs of salvation. He said there was an angelic care of us before we were saved because we were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.
00:15:15
And Percival and a narrow escape. Why didn't you die in that narrow escape? Because angels were taking care of you and preserving you. Because you were an air of salvation. You were going to be among that throng. Will the angelic care will be ended. They won't need to care for us when we're safely in the Father's house. And then it says, and the Trump of God, when Moses was told to make the two trumpets of silver, it tells us what those trumpets were for, for the calling of the assembly and for the journeying of the camps.
And so it says, when those trumpets were blown, they were all to assemble themselves to thee, that is, to Moses, who was their leader. And when that trumpet sounds that the Lord's coming, we're going to be gathered around that blessed person. Not at the door, brethren. Right inside in my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you, I come again to receive you unto myself, that where I am.
There ye may be. Also, I'd just like to mention one other little point here in this 21St verse.
He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me, and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and uh, I will love him, and will manifest myself unto him. Judas saith unto him, not as carry it. Lord, how is it that thou old manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world? Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode.
May I mention that the word abode in this 23rd verse is exactly the same word in the original as the word translated mansion in the second verse. He'll come and make our abode. He says you can have a little previous enjoyment of it before you get there. He says, I'll make my mansion in your heart. That is, you can. I can enjoy beforehand a foretaste of heaven.
If we walk in that path of obedience, if a man love me, he will keep my words, My Father will love him, we will come unto him and make our abode with him. So it's my Father's house. Now passing on to the 27th verse.
Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
Disliked and emphasized that little word My, my peace I give unto you. Everyone who is saved can say we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. That is the portion that every believer.
Is entitled to enjoy peace with God because the whole question of our sins and our guilt was settled by what the Lord Jesus did when he bore our sins in his own body on the tree and our sins have been forever washed away in his precious blood. We have peace with God. But here this is a little bit more. It says here, my peace I give unto you. I believe that the peace in which the Lord Jesus walked is the same thing that's spoken of in Philippians.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. I heard of two artists who were asked to draw a little picture that would illustrate peace. And uh, one of them drew a countryside where everything was very beautiful and peaceful, and the other one drew, oh, quite a storm going on, but a little bird sitting in a very sheltered place.
Absolutely undisturbed.
By the storm. And that was his conception of peace. Brethren, that is the way we are. We're in a troubled world. We're in a world where there's even trouble among the people of God, for even Saints get troubled. But isn't it lovely? My peace, I give unto you that precious Savior. He ever walked in the enjoyment of his Father's love and his Father's will. And so there was perfect peace.
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Even when they came to take him and carry him away, he was a perfect piece. He said If you seek me, let these go their way.
When they were about to take him, it says He, passing through the midst of them went his way. Another time they told them, Herod will kill me. An hour is not yet come. He walked in perfect peace because He was always doing His Father's will. Brethren, we need that ourselves.
I can fast, but I don't always enjoy. Circumstances upset us. Are we entitled, in the midst of a stormy world like this, to walk in peace? Yes, we can. The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Just to know that the person who loves us, who died for us, is in control of every circumstance. There's absolutely nothing.
That happens by chance and he makes all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. My peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth. The world can't give that kind of peace. The world's idea of peace is always to bring about a settled state of things and then there's peace. But the peace of God is a peace that we can enjoy when everything is in turmoil and tumult because.
Just like Paul and he was there in the uh, storm in the in the sea, notwithstanding the Lord stood with me and strengthened me. How? How blessed brethren, and the Lord says, my peace I give unto you not as the world give us, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
And then passing on to the 15th chapter, how we find another one mentioned here, a well known one in the ninth verse.
As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you. Continue ye in my love.
We think of the love that the Father had for His Son. He did His will in everything that He did, and the Father found infinite delight in that Blessed One. Isn't this a marvelous expression? As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you. We can't measure the Father's love to His Son. And just to think of those wonderful words, As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you, that unchanging love.
As he said to Israel of all, In fact, I've enjoyed, uh, noticing that the assurances of love that God gives to his people were not at times when you might have expected it at the close of their wilderness journey, when they had, uh, grieved the Lord so often by their manners in the wilderness. At the very close. It says in Deuteronomy, I think it's 32. Yay, He loved the people.
