YP Sing Address—K. Harman
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You know when I see all these.
Sorry young people, it really does something to me.
I remember not too many years ago, believe it or not, that I was in the same place that you were.
And.
I often think you know of all those ones that I sat with in those things.
Where are they today?
This is a group of young people that will never be the same again. You won't be the same group today as you or again as you work are today. And so every one of you has the same privilege, the same opportunity to live for the Lord Jesus as the other one does. And I think of this when I think back on my past.
And, umm.
How we rub shoulders with so many of these young people of my age and.
I I don't I've lost contact with many of them I know have turned away from the truth that was made precious to my soul.
We've had much in these last meetings about this, but I think before we go any further, we're going to ask the Lord's help, OK?
I was thinking of that song and I need a song book so that I can.
When we're singing #155 I think it was.
No, not 155.
I'd rather have Jesus. Which number is that? Is there an index in this 107? Thank you.
I suppose you heard the story behind that one, and if you haven't, if you have, I'll tell it to you again. And I'm not sure I'm clear on all the details, but I I know that it was written by a 20 year old girl who was the daughter of a very wealthy man. I believe it was in California.
And she came to know the Lord Jesus as her Savior. And her father was incensed at this. And he, he vowed, he tried and tried to dissuade her from what she had chosen to do because she was in line for a very wealthy, very big inheritance. And he tried to persuade her to give it all up, and she refused. And he.
Finally said that he would remove her from his will and she lost that inheritance because she would rather have Jesus than anything. And so she wrote this song and she said I'd rather have Jesus than silver or gold.
I'd rather be his and have riches untold. I'd rather have Jesus in houses or lands. I'd rather be LED by his nail pierced hand than to be the king of a vast domain and be held in sins. Dread sway. I'd rather have Jesus than anything this world affords today.
How? How much? How it must have?
How difficult it must have been for her to turn away from her father and from those riches. And yet she found something in in what she had found in the Lord Jesus that was better than any of it. She was willing to give it all up. And there was a man in the 1800s who also was a very wealthy man. He was the son of a nobleman.
And he was saved as a young man and he gave also, he also gave up the inheritance that was his. And he was the heir to a castle. He was heir to lands. He was heir to money that was untold. His name was Lord Cecil.
That's what he was referred to, that's what he was called.
And the brethren even continued to call him Lord Cecil, just out of respect. I believe it was because that's what he was. He gave that title up, but they gave it to him, and he went forth to preach the gospel and to preach also the truth of being gathered to the Lords name.
He and a man by the name Mr. Dunlop used to travel together and preach the gospel and they went in it's it was in eastern Ontario mainly and they preached the gospel together. They went even went into the city of Toronto and they put up there was banners put up to come in here. Lord Cecil and Captain Dunlop preached the gospel and they would come and listen to these men preach the gospel and then.
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They learned the truth of being gathered to the Lord's name, and they.
Turned around and they went through the whole circuit again and preached the rest of Paul's doctrine.
About the truth of the one body and so they remain firm right to the end and.
I'm sad to say Lord Cecil died fairly young. He drowned in a in a boating accident or actually he fell out of a sailboat and he was drowned at the age of 42. But the life that he had lived up to that time was a fruitful life and he had given up the truth, or had given up rather all the wealth that was his.
Right down here. But did he lose out in it? We heard that about a man who was who was very rich, but he was poor. We heard about a man who was poor but was rich.
And that was certainly Lord Cecil. He was. He became a poor man, but he had far more than he would have gotten had he.
Obeyed his parents.
But you know, what I had before me was a few thoughts in connection with the heart being opened. And you know, there's not one of us in this room. There's not one soul that can ever come to the Lord Jesus by deciding to do it.
I know sometimes we sing. We sang that song. I have decided to follow Jesus in a way that's right. In a way. In some ways it's not quite right because I have.
I cannot as a as a lost Sinner, I cannot decide that I'm going to open my heart to the Lord Jesus. I'm dead and every one of us in this room as a Sinner is dead. In trespasses and sin. You can't make one movement towards God.
It's as though you were a dead corpse on that floor and I was to kneel down there and shout in your ear the way of salvation.
You wouldn't be able to respond, would you? You're dead. Absolutely no movement towards God. And that's the way we are as lost sinners.
So where does the work begin?
Does it begin with me? Does it begin with you?
