Preservation of truth

Shall we turn to 2 Kings, please? Chapter 4. Now, I know we're all fairly tired. It's the last meeting before supper. And I'll just, in the will of God and the help of God, give you what's on my heart for the next few minutes.

2 Kings, chapter 4. And we'll begin reading at verse number 38. And Elisha came again to Gilgal, and there was a dearth in the land. And the sons of the prophets were sitting before him.

And he said unto his servant, Set on the great pot, and seeth pottage, or boil pottage, for the sons of the prophets. And one went out into the field to gather herbs, and found a wild vine, and gathered thereof wild gourds, his lap full, and came and shred them into the pot of pottage. For they knew them not.

So they poured out for the men to eat. And it came to pass, as they were eating of the pottage, that they cried out and said, O thou man of God, there is death in the pot. And they could not eat thereof, but he said, Then bring meal.

And he cast it into the pot, and he said, Pour out for the people, that they may eat. And there was no harm in the pot. And there came a man from Baal-shal-lishah, and brought the man of God bread for their first fruits, twenty loaves of barley, and four ears of corn in the husk thereof.

And he said, Give unto the people, that they may eat. And his servitor said, What shall I set before a hundred men? He said again, Give people, that they may eat. For thus saith the Lord, They shall eat, and shall leave thereof.

So he set it before them, and they did eat, and left thereof according to the word of the Lord. Now the Lord blessed the reading of his word, and what we've been listening to this afternoon. I certainly have been challenged by the word of God, and appreciate my brethren who have ministered the word of God very effectively.

And it's also very nice to be back to the Blue River Conference, and to see many of the Christians again. Now I'm sure if he would have read all of chapter 4 of 2 Kings, would realize that Elisha had the answer for all the problems that were in this chapter. He had the answer for the widow's debt, and he had the answer for the widow's dead son, and he also has the answer for the death or the dearth in the land.

Now Elisha was certainly a man of God, I think it refers to him nine times. And if I'm not mistaken, over 70 times in our Old Testament the term man of God occurs. And once in our New Testament.

Certainly these were men who had the character and conduct and courage in a day of declension and departure. And for the most part in the Northern Kingdom, the Levites had been removed, and so therefore the people refused to be governed by the word of God. God then raised up prophets, and most of them are in the Northern Kingdom, to bring the people back to God.

And these were remarkable men, because their character and their conduct and their courage should have been like those in the nation itself. But the nation had turned from God. And this is likely one of the reasons why there was dearth in the land in 2 Kings chapter 4. Usually God sent a dearth because he was going to discipline them because of their departure from God and their turning to idolatry.

And one of the wickedest forms of idolatry was Baalism, which was reintroduced by Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, king of Israel. It was a disgusting vile and a very immoral form of sensual worship. And so God's prophets were raised up to stem this tide of wickedness in Israel.

And you will recall that Elijah initially was raised up to bring the people back to God in 1 Kings chapter 17, which one of our brethren referred to this afternoon. But I want to get on to my point here, and I'm sure you all will agree that in our land, and I'm speaking first of all my country, Canada, our country is in a spiritual dearth. There is a tremendous departure from God, very little of the fear of God, and increasing immoral living and also ungodliness.

I can look back 50 years in my life when that was not so. In the large Protestant denomination in which I was raised, in which there was no gospel preached, but at least the word of God was opened on the pulpit, and at least they had a fear of God about them. And they respected the word of God, respected Christ, etc.

But after 50 years, that is not so today. And I'm sure that in some measure, that is true in the United States as well. However, I will say this.

I believe that the measure of the fear of God in the United States, and that is seen in some measure in the political leaders, which you don't see in Canada at all. You never hear them talking about God or Christ or any reference to the word of God, sad to say. But I do thank God for some of your political leaders and others who will mention God and have respect for God.

And I believe the measure of decline in various countries of the world has been hindered because of maybe the moral standards that the U.S. may profess and do carry out today. And I thank God for that. If that's been removed, then everything will fall to tremendous degradation and shame.

But I'm going to think a bit further than this, and I'm thinking about those of us... Well, I should back up. When I was amongst the evangelical circles a number of years ago before I came into the Assembly, and when there was a movement about probably 40 years ago, which was called the Neo-Evangelical Movement, which was a neutral movement, a middle path movement that encouraged professing Christians to compromise and to surrender biblical principles and precepts so that they could get along together and forget about doctrine. Now, that was 40 years ago, and I had been saved only a few years, but I remember amongst the group that I was associated with, which was a non-denominational gathering of Christians.

