Old Paths

I have heard some of my brethren make a comment that what they have before them is for young believers. I have a few words just now. I'm going to read a passage of scripture, one verse, from the book of Jeremiah.

Don't get too excited when you hear the verse that I'm going to read because I'm not going to take the verse up the way that it is sometimes taken. I'm going to do probably two things. I'm going to make a very brief reference to the context where the verse is found.

That will be very brief. And then I'm going to make an application of the verse. So the verse that I have before me is found in the book of Jeremiah, and in the book of Jeremiah, this is in the sixth chapter, and it's verse 16.

Jeremiah chapter 6 and verse 16. Thus saith the Lord, stand ye in the ways, and see and ask for the old paths, for it is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, we will not walk therein.

That's all that I'm going to read. If you were to go back to the very commencement of this chapter, the first 12 verses of the chapter, you would have a description of a nation that has set God out of the picture. In other words, they are a nation that have rebelled against God.

And God is warning them that there is going to be disaster ahead. There will be wars. There will be difficulty.

There will be destruction that they will have to face. One of the tribes is instructed here to flee from the city of Jerusalem, that is Benjamin. And so there are difficult times that are facing these people in Jeremiah chapter 16.

Their spiritual condition, notice verse 12 of the chapter, they are covetous, and it says that every man deals falsely with his neighbor or with those around him. And then it also says that their response is peace, peace when there is no peace. And then perhaps the most solemn statement is given in verse 10, when they have no love for the word of God.

That is probably one of the most solemn statements in the Bible, when those who are saved, profess to be saved, have no love for the word of God. I want to take this verse for a few moments and apply it in a very practical way, primarily to the life of a younger believer. I want you to notice this expression, the old paths.

I was born about three miles north of Lake Erie in the province of Ontario back in Canada. There was a pathway that went from the shore of Lake Erie north several miles. I am certain that many, many years ago that the early North Americans walked that pathway when they would stop their canoes on the shore of the lake, unload whatever they had, and would carry it north on that pathway.

I am certain as well that years later, individuals that we would call pioneers, they walked that pathway and carried their axes and their saws and their supplies. So that pathway was well worn, it was well marked, it was clearly identifiable. My grandmother walked that pathway.

She was born in a house not too far away from that pathway. As a young boy, I spent a lot of time walking that pathway. It was a clearly identified pathway.

In other words, the point here is that others walked the pathway. And so it was a pathway that before I walked it, multitudes of others walked the pathway. I want to make an application of that, very simple.

There's a pathway for us to walk, and I want to suggest to you that it is a pathway of communion with God. Many have walked that pathway. They have gone before us.

They have lived a life that has been a life of communion with God. I want you to think for a moment of David. David walked that pathway.

You would only have to read the psalms that David wrote to realize that David knew God. Yes, there was failure in the life of David. There's failure in the life of all of us.

But it says about David that he was a man after God's own heart. And for a man to be a man after God's own heart, he had to be a man who was walking in communion with God. So the general tenor, the overall character of David's life, was a life of communion with God.

That's a pathway. And I'm addressing myself to my younger brethren and sisters here. That's the pathway to walk today, a pathway of communion with God.

I was at a conference many, many years ago. There was an elderly brother who got up to speak at that conference. I don't know if anyone here would recognize the name.

Maybe some of the older people would. His name was Mr. Andrew Douglas. We used to think that Mr. Douglas had swallowed the dictionary.

You would almost have to sit with a dictionary beside you to move very quickly through the dictionary to find the meaning of the words that Mr. Douglas would use. I would have to confess that much of what he said just sailed over my head. But he made a statement.

And I carry that statement with me right until this present moment. That was many years ago he made that statement. I was only a young believer.

I'm going to leave that statement with you just now. Mr. Douglas made the statement, if I had my life to live over again, I'm going to pause for a moment. I'm not going to finish the statement.

I want you to think about that. An older brother now, and he's looking back over his life. He's going back to the time that he was saved and to the early years of his life.

And as he looks back, he's saying, if I had my life to live over again. Now, what would he do with his life if he had it to live over again? I would expect that he had spent years in the Lord's work. I would expect that he had preached the gospel, ministered the word of God at conferences like this.

Now, what would he do if he had his life to live over again? When he finished the statement, I'm going to finish it. I hope it gets you, gets a grip of you like it did me that afternoon. He said, if I had my life to live over again, I would spend more time getting to know God.

A life of communion with God, a life in fellowship with God, that is possible for a younger brother or for a younger sister to live a life that is lived in fellowship and in communion with God. How does that take place? How can we do that? Well, you get to know God by reading the word of God, by setting time aside, by having a regular time when you read the word of God and you meditate upon the word of God. That's what should be before you in your life.