You know, there's, it's quite common in some preachings today in the, in the religious world that we have something to do about it, that we have to decide to do it.
There is a point where we do decide to follow Jesus, I admit, but it's after salvation, but not before.
And so it's only as the Spirit of God comes in and makes a movement in your soul and in mind, in my heart, and he quickens my, my soul and he makes me a living soul.
It's just like in the when God first created the world, it says in the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And.
And he said, let there be light and there was light. And that's the way it is with a, with a, a Sinner. It's the way it is with you. It has been with you and me.
If you're saved and that is that we had nothing to do with it, we cannot take any credit. It's not of works, lest any man should boast. It's by grace that we're saved through faith. And so you and I are dead until God puts life into us. So that corpse on the floor there, if I were to get down and be able to put some life into that soul, into that course, and if prior to that I put a 400 LB weight on top of it, he wouldn't feel.
That he wouldn't have any sense of the weight of his sins, of that weight rather on his, on him. But the moment I could put life into him, he would say, who will deliver me from this weight? Now he has weight, he has life in order that he can respond to what's being said.
And if there was someone saved in that room tonight, it would be because God had first begun a work in that soul and made him a quickened soul. These things are, you might think are maybe, you know, while maybe you're drawing, you're, you're, you're drawing at straws or something. It's not. It is a very vital thing to understand, I believe, because it begins with God and it ends with God.
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We have nothing to do with it. And so if you sit here tonight as a young person saved by the grace of God, you have nothing to do with it.
Except listen to hear the word and believe it.
But you couldn't believe it as a lost person. You had to believe it as a quickened soul. You got that.
That might sound kind of strange, but sounded strange to me until I first.
Before I understood that. But it is the truth of God and it's something to get a hold of. It gives us an understanding of where a soul is in His path, in in His, shall we say in His.
Stature as far as his position before God.
And so, as someone said, it takes a lot of stress out of preaching the gospel.
Because I it's not up to me. It's not up to me to to quicken that soul. I don't preach the word of God in order for a soul to be born again. I preach the word of God for a soul to be saved.
It's God that puts that quickens his soul. The same thing as being born again. Except that well, I never found. I was looking today and just to check on this before I said this and that was that. And maybe somebody can correct me if I'm wrong.
I don't find any place for Paul ever preached about being born again. You know that now if you can find find something where Paul says that you must be born again or anything to do with being born again. I'm using those words now. Tell me please, because if I'm wrong, I want to be corrected. He talks about being quickened. Now you say, but that's you said, that's the same thing it is.
But being born again is more in connection with the Jews, and quickened is more in connection with the Gentile. So we get with Paul's doctrine, he speaks about being quickened. And so the Jew was born again, because in the Old Testament the Jews were born again. Any believers who were born again, but they were not saved.
In the true sense of the word. In the New Testament sense of the word.
The New Testament sense of the word says, in whom after that ye believed.
After that, you believed you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. The Old Testament Saints were never sealed with the Spirit of God. That's a New Testament doctrine that has to do with the church only. And that is a position, the peculiar position that you and I, as as Saints of God, as children of God, as being members of the body of Christ have.
I didn't mean to get into this really, but.
I hope you don't mind understanding that in a little way. It's, it's very, to me, it's very important because it, it, it gives us a differentiating between that which was Israel and that which is the church.
What I wanted to really talk about was, and I'm going to skip a few a few things here because our time is going. I'm going to read a few verses in Acts.
Acts chapter 16 I think it is.
Before we get to that stop at Chapter 10.
And there we read of a man.
And you're all familiar with this, and you'll see what I mean when we talk about this. This man was the name. His name was Cornelius, and it says of him, he was a devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people and prayed to God. All we he saw in a vision, evidently about the 9th hour of the day, an Angel coming to him, into him, and saying unto him, Cornelius. And when he looked on him, he was afraid, and said, What is it, Lord? And he said unto him, Thy prayers and thine arms are come up from memorial before God.
And now send men to Joplin. Call for one Simon, whose surname is Peter. We all know the story there. Now we're going to go to the end of that chapter.
And he says.
Verse 44 While Peter yet spake these words, I'm going to go back a little further yet.
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Well, that's good enough for time. While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word, and they of the circumcision which believed were astonished as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost, for they heard them speak with tongues and magnify. God Then answered Peter, Can any man forbid water that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we? And he commanded them to be baptized. You see, there was a man, and he was a Gentile.
