In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of living in fellowship with God and acknowledging His deity and judicial office. He emphasizes that God alone is the judge and knows all things, and we should submit to His knowledge and be thankful for it. The speaker also highlights the need for authentic praise that recognizes God as the ultimate judge and good. He shares examples of dealing with opposition within the fellowship and emphasizes the importance of seeking the Lord without any conditions or requirements.

It's not good and evil as if they're moral categories, just to know plus or minus. It's good and evil. The tree is a summation of a whole omniscience, a whole knowing, a breadth of understanding that is uniquely God's alone. It's not to know this issue or that issue. It's a tree. It's a much larger thing than the moral issue of whether this is good or that is bad. It's a knowing that is only appropriate to God. It's an understanding and a knowledge that alone is God's. And when you eat from that tree, what you're saying is you want to be as God. You want to have the same breadth of perspicuity, of understanding and choices as only he is alone fit to make. You're unwilling to be limited in your dependence upon him who is alone, made unto us wisdom, sanctification, redemption and power. Because we don't want to look foolish. We want to have access to our own wisdom. We want to be able to turn it on and off at our will so that we can give answer to man. We can look spiritual. We can be appropriate. We don't want to be there with our faces sticking out and say, I can't answer. The Lord has not given. I don't understand. Remember I said I was not the first in my neighborhood to know the body of Christ. I was the last. And men were giving messages and lectures and talks and this new novelty, the body of Christ. I had not a word to say. Why? Wasn't I as capable of going to a concordance and finding appropriate scripture? Couldn't I even copy them? Isn't that what false prophets do, but copy one another? No, you had to wait. And it's an embarrassment not to be able to give answer. Are you willing for that? It's death, death, death, if you're going to have life, life, life. And the temptation that is powerful, seductive, is the accessibility of that other tree. If you'll disobey God who said it's forbidden. What I'm wanting to score and underline is that it's not only evil because it's a tree of good and evil, but that the good is as evil as the evil. Maybe even more because it's deceptive in its appearance. And yet in its activity, it is as much opposed to God as evil. And the reason that we're attracted is because we who would be repulsed by evil are attracted by good. See what I mean? But God said you shall not eat. And that's the question. Are we going to obey a word that has been given us by a God who knows what is good and evil? Because we cannot know. To us it appears attractive. To us it appears useful. God said no, we shall not eat. And he does not give us an explanation. And we should not be ones who require it. God has said. And what was the point of temptation? What was the first question? Has God said the first attack is on the credibility of God speaking in his word and raising questions of what might be God's ulterior motive that had never occurred to Eve until the devil suggested he doesn't want you to eat because she's jealous. He wants to be alone, sovereign. But if you eat, you'll be like him. See how vicious that is. So what is a saint? A saint is one who obeys the word and does not require explanation and will not be tempted away and out from that obedience by allowing questions to be raised about God's credibility and his motive in that requirement. Even when it comes from men. What if God is speaking through an elder and he says no and doesn't give explanation? Will you surrender to that as being God's requirement? We're a people who have been shaped by the world. We want explanation and we want it to add up. We want to weigh the pluses and the minuses and see if we agree with it in our logic. And then we will accede and give obedience. That's not to say that God is averse to knowledge or averse to understanding. We have us to be nitcompoops and noncompassmentists and a bunch of dullards. But what is the source of our knowledge? From where has it been derived? Who has been pleased to give it in his own time? Are we holding it in humility? And even then do we act upon it independent of his will? So there's all those kinds of things that need to be considered also. What's the object of the Garden of Eden? That he planted a garden and set Adam and then subsequently Eve in it. What was his intent? But to fellowship with them in the garden. This is the summum bonum. This is the ultimate good is the fellowship. What breaks it is man's autonomy and independence from God. Wait till we come back from the break and I read you Barth's conclusion to the matter. You'll be carried out on a stretcher. I'm worried that you'll be able to take it. The glory of this. This theologian brings us through to this ultimate question of what fellowship with him in the garden means because we have submitted to the limitation of God who alone knows what is good and has given us limitations for our good. And does that mean a permanent restriction? Or does God have some ultimate thing in mind of the kind that you're talking? So brace yourself. What was being confronted that night in North Carolina was the counterfeit. God was blowing the whistle. And my naive