We had the privilege just a year ago of sitting down with a young sister. She had her life before her. She had her future before her.

She had a good job. She was a nurse in a well-known hospital making lots of money, but she had expressed an exercise to go to Zambia to work as a nurse in a hospital in Zambia. Another brother and myself, a brother who labors with me somewhat, we sat down with her for two whole mornings and listened to her exercise.

We were impressed. On another occasion with the overseers in the assembly, we sat down again with her and went over the life of communion with God and what would be required of her to go to a far country like Zambia to live as a missionary nurse in Zambia. So what about your life that's before you? Some of us are older.

We're like the older brother now. We look back and we would have to say, as he said, I'm sure most of us would, if we had our life to live over again, but you've got your life before you and it's a life that you can live in communion with God. That would be a very profitable thing, a very profitable exercise.

That's what David did. He lived a life of communion. What do you think for a moment of Joseph? Joseph had a hard life initially, thrown into a pit by his brethren, sold to the Israelite traders, taken down to Egypt, sold into bondage, eventually into the house of Potiphar, one of Pharaoh's servants, and then slandered by a wicked woman.

He fled and said, how can I do this great wickedness and sin against my God? It has been observed that Joseph kept his testimony. He lost his garment, but he knew what it was to pay a price, to live a life of holiness, a life of holiness for God. We live in a very evil and a very wicked world.

There are others here who are my age, we look back at our life, and in the course of our high school days, there was not much for us to get involved in, not like today. This was a wicked, evil world. This was a sinful, sinister world that we were living in.

It used to be in years past that our brethren used to minister a little bit about the television. That's long gone. You've got that computer, you've got that computer in your bedroom.

I'm speaking to younger people now, maybe a message for parents as well. You've got that computer in your bedroom, you'd go in the bedroom, you'd close the door. What you can get on that computer, I wouldn't mention from this platform, it is a wicked instrument if it is used wrongly, and there is value if it is used wisely, but it is defiling if it is used wrongly, and so there needs to be the determination like Joseph to live a holy life, in spite of what is around us, and all of the evil, and all of the temptations that surround us in the world that we are living in, Joseph lived a holy life, a life of communion with God, a life of holiness.

Want you to think for a moment of Daniel. Daniel made the statement, or it is said about Daniel that he would not defile himself with the king's food. That was a worldly food, and there's worldly food around us today, and it is defiling.

A life that is a life that is a life of separation from the world, a life of communion, a life of fellowship, and a life of separation from the world around us. Daniel walked a pathway, Joseph walked a pathway, David walked a pathway, but the Lord Jesus walked the same pathway. He walked a pathway of communion with God.

He would go to the mountainside alone early in the morning. He felt the need to spend that time in communion with his God. Is it a time that you love, a time that you desire, a time that fills your soul when you get alone with God and with the Word of God? The Lord Jesus did that.

He walked a pathway of holiness, for he himself was holy, harmless, undefiled. He was separate from sinners, a pathway of holiness. He walked a pathway of separation from the world.

He walked the same pathway. The Apostle Paul walked that pathway. That's a pathway that is before you today.

That's a life that you can live that is going to count for God. One has ten the words, only one life shall soon be passed. Only what's done for Christ will last.

I wonder if when you leave the conference here at Blue River just this afternoon, if you would leave with a determination in your soul, I'm going to make my life count for God. I'm not going to squander it, many have. Many have wasted their time, many have squandered their life, but I'm going to make my life count for God.

At the end of the school term, and those who are students here would know this, the students would come, particularly those who are leaving the one school and going to another, and they would bring a little diary for you to sign. I never looked at some of those diaries because I didn't have too much confidence in the students that gave me their diary. But one girl came one day with a diary, and she was one of our better students.

I had a fair bit of confidence in her. And so I looked through her diary very quickly, and there was a four-line stanza that jumped out at me as I looked through her diary. I'm going to repeat that to you.

It's worth memorizing. It's worth storing up in your mind. It's worth keeping before you, because in that diary were these words written.

I don't know who wrote them there, but they were good words. I'm going to repeat them twice. The future lies before you like freshly fallen snow.

Be careful how you walk it, or every step will show. I'm going to repeat that. If you forget everything that I have said just in the last 15 minutes because I've got to sit down, I've got to leave 15 minutes for someone else, but take these words with you because they are so true.

They're such tremendous truth. They are so vital. You have your future before you.

You can live a life of fellowship and communion and separation from this world, so the future lies before you like freshly fallen snow. Be very careful how you walk it, or every step will show.