In this sermon, the preacher discusses how God reveals his wrath against those who have turned away from the truth and embraced lies. He emphasizes that God has manifested himself and his eternal power through creation. The preacher also reflects on the concept of wood not being solid but rather a collection of atoms in constant motion, highlighting the complexity and design of the natural world. Ultimately, the wrath of God is not revealed through natural disasters or external forces, but rather through God giving people up to the consequences of their sinful actions.

Good morning to you all on this, let's see now, it depends how you look at it. It could be a threatening or it could be a thrilling Thursday, right? All depends on who you are and how you look at it. We had a sister in Cuba years ago and she, she was the kind of person that she never was glad unless she was sad, never was happy unless she was mad, she never was feeling well unless she was sick, and she always had something to tell you about her sad estate. So, got a little bit difficult to handle and I learned never to ask her, how are you? It was a fatal question. And then another thing I would, she would say to you, she would say to you, Usted no es capaz de imaginarse como yo tengo que sufrir. You haven't any idea how I suffer. So I thought, well now maybe she should understand a little bit how I suffer, you know. So I tried it on her one day, but it wasn't very effective. She, she always was ahead of me even in the suffering. So I just learned to avoid the question altogether. Now this morning I want to continue our morning subject of stewardship and we have considerable territory to cover yet. My wife says to me, if you wouldn't take so long in the introduction, you'd get to the heart of your message a lot quicker. Some of you said they'd like to meet my wife. Well, if you do, you get to meet the better part at any rate. I remember I went into Houston a number of years ago to a Spanish assembly there and there was an elderly gentleman and his wife there. They couldn't speak Spanish, but they had a great interest in starting Spanish work and if any of you know about that work now, there are several assemblies, Spanish speaking assemblies in the city of Houston and very large. The one when I went, it was just fairly small. They had started in his garage, I believe, this older gentleman and he used to go along to their meetings, so he didn't understand what it was all about. And afterwards I went down and he said, Brother Adams, I want you to meet my better half. And I said, certainly, delighted, you know. He said, just a minute, you know why I call her my better half? And I said, no. He said, because if you don't give them a specific amount, they'll take the whole thing. So, someday I'll introduce you to my five-eighths or my three-quarters. I'm not just sure exactly what it is or what she is. Let's turn to the Epistles of the Romans, Chapter 1. Now, that's a quantum leap. I know for some of you from Adam, where we were yesterday, and you're going to say to me now, why did you take this big jump? Are there no stewards from Adam to Romans, Chapter 1? Yes, certainly there are. There are a number of them. In fact, the first time the word steward is used is in Genesis, Chapter 15, when Abraham was speaking with the Lord, wanting a son and an heir. And he said, I don't have any heir except this steward of Damascus, one born in my house, he said. And I want my own son to be my heir, to be my steward, to dispense of my properties when I have gone. And that's the first time you hear the use of the word steward, or you see the use of the word steward in the Scriptures in the Old Testament. Now, we have it in the New Testament several times, as I expect all of you will know and wonder why I haven't got there yet. Well, there's a lot of territory between Genesis 15 and Romans, Chapter 1. I understand that. But nevertheless, that same territory is covered by Romans, Chapter 1. And I want to look at the subject of stewardship this morning in two aspects, two divisions. One is universal, and the other is national. So we look at the universal first. In fact, we're going to look at both of them from the same epistle to the Romans. Let's read in Chapter 1 of the epistle to the Romans. Paul says that verse that we all know so well in 16, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. Like that, don't you? That reminds you of John, Chapter 1. From grace to grace, continuously. So this comes out of faith, and it continues to go unto faith, from faith to faith. It's a continuous thing. As it is written, the just shall live by faith. You'll recall that that verse is quoted for us from the Old Testament in Habakkuk, three times in the New Testament. Romans, Galatians, and the epistle to the Hebrews, Chapter 10. Verse 18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. Notice that expression. Who hold. Some have translated this retain or keep down the truth in unrighteousness. Now, they did have truth, you can see, but they're holding that truth down in unrighteousness because that which may be known of God is manifest in them or amongst them, for God hath showed or manifested the truth unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but they became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and they changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Now, that'll take you back to Genesis, Chapter 1, won't it? Where we're noticing Adam's relationship to the creation, and to God, and finally to his companion. Verse 24, Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lust of their own heart, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves, who changed the truth of God, and notice, please, the