Sermon: Rejoice in What We Are

#1434B
John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)
Given 20-May-18; 78 minutes

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Do you ever compare yourself and your lot in life with those of other people? Of course you do. Everybody does. It might be considered one of the great earth-wide human pastimes. We compare homes and cars and clothing and money and fame and notoriety and skills and personalities and accomplishments as well.

But with whom or against whom are you most likely to make a comparison? Are you going to compare yourself with the Pygmies in Central Africa or the Maori there in the Outback? Or how about the Amazon Indians in Brazil? A Calcuttan in the midst of that teeming humanity there? How about an Afghani sitting up on his barren mountain looking over the deserts below and saying, "This is my land!"

No, I do not think so. How about even American Indians living in this great land and yet so many of them have almost nothing? Well, we might do that occasionally and I do not think we do it to brag in any way. I think we do it maybe to say to ourselves, Boy, I am way better off than that person, that's for sure.

But more often than not, the tendency is for us to compare ourselves either with our peers or even those who we feel may be our betters. We do not even tend to compare ourselves with our brethren who are less well off than we seem to be. We especially like to compare ourselves with the high achievers. The stars of the cinema, the stars in athletics, the stars in business who become wealthy; maybe even we might envy them.

So, public fame and acclaim is something that attracts attention and it will attract our attention as well. Those who seem to accomplish more, make more, lead more exciting lives, are in the public's eye, and they are receiving adulation that we might enjoy having ourselves. But I think that we kind of would enjoy what we think of as the ease of life that they seem to live, and that can even become a very serious covet.

It might be very interesting and may be very helpful to evaluate who it is that you compare yourself with and search for an answer as to why are these are the people that you are comparing yourself with. And as a rule, whoever it is, we usually conclude that the comparison with these high achievers is not too good and that has a resulting effect. It tends to make us feel disadvantage and it puts kind of a pall in life.

Perhaps you graduated from high school with somebody that, when you were in high school, maybe you paid very little attention to them. They were kind of nerdy or something. But then you hear later on that, hey, this person is a millionaire. I heard that of one of the fellows that I graduated with was a millionaire, and I thought, Oh, no! I really did not envy that he had the money but, why did I not make money like him? He did not seem all that great in high school but whatever it was, he had something on the ball and he made a great deal of money.

Anyway, it has the effect of possibly making us feel as though we are spinning our wheels and we are getting nowhere. We seem tiny, maybe just a mere speck in a vast humanity, and our life is encompassed with endless troubles and, it seems like there is no escape. As far as we can see into the future, it looks as though it is not going to change. It seems as though we are barely skinning by. We live from paycheck to paycheck in a dull drab existence.

Now, for some, they may even get quite depressed, feeling that they are being picked upon and other types of self-pitying thinking. Maybe we even think, "Well, whenever the brains were handed out, why was I standing behind the door? I didn't even know I was behind the door, but now I look back and I see I was behind the door. (At least that is the way I think.) Why can't I get a break? I put in my eight hours a day or more and I think that I'm trying hard. I'm really studying my job. I'm trying to improve myself. I'm trying to make the boss be pleased with my work, and things just keep churning along and I don't seem to be getting ahead."

As we begin this sermon, we are going to take a look at one segment of our culture's high achievers, and these happen to be the astronauts. Just a few of them, not all of them, just some of them. Now, these profiles that I am going to give you are drawn from an article that appeared in the National Observer, which was a national magazine put out by the Dow Jones people and they discontinued it five or so years after I got this. This issue was released May 17, 1975. Old information, but it is still valid as far as I am concerned. It has been 36 years since this article but I think the principles that you will find in this article are just as valid today because something like this just does not change.

The name of the article was, "What Do You Do After You've Walked on the Moon?" I mean, what is left? Can you imagine what a small segment of the population that includes? We are going to expand it just a little bit from those who have actually walked on the moon. But there were others who went with those men and they circled around above while Neil Armstrong and them were on the surface of the moon. But we are talking about a very small segment of the population. Now listen to the way the writer of this article describes or profiles these people.

The first one is Neil Armstrong. He is described in this article as an enigmatic, puzzling, withdrawn man who speaks in a frustrating, emotionless monotone. He seems evasive and he never answers you directly. Everything goes off in an oblique angle. Hey, that is quite a personality to envy, is it not? No, it is not. Because he did achieve, and of the astronauts he was picked as being the one that was best to put on the moon. But listen to that personality again: frustratingly emotionless, monotone, evasive, and answers indirectly.