hope was that men in hearing the word, however severe and however offensive, would say it was worthwhile and will go down on their faces was unveiled and the authentic was set forth as an option that would be theirs out of repentance from the false. Instead, the man never moved from his seat. Others cried out and he went on as if it was not a word for him. And I think of your illustration of Lazarus. It takes God to call forth Lazarus from the dead. But then he has the people to unwrap him. We are called, this is the calling of the church, is to unwrap. And what was underneath that? I mean, to be willing. You know what we have to say as this breaks upon our consciousness? Who is sufficient for these things? Paul was continually groaning. Who is sufficient for these things? And there's a whole wealth of Christians out there who have never once ever asked that question. They're all sufficient. But when you begin to reckon how kind of walk and fellowship that God is wanting, that we might be co-heirs, and the delicacy of these questions where even the word of God mechanically applied will miss the moment. Doesn't it say that you should love your wives? And how is this man allowing his wife? How do we thread our way through something like that? Where sometimes God even seems to be contradicting his word. Abraham could have missed it on that basis and not made Isaac a sacrifice. There is no question that however much it confronted his categories of what he knew about God as good, he still was able to hear the voice of God unto obedience. So who is sufficient for these things? What kind of a walk? And can we maintain that walk independent of other brothers and sisters? I watched the most wonderful transformation of Adam over the course of time that he's been with us, and Measure and Cheryl, only because of the benefit that has come from the corporate life, the interaction within the body, the things of a confrontational kind, and the dealings and prayers and counseling, a man could never have obtained by himself independent of the body. Maybe we'll come to a new respect and appreciation for the body of Christ, the Church, when we recognize that the demand of God, the call for this fellowship and this walk is of such a kind that requires such a sensitivity, such an adherence to God, that we cannot attain to this independent of the benefit that we receive from brothers and sisters in exhortation, in correction, in rebuke, in counsel, in prayer, in love. We'll never attain to a walk of this kind as autonomous and independent souls. And in fact, that's the very formula for counterfeit. That kind of super spirituality that doesn't need the brother is the one that will assure you that however spiritual you think you are, and alone to God, you're actually in the place of the deception. So I want to just end on that note. Because I see how it all goes together. If the Church is to be the Church, it requires this recognition, this appreciation. So Lord, who is sufficient for these things? The great apostle continually cried out, What shall we say? So we thank you, my God, for pressing upon us and showing us we cannot make decisions. We cannot assess of ourselves. We cannot weigh up, my God, and come to a right conclusion. Only you know what is good, for only you are good. And bring us, my God, away from the seduction of the operation of our own minds, our own assessments, particularly our own critical judgments of one another in the Church that keeps the Church from being the Church and the very supply that would bring us to the kind of walk to which we're called. So we bless you, Lord. Oh, precious God, let nothing fall to the ground between what is said and even in between the lines. Press upon our hearts, my God. And we thank you and give you praise for your jealousy over us to not allow us too quickly to pass out from the subject of the two trees without this, what is it, this gleaning in this garden. So we bless you, Lord. Bring us to your conclusion after the break. We thank and give you praise for this love and intense jealousy that will not let us go. Be glorified thereby. In Yeshua's name we pray. And just to bring our subject to a conclusion so we can go on tomorrow to Cain and Abel. And that will be a heavy consideration. If you're not used to theological reflection, this will be a new kind of experience. But I appreciate, I want to encourage your appreciation of men who have given their lives to wrestling with the Scriptures and trying to come to understanding. Because I believe that it's a privilege of the Church itself that theology is too good to be confined to theologians, but that we all should be given to a theological reflection. I can't think of a better subject to occupy us than to think on God and his word and his way. So I'm just going to read it, except for some comments that the Lord might himself prompt. I've already read the part about that God alone is the judge, the sovereign judge, and the only one who knows what is good, for he's made what is good. And he said it is good. A brother in the break time said, well, how then could the tree of the knowledge of good and evil be good if it's deaf? And yet it says all that he made is good. Well, it's not good for the eating, but it's good in the sense that it fulfills a purpose in God in giving a man limitation that tests his obedience. That is the issue of fellowship with God that would not be an issue if the tree were not there. It's good in the purpose that it serves, but it's not good in the eating. You