In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes that those who killed Christ were not evil men indulging in vice, but rather religious and moral individuals who saw Jesus as a threat to their way of life. The speaker highlights the contrast between the reality of the world and the truth found in the Word of God. He challenges the audience to examine the foundation of their lives and whether it is based on what is seen and applauded by society or on the Word of God. The sermon also mentions the need for a qualitative shift in the fellowship of believers, transforming it into a body that can fulfill God's purposes.

Well, I've been asked to repeat a few remarks made before our break time, one on the issue of leadership, the other on the subject of baptism. And just to bring it together in a very concise way, I feel very keenly about the necessity for leadership and that it's intrinsic to the Church and that the absence of leadership is a formula for, what's the word that I use? Anarchy. And it's clear from Scripture that God gave to the Church apostles and prophets, men of authority and evangelists, pastors, teachers, but also elders and deacons. And so the issue of government and rule is clear in the Church. The only issue is the recognition of those whom God has appointed. So Paul would leave a fellowship that he himself had established through his own evangelistic efforts and come back a year or two later and set in the elders of that fellowship. It's not that he just said eeny, meeny, miny, moe, and just picked one capriciously. What he did was recognize what God had already established and make that public. And to the recognition of the body in which that brother was already expressing authority. So it's not some arbitrary thing that the apostle at will establishes, but recognizes and ordains and sets before the body in the recognition of the calling of God. One of the compliments that we received that the Lord is just reminding me to share with you about our own fellowship, I was one of the three elders, was a brother who visited us from another community and said at his leaving two weeks later, if I did not know who the elders were, I would have been hard pressed to identify them. Which is to say that except for the fact and the requirement of expressing authority, that the elders acted as brothers. They were not conspicuous. They didn't wear a label or have a sign on their door. But when authority was required, they asserted it. So I think that that's the kind of formula where brothers with brothers, until such time as the expression of authority is required, and then it's given. But authority certainly. And that the whole kingdom of God is hierarchical and different offices and distributions and gifts. And so that's reflected in the earth. But that will be the reality eternally when his kingdom comes. So we shouldn't shrink from that. And maybe what we're being what's being tested is our own pride, our unwillingness to recognize or to submit to authority. And that will take the form of finding disagreement with the personality of the man or something about his own history. None of them will be perfect, as I'm not. But elder signifies one of a greater maturity in the things of God, but not necessarily that he's faultless. So if you want to find grounds to exempt yourself from the authority expressed through that one, it wouldn't take you much to find it so as to disqualify his authority. But what it really is, is the expression of one's rebellion and self will that really refuses to submit. So we need to humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord, and err rather on the side of submission, and recognition of authority than defiance against it. And that would be God honoring. And you have only to look around and see who are the men that seem to be expressing things, calling the session to order, praying, making comments, announcements. These are usually the signs of those who are already being groomed and called by God to express authority. If you're going to move from a very precious but casual Saturday morning meeting of men into something more formidable and significant for the kingdom of God as a body, you'll have to come to these recognitions sooner or later. And that will be a qualitative shifting and a change from just the enjoyable, non-requiring fellowship that your Saturday mornings have been, to an expression of the body of Christ in this locality that can begin to serve and to fulfill the purposes of God, because structure that has been imputed is recognized and acknowledged. On the issue of baptism that came up out of our conversation about the exchanged life, if we could perform what we think as Christian, we are outside the faith. God has called us to a faith, the nature of which is of such a kind that it's beyond any capacity ourselves to fulfill, so that he must be all in all, and to be it through his sons who have yielded up their own natural ability, however well-meaning, that he might express his life through them. This is God's normative intention for all believers, and I would say it's the most grievous lack and failure in the body of Christ today, in the church today, is the appropriation of the life of God. We have not the faith to appropriate it, or we're fearful to let go of our confidence in our own ability, which has been established over a lifetime, and the fear that if we relinquish that dependability, what will we have in its place? It'll be a kind of a no-man's land where we'll have our face sticking out, but we have nothing clever to say and no ability to express, except that the life of God will express himself. So, resurrection is the name of the game. It's the heart of the matter. We're called to be sons of the resurrection, especially in the last days. Who will be sufficient for these things? But the resurrection must ever and always be preceded by death. Death is a painful phenomenon. Humiliation is death. Waiting on God is death. Not trusting your own confidence in your ability is a death. Believing God and opening your mouth and yielding your body, your frame, your voice, is a kind of death. But the result thereof is life. And so we saw last night, in what seemed to be a fitful, spurt-jerk presentation, that the life of God was functioning because it turned a message into an event. Something went forth that affected lives because it was the life of God himself promoting his own kingdom and his own power. But what it took was a man willing to abdicate the confidence in his own ability, his own eloquence, his own knowledge, and trust God. That's the genius of prophetic proclamation, that you don't come with a well-ordered statement that becomes your confidence. You simply come and trust the Lord to assemble and bring together in the point of time his own communication. And if you're around long enough and follow such men long enough, you'll see how variable their expressions are. They're never two times that they are the same, even on the same subject. So I'll be speaking tonight likely on the subject of Israel, and I'll say many things that I've expressed before. The way it will come forth will be uniquely fitted by the wisdom of God to this occasion, not by any cunning on my part or ability, but the Lord himself expressing himself in his own originality, not because we want novelty, but because he's a creative God and he will form and shape his utterance. And that ought to spoil us, that when we come to the house of God to hear the word of God, that we should really have that expectation that it's not going to be the word of man or an opinion, but that of God, which Paul says performs a work in them that believe that. He complimented the Thessalonians, these pagan people who are radically converted by the preaching of Paul, the apostolic proclamation of Paul, because they turned from their idols to serve the living God and to wait for Jesus who comes from heaven to save them from the day of his wrath. You can imagine the kind of gospel that they received from Paul that was that inclusive and had the power to turn them from their idols to serve the living God. With the God we would see that in the