And and yet he prayed to God, and he was a very upright man, honest man. God heard him. His prayers were answered, and God answered his prayers. Was he dead?
Was he a dead man or was he a quickened man? He was, he had life. He had life so that he was, he was conscious of his, of himself before God, but he didn't know how to, he didn't know what to do about it. So he prayed to God, but he was ignorant of what was going on, what had gone on. He didn't know anything about Christ dying for his sins. So he prayed to God, just like a Jew would have.
And God answered his prayer. And what did he do? He sent Peter, and what did Peter do?
Peter spake the words.
Whereby they would be saved saved.
And so after he was saved, he was sealed with the Holy Ghost.
That's one picture of it.
But there was a work that had gone begun in Peters in Cornelius heart sometime before this. And you know you and I don't know what says in the Lord said to to Nicodemus, the wind bloweth where it listed, and now here's the sound thereof. And now we know it, but we don't know where it goes and when it comes from. So, so is everyone that is born of the spirit born of the spirit born again. How does it happen? I don't know.
I know a man. I've told a story before. I know a man who.
Was cursing God. He's using God's name in vain and he's driving down the road to some friends and and he was saying God this and God that and all of a sudden just like that, he stopped. What are you saying? And he he said, sorry God.
You never said that before, but what happened? All of a sudden he became conscious.
That he was violating something before God. That he was taking God's name in vain.
And from that moment on, he began to seek for God.
Romans tells us that there is none that seeketh after God. No, not one. That's because they're dead.
But when God puts life into a person, he begins to seek God.
And this man?
Continued to seek.
For God, and God heard him, and God answered his prayer.
And that brother now is gathered to the Lord's name, and he's ministering the word of God.
These things are wonderful things to see, but God opened His heart and that's the point that I want to make, is that there comes a time in the life of every individual that God gives the opportunity for you and me to respond to His Word. Now I'm talking to those now who are whose heart, who who belong, who are quickened, shall we say, who fear God.
But you may not be going on with him.
There comes, I know, I know what that's all about. I was a young person once too, and I was going on with associations that were not that I shouldn't have been going on with. I know that. And I look back at my wife and my life and I say wasted time.
But nevertheless, there came a point in my life and it will come. He will come in your life too, if you're really interested.
Are you interested to follow Jesus? We were singing about that. I have decided to follow Jesus.
Did you mean it? Did we mean it? Each one of us did I mean it?
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You know when we sing something like that.
There should be.
A question going on in the back of my mind. Do you really mean that? Do we really have the consciousness that we want to please Jesus?
That we want to live for him.
And as a young person, I could say, yeah, I did.
Subconsciously, but not really out and out. But the time came in my life and I say it'll come in your life too if you're interested. And that is when God opened my heart.
Not for the gospel, but to hear his voice and to do his will.
I've failed it many times but I still remember the day.
I remember the place I was when that happened, because God.
Did the work and there's a woman here in the 16th chapter of Acts where it speaks of this very thing. And you know probably who I'm talking about.
It says in verse 13 and on the Sabbath day we went out of the city by a Riverside where prayer was won't to be made and we sat down.
And spake unto the woman, women which resorted thither, and a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us. And it says whose heart the Lord opened. Isn't that wonderful to think that the Lord opened her heart? But she was there at, at, at that, at the prayer meeting. She was praying, but she knew nothing about this.
It wasn't the preaching of Paul that that that quickened her, but the Lord opened her heart to the truth and she received it and we find her now at the end of the chapter while in between there we know all about the Philippian jailer and what happened to him. Well, he was the one that was that was had put thrown Paul in prison and he didn't have any desire for that at all. But when Paul and Silas were praying, God opened his heart.
And he fell down at Paul and Silas's knees and said, What must I do to be saved?
And they were able to give him the word that saved his soul. Now at the end of that chapter.
Says, And they came down, verse 39 and besought them, and brought them out, and desired them to be part of the city. And they went out of the prison, and entered into the House of Lydia. And when they had seen the brethren, they comforted them, and departed. Not interesting. They went to the House of Lydia, and he strengthened the brethren. How long ago was it that Lydia was saved?
