Vestal Other Meetings: 1986
Table of Contents
Christian Warfare
Address—Bruce Conrad
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.
In Nine, 1986, addressed to Christians for Brother Bruce Conrad.
Abstin perhaps to start, we could just turn to a person, Timothy.
First Timothy in chapter one.
And verse 18.
This charge I commit unto thee, Son Timothy.
According to the prophecies which went before on the that thou by them mightest war a good warfare.
I should perhaps explain to you a little bit my exercise for, uh, at least on my part for being up here this afternoon. And it really goes along these lines. I've had it upon my heart for some time to take up the subject if the Lord will of, of service and of ministry and, and of priesthood.
Uh, most of us in this room at least are familiar with the fact that God has made us all priests, and we're also aware that he's made us all his servants.
And when I considered those two aspects of things that just came before me, that perhaps it would be good to back up even a little further. And, uh, then I recall that I had read some years ago from our brother CHM, an expression that, uh, that he mentioned in one of his, uh, books, whereupon he looks upon, uh, all believers as, uh, warriors and as workers and as worshippers. And so perhaps this afternoon, though I, I feel, uh, a little bit overwhelmed by the, uh, this line of things we might just look at.
Ourselves as warriors, as being in a scene of conflict and the different types of warfare that we've experienced, that we will experience and, uh, and that line of things. Firstly, if we turn back to First Samuel 17.
And verse 50.
First Samuel 17 and verse 50. So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and smote the Philistine and slew him. But there was no sword in the hand of David.
Therefore David ran and stood upon the Fiddlestein, and took his sword, and drew it out of the sheath arrow, and flew him, and cut off his head therewith. And when the Philistines saw their champion was dead, they fled. And the men of Israel and of Judah arose and shouted and pursued the Philistines, until thou come to the valley and to the gates of Ecron. And the wounded of the Philistines fell down by the way to share them, even under gas, and unto Akron. And the children of Israel returned from chasing after the Philistines.
And they spoiled their tents. I suppose before we discuss what we might properly call Christian warfare, we should start at the very beginning of things with the fact that the Lord Jesus here, as typified in David, single handedly himself alone accomplished a a mighty victory at the cross of Calvary. The Lord Jesus was sent forth from the very bosom of the Father, and He was sent into a scene to discharge all that stood against us. And He did that on the cross of Calvary in John 19.
We have recorded there what some have terms of victor's cry when he says in our translation, it is finished. And perhaps your indebted as I am to our late brother, Christopher Willis, who, uh, has left us, uh, some, uh, tips on, uh, on the original language. And I think it was he that explained that, that, uh, that in the Greek, that, uh, that word, that pride that the Lord Jesus uttered. I think it was Telestai was really the cry of the victor, the cry that a mighty, uh, conqueror when, when he returned back to his home city.
That they would have a parade up the Main Street and that cry would be given to left eye. It is finished. And so the Lord Jesus there uttered the victor's cry and the and the battle was won. The battle was all over. And so in a certain sense, and hopefully we'll return to this later, the Christian warfare starts after an accomplished victory by the Lord Jesus. And there is an expression that sometimes we hear about the victorious Christian life and this kind of a thing. I've been a little puzzled by that. Not really sure what's meant by that.
00:05:02
But I think we can be very sure if we rest our, our minds upon the word of God and see that every, every believer, everyone who has put their trust in the Lord Jesus is made more than a conqueror through him that loved us. We've been brought into a wonderful victory, not won by us, but won by another, a little flock him book, which is a precious legacy left to us is filled with him, after him. Uh, that, uh, in addition to the scripture, though not inspired, it can help us, uh, to understand and to cause us to dig into the scriptures and learn this precious truth.
And so, as believers, that's where we start, and that's why I read from this passage.
That, you know, though David's brethren said, well, why did you come down to see the battle? There really wasn't much of A battle there at all. There was, uh, an army of Israelites on one side and an army of Philistines on the other and really no battle at all. It was more or less a standoff. But after David, the flu, Goliath, who typifies, uh, Satan, the adversary, then there's a battle. Then the Israelites, uh, take off after the Philistines and they route them. Now, first of all, I'd like to turn back to Romans Chapter 7.
We start with the type of warfare.
Of which I might say.
The Lord Jesus, though He now there at the Father's right hand, can sympathize with us in this type of warfare. He himself did not experience what we have here in Romans 7.
In Romans 7, without reading the whole chapter, we've had this before us recently in the readings in Romans, which for the ones I, I came to where I felt were very profitable. We had before us that there's a struggle in here. And the struggle is based upon the fact that well, if we read verse 23, maybe this verse, but just to pick one would be.
I'll bring it before us, verse 23. I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members. If we trace down through this chapter, we see that the person who is uh, who ha is having these experiences in Romans 7A fee is that there are two opposing forces in it. And you would almost, uh, feel that he's being torn by these two opposing forces.
He finds within him a desire after the things of God and you can trace them down. Uh, he, uh, he desires, uh, uh, he delights in the law of God after the inward man. He has right desires and right motives and right, you might say sensitivities in a spiritual way, but he doesn't find him in himself anyway to accomplish, uh, the good. But he finds also as well this force working in him, which just tends to leave him captive. And so at the end of the chapter, he comes to this conclusion. Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?
From the body of this death. Now, this is a type of warfare which I would say at the start is not typical Christian warfare. This should not be, uh, that, that is, that which we have in this chapter should not be characteristic of you and I as believers in our daily life. We may feel things at times whereby we might feel difficulty, uh, with a particular trial or a personal problem. We might sense a little bit of a frustration or helplessness, but that off, we ought to realize that's a far different thing.
From the helplessness and the, and the ******* the wretchedness that we have in this chapter now with many souls or brought to know the Lord Jesus and Savior. They go through sometimes a period of many years really of agony, a period of years whereby they have life, uh, given from God as we had before us in our reading in Acts with Lydia as she worshiped God and there was stirring in her soul a response to what light she had been brought into worshipping the true God.
We've read of Cornelius in the same book and how that he was uh, uh, uh, godly, a pious soul who sought after God and many others too. And perhaps in your own soul's experience, you can look back to a time even before you knew the Lord Jesus before you. It it it come to your knowledge that Jesus was God indeed, the Son of God, that you had these stirrings after the good that you felt hopelessly enslaved in always doing the thing that you chose not. This is a warfare that takes place in a soul before they know what we might call deliverance. Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
And so in verse 25, I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
So then with the mind, I myself serve all gone, but with the flesh of the law of sin. And then in the chapter 8 and verse 3, for what the law could not do, and that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in US who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. We might say in Romans 7 that what we have is a description of what we would call the new nature. We don't read that term in Scripture.
00:10:22
What we would call the new nature and the old nature. And so sometimes we might mistakenly say, well, you know, the new nature and the old nature they wore together, and perhaps we know what we mean, but it's not really quite right to say that what we have is proper. Christian warfare is over in Galatians chapter 5.
And verse 16.
Galatians 5 and verse 16 This I say then, walk in the spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh, for the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary, the one to the other, so that you cannot do, or that really it should be rendered so that you might not do the things that you would. In other words, the tendency of this warfare is that it's possible that you might not do the things that you would, not that you can.
But its tendency is that you might not. Now we experience this on a daily basis, don't we? We experience this in an hourly basis perhaps. And here we have proper Christian warfare, the type of warfare that goes in right inside these parts, these souls fires. You know, I was thinking in, uh, considering this whole subject recently that a Nehemiah 4, you have the, uh, the case there where because of the enemy as they were built, rebuilding the wall.
Because of the enemy and their need to be watchful, they were building with, uh, trials in one hand and sword in the other. And yet it also says there that they had uh, uh, uh, bowls and Spears and halogens. And in meditating upon that, I thought to myself, at least suggested it to me that there's different kinds of warfare. There's the Habridge and there's the real near close, what uh, people might call hand to hand combat, very intimate, very near. And so we have trials in our own particular inward life where we have that which would seek to enslave us or to hold us down or to hold us back or rob us from displaying Christ here. And we have these tendencies and it's, it's an inner warfare that we desire daily to walk in the spirit and not to fulfill flesh. Uh, flesh is lost. Then there are things which are more outward.
Which would be like the sphere. And finally, the things which are more at a distance and more public, which is the character of warfare that that we should get to shortly. But I might just say here that Scripture is very precise in its language. And that, you know, there are the expressions that the old man, we re. We read the expression the old man in the New Testament, I believe in three places. And you can trace this at your leisure. But I believe whenever the Scripture uses the expression old man, it's always in the past tense.
And always in connection with that part of us connected with the first atom that God sees forever as put away. We should we should just fine. I think Romans 6 has one of those, yes, Romans 6 and verse six. And there's another in Colossians and another infusions.
Romans 6 and verse 6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him at the body of sin, might be destroyed or rendered powerless, that henceforth we should not serve sin.
And so in this passage as well as in the other two, if we look at them sometime, we'll see that the old man, that which we were is children of Adam by birth. God sees us now as put away the death of the Lord Jesus as seen before. God has availed that he now sees you and I as put away before his sight in that connection forever. If any man be in, in Christ, there is a new creation where new creatures in Christ. He sees us now, uh, all of us as under the, the, uh, second man, the last atom. He sees us in that condition now.
Uh, in a new condition entirely the old man. So if we were to say, well, it's my old man again, we don't wanna make one another offenders for a word. But Scripture seems to reserve that term for that which we were and which we aren't any longer. But we say, but there is that in me, which still seems to seems to work. Scripture calls that the flesh. And so the flesh, you might say, is that energy, that which we might call in our own language, which is perfectly fine. The old nature, the flesh is that in us which.
Is not going to ever get any better, which has been the same. And uh, you might say it's incorrigible. It's an old brother put it before us once in Palmyra. He said, you know, the flesh is just like garbage. You, uh, you put it in the garbage can because it's no good to you. You take it out back and you put a lid on it. They said you can come back a day later, it's still garbage. You come back three days later, it's garbage. You come back 30 years later, it's garbage, etcetera. And this brother was quite aged and he said, you know.
