270: Dev Ramcharan - Israel's Spiritual Adultery

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:13

   Welcome to Good Chris Selfie and talks. I’m Levi. And I’m Chris. And I’m Brian. Thank you for joining us this week on this podcast. We select one Talk a week to help us get the Bible in our Daily News feed. We post a new episode at the start of each week. With a short intro beforehand to kind of set the stage for the talk you’re about to listen to. And now let’s talk more about this week’s talk. This is Brother Brian.

2. 0:52

   This week’s talk is the second class in a series that was given by brother Dev Ramsharan. On the topic Hosea, from this past September in Australia, it would appear that Brother Dev was brought over to give a number of different talks in various places. So there’s plenty of good material to scope out and we certainly thank the sister who sent in these recommendations with active links hot off the press. That’s very much appreciated.

3. 1:28

   Out of all the classes, the Hosea study was the most intriguing to me because the story on face value is just brutal to have to put yourself in his shoes and imagine what that scenario would be like. So Brother Dev does a great job of bringing out all the finer and more blunt points over the series of four classes. But the second one that we’re listening to here stood out the most, with an abundance of cut to the heart, practical takeaways, and memorable analogies and metaphors. From a study perspective, there’s a cool tidbit in here about the price that Hosea had to pay in order to get Gomer back.

4. 2:25

   It being half in silver, half in barley, and what was the meaning of all of that? But overall, I would suggest this class as one that was just a very powerful take on a very harsh story. Brother Deb reminds us that through all of the heartbreak that Israel put him through, God was all the more willing to show.

5. 2:53

   His long-suffering and care for his people, even to the offering of his only begotten son as a testament of his commitment to all of us. And nothing will separate us from his love for us. So as always, we hope that this strengthens your faith and brightens your day. Brother Dev Ramchuran Hosea, Israel’s.

6. 3:22

   Spiritual adultery. The second chapter of Hosea begins with the following words. Say unto your brethren, AMI, and to your sisters. Ruhama plead with your mother, plead for she is not my wife. So it’s almost as if God is saying. Go tell your son Jezreel to stand up and plead a case against her mother as if his mother as if she was in in court and we were in front of a judge, and talk to her about how she’s living and the way she is treating her family and treating her marriage and through through this. Acted out parable in a man’s life, God is showing Hosea and the nation what it was that Israel put him through. Now when you look at the prophets to Israel, they come right at that end stage the last few years of the existence of the Kingdom of Israel and the north. And you, you would ask yourself the question. Why would God go to the trouble when they wouldn’t listen and just a tiny remnant of them would survive? Why would he go to all this trouble? Why did Jesus offer Judas Iscariot the SOP? He knew he had betrayed him.

7. 5:10

   He knew he wouldn’t turn from what he was going to do. He knew that Judas would go all the way through, and even knowing that and knowing that Scripture had predicted all these things, there is Christ still working with a brother, just in case he can turn him around.

8. 5:35

   He did that because that’s the way God is, because that’s the way God was. With this rebellious people. God, God knew them. He says it right in the chapter that was just read for us. I know your heart, O Ephraim. And yet he still sends a Hosea. He still allows this man to plunge into the depths of heartache and loss.

9. 6:10

   All of those things. Because he loved Israel deeply, deeply. So it goes on in chapter 2 and he says, look, you need to do these things lest I strip her naked and set her as the day that she was born. And surely some of you will be thinking of Ezekiel chapter 16, where God represents himself as walking along and he sees this little baby girl. She still has the umbilical cord attached to her. She’s thrashing around in her blood. She’s just been born and pitched out, rejected by the mother that bore her.

10. 6:55

    He picks up that baby in her nakedness, in her blood, and he says live. And he cares for her and he loves her. And so here he says. I need you to talk to her so that her thinking will change, so that I don’t have to put her back down onto the ground, so that she can continue to thrash in her blood pitched out by the people who should have loved her and looked after her.