We weren't very large, but we could see that this particular movement that was beginning to take place back then 40 years ago would be a movement that would be disastrous. And as I look back now, that was so. And the man who sort of took a strong stand against this, which many evangelical leaders then didn't take a stand against and went along with it, created more problems and difficulties.

And that's why we're moving towards an ecumenical religious system. But I'm going to leave that because I want to move to our realm, to us who are professing Christians today, because I believe that there is a spiritual dearth amongst us as well, even as there are amongst professing Christians outside of our circle today. And we respect those who have a measure of the fear of God about them and who want to honor the word of God in light of what they have been taught and have seen from the word of God.

We thank God for this. And had it not been for godly men who came into my life and my wife's life, I would never be here today, nor in the assembly of God. But because men took time to open the word of God up to me and to show me things relative to the assembly of God that our brother Stanley Wells has brought before us, it made me take stock of my life and to begin to see, well, in what measure in my life am I compromising and denying and disobeying the word of God? And since I've been amongst the assemblies of God now since 1970, I can see a major departure amongst us as well.

When we're willing to surrender principles that are very valuable to us in reference to being gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and to hold to that pattern tenaciously, I see there's a weakening amongst us so that we want to compromise so that we don't look different and behave differently and we become dissatisfied with what we may say the old paths that Jeremiah referred to to his people in his day when he said, Stand ye in the ways and see and ask for the old paths where is a good way and walk therein and you shall find rest unto your souls. But their response was, we shall not walk therein. And I'm afraid that there may be some amongst us even today who are thinking that way.

And you're willing to compromise, you're willing to surrender because you're not satisfied with the assembly of God because you've been looking outside the sphere of the local assembly and seeing what people are doing there. And maybe you're reading books that are encouraging you to do so as well. And maybe you have friends that are encouraging you to move along a more open line of things.

And that compromise will only spell disaster. And that certainly will not promote spirituality. Let me say that.

And you ought to value today the assembly of God because you'll find nothing better. Granted, we as Christians could be a lot more godly and including myself today because I hope I came to this conference with enough open-heartedness to allow God to speak to me that I may be refreshed and renewed and restored to serve the Lord Christ more faithfully in the sphere where God has placed me and as well as placed you. But I believe we are aping the world and we are catering to the world value systems.

And I'm going to speak quite candidly and frankly but I'm speaking from my heart as well to try to help young believers in particular and maybe older believers who are tending to let slip some of the convictions that you once had. I can think of a sister today and when her husband died she changed her convictions and I wondered, well, what did you really believe in the first place? And though she's still in the assembly a lot of her values that I thought were very precious to her were not as precious as I thought they were. But you see, I say that but yet the hand points back to me.

What about me in a coming day? What will I surrender? What will I do in reference to the Word of God? Will I compromise to suit those in my family? Because blood runs thicker than water, doesn't it? And when troubles come in our family then that will test us as to how much I'm going to obey the Word of God or will I yield to my family my sons or daughters or daughters-in-law or whatever it may be. Or will I have enough spiritual conviction in my soul to honor the Word of God? Because that's what's going to count, isn't it? If there's any measure of spirituality about me or you today you're going to hold and you're going to stick against whatever storm that may come into your life. But I want to speak to young people today because I think that by some of your appearance that you are surrendering some of those convictions and maybe the way that you are looking and your appearance that you could fit in quite nicely with those outside the assembly of God.

I don't mean me hard on you but after all we are being very careless because I think sometimes glamour is more important than godliness. That you're spending too much time in the wrong book rather than spending time in this book. And I'm going to say this though I don't know much about it.

Facebook, which has to do with the computer where a lot of pictures are placed on there and if you know a friend then you can get into that particular site and see those pictures. While I've been able through somebody to see some of those I find it rather deploring disgraceful that Christians in God's assembly would dress like that. They wouldn't probably dress like that when they come to the assembly meetings but outside the assembly meetings it's a totally different thing and some of the language that I read is what the ungodly sometimes would even say.

And I'm not just talking off the top of my head those are facts. And can I go a little bit further? I think that our Christian weddings today lack a lot more godliness. There's far too much flesh being exposed and if I was to show some of those pictures to some of the Mennonite people that I know they would be deplored that they could ever profess to be a Christian even though they themselves are not Christian but their culture wouldn't even allow such a thing.