Buzz Aldrin. He also walked on the moon. Well, for him, when he came back splash down was hard. Psychologically, he did not come back all in one piece. And he and his wife divorced after he had an emotional breakdown.

How about Al Bean? As a name, boy, you cannot get one more common than that. But Al Bean had family problems and Al Bean confessed that he had a withdrawn son that he was not able to get through to. Here is this very intelligent man, quick-witted, probably a person who was able to perceive problems, anticipate them and work on them so that this flight would be a success. But he had a son who was withdrawn, which makes you wonder about the kind of contact there was within the family.

And how about Edgar Mitchell? Edgar Mitchell, after he came back, he dabbled in parapsychology and he was always trying to see things that other people did not see, you know, scientific kind of things. But he and his wife divorced. It looks like there was a family problem there as well.

How about James Irwin? He is another one. He found religion up there on the moon. And when he got back, he founded a nonprofit organization and established a spiritual retreat. But poor James, he and his wife also divorced.

And how about John Young? He described himself as a loner and admitted that he had no interests outside of his job. His home life must not have been too good. He and his wife also divorced. (Are you keeping tally of all the divorces and the withdrawn children?)

Well, about the same time of the year (May), but this time in 2001, an article appeared in the Charlotte Observer newspaper and it was an article that was written because the woman who wrote the article was stunned. Here was this friend that she had that seemed—at the age of 27 she had a very high paying job—to be highly respected by everybody. The people that she worked for, the people that she did business with, she really had it all together, and bang! She committed suicide and everybody is asking questions. Why should anybody who was achieving so much and had so many friends (at least on the surface), but something was eating away at that young woman on the inside and she felt that she could not go on, and she ended her life.

I think we are beginning to see that, despite the high achievements of some people who really seem to have a great deal on the ball, they really do not have problems any different from you and me.

Please turn with me to I Corinthians chapter 10, and verse 13, a scripture we turn to very often in order to find some measure of encouragement as we go through our Christian life. And I believe that this is truly one of the most encouraging verses in the entirety of the Bible.

I Corinthians 10:13 No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.

That verse is a reality to anyone who believes it; that it wipes away from us any reason to ever commit suicide. And in a sense, it wipes away and keeps depression from getting really deep within us so that we are so discouraged that we want to give up. It removes that from the picture as well, because here we have our very Creator, the One who is creating Himself in us, saying that what we are going through is something that can be borne. But, it only works that way if we believe it and, at the same time, if we are willing to bear up under the trials of life. You see, really and truly believing that God says what He means and means what He says when He says He is actually overlooking our life and He is not going to allow anything to happen to us that is beyond our ability to overcome it, at the very least to bear up under it.

Now, it is important to our well being to understand that these high achievers have the same variety of problems that everyone experiences. Their fame, their monetary fortune, their academic and professional accomplishments have not proved to be an advantage to help them avoid many of the very things that trouble us.

The first thing we want to draw our attention to now is that God's testimony to you and to me is that what we experience in life is common to man. And that is what we have seen here. The high achievers have the same problems we do. They have marital problems, they have money problems, they have withdrawn child problems, and whatever. So seemingly having more brains, having more money, more ease and fame have not insulated them from divorce, from withdrawn, alienated children or spouses, emotional breakdowns, and health problems.

Now, the word common indicates nothing exceptional. Our problems are nothing beyond the powers of endurance or the powers of overcoming. There is another word in there that is helpful to understand a little bit more and that is the word "taken," translated "overtaken" there in the first phrase, "no temptation has overtaken. . ." This was written in the perfect tense and it indicates being grasped by, grabbed. No problem has grabbed us or taken us or captured and carried us away. And what it means, then, within the context, indicating that the temptation or the problems that God is referring to that are common to man are something that is chronic. It is a lasting condition. Now, that is an admission from God that the problems we have as Christians are not going to just "poof" and go away. That the problems of overcoming and growing within Christian life are something that we are going to have to carry or bear with over the course of our conversion period.

Escape is another word that is used. He will also make "a way of escape that you may be able to bear it." This indicates that God sees the way we are and as He sees us, if I can describe it, as though we are in a box canyon. We are in a narrow defile, a tight spot. It seems as though we are boxed in or surrounded, but He has promised that He will give us a way out of this situation. Not necessarily to escape the whole thing, but at least to be able to bear it, if indeed it is going to be a chronic condition.