11. 7:34

    And so he goes on and he says. As in the day that she was born and make her as a wilderness and set her like a dry land.

12. 7:46

    Look at the attitude that Israel has. Israel looks at all of these lovers that she has, and in the context of the passage, it’s about the gods that she worships outside of Yahweh, together with worshipping Yahweh, that horrible, nasty amalgam. Of religion that she had and it says in verse 5 for she said I will go after my lovers that give me my bread and my water and my wool and my flax and mine oil and my drink. Look at the repetition of that.

13. 8:27

    That word, mine, mine. It’s all about me. It’s this thing that belongs to me that I have, that I’ve gotten from my lovers. And she hadn’t gotten it from those lovers. She’d gotten these things from her actual God, Yahweh, her husband, that she’d spurned. And then he goes on verse seven, she shall follow after her lovers. But she shall not overtake them, and she shall seek them, but shall not find them.

14. 9:01

    And just before he says that, God says I’m good, going to put a hedge in place so she can’t find her lovers anymore. God made it hard for Israel to sin, but she still found ways. Now it’s the same thing with us, isn’t it? God puts in boundaries, things in our conscience, things from the word of God, words our parents have taught us or or or or or told us as they were raising us, the words of our brothers and sisters around us, All these things.

15. 9:38

    And yet we still find ways to sin. Every one of us. We know the bypass, We know how to get under, get over, get around that hedge. But God still puts a hedge in place. He still put something in place. That provides A boundary line, a limit, a deterrent to doing those things we want to do.

16. 10:05

    But Israel found a way around and it says in verse 9. Therefore will I return and take away my corn? It was mine. It wasn’t from the gods that she worshipped. In the time thereof, and my wine in the season thereof, and will pluck away my wool and my flax, which should have covered her nakedness.

17. 10:35

    So he corrects all the My’s and minds, and he says all that stuff, all those things, all that prosperity. It belonged to me. I’m going to take it all back.

18. 10:56

    It was the story of a brother who had everything a person could want in this world. He’d worked hard, he’d accumulated it, put it together. It was his life. He was full of it, full of pride. Because of all the things that he had, it lifted him in his mind, above his brothers and sisters.

19. 11:21

    He became unapproachable, judgmental, hard, critical, edgy. Circumstances changed in his life and he lost every penny he had. He was more destitute than the poorest brother that he knew.

20. 11:44

    You know who showed him the most kindness? The people who had nothing. Nothing at all. They took what little food they had, what little clothing they had, and they shared it with him. They gave him a place to stay in their little tiny apartments, and they slept on the floor and put him in the bed.

21. 12:10

    And that brother realized I had nothing when I had everything, and now that I have nothing. I have everything because now I know what my faith is. Now I I know who my brothers and sisters are. The brother still has almost nothing, but he’s happier than he ever was when he had everything. Israel had everything, she thought. It was hers, she thought.

22. 12:47

    People gave it to her that didn’t even exist. God takes that misunderstanding and corrects it by taking everything away from her. Now these are the things he said that he would do to her. But she didn’t believe what he was saying. She didn’t listen to what he was saying, but he still tried. He still gave her that SOP.

23. 13:12

    Hosea, go and talk to her. Jezreel, talk to your mother. People, listen to me. Take the SOP. Do the right thing, change your ways.

24. 13:29

    And so God in the end, would do all of these things. He would take away Israel’s feasts, festivals, sacrifices, temple. He take away all of that because out in the lands in which she was, he was. He catapulted her. He sowed her like seed strewn into the wind, out into foreign nations. She couldn’t worship him. She wanted to, but she couldn’t.

25. 14:01

    She couldn’t keep the feasts, festivals, fasts, any of those things she found. Everything that was of value was taken away from her at that time.