00:15:31
The flash doesn't get any better, no matter how long it's there, no matter how many years you walk with the Lord, That which is born of flesh is flesh and it's not, cannot be improved upon, but that which is one of the spirit of spirit. And so we have this type of warfare in us. This is proper Christian warfare. It's that in US younger folks here. I, I hope this is this. You have this warfare and you too, if you know the Lord Jesus, you have in you a nature. Our, our son calls with a little bad man and uh, he has in him and you have in, in you too, if you're a believer.
You have these two natures in you, these two forces the moment you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior.
Why? Uh, God did something wonderful. He sent the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit to take up his residence in your body, just the way, uh, you live inside of a house or you sit inside of a car. Uh, God has sent the Holy Spirit to indwell your body and that Holy Spirit exists in there and he is the energy for you to walk, uh, in the new life. And so this warfare takes place and you have what, uh, what we, what scripture calls the flesh or.
Let's say my, we, uh, seeking to instruct our children in these things that there is that in them which will always lead them astray. If a mom or dad says, uh, uh, John, I want you, please, if you want to, uh, to take your books to your room, Well, if there's that within you, which says, I just don't feel like taking my books to my room, I feel like doing this. Well, uh, you just say to yourself as a, as a young Christian warrior, you say, if I'm gonna please the Lord, if I'm not gonna just be, uh, a tool of, of Satan, if I'm gonna please the Lord, I'm gonna realize that that hoist that just wants to do my own wills, the flesh.
And that'll never make me or anybody else happy. And so you'll find that if you just stop and think about it a minute, God will bring a verse before your mind or even just the sense that it's best just to please the Lord. And, uh, a again, as we're kind of thinking simple terms with young children, I like that, him that, uh, that we sing if we trust and obey, uh, there's no other way to be happy with Jesus but to trust and obey. And so whether it's the youngest child of, uh.
Of seven or even three or four, who knows the Lord Jesus as their savior. They have this warfare going on in them, just as the oldest St. in this room has the same warfare. Some have likened this type of warfare to the warfare that the children of Israel experience with Amalek as they were just coming out of the land. And Scripture says that there is going to be war with Amalek from generation to generation to generation. It's not going to go away. And so when the Lord Jesus comes and takes us up, uh, that type of warfare will cease.
We turn over to Ephesians 6.
Perhaps it would be.
Good to read part of this passage that is very well known.
Ephesians 6 and verse 10.
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord.
And in the power of His might put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the Wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand an evil day, and having done all, to stand.
Stand therefore having your loins gird about with truth.
And having on the breastplate of righteousness in your feet, shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, above all taking the shield of faith, wherewith you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked, and take the helmet of salvation in the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for All Saints.
Now here we're fully on the ground of Christian warfare.
00:20:04
And perhaps we should back up, and I've asked myself this question, and perhaps it's occurred to you, why? Why are we talking warfare?
Is this just something just the apostle chose to use this type of analogy or or what? Is there really a conflict now?
If we hold our place there in Ephesians and turn over to Timothy again.
We will notice that when Paul wrote to Timothy and his two epistles, he uses several references to warfare. We read first Timothy one and verse 18.
Wherein Paul and joined him Timothy.
Thou thou by them might a score a good warfare. I think also in the 6th chapter of this, uh, same epistle.
And verse 12 fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life.
Others translate that verse lay hold on that which is really life.
Where unto thou art also called, and has professed a good profession before many witnesses.
In the second epistle to From uh to Timothy.
And uh, chapter 2.
Verse 3. Thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier, and so on. And then over in verse in chapter 4. In verse 7.
I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. There are numerous other references to warfare.
This is a call in the New Testament and so on. So we might say, well, what is the battle about? We started out by referring to the fact that the Lord Jesus accomplished a victory on the cross of Calvary and nothing can be added to that victory, nothing ever taken away, uh, from it. Uh, that which, uh, God does is done forever. And So what, what is the battle? What is trying to be gained and by whom? And what is lost? Let's, let's turn back to Joshua.
Bear with me if we jump around a lot here.
So our late brother Adrian Roach said God never wrote the Bible to make us lazy.
Joshua 24.
And verse 12.
And I sent the Hornet before you which strayed them out from before you, even the two kings of the Amorites, but not with Eyesord, nor with Thibault. And I have given you a land for which you did not labor, and cities which ye built not, And you dwell in them of the vineyards and olive yards which he planted not.
To Ye.
In the first chapter of Joshua.
Joshua one and verse 3.
Well, perhaps we should read from the first verse. Now after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Joshua the son of man, Moses minister, saying, Moses, my servant is dead. Now therefore arise go over this Jordan vow, and all this people unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel, every place that the soul of your foot shall tread upon.
That have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses.
Now this would seem to be a paradox, a seeming contradiction.
Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses.
In other words, to paraphrase, we might say that Josh was saying or that it said to us as believers, if you don't put your foot in it, if you don't stand in it. And remember in Ephesians 6, there was a reference having done all to stand. If we don't walk in, and as we say, if we don't stand in it, it's not ours. We don't have it. Can't say that it's ours. We haven't possessed it. And we'll go into hopefully what what this is that we're seeking to possess.
00:25:00
But yet if it is possessed.
And if there is, as says in in other place, good success in the spiritual warfare, then we don't say, oh, I won this by my valor. Now we realize that have I given you a vineyard that I drank, that I didn't dig, didn't plant a well, that I didn't dig in a house that didn't build? And yet we need to possess it. What is the kind of warfare? This is true and proper Christian warfare. And basically we might say that we're in a scene, we're left here in this wilderness. And after all, God could have taken us out one by one the day we got saved, but he left us here in this scene.
Specifically.
Among other things that we might learn warfare.
There's a passage in uh, in Judges chapter one. Excuse me, Judges chapter 3.
Some years later.
Judges 3 and verse one. Now these are the nations which the Lord left to prove Israel by them, even as many of Israel as had not known all the wars of Canaan, only that the generations of the children of Israel might know to teach them war at the least, such as before knew nothing thereof. Verse four. And they were to prove Israel by them, to know whether they would hearken under the commandments of the Lord, and etcetera.
Again, it's a later time, but it says specifically that the Lord allowed an enemy to remain in the land.
So that those who were too young to have known all the wars of Canaan, they would learn warfare this way. He would leave the enemy on purpose because warfare had to be learned. What is Christian warfare? It's learning to possess in a practical way. What's laid before us in Scripture is our portion. It's given to us. We sometimes speak about Paul's doctrine or we speak about John's ministry and these kinds of things. And I sometimes have to hang my head in shame that we're, we're, we're much more conversant with these things as doctrine, which is a real blessing.
That we are familiar with them practically. And again, if we aren't standing or walking in these things. And I say this to my own soul.
Sometimes wonder after a meeting like this, as I drive away home, if if I feel more convicted about what was said than anyone else. But again, the possession of these things is where the warfare comes in.
And so getting back to Galatians 5 again without turning to it an intimate warfare.
And our own persons as now, not the new nature warring against the old, because after all, what did the new nature avail for the man in Romans 7? Nothing. All it was was, you might say, frustrated. It had right desires and right motives, but he just felt that at the end of it all that he was wretched. And what's more wretched than desiring something that you can never have? Like when you're stuck in, uh, in snow or mud and you spin and spin and you just go deeper and deeper. What a wretched experience.
And if you if you've gone through this in your days before you knew the Lord Jesus Savior, you, you know what this means intimately.
But now we have not the new nature itself warring, but we have the Spirit of God-given to us. The Lord Jesus having been raised by the glory of the Father, He sent the Comforter down. He sent the Spirit of Christ down to reproduce in US. Already we possess life to reproduce in us through His power, the very life of Christ in a believer. And this is something altogether different. This is where we burst out of Roman 7 and we come into the liberties expressed in Romans 8. Romans 8 is full of references to the Spirit. And so now we don't just have the desire.
But we have the ability to bring it out into a practical fruition, to bring these desires into fruition, how the new nature is going to be and, uh, and put the old nature down. No, that'll never happen. But through dependence and through the Spirit of God, there can be victory in the personal, you might say, uh, intimate warfare that goes on with us. And if there's not that kind of success, there's never gonna, we're never gonna have to worry too much about the kind of warfare we read about in Joshua or in Ephesians 6 or some other place. Let's face it.
If you and I are succumbing to the flesh in our daily life, whether it's a, a tendency towards anger or towards a critical spirit or some other indulgence or some other fleshly difficulty, we might as well not worry too much about the warfare and Ephesians 6, because Satan will leave us all alone because he knows we'll have no power. The two are connected, the inward and the outward. And This is why I believe the apostle Paul, who was certainly in the 6th of, uh, this type of warfare.
00:30:09
While he constantly, when he wrote to his dear son in the faith Timothy, he would always enjoin him in a double way. Take heed unto thyself and the doctrine.
Two types of warfare.
Take heed unto thyself and the doctrine. There was always care exercise towards one's own personal inward struggle, if we would call it that, that there would be good success in the spiritual warfare. And Joshua, you remember that times of failure, what did they have to do? They had to get back to Gilgal. They had to get back to that. For them, what was a geographical place where they would remember the very basis of their position in the land, where they would remember that place where there was where circumcision took place.
Which pictures to us the setting aside of the flesh where they would remember how they were brought across Jordan dry Shaw and how they are, uh, was brought. And as soon as the priest feet came into the water, the water stopped and all those kinds of things. And so for you and I sometimes, uh, the Lord allows us to be called short. And what do we have to do? We realize without too much thought that, uh, we've just, we've lacked watchfulness. We've been a little careless and the enemy has just seemed to got us a preoccupied and forgetting that we are a heavenly citizens in heavenly men and that we serve the Lord Christ. We go back in our own soul to Gilgal and we judge ourselves and we say, I've been allowing this in my life that is robbing me of power and joy.