conversions of today, but our idols continue. Sport, sex, business, whatever. We need an apostolic proclamation that has the power to break idolatry. And that's why Paul said, I praise God that when you heard the word of God from me, you received it for what it was, not the word of man, but the word of God that performs a work in them that believe that. He didn't say that, but not just believing in general, but believing that the word that they heard was God's word. Now it came forth to a Hebrew and it had his accent and was expressed through his personality, but it was God's own word. And these pagans recognized it and believed that therefore it had the power to deliver them. So we need to come in the hearing of the word without expectation. And those who proclaim the word need to believe also that the word of their own mouth is God's word. Maybe it's a greater demand on the speaker than it is the hearer, because who is more conscious of his own frailty and his own humanity than the one who is speaking? Like last night, my bowels were rumbling, powerful headache, hot and sweaty. I felt like I had a fever. And in fact, perhaps I did. So I was very conscious of my humanity and my infirmity, but in that same consciousness to believe that the word is God's own word. See how we're continually tested by faith. Faith never becomes a static matter of just subscribing to correct doctrines. That's what it has become today, a kind of a creedal Christianity where we believe correct things. Faith is a dynamic, active affirmation of the reality of God moment by moment, despite all appearances to the contrary, despite all feelings to the contrary. So the just shall live by their faith in the living God, whose spirit lists where he will. And you cannot know, as we've mentioned before, where it's coming from or where it's going. And you don't need to know. To know is still to have yourself on the throne, to have control over a situation, to gratify the lust of your mind and give you a security that is not a kingdom security, but a worldly security. Not to know is to trust. And when God called Abraham, who's the father of faith and who will inherit the world, the nations and his patriarchal place in God's governmental scheme in his own resurrection, the word was come out from father kindred, from nation kindred and father's house and follow me in the land that I will show you. It's not some fixed thing that here it is, sign on the dotted line, you know what it's going to be. You'll not know. It'll always be a trembling, always an adhering to God, a sensing and an obedience. That's the active life of faith. That's a remarkable requirement. I said to my dear brother across the way, as we were having a cup of coffee, I always ask men what they do for a living. I want to know what men will give them their lives to. And he mentioned something about he's young in the Lord, two or three years, something like that, and that he's timid, which is to say, don't expect me to share the word of God. And I said, Israel's great sin was limiting the holy one of Israel. We dare not limit God by deferring to, or referring to our personalities or our natural temperament or our disposition as if that's the only thing that we can only act in God to that limitation. He has given that personality, but he may call for occasions when he will transcend it. If we will allow him that, that right, we must not limit the holy one of Israel and tell him what we can or cannot do. We can do all things in Christ who strengthens us if we'll allow him. Sure. So what seems to be modesty is really arrogance. It's imposing upon God a limitation and saying this far, no further. No, you can't do that. I'll not allow it. This is my personality. This is the way I am. And I'm comfortable that way. I don't want to be bold. I don't want to be a preacher. I don't want to be an object that men may reproach. So we're falling short of the glory and the kingdom by these mentalities that have not their origin in the faith or in scripture, but in the world. So that's why we need a radical separation from the world. It's mentality, not, not in the things that are apparently evil. That's easy to renounce, but in the things that appear to be good, that seem to be deferring, modest. And the way for that separation is not by analysis, but by baptism. Baptism is the radical separation from the world, the flesh and the devil. Israel was baptized unto Moses, both in the sea and in the cloud. They had to come out of Egypt, but Egypt had been taken out from them and they had to pass through the waters and come up on the other side. And then before the entry to the land, one more time for the generation born in the wilderness through the Jordan, which by the way, means descent into death. It's not just going down and getting your little tootsies wet. It's coming into a burial. So baptism is a burial. And I, and I shared before the break, if those of us who are having difficulty in appropriating the life of Christ, we need first to make clear and understand that the baptism is the key of entry into his life, because it's the place of entry into his death. There's no resurrection without death. And our death is entering into his death, established at the cross by the sacrament that he has established called baptism. And what we have done in modern times is to traduce the great sacraments of God and to make them mere institutional commonplace obediences so that people get wet and they feel like they're fulfilling a requirement, but they have no notion of what they're in fact doing. And if the truth were told, they have no desire for the truth of what they are doing. They only want to get wet. They only want to fulfill a minimal religious obligation. They never have any intention of dying. God is not going to bury something that's still kicking and alive and wanting to succeed on the basis of that life. He'll only bury a life that is committed to death because it recognizes that in me, there is no good thing at all. And as I said before the break, it's an easy thing to crucify and bury our defects, our shortcomings, our hangups, our sins, our sinful disposition, our lust and all the kinds of things that mar our life. But we want to retain that which is good. And we want to succeed on the basis of what is good and want to be found succeeding. We want to be recognized by men succeeding on the basis of our virtue, our accomplishment, our strength, our intelligence. These are the things that must be crucified. And that's why we've not come into the resurrection mode. We want to retain and succeed on the basis of our own natural life, thinly gilded over with a religious overlay. We have not shared God's view of man. We do not really agree with him that it is utterly depraved, that there's no hope in it. There's no good thing in it, even at its best. It stinks because it has as its basic constitution, self-seeking. It will always displace God. It will always seek for preeminence. It always wants to be recognized. The only place for it is death and burial. And the good news is that something was performed 2,000 years ago that has effectually met this profound inveterate egocentrism. It's called the cross of Christ Jesus. When that Adam went to that cross, that's what was destroyed there. And that's the good news. It has been done in once and for all. And we can enter that death through baptism. And then Paul says in Romans 6, which is the heart, in my opinion, of the gospel, verse 11, now reckon yourself indeed dead unto yourself and alive unto God in Christ Jesus. He's not saying suck in your lips and hope against hope and whistle in the dark, and that in fact this is true, but that your reckoning is based on two facts, the death of Jesus 2,000 years ago at the cross and his resurrection, and your death by the moment in time which you entered it by your baptism. You have a fact. You have a factum. You have an historic event that on August 13, 1965, 75, 92, you entered his death by the act of baptism. You know when it took place. Reckon yourself dead on that basis and on that act that you chose and you will to go to a willing death as he went to his death willingly. So