26. 14:16

    And so, as Brother Rodstell was pointing out to me, there are three interesting uses or places and contexts that the word therefore is used something, something therefore, and then something else. The first one then or one of them is in verse. Six therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way. So, because she has these attitudes, my me, mine, and my lovers, the idols that I worship gave this stuff to me. Therefore I’m going to put a hedge between them and their ability to worship these things.

27. 15:01

    But she wouldn’t have anything to do with that hedge. She found a way around it. And then in verse 9. Verse nine, he talks about. Therefore, because of the attitudes I’m going to take away, I’ll take those things away, but it still doesn’t have the desired effect. And then I put it to you. The real heart of God comes out underneath the discipline, underneath the correction, underneath the terror and tragedy comes the love that is underneath all of that. And he says in verse 14, Therefore the third. Therefore, behold, I will appeal to her, I’ll bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. And what God is saying is I’m going to take her back to when she was my young bride.

28. 16:04

    I’m going to take her back to that first little apartment that we had, where the only furniture in the place was stuff we found thrown out in front of people’s homes or that had been given to us by brothers and sisters, where even the curtains were given to us by brothers and sisters.

29. 16:24

    Where we had old pots and pans that didn’t match up, furniture didn’t match, but that’s where we started. That’s where our love was young. And where was the love of Israel and Yahweh? Young. And he brought her out of Egypt into the wilderness, and she followed him around through the wilderness, even as she made her mistakes. And a generation was lost.

30. 16:54

    But a generation was gained and brought, brought into the land of promise. But that was their little apartment. That was their first time together as a couple. God says she won’t respond to these other disciplines. Let me take her back to when she was my young wife and see if that will turn her around, and I will give her her vineyards from thence.

31. 17:29

    The Valley of Ayko for a door of hope. Now, yes, he’s talking about how he’s going to deal with Israel at this time, but he’s pointing forward into the future too, isn’t he? He’s pointing forward to a time when Israel will be saved by his son Jezreel, that he’s going to send and look at the wounds in his hands.

32. 17:55

    Ask him about them. And He will save them with His bride, that thundering army on horses together the word of God made flesh and His bride, when they save the remnant that’s left in Jerusalem and Israel. And and then there will be a reuniting again the valley of Acor, which reminds them of Acan. And what had happened to him and the cursing of that man when he’d stolen the Babylonian garment and the bars of gold and all the things of this world that he thought would give him happiness and just gave him death? And that instead will be turned around and Acor will instead be a door of hope, open for this stubborn and resistant. Nation, verse 19.

33. 18:56

    I will betroth thee unto me forever. Yeah, I will betroth thee unto me. With what things, what qualities, what aspects will mark that relationship? In righteousness and in judgement, and in loving kindness and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness, and thou shalt know Yahweh. And so he’s he’s looking forward to a time he knows he has to discipline this nation.

34. 19:30

    He has to put them through the horror of what the Assyrians are going to do to them, those wicked Assyrians. But he looks forward to the time when the remnant of that people raised from the grave will be united as one people. With Gentiles to become the bride of his son and his people forever. So it goes on in this chapter, and it says in verse 23. Now just look at this exquisite verse and puzzle it out, he says.

35. 20:15

    And I will sow her unto me in the earth. And I will have mercy upon her that have not obtained mercy. I will say to them which were not my people, Thou art my people, and they shall say, Thou art my God. Now now look at look, look at that wonderful little sentence.

36. 20:45

    And I will sow her unto me in the earth. Well, what does that remind you of, 1st Corinthians 15? The seed sown in the earth, the dead in Christ in the earth, that seed that is sown unto me, because they’ll be raised and after judgement will be God’s everlasting, ever living children. So God is not just looking and what’s going to happen to Israel as a nation only and what he has to put Israel through. He’s looking forward and pass that to the fulfillment of his promises, his mercies, the mercies of David. He’s looking forward to the time when the resurrection has occurred through his son represented by Jezreel. Go talk to your mother, the nation, when they will be raised from the dead.