All his Saints are in my hand. Isn't that wonderful? 40 years they had grieved him. Had it changed his love not a death yet he loved the people. All his Saints are in thy hand. Then we turn over to the book of Jeremiah and we see there the people had got so far away from the Lord that the Lord had to tell him that in his dealings ways with them he was going to have to bring.
The ethereum up against them, and the king of Babylon, and that there was judgment going to come because of their ways. Did it change His love? All of us know that beautiful verse in the 31St chapter of Jeremiah. I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee. Does our failure, our weakness, brethren, does it change His love? May change our enjoyment of it, but not His love.
Having loved his own, which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. Oh, how lovely. Then it tells us too. And Malachi, that was the last book in the Old Testament and they were saying it's vain to serve the Lord, and they were offering the lame and the blind to the Lord. A lot of things were really grieving to the Lord that were taking place. And they're mentioned there in the book of Malachi.
But it very opens up with these words, the burden of the word of the Lord by Malachi. I have loved you, saith the Lord. The burden of the word of the Lord. It would have, I would have expected the book to begin by saying how grieved the Lord was. He does mention some of the things that grieved him afterwards. But he starts by saying I loved you, I loved you.
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Yes, and that love hadn't changed. We turn over, we think of those two sisters, Martha and Mary. I would have expected if I was reading that verse.
That says thou Jesus loved Martha and her sister. I would have expected to be the Jesus loved Mary and her sister but doesn't say that it says Jesus loves Martha and her sister. What Martha is the one that was covered with much serving and didn't show her affection in the same way that Mary did. Yes, she loved her and in the last church that we have in Revelation in the third chapter of Revelation, the very last one.
The only one where he mentions his love it says in uh, in the last year she says as many as I love, I review can chase me.
Oh, it's never allowed Satan to get a thought in our mind that caused us to doubt His love. Doesn't it hurt us when our children doubt our love to them because we've had to correct them or deal with them or something? They they question our love? Doesn't it hurt us while we grieve the Lord, brethren, if we don't, His love is gonna take all eternity for Him to bestow that love upon us. Well, it says here.
If uh, uh, you, uh, as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Continue, ye and my love. Now the next one in the tenth verse. If you keep my commandments, she shall abide in my love, even as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in his love. Notice that word, My commandments. Perhaps you wonder why it says that commandment, because you know, we all understand we're not under law, but we're under grace.
Why does it use the word commandment? Well, perhaps I could put it this way. When love is active in our hearts, what the Lord wants us to do has all the power of a command. We don't, we don't say, do I have to do that? If love is active, why we want to please Him. The law didn't impart new life. It says if there had been a law given which could have given life fairly, righteousness had been by the law.
But the Lord Jesus spoke of His Father's commandments because everything that was His Father's will for Him became a commandment to his blessed, loving, obedient heart. And so you say, do I have to do that? Is there something in the Scripture? And you say, do I really have to do that? If you really think of how much He loves you, what He wants you to do has the power of a command.
Because I sometimes said if I were away from home and I get a letter from my wife and she says when you're in such and such a town, when you pick this up for me, they have them there and would you bring it home for me? Did I say, is that a request or is it a command? I wouldn't talk like that, would you? You'd say, oh, I must do that. The person I love is asked me to do that. It becomes a command to a loving heart. And so rather than if you love me.
Keep my commandments. If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love. It's in the path of obedience. Those of us who have children know a willful child does parents love. An obedient child knows its parents love and yet the parent loves them both the same. Maybe the wealth will run a little more because it feels so badly that the child does his love and doesn't want to walk in the parents company. Well, rather than he, he wants us. My love, my commandments, my Father's house, my peace. This is our portion, brethren.
And now going a little further here.
In the.
14th verse Ye are my friends, if I do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servant, for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth. But I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard of my father, I have made known unto you, my friend. This is not a lovely expression says about Abraham. He was called the friend of God.