They're very modest people. But where has our modesty gone, young people? Maybe older people as well. We're failing in this.

Where are our convictions? And what about long hair? Are you willing to forgo that and to compromise to be like those of your peers or those outside the assembly? Because that's just simply indicating something is wrong. There's something missing. And I believe what's missing is spirituality.

And if spirituality is missing then Christ-likeness is missing. And when that's missing then no wonder there's going to be spiritual dearth in our souls, in our homes, in our assemblies. And it's on the move.

We can feel it. We can sense it. And I sense it from my brother who was speaking from his heart today about what he's concerned about and what I'm concerned about as well.

Maybe we're more interested in quantity than quality. But we need we'd like to have more people in our assemblies. But just to have numbers for the sake of numbers and let other things slip is not going to work to say the least.

So, I'm just saying today there is a dearth in our land. There's a dearth coming in our assemblies. And I'm sure that you would agree with me.

And I think we can do something about it. And young people, you can do something about it. I want to encourage you to be a godly young woman and a godly young man.

That you will take time to consider what the Lord wants from your life. And who he would have you associated in your life as a partner for life. Because marriages are falling to pieces amongst us at an alarming rate that should never ever be.

But they're happening amongst young people in particular. There's something missing. And you know what it is.

And only you can do something about it. And maybe this conference will be the means of you getting restored to God. And get into this Facebook.

And spend time there. Because that's the only thing that's going to change you. And the Spirit of God can't change you if you're not in this book.

Believe me. Make it the man of your counsel. And that will produce spirituality and will produce Christ-likeness.

Was that not the problem with Laodicea? Spiritual dearth? Because of lukewarmness? Because Jesus said, Thou sayest thou were rich and increased in goods and needed nothing. That's something with spiritual dearth. That's all they were interested in.

In materialism. Getting ahead. Prosperous.

But like the Sahara Desert, spiritually. And maybe, maybe that could be our problem. We're more interested in the temporal and the material than we are in this book.

And maybe we're lacking proper teaching from the Word of God. Maybe our Bible readings are lacking quality. And sometimes at a Bible reading, when I've gone, I think, Well, if I wasn't a Christian or if I wasn't in the Assembly of God and listening to that, I would not get much from that Bible reading.

Because as my one brother mentioned, going from Dan to Bathsheba, you never got the sense from the Word of God. Now, we condemn Bible schools, but sometimes they can produce some good quality teaching that is lacking amongst us. But I believe today, wholeheartedly, the Assembly of God is God's Bible school.

And so that means that we should have men who are capable to teach the Word of God. And I believe we do, of course. But as the late Jack Hunter said, beware of a non-teaching oversight.

And there's some on the oversight who can't teach the Word of God. They're just there to fill a spot. Because there's things lacking in their life.

Maybe a spiritual dearth. And not qualified, not prepared to do the work of God that they should be doing and helping the people of God. So I want to challenge young people today.

It's time now to get into the Word of God and set your focus on this. This ought to be your priority. Not books, per se.

That is not the main emphasis. Not even getting a good education, primarily. Or a good job.

This ought to be your priority. And when you put this first, seeking first the Kingdom of God, then God will add these other important matters to you in your life. So, I'm just saying this.

There is a dearth. And it's time to wake up. As the Apostle Paul says, for now is our salvation nearer than we first believed.

The Odyssey was a nauseating situation. And Jesus said, I'll spew you out of my mouth. That's what God said to Israel.

I'll spew you out of the land. Because they couldn't tolerate the dearth. Their idolatry.

They looked all around them and they wanted to be like the nations. And a fear that some of us want to look around us and be like those outside of us. More social activity.

More looseness. More carelessness. And that only will breed further departure from God.

And when we are careless, brethren and sisters, as to assembly reception, then we're not going to have assemblies. That's why it's so very important to have men who know the book. And those who are seeking an assembly fellowship will have the desire to honor the word of God.

I remember when we came in the assembly in 1970. We sat back for three months. Of course, we came from a non-denominational setting.

They didn't know us. They didn't know what we believed. And we were waiting for the brethren to ask us if we had any desire whatsoever to come in the assembly of God.

And we were waiting on them to ask us. So when we made it known to them, they were happy to talk to us to find out, oh, what do you believe? And et cetera. And I thank God for that because there's a lot of things that I had or my thoughts, some of my convictions were not according to the word of God.