know what I mean? And in that way, evil serves the purpose of good, and God is the creator of all things. So in making this decision as the creator, he made use of his knowledge of good and evil. It is this judge, on the basis of this judicial knowledge and sentence, that he confronts men as Lord. We are taking the word Lord in vain and abusing it and making it a light matter if we have not in the deeps recognized that the understanding of God as Lord is the understanding of God as judge, as the one alone who knows what is good. Unless you have given yourself to that, you might find yourself saying Lord, Lord, in a kind of a mindless way that has not really surrendered to the Lordship of God in the sovereignty of his own understanding and his own knowledge of what is good and what is evil. You see what I mean? So everything is what is and how it is because God as the judge has decided and ordered and willed it thus and not otherwise. Because in his freedom, which is also his wisdom and power, his righteousness and goodness, he has chosen between good and evil, salvation, perdition, life and death because he alone knew how to achieve that which is right and did achieve it. There is a knowledge of good and evil which is the basis of all things and the source of all life, namely that of God the creator. And that's what we're looking at in these days. What is revealed of God in creation, in the garden and the establishing of the two trees is a statement of God in what is good and himself as good. So human life is to be lived in such a way that face to face with the second tree, man takes his stand consciously and not unconsciously on the ground of this divine decision. That he accepts it as such and he acknowledges and praises God as the one who in his sovereignty has willed and done this and not something else. It's not enough to acknowledge the goodness of God and the wisdom of God in establishing the trees but to consciously embrace that knowledge, that God in his act and rejoice in it and celebrate and praise him for it. Then it's a real acceptance of the lordship of Christ. If it's a begrudging compliance like well I guess, what can I do? I'm forbidden. That's not the full recognition of God as creator because he created all things good. To know God as good is not merely to reluctantly acquiesce to what he has done but to embrace it and to praise him for it joyously. I'm a woman. I have certain limitations. I receive that not begrudgingly but with joy because I know that those limitations are intended for my good for he is my creator and what he has limited is in his wisdom and I rejoice for that limitation. See what I mean? And whatever it is in our limitation or our calling, not merely to acknowledge but to celebrate and to praise. Then is he indeed lord and then are we indeed coming to the place of fellowship of his intention. So this is what God wills with the existence of the second tree. Its function is to summon man to life in this knowledge and adoration. I'll tell you that from my earliest days as a believer, whenever the word came up in our courses, adoring Jesus, I winced because the word adoration and to adore is not some light epithet as if we can turn it on and off like a faucet. Adoration is one of the deepest recognitions of something sublime and the object that we adore and you don't come to that lightly and I don't think that the church has come to it at all or can come except that we have come to the depth of the recognition of who God is as it is revealed only and especially in his creation from the beginning. Adoration waits on this kind of recognition that all that he has done is good. Then we can adore him for his wisdom and his love. He's not a mean deity who pulls the wings off of flies or delights in judgment or delights in restricting but because his wisdom knows that the place of restriction is the place of expansion and that we could not come to this plentitude of expansion except that we have willfully and joyfully submitted to the restriction that has come through his word. He's testing us. Will we obey without explanation? We've got to love him for that because he could have been a soft sap. He could have been an easy condoling God and making, the way we do with our kids, looking the other way and making nice and what do we get for it? A bunch of rebels with earrings and nose rings and belly rings and tattoos and every kind of thing because we have not been to them as stringent in our discipline and requirement as he is with us for fear that they would misinterpret it or we would alienate them when really what they're organically crying out for is that demonstration of love that requires and doesn't give explanation. Why can't I go? Because I said so. There are things I cannot explain to you but I'm requiring of you. Take those earrings off. I can't explain to you how I know what you cannot know that you're giving access to the spirits of this world and demonic powers that will not immediately be evident but ultimately they will have their place because they're on your body and you're around and on your neck and on your being. Take it off. So the life of man is ordained to be lived in fellowship with God in the acknowledgement of his deity and therefore of his judicial office in creation. He alone is the judge. He alone knows and we submit to that knowing and that we're consciously thankful for that and praise him for that. So we give our cheerful acquiescence because God is good and he's right and he has spoken and the