when I baptize someone, I keep them down. And when I was baptized, I asked, don't make this a quickie. I want to be submerged, and my head especially, my Jewish head, with all of its independent thoughts and self-will and idealistic revelries, that seat of rebellion and self-will has to go down into death and into burial, and then bring me up. And so I keep the baptized person down. Let him get the sense. That's why immersion is so remarkably significant. And I would not say that if you were just sprinkled that you have an invalid baptism. But I will say if you were only sprinkled, you need a greater faith to believe that that sprinkling stands for that burial. And if you have not the faith to believe that, then see to it that you are immersed and be buried. Because you have to make a reckoning and you need to make it daily that you are indeed dead unto yourself and alive unto God on the basis of an act that you can point to. Got the idea? That you might be raised unto newness of life, that you no longer, how to say, yield your members unto unrighteousness, but no longer to live unto self, but unto God. That's what makes it new. There's a new principle of life. The old principle was self-serving. And you can even do that religiously. Hide in the pew, dollar in the collection plate, sing to him, say amen, attend the meeting. But you are still in the throne. You are still calling the shots. You are still making your own determinations. The newness of life serves God. It has no interest in anything else. Its nature is to serve God. He was raised to a newness of life, no longer to live unto himself nor for himself, but unto God. Can you imagine a whole church of people who have come alive into that reality? My God, it would shake Canada. Nations would fall. But what do we have now? We have an addendum to society, a Sunday thing that confirms the status quo and challenges nothing. It's just people who subscribe to a quaint Sunday culture that has not even impressed their children or engaged their children. Their children are going out and doing their thing under the more powerful influences of the world than anything that they have gleaned or seen in their parents, because their parents are not in the resurrection. They're only in a religious equivalent thereof. Got the idea? Okay, so what I'm going to share with you guys are the insights of this morning's devotional. And I want to encourage every one of us to a morning devotional life. So I read the Psalm for the day. Today was the 30th, it happens to be for me, and the third month of this cycle of Psalm readings, Psalm 90. But I also read the chapter of Proverbs. So today is the 30th, that's the 30th chapter of Proverbs. And you'll never exhaust it. Every time you go through it again, you'll see something else that will be an application, appropriate now for some circumstance in your life that will quicken something in that chapter that you had not seen before. So my devotional life is early. Before the world wakes up, before the family wakes up, it's yet dark, quiet. You can bow before the Lord, commence in prayer, plead and invoke the blood afresh upon your own head in your own house. It's amazing. I have a naive and simple faith that invokes the blood. And I'm always astonished when I hear of families that are being ravaged, and their children are being chewed up and spit out, or they're having all kinds of tumult and problems. I said, but I say to the father, have you pleaded the blood? He said, what? What do you mean? I said, you're the priest of the family. You need to perform your priestly function for your family by invoking the blood of the lamb daily on their heads, on your house, on your doorpost, on your pillow, and submit the whole family under the blood of the lamb for protection, keeping. And so I do that in the morning. At the commencement of the day, I do it at the end of day for the night hours. It's amazing if I forget once in a while how that night I will be worked over by the enemy with hot seasons and flashes of such erotic things that it's an embarrassment and a shock to know what you're able to conceive in your night hours because you've not thought to submit yourself under the blood of Christ and that he would rule even over in your sleep and through the night hours and not allow a harassment that we need not suffer if we had only submitted ourselves under the blood. So that's how I begin in prayer and talking things over with the Lord, the things of the day, and giving myself to him afresh, asking for his thoughts. The last bastion of self is thought life because our thought is us and we don't want to be thought to be ignoramuses or devoid of opinion because we want, you know, that's our identity is our thought and how we express it. But God says in Isaiah, I think it's 55, let the unrighteous man, let the, not unrighteous, the evil or the wicked man, that's it, the wicked man forsake his acts and the unrighteous man his thoughts and I will receive him, save the Lord. And I used to think that the unrighteous thoughts must certainly be pornographic and yes we must forsake that but the Lord impressed me that it's not because it's pornographic that it's unrighteous, it's unrighteous because it's our thought. The presumption of having our thought when we could have the thoughts that are above our thoughts and come down to us from above. His thoughts are above our thoughts and his ways above our ways and we never think to clear our minds from the debris and clutter of our own imagining and our own contemplations to receive the thought of God. Like for example, what is God's thought for this morning through me for you? Is that something that I'm supposed to determine by some kind of logic that I should have an idea of what is represented here and what their needs could be and what is the most appropriate thing to say? There's no way that that could be considered. All I can do is, Lord give me your thought for these men today. So I want to encourage you to know that our minds are to be secondary to our spirits and not to run the show. That it's a servant organ and not the primary one. Our spirit, his spirit and our spirit is the center of our being and to allow it to engage our minds when it serves the purposes of God but not to be a playground where every stray thought can have its place of residency. Anything that does not come down from above must issue from below. If it's not his thought but our thought, it's contaminated, it's impure, it has its ultimate origin below. But it'll be working in your mind with your voice. It'll sound like you. You'll enjoy it. You may even be proud of it. And that's how the devil will engage you and find sway. So let God be God. The remarkable thing is if you lose your life, you'll find it. You'll not be mindless but you'll have the thoughts of Christ. He'll have your mind, you'll have an enchristened mind. And that's not just for religious or spiritual things but all things. Business also. That the business might be a kingdom venture, submitted to the king whose thoughts are being given to direct you in it in a way that is contrary to the ethos and principles of success that are employed in the world. Well, just let's take a look at Proverbs 31, today's chapter, that begins, Thus says the man, I am weary, O God. I am weary, O God, how can I prevail? How appropriate. There's nothing that's going to be more exhausting than religion. When we seek to serve God out of our humanity, it's wearying. And here's the cry of it, I am weary, O God. I am man and I am weary. Surely I'm too stupid to be human. I do not have human understanding. I have not learned wisdom, nor have I the knowledge of the Holy One. And then comes this remarkable portion that we often quote to Jewish inquirers. Who has ascended to heaven and come down? Who has gathered the wind in the hollow of his hand? Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name? And what is his son's name, if thou canst tell? Or surely you know. Well, I like the phrase, it takes God to be a man. Jesus's humanity was the evidence of that. I'm too stupid to be human. I do not have even a human understanding. I have not learned wisdom, nor have I the knowledge of the Holy One. In a word, we don't know as we ought to know. And what I heard myself praying this morning that occupied my spirit is to come in to a knowledge of God that is a real knowing. To qualitatively shift gears from things creedal, doctrinal, theoretical, to the thing that's actual. The real knowing that establishes our humanity as godly men. And then that's why those questions arise. Who has ascended to heaven? Who? Who? Do you really know who he is, who has wrapped up the waters in a garment, who has established all the ends of the earth? Who is that? Do you really know who that is? If he's established all the ends of the earth, how about my ends? Does that include me? And the details of my life. Is that inclusive in the God who has established the ends of the earth? This is typical biblical speech found also in the Psalms. Grand statements of the inclusive God that is the understanding of those who have a history in God and have struggled to convert mere theoretical or doctrinal knowledge into the reality of who God is. This is not a cheapie, but it ought to be our persistent search. And then the text goes on, every word of God proves true. He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Well, what a wonderful last day's provision to have God as a shield. But it's only available to those who take refuge in him, who have wrestled through who has the winds in his hand and the waters as a garment. He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. So this is beyond the issue of doctrine, theoretical knowledge, even correct understanding. This is existential appropriation of God. That seems to be the reality of whoever wrote Proverbs and who speaks like that in the Psalms. It's the same language in the Psalms. God is my shield. God is my high tower. God is my refuge. God is my strength. That's why Psalms is so remarkable. The faith of the psalmist is the thing to which we are called. And it's got to come to a place of actuality. God is my refuge and my strength. You'll not be able to say that, except that you have tested God for this reality in your own life. And the frequency of his answer gives you the confidence and the strength that you can say, my shield, my tower, my strength, because you know you're weak. And you've seen his strength make perfect in your weakness. You've been willing for the humiliation of weakness to know that strength. And now that you know that you know it, it's your provision in the last days. Because eventualities are coming that we cannot anticipate, that will come upon us suddenly, for which we will have no preparation, that past experience or logic can give us an answer. But only the knowledge of God will sustain us if he is indeed our refuge and our strength. That no matter what the eventuality, God is the greater and God is the sufficiency. So our every day, our fellowship, our coming together, our own personal devotion is the questing for the appropriation of this reality of God. This is the seeking of him. And just to take a quick look at my psalm for the day, it's remarkable how often the psalm will correspond to the Proverbs. Or I read also from Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, the selection for that day. I have one or two other devotional books. And there seems to be such a confluence, like almost a theme, God's thought for the day is echoed in the psalms and Proverbs and Oswald Chambers. And that's how you've begun the day. And you take those thoughts with you into the day, into the practicality of what you're about. And it's remarkable how you'll find application. So I'm commending again, beginning the day in God and devotion, but not as an obligation. I've read chapter one, I've read so many chapters, I have fulfilled my obligation. Devotion is the antithesis of obligation. You don't want to get religious about this, so it's no longer a devotion. It then becomes a requirement, an obligatory thing. I've done my duty for today. I read so many chapters, I read so many verses. It hasn't benefited you a bit. It has got to be a devotional thing. You linger over it. That means that you can't rush this. That means that you're not just giving the Lord 15, 20 minutes or even a half hour. You're up early enough to luxuriate in the scripture, to dwell upon it. You're immersing yourself. You're letting it come into your spirit. You're thinking of its application. You're relating what is being said here with something else that was quick and recently in your devotions, or you heard someone speak as a message. This is devotion, basking in the word of the Lord and the presence of God, whether or not it's felt. Don't become sensate. Don't measure the success of your devotional time by whether you feel the presence of God. He's trying to wean us from that very dependency. But whether you feel it or not, to be in the word of God is to be in God. You're in his presence, whether it's felt or not. Something is being communicated. Some dimension of God is coming into your inner man and into your being. I even have the audacity to believe that not only am I invoking the blood of Jesus to be washed afresh, that the Lord would make chaste my soul and my spirit from whatever may have impinged upon it or any taint of things spoken or heard or done that I might freshly receive of him, but by that same blood I can enter into, by that new and living way, into the holiest place of all. That I'm not just on my knees in an upstairs room in Tracy, New Brunswick. I am actually in the Holy of Holies before the Shekinah presence of God. Believest thou this? Have you the faith to believe that? That the blood of Jesus, see how we have fallen short? Merely to reduce the death of Jesus and his resurrection as atonement for sin, however glorious that is. And to stop there is to fall short of a greater glory. By that same blood, a place of entry was made, a priestly place, into the holiest place of all, where the veil has been rent and which we are now bidden come to find help in time of need at the throne of grace. Well, in what day do we not need that? In what day are we free from need for help? If we're living at the radical edge of faith, in the last days, in a world that is hostile and at enmity with God, where is the day that we don't need to find him at the throne of grace to find help in time of need? And there's a place provided. The veil has been rent by the flesh of Jesus. And if we are in the blood, we have entry, not by any qualification of our own, but by virtue of the blood that the Father deeply honors and respects. And we can come into the high priestly place. So that as we're making our petitions before the throne of grace, I'm asking the Lord at the same time that I might be imbued with something of the radiance of his own glory. He's in his Shekinah presence. He's above the mercy seat and between the cherubim in his Shekinah glory. And certainly you can't abide there, even in prayer, without some infusion coming out of that great radiance and into ourselves. And occasionally we'll see a saint with a radiant face, rarely, but occasionally. And you can believe that that radiance like Moses has come out of the place of communion. All of our faces ought to be shining in God. If we are consistently and daily beginning the day in his presence in the place of communion. So Psalm 100, the Psalms are, one is not like another. This happens to be a brief one, but I've not found the Psalm yet that has not been rewarding. Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness. Come into his presence with singing. Know that the Lord, he is God. It is he that made us and not we ourselves. We are his. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to the Lord. Bless his name. Be thankful unto him for the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever and his faithfulness to all generations. I'm reading it much too fast. Don't follow my example. When you're reading this devotionally, you want to linger over this. Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. This is God's intention for all his creation. But a joyful noise is not some feigned thing. Joy itself is an ultimate statement of an elevation of your spirit that can only come out of communion with God. You can be happy over many things, but joy that is some inward thing that is not affected by external things is the inescapable truth, the testimony of a quality of relationship with God, the joy of the Lord. You can't feign it, you can't manufacture it, you can't produce it. When you have it, you can have it in the face of all circumstances. Disappointment, business failure, infidelity of your wife, failure of a friend, the most shattering kinds of things that can happen to a man in the world and particularly to a godly man, and God will allow some of the severity of these things, will not impinge upon or diminish your joy. It's constant, it's something inward. It's not some supercilious or superficial thing. It's not affected by circumstance. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord is an ultimate statement, not a minimal statement. And that's how the psalm begins. Where did the psalmist get it from? From the depth of his own relationship and knowledge of God. Comes into our spirit, it will be brought up to the level of our consciousness. It will not be wasted. We cherish your word, Lord. We live by your word. We love the sound of it. It doesn't have to convince us by its logic and prove and demonstrate itself. We receive through your word is to receive you. And Lord, we want to say that we want to be joyful, radiant saints. We're dissatisfied. You've made us divinely discontent with things as they are. We don't want to be get-by saints who have avoided conspicuous sin and are doing a passable job. We want to be the sons of the kingdom, the radiant sons, the sons of resurrection, my God, who can say with Paul, with the same confidence, for me to live as Christ. In him I live and move and have my being. We want to be with the psalmist and the authors of the book of Proverbs and that wisdom and understanding. And we know this is not cheap, Lord. And we ask your forgiveness if we have slighted you. Our morning times have been minimal. Most of us don't even have such a time. We're instantly caught up in the affairs of the day and we breathe a little prayer on the run. But we have not taken the time as sons to wait in your presence and to seek you and to enjoy your word and to allow it to be invested in us and to temper our entire day. We have not realized how it would have affected everything. You need your rest. But it's amazing how little we need when our rest is in God and that we are not to be dictated to by the conventional wisdom of the world, but that there's another wisdom, that there's a transcendent thing. We are already beyond time. We're already in the measure of eternity. We don't need to be governed and ruled by these secular considerations. And it'll be remarkable if God is our strength, we'll not fade. There's another dimension of being. Speak a little bit on how we can establish our relationship with our Lord. By sacrificial seeking of him, by investing ourselves in his word, by taking that word to heart, by looking for the practical application and the walking out of it, by being in relationship with other brothers who have the same intent, by the willingness to receive their correction, their admonitions, or the rebuke of God if it should come to that. It's a mode of living. It's a kingdom reality now. The kingdom is coming but already is. You see what I mean? But it takes a radical rejection of the world and its mentality, not in the evil and apparent gross aspects of the world, but in the subtlety of what passes for its wisdom and its values, which are contrary to God and opposed to God. Those who killed Christ were not evil men who were luxuriating in vice, but men who were religious, ethical, moral, and wanted to continue to live their lives on that basis, and found him to be an ultimate threat to that mode of being. You see what I mean? And you'll get this as you go on. When you immerse yourself in the Word, we are continually challenged about two realities. The reality of the things that are seen and that are everywhere apparent, to which the world subscribes with heartily a saying, this is truth, this is reality, as against that which is opposed to it in every point in particular, the Word of God in Scripture. We have a choice to make. Which is the foundation of our reality? What is the predicate upon which our life is based? Is it what we see and that to which men subscribe and applaud, or is it the Word of God, which opposes it? Remember that when the first martyr Stephen, what made men rush upon him and gnash upon him with their teeth? He was filled with the Holy Spirit, and he saw the heaven opened. It wasn't just that he always lived with an open heaven. He always lived, he looked upward. That's why he could confound the doctors of the law, and he was only a busboy who cleaned the crumbs off the table. And yet he was so in God and in another reality that the world could not abide his presence and killed him. And even in his death, he didn't feel the pangs of it. You imagine being stoned, and the stones flooding into your flesh and breaking the bone in your nose, and the blood is trickling into your mouth and into your eyes. Everything in you that's human would want to retaliate and get at those who are destroying your flesh. But he was so suffused with God, he saw Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father, and forgive them, they don't know what they're doing. He was in a transcendent place. And what I'm saying is, that's not just a martyr in his final moment, but that's a man in all his moments. He died as he lived. He always was in the heavenly place. He always saw a heaven open. He was always filled with the Holy Spirit. He's normative. He's a pattern, not a rarity. You see, we have been in the earth far too much. We have become worldlings. Our religion echoes the world. They have found a place for it Sunday morning, but not too early that you have to sacrificially get up, but not too late that it's going to spoil the rest of the day. You'll still have time for the golf course, the football game, and your good pleasure. And they'll give you tax deduction if you're willing to be satisfied with that mode. But start to get radically serious about God. Start to become apostolically minded and kingdom oriented and bring these transcendent realities into your immediate life and see what will be the repercussion. Remember the powers of the air said, Jesus we know and Paul we know, but who are you? We know whom to fear. We know whom to recognize, but who are you? There's nothing about you that constitutes any threat to our kingdom of darkness. Thank you. Go on with your religious thing. It gives you a little modicum of satisfaction. Fine, doesn't threaten us at all. But they know when you have crossed over and they see a seriousness and intent of your heart that is now being expressed sacrificially by getting up early, seeking the Lord, welcoming his counsel, voiding your own thoughts, receiving his, even for business, and acting on that thought, when men will call you a fool. What you're doing is suicidal. You're threatening the whole investment of your lifetime to take that course. It's not wisdom as we understand it, speaking practically. Well, it's what I've heard from the Lord. And trusting God. And yea, though he slay me, yet will I trust him. Yea, though it fails, because there's an issue greater than even the success of my business. It's obedience to God. And it's not to be measured in terms of worldly success. There's something of an eternal question at stake here that I can't even know. There's a radical level of obedience to God that is not even understood by God's people, let alone followed. So, all of this out of the first reflection of the first line of Psalm 100? Make a joyful noise to the Lord. I'll tell you what, if he's not Lord, you'll never make a joyful noise. Don't think that because we can vocalize the word Lord, that he has in fact become that. Lordship means totality. He's Lord over all, or he's Lord over nothing. If you have so much, one thing by which you have held a key to veto. He's allowed