How old was that little assembly? How many brethren were there there? Was it a big number? But it was a brother. It was brethren in the Lord now. And who was that? It was Lydia, the, the, the jailer and his family. Just a few, not just a little number. Sometimes we forget these details that, you know, they're just a few people there. But they were the brethren that Paul and Silas went and they strengthened them.
Now we can do that. You know, when God opens our hearts, He gives us something to do.
And we can encourage and strengthen one another, the most important thing in this world. And I and and this was made clear to me once as a young person and I've never forgotten that he said this brother said the most important thing in this world to God.
Is the assembly.
You say, but I there's only two or three where I come from, but God's eyes on it. And if it's going on according to the word of God, and if it's assembly gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus on the ground of the truth, God's eye is upon it and the most important place in that in the world to him. Now believe it or not, I do.
And unless we get ahold of that and value that we're going to be there, God is going to allow circumstances in your life and mine that's going to test us. And we're either going to stay because our hearts have been opened by God for to follow that in obedience to Him, or we're going to flounder and we're going to we're going to lose the pathway. We're going to miss it. How much do we value the truth that we've been brought up in?
Is it the truth of God or is it not the truth of God?
It is or it isn't.
I'd like to.
I'd like to suggest it's the truth of God with all my heart.
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I went through the I'll say again, I went through the same circumstances that many of you guys and young people go through, and I had to search it for myself.
I had to give up.
Friends.
That were Christians.
But they were dragging me in the wrong direction.
I think I mentioned this once here before.
Some of us.
Had formed associations.
Involving.
Car clubs You guys interested in cars?
You like cars, Fast cars, Nice cars. I did used to work on them all time. I used to make fix them all up.
It meant a lot to me, but.
We formed clubs in order to go out and help people.
We were affiliated with some place down in California. We thought we were doing great things.
I'm not saying this to be proud of it, but I say this is what this is what happens when we form associations outside of the truth of the assembly.
And the time came, I say again, the time came when the Lord opened my heart about that and He showed me the error of it all, and I thank God for it and I've never regretted it.
As I say, I failed him many times, but he's kept me there with the with the realization that there is only a place that he approves of in this world.
And it's the work of God that does it. So I want to encourage you young men and you young sisters.
To.
To think about these things real seriously and allow God, you know, Hebrews says.
Let remember it has the word in Hebrews. Let, let, let, let the word of God dwell in you and let this and let that. I even quote them all. But Hebrews it's, it's a, it's used quite often in Hebrews. And I think the idea of letting is just to sit back and let God do it.
And justice, let the Spirit of God come in and.
Bring the truth home to my soul, and if if you let the world let the truth of God affect you, you won't be the same.
If you let the word of God come in and you get in the presence of God about it.
Getting in the presence of God about these things is not the same as just saying yes.
But it's getting there in the presence of God and thinking about these things because meditation, the truth comes into the into the into our hearts by meditation and it's through the conscience. That's how the truth of God comes in and we.
It comes in through the ears and through the eyes.
And it gets down into our hearts and into our soul by a heart.
Heart.
It's a.
Kind of a circuitous road and a lot of times we hear the truth of God and someone has said it's like the truth goes around through the avenues of our ears and our eyes and it goes around and around, never gets down into our soul.
But as we meditate on these things, it drops down and gets down a little deeper down into our souls.
And justice, a little bit of that really makes a difference. And I want to say it's like God opening our hearts.
Well, I was going to go further, but our time is running out. I'm just going to refer to a verse in first in the Ephesians right now.
We read.
Today sometime Ephesians one and 18 the eyes of your understanding being enlightened that you may know what is the hope of his calling and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the Saints. I was thinking of that the eyes of your understanding being enlightened as God opening our hearts.
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Well, I'm not going to keep you any longer.
I think I've.
I've said what I wanted to say, maybe not as much, but I would plead with my young believers to to give much thought to the truth that you have heard and value though.
Because Satan wants to take them away from us and you know, we can let him very easily.
Evil communications, corrupt good manners. Our associations and our affiliations are going to either, they're going to either drag us further from God or they're going to bring us closer to him. And so watch your associations, watch your affiliations, watch your friends be like these Paul and Silas when they went to Lydia's house and encouraged the brethren there just.
Just a little word of encouragement to one another. You have your friends, encourage them to go on the path. Help them out and they'll help you out.
Let's ask God's help. Our God, our Father, we thank thee.