And so on. And so the two types of warfare are connected.
If we turn now to, uh, Second Kings Chapter 2, I'd like to dwell a little bit on, uh, I think that was.
A place where Elisha sees Elijah taken up. Yeah, Second Kings chapter 2.
Because I think this is very important.
I think it's very important to see that the difference between the frustration, if I would call it that, enrollment 7 and the and the good and normal and likely prospect of success.
That the Spirit of God holds before us in the other parts of the New Testament. The difference is the indwelling of the Spirit of God.
The Spirit of God is the energy which energizes that new nature.
And through dependence provides power in Second Kings chapter 2.
You remember Elijah was going to be caught up.
And Elijah is following him because in verse 9.
Well, I'll read the verse Second Kings 2:00 and 9:00. And it came to pass when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elijah, Ask what I shall do for thee before I be taken away from thee. And Elijah said, I pray thee, little double portion of thy spirit be upon me. And he said, Thou hast asked the hard thing, nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee.
It shall be so unto thee, but if not, it shall not be so. And it came to pass, as they still went on and talked, that behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire.
Imparted them both asunder, And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elijah saw, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more. And he took hold of his own clothes and rent them into pieces. He took up also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and went back and stood by the Bank of Jordan. And he took the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and smoked the waters, and said, Where is the Lord God of Elijah?
And when he also had spit in the waters, they parted, hit her, and thither anyway she went over.
Down in verse 19.
Elijah goes to Jericho.
And the men of the city said unto Elijah, Behold, I pray thee, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my Lord seeth, but the water is not in the ground barren. And he said, Bring me a new cruise, and put salt there in. And they brought it to him. And he went forth onto the spring of the waters, and cast the salt in there, and said, Thus saith the Lord, I have healed these waters, There shall not be from thence any more death or barren land.
Someone has said that you can see wonderful pictures and types of Paul's doctrine in the ministry of Elijah, and I feel that's very true. Precious, precious times. God knows how we learn. And uh, so graciously he has given us in the New Testament explicit teachings versus which say such and such and such and such. And then marvelously he has given us these inspired histories, personal histories, national histories and all these things because he knows that we learn by pictures and types.
00:35:19
Now here I would just suggest that Elisha is a picture of a believer, and his power comes not merely from having company with Elijah, but seeing him when he's taken up.
And so we would say that like it, like we have in Second Corinthians chapter 3, uh, verse 18 for we all open or unveiled face, the veil taken away, beholding as in a glass, the glory of the Lord are changed into these same image, even from glory to glory next to the last verse of 2nd Corinthians 3. And so someone has said that that verse is really a key, uh, to successful or happy Christian life beholding with a veil taken off the face.
Beholding the glory of the Lord, Not just the Lord, but His glory wherever He is at the Father's right hand.
Where he has positioned himself.
To be our great high Priest.
He's positioned himself there to to be, you might say, the one to help us along in this warfare.
And so Elijah sees him there and what does he do? He rents his own garment. He throws it away. You might say he picked up Elijah's mantle and he goes back. Did Elijah tell him that he had instructions after he had seen me taken up? You just ripped your clothes. Take him here and then take mine and go back and, and start and 1St go to. I don't think he had any of that, but I think there was something working in his soul. Something happened to Elijah at that point. He realized that when he saw Elijah taken up that he had what he had desired.
He had a double portion of that spirit. He had a power now, source of power. And what does he do? He begins to imitate Elijah. He takes up Elijah's mantle. He's, you know, Elijah had done that on the way over. He does it on the way back, smites the waters. They go across and Elisha goes across.
And begins a wonderful ministry of gracious healing, for the most part, ministry, a ministry of blessings. And this is a wonderful portion that's left to us here as believers that God would, has, has given us the privilege, uh, to be, uh, with him dispensers of rich blessing. But what's the key? Seeing him where he is, You say, I have no power in myself and neither do none of us do. But as we look up, uh, to the throne of God and we see the Lord Jesus there at the right hand of the majesty on high. And we read such passages if you hold your finger there.
As we have in Colossians 1.
Colossians 1.
I wanna read from the middle of verse 9.
Someone had this part of the verse above their fireplace once it.
Has always helped me to remember it.
Desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of His will and all wisdom and spiritual understanding, so that you might be smart. You know that you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all, pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God. This is the verse I was thinking of. Strengthen with all might, according to His glorious power onto all patients, and long-suffering with joyfulness.
To be strengthened with Almighty according to his glorious power, the measure of the might, the measure of the resource that we have now in this wilderness scene is the measure of His glorious power. And we can read in other passages that the that the same grace and that glory which raised the Lord Jesus from the ver, from the dead and seated him at the Father's right hand in glory is the same power that avails for you and I to go through our lives day by day. How little we avail ourselves of it. But this is what's available to us, not the frustration of Romans 7.
All I desire to do good, but I always do the wrong, not that kind of a thing at all, but a resource on high in the Lord Jesus that we might be strengthened according to his glorious mind. And so beholding, looking up, seeing the Lord Jesus there as our resource will give us strength. Being occupied with him and with his glory will give us the strength and the resource. And so Elijah goes back, he imitates Elijah and then in verse 19, bring me a new cruise and put salt there, and they brought it to him.
There was, you might say, there is in Romans 7, you might say a spring that is just the cursive spring. He, he, he finds within him just a, a source of things that is just, it is of no value and of no health. And So what does Elisha do?
00:40:11
Bring me a new cruise. And who was that? And put salt there. And what was that? The devotedness, the very when God sent the Lord Jesus down into this scene. Why, there was there was a man for the first time ever on the earth that God could delight in a man who walked according to a totally different motive.
A man who walked in his, uh, his every, his every fall and his every impulse was something that God could delight in. This was a new cruise and there was fault in it. There was that salt, as we read in other places, was never to be lacking in any offering. And you say, well, what does salt mean? And I've pondered that for some couple of years now and I'm beginning to get the impression that salt is just something that gives a sort of an inward dogged.
Devoted determination.
To do the will of God. There was that in the Lord Jesus as typified in the, uh, in the coverings of the Tabernacle. There was the badger skins, There was the ram skins dyed red. And there was that in the Lord Jesus whereby he would set his face as a Flint to go to Jerusalem. Whereby he would look past and go beyond and overcome all the shame in the spinning and all the, uh, senseless arguments and the false accusations and go on. Not just to Calgary.
But to go down into death, 3 hours of darkness and anything that was before him, because he was going to do the will of his Father. And so this was a vessel of a totally different kind. It was a new cruise, and there was a vault therein. And now the Lord Jesus had in common done the Father's will. And having been raised up to his own right hand, the Spirit of God is now active. And you and I to reproduce in you and I.
See, in spite of what we were by nature as under the first atom, but to reproduce now and you and I the same life, to have the same motive, to be energized by that same power and to have an effect upon this world that was similar to his. Peter tells us to walk in his steps and I I like to I always remember that analogy. Someone said that a young boy following his father across and crusty snow. The father takes big long steps.
And the sun can't match them, but he walks in his steps, walks along behind, and this is what we're called to do. So I think this is a lovely thing to remember in ourselves. We're still as hopeless and helpless as the man in Romans 7. But now having experienced deliverance and having the Spirit of God within us, uh, we can have a good success in our spiritual warfare.
Now let's turn for a minute. Our time is, uh, just evaporating back to First Samuel.
The same area, I think it was chapter 17.
David comes down to see how his brethren fare, not because he was curious or just to see some battle as a curious child as his brethren accused him of, but because his father sent him down.
It's a lovely answer in verse 28, Why came as thou down hit her, and with whom hast thou left those few sheep in the wilderness? And verse 29 and David said, what have I now done? Is there not A cause another translation renders that has it not been laid upon me? And so it's a wonderful consolation to us and the difficulties in the pathway, when we remember that in the difficulties we get into as we walk, seek to walk to please the Lord.
As we seek to welcome the Spirit so as not to fulfill flesh's flesh's lost at the difficulties we encounter then are not difficulties that we've taken upon ourselves. The Lord said to Gideon, go, and this thy might have not I sent thee. And so having the sense that whatever whether it's our service or whether it's these aspects of Christian warfare, but it's something the Lord has laid upon us all we can say, Oh, that's that's all I need to go on. The Lord has laid it upon me and we can say after all, who goeth to warfare at his own charges.
If the Lord has asked me to walk those six steps in that direction, He'll give me the strength to do it. And there's a reason, even if I don't understand that there's a reason I should go in that direction or say this thing or go and speak to that person or deny this request or whatever it might be. But that's a lovely thing. Has it not been laid upon me? But the reason I turn back to chapter 17 was.
00:45:04
In regard to looking upon David now, not as a type of the Lord Jesus, but as a type of you and I as believers.
In our own warfare, you know, there are aspects of things occasionally that we have to get involved in that are very public and we can all can say, well, those are conflicts. And it's good to remember that we wrestle not against flesh and blood.
We don't wrestle against flesh and blood. You and I may have difficulties together as brethren, but we're not wrestling against each other and it's good to remember that. And whenever there's difficulties amongst brethren, it's good to remember that that's simply what they are, difficulties amongst brethren. And I think in we can't always change one another's minds.
Nor can we do it immediately. And it's good to conduct ourselves with dignity and with sobriety and with courtesy and with all those other things that aren't supposed to be dropped by the way because of some new difficulty that we tend to get all engrossed in. So I think this is good for all of us in the present time with difficulties to remember all the truths and John's ministry and in Paul's.
Are very, very important, and no difficulty is so great that we should be encouraged to be careless in our courtesies and with the simple truths of the ministry, especially of the Apostle John. Little children loved one among them, and those kinds of things.