connection in which he says they changed the truth of God into a lie, that's the truth they had known, as we've already noticed, and worshipped and served the creature more than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this cause, God gave them up into vile affections. This is the fruit, now, of changing the truth of God, and abandoning that which they knew. For even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature, and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the women, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men, working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meat. That reminds me of the fact that I was speaking in the Gospel one time on John, Chapter 8, and there was a younger brother who was accompanying me, and he came to me afterwards, and he said, Mr. Adams, do you really believe that you should preach from John, Chapter 8, in a public service? And I said, oh, yes, absolutely. Well, he said, I understood, and I was told we should never preach from John, Chapter 8, in a public service. Well, it made me think of the time that I was told that you should not read 1 Corinthians, Chapter 7, in a public service, or in this section of Chapter 1 of Romans. So I took them back to the days of Ezra, when the people were gathered together, and they read the whole law, the whole law, in the presence, and it says, of men, women, and children. And I said, the only thing that I haven't come across yet in my New Testament is the appendage, the explanation later on, at the close of the book, now, these things are to be read in churches, or in public, except Romans, Chapter 1, and 1 Corinthians, Chapter 7. And, of course, it sounds ridiculous when you say it like that. Nevertheless, I was raised in an assembly when, in our conversational Bible study, when we went through 1 Corinthians and cut to Chapter 6, at the end of Chapter 6, they always took that quantum leap and landed in Chapter 8, and never would study or publicly speak of Chapter 7. Now, I believe that, in my early days, was the product of an atmosphere, an ambience, that we were raised in when certain things were not discussed, even Biblical things. But, if you look at what I've quoted to you from the days of Ezra, from the book of Leviticus, and also the reading of the Scriptures in the New Testament, you will understand that is not a true position. There are no impositions put upon the reading of Scripture, especially to the saints, in public, or any sections of them. Nevertheless, we do that at times, which is most unfortunate, I judge. All right, verse 28 says, And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, you see, they had a knowledge of God, but they didn't want to keep that, retain that knowledge, God gave them over to a retrograde mind to do those things which are not convenient, being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whispers, backbiters, haters of God, spiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful, who, knowing the judgment of God that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. Now, this paragraph from verse 18 on to the close of chapter 1, I want to name it a universal stewardship, and we have already learned in our study, if but briefly, that a stewardship is when the property of one is committed to another whose property it is not, and authority is given for the administration by this steward of that which is not his own. And you have some parables, as you know, Matthew chapter 20, Luke chapter 19, and others, Luke chapter 16, that speak of stewards in that capacity. A steward is one who has received authority to administrate something, some property, some goods, some kind of investment that belongs to somebody else. And that's why Paul says, in connection with the mysteries, as we may have opportunity to see in 1 Corinthians chapter 4, that it is required of a steward, regardless of what the deposit is, regardless of what the trust is composed of, it is required of a steward that a man be found faithful. He is handling the property of another. So, I want you to look at this from that light, because I think the understanding of the passage is in keeping with that. So, Paul says, in verse 18, "...the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men." I recall the first time I noticed that this is not what I thought it was. This is not a dramatic, disastrous display of God's wrath in a visible form. But, when we read words like these, "...the wrath of God is revealed from heaven," you're thinking of a lightning flash. You think of an earthquake, such as they just had in Kobe, in Japan, or such as many of the recent earthquakes that have been experienced. Floods, disasters, things like that. I used to think that that's exactly what it must be when it says, "...the wrath of God is revealed from heaven." And then, when you read down through the whole passage, you say, well, that's not the meaning of it at all. He's not talking about cosmological, he's not talking about earthly, physical, natural disasters. He's talking about the wrath of God being revealed against men who have given up the truth, adhered to the lie, and taking pleasure in all the vices that now the lie reveals and permits in practice. And, the wrath of God is revealed from those who do these things by God giving them up. Now, it took me a while to see that. In fact, it generally takes me a long while to see anything very much. And, he says, this isn't a lightning flash, this isn't a tremendous volcanic eruption, this isn't an invading armies of the pagans, this isn't an earthquake that reveals the wrath of God. What is it that reveals the wrath of God? Him saying, if this is the way you insist on going, then just go. So, once it says he gave them