recognition of our limitation that he's the creator and we are the creatures. If you've never heard about the 10 day fast and 24 hour prayer around the clock that we had here at Ben Israel some years ago how I came back from some ministry trip in which I had said that the church needs to continue in the same kind of waiting upon the Lord as was experienced in the 10 days in the upper room before the advent of Pentecost. And when I finished that message a young believer came up to me and said Art do you know of any fellowship anywhere in the world where you have traveled that has waited 10 days on the Lord? You ever get hit in the solar plexus and the air goes out of you and you double over with a question? And I had to think no I don't know of one fellowship and even your own fellowship has never done that. Yes we've had our fast 3 days 5 days 7 days over an issue of should we do this should we do that do we go to East Germany you know make but a 10 day waiting on the Lord 10 is an ultimate number it's even the number of the 10 commandments the number of righteous requirement the number of judgment and so I came back to the fellowship and so I think we need to wait 10 days on the Lord in fasting and in prayer ok yeah Art when it's convenient when we're not busy when the phone's not ringing off the wall we found such a moment will never come we had to be ruthless and declare starting Monday 10 days no other activity fasting and prayer and we elders are going to begin and fell asleep after the first hour and the Lord showed us the pattern of 3 hour cycles and that there'd be a rotation day and night through and the Lord with the community and somewhere you're going to find yourself at 4 o'clock in the morning with these 2 and another time 7pm with another 2 and in the course of 10 days you've gone to the whole community at one time or another in one posture or another and your prayers are so vigorous at the beginning so inspired and so spiritual that by the 4th, 5th day the 6th day the 7th day you're a blah your breath is like a camel and you can't even put a prayer together you're a drone but I'll always remember this the fire of God did not fall don't think that Ben Israel did not need the fire of God but we did not make that a condition for seeking the Lord in this total fast and prayer around the clock because had we given a condition it would have negated what it means to be before the Lord to be before the Lord is to come without a requirement he has not any obligation to answer in a way that would even bless us and in fact fire did not fall but it was somewhere near the 10th day when I was in so pitiful condition stretched out 3 o'clock in the morning before a couple of other saints barely able to audibly even make a groan that I was struck for the first time in the deepest consciousness that I am a creature and that God is the creator I was stretched out before him and I realized that our past fastings had to do with petition with issues with an answer that we needed but that we had never come before God as God without a requirement without a benefit without a payoff just because he is God and he deserved the uttermost supplication and being stretched out before him and that recognition for the first time that broke in my consciousness that I am just a creature and that he is the creator was worth the whole 10 days of fasting and of prayer so I commend that to you we need to have that come into our deepest consciousness we are his creature he alone is the creator and only he can occupy the position of God and if we attempt it we are only bringing about death we need to realize that we are not God that we are placed here in our creatureliness and that we can only continue as such it is poison for any being to have to stand in the place of God it's destructive and that's why God forbids it he knows that we are bringing our own destruction with grandiose ambitions that seeks to usurp and take from him the same thing would be true of a woman seeking to usurp from a man or from a husband or take a role or function for herself that God has not given who wants to keep us and his restrictions are given for that reason placed there it can only pronounce and execute its own sentence not because it's evil but because God alone is good the restriction is good so if man allows God to be the judge and does not himself become a judge that is the precious good that God intends and brings the knowledge of good and evil as perhaps nothing else can he alone is good he alone is competent to judge good and evil that every other being will necessarily fail in the attribute and function of judge and yet we're called to judge how does it call judge righteous judgments another paradox there are times that we have indeed had an occasion in the history of Ben Israel where we had to give a brother over to the devil for the destruction of his flesh that his soul might be saved we had to execute righteous judgment but I can tell you that there was such trembling on that day such walking before God with such delicacy and softness like I have never seen nor had I ever heard wisdom of God come forth out of the mouths of housewives as we did in the extraordinary hour and the day when we were required to bring an ultimate judgment in order to protect the church and its integrity and maybe unless we know that God is judge and have deferred to him we would be incapacitated for that kind of judgment and unless we have walked in that way how shall we rule and reign with him for what is that ruling