Now, the word "temptation" adds to our understanding too. It tends to indicate—this is very interesting—something designed. Here comes God into the picture—something designed. And on top of that, it also indicates something unavoidable. We think we are going to escape it before we get into it. Well, if God is in our life, He will take steps to make sure that if it is going to achieve a purpose in us that is good for recreating Himself in us, there is not going to be any escaping it. He is going to make sure it happens.

Why? Because we need it, we need it to prepare us for that responsibility for which He is preparing us. Whether that responsibility is in this life or whether it is going to be in the Kingdom of God there is no getting out of it. It is like God plans the tests. When you get to school on Monday morning, you are going to have this test and you find out about it, and so you take the day off, you skip class. You go on Tuesday and He says, "Ah ha, I delayed it for you until today. You still have to take it." You see, you have somebody watching over you who is able to manipulate events to make sure that we get into the situation that He wants us to get into.

You can see this back in Deuteronomy 8 for example, God says I made them go hungry. That shows that He was involved there and He wanted to see, whatever it was, how they were going to react to being hungry or being thirsty or being attacked or whatever it was.

So, the important thing for you and me is that God is faithful. That it indicates, then, that our difficulties in life can be successfully met, and that God, by this verse, is our guarantor. The problems can be met and the problems will either be overcome or the problems will at least be borne with while He works things out.

I said in a sermon just a week or so ago, we have to understand that there are some cases in life where the problem cannot be solved and there are reasons it cannot be solved, and we have to be able to see God working in our life to know that God knows it and He might be the very one that might be keeping it from being solved. And so we are not necessarily disappointing Him at all when we are having to bear up under this thing, whatever it might be. And God is the one that is keeping it there and He might be keeping it there in order to make sure that His will is done. Do you think that Paul, whenever he was sent to prison, thought, uh oh, this is the end. It was not the end because God made it possible for him to write four books of the Bible while he was there and then He set him free for a while. The second time he went in, it was the end.

So we might get into a tight spot, but from it God will create something that is very good while that tight spot is in and He will let us out or keep us there, according to His will. I know that this is hard to adjust to, but we must understand that God is there. And because He is there, it does not mean at all that He is disappointed in us.

Now, there is no doubt that life is difficult, but being a high achiever in the world does not guarantee that one will escape those difficulties. Pentecost has a great deal to do with pointing us in the right direction to enable enduring and overcoming these long-lasting problems that are common to mankind.

We are going to look for a while at the writings of a man who knew a very great deal about life's trials and he wrote about it about them very often. That man is Solomon. We are going to look at Ecclesiastes chapter 3.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 To everything there is a season [remember, he is talking about life and he is most definitely reflecting on his own life and these are conclusions, observations that he made as he was trying to reason this thing through], a time for every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, a time to die; a time to plant, a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to gain, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sow; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

What profit has the worker from that in which he labors? I have seen the God-given task with which the sons of men are to be occupied. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from the beginning to the end.

You know, of the astronauts that I named earlier, the only one that gave any evidence that he thought he knew what God is doing was James Irwin. I believe he has since died, but he at least believed that he had it, started that retreat, and I believe he eventually became a minister, but he was the only one.

Now, let us understand an overview of what God, through Solomon, is saying here in these first 11 verses. Let us look at verses 9-11 again because this is the key, really, to this section.

Ecclesiastes 3:9-11 What profit has the worker [that is you and me] from that in which he labors? I have seen the God-given task with which the sons of men are to be occupied. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.

These verses involve God directly as a brief explanation for why these events in the first eight verses, or circumstances, seems to occur in all of mankind regardless of one's station in life. That is the important point there. These things, Solomon is saying, seem to occur to everybody regardless of whether they are a king or whether they are a pauper. Now, Solomon, understanding his attitude in this book, was not always that good. He is saying, in effect, that things are frustratingly out of control, even for a person as intelligent and as powerful as Solomon. In a sense, he is saying, "Here I am, a king. I've been gifted by God and yet these things are happening to me. Why?" He did not know the complete answer to that and that is what he is trying to find here in the book of Ecclesiastes.

Now, one thing that I believe that God wants us to begin with is that nobody completely controls all of life, beginning with one's birth and death. Here there are 14 pairs of opposite events and almost everybody goes through some form and intensity of them. And it seems as though they are all designed to occur. Indeed, verses 9-11 indicate that particular point very often, very strongly. Now, I am going to read verses 9-11 to you from two different modern translations and they are a little bit helpful. Just using modern language we can see then a little bit more clearly what Solomon said in those verses.