We might say those are the ABC's and brother and I have sometimes felt, and I guess this is the digression that we're sometimes so busy trying to get into the XYZ, which is right and proper to seek to, uh, in the sense of Joshua to gain ground that we forget the ABC's. And you know, young Christians as they might, uh, come amongst us or, or someone gets saved. You know, that's what they look at, don't they? They look at the ABC's. They say these brethren seem to be, uh.
I'm talking about all these things that I don't quite understand yet. It all sounds very wonderful.
What they see is the ABC's. They see the little things that are mentioned so simply and yet so powerfully in John's, uh, epistles, for example. Little children, let us love one another, love us with God. Little children, keep yourselves from idols and all these kinds of things. You know, there was a time in the history of Israel in the days of the Judges, when one of the tribes, I think it was the tribe of Dan was up on the mountain. And, uh, the enemy was so, so successful that, uh, they had this wonderful mountain that they had possessed. And you and I may, may, uh, be on our knees and, and, uh, and, uh, beg and dig.
And seek to understand, uh, that which has been committed to us in regard to the deep mysteries of God. But how terrible if in that pursuit and the possession of those higher truths, uh, the enemy takes hold of the valley. And after all, the valley is the place where daily life is experienced. The valley is a place where commerce, where roads are built, where things are shipped along the rivers, where fields are, where things are plowed, where people build houses. That's the day-to-day things. And how terrible.
And I, I say this especially to myself and others of us having the privilege of being gathered to the Lord's name, how careful we need to be that we don't become a lopsided in that way and lose sight of these practical things here with David.
David is, has it laid upon him that he is going out into a very public type of warfare and David is, uh, is indignant as having a, a sentiment that's right towards Jehovah that this, uh, this uncircumcised Philistine is not just defying.
The Hebrews, as he called them, but defined the living God.
But you notice in verse.
Uh verse uh, 34.
David said unto Saul, thy serve, and kept his father's sheep, And there came a lion and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock.
And I went out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth. And when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and slew him. Thy servants slew both the lion and the bear, And this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he hath defied the armies of the living God. And then verse 38.
And Saul armed David with his armor, and he put a helmet of brass upon his head. Also he armed him with a coat of mail.
And David girded his sword upon his armor, and he is saved to go, for he had not proved it. And David said unto Saul, I cannot go with these, for I have not proved them. David put them off him, and he took his staff in his hand, and chose them five smooth stones out of the brook, and put them in a shepherd's bag, and so on.
To my knowledge, Scripture doesn't record these previous instances when David slew both the lion and the bear.
00:50:06
Seems to me as having read through that this is the first time you ever hear about something that took place back in Davis personal life, but whatever it was.
Whenever it was, it happened, and it gave David confidence in the Lord that he was able, with the Lord's health, to overcome something that came his way in the pursuit of his rather mundane duties. He was taking care of his father's sheep. It was so mundane that when Samuel came out to anoint one of Jesse's, uh, other seven sons, they didn't even bother to call David. He was out taking, uh, doing a very mundane task. But that's where David met the lion and the bear. And David had success with the Lord's help, you might say, in that type of warfare.
Before he ever came forth and was used to the Lord in something more public. And again, this hails back to the aspect of things in Galatians 5. All of us has a lion and the bear that we have to tangle with, all of us has to fight the, uh, uh, Satan's attacks upon us, as, uh, as some have said, as a lion in our day. He's the lion that is a lion of discouragement. And the bear would speak of those entanglements which are so, so treacherous for all of us as believers.
David had good success in that warfare, and you and I have to too.
Have have have I slain the lion and the bear in my personal life? Did I slay a lion in a bear a couple of years ago? But I've got a whole other set of them this year. It's quite possible. Whatever it is in your life and in my life, this is where our attention needs to be. We need to, we need to look to the Lord that will have success in these kinds of personal things. You know, we read in Second Timothy 2.
About the no man that worth entangled himself in the affairs of this life. And what a solemn picture we have in Samson and with the Israelites in connection with Gibeon. Another example is all through the inspired history of entanglements. What a disastrous effect it can have upon us if the Lord lays upon me some, some form of, of, uh, adversely, uh, occupation. So that's one thing. If I feel clear, that's what the Lord has for me. That's one thing.
But to go out and to take things up and then tangle myself in this present world, after all, as a soldier.
Uh, World War Two, picture any example you want to take a, a, a Canadian soldier over in, uh, World War Two is going through France. Is it gonna stop and join the, the Rotarians or something like that? It's just an absurd thought, like he's fighting a war. And how about you and I?
Are we succumbing to the uh?
Bear hug of this world, especially perhaps those of us who are brothers who are out in this world on a daily basis. It's thoughts, it's attitudes and all that it says that we have to accomplish in order to be successful or in order to, uh, to, to, uh, get all these wonderful things that they say. And we need security, whatever that is, all these other things while we face these in our lives. And even if you've, uh, laid aside your earthly as a lot of the brethren here, it's no longer.
A work in that sense, why there are still these, uh, these trials and this type of warfare for you too, as I'm sure you'll be the first to admit. And so David had the success. He went out and with the Lord's help, he was used in a public way. But again.
Saul's armor. Is that going to do now? It's, it's the new source of waters. It's the new cruise with the salt they're in. It's the, it's the, uh, that which he approved in his personal victories with the lion and the bear that he's going to use with Goliath. After all, if God has been so displeased with the 1St man.
That he sent his beloved son to put that man to put Adam out of his sight forever. Is he going to want to see us going around, as it were and, and uh, digging out certain attributes of him and say, oh, those tools and we'll, we're going to salvage that, uh, that sword or that spear or something. As, as the men who win a battle, they go across the, the battlefield with the dead and the dying and they say, oh, I want this and I want that. Is that what you and I know Paul said? The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down.
Of strongholds.
Just to close with reversing Isaiah, our time is gone.
Isaiah chapter 2.
Verse 4.
And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their Spears into pruning hooks. A nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.
00:55:09
We read in the CLA Ecclesiastes that there is a time for everything, season for everything under the sun, a time of war and a time of peace. So it's a wonderful thought to comfort our hearts that there will be a time when we can lay aside all the warfare of Galatians. 5 Perhaps this afternoon, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the last, uh, second of that type of warfare will be forever behind us.
And we're caught up to be with in life, the Lord Jesus, but still, you know, the Lord Jesus is going to come into the scene and the world is going to see him, see him in a different character. I know, uh, one of the brothers here uses an expression that he quotes from a brother who's with the Lord now, gentle Jesus, meek and mind. I never heard that before I came here. But whenever that expression is used, I think of Revelation, uh, chapter 19, I believe it is.
I think of the Lord Jesus coming out of heaven. And after all, we may know the Lord Jesus in that way. As one who would be kind and gracious enough to turn in the midst of a public event and turn. And to hear our cry as a blind Bartimaeus, or to pick us up on his lap if we were a child. Or to comfort us in our sickness or our mother-in-law. Like this world is going to see him in a character that they had no idea of. When I was a young boy, I remember going to a large place where they.
I must have been quite small. I remember being put up on the fuse. They always stood when they sang and I was put up on a few to be able to see and I thought it was the so inspiring when they sang that song. How does that go onward? Christian soldiers, you know, I I didn't take in much.
But I thought that was a wonderful thing. I didn't know what, what kind of war they were talking about. Didn't know for many, many years. But the Lord Jesus is going to come in. The character, like David is a man of war, and he's going to establish everything on this earth which is essential. It was this earth where his blood was shed. It was this earth where he was cast out. And it's this earth, you might say that it's essential that God sent him back, as it were, again, and he established his rightful rule on this earth. No, as a brother has put it before me some years ago.
It's not good enough. We might say that he's given his rightful place in heaven and that he has all the redeemed around them there. It's essential to the majesty of God that he give him his rightful place here where the outrage took place. And that same, same political entity which, uh, which enforced, which uh, you might say empowered that spear into the side will be faced again when the Lord Jesus comes out of heaven as a man of war. His name is called the Word of God, and he has a vesture dipped in blood.
And so.
There will be continued for a time a state of of warfare, of a state wherein we will learn in a fuller and deeper way than we do now what holiness is, and the fact that God is glorified in judgment as well as glorified in his grace. But after that, there will be a time when all of this will be laid aside. And how wonderful to just be able to ungird. In Ephesians 6, which we read and didn't get into much, we read about being good about with the truth that which I need to apply to myself.
And the breastplate of righteousness, which has to do with that which I am outwardly with others.
Uh, we can ungird ourselves without fear of defilement, then, without fear of ambush, without fear of always being overtaken by the flesh or by the enemy, will be fully in possession of those things that the Lord Jesus has accomplished as a victor on the cross of Calvary. Well, perhaps we should look to the Lord.
Christian Ministry
Address—Bruce Conrad
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.
Vestal, NY, April 13, 1986 Address to Christians by Brother Bruce Conrad. I'd like to turn first to a passage in, uh, Colossians.
Blossoms, chapter one.
Colossians one and verse 25.
Where have I made a minister according to the dispensation of God, which is given to me for you to fulfill or fill out the word of God? Even the mystery which has 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 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 our wisdom, that we may present every man perfect.
In Christ Jesus.
Whereunto I also labor striving according to his working, which worketh in mid mightily. The reason I read that passage to start with, uh, this afternoon was the phrase at the end of verse 28, the apostle Paul and his labor and in a conscious sense of his stewardship, uh, committed to this, uh, this mystery. He looked upon every man as not just someone who, yes, might be saved and brought into the Church of God, might have their sins forgiven.
But that he might warn every man, teach every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.
Last the time we were together in this series of meetings, we took up the subject of service or ministry more particularly, and the exercise of gift, and how the Lord Jesus, having ascended up on high, gave gifts unto men. And the purpose of those gifts was not just that they could be exercised as an end in themselves, but as we read there in Ephesians, so that you and I, all of us, might have the benefit of helps, divine helps, divinely given and divinely empowered helps.