and reigning in that eternal office be except the ability to judge and to bring righteous judgment and to aid and to facilitate the government of God over his creation where have we learned the ability but in this life so maybe the best qualification to judge when we shall be required to bring righteous judgment is that we have not preceded that by the judgments of our own that are coined that of our own mind our own heart our own assessment our own spirit but have come only from the life of God in the moment that he gives it or we are content not to have it we are not content at all Jesus lived and served with Judas in his company for his full earthly career right to the end was he not able to discern that this was an emissary of the evil one and calculated for his destruction he never acted on that if he knew that never made an issue of it until that final hour and many of us are wanting to rid ourselves of what we consider a threat to our ministry threat to our marriage threat to us and we're judging before the time we should not judge at all and bear it to the Lord himself when did he overthrow the money changes tables that was always there throughout his whole earthly tenure but only at a moment given by the Father did he pronounce that judgment he did not exercise it out of his own observation of what was evil in practice and needed to be rectified or threatened or challenged it was there when it was not at his liberty to address it until the Father gave it so it's in this possibility that God needs to be recognized and praised and I wrote in the margin is our praise really praise till we have come to this recognition maybe that's why we're required to turn the amplifiers up there's something hollow in our praise that needs to magnification of technology because our praise has not yet hit the authentic note that comes with the depth of the recognition of God as God who alone is judged and who alone is good and who alone knows when we've come to that we can praise him and praise him with the confidence that when it's time for righteous judgment he will perform it and until that we live with the threat to our ministries to the fellowship and whatsoever I don't think that I think of only one instance or two now where we require a man to leave the fellowship otherwise we have lived with enemies who have publicly opposed us right within the fellowship and were vocal about it and were very clear to say that my whole notion of the last days movement of Jews and flight is only a romantic imagining oh really? then we're really barking up the wrong tree and we're embarked on something and making something known worldwide that is a fiction coined only out of my own humanity if you're right and yet that brother remained and publicly expressed those reservations for four years until the Lord removed him and I have watched over the process of 25 years the Lord being very patient and gracious to allow men a full opportunity to receive his correction and his grace and when it is finally spurned to the point where it seems that they cannot obtain his grace he removes them but until then we suffer this tension of opposition within the body and know that God who is judge over all knows it and will give us our grace to bear it and we and nothing will be lost rather we will gain by our patience and composure and trust something of the issue of the decoration of this altar was like that doesn't that callous that prayer shawl designate the legalism of Judaism and we're putting that above the blood and doesn't that that is not really a blood color and then is that really not a table of demons and it's going to affect and corrupt the school and the convocation should we not remove it by every record reckoning yes and but by the life of God no that somehow we could bear it we will not suffer its corruption there's purposes unknown to us that only he can know not yet to be served by allowing it to remain even the testing of our own spirituality and our alarm that we have to take the decisive action as if God is not able himself to perfect that which pertains to him and preserve the sanctity of his own house do you understand what I'm saying these are the issues to which we struggle and they're great issues and God himself has given it because all that he gives is good even if it came through a vessel that was questionable how about this guy I don't know the way he conducts himself and somewhat effeminate and blah blah blah and his Episcopalian and his orientation and the history of that church has always been adverse to the remnant people of God even to the point of persecution aren't we opening a door for some kind of an intrusion of the enemy himself I'm saying all that to say and I'm only touching the surface of it that probably more harm has been done to the church by its zealous defenders than can ever be assessed right even the persecution of saints in the name of God and protecting the faith well the last thing that I want to share is Colbert raising the question if God knew that man was going to transgress and succumb to the temptation why did he allow it why did he plant that tree in the garden how could it be good what's his intention look at the tragedy that ensued as a result and we all share in the Adamic fall so the theologian wrestles with this question and here's his answer God does not will to exclude man even from his own judicial office God does not in any sense will to keep man apart from his participation as co-heir he wills quite definitely that man should