up, and the next time it says he gave them over. He gave them up to what they were doing, and he gave them over to the results of what they were doing. That was the measure of the revelation of the wrath of God. Now, then he goes on to say this. They hold the truth in unrighteousness, because that which may be known of God is manifest to them, for God has showed or manifested it unto them. Here is truth that has been committed, that has been entrusted, that has been displayed to mankind. I judge this is the stewardship from the days we're looking at, the early days, the fall, right to the close. This is a long period of stewardship. God had deposited in them, he had given them a treasure, he had made known to them things about himself that were invisible but very real, because they had said, and was it? Yes, it was Bertrand Russell, I believe, who said, if after I die and go over there and I meet God, I'm going to tell him, or I'm going to ask him, why did he not give us more evidence of himself? Why did he not give us more evidence of what he does and who he is? Well, I judge he never read Romans 1, if he said such a thing, which he is reputed to have said. He's going to inquire, he's going to ask God, why didn't you make yourself known more clearly, more evidently than you did? Why didn't you show us some proof of your being, of your person, of your presence? That's what the philosopher is going to ask God, said he, when he should meet him. But listen to what it says here. It says here very clearly, that that which may be known of God, verse 18, is manifested amongst them, for God has showed or manifested it unto them. Now, there's a direct statement that God has made himself known. He has manifested himself to mankind, and this is the way he has done it, and it still stands from Genesis chapter 3 to Romans chapter 1. How has he done it? Verse 20, The invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen. The invisible is clearly seen by that which is made visible. And then he goes on to detail exactly what that was. He says it is seen from the creation of the world, and that which is seen being understood by the things that are made, and then notice this, even his eternal power and divine nature. Now, we speak about partial revelations of God. We speak about intermittent views or glimpses of God. Here the apostle writing by the Spirit says, this is a clear, clear manifestation of God. It is something to be seen that reveals something which could not be seen. The invisible God reveals himself by what he has done, by what he has made. Long before papyrus was invented, or books were written, or transcripts were made, or manuscripts and so on, God wrote the first book himself, and he wrote it in the creation. That which is above us, and that which is around us. And this is one clear revelation, says the writer, of God, and of a twofold manifestation of God. First of all, his eternal power. That's the first thing that is seen. And isn't it tragic that men who are discovering constantly some of the hitherto unknown characteristics of the universe in which we live, the precision, the immensity of it, wait till they get another telescope after the Hubble is outdated, and we go on and on and on, and these astronomers who tell us that there is no limit, seemingly, to the ever-constant outward motion of the universe which is ever-expanding, they tell us. And I recall reading when I was a teenager, it was written in one of those old books where all the S's were F's, you remember? Nobody nodded their head. Nobody remembers when all the S's were F's. Well, this is an old book I got out of the library in my lunch hour, and I used to read it, and I think it was a man by the name of Arthur Whitehead, something similar to that, and he visualized man being taken on a tour, an exploratory tour by one of the angels, and they're traveling through space. Now, this is way back, you know, when the S's were F's. And he's taking them on through the universe, and they pass star after star after star long before they knew what galaxies were, long before they ever dreamt of seeing that there are more than a million galaxies, and that our Milky Way is just merely a galaxy, and long before they told us, the astronomers, that the sun is just a spotted, spotty little star in the backwaters in an insignificant position of one of the smaller galaxies – doesn't that make you feel important? – of the universe, long before they knew how to say that. Well, the angel is conducting this man on this voyage into the universe, and finally he was so overcome, he says to the angel, And is there none to the universe of God? And the angel answers, supposedly, Yea, and rather, there's no beginning. In other words, what he is saying is, it is limitless, and that's what we're being told now by the astronomers as they keep on reaching farther and farther out into space. We look at this, what do we see? A manifestation of God. A revelation of God. And the first thing that we're to understand by this is His eternal power. The psalmist must have felt awed, and perhaps dismayed, certainly confounded and confused, when perched on one of the hills of Judea, keeping watch over his father's sheep by night, he contemplated this book of creation, this manifestation of the unseen, this revelation of the invisible, and he queries, and he gives us that wonderful passage in Psalm 8 that is repeated in Hebrews chapter 2, What is man? What is he? Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels. Thou hast crowned him with glory and honor. Isn't that a remarkable statement to say? Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. And what is he saying? He's saying what Paul writes here to the Romans, and he says, God has revealed Himself and His eternal power, the majesty of His being, and all the laws and all the components of the creation. I remember the first time I was kind of baffled, you know, by discovering that wood isn't wood, really. I mean, it's not solid. It's not solid. It's just a bunch of atoms in constant motion, and neutrons and protons and so on, and they're revolving constantly. And I used to look at wood and say, now that's solid. And the physicist says to me, no, you're mistaken. That's not solid at all. That's just something. And I said, how am I going to understand that? Well, you look at it, and you say it's solid. I think one of the explanations I read was a boy with a bicycle, and he has the spokes of his wheel have bits of paper, whatever it is, wrapped to it. Now, of course, they've got them solid. I've seen that in erasers. But anyway, and he puts several strips of colored paper in the spokes of his wheel, and as he drives along slowly, you can see all these strips. But then he gets faster and faster, and he gets going so fast that you can't see the individual strips. All you see is what looks like a solid blank, a solid mass of color. And you know it's not a mass at all. You know it's not solid. It's merely a whole bunch of strips of colored paper in motion. Well, says he to me. Now, look. You look at that, and you say, it's solid. That's not solid. That's just atoms constantly moving. And then, and then I read too, you see that not only are these atoms, so-called, in constant motion, and I say, well, who understood that? They said, well, we believe and we practice fission, you know. We explode them. Well, we explode them. Of course, we get atomic bomb or hydrogen bomb, whatever. And that's when we can explode them. And they say, that's fission. Well, then, I say, now, just a minute. Who put them all together in the first place? Well, they call that fusion, you see. And what are these atoms? They tell me it's energy. That's all it is? I thought it was wood. They say, no, that's not wood. That's a lot of atoms of energy in motion. And I said, where did the energy come from? And they say to me, you'd better read Colossians 1 over again. So I go back and read Colossians 1 over again. And I read, "...in Him were created all things." Not by. That's not the first preposition. There are three there. The first preposition is, "...in Him were all things created. Without Him was not anything made that was made." This energy, where did this energy come from in the universe? It's like the girl who said, looking at all the skyscrapers. Now, this was in the city of Houston, too. She's looking at all the skyscrapers. There they go, towering up into the sky. And she said, they'd better not build anymore. Why? Because the weight's going to get so much that the earth will sink under it. And then somebody asked her, well, but where did the cement come from that they built these buildings with and the steel? You mean they went out and brought it in from Venus? Or wasn't it here in the first place? Well, have they added anything to the weight of the earth because they built some things vertical? It was all there anyway in the first place, wasn't it? Sure, the weight was all here. They just used it and changed it into another form. Where did the energy come from that has made the universe what it is, that has fused all these atoms? It's all energy, and if you can explode it, that's what it's going to go into, and there won't be any matter. There'll just be energy. Well, it was all in Him. In Him were created all these things. And think of the eternal power that was resident in the person that we know as our Lord Jesus Christ. That He took this energy, which came from Himself, and He fused it, and He made atoms. He made what we call material, but it's just energy in motion. Some people are built that way, by the way, you know. You can't keep them still. They're constantly energy in motion. I'm not sure what kind of atoms they're formed of, but anyway, that's what the world's made of. And says Paul here, here was a stewardship that was imposed, that was entrusted to mankind. It was the knowledge of God's eternal power. But that's only half the story. Here's the other half, as it says here. His divine nature. His divine nature. When you look, when I look, when we look at the creation in which we live, can we see anything of God's nature in it? Yes. It's right there to be seen. I have some neighbors up home, some friends of ours, believers, and the lady was telling us one day, not long ago, she said, you know, it was a cold, blustery, one of those not good nights at all. You know, not one of, this is the days, you know, not one of those. And she said, I heard a noise at the back door, and I went to the back door, and here's a cat. And it's not our cat, I don't know where it came from. And it's meowing pitifully there. So I opened the door and let it in. And it came in and arched its back, you know how cats do, and looked all around and settled for a little bit. And she thought, well, I'll just leave it in the back porch a while, and then it'll go away when the weather gets a little better. So I went and got a box, a cardboard box, and I put it on the floor, put a little rag in it, and the cat hopped in to the box and to the rag and settled down quite nicely and purred away for a while. And then she said to get up and went to the back door and started to meow. And she said, I just let you in out of the weather, now why do you want out again? But it was very insistent. This cat could be, can be, we have one at home. I learned I'd never seen a cat and a dog if you give a dog a kind attention and you love it and you stroke it and you pat it and you feed it and so forth. And after it's nice and happily