Why was he called a friend? Well, because the Lord God made known to Abraham the thing that he intended to do in connection with the promises of the blessing that was going to come to the them as a nation, and also what he was going to do with Lott, who had gone down there to live in Sodom. He made known these things to him. And isn't this a lovely thing? Did you ever stand in a crowd of people?
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And just think of yourself, the Lord saying you're my friend. We all love that little hymn. What a friend we have in Jesus to know him as our friend, but for him to call us his friend. Isn't that infinitely more? We know very well that we wouldn't tell everything to somebody who's not very close to us, but our friends, those that we really call our friends, we can open up our hearts and brethren, I've often said me and bears repeating.
That Christian is the only person who has an intelligent outlook on what's going on in the world.
The Lord calls us his friends and he says, and you can see a lot of turmoil going on in the different countries. You can see the movements of the nations and so on, but you're my friend. The newspapers may try and explain some of these things, but you're my friend. I'm going to tell you what I'm doing. I'm in control of this situation. When Israel goes back to their land, it's not just a historical fact. I want you to know that you're my friend. I'm telling you they're going back because the time is coming.
When I'm about to call you to be with myself and give Israel back their land, we see Europe coming together, a great political move going on, and this is occupying the minds of great statement. But here we are, shall I say, insignificant nobodies as far as this world is concerned. We knew that I could show you a book written 100 years ago where her brother talks about about each, about Europe coming together and the nations that will unite there.
Were his friends present? Isn't that lovely I say again when you want to down the street and feel kind of left out. Nobody cares. Just think I've got the best friend of all and not only can I call him my friend, but he looks down on me and he says you're my friend, you're my friend. I'm going to tell you what I'm doing because I want you to know my secrets. The secret of the Lord is within the fear him all rather than how wonderful this is and just one more before we close.
And that is, yes, it doesn't say my in the 16th verse, but I just like to notice that He has not chosen me, but I have chosen you on ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain. And whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. It doesn't have the little word in my, but I like to think it's introduced here.
My choice, my choice. I've heard young people say sometimes, no, I was chosen out of the whole class to give that little speech, or I was chosen out of the whole class to do this or that. But isn't it wonderful to lock down the street and look and look up and say, the Lord has told me, I you're my choice, you're my choice. That's what Paul said to the, uh, Thessalonians believers, he said.
I know you're being persecuted and I know you're going through a lot, but he says.
He says, knowing, brethren, beloved, your election of God that is out of this whole world, you're my choice. You're my choice. Doesn't this fill your heart with gladness that the Lord should have? We were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. Well, brethren, our meetings here are drawing to a close. Most of us are going to have to go back to our own homes and our assemblies. What is going to keep us?
There's a lot in the world to upset us, and sometimes even among the people of God, trials and difficulties come in.
But I believe if we're in the enjoyment of these things, are we willing, brethren, to let the Lord wash our feet? And if there's anything in your life or mine that's a hindrance to our enjoying these things, let's not say to the Lord, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Let us be willing to, as it were, put our feet into His hands and say, Lord, if there's anything in my walking ways not pleasing to see, I want the application of Thy word.
To that situation, so I wouldn't be going on with something that displaces thee. And the Lord said, now you can walk in my company, Now you can enjoy what's in my heart before you at the Father's house while you walk through this world. You can have my peace, you can walk in my love, and I'll give you all direction that you need for your pathway, My commandment. If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love. I'll give you all the directions you need. The way of man is not in himself. It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.
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But we have the direction in the precious Word of God, and he's given it to us, brethren. And then he says, last of all, he says, you're my friends, you're my friends. And then he says, out of this whole world with all the people that are in it, you're my choice, my choice. Well, may the Spirit of God make these things good to our soul. We're living in difficult times, but we're living in wonderful times.
I like that little verse that just mentioned in Isaiah in Psalm 45. It says instead of thy father shall be thy children and thou mayest make Princess in all the earth. In other words, when the children of Israel were going through are going to go through a novel time, the godly remnant are going to have an awful time and even says all of them that are with child and give suck in those days and they look on their children. They think what terrible days for our children to have to live.