Ecclesiastes 3:9 (Moffatt) What does a busy man gain from his toil? I have watched the interests that God sets the sons of men to labor at.

That is very interesting because now Solomon is saying that God is causing these 14 sets of opposites to occur to everybody in some form, in some measure. It does not matter who you are, you have to go through these things in order to walk the course that God has given. He goes on.

Ecclesiastes 3:10-11 (Moffatt) He has assigned each meaning, each person, or event to its proper time. But for the mind of man, he has appointed mystery. God has set eternity in their hearts, that man may never fathom God's own purpose from the beginning to the end.

Now, if Solomon could not understand this stuff, you can understand why these high achievers who even go to the moon and are schooled beyond our belief in certain areas of mathematics and science and so forth, yet they cannot figure it out and neither can all the psychologists and psychiatrists and these doctors of sociology, they cannot figure it out. But Solomon was wise enough and humble enough to admit, I see these same things happening to everybody in principle.

Ecclesiastes 3:9-11 (Amplified Bible) What profit remains for the worker from his toil? I have seen the painful labor and exertion and miserable business which God has given to the sons of men with which to be exercise and busy themselves. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also planted eternity in men's heart and minds, [a divinely implanted sense of a purpose working through the ages which nothing under the sun but only God can satisfy], yet so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

Now, I am going to point out some phrases from both of these verses that will, I think, help you a little bit because there is some interesting terms in those two translations that give us a clearer sense of what is intended by painful labor and business. Because to Solomon, that is the way a person's life seems to be, painful labor and business. Work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work; never have enough money, work, work, work or whatever. Painful labor and business.

Here is another one: "For the mind of man God has appointed a mystery." You know, man hid himself from God at the very beginning. Was that not what Adam and Eve did? They hid themselves from God and God, you know what He did? He reciprocated; and so nobody can find God now except those to whom God gives the great gift of revealing Himself. So Solomon sees that everybody is going around in a fog. Why are we born?

Here is another one: "Assigned each in its proper time." Solomon perceived that these 14 sets of opposites seemed to be timed perfectly by somebody, some power, so that it hits everybody at some time in their life. Guess who is doing that.

And then another one: "A divinely implanted sense of purpose." God has endowed each one of us with a concept that we believe that there is something greater to life than the way it is being lived right now. And that is true. Do not people believe that there is something beyond death? They may not have any truth but somewhere within them there is this idea that there is a meaning to life and whatever that meaning is, it is awesome. And, they of course, come to the conclusion that they are going to go off to heaven. That is not the right answer, but I am just saying that there is something there in man that is a divinely implanted sense of purpose that only God can satisfy.

It is also interesting to conclude from this paragraph that Solomon, despite all the powers in his office as king, plus his intellectual gifts and wisdom, found life had a frustrating quality to it that was beyond even his control. And one of the additional things that he sees here is that it seems as though life took serious turns that even, he, Solomon could not anticipate and could not control.

Now take note of these things. You had no control over at all that God that called you. That just came out of the blue. That is what he is talking about; that God does things He does not attribute necessarily to God. But he can see that many events occur in a person's life that are completely beyond their control and was completely beyond their ability to anticipate it was going to happen. It just did.

So I ask you: do you see God? This is all-important to our life and we should have this concept in our minds so that we are seeking God at all times and we see Him as operating in our lives. We are not exactly sure all the time that He has done something, but at least we are willing to do the considering that maybe He did do this or he did something else that either helped or slowed us down or whatever. Did not Herbert Armstrong say in his autobiography that it later came to him that God simply swept away his very profitable and lucrative business? It was gone. He was making beaucoup amounts of money in the advertising business and suddenly it was gone through no fault of his own. He had not changed, but God took it away and he never replaced any of it for seven years.

That is about as close that Solomon comes to admitting that God is manipulating events in people's lives. He could see it was happening and he left little hints that that is the way he was thinking, but he had no proof for it, as we will see in just a little bit.

Let us ask a question here. Why is it this way? What went wrong? What was lost, brethren, was a result of what happened in Eden and it has continued to plague mankind ever since. We might be able to name a number of things to be correct. But I feel that one of the major things that has gone bad is that faith, in the form of trust by men toward God, was destroyed. This is what Adam and Eve lacked. Even when they were in the Garden, even when they saw God with their eyes, they still did not have faith to believe what He said. And they accepted the proposition from Satan and boom! things really changed and the contact with God was gone.