contented, it lies there on the floor and it looks at you and it says, he must be a god. But if you have a cat, and we have, and you give the same kind of attention to a cat and you love it and you pet it and you feed it and so forth, and after you've done it, it walks away and starts pruning itself and says, I must be a god. Yeah, they tell me that's the difference between a dog and a cat. Well, the cat went to the back door and it started to cry. So the lady says, I know what you want out for. But she opened the door and let it out. Away it went. She didn't know where. And after a while, she said, I heard it meowing again at the back door. And she says, I thought you wouldn't stand alone out there. So she went and opened the door and here it's standing there with a kitten in its mouth. So she said, Oh. And it came along and it deposited the kitten in the box. Then it went to the back door again. And it started to cry to get out. You know what it was doing, don't you? Disappeared. Came back with another one. When it came back with another kitten, it decided, this isn't a very good place. There's a lot of traffic here. So, there was another door leading downstairs to the cellar to the basement there. So she said, it went to that door and cried. So it opened that door and down it went. The cat went downstairs and it wasn't gone very long before it came running back up again, picked up the first kitten and took it downstairs. It came back up and picked up the second kitten and took it downstairs. Then it went to the back door again. And it's gone. It wasn't long before she heard it again. And the process went on until she had five kittens in the box which she'd taken out of the back porch and put it down in the basement. And she said, you know, I just couldn't hardly believe my eyes. She said, when I saw the care that this cat had for its little kitten, it wasn't even content to leave them in the back porch because there's too much traffic there. So it took it, put them all down in the basement and raised them all in the basement. You know what that is? It's a display of His divine nature in creation. Who put it into the heart of a cat to go to all that trouble to look after its kittens? Tell me, where did that come from? What Paul is saying here, it's not only His eternal power that you can see in the creation, you can see His divine nature. Who is God? He is God that in addition to the immensity of His power out there has a heart that cares, that preserves, that watches over, that feels for the needy and the small and the insignificant. We look out through the telescope and we see His eternal power. We look down through the microscope and we see His divine nature. That's the stewardship of the truth, Paul says here, in connection with God's display of Himself. And you watch the animal world, watch the birds around here and even that one that's bothering our good brethren, I see, the one that's using his head all the time and drilling holes in poles and houses. You look at these little things and you see past the creature, you see the heart of the Creator. My friends, God is love, as well as God is light, God is tenderness, as well as He is the God of power. And Paul said they knew that, they knew that, but they refused to believe in that, and they took the truth, the stewardship of the truth that God had given to them and they turned it into a lie. And they reduced the stature of the Almighty God and they brought Him down to the likeness of His creature. And they actually worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator. What were the consequences of that? The consequences of that were, instead of looking out and seeing God in His divine nature, as well as in His eternal power, all they concentrated their interest on was that which was made. And they worshipped themselves and they fell into the corruption and the result of that failed stewardship was we have the vile world in which we're living today. Why when we see such explanations or such details given to us here about homosexuality, about sexual perversion, that you read in detail over in the book of Leviticus. Why do we see that around us today? Because this country, our countries were founded on the Judeo-Christian faith for the knowledge of God. And I haven't been living very long yet. Not nearly as long as some of you. Please keep that in mind, won't you? But I can remember when the Lord's Day, in obedience to the constitutional act which is called the Lord's Act, everything was quiet and everything was subdued and none of the stores were open and there was no joyriding and there was no display of sports and all that kind of thing. My young days, I remember that. We used to walk twelve miles at least to our services on Sundays. Never thought we were hard done boys. Never thought at all. Back and forth, back and forth, four times a day, two miles each way. And that's how we went all the time. And to take the car out and go for a little bit of a ride was a tremendous obstacle to overcome. Now, what do we have? Divergent interests, the means to indulge them with the result that the Lord's Day, and I'm not sure what your constitution says here, but in Canada it's called the Lord's Day Act, becomes a time of frivolity, of sin, of pleasure, of corruption and perversion. Why? Because having left the truth of the revelation of God which He gave to us, and even in the foundations and the constitution of our countries, having left that, we've gone into the vile state that we see detailed for us here in Romans chapter 1, and we see displayed for us all around us every day. It was a failed stewardship. That which was universal. Now turn to chapter 9 please, and I'm going to take a quick run into chapter 9, and just look briefly