Oh, says the Thomas, they might be the most wonderful days because when the Lord comes and sets up his Kingdom, their children will be Princess and all the earth. And our children are growing up in a very difficult time. School systems are teaching them things we don't like them to hear or do, but they may be living in those wonderful time of the whole church history. They may be the one who are living in the various generation. When the Lord comes and gives the shout, oh, how wonderful if they're saved and they're young and go up to meet him.
Wonderful privilege is to live in this generation and to live in the enjoyment of our portion. May the Lord grant it may be so.
Turn with me please this afternoon to.
Genesis chapter 30.
Our brother just finished his comments in connection with.
Children and with parents. And you know, as we look around the room this afternoon, there's still many precious families which the Lord has brought here together this weekend.
What a blessing it is.
To worship the Lord as households together in the presence of our Lord and Savior, as we've done this morning. And so I'd like to, with the Lord's help.
Look at some passages beginning here in Genesis 30.
Directing my comments mostly.
To perhaps those of my own generation as an encouragement. And I trusted the help, umm, in connection with our children, you know, I must confess that.
Perhaps.
I didn't know it. Enjoy.
My children, as I should have, but by the grace of God.
I believe that the Lord by his Spirit the past few years has given my wife and I perhaps God's thoughts about our children. You know, it tells us in Psalm 128, it says that love children are heritage from the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is His reward.
And so I desire for each one of us, particularly his heads of households.
To have God's thoughts about our children.
And not neglect in any way our responsibility towards them.
And, you know, as parents, I believe that.
We need to constantly be on our knees before the Lord.
About depression gifts and she bestowed upon us for such a short time. Spoken with many parents here.
It's from this afternoon. They all say the same thing, how quickly our children seem to grow and my older brother, I'm sure, can say that that particular phase in our lives is here.
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And gone like a vapor here for a little time. I was there in James four and then finishes away. And so it is with this period in our lives that God sees fit to give us the fruit of the womb. It's only a very, very short time period in our life history. So I believe that we need to be on our knees. I like to look with the Lord's help this afternoon. I don't wanna be too lengthy.
Had some pairs of knees in connection with our children. Jeff is 30 here beginning with verse one and what Rachel saw.
That she bear Jacob no children. Rachel envied her sister.
And said on to Jacob, Give me children, or else I die. And Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel. And he said, Am I in God said, Hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? And she said, Behold my me Dilha, going out to her, and she shall bear upon my knees that I also man children by her. And so I don't want to stretch the point, but.
The thought that comes home to my soul here in this passage.
Is the needs of reproduction, the fact that God in His gracious ways has brought a man and a woman together in holy matrimony? A beautiful picture we know of Christ and the Church. What a lovely thing it is when a husband and a wife married together in the Lord. As time goes on, perhaps in that blessed union the Lord may be said.
In his blessed ways to give children.
And you know, I believe that it is not only a natural thing, but it is perhaps a spiritual thing too, in the sense that God's desire is that we should reproduce and have children. Why do I bring that point out? Because, you know, brethren, I believe we're living in a day where the world at large with their mind frame, with their way of thinking.
Children.
That's fruit of the womb in a certain sense, and I think every head of household who goes out into this world each day to seek to make a living, to bring home bread for himself to eat and his family will understand what I'm talking about. Children themselves have become regarded as a reproach.
Perhaps we understand what I'm talking about.
You tell someone on the street.
About the love of God and you're talking to them a little bit and maybe you share a little bit of your life with them. While I have three children, I have five children that the Lord has given me and they say, well, what's wrong with you? How can you possibly afford such a thing? That's ridiculous. Children themselves have become or approach here, Rachel, you know, I believe that if we had opportunity to travel to other societies, we would see the children or not regarding as the reproach in any way, shape or form.
They regarded as a blessing, and here Rachel had the sense in her soul.
That somehow God and his governmental ways, in serious ways perhaps he had withheld from her the fruit of the womb, and she would come all of her earnestness of soul. Like Hannah of old, she would say, give me children or die when she wanted offspring.
Well, I trust that the desire of every one of our hearts that we want not only to have children, but having obtained them from the Lord, to bring them up for the Lord to reproduce before them every day, with the Lord's help, the heavenly grace of Christ, and thus as we reproduce Christ.