participate in it and therefore in his own design divine essence and being in making use of the freedom given him and therefore acknowledging the divine decision in the obedience of his own man undoubtedly participates in the wisdom and righteousness in which God made this decision you understand what he's saying by obeying God and not eating we are participating in the wisdom of God we made a co-participant with him we're acknowledging the rightness of his requirement and obeying it it's not just we've done a mechanical thing but we have become participant with him in our agreement and in our act this is what he's wanting we're getting at the nature of what fellowship is it's not some casual amalgam of souls who happen to be approximate one to another fellowship is a deep statement of union and of relationship of agreement and the condition for that agreement is are you going to obey my word and in obeying it you have met the condition and the requirement to participate with me in the rightness of that requirement and therefore you're a participant even in my office as judge and as God you wanted to rest it for yourself you wanted to grasp it by acting and eating from that tree when the irony is I've wanted you to come into my deity I want you to participate in what I am as God not by your grasping it but by forsaking grasping but by obedience to my word man undoubtedly participates in the wisdom and the righteousness in which God made this decision it is not without man but with him and with him in his own decision and act that God is wise and righteous in that he's the sovereign judge who judges rightly this true union with man this true exaltation of the creature is what God wills when he gives him freedom to obey how do we become participants with him how do we become co-heirs with Christ through obedience to his word by the exercise of our freedom we have fellowship through obedience to the word of God and in that fellowship we have participation and union with God we are co-heirs we are participants in our fellowship and joining in union because he cannot fellowship with that which is sinful he cannot fellowship with the transgression of human arrogance that will not obey his restriction but when we in freedom choose to obey it even without explanation we have met the requirement that allows him to receive us unto himself in fellowship and in union and when you're in fellowship and in union with him you're in the place with God of judgment and in righteousness and knowing good and evil and acting rightly because that's what he is in himself you're in the tree of life that's Barth's explanation to why God has allowed the other tree it was good all that he created was good even the thing that was evil in itself so that we would have a tension of choice in the exercise of our freedom by which we could find a place of fellowship with him through obedience and that principle remains still that's the issue of fellowship still and the fellowship is the issue of prayer fellowship is the issue of praise fellowship is the issue of worship any one of those expressions that does not issue from fellowship is itself affectation counterfeit and religious feigning the true worship is out of the true union and the true union is fellowship out of obedience again and again and again and the whole design the whole genius of it the whole goodness of it was given at the first in the garden by the creator who alone knows what is good we would never have thought that this is the way to attain fellowship we would have said hi jesus buddy here i am there is a condition that is in harmony with himself and is revealed even in the genius of his godhead where the son is in submission to the father and the spirit has no function in himself to glorify himself contrary to what Benny Hinn says but only to glorify the son as the son glorifies the father as the one person of the godhead exceeds to and is in submission and in deference to the other it's the very nature of god to be submitted to the requirement of god who alone knows and has made what is good and himself is good every time you step out of that whatever the temptation i can preach better than this man i'm sure you can i've got more spirit than this in him i'm sure you can but has god said that it's not a woman's function to teach and have authority over man without explanation although explanation in part is given because the woman was first given to deception because in the economy of god it's not right for a woman to have authority over a man and many of our men are emasculated and robbed of that which would have brought them into the fullness of their masculinity by women usurping because they are better qualified that they have more spiritual knowledge they are better speakers and preachers yes they may well be but are they better in order to perform it or in order to yield it what's the word to relinquish it because to relinquish is to recognize the requirement of god and the limitation of god and to rejoice for it and to believe in that faith that what you are relinquishing is now going to be divested in and find its expression in that man who has never been in any way spiritually significant because you have usurped from him and now god because of your submission is going to bring forth in the vessel that he has designated to be authority and leadership because he made him male will perform it and that will glorify god and because of your union with your husband you will be as much gratified by his performance and his ministry