37. 21:49

    Those people who were sown, he’d sown them like seed amongst Jews and Gentiles to be his children forever. That’s beautiful, that little verse. You have troubles in your life sometimes, brothers and sisters,

38. 22:13

    and just just when you think you cannot take any more, God adds another trial on top of that. This this man, Hosea had two terrible jobs. He had to preach to the nation that didn’t want to listen to him. He had to marry a wife that would not be faithful to him. He had to raise other people’s kids, and then she left him to go and live with somebody else. Now when that happens, your heart is broken into little splintered bits.

39. 23:02

    You wake up in the morning and you don’t want to wake up. You go to sleep at night and you cannot sleep. You go to sleep exhausted. You wake up exhausted. You can barely think. You can’t work. You can barely take care of yourself. But then as time goes by, there’s a a kind of healing, a trigger, a circuit breaker that goes off in our minds.

40. 23:31

    You never get over the loss of the person you love. You just slowly get used to the fact that they’re not there anymore. That hole is never filled. That was them in your life, but you grow used to it. And then you begin to forget the sound of their voice, and sometimes you can’t remember what they look like, except for pictures that you’ve still got. Now you get to that stage, perhaps in your Hosea, and then Lord God Almighty says to you in Hebrew this is literally, literally what it says.

41. 24:18

    Go again. Exclamation point love exclamation, or whatever the Hebrew equivalent is 2 strong ordered commands. Go again love. So what he’s telling him is it’s not over with that woman, son.

42. 24:45

    Commentators do backflips and all kinds of things that they read into a woman loved of her friend, who is the friend that she is loved by, and it’s Hosea. He never got over that love for his for his wayward wife. He never stopped loving her. He he he was without the stress of her being with him and wandering for a while. But then God said, you have to do it like me. Go.

43. 25:20

    Continue to love her. She is beloved of you and yet she is an adulteress. And this is how you need to love her. What? What did Christ say? I want you to love each other as I love you. And that was a new commandment. Well, how was it new? How was it new that they would love each other? Well, what was new was the standard they had. They had to love each other the way Christ loved them. And they knew what Christ had to look past to love them, and he still loved all of them.

44. 26:05

    And God essentially is saying the same thing to Hosea. I want you to love her like I love Israel. That’s what God is saying to him, according to the love of the Lord toward the children of Israel now. So he goes out to find his wife, and he knows where she is. And I want you to just imagine this.

45. 26:38

    He marries beautiful, wayward young Comer. At first she’s faithful to him like Israel was faithful to God, as Jeremiah chapter 2 says. But then her eye wandered and she thought she could do better, and she spurned him and undervalued who he was and what he was to her. And she went out with one man and another man and another man, and of course she was beautiful, so that could happen.

46. 27:09

    And continue until as time went by. She wasn’t beautiful anymore. She wasn’t young anymore. Now, now look what has to happen. I bought her to me for 15 pieces of silver and a Homer of barley, and a half Homer of barley. Now why this mixture of silver and and and a Homer and half of barley?

47. 27:48

    Now of course we might read into it. Silver having to do with redemption and the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. The barley once again the grain offering, reminding us of the bread that’s in the bread and wine that represents Christ again. And of course it sews things together when Zama pointed out that when you add up according to what a Homer of barley was valued at in the days of the kings during whose time Hosea was writing, this would add up to 30 pieces of silver, the price of a slave. Why did he give barley and silver? Because he gave everything he had. He had nothing else to give.

48. 28:37

    He didn’t have it all in silver because he didn’t have that kind of money. So he he supplemented what he had, all the silver. He had everything he had to give with all the food he had so that he could redeem his beloved sinful wife. Does that remind you of another woman? Of course it does.

49. 29:10

    She’s sitting in every chair in this room right now. The woman that a man gave everything he had for that you might sit in this room and listen to these words. And so he gives everything and he takes Gomer is broken, chastened, demoralized, depleted woman who is now a slave in somebody’s house property, someone of no value, mistreated and abused, and he takes her back home.