That each one of us might grow up onto him as we read there in Ephesians chapter 4. And so if a brother comes through and he preaches or he teaches, are coming together to experience or to hear, that teaching is not an end of its SE in itself, but it's a function that is, that the Lord has ordered to take place amongst his own. And the end result is that there would be more glory brought back to him as that teaching or that exhortation or that comfort or that encouragement, or whatever it would be.
Is experienced and taken into the lives of his people and there's more a display of what Christ is down here. We need to keep in mind the Christ object God's object in the in the exercise of ministry in the church and here just to to kind of continue for a few moments with that line of things. The apostle Paul is very mindful of this. If I were an evangelist and I and my my sphere of service to the Lord would more properly be out where the out where the sinners are. I shouldn't rest just by saying oh that was wonderful a one or two got saved tonight or three or four or however many.
But the evangelists who, who, whose major work that's his thrust out there in the regions beyond, he should look upon each of those, uh, folds as they sit there and they listen, they ponder, uh, these, uh, solemn words he should say, oh, in his own mind that not only does he want to see that person get saved, but he wants to see them come into a knowledge of the truth, wants to see them presented perfect as it says here, presented every man perfect in Christ Jesus. And so the evangelizing, as you might say, the, the initial work and he's brought into the, uh, if things are happy and normal, he's brought in where others have already been brought in.
Have run into the assembly. And there are those who, uh, who uh, according to their measure, the sisters, the brothers, the old and the young, each one performing his function, would seek to encourage and to instruct and to pasture and to help. And the new convert would be brought on and brought up. And day by day, week by week, there would be brought in the life of that convert more and more of a conformance to Christ. Evangelizing is not an end in itself. Teaching is not an end in itself. And we ought to look at what God's purpose is in this.
I can remember years ago as a little boy growing up in a, down in a city some, some way South of here, before the days when everyone had air conditioning, difficult to sleep on hot, humid nights. And, uh, uh, done any little ones follow this? But I, I had this habit of climbing out the window up onto the roof, uh, when I couldn't sleep. And I just look around the, uh, it was like a, a housing development, little brick bungalows.
And you can see all these other little houses, you know, just like the one I was sitting on top of on a flat portion of the roof. And I can remember a lot of it were yesterday. I don't know how old I was, remember, like it was yesterday pondering that question, why am I here? Uh, looking at across the, you know, the suburbs as they were being built up outside of that city, just pondering, why am I here? That never left me. And by the grace of God, uh, he followed me and he brought me in. And it was perhaps, uh, 1516 years later when I finally started to have an idea.
00:05:31
As to what God had in purpose for my existence, we read in Revelation chapter four, another passage before we get going on another line of things here.
Last verse in Revelation chapter 4.
Verse 11 Revelation 4 Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power, for thou hast created all things.
And for thy pleasure they are and were created.
I think it was back in the book of Job, which was centuries and centuries ago, when, uh, when one of the speakers says, wherefore hast thou brought me forth from the womb? And Sarah is a believer. Now We can ask the same questions that a convicted Sinner might ask. Only we can have light. We can have light and we can enter in, uh, through the purposes of God as told out of the Scriptures. Just what is God's desire for me?
Why did he bring me forth from the womb? Well, it's for his pleasure. And so we, we, I want to take up this afternoon with the Lord's help, a line of things which we might just generally call priesthood, the Christian priesthood. And and we might just see there as we as if the Lord helps us and we get through a few of the different aspects of what it means to be a priest now in this present age. We might just see that there are things which are are most exalted privilege and the most important thing in our lives.
Is is a certain aspect of things included in that and I wanted to make a careful mention last time we were together and took up the subject of ministry. I wanted to make careful mention that we all remember that ministry and service and the exercise of gifts as we each of us have gifts from the offended Christ. Those things are secondary to what we're going to have before us today. You know, sometimes when you when you speak about the subject of Christian ministry or gift and people come away with the wrong thought, they come away feeling that while you're narrowing things up for me.
You're taking away a liberty from me that I thought I had, I thought we could all do this and that I thought we could all take part in meeting. And I now I feel like I'm put in some sort of a constraint that I didn't know I had. Well, it's just the opposite. There is a ministry given to each one of us, a stewardship, a work for each one of us personally responsible to the Lord and administrative as, as we thought to, uh, to say last time. And in ministry, each one of us is unique and different. Each one of us has been placed differently in the body as it has pleased him.
We possess different abilities and we're given GIF different gifts and we function differently in the body of Christ. But in priesthood, there is that which is characteristic of all of us. And that's the higher thing We said last time how Levitical services were always, uh, up ranged below, uh, the priests, the Levites were given to the priests and we're all priests. Let's, let's turn now to first Peter 2.
Familiar passages.
Just to, uh, a place to start from so we understand what, what we mean when we say that each of us that knows the Lord Jesus is his or her savior, that we are priests.
First Peter 2 verse five, Ye also as living stones are built up a spiritual house and holy priesthood to OfferUp spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. And then further on in verse 9, but Jiara chosen generation, a royal priesthood and holy nation of peculiar people, that you should show forth appraises of him who have called you out of darkness.
Into his marvellous light.
It was God's purpose to have a people brought out from ******* brought out from from Pharaoh's dominion, as it was in the days of the book of Exodus, there we read in the chapter 5. I'll turn back there a moment.
Hold your finger in First Peter 2.
You would.
Let's say that the Lord God of Israel let my people grow, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. Exodus 5.
00:10:06
Not that they may go serve me, but that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. And there are many questions raised further on in Exodus. I think it's the 19th chapter.
Verse 4 You have seen what I did under the Egyptians and how I bear you on Eagles wings and brought you onto my cell.
Verse six. And ye shall be unto me a Kingdom of priests and an holy nation. These are the words which which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.
It didn't happen then for other purposes. Not all of those redeemed Israelites became priests. The nation itself, in a way, didn't become a nation of priests. But just like, uh, we might quote in John two, thou has kept a good one until now. In this present age, all of the redeemed, every boy and every girl, no matter how young, how recently saved, how old, male or female we are, we have all been made priests unto God. In the Old Testament, a person couldn't become a priest by volunteering.
You couldn't go to a school when you got to be, uh, out of high school or 16 or 17 and say, I'd like to become a priest. You couldn't do that. You had to be born into a certain family. You had to be right in the lineage of Aaron to be a priest. You had to be one by birth. No one could volunteer. And so it is similarly in the priesthood today. You can't just volunteer and say, I wanna be a priest. Maybe, you know, as you get older, you'll see people that you go to school with and you're gonna say that are you going to go to college or go back to work when you go to a school? And some will say, well, I'm gonna go into the ministry. I'm gonna go be a priest.
Well, it doesn't work that way. It really does it, because just as you had to be born into Aaron's family to be a priest in the Old Testament, you have to be born into God's family to be a priest now. And if you've accepted the Lord Jesus as your Savior, and as you read his word, you will see that he has made you a priest. He has given you all those priestly privileges of access into his presence, and that you can worship Him and understand divine things and have all those other privileges and responsibilities.
That a priest is known to have and so here in first Peter two we see first of all in verse five in holy priesthood, a spiritual house to offer up a spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
And we might say, I suppose at the very start that the the most predominant I, I, I feel that in my own soul of the most predominant privilege or activity of a priest is worship. It's the offering up.
Of spiritual sacrifices now.
I feel a little bit, you know, how do you put it, small, standing here and starting to talk about a subject like this. I feel like a little child standing at the bottom of the Empire State Building or something and looking up at something so vast and so eternal and so intimate and sacred is this. So I trust my comments won't be esteemed to be.
Presumptuous or anything like that. We realize we're talking about something extremely precious to God and personal intimate and all the rest. And I don't wanna feel as if anyone to feel as if you can put numbers to it or give a formula or anything like that. But I think we should, we should at least start by understanding that what God is looking for from us is our worship. Remember our late brother Albert Hagel saying, I was going to say many, but at least several times.
As He would stand there, a devoted servant as he was. And so the Lord can do without my service, but He doesn't want to do without my affections. He can do without my service and my work because He can do His work himself. He doesn't need you or me to go and leave someone to Christ. He can do that himself, but He doesn't want to do without our affections. He wants us to be worshippers. And in John 4, when the woman at the well of Sycar met there, that's a heavenly stranger.
Met the Lord Jesus himself. Little did she know who she was speaking to, but he said to her in that passage, Woman, the hour is coming, and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. Let me read the next verse after that. John 4.
Further on in that same passage. For the Father seeketh such to worship him.
And so in a certain sense, we would say that it's God's, God's purpose in this present age, not just to call out people to to forgive their sins, not just to make a servants or even members of the body of Christ, as wonderful as those things are, but to make us worship worshippers, to put us into a place and to give us even now the enjoyment and the delight and the intelligence is something that's eternal. The Father seeks worshippers.
00:15:24
You know, in Luke 17 where the 10 lepers were healed and uh, as they went, they were told to show themselves to the priest and they went on. And uh, one of them when he realized that he was cleanse, he turned back and he, it says there he glorified God, He gave thanks. He turned back to the Lord Jesus to give him thanks. And it says there that he glorified God. And the Lord Jesus there said whether or not ten lepers.
Where are the 9 now? In A? In a? In a parallel type passage? Also in UH over in John's Gospel where?
Where where he says lift up your eyes and so on and look in the connection with service. He says that the laborers are few, but you don't seem to get, at least I don't get the impression that there's aid, that there's seven, that there's 75 or any specific number that are missing.
And that that's the reason why there are so few laborers or servants.
But here it's a specific number, each one, each one. Where are the 9? Not where is the majority, where are the other four? Where are most of you? But where are the 9? We are dealing with something that is essential, something that's essential to the heart of God, that we were created for His pleasure to be worshippers.
So here in first Peter 2A spiritual house and Holy priesthood.