at a stewardship that was national. A stewardship that is national. Chapter 9 of Romans. The world having had corrupted itself, you recall, in the days of Noah, then God brought the flood upon the face of the ground. And all that perversion momentarily was ceased, though it grew again. Paul says in chapter 9 that there was such a thing as a national stewardship. The first one from chapter 1 was universal. This one is national. He says in verse 1, I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed or separated from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites. Now we're going to speak about a specific body of people, a national stewardship, to whom pertains the adoption or the sonship. We don't have time to go into some of these things in detail, but then nevertheless, let's just notice them briefly as we read them, one after the other. The first thing he says, these who are Israelites, they received the adoption or the sonship. Now that will take you back to Exodus chapter 3, when God met Moses in the wilderness and he displayed something of himself, something of his nation, something of the church even as well, but that's projecting it away ahead. And he saw this thorn bush burning in the wilderness. And as he saw this mystery, because it did not burn up, it was not consumed or destroyed, it just kept burning, he drew near to see it. And the Lord spoke to him out of the bush. And he who spoke to him out of the bush, please remember, said himself that his name was I Am. Because Moses, having received the commission to go into Egypt, what was the commission, by the way? The commission was this, Let my son go. There's the adoption. Let my son go. God had made a covenant with Abraham, as you know. God had made a covenant with Isaac. God had made a covenant with Jacob. In fact, he goes so far as the epistles of the Hebrews tells us that he wasn't ashamed to take upon himself a surname which was the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. It's just not too long ago in performing some marriages, which I have to do every now and then, and then wait long enough, and live long enough, and bury someone, and make them married. At any rate, that wasn't my fault. I noticed in the license application that we were filling out, a section that I had never seen in all the years I'd been performing marriages. I'd never seen it, but I noticed that if the bride wishes to retain her own surname, please fill out the following section. I said, what's this? I never saw this in a marriage license before. Oh, the bride now may not want to assume her husband's surname. So, instead of being Mary Brown White, she can stay Mary Brown Black as she wants. Well, this was an innovation. I never saw this before. And it reminded me of the fact that God said he was not ashamed to be surnamed by calling himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. All right. Having done that, now we move on to the national relationship. And we come to the days of Moses, as already mentioned, and we discover that God is going to give them the adoption nationally. Individually, in family way, they had been given the relationship with God by covenant, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now, he's going to send Moses down into Egypt. He's going to tell them when they ask you, as you say, who sent you? You'll say, the I Am sent me. Well, they won't believe me. Who will I say? Tell them that the I Am that I Am, if you want a development of the title, says God, tell them the I Am that I Am sent you. And don't say, I Am what I was not. And don't say, the I Am which shall be what I am not. No. Just tell them the I Am that I Am. For I always was the I Am. I am, and I always will be the I Am. But when you get down to talk to Pharaoh, say to Pharaoh, Thus says Jehovah, Let my son go. There's the adoption now that Paul talks about here being introduced. And it's going to be a national adoption. God has chosen a people nationally for himself. And I worked with a Scottish girl one time. I shouldn't have said Scottish, should I? I can't believe in racial discrimination, can I? Well, anyway, I worked with her one time in a large factory. And she said, I think it's totally unfair that God should have chosen the Jews. No. Whom should he have chosen? You know, of course. Who else? But anyway, I said, well, why do you think it's so unfair? Well, she says, Aren't we just as good? I said, it wasn't a question of being good, you know. God made man in the first place. A man corrupted himself so sadly and so badly that he sent the flood and destroyed them all. And it says about them, what is not said about anything else, that God repented. He was sorry he had made the man. If you understand that, tell me what it means. It repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth. He never repented of making a lion or a tiger, a hippopotamus or a warthog. But it did repent him that he had made a man on the earth. Here's the one that we were looking at the other day, who was made in the image of God and in the likeness of God. And now, God says it repents. I am repented that I ever made him on the earth. I want to destroy him. So what did he do? He destroyed him with the flood. And then what happened? He started all over again. And what happened? They went into Romans chapter 1. They corrupted themselves again. They fell into misery and the mire and the morass of human corruption again. So what does God do now? He chose a man in the first place, Adam. He chose a man in the second place, Noah. So he's going to start all over again. But he said, I won't deal with the flood, but I'll choose another man. So he chose Abraham. And he said, I'm going to make a great nation of you. What's wrong with that? What's