governance in all things, but this one area, or this one thing, you reign supreme to veto his will. You have voided his entire lordship. We have not understood the totality of God's call to man in his lordship. The evidence of that in modern times is totalitarianism. There's an ironic judgment that comes on mankind, especially the land of the Reformation, Germany, that has not subscribed to the lordship of Christ, but took and modified the apostolic Christianity to fit in with its bureaucratic, imperialistic design and ambition for its own nationhood. And the end thereof was a totalitarian regime. You'll not give me your absolute loyalty and devotion, and you'll give it to that one who is my opposite. And you will come into bondage and destruction and death rather than life. We have not understood as the church what lordship means, and that's why there's no joyful noise. There's noise, but it's not joyful. It's clutters. It's aided by loudspeakers and all that kind of jazz. The lordship, the joy comes spontaneously when the truth of his lordship is established and consistently maintained. We have not understood how much he's requiring. And you know what? It's not a grievous thing. The psalmist says, I delight to do thy will, oh lord. He doesn't even ask what it is. If it's the lord's will, it's his delight. And when the first apostolic mission took place in Acts 13, and God said it by the spirit into the church at Antioch, separate unto me Paul and Barnabas for the work whereunto I have called them, they immediately laid hands on these men and prayed for them with fasting and sent them forth. And God did not even identify the purpose for which they were being called, but separate unto me. It did not matter whether they would go to this city or that city, to the Jew first or second or last, they always went to the Jew first. The idea was that they were separated unto him. They delighted to do his will. And if his will was to leave them remaining where they were in Antioch, where he found them in the moment of worshiping the lord together, they would be just as content to remain as to go. He was lord over all. Got the picture? Lord over all. If there's any exception, we have voided his lordship. And the powers of the air know it. And we are just, they yawn in our face. We represent to them no consideration or threat at all. They remain the undisputed rulers over our cities and over our nation, over our locality, because there's not in the earth in that locality, a presence of a people who have made Jesus lord and broken the powers of the air over them by the reality of that lordship in their lives corporately. That's the issue that you guys represent here. This whole locality is in bondage to the invisible spectral reality of spirits who have had undiminished sway over this locality. And the only thing that can break it is the presence of a people who can discern that spirit reality and who can oppose it in the authority of God. Because the moment that they make a joyful noise together, those things are finished and they're compelled to scatter. They cannot stand that joyful noise. You know why? It's the hallmark of authenticity. They've heard praise, they've heard worship, they've heard this, they've heard that. Oh, that's nice. You know, amuse yourself, enjoy it. In fact, what is it for but our enjoyment? It's not really unto him. But the moment that they hear a joyful noise, a true note of that which rises up out of souls that have been sanctified and redeemed and are walking in the light which he is the light and are obedient to the things that he requires and shows and are in relationship together, which breaks up our ecocentric, privatistic life. We're willing to be submitted. We're willing to open our lives to the examination of other men. We know we can't do this alone. The genius of God is himself corporate. He is himself a sweet company, father, son, and holy ghost. How dare we oppose that and seek to be Christians independently and privately? That's not a luxury he allows himself. The father and the son and the holy spirit are related. They submit one to another. They yield one to another. The father gives to his son a name above all names under heaven and the earth, even willing to give the son a place of preeminence above himself. He's not jealous to retain for himself something that is peculiar to himself. The nature of God is to give and they are a company. He says, and when you will show forth in the earth what is in the Godhead, the world will know that the father has sent me. You can see how everything conspires against that. The world has taught us to be individualistic. I'm my own man. I've made my own success. I'm willing to come to a service to enjoy the benefit of being in the same room to hear that word, but my life is essentially my own. So the issue is not, should we have elders? Should we do what's form? Those questions will take care of themselves. Once we subscribe to the reality to which we're called the kingdom of God and its expression in the earth, which is called the church of spirits of just men being made perfect in relationship with one another in humility, submitting to one another in the world. Because that kind of fellowship cannot be a Sunday reality. It's too demanding. It's too all inclusive. What is the secondary thing is the business. The primary thing is the fellowship. That's what we're born for. Two times is our participation in the reality of the church and the locality where we are is the first business of our life. The secondary thing is how we attend to our families, how we provide, how we take care of the other responsibilities. This is first and foremost, his kingdom come seek first the kingdom of God. So long as the church is an addendum and the secondary aspect of our life, that kingdom does not come. There's no joyful noise. The powers of darkness are not scattered. They can look down because they're, they're usurping a rulership is unchallenged and unmoved. Men are still in bondage under it. So make a joyful noise to the Lord. All the earth worship the Lord with gladness come into his presence with singing, but they're singing and singing. Singing itself is an ultimate expression of the sanctified soul. The song of the Lord it's a, it's a genre G E N R E. There's speech, but there's singing. It's like singing is the highest form of expression. It doesn't mean that you're musical or that you're gifted or that you have a nice voice, whatever those things, there's a song unto the Lord. Your prose won't, won't they're terrified. So my last message in Nuremberg, Germany on the last overseas trip, true and false repentance toward the Jew by the German Christian who are hung up with grievous consciences and want to be relieved of guilty conscience and never succeed. They always have to do the repentance over and over. They've not repented at the depth of the issue of sin for themselves as Germans. And when that word came and they broke over that word that they had fallen short of the glory of God, that they were not living in the resurrection life, that they were not in the place of totality to the Lord and therefore had invited the totalitarianism of the devil. They came out of their seats. They sprawled out over the floor. All you could hear was gasping and crying of souls who are broken in their deeps. And as they repented and flushed out all of the sin of disobedience and self living, you began to hear a song in the spirit. They were singing in a priestly way. And I said, now the powers of darkness over Nuremberg are terrified. They have not been impressed with anything that has issued from you till now in all of your charismatic choruses with your overhead projector. Now in hearing this singing, that is the joy of coming up into resurrection after an authentic repentance that has brought you to death. This terrifies them. It was a historic moment in the whole nation of Germany in a point of time that was brought by the Lord in his word, spoken in the resurrection mode. My interpreter, who has been with me for 25 to 30 years, he can preach for me and I can sit down. He knows exactly what my message, my mood. He wept