as if it had issued from yourself that the idea of compatibility is not two equal ministries coexisting under one roof and acknowledging one another but the submission of the one into the other because god has called them to be one flesh one life one expression and that he will perform because that alone is good so let's give god worship praise and adoration for his ineffable that means unspeakable you can't articulate your only sense the dimensions of what god is and his genius and his love for us knowing that we would have done ourselves in out of our own best well meaning intentions not because we were malicious or wanted to do the wrong thing it's out of our good that we would have done ourselves in and what we would have thought good that it would even serve god and serve his purposes to dismantle that altar to do this do that but his love and then his knowledge is supreme he alone is god why call this now me good there's no bad good but god so lord we just bow before you you're supreme my god and you know what your greatest goodness is that you intended that we should have fellowship with you and fellowship with you is not a peck on the cheek fellowship with you is intimate union and oneness in yourself that we come in to the very creator himself come in to his judicial office come into his knowledge of what is right and wrong and good and evil come in and share with you and express with you your heart and will that's your intention it wasn't to close us out that you that you forbade us it was to bring us in by the exercise of our own freedom that would obey your word so we bless you lord oh my god teach us what this means and show us how it is continually the issue before us always that we are not to proceed with great adamancy and conviction and rectitude that we know what's right this has got to go the word says that that that that's not right that's a an altar of demons that would corrupt that is that what the life has said or is that what your mind has said one of the greatest damages to the body of christ in modern times in recent history is the whole submission and what do you call it movement discipleship what is that not a principle of god yes but were you guys you five leaders who are not in covenant relationship now given that from god was that an issuing out from the life of god or your own human and religious ability to recognize a need the way moses sought with the egyptian oppressing the hebrew and thinking to answer it out of your own perspicuity and knowledge of scripture and to make an application that god never intended in that time and in that way and the end of it was a system which is death even though it's based on godly biblical principles it's not for us to exercise or to ordain or to establish them until it's his time to overthrow the money changers table to reveal his duties it's too holy holy holy don't touch the ark he knows how to keep it he can preserve and perfect what pertains unto him he's the creator everything that he does is good even our present separation from our wives who are freaking out in unbelievable whoredom and disgrace and scandal and shame it's good he'll forgive them one day and expunge their sin as if they had never committed it and bring them back to us in pristine holiness as virgins that's what he's going to do with the nation of israel because he's able because he's the creator he's able to recreate because his recreation is his redemption and we can believe for that and not panic and hit the panic button and act out of our own righteousness and rectitude and put them in a place and tell them what they need to do we can love them even in that condition because that's how god is and when we will so act we'll be in fellowship with him so we bless you lord oh my god we didn't know as we ought to know we're a bunch of blunderers we are the we ourselves are the the ox and the china shop lord we're clumsy as all get up and our worst damages have come out of our sense of what we thought right we were doing you a service and we'll be killed by men who think that they're doing you a service in the last days and we will even bear that death and that mortification with grace and with joy knowing it's not in any way an accident but even our death is serving your purpose for you do all things well you cannot do otherwise because that's what you are as god from the beginning as creator and as redeemer and we bow before such a god we worship such a god we adore such a god thank you for a so great salvation that was evidently more great than we could have understood not that we should be ones that you could use but participants co-heirs in union with you oh the sublimest privilege is ours not to be grasped but to be given through obedience so we bless you lord oh keep us in the way everlasting in the holy way forgive us where we have blown it where we have transgressed where we have acted out of our southern knowledge of what is right a man doesn't say that a man doesn't do that you shouldn't do lord may that letter to that man dying of cancer yet save him may they who crumpled it up in the wastebasket with great indignation and anger take it out and flatten the page and smooth it out and say could we be doing to this letter what we did to the man when he spoke and to his word we crumpled him up and we threw him out and we've done the same to this letter and we're dying it was death and we thought it was good to reject but now we're smoothing it up lord could it be that you're speaking even through this better to