So following Adam and Eve's sin, God set in motion a program, a purpose and a plan in which mankind would never be able to know God or His purpose without a calling in which God would reveal it, deliberately reveal it. And then He requires all of those to whom He has revealed to live by faith, choosing to trust the Revelator. So the purpose would be worked out by means of a continuing revelation of Himself and His purpose by putting those called through events like the 14 pairs of opposites—molding, shaping, forming, testing, and evaluating each of us individually and as a group in order to complete His purpose.

Now Solomon is saying the events seem to be predetermined and beyond control, and that they happen whether one wants them or not; and to a very large degree, he is correct. We may not be able to stop them, but we can, because of our calling, make the best possible use of them because the mystery is revealed. This is something, brethren, for you and me to really rejoice in (and incidentally, the title that I have put on this sermon is "Rejoice in What We Are."

We have something that Solomon did not and none of us even begin to measure up carnally to what Solomon was. We do not measure up to the high achievers in our age. We do not have the education. We do not seem to have the mind that even begins to compare to them. We have not been selected to do anything like they did—really a select group of people—and yet we have something that they do not have. And as God Himself tells us in I Corinthians 1, that God has called the weak of the world. And why did He do it? In order to confound the mighty. Who, them?! In fact, there was a television program that was on the other night named, "Them!" Turned out to be giant ants. It was 1951 or 1950 for sci-fi thriller that took place out in the desert. But we are "them," and this is a good "them."

Let us go to Ecclesiastes 7, and we will begin in verse 23. It is revealing about Solomon again.

Ecclesiastes 7:23-29 All this I have proved by wisdom. I said, "I will be wise"; but it was far from me. [he could not figure out the problem that was before him] As for that which is far off and exceedingly deep, who can find it out? I applied my heart to know, to search and to seek out wisdom and the reason of things, to know the wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and madness. And I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God shall escape from her, but the sinner shall be trapped by her. "Here is what I found," says the Preacher, "adding one thing to the other to find out the reason, which my soul still seeks but I cannot find: one man among a thousand I have found, but a woman among all of these I have not found. Truly, this only have I found: that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes."

Solomon wants to comprehend what is going on. But, brethren, in his life he cannot because he did not have a calling. And so he is a confused man in his carnality. Despite the intellectual brilliance, he truly cannot put his finger on why life should be as it is and, to some degree, seems to be out of control. So here in these verses, he draws special attention to his experiences with his harem. Do you know what his conclusion was? The reality is that he found that there was no solace, no comfort to the burning issue of this book. Where is God? What is going on? He found that having many sexual partners was not the answer. Well, we will mark that one off.

Ecclesiastes 8:16-17 When I applied my heart to know wisdom and to see the business that is done on earth, even though one sees no sleep day or night, then I saw all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. For though a man labors to discover it, yet he will not find it; moreover, though a wise man attempts to know it, he will not be able to find it.

And so I remind you that the astronauts mentioned in the article, of that group only James Irwin thinks that he knows what is going on spiritually. And the others generally felt as though going to the moon—listen to this—only complicated what they knew about life. It did not relieve a thing.

Now, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus admonished us not to be overly concerned about the future. But that concern is a reason why so many people in the church are so acutely focused on prophecy. But Solomon seems to be saying that the more one searches, the more one is puzzled. You see this over and over through the book. He keeps looking. But you know what the fruit of it was? His contentment was constantly disturbed. He just got more and more frustrated. It left him puzzled. But because God has put a quest for eternity in man's heart, men want a fuller explanation and we will make great efforts to discover the mysteries, even as he says here, in a virtually sleepless quest, work night and day, Solomon said. But he says all of these efforts will be futile. He will never find the great mystery because God is sovereign and God has determined that He must reveal it.

A man cannot find why he was born. So unless he is called (this is even more amazing), even if it is told him, he will be too preoccupied with other things from his own world of interest that he will not recognize it nor will he accept it. And since it is not physically discerned, and the man is oriented towards that which is physical, he overlooks its importance to his own well being and off he goes. Was it not Winston Churchill who said that you can hit some people with the truth right in the face and they pick themselves up and go on and it just never disturbs their thinking. Now, he was a man who had some experience with that. He kept beating the drum before World War II and said over and over again, Hitler's going to make war. Nobody, and I mean nobody, seemed to believe him but it happened. Maybe that is where he got the idea.