As we live Christ before our children from day-to-day, that Christ who by the grace of God be formed in their precious little hearts. Well, the knees of reproduction, if you will. Now turn over a few chapters to Genesis 48.
I'm gonna look at another pair of knees in connection with children.
00:45:02
S.
Genesis 48 and verse 11.
And Israel, that is Jacob.
Said unto Joseph, I had not thought to see thy face, and lo, God hath showed me also thy seed.
And Joseph brought them out from between his knees.
And he bowed himself with his face to the earth.
What a blessed place this was for his children to be.
And again, I must confess that you pardon me, telling on myself something that unfortunately had to perhaps learn the hard way. Look around you. See, fathers and mothers, the blessed thing it is that holding their children on their knees. These are the needs of protection, brethren.
What a vital thing that is. We're living in a very hazardous scene. Our brother has brought that out.
Thorns and briars.
Temptations on every hand. Our children need to be protected, don't they? And all how we can thank the Lord Many of us in the room this afternoon have had that privilege.
Uh, being raised and the protective needs of our parents and oh, what heartache and sorrow Dad and Mom perhaps preserved us from because they wanted to take their children and keep them on their knees.
But a blessed place, that is the knees.
Of protection.
Well.
Time is slipping by. Drop down a few more chapters to Genesis 50.
And we'll read about this same man, Joseph.
Janet is 50 and verse 23.
Another pair of knees, and Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation. The children also of Maker, the son of Manasseh, were brought up upon Joseph's knees.
I say again, what a blasted place that is for our children to be found. And here we see that Joseph, he was a grandparent.
You know, I think we read about Joe, that he saw perhaps his grandchildren's, the 3rd and the 4th generation. God extended his life and gave the fruit of the womb to his offspring and they perhaps were brought up on his knees. Oh, do we have that desire, brethren, to see the blessing not only of our children but of our grandchildren to take the time.
To spend time with them, you know, if we have a child on our knees and we have that child there consistently, we are going to get close to that child. There's that bond that is formed, I believe between.
Parents and between child and it needs to be not only formed but it needs to be kept.
You know, sometimes our family.
We have a boy who is nine years old.
Sometimes in the middle of needing.
How come see that I want to sit in uni?
I hope there's no one here whoever gets the mistaken notion that, well, my child is too old. I mean, he should just be exercising without sitting by himself.
Let's be willing.
To stay close with our children.
As I said earlier, they're like the flowers in the field, aren't they? They're here and they're gone and they're on their own. I look around this room and I see children who only 15 years ago were sitting on the lap, their fathers and mothers perhaps right here at the Vessel General Meetings. Now, those children, they're not children any longer. They're 225 lbs. And it'll be very funny indeed see them sitting on their knees.
Of their parents. And so I just challenge my own heart again.
Let's seize every opportunity we possibly can.
00:50:03
To take our children.
So stay close to them.
Right on up until that time when they, as it were, are no longer under our umbrella of responsibility.
Well.
We know that the needs are.
In connection with a very important part of our relationship with God.
Let's turn over to 1St King.
Chapter 18.
And just.
1St 42 for another set of needs. First Kings 1842 So Ahab went up to eat and to drink.
And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel and cast himself down upon the earth and put his face between his knees. And we know that the knees in Scripture often bring before us the necessity of prayer. Our brethren and I in my home assembly, I'm so thankful for they often remind us.
The importance of praying for our children, especially our children go to public schools, uh, every hour that they're there, I believe we should be thinking about them. We should be praying for them that the Lord would cheat and preserve our dear children from all that which abounds there. We can talk perhaps for a long time about that, but here in this passage, I believe Elijah, he's not only.
Just praying as it were, because the general course of the day he's in earnest about it. His face between his knees. I think that will bring before supplication, wouldn't it? The needs of supplication, perhaps as husband and wife there in first Peter chapter 3, that your prayers be not hindered. Remember that's your passage. Husband and wife on their knees together. Supplication. What supplication?
Earnest prayer.
Crying out to God, not only for the salvation of our children, but for the blessing of them, for their welfare, and that they may grow in grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And further, that they may become, if He sees fit, men and women of God.