And I was prepared to be taught the word of God by these men who feared God, who honored God. So Elisha comes to Gilgal in the dearth to where these men were, the sons of the prophet. And they were sitting there.

Some have suggested were they sitting idly in their apathetic dignity? Well, maybe they were, maybe they weren't. But Elisha comes there in the dearth to feed them, to give them something, to encourage them. That would be like the prophet, wouldn't it? And that's just like us today.

We've come here to be fed the word of God, to be encouraged. And we have heard encouraging ministry. And we'll hear more of it, to be instructed from the word of God so that we may be able to do something if there's a measure of dearth in our assemblies.

And when he had finished teaching them the word of God, he orders a pot to be put on to boil to feed them and likely had herbs in it. But there was some man there who, a servant, went out in the field. He figured he needed to put more into the pot.

And he got his lap full of gourds, something that was not very good to eat or not to eat at all. He should have known better. I mean, after all, here was a famine and to have a lap full of these things, it certainly wouldn't be herbs proper to eat.

He puts them in the pot. And when they drew from the pot, of course, he found this very nauseating. In fact, he said, there's death in the pot.

So if there's dearth in the land, now here is death in the pot because a man likely was very careless or mistook what he had taken from the field. And isn't that just something that happens all around us? Because I think this pot here may be a picture of the great gospel of the grace of God that can feed a hungry world today. And it could be a lovely picture of assembly truth that we hold so tenaciously in our souls.

But it's all being attacked, isn't it? The gospel of the grace of God and the assembly truth is being attacked. And there are those who are putting things into the pot, as it were, that's doing damage to the truth of God. And while I can't develop this, I just want to say this.

We've got to beware of those who are going to water down the Word of God or water down the gospel. Thank God in the assembly of God we preach Christ crucified. Where I once was, it was all mixed up.

Ministry, gospel, depending on the congregation. But when we came in the assembly of God, that's the first time that I heard the gospel preached clearly and plainly. And you know what it did to us? It made us search our foundation.

I can remember my wife who was saved as a young girl at seven years of age. She began to think, well, after hearing the gospel being preached, did I really get saved at seven years of age? Or did I make just a profession of it? Well, I had known her for a few years and I would say, well, I certainly would think you were a Christian, but she had to find that out for herself. What did she do? She went to the book, the Bible, to get a word from God to ascertain that as a girl at seven years of age, she trusted Christ and she got that assurance.

Now, I've known her for 40 years and she's a lovely Christian and she's a remarkable help in my life. And I thank God today, as I probably have told you before, for the way God moved in my life to bring that young woman in my life who never knew a thing about the assembly of God, but was ready to obey it handsomely, obediently, readily, without any reserve. And those convictions she has today are the same when I first met her or when we came in the assembly of God.

And I don't want to add things to the pot. I don't want to bring things into the assembly of God that's going to do damage. And I hope you're not going to do that, young person, by your appearance, by your conduct, or any other way.

I hope you will maintain the precepts and the principles that have been taught to you. What's the answer here? What's the deliverance in the pot? It's a meal, wasn't it? And Elisha had the answer, didn't he? Put meal in the pot. God before in the miracle.

And what is the answer to that? What's the antidote today? We've heard it this morning. Christ. Yes, Christ.

You put Christ in His rightful place and everything else will be in His right place. That's what was needed in Laodicea. That's the appeal.

If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come to him and sup with him and he with me. He wanted those believers to own the Lordship of Christ in their life, to give Him His rightful place. And I feel at times, even in my own life, does He have His rightful place? And while I believe wholeheartedly Romans 12 and 1, and I can remember the night when that came crystal clear to me, laid it all on the line.

My body is a living sacrifice, but it's a daily, continually yielding to that precious truth. And young person, I wonder, have you ever in your life come to that place when you handed over the reins of your life, your heart, your soul, your will to the Lordship of Christ? And when you do that, you begin to do something in your life that is never done before and to make your life count for God and to make you an asset in the assembly of God. Put Christ in His rightful place and you'll make the assembly a better place and you'll encourage others to follow in the footsteps that you're taking or otherwise you'll follow your footsteps and a path may be away from the assembly of God.

So despite the dearth, there's always an answer, isn't there? And thank God in closing days we still have the book, we still have Christ in the book, and Christ in our hearts, and Christ in glory, and what need we more?