three times. I had to wait for him. He broke down. He couldn't continue. The word was so devastating for him who knows me all these years and knows my heart still. It was so fresh. It was so from the throne. It was so the word of God. It was so on time historically for the nation and the church in the nation that he broke down. Now that message is going to be transcribed and added as a postscript to the German edition of the Holocaust book. That nation needs to break and to repent. They've had a guilty conscience. They've paid Israel billions of Deutschmarks in reparations, but they have never recognized what the Holocaust means in terms of themselves and their own faulty relationship with God in a Christianity that had become domesticated and served their national imperialistic and personal ambition. They've never acknowledged that and repented for that and seen that their ability to reduce Jews to death bestially is the statement of that failure. It's not a boo-boo that they missed it for one moment. It was the summation of a long history of fallenness away from the truth of the faith. Even when it was orthodox, it was lacking, let alone when it was liberal. Well, that's more than I can communicate right now. But I'm just saying that the song that came out of that repentance, I knew was terrifying the powers of darkness and God is waiting for it here. Well, I'm not a personality that, you know, sings like that. Don't limit God by your personality. If you're experiencing the sanctifying redemptive work of God, because you have opened yourself to not only in your personal devotional life, but in your relationship with brothers, and that you can receive correction. I have been saved from deception, from the youngest and weakest members of our body. The Lord has always employed the one that I would think least to bring to me a corrective word. And I would say, well, where does he come off? Listen, I've been a believer 35 years. I've got a history with God. I've been all over the world. I've been living as spirit. This guy's one or two years old in the Lord. He's going to tell me, you see how pride, because I'm willing to hear God and I do hear him in the weakest and the youngest. I have been corrected and kept from my own deceptions. See how we need each other. We, each of us have our blind sides, our blind spots. We cannot see. We need the other brother speaking again. Our ministers need that desperately, but we have a church system where the ministers are inviolate. They are the men of faith and power. They come up on the platform mysteriously, and then they disappear after they bring their word. They're unwilling to open their lives for the inspection of others as if they are another kind of humanity who have it all together. They are just as shot through with defect and problems as ourselves, but they have not the courage to open their hearts, to ask the congregation for prayer for themselves. And they're struggling with their own children or with their own lives or their own sex life or their own temptations and lusts. They'll continue to have these things as ghosts in their own closets, unless they will open it up and seek the help that comes only through the body. See what the church is. It's a place of humility if it's going to be a place of redemption. And we've been unwilling for that. We don't want to be inconvenienced, let alone embarrassed. And so that we have what we've bargained for, and it's not much. There's a potential here in this Saturday morning gathering of men, if you'll only allow the Lord to take you from your day of beginnings and become the apostolic foundation for something in this community. There's no imagining what that will mean for those who are presently in bondage, who will be delivered by the reality that issues from this coming together of men that is earnest and wants more than just the enjoyment of a Saturday fellowship. They want the reality of the kingdom of God in all of its apostolic meaning. And they know that that's not cheap. That's time consuming. And then you'll worship the Lord with gladness when he will have corrected your priorities and shown you what is first, this kingdom, and giving yourself to each other. Then you'll come into his presence with singing. And you'll know that the Lord, he is God. It is he that made us and not we ourselves. We are his. That's what we're made for. And I give the Lord, as I did this morning, when you guys were still turning over on the other side, I was on my knees before the Lord, giving him again this frame. Listen, Lord, you made it. It was born in 1929 out of a Jewish mother and father that it was for yourself. I don't have any purpose for my being except your employment. Come and infuse this frame, this personality, this mind with yourself and set yourself before these men and speak to them in your own accent. And this is what you've made me for. And so every one of you, being an electrician or a businessman is a secondary thing. And I don't knock that. It's also a place of contact and ministry, touching the world. But your first and foremost consideration is your availability before God. It is he who has made us for himself. And we've got to give ourselves to that God. It's amazing the humility of God that will not commandeer what really is rightfully his. But he stands at the door and knocks. If any men hear my voice, it will open to me. I'll come in. That he still allows us the expression of our own arrogance to keep that door closed. The only thing is that there'll be a comeuppance in the way of eternity. In that day, you will see as you are seen. And in one flash, you'll recognize I have withheld from God what has been rightfully his. And I have lived beneath the kingdom and the glory all my life long, content to get by Sunday services, modest contribution. But my life has been essentially my own. And now it's too late to alter anything. And I have stolen, I've cheated myself of eternal reward, honor, and distinction. And I'll be forever at the outer perimeter of the kingdom of God, away from the light and closer to the darkness and from any reward. I might not even be raised up in the day of his coming. Only those who are in Christ will wake from their sleep at his appearing. And those who are, what was that from last night? Those who are... Remain. Those who are barely surviving who are his, the rest sleep. And it says in Revelation 20, they sleep a thousand years. They miss the whole millennium, the whole foundation of the kingdom over creation. They have no part in it whatsoever, no pioneering participation. And when they awake a thousand years later for the great resurrection, they have to hold their hearts in their mouths that their names are going to be found in the book of life that is opened. Why should the book of life be taken out a thousand years later? Because there are those who are nominally Christian, saved, whose names are hopefully in the book, but were never qualified to rise with Christ at his appearing because they were not qualified to rule and reign with him as overcoming sons. They chose a lesser mode of Christian life and now have to suffer that consequence. I feel so much that what I'm about in the church is pleading with God's people, not to be internally embarrassed, let alone to suffer the anguish of irremediable loss. You cannot make it up after the day of eternity. It's this life. So enter his gates with thanksgiving for the privilege of it. And his courts with praise, give thanks unto him, bless his name, be thankful. The Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever and his faithfulness to all generations. Here's my daily devotional reading. Begins with Oswald Chambers. I won't go through all of it. We don't have time. What does he talk about on October 30th, but faith about until we know Jesus, God is a mere abstraction. We cannot have faith in him, but faith is the whole man rightly related to God by the power of the spirit of Jesus Christ. Faith is not the subscription to correct doctrine. Faith is a mode of being where the totality of man is given to the totality of God by the power of the spirit of God. It's a subject of the kingdom