unjust about that? Well, the girl wasn't sure. But she still thought that north of the Pics and Scots line there were far better people in the highlands than there ever were all the way down in the plain of Shinar. So, he should have chosen another. But it pleased God to choose another man. This is the third time he's done this. And out of this man, he's going to develop a nation and he's going to call that nation his son. And by the way, I mentioned to you the other day and I didn't clarify it, but that's not the first time I've made that mistake. I'm making it all the time. Remember I said to you that we were taught that Scripture had one interpretation and many applications? I was taught that and drilled into me with a jackhammer until I didn't believe anything else. Scripture only has one interpretation and it has multiple applications. That's not true! Even if I did believe it for 40 years. Because why? Because the Spirit of God interprets the same passage in multiple ways sometimes. There isn't only one interpretation to any given passage of Scripture. We must leave the Spirit of God free to interpret a passage as He wishes. We can't put any restrictions on Him. That's what you're doing. We're just putting restrictions on the Spirit of God, He who wrote the book. Now we say, now you've said that. Now, you can't make it mean anything else but that. You can't do that, you see. You just can't do it. Joel chapter 2 is the prophecy concerning the day of the Lord. But Peter interprets it in Acts 2 as the coming of the Holy Spirit. Hosea chapter 11 God, referring to Israel, says, Out of Egypt have I called my son. The Gospel by Matthew interprets that passage to mean that the Lord Himself unabated was carried down into Egypt so that the Scripture might be fulfilled which said, Out of Egypt have I called my son. Isn't that two interpretations for the same passage? Why do we say Scripture only has one interpretation and multiple applications? So, when we come to this passage, God said to Pharaoh, Let my son go that he may serve me in the wilderness. And Pharaoh says, I won't let him go. You know the result of that. They got the adoption. That's the first thing they got. What else was their stewardship? They got the glory. And what was the glory? The visible presence of God amongst them. Not only in the pillar cloud, over the tabernacles, but the Shekinah. We were talking about the other day. Beneath the wings of the Cherubim and over the top of the ark, over the propitiatory. They had the glory of the presence of God given to them. That was part of their stewardship. What else did they have? They had the covenants. Notice the plural. There was more than one covenant. There were various covenants that God made with the nation of Israel. This was a part of their stewardship. And what else were they given? They were given the law. And they were given the service of God. And they were given the promises. And they were given the fathers. And finally, they were given the Christ. What is not mentioned here, but is mentioned somewhere else, is maybe the two main features are the law and the land. God gave them both. He gave them the law. That series of statutes and judgments and covenants that God made with them that no other nation in the world ever received. That was their stewardship. And in addition to that, He gave them the land. And He's called it to this day, My land. My land. So, the land of Israel, with the boundaries given to Abraham in Genesis chapter 15, way to the other side of the nation of Iraq, from the north to the south to the river of Egypt, God promised it all to Abraham. That was part of the stewardship. So, they've got the law. They've got the land. They've got the adoption. They've got the glory. They've got the fathers. And it's all been entrusted to them. And finally, they've got the Messiah who came after the flesh of the seed of Abraham. Could there be a greater, a higher, a more sublime stewardship than this? This national stewardship that Israel enjoys? And what happened? Another failed stewardship. Another failed trust. And the nation lost it all. They lost it all. They lost the effect of the law in their midst. They lost the visible evidence of the sonship. The glory is gone. The covenants have been forgotten. The Christ who came, the Messiah who was given to them, was rejected. And as a result, what? The law and the land and the Lord have lost it all, haven't they? And what a sad story of thousands of years. Kneaded as the dough for the bread, kneeded with tears and suffering and blood and sorrow. And when they rejected the Messiah whom God gave to them, then from then on, it was the wandering foot of the afflicted Jew. The stewardship was violated. The land was lost. The law was forgotten. And the Messiah is gone. And that sad story we are seeing fulfilled around us even today. But God is faithful. He will fulfill His covenant with this people. And this national stewardship will come into play because of the faithfulness of Him who was Israel's highest glory. He was the Christ Himself. And everything is secure for Israel in Him as it is secure for us, as it is secure for the world yet to come in the Messiah, in the Christ, the faithful steward in all things. Shall we pray? Our Father, we thank Thee this morning for Him who is the source of our peace, our consolation, and our confidence. We rejoice that Thou has taken us out of self and placed us in the Savior, out of failure into faithfulness, out of despair to hope and gladness. We thank Thee He never fails. God is faithful by whom we are called unto the fellowship of His Son. Bless our hearts, bless Thy people and all the activities. We do pray as we commend us to Thee once more this morning in His name. Amen.