This principle that we are talking about here is very important to you and me. Not only has it been revealed, but God has a requirement that He has laid down for you and me and that is that we have to continually seek Him. In other words, there is an initial revelation of the mystery, but when God reveals, He only reveals a portion of it and He has determined that He wants to make things so that we willingly, voluntarily, give ourselves toward learning more, and increasing our understanding and effectiveness in life in glorifying Him. Now, let us go to I Samuel chapter 3, verse 1. What he says here is meaningful to this subject.

I Samuel 3:1 And then the boy Samuel ministered to the Lord before Eli. And the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no widespread revelation.

I think that we can say that is the way it is in our world. "The word of the Lord is rare and there is no widespread revelation." So we are looking at a situation that not only suits Samuel's day, it also suits ours.

Let us understand this a little bit better. This takes place among God's covenant people and those who should have known God and have been ready to do His will. Now, when he says that the Word of God was rare in those days, he meant that the truth was not being preached. That is what we would say today. The Word was there, but it was not being preached. This takes place during the period of the judges. And you know, the book of Judges ends with the statement that "every man did what was right in his own eyes," which gives you an indication that this is the way people were leading their lives, and therefore you can understand why the Word of the Lord was not being preached. Nobody was going to obey it anyway, even if there was a priest that was willing to preach it. Now, maybe there were some few; God's Word never completely dies out. But in the overall sense, it was rare.

Let us translate this a little bit more into something more applicable to daily life. In other words, the people were not being submissive to what they did know of God and His purposes. And some of this is to show that one's attitude and response toward what has already been revealed is going to pretty much determine God's continuing revelation. Do you understand that? In other words, in order to keep the flow of knowledge from God going, those who already have it have to be applying what they already know. And if they are responding to God in that manner by applying what they do know, boy, the revelation will keep on coming. It is like watering the garden. If you do not water the garden, it goes dry and the growing does not take place.

So, if we have had the way of God revealed to us, and God Himself revealed the way to keep it flowing is to do what God says, seek Him; and the way we seek Him is to try to be like Him in the way that we live our life. And when we do that, He is happy and He gives us more gifts.

Now, let us look at this in the life of one of the very interesting kings that Richard has been talking about, in II Chronicles, chapter 15. This is a really significant verse for you and me in understanding how (if I can put it this way), we can get gifts from God.

II Chronicles 15:1-2 Now the Spirit of God came upon Azariah the son of Oded. [Azariah was a prophet.] And he went out to meet Asa [who was the king], and said to him, "Hear me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin. [here is that significant statement] The Lord is with you while you are with Him."

Can you just get a picture of two walking together? But what if those two are not walking together—one is going in one direction and the other is going in the other direction, and the one that is going in the other direction is God. And so this admonition here cannot be met because we have to be walking with each other.

II Chronicles 15:2 "The Lord is with you while you are with Him. If you seek Him, He will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you."

It is a matter, brethren, of reciprocity. So we have to respond, that is clear. And when we respond, the vision from God, the revelation from God, will continually be expanded, bit by bit by bit. We have got to make it go. We do not want to be like Solomon looking from the outside in and wondering why our life, like Solomon, despite all his intelligence, despite his power and position, despite him being a high achiever, he could not figure it out!

Let us try the book of Lamentations. This takes place, of course, in a time of terrible circumstances. But in chapter 2, verse 9 Jeremiah is describing here the devastation of the city and the resulting physical and spiritual condition of the people.

Lamentations 2:9 Her gates [meaning Jerusalem's gates] have sunk into the ground; He [God] has destroyed and broken her bars. Her king and her princes are among the nations [they have been scattered]; the Law is no more [now, the law of course can never pass away, but it means that it is not spoken at all], and her prophets find no vision [there is no prophetic revelation] from the Lord.

Now, that is kind of interesting because it is saying there that the ministry's ability to give sermons that are understandable and are truly leading to the Kingdom of God and have the power of conviction and understanding, will be determined by the people's response to what they already have. So we (the ministry) are, in a sense, tied to the whole group's response to God, and the better the response to God, the greater the revelation is going to be. And the more conviction and power there is going to be in what we say and that you, then, are going to benefit from because God will give His gift of understanding to His people.

Let us go to Proverbs the 29th chapter. This is another one of those very familiar scriptures. But the word revelation and vision are contained within the verse.

Proverbs 29:18 Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint; but happy as he who keeps the law.

That word "revelation" in my Bible (the King James version) says vision: Where there is no vision. It is talking about the same kind of vision that we just read of there in Lamentations 2:9 and what we also saw in I Samuel 3:1. It means something that is clearly seen and understood in terms of preaching and instruction. Now, in each one of those places, the word revelation and vision is exactly the same Hebrew word that is underlying in every case.