Now again, what is worship do?
We, there's a sign out there on the, on the outside of the building, uh, listing some of the times of the meetings. Do we put up a, a sign saying Lord's Day, 11:00 AM worship meeting.
Oh, you don't see that out there?
Because I think that would be presumptuous to put that out there. We can come together every large day at 11:00 AM and we can put up on the sign that, Lord willing, there will be the breaking of bread. And we can.
The Lord willing, uh, with the liberties we enjoy in this land, as our brother mentioned this morning, we can set the table and put a list there in the cup. And by faith, just as Moses, it says, by faith, he kept the Passover. By faith, we can come into this room and we can show forth the Lord's death one more time, but we can't say we're going to come here to worship. We hope we would come here to worship, but worship, what is it?
Is it giving thanks? I suppose it would be included in that. Is it reading passages scripture? Is it singing hymns?
I don't really know what to say.
But we know that worship is, and we experience it.
If we pray in the prayer meeting, we have needs and we pray about those needs, and out of our own feeling of need and of emptiness and of and of insufficiency, we look to the Lord for help.
But in worship, it's something of a different kind altogether, because we're not there addressing our God our Father, or the Lord Jesus himself in a sense of need, but out of a sense of fullness. He's made us so rich and so full, and as he's occupied us with himself.
We just wanna share with the very heart of God. We wanna look up to the Father, and like little children, we just wanna say that we agree. We just wanna say that we agree. I enjoy the comments someone wrote once. And all of all of God's thoughts of the heart of Christ are fully formed in His Word.
He knows what he thinks of Christ. He's found all his delight in him.
He knows all about him.
But what do we say about that experience that He and Grace brings us into when in our the experience of our own hearts and minds and our own souls, we find ourselves entering in.
And and in a practical way, understanding in our measure, He informed us, we in our measure a Father's delight in the Son. And this is worship. It's not a sense of need and true worship. You know, we might forget all about ourselves.
Like in that precious hymn, the bride eyes not her garment, but her dear bridegroom's face. We're thankful for the fact that we've had our sins put from us as far as yeast is from the West. We're thankful that that, uh, the blood of Jesus Christ has cleansed us from all sin. We're thankful for all of those blessings. But you know, the work of Christ has done something powerful and eternal, and I experienced it in my conscience. I have peace and I rest.
00:20:23
But it's the person of Christ that I need ongoingly to satisfy my heart. And so there's a difference, I would just submit, between thankfulness and between worship, in that worship has more to do with our own thoughts and feelings and the overflow in our own hearts affections for the person of Christ who it is that have done this.
It's a sensitive thing, isn't it? And you know, you say, I don't know.
You know, have I experienced am IA worshipper? Really.
Isn't it something I know brother?
Being taped, I shouldn't be so free with the use of names, but brother that used to come through Palmyra a lot. He used to speak about Communion being like a being like a bubble. You know how the children get those little.
Soap containers with a little thing in it with a round disc on the end, and they blow those little bubbles. You said Communion. Communion is like that. It's like one of those bubbles, easily made, but easily broken. Can you sit down and say I'm going to worship the Lord? No, you can't.
We can't do that. You can read and you can pray and you can fast all week and say I'm going to worship the Lord.
There's something about it that it just doesn't work that way, does it? And sometimes, you know, I've sat down and just so weary with all the earthly things and responsibilities and the weariness of this poor tired world and just to sit down and, uh, you can't really just turn it on like that and say, oh, I'm going to sit down and have a lovely time in the word. But I think whenever we sit down, we can put the Lord before us.
And like some have used in the analogy of John 2 with those, we can fill those pots with water and we can trust him to fill them, turn them into wine. And if you've had this experience, you know what I mean. Sometimes you sit down because you just wanna, you just wanna bask a little bit in his love and to and to just open your Bible and the Gospels and just trace them a little ways as he walked here or there.
And you start to read and all of a sudden you, your thought gets your mind gets to wandering and you start to think about something you said or did earlier in the day. That's funny. Should I think about that? And you dismiss it from your mind. And you go on and you're still reading and all of a sudden you start to think about something that's just a piece of unfinished business, you know, like a letter that you didn't answer or a phone call you were supposed to make or, or something that you know, you just should really have done. You didn't put that in your mind. You go on.
But I believe what's happening in your soul is that.
It's the Spirit of God, like the oil in those lanterns, that is really the source of that enjoyment in Christ. And He's the Holy Spirit. And we can't just sever our practical life from any other part of our spiritual life. My own conclusion, I suppose you can draw your own, but my own conclusion when those things happen is that, you know, that's the Spirit of God bringing things to my conscience that He wants me to judge, that I might be in communion with him.
Little things, little carelessness, we speak about self judgment, but I wonder if we don't forget sometimes what we're really talking about, all of us. And so that we might be in danger of passing on to the younger ones of things that are empty platitudes instead of things that we really feel and experience on a weekly basis. We need to judge ourselves and not to get ourselves into some morbid, uh, introspection or anything like that, but as a brother who's with the Lord now, I used to say, I've heard to keep short accounts with God, to keep short accounts.
To always take His side, even against yourself, and to judge those things as they come up and to acknowledge them that you can be maintained in communion with Him. And so some have said that the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, that one who indwells each one of us, has two functions. Primarily, the major primary function is to occupy us with Christ, to be the one who just keeps bubbling up different aspects of His glory. His glory is the Son of man or is the eternals Son of God.
That's the perfect servant. Like you have him in Mark or or any any of these other aspects. That's his primary function.
But then he also performs the blessed function, and it is a blessed thing to convict us when we need. There are things in our lives that come up that we need to judge, that we might be able to judge those things and forsake them, to take God's fight about them. And then we can go on with the more normal and happy work. And so when we speak of worship, I, I think this is perhaps what we should be thinking of, A heart that is occupied, overflowing.
00:25:29
With a person of Christ as well as the glories of the Spanish world.
Now, again, if we were to put up a sign, we don't know. You know, someone said that there's no shortcut. How did that go? There's no shortcut from, from Egypt to Shiloh, no shortcut from a, from a, a, an occupation during the week with worldly things.
All of a sudden to come into this room as we had before from the reading this morning, there's nothing magical about buildings, not even this one.
And then we had in, in my short time here, have had many happy, refreshing times so that I associate this place with blessing and happiness. Still, there's nothing magical about the place that when I walk in, merely by walking in, I'm going to sit down and be right in the enjoyment of heavenly and divine things. Now, there's no shortcut because if we've been occupied with things that are really not-for-profit, we've got to judge the fact that we've been occupied with things that have been not-for-profit before we can get on occupying being occupied with things that offer profit.
And I know when I was first saved and, and uh, we used to just live from meeting to meeting. We live from Wednesday night to Lord's Day morning, from Lord's Day night to Wednesday afternoon to when the prayer meeting started.
And how it all just seemed, uh, that everything revolved around the meetings when life was simpler than. And, uh, how you just felt that anything that came in that would detract in any way from your enjoyment of Christ, whether at night or in the morning, in your own home or in the meetings, wasn't worth it, no matter what it was.
And how I sometimes, uh, feel convicted in my own soul as I look back upon earlier years.
If anything, we should be growing in these things, and I sometimes feel that.
That, uh, there's been a, a, a slipping in my own soul need to be exercised about this. And so getting back to worship, why can we be occupied with worldly things and expect to come here Lord's Day morning and to be able to just bask and be delighted in the heavenly realm where everything is Christ? We can't and we know that we can. And perhaps we go on when we give out favorite hymns and after hymns are given out, you know, we're, we're, we know what goes with what.
And a brother might give out a hymn that has a certain line of thought in it, and I might just say, well, that goes with Hebrews 10, and I'll read the passage in Hebrews 10.
And we know what the loaf means and what the cup means.
But brethren, we know when we are in the real enjoyment, the fresh enjoyment of the love of Christ, and when we're not. Now, I don't mean to in any way make light or make put things in a profane manner. It's good to go on with good things. It's good to have habits. The Lord Jesus had habits. It was just custom to go into the synagogue.
And sometimes younger folks say, well, you know, they see failure in the older folks and haven't seen themselves yet, and they say there's failure there. And I mean, I'm not going to go on all of that. I don't mean in the slightest to add anything to any of that. The Lord Jesus had good habits. It was just custom to go to the synagogue. We read in Scripture what the character of that synagogue was as far as hypocrisy and as far as wickedness, as far as evil. But it was his custom, and it's a good custom to go to the meetings of the assembly.
And to be there and to be with the Lord's people, and it's good.
But brethren, we don't want to just feel that Christianity consists of going to meetings and and that kind of thing and lose sight of the fact, as I sometimes thought, at the end of the meeting, as we're sitting there wondering that someone is going to give us a word or if someone is going to give out another him or whatever.
Uh, maybe I mentioned before, but sometimes that passage kind of strikes my conscience. That gave us me no kiss. It really convicts me sometimes. We sang hymns, we read passages from Scripture, we gave thanks for the love from the cup, and we did show forth the Lord's death. We announced his death. We remember the Lord and his death. But that's kind of touching to me. Thou gave us me no kiss. Where our affections there for Christ, the way he would like to have them be.
00:30:04
I remember once in a general meetings in New Brunswick, my brother was there and after the breaking of bread in the room.
Large room there in the on the coast there some you've been there and the brother stood up and he.
He started to speak and you know, I must confess. My first thought was this doesn't sound right at all. You know, it almost sounds almost blasphemous. I, I, I, I must confess. I started to think this way. Didn't know the brother very well, but he, he started out by saying, uh, has God had a drink?
Have we given him a drink this morning in our worship?
And he went on speaking about different things, and it it took a while for it to dawn on me. John 4.
Give me the drink. And then I was greatly relieved, you know, and I was perhaps was just not used to his manner of speaking, but I was greatly relieved and I started to take deeper interest in what he was saying. And he turned to a passage in in, uh, I think it's second Samuel. Maybe we could turn back there.