50. 30:01

    Would you do that for your wife? Yes, you would. I know you think you wouldn’t. I know you would be thinking of all that she did to hurt you and said about you and said against you did to you. How she blackened your reputation, ruined your name, how she hurt you to the core.

51. 30:24

    How many years it took you to get over it. But when you see her in the condition she is in, and you remember the love you have for her, how could you do otherwise than what Hosea did here for Gomer and what God did for Israel, and what Christ did for you, How could you do otherwise?

52. 30:59

    Now are you willing to do that for the brother or sister that fails beside you in the ecclesia? And the full shame of the bad decisions or actions they’ve been engaged in is out there for everyone to see? Would you do that for them? Would you do that for your child that has bitterly disappointed you?

53. 31:32

    For your brother that you’re related to? For, for your aunt, your uncle riddled with disease, whose life has fallen apart into drugs and alcohol and all kinds of degradation? Would you do that for them?

54. 31:54

    You see, we’re all fine upstanding, well dressed brothers and sisters in Christ. But every one of these suit jackets covers a broken person, broken because of sin, broken because of all the folly and frailty that we carry about in ourselves, in our hearts, in our minds.

55. 32:25

    And sometimes when someone’s brokenness becomes public, we pull back from them, so none of it splashes up unto us. But that’s our flesh and blood. Isaiah 58 talks about the fact that we cannot hide ourselves from our own flesh and blood. When the leper came up to Christ and said, if you will, you can make me clean, he didn’t step back and say yes, stand back a big will you? Yes.

56. 32:56

    Be clean. He put his hand on him and by every tradition and social norm of Israeli life, rendered himself utterly unclean by touching that man. But he touched him so that he could show you, you’re connected to me. What you have on you that everyone can see on the outside, I have in the nature I bear, and I do want to make you clean, and I do want to treat you with honor and respect. So that man picked up his broken, pitiable wife in his arms, and he took her home.

57. 33:49

    And he said to her when he took her home, Thou shalt abide for me many days. Thou shalt not play the harlot. Thou shalt not be another man’s, And so will I also be for thee. For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, without a Prince, without a sacrifice, without an image, without an ephod, without Terrapin.

58. 34:21

    And afterwards shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God and David their king, and shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days. And so the this this picture is not just about a man and what God put him through, so he could understand what it’s like to think like God, to feel like God.

59. 34:49

    And you? Some commentators say you know this this business about these feelings God is expressing. Well, that’s not really what God feels. God is trying to explain his emotions and terms that we ordinary humans can understand. And that’s rubbish. Where do you think those feelings and us came from? Mums. Where do you think your motherly feelings came from? From God?

60. 35:16

    From God? All of these feelings hurt. Love. Sadness. Disappointment, elation, joy. These feelings come from God and are in us too. So God did feel hurt and disappointment. God did feel a deep sense of loss. With Israel, it’s not just that He’s talking in language so we mortals can understand, but that’s not really how he feels. That is exactly what he feels.

61. 35:55

    So that means when God saw his child, his baby, pinned to that cross, he felt everything a father would feel everything. Every pang his child felt, he felt it too. So like Abraham and Isaac, they too went along together. And when that great darkness unfolded around that scene on Golgotha, it was God coming down, some presence representing him there with his child. Just like that same cloud had come down upon Mount Sinai, just like that same cloud had come down on the Mount of Transfiguration, just like that same cloud had filled up the temple and pushed the priests out because of its presence. He was right there with his child, feeling every pang with his child, and that’s how he is with you. So I know brother or sister, you have a hard life. You have to live, and I understand the loneliness that goes with that life.

62. 37:36

    I understand those long, long evenings. Just know that you are not alone. That your God is with you, that your God cares so much for you and what you feel and what you’re going through, That he will never let you go. He’s always there with you.