deferring to the sovereign king. It's the whole man in totality, mind, body, and soul. That's just a little note from his devotion for this day. This is Eugene Peterson, the same author that Mike quoted in his edition of the scripture, but he has a daily devotional also. Knowing to correct past words, saying master, master isn't going to get you anywhere with me. This is his paraphrase. What is required is serious obedience, doing what my father wills. Talk about leadership. Be wary of false preachers who smile a lot, dripping with practice, sincerity, their performance. Chances are they are out to rip you off some way or other. Don't be impressed with charisma. Look for character. Who preachers are is the main thing, not what they say. A genuine leader, so there must be leaders of ingenuine kinds, will never exploit your emotion. He'll never play upon it. There'll never be an altar call that is soulful, that is contrived to affect your response. He'll just trust the word. He'll bring the word that God has given him, the thought of the Lord, and that will bring the work of God. Father, those that have not yet been expressed, but that are in the hearts of these sons by God, who are covenanting with you afresh in a heightened, deeper seriousness than they have ever known, that will affect all their future. A covenant, my God, to go on for the kingdom of God, whatever the cost, whatever the requirement, whatever the sacrifice, whatever the misunderstanding, not to fall short of the kingdom or its glory. And so I bless these men. I bless this resolution, Lord. I bless this covenant of agreement that will transform this Saturday morning gathering to be foundational, my God, for the whole community, that something will rise from this resurrection, splendor, grandeur, weight, significance that will affect much, not only for the locality, but beyond it, even for the lost sheep of the house of Israel who have no cognizance that there are men meeting in a basement kitchen, but will affect even their lives unto salvation and restore to you a remnant that releases your own being contained in heaven to be their king, that your rule might go forth over all creation, let alone Canada. So we bless you, Lord, for the significance of this morning. Your heart, your jealousy taught us the appointment, my God. And we thank you, your initiative in coming to us by word and spirit. We thank you for your brooding, jealous love that will not let us go. Hear our yea and our amen. We affirm your word. We receive it, my God, as a call. Let men here even sense and experience personal call in the things that have been positional till now, and now will be activated, that you'll have again in the earth, evangelists, pastors, teachers, prophets, and apostles who are willing, my God, for the cost of it, and will again bring the glory of the church as it was known at the first. Let this have a significance beyond what we can even estimate this morning. Put a holy seal on it, Lord, and bring forth in full from the investment of your love toward us through your word and spirit this morning, and this day, at this time, in Yeshua's holy name we pray. Amen. Amen. Lead us on, Lord. Lead us on. We need the Lord to lead us on. Thank you, Lord. Do you know that song? Ah, there's a song about the Lord lead me on or something. Do you know a song like that? Do you know a song with those words? No? Okay, I don't know. How about that? He is Lord. He has risen from the dead. He has risen from the dead, and he is Lord. Every knee shall bow every tongue that Jesus Christ is Lord. He is Lord. He is Lord. He has risen from the dead, and he is Lord. Every knee shall bow every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. You my Lord. Good, that's good. Yes, you're my Lord. You're my Lord. You have risen from the dead, and you're my Lord. Thank you, Lord. And my knee shall bow, and my tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Thank you, Lord. We want to go on with you, Lord. Lord, we want to go on. Lord, Lord, we confess the sins of the past, and I confess, Lord, allowing my own weariness, Lord, to hold me back, Lord, and to not go on, Lord. But, Lord, we want to go on with you, Lord. Amen. Lord, we want to go on. Thank you, Lord. Thank you for the indestructible and endless life of God. Thank you for its infinite strength and power and ability, Lord, of what shall we need, my God, if you are our strength, you're our life, you're our wisdom, you're our utterance, you're our mercy, you're our compassion, you're our righteousness, you're our love. What a gift to man, God himself, in very truth, forgive us, Lord, that we have been satisfied with a shabby substitute, our own humanity, and sought to succeed on that basis. How pitiful. Thank you for the great enablement of your life, the great exchange, the freuleiche Wechsel, Luther said in German, the happy exchange. It is happy, Lord, glorious. And I ask, my God, the gift of faith for every son in this circle this morning, to appropriate that life, to believe that their baptism counted for that, and to desire that, and to take hold of it, and to walk and act in it, and to expect to see the reality. Thank you, my God. Let your resurrection life shine forth through all these vessels, in the fields of endeavor to which you have called them, even presently, that a new radiance, a new permeation of the life of God will come into those secular places, and transform them, and bring the light and luster of their kingdom into the earth. We bless them, Lord, and we thank you for the great provision which you yourself are, and we lay aside our shabby rags. We shall not attempt to continue to succeed on that pitiful basis. Thank you for the gift of life in Christ Jesus. Thank you, Lord. Hallelujah. Thank you, Lord. Precious enablement. There could not be better. Thank you, my God. We can overcome troops. We can leap over hedges. We can do all things through Christ Jesus who strengthens us. Thank you, my God. You're our wisdom. You're our redemption, our sanctification, our power. You're everything. To you be all praise and glory, now and forever. For all things are of you, from you, and to you, to whom be glory alone. Thank you, Lord. Oh, we bless your great name. Such a gift. Such a gift. Thank you, my God. You have poured out life for us. Thank you, my God. We might become the righteousness of God. Thank you, Lord. Hallelujah. Bless these men, Lord, as they take first steps altering the ship. Thank you, my God. They'll not be embarrassed. They'll not be sheepish. They'll not be men who are quick to criticize or condemn, but to encourage. Thank you, my God. As they move into the mode for which you have called us out of that no man's land. Thank you, my God. To encourage one another to walk in the reality of Christ. And to respect and to revere each brother as containing your divinity. Thank you, Lord. And give to the assemblage the structure appropriate to these men this time and in this place. We don't have to occupy ourselves with the details as if the issue is some architecture of arrangement, but that it will flow out of the reality and the content that you yourself have given in your life. It will find its expression. That's not the issue. The issue is the covenant, the commitment, the consecration, the reality, the life of God in your people. Thank you, Lord. Hallelujah. The Father will confess to the host above that we will take the land. Because the God who is God is seamless. He is one God. His judgments and his mercies are one thing. And the issue of the Holocaust, the deepest calamity of modern times, is a revelation of God as much as the cross. So, it's here. The few books that we have, I just want to encourage you not to let that pass while you have opportunity. We don't charge. We're not in business. We're not selling. But it's a sustenance for our life. And I don't know what the equivalent value would be. Ten Canadian dollars? Does that sound very reasonable? And if you want to be more generous still, that's a blessing for us. But don't miss the books. They'll help you. They'll be a blessing. And they're precious given of God. Hallelujah. Thank you, Lord.