OK.
Yes, Second Samuel 23.
The recounting or the catalog of David's mighty man in his last words.
Verse 14.
Verse 13 and through the 30 chief went down and came to David in the harvest time onto The Cave of Adela.
And the truth of the Philistines pitched in the valley of Riff AM, and David was then in hold, and the Garrison of the Philistines was then in Bethlehem. And David manned and said all that one would give me drink the water of the well Bethlehem, which is by The Cave. Pretty specific place he wanted it from.
Pretty specific place you wanted it from. And the three mighty men breakthrough the host of the Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem that was by the gate, and took it and brought it to David. Nevertheless he would not drink thereon, but poured it out unto the Lord. And he said, Be it far from the O Lord, that I should do this. Is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives? Therefore he would not drink it. These things did, these three mighty men.
As this brother began to speak, and it began to really speak to my own heart and conscience, give me the drink. And that is the Father's delight, to have the satisfaction of hearts. Think of it. Think of the miracle. Men speak of miracles, and in some phases of Christendom there's much made of miracles. What an awesome miracle.
That God could not only he can change outward things, but the fact that God can go in and change an attitude, change our heart, that God can go in and not only has he done a mighty work for us, but He's gonna work within us to give us a totally different point of view than what we had when we were unsaved, unregenerate.
What a mighty work that is.
To go in and just change things completely. And so that we're new creatures in Christ, new desires, new delights, and a new capacity to understand things we could never have even understood before, never would have wanted to. Because after all, someone said he might have forgiven us our sins and not given us the capacity or a desire to enter into divine things. He could have given us access and we would not have had the desire to even go in. But he's given us access and given us that, that new nature as we speak of it, that delight thing and wants to enter into the presence of God.
And we're comfortable there. That's another awesome thing. And so it was here.
Give me the drink here. David is a type of Christ. He longs the refreshment that he knows there in Bethlehem and God looks for it. There's a passage that says the Lord's portion is and so forth. The last portion is his people. And you think of all the the the wickedness and the stench from the mere existence of of men and women and boys and girls all over this country, all over this world who go on in a way.
00:35:21
That is an abomination to God. God is angry with the wicked every day. And you think of that mall, uh, stench. If, if I would use that word, it's a pretty strong one, but I think it would be suitable that constantly wafts up, you might say, towards the holy God day in and day out, throughout the day, throughout the 24 hour period, year in and year out. What must it be to him when some soul having been wrought upon by the mighty Spirit of God?
As a thought of worship, as a thought that God can say Amen to, He's all together lovely, as we might say in quoting Scripture, and God will say Amen, a lovely thing. He looks for that, the Lord's portion in his people. But here in the Philistines, you know where the real impediment to this kind of blessing taking place.
And this brother said, you know, the Philistine isn't somebody from without, it's somebody from within.
The Philistine was the enemy within the land. Typically. He was there, always there, always sort of a nemesis. But he was in the land, didn't didn't invade from without. He was there in the land.
And the finest time he suggested, and it commends itself to me. It's not something that comes in from outside the assembly. It's just that old carnal mind that exists in you and I exists in a still. The carnal mind is enmity with God. And the first time he wanted to be in the land. He didn't want to be anywhere else, but he had no thought and no care for the God of the land, Jehovah, the true God of that land. And so he was there and he always had to be dealt with. And it's an interesting subject to trace the Philistine.
And how we kept, you know, even from early days, he, uh, he would fill up the wells of water that had to be digged again. The Philistine was the, the name literally means water. And the Philistine got into the land. You can trace back in the earliest chapters of Genesis and see that he's a, a descendant of the Egyptian, The Philistine is the worldly element. And uh, but he gets into the land, but he doesn't go across the Red Sea and across the Jordan again.
Doesn't go in through the right way. He takes the shortcut and goes right up through the coast.
So you don't need to look around. We don't need to look around and say, I wonder who the Philistine is in, in, in this place. No, it's you and I. It's that enough. It's that carnal element. It's that in us which just wants to go on with things in a dull manner. No, I don't want to leave the Lord's Table. Don't want to leave the meeting. No, we don't. But you know, even that kind of a, of a desire to just be there even in a cold state or the kind of desire to just go on with a monotonous line of things.
Wherein we weary one another, if not God. Why? That is something that we each of us need to resist to get before the Lord on our on our faces and proud of the Lord that that which we take up in the assembly and together, whether we are in this room or out of it together and in our homes and families that it would be fresh and real. Because each of us does have that divine nature that is just totally delighted in all the divine things purposes of Christ.
And so we need to overcome this tendency in each one of us, the tendency to just go on with things, to just give out to him because we know it, uh, to just read a passage or just to fill up the time. Better to sit in silence. Better to just wait on the Lord, no matter what our state that the Lord would lead us, whether it's in little or much. That would be real impression. All kind of a digression here, but we might turn now. I see the time, as always, is fleeting to Malachi, please.
Aspirin in the Old Testament.
Mm-hmm. You know, we have such an effect upon one another.
We who are not that terribly old or affected by those of you who are older in the past.
We watch one another, we affect one another.
Where I was first saved and gathered, I understood very early on.
That a certain form of, I don't know how to exactly put this, but you just got the impression early on that the thing to be above all is to be a worshipper. I don't know. No one ever came out so much and said that though they would minister on passages like we just read, but you would just hear it. Sometimes an older brother would speak about some other older brother or sister or some Saints and all that. That brother is really a worshipper, really a worshiper.
00:40:21
Well, you know, that made an impression upon me, and I could see from Scripture that it was God's desire, you know.
And we would be worshippers. And I sometimes wonder if we have the same sense amongst us today that all the other things in our lives are ordered around that.
You know, if something comes in and it takes away from my liberty to worship the Lord, we ought to really be exercising, not doing something about that thing. And sometimes I get the impression that we have a subtle way and.
Are feeling like how much of the world can I have and still worship now how much of the world can I have and still be in the meeting it it almost sounds profane to say that but.
That almost gets the impression sometimes that that someone is well thought of.
They're able to make, uh, a lot of money or to be successful in that worldly sense and to still be able to make it to the meetings and things like that and to go on in the assembly. I just shudder to speak so plainly, but I felt this and not, not hear so much, but I just feel that there is this kind of a thing that, that, uh, in my generation that we need to come back.
Because, uh, that kind of a a simple approach to having so-called the best of both worlds is obnoxious to God. And we're deceiving ourselves, aren't we?
Judaism was an enclosure, and I suppose a Jew could say how far out can I get would still be inside that enclosure. But Christianity is not an enclosure. The sheep in John 10, when they were called out, they weren't called out from 1 enclosure and put in another. They're out in wide open spaces. And there's an attractive power in that shepherd and he doesn't need an enclosure, doesn't want one. It's just him and he's the attractive power.
And so the question, what's wrong with this? What's wrong with that? All those kinds of things.
How far can I go and still keep up a semblance of religious life?
Those are questions that have no intelligence when we understand what the Lord has done and what his purpose is. But I, as I say, this is something in his exercise me and I hope as we go on together, those of us especially that if the Lord carries will be left here naturally speaking much longer that we, that we stand up against this tendency, uh, to seek to, uh, just make ourselves comfortable down here.
And faithfulness to the Lord is sacrificed. But I'd like to read in Malachi to bring out another aspect of things in regard to priesthood than what we've taken up. Malachi chapter 2.
Malachi 2 and verse seven. For the priests lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.
We've spoken a little bit about worship.
And there's another responsibility, another privilege that goes with priesthood, and that is the responsibility that we service. Intimated about a little bit in First Peter Two, that there is not only access but intelligence. The priest's lips should keep knowledge. And so in contrast to what we had before us last time in regard to ministry, not at all. All of us are fitted to beyond some platform to be taking a public role in teaching or preaching or anything like that.
Not all of us are fitted that way, and it's not God's purpose that all of us are fitted that way. But you say, does that mean that I'm, you know, that I.
Don't teach at all. No, it doesn't mean that.
You have children, you're a mother, you're a teacher. Your grandmother, you're still a teacher. You have a family, you're a teacher.
You're a little fellow in school and there are unsafe ones around you. You're a teacher.
In this kind of a sense, because we're priests and uh, though we don't have a special garment or a special card or some special emblem of this privilege while we have it and God sees it and we've been instructed in divine things. Even the youngest babe in Christ has an unction from the Holy One and he knows all things. We know the Father, the Lord Jesus has gone down to death and been raised from the dead. And it was his desires expressed almost immediately.
00:45:26
That he might declare.
The Father's name to us.
Central to his thought when He raised from the dead that I would declare unto them volume eight, We know the Father's name. And so there is an aspect that all of us are to be intelligent in divine things. Now sometimes when we get into difficult passages, I know some time ago when I first arrived, we were reading in the Book of Revelation and it gets a bit difficult and there needs to be a a high level of interest and an exercise to understand things.
As we come into meetings like that, but we ought not to degenerate into a thing of saying, well, I'm not an older brother, I'm not a teacher. So I'm, you know, this is kind of really not what I need rather than that's not right, that's not right.
Again, our, our late brother Albert Heyho, you saw, I've heard him say it several times and uh, he would say Scripture speaks clearly about a gift in giving out the truth, but nowhere in scripture does it ever speak about a gift to take in the truth. Let him say that several times. It struck me each time. No such thing as a gift to take in the truth.
My to say, well, I really don't have, you know, it's really not. I don't have git. No, it's not a question of gifts.
Gift and ministry and those kind of things are over here.
And the kinds of things we're talking about this afternoon are over here, things in which we all enjoy together, all of us holy priesthood, each one of us displaying Christ, displaying him uniquely according to who we are, but displaying Christ the same privileges, the same responsibilities. And here when we speak of a responsibility, keeping knowledge, they should seek the law at his mouth. And this is a responsibility that we have, and we have it collectively.