63. 38:06

    Chapter four, he goes through all the evils of the nation, he says in verse six. My people are destroyed. For what? For lack of knowledge, because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me. So this is like the words in Malachi, where God is rebuking the priests, and they were to be the sources of knowledge and teaching in the nation.

64. 38:40

    The prophets came and went. The priests were supposed to always be there, teaching, leading, reaching into the nation, showing them out of the law. And you know, brethren, that’s our job today. And sisters who teach Sunday school, that’s your job with the kids. This is part of what Psalm 78 describes, generation, passing things on to generations after them. And if if we don’t have the word of God right in the center of ecclesial life and it’s so easy for it to be pushed off, you just just think the ecclesia gets together, everybody is playing games, having fun, and the word of God is pushed off to the side.

65. 39:30

    May or may not even be read. Perhaps if it’s read it’s just a short passage no comments. And on to the games. Well, the the the problem is that’s appealing to flesh if the word of God is not kept in the center. And brothers, you might listen to speakers travelling through like, oh, it’s so easy for that brother to get up there and say this or that. I couldn’t do that.

66. 40:02

    You are making for yourself, The biggest cop out an excuse imaginable. Thousands of hours of Labor. Are poured by speakers into the speaking that they do up till 2:00 in the morning. Your eyes can barely stay open. You just have to get through a few more words in the passage to understand what is this saying? What does it mean?

67. 40:33

    How can I bring it out to my brothers and sisters? The labour, the backbreaking labour that goes into study? It’s not easy for anyone what what you’re saying effectively in that cop out is this, oh, study is easy for some kinds of flesh. Are you crazy or something? Crazy, by the way, is not a diagnostic term that clinicians use today. They don’t say, well, actually your mother is crazy. They don’t use that term.

68. 41:04

    But are you crazy that you think that we just throw it together because we’re talented? There’s no such thing. It’s all work. So put in the work. The priests weren’t putting in the work. The truth was lost for lack of knowledge. The Ecclesia was falling apart, perishing without anchor this direction, that direction and away and away from God.

69. 41:33

    And don’t think it couldn’t happen to you. Don’t think it couldn’t happen to your Ecclesia. So this is an excitation to us. That’s for us to be able to look at and learn from. And then chapter 5 hear this. So you priests hack in the House of Israel, O House of the King gave ear, he says, for judgment is towards you because you have been a a snare on this path and a net spread upon table.

70. 42:10

    Now he’s using very famous locations in Jewish history and he’s saying instead of you being the kind of people who in those historical circumstances were heroes of the nation and helped to save the nation who trusted in God, you’re spreading a net to trap your people like birds and to kill them, he says in verse three. I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hid for me. And so brother, that’s that’s a message to you and me, brothers and sisters, God knows us.

71. 42:50

    We might pretend to be one person to our people at large, but inside with somebody completely different. And what God is saying is you can’t pretend with me. You can’t make like you’re somebody you’re not. I know you. I know who you are, with everything that’s good and bad going on inside of you.

72. 43:13

    And I still love you. And I still love you. And so God talks about the rebuke He even says in verse 5 Judah also shall stumble with them. Something about the mentality of prosperous, sinful, heedless, stubborn Israel affected Judah as time went by. We want to be prosperous like Judah too. Maybe what they worship, maybe the way they live is OK.

73. 43:44

    Maybe if we’re more like them we’ll be as well off as them. And Judah started to slip and slide. And God is saying, look, even Judah is going to stumble because of you people. Verse 12. Therefore will I be unto Ephraim as a moth into the House of Judah. As rottenness. Of course. That ties up with James, doesn’t it? You’re moth eaten gold and silver. And what he’s saying is this.

74. 44:15

    It’s the story of that brother I told you who lost everything. He says. I’m going to take everything away from you now. First Corinthians, First Corinthians 14. Let’s go there for a minute. You are so tired this evening, brothers and sisters. I’m standing here and looking at you, and you look terrible.