err on the side of repentance than to err on the side of our rectitude that we can't be wrong better to believe that we are wrong and that our good is wrong thank you my god that we would walk softly before you and broken before you that even our good is evil that even when we're right we're wrong and the worst damage we have ever done is being right you alone are good thank you my god we don't know how to put one foot before the other lord without you we walk into walls where a bunch of dum-dums will make a mess of it lord only you only you only your life may you have full expression if we have chosen wrongly unwisely if we have not consulted you we're willing to abandon our school program we're willing to collect garbage if that's your will you've got to be lord over all our coming and going out what we shall say and do we don't know how to proceed tomorrow and we know that life and death is at stake in these days this is not just a school this is not just a conference issues of nations are before us in these days my god and who is sufficient for it but the high priest and the apostle of our confession the prophet priest and king who alone is god who alone knows who alone is judge you alone lord oh my god we're willing to stagger and not have a word to say and know how to proceed except your life expresses it thank you lord oh we bless your name thank you my god save us from ourselves save us from our best well meaning intentions save us my god from our religious rectitude and principled christianity save us my god thank you lord this true union with men this true exaltation of the creature is what god wills when he gave him freedom to obey god is good hallelujah his intention is greater than our own we would have been satisfied with so much less no union with him fellowship the return to the garden thank you lord hallelujah greatly to be praised is our god is walking as if you're wrong when you're right that even when you're right you're wrong understand what i'm saying true humility is a walk with god of such a deference and such a softness that even when you're right you're wrong you act as if even when you're right you're alive to the possibility that you're wrong you're never in a adamant hard fisted self righteous always a broken demeanor lord i'm only a creature and even when i'm right i'm willing to entertain i'm wrong even when i think i'm obedient i'm willing to acknowledge i may have missed you i will never know until the day of judgment i walk before you in that broken possibility that even when i'm right i'm wrong thank you lord in requirement to act talk about paradox as tremulous as this life is we're not called to passivity we can't defect and say who is sufficient for these things therefore i'll not act we'll cancel the school i'm afraid to begin a subject that we've never explored before lest we do damage so better not to have it you're still required to act thank you lord for the divine intention knowing that our every act is palpable pulsating with the possibility of error and of damage yet we're not at liberty to be passive we cannot defect we cannot abstain and remove ourselves from the thing that's required if there's a letter to be written there's a letter to be written and only the day of judgment will reveal whether we're obedient to god or acting out of our own humanity but act so we thank you for the blood we thank you for your patience your forbearance and your forgiveness may all these saints pray the prayer that I'm continually praying who is required to do much speaking and knowing that in the volume of many words of sin lord forgive me my inadvertent sin even in my best speaking somehow it finds an expression forgive me the iniquity of ministry itself forgive me the iniquity of priesthood itself that even when I'm at my best I'm at my worst and no sooner can Peter say thou art the Christ the son of the living god than say two minutes later lord let this be far from you get thee behind me satan what? the man who just acknowledged only what the father can reveal is now satan yes every one of us stands in that potentiality and therefore who's sufficient for these things we have to walk my god what a walk only your grace can make it possible and when you came full of grace that's full of truth thank you lord so we bless you thank you my god what fellowship is there between righteousness and lawlessness or between light and darkness what agreement does Christ have with Belial what does a believer have with an unbeliever what agreement has the temple of god with idols for we are the temple of the living god as god said I will live in them and walk among them I will be their god they shall be my people what a picture of god walking in the garden therefore come out from them and be separate from them really from it from their culture from their values from their mentality from their definitions of what is good what is love what is romance what is humility even is false it's a self-effacing self-conscious artificial that is as phony as the day is long true humility is obedience even what it means overthrowing the money changes tables come out from that don't even touch it see it as an unclean thing and I will welcome you and I will be your father you shall be my sons and daughters we'll have communion we'll have fellowship together if you don't touch it don't draw from it don't live by it since we have these promises beloved let us cleanse ourselves from every subtle defilement of body and of spirit perfecting holiness in the fear of god