So without revelation, what does this verse say? People cast off restraint. You see, where there is real vision, real revelation from God, it encourages people to overcome, to grow, and God is enabling the people to do that. Are you beginning to see something develop here? You see, it is God responding to us and our efforts to seek Him, and His response is to give messages through His ministry that are understandable and applicable to those who are in the congregation. And they can use it and they glorify God and that makes God even happier because the gift He gives is being returned in Him, being glorified by the conduct and the attitudes of His people.

In the Living Bible I think that they have something here that makes very good sense. It says, "Where there is no revelation [or vision], the people run wild." Now that does not mean that they are running around like wild men. That is not it at all. It just means that they are not mad men, but they are walking their life without direction or purpose as to what they are doing with their life. It is just being lived. So one goes this way, another one goes that way, another one goes another way. And instead of everybody being unified with the same lessons, with the same understanding, with the same instruction, the same pictures in their mind, and enthusiasm, why everybody is going in their own way and we have a Judge's situation. Everybody does that which is right in his own eyes.

Do you know what that verse describes? It describes liberalism. Everybody is doing what they think is right. And what is right is God's Word, His law, His understanding. And if everything is in tune with God, then the people are going in the right direction. Everybody is on the same basic path. Everybody is not on the same place on the path, but everybody is on the same path and that is great. And there is real spiritual unity.

So we have scriptures here that point to what happens to a people who do have a revelation but do not use it, and others that show what happens to a people who have no revelation at all. That is, like Solomon. But the result is exactly the same, that is, people living spiritually aimless, purposeless lives.

Therefore, since we are a covenant people our attitude toward what we have is extremely important to making use of the revelation given, because it is adherence to God's revealed will that brings the blessings that are everywhere represented by this word "happy." Proverbs 29:18, "Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint, but happy is he who keeps the law." These people have a sense of contentment, peace, a sense of well being, despite the fact that they have trouble. God is on His throne and God will provide.

Here comes a question then. Do you believe that you have been given revelation from God? It is a simple question. The answer should be yes. You have something that the high achievers do not have. They have no revelation. They are running wild. We have revelation. What are we doing with it?

I feel that this is so important I do not believe that its value can be overestimated because this revelation is very much needed for us to have a sense of direction and a sense of well being about life. Now, the times that we live in are oppressive and they are depressive and it is not hard at all to let them give us a sense of hopelessness.

But we do have the revelation of God and therefore the mystery of life. And though we do not have it all, we still have the most valuable pieces of knowledge that can be given to anybody anywhere in the world. We have what could make everybody's life, including the high achiever, the rich and the famous, the powerful and the intelligent, complete because it would give them the proper direction to vent their gifts into something that is truly useful. We have not at all been shortchanged when the door was opened and God said "Come in." So they may be rich in power, they may be rich in intelligence and prestige, fame, social influence, and worldly education, but brethren, we are wealthy beyond measure in what matters regarding life and its purpose.

Now, let us add something to this. We are going to turn to the book of Isaiah in chapter 65.

Isaiah 65:8-10 "As the new wine is found in the cluster, and one says, 'Do not destroy it, for a blessing is in it,' so will I do for My servants' sake [this is God speaking], that I may not destroy them all. I will bring forth descendants from Jacob, and from Judah an heir of My mountains; My elect shall inherit it, and My servants shall dwell there. Sharon shall be a fold of flocks, and the valley of Achor a place for herds to lie down, for My people who have sought Me."

This is directed at a certain people and there is a great, wonderful blessing that is contained within these verses. This is one, actually, of quite a number of scriptures that prophecy of a very small number of people who will inherit the Kingdom of God. And they are referred to in verse 10 as "My people who have sought Me." How many people are really seeking to be like God? Not looking to find Him—seeking to be like Him. It is not very many because it is something that is lost and hidden because God must reveal Himself in every case to everybody and He has not chosen to do that.

So this seeking Him means the sense of working, striving, to be like Him; to imitate Me, to be patterned after Me.

Now, there is a very sad story in this same book. We are going to just look at it quickly without much in the way of expounding. But it is in the fifth chapter. I will read it and you will understand it very quickly. Again, this is God speaking.