That was Hannah's desire.
I trust it's my desire. I trust it's the desire of every heart, every parent here this afternoon.
Our older brethren have often told us that if the Lord be not come, the ranks will need to be filled.
And as our dear brother Henry Short so often reminds us in his ministry of the fact that God in his ways has been said to preserve this testimony, we can, feeble as it may be, 5 perhaps in the eyes of men, but to preserve this testimony primarily through the offspring, the families of the Saints. So, brethren.
And we'd be on our knees as perhaps our parents were, on their knees for our good, our spiritual blessing, supplication, our faith, between our knees, crying out to God.
Well, let's turn now to.
Another set of knees and.
Second Kings I believe it is.
Second Kings 19.
I'm sorry.
First change 19.
00:55:04
Another set of needs in verse 18. First Kings 19, verse 18.
The Lord speaking, He says, Yet I have left me 7000 in Israel. Albanese which has not battled unto bail in every mouth which hath not.
Cheers him.
Well, I can't help but feel this will bring before us the needs of faithfulness. Faithfulness.
Oh, how vital this is.
In the training of these dear children for that glorious team towards which we're traveling.
You know we sometimes think, don't we together?
Have an object Lord below which would attain.
Which would keep my heart, my spirit from thy coming again, O Lord.
Is it possible that I have an idol in my heart? Perhaps it's my job.
Perhaps it might be something so insignificant as a home or a vehicle. These things that come in the cares of life, the deceitfulness of riches tells us in the gospel that come in and they choke out the word.
And the word becomes unfruitful, and perhaps I become unfaithful.
And don't my children know about that?
You know.
So many times.
That perhaps our children know us much better than we know ourselves. They know what we're about.
And so I searched my own soul this afternoon.
Do I have any faithfulness like the 7000? I realized they were not.
And a totally proper position before the Lord. They should have been with Elijah here.
That's where they really belong. They should have been willing to identify with God's men, but at least they didn't bow the knee. They weren't taken up with the course of that present evil day. I know by the grace of God, may that be our exercise and heads of households not to be so swept up.
Important as the cares of this life are, we placed a lot of emphasis on putting that loaf of bread on the table because we say, after all, I, my family, we need to eat. How true that is. Hello, brethren.
To be exercised before God. Most importantly, to take the living bread of God come down from heaven.
And to feed our children with that, to place more emphasis on the spiritual blessing and welfare of our children.
We need the needs of faithfulness and perhaps there's going to be reproach involved, perhaps there's going to be.
A missing out we might say, on being elevated in the local company for which we work. I saw thicker the other day and it was amazing because I saw twice in the same day it said work union live better.
No, brother, let's be found safe with the Lord.
Better is little and quietness there with.
And a house full of sacrifices and great strife.
Let's see content with our wages at John the Baptist told the Soldier.
And so I must keep saying Psalm 37. I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. He's ever gracious. And Linda, the Lord will provide Jehovah Jireh.
Yeah, with Abraham and Isaac, there it is with another household. So better it is. I say again, dear brethren, to remain low on the totem pole.
To be found exercising the needs of faithfulness before our children.
And to rise high in the local corporation and to have our children swallowed up.
With this world in time.
Well.
Another important set of needs in Isaiah.
We could turn to.
01:00:01
Isaiah 35.
Isaiah 35 and verse.
Three.
Strengthen you the weekend and confirm.
The Siebel Knees.
You don't have to turn to it for the sake of time, but there is another passage that I'd like to read in Ezekiel 17. Ezekiel 7.
17.
All hands shall be feeble, and all knees shall be weak as water.
So here we would have Denise of Weakness.
You know, we like to think.
Sometimes in our.
Family relationships As heads of households, we may be entertained the false notion while I have everything in control.
Things are going real good.
And then the Lord said something along.
It just.
Like maybe our family. Like a boat out of the blue.
And our needs to come as weak as water.
Are, like we read here in Isaiah, just so feeble we can't hardly even stand up upon our own 2 feet.