And the apostles that develop it in the epistles, where it speaks in several ways of us collectively united together as the assembly or the House of God being the pillar in ground of the truth. That is, it's not just that this brother over here or this brother here, or that brother there are responsible to maintain sound doctrine for the Assembly of God in this place, but the Assembly of God in this place and on that ground, manifestly so.
We're together responsible to hold the truth.
That's a collective responsibility, the brothers and the sisters that we all are accountable for.
Now, perhaps you felt frustrated at times when you've been speaking with someone, maybe someone at school or someone you've met another Christian or something and you got into something and you say, well, I know that's not right, but I just, I just can't explain it. Well, that's all right. It's all right. I've had that experience many, many times myself. And sometimes walking away a little frustrated, you know, and going home back when I was single, I lay down and open my Bible and the Lord would open the whole thing right out. Boom. Didn't trust me with it, really, you see.
Didn't trust me with it then, but he wanted me to know.
Got a loan? He let me know. We wanna take in the truth. We wanna hold the truth. There's a difference in our ability to put it out to others, but we should not let that difference in ability or that lack of ability to put it out to others.
Uh, hold us back in any way from having a sincere and diligent desire to take in, to hold, and to enjoy the truth.
Perhaps a little digression, but if we could hold our finger and Malachi and go back to, uh, Nehemiah 8.
Mm-hmm.
Sorry, I think it's Ezra 8.
Ezra 8.
Going back to the land, going back to Jerusalem, going back to the divine center here, Ezra 8.
Verse 24. Then I separated 12 of the chief of the priests, Sharabaya Hasharbaya, and ten of their brethren with them. And the way you'd underline the silver and the gold and the vessels, even the offering of the House of our God, which the king and his counselors, and his Lords, and all Israel their present had offered. I even wait under their hands 650 towns of silver and silver vessels, and 100 talents, and of gold and 100 talents also 20 basins of gold of 1000 grams, and two vessels with fine copper, precious as gold.
00:50:14
And I said unto them, You are holy unto the Lord. The vessels are holy also, and the silver and the gold are free will, offering unto the Lord God of your fathers, Watch she and keep them until you wave them before the chief of the priests and the Levites, and chief of the fathers of Israel at Jerusalem, in the chambers of the House of the Lord.
12 Chief priests a representative member of Responsible Persons.
The precious holy things were weighed out. It was fully known what was committed. The responsibility was not to gain, to increase by trading, to add anything, but to take those holy and precious things and to take them across that wilderness journey where they would be weighed again at the end of that journey and they would be weighed.
Before the chief of the priests we know who that is.
And so I think it's a lovely picture or a lovely figure of our responsibilities, each one of us as individual believers. We've been committed precious, precious treasures, each one of us. And we're responsible as stewards to hold these things. That good deposit, Paul said to Timothy. Keep by the Holy Ghost, which dwelleth in US. It's a good deposit. It's committed to us.
It's the mystery.
It's the most majestic and glorious thing that a human mind has ever been able to understand or human lips will ever speak. It's been committed to us, weighed out. God knows what He's committed to us, and we're responsible to carry it with us intact until it's weighed out again in His own presence and glory.
We are holy, the vessels are holy, also holy brethren, a holy priesthood, and that's what each one of us together are.
And so back in Malachi, we have this responsibility. Not only is there the privilege, enhance the responsibility that we will be worshippers.
But in order to worship, there's, there has to be the intelligence of things. And we are brought into this too. He's Carlos, his friends, and he brings us into his councils. He commits unto us these secret things, these truths, these awful mysteries that are unknown to the world but known in the Church of God.
We're responsible to hold them, to understand them and there's growth in this, but not gift and to enjoy them.
Back in Leviticus 10.
Leviticus 10.
Verse 8 The Lord spake unto Aaron, saying, Do not drink wine, nor strong drink thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go in to the Tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations. And that you may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean, and that you may teach, and so on.
The intelligence of divine things in a way that God calls holiness.
To make a difference between that which is holy and that which is not.
And what we might call discernment, something each one of us needs, you say, well, maybe there are those who are spoken of as having a special gift, discerner of spirits, Yes. And faith is spoken of as a gift too, because there are those who have it in a special way, in a unique way that you and I don't. Just as there are those who are teachers in a way that you and I are not. But still, there is an aspect where teaching is common to all of God's holy priests. And faith is certainly.
And discernment is now as priests, we need discernment. And in order to maintain, to be maintained as we go across that wilderness with those holy treasures and to maintain that collective holy fellowship into which we are called, we need to discern them. We need discernment because there is holy and there is unholy and there is clean and there is unclean, and we need discernment. This is another privilege, another responsibility.
00:55:05
That we all have as being priests.
When there are difficulties in the assembly.
There are some kinds of things which those who would be in the place of exercising oversight would handle.
But oftentimes, you know, there are things which come into the assembly.
And how, how is it handled? You know, you just can't write down or it's almost difficult to describe the mechanics as to how an assembly arrives collectively a decision. It's just, uh, one of those things that just can't be written down or fully understood while the brothers get together and they talk and then they talk over here and you know, how does it happen? I've never been anywhere yet where there was a really distinct pattern. And I'm not saying there should be, but somehow or other.
What God looks for when there is questions of holiness, questions of maintaining, uh, the assembly as a clean place. There needs to be and there should be, and there has to be to be able to be maintained in this clean, this holy state. There has to be the exercise of the consciences of all those gathers in the Lord's name in that place. Now, true, we get help. We get help from those from the Lord has raised up who have wisdom.
Who have knowledge, who have perhaps a special way of discernment that the rest of us don't have. As someone once said, it takes a good engineer to design A role. But every, every Carter, this was written a long time ago. Every Carter in the country knows a good road from a bad one. And so I used to live. There was some older sisters who of course never came to the brothers meetings, and most of the responsible brothers were quite young, naturally speaking.
While we would have brothers meetings, as I felt was and I'm sure you would agree would be right and proper. But you know, without really saying so much. We used to kind of make it a habit to make a few visits have a cup of coffee a year older widow sister especially, whose judgment we valued. We wouldn't go over there and and spread it out. You know, I I know brother Charles is smiling here. He probably knows who I mean I wouldn't go over there and say we have this problem. What do you think? But we go over and have a cup of coffee and we talk a little while and things would come up as they have a way of doing and we would just.
It would just sort of happen that we would get her thought, her input into this question. You know, if we're sensitive about these kinds of things, we can learn what the thoughts are and what the conscience is of the Saints are exercised to what they are. This has to happen in the assembly. The brothers don't really make decisions. And you know, even if they did or a few, two or three, did you notice they're in First Corinthians 5? Let's see, our time is up.
Well, perhaps I should turn really to 2nd Corinthians.
In Chapter 7, Second Corinthians 7.
For the apostle is writing in regard to the wicked person in first Corinthians 5 that he enjoined them that they should be exercised about putting such a one out as a wicked person, which they did, which manifested the fact that yes, he was put out as a wicked person. But you know, he really was a brother. He really was a brother because there was a work that took place in him, namely he repented.
And so here in Chapter 7.
See if I can pick you up quickly, uh.
Well, verse 10 For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation, not to be repented of or never to be regretted, but the sorrow of the world work is death. For behold this felt same thing that you sorrowed after a godly sword.
What carefulness it wrought in you.
Yeah, what clearing of yourselves? Yeah, what indignation? Yeah, what fear? Yeah, what vehement desire. Yeah, what zeal. Yeah, what revenge. In all things you have approved yourselves to be clear, or approved yourselves to be pure in this matter, and so on.
01:00:00
When evil is manifested in the assembly, it needs to be discerned.
And we need to be exercised, each one of us, that we have God's thought about what we see. If it's evil, we ought to be exercised that we agree that it's evil.
If there's a difference in judgment between brethren, we need to be exercised about that.
Because if you and I differ about something of this kind of a nature.
Either both of us are wrong, or at least one of us is, and we need to be exercised and humbled about that. And I should be just as humbled if it's you that's wrong as me, and vice versa.
We're members one of another, so we need to have discernment. We need to discern things and see them the way God does when evil is manifested in the assembly. It's not enough if just a few brothers.
Though that it's proper that they take the lead. There's such a thing as a quarter, you know, in the House of God, a doorkeeper, a Porter. And there was a time in Israel when I can't think of the passage, it's in Chronicles. There was a certain number of singers and a certain number of quarters and I think the number was identical. Perhaps we can look it up afterwards.
Identical number of porters as singers. What does that bear on our subject today? We're speaking about worship. We're speaking about the ability to come here collectively and delight ourselves in the precious holy things of God. Singers, lovely. But in order for that environment to be there and for us to enjoy such an environment like that, there has to be holiness. There has to be discernment about when things come in that are not suitable to that environment. There has to first of all be the discernment of it and the exercise before the Lord to deal with it in a way that God can approve of.
And so it's not just enough. Again, the porters, the singers, same number. And God would say to us, if you want to have this singing, you want to have this enjoyment of holy and divine things.
You have to be in a practical way, holy brethren, there has to be the maintenance of holiness in a practical way in our personal lives, our family and the assembly. It's right and proper that some take the lead in these things as far as dealing with them gently, firmly, in a way that is commendable to God. But all of the brethren, the brothers, the sisters, all of us, each one of us in our conscience, need to take a stand in regard to these situations, need to have discernment, because what God looks for is not just the putting out of the wicked person.
Or of a wicked attitude.
Or of a wrong doctrine or something like that. But he looks for as he says here, yeah, what clearing of yourselves in all things. You have approved yourselves to be clear or pure in this manner. And so I say not just enough for two or three brothers to handle a thing. Quote, right, UN quote. Now all of us in our conscience need to understand the divine issues, need to act in a way that evidence is wholly and divine discernment so that not only is the wickedness put out.
But God looks for the maintenance of his own glory for.
Christian Priesthood