Isaiah 5:1-10 Now let me sing to my Well-beloved, a song of my Beloved regarding His vineyard [Israel is the vineyard and I am taking this principle over into the church. It fits, I am not doing anything wrong here.]: My Well-beloved has a vineyard on a very fruitful hill. He dug it up and cleared out its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its midst, and also made a winepress in it; so He expected it to bring forth good grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes. [an unexpected harvest or an unanticipated one or something different from what he wanted]

And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge, please, between Me and My vineyard. What more could have been done to My vineyard that I have not done in it? [that is, to make it produce the right things] Why then, when I expected it to be to bring forth good grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes? And now, please let Me tell you what I will do to My vineyard [here comes God's response]: I will take away its hedge, and it shall be burned; and break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will lay it waste; and it shall not be pruned or dug, but there shall come up briers and thorns. [You see, God's reciprocation here, not very good. Just the opposite of the people who seek Him.] I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain on it."

For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are His pleasant plant. He looked for justice, but behold, oppression; for righteousness, but behold, a cry for help. [That is what He sees in the country.] Woe to those who join house to house; who add field to field, till there is no place where they may dwell alone in the midst of the land! In my hearing the Lord of hosts said, "Truly, many houses shall be desolate, great and beautiful ones, without inhabitant. For ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and a homer of seed shall yield one ephah.

God planted Israel as a pleasant vineyard to bring forth fruit, as we heard in yesterday's message, but He got the wrong kind of fruit.

Now, back to verse 8 of chapter 65. He is giving a pretty strong hint here when He says that there is a blessing in the vineyard.

Isaiah 65:8 "As the new wine is found in the cluster, and one says, "Do not destroy it, for a blessing is in it.'

You know from the circumstances that we read in Isaiah 5 that it is not going to be a great blessing, but there is a blessing there. A small one. What is that blessing when we think of Israel as a nation and also the vineyard? And yet here is like a cluster here, a cluster there, that this does have something that is good there.

Think of the cluster as being people and maybe in that cluster there is only one or two that are really good. What are we talking about here? What we are looking at here is part of the "remnant doctrine"; that out of a great nation, out of a great number of people, there are a few that have the truth and they are bringing forth the right fruit, even in the midst of the corruption and the destruction and all of the violence by which they are surrounded in the vineyard. when you think there was nothing in there that was any good. "Oh yes," God says, "there is something good there, right in that cluster over there, there is something there. Don't destroy that little blessing that is there."

Do you know what He is saying, then, in the next two verses?

Isaiah 65:8-9 "So will I do for My servants' sake, that I may not destroy them all. I will bring forth descendants from Jacob, and from Judah an heir of My mountains."

Out of all of those grape clusters there is one here, one there, and in it, God says, because of them, I will not destroy the whole thing because of that small remnant.

Isaiah 65:10 Sharon shall be a fold of flocks, and the Valley of Achor a place for herds to lie down.

Sharon and Achor were two well known locations in Israel. And He is showing that those areas will blossom forth in great beauty and productivity and it will be done because of those who seek Me. So he is prophesying that the dangerous, oppressive, and depressive spirit of the world is going to come to an end and it will end because of God's mercy extended for that tiny number of people who are giving Him pleasure—the remnant—and brethren, that remnant is the church. He is talking about the time of the end here.

Now we are going to jump from here to the book of Romans in chapter 9, verses 1-3. We are just going to read some verses very quickly here.

Romans 9:1-3 I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience also bears me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God.

Why would he have that kind of a statement? Because he knew where they were headed.

Romans 10:1-3 Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.

There is the problem right there.

Romans 11:1-5 I say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not! For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel saying, "Lord, they have killed Your prophets and torn down Your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life"? But what does the divine response say to him? "I have reserved for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal." Even so then, at this present time, there is a remnant according to the election of grace.

Now, we are not the only ones who have ever felt that we live in a culture that operates in a spiritual, moral, and ethical confusion that produces violent, oppressively discouraging, and dangerous times. But not since the Flood has the entire world lived so close to the edge of extinction. But there is still reason for hope. And that hope is for those who are part of the remnant.

We will close this with another question. Do you believe that you are part of the remnant? And if you are, then we not only have the revelation, but we have all of the promises that are given to the remnant, in addition to the fact that we know God and we know what He is doing. He has also, as it were, put us in His pocket to preserve us through the trouble that is coming on this world.

What a gift! All the intellectual power that these high achievers have are not going to preserve them from what is coming. But God, in His mercy, has made us what we are. It was He who called us. It was He who found us. We did not find Him. All we did was respond when He called. And He was the one who gave us, enabled us, to respond by saying, "Here I am, Lord. Use me."

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