Well brethren, I believe that they place a weakness is a place of blessing. So as quoted earlier in this conference, I don't remember who quoted it. Second Corinthians chapter 12 Says for my Paul, the Lord speaking to Paul, he says, For my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory my eternity, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. And so by nature.
We like to think we're in control.
We like to take the credit to ourselves, the goodness of God which He daily bestows upon us, but begin to take for granted, we think well, like maybe to Nezra, is this not great Babylon which I have built? Look at my family. Oh, it's doing so well, and the Lord can come in and strike our false attitudes down so quickly. So we need to exercise the needs of weakness. Brethren, we have no strength of our own.
Without him, we will surely fall.
And so let's be exercised about exercising the needs of weakness.
Save me, O God, friendly do I put my trust. Preserve me, O God, Fern D that put my trust. May that be the expression of our hearts.
Heads of households. One further set of needs in the New Testament.
Ephesians chapter 3.
Verse 14.
For this 'cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.
So here we have.
To partner application.
We have the needs of worship.
In connection with our family, so how vital that is.
In view of everything else that we've considered.
Should we not be like Eliezer of old, having tasted of the goodness of God, God graciously guiding and protecting him across that wilderness journey, bringing him right into the presence of the very one that he was looking for? And after having gotten over the formality and Becca, I can just picture her going back.
Excitedly telling her family about what she had just been told. Can we read? We won't turn to it there in Genesis 24.
He bowed ahead and worshiped. How shouldn't that be the expression of our hearts? What a privileged family to be found worshipping God, having tasted of His great salvation to be considered. This morning we sat at the table of the Lord.
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Having tasted of the fact that He's brought us into the heavenly family by sovereign grace.
Our brothers, He's brought before us the fact that we are bound for those heavenly boats all secure with us. We have every reason to bow the head and worship together with our families.
Our privilege.
May be the expression of your heart and mind.
And so we see is less space.
Like to open our Bibles?
To Philippians.
Philippians, Chapter 4.
And verse 4.
Rejoiced in the Lord, and again I say, rejoice. Is that what it says?
Is that what the verse says? It says rejoice in the Lord always. And again I say rejoice and just think of the context.
Of this verse, the last chapter first, the third chapter, when the apostle wrote about his pedigree and his lineage.
And then he said in verse 7, But what things were gain to me, those I counted lost for Christ, ye doubtless. And I count all things but loss for the Excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and to count them but dung, that I may win Christ.
Nobody here in this audience.
Has suffered the loss of all things. Somebody here in this audience, I don't believe was a success as Paul was a success in this world and yet he suffered the loss of all things for Christ. And he could say rejoice in the Lord Alway. And again I say rejoice. And when I read this Vo, this verse, this fourth verse, this 4th chapter, it speaks to my soul because I failed, I failed.
In a very dramatic way to apply this to my soul.
Circumstances that are very insignificant come along in my life.
And then I'm unhappy so many times my happiness.
Is situated in the circumstances in which I am.
But my happiness should not be a matter of circumstances as other others have said, but my happiness should be in the Lord, and so many times.
It comes along just some insignificant little thing. There's a cloud comes into the sky, the sun is blocked out and I'm no longer rejoicing. But our happiness as the days grow darker and darker must be in the Lord if we look to our circumstances.
Our circumstances may change for the worse. Think of Paul or people.
Who are adding to his bonds, preaching and adding to his bonds. And here he was a man who had made it in this world, lost everything, and was in a Roman prison. And he could write these words chained to a soldier in a Roman prison. Rejoice in the Lord.
Always and again I say rejoice. It's a challenge to my heart because I fail so much in this.
So many times when children go to school, it's hot to put.
Put so much of their effort into becoming a success in this world.
And it's important that they get a good job, I believe, But it's so important to put the emphasis in the right place. And I think of that verse in Joshua, one, maybe we could turn to it. I can't quote it by heart.
1St chapter of Joshua.
Verse eight. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein, for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. I think it's so important in our lives to to place the emphasis in obeying God's word, and that we view those who do that as being successful and not those that have accumulated great wealth.
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Or attained a higher education, but that our emphasis beyond the right things and that our happiness be in the Lord, and we can say rejoice in the Lord alway and again I say rejoice.