75. 44:41

    See, now you’re up a little bit more, right? OK, so let’s see if I can find it not just by memory, but actually find the passage I’m looking for. Might have to do a little bit of digging around. Still, just bear with me here. See if I can find that passage. There it is. OK, First Corinthians Chapter 11. And let’s end with this, shall we? So that you can just rest a little. I know it’s been a long day.

76. 45:17

    So, First Corinthians Chapter 11, verse 31. There are three forms of judgement. OK, if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. So the rebuke of the word of God is not to make us feel down. It’s to give us the incentive to change, to look at ourselves, judge ourselves and say, look, I I can’t be like this anymore.

77. 45:49

    I can’t do things this way or that way anymore. I have to change that, right? So if we would judge ourselves, then God is not going to have to judge us. And what judgement is that? It’s the correction. It’s the the experiences. We go through Indiana, this life where God takes who we are and confronts us with painful and difficult circumstances. That’s that’s what the second judgment is. And why did we receive that second judgment? Why did God put Israel through all the terrible things he put her through?

78. 46:32

    So that she wouldn’t have to undergo that final judgement, which is rejection at the judgement seat of Christ? So we we have these three judgements, and the first is reading the word of God, being rebuked and chastened by what it says. And it’s not going to happen if we’re not reading it. So if we’re not doing the readings or reading the word of God in a systematic, continuous, daily way, it doesn’t have the chance to work on us that way.

79. 47:05

    And then so what’s left then is correction in this life through circumstances we go through Now, what we have to avoid is this. There are many tragic circumstances that attend our lives. That does not mean when someone goes through those things that God is rebuking a person or correcting them. It may just be a genetic inheritance that a person has a predisposition for cancer, for instance. When a person develops cancer, is it then right for you or me to say, well, God is teaching that person this or that, that’s why they have cancer?

80. 47:50

    No, no. God knows when he’s correcting people in particular ways. But sometimes it’s just the experience of human life, frailty, loss, disease, and these things that we we all go through and that we all have to endure as brothers and sisters, right? So other times God acts directly, does something to stop you from going too far, and that usually involves loss or pain or some experience that is not easy to bear up under, but it can have the effect of cutting you off at a point where you would go too far. But if you still do not take heed, well then there is the judgement seat when we will be told so. If, brother, you, you mistreat your wife, you disrespect her, you make her life a life full of pain, a veil of tears, and and you read in scripture about the way a man should behave, and now we should love his wife as his own body. And you don’t take heed to that, and you continue to behave that way.

81. 49:19

    You will hear about it at the Judgement seat, and that’s not where you want to hear about that. But Israel would not listen. God loved her. God gave her so much. God gave her his beloved Son, and she still put him to death. But sections of the nation believed there was 5000 that didn’t bow the knee to bow the ball of tradition and the priesthood and the Roman authority. They believed in Jesus and continued as his brothers and sisters.

82. 50:05

    So here we are, the broken bits and pieces of the bride of Christ. All of us working with different forms of trouble, addiction, wrong headed notions, stubbornnesses, difficult areas to change. Every one of us. I’ve got my things, you’ve got your things. Many of us have certain things in common. You know there’s a brother here and this just it is unfortunate for you that I have so many distractions that run across my head while I’m speaking.

83. 50:42

    There’s a brother in this in this room today, who was born on the same day of the same month, of the same year that I was born. Peter Osborne.

84. 50:59

    We’re twins. It’s pretty sad, isn’t it? Same day, different sides of the earth and part of the same family in Christ. But he’s my brother and you’re my brothers and my sisters, and whatever trouble we’re going through, God is at work. God does love you. The pain in your life is not evidence of the opposite.

85. 51:27

    He loves you in that pain, working with you through it to to to shape you into the gem that you are. Job did not go through what Job went through because God didn’t love him. God absolutely loved him. So hold on to that. This evening when you go to sleep, thank him for his love, and thank that woman or man beside you for their love for you.

86. 52:14

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87. 52:44

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88. 52:59

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