296: Jim Styles - What Does God Require of You?

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 Elfion 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 the short intro beforehand to kind of set the stage for the talk you’re about to listen to.

2. 0:33

   And now, let’s talk more about this week’s talk. Hi everyone. This is Jason Hensley and this week we are going to be listening to a talk that Brother Jim Styles just gave at Rathmines Bible School in Australia. So he gave this just a few weeks ago. So it’s very new material and this is the first class in the series.

3. 1:10

   The entire series is called Living as a Member of God’s Family and His First Class is specifically entitled What Does God Require of You? I Absolutely love this series, so I hope that you are going to get to listen to the entire thing. What I really like about it is that Brother Jim really brings out and stresses who God is.

4. 1:40

   That’s really the whole idea behind this series. And what he does is he he takes apart, deconstructs some of the false ideas that maybe we had about God that we didn’t realize we had. And these ideas, in creating a wrong picture of God, affect us because we then turn around and treat other people the way that we believe God treats us.

5. 2:08

   So this series is huge. Listen to the whole thing once, listen to it twice, three times. I think it’s the kind of thing that you want to listen to over and over to really help fight against some of those wrong ideas that maybe we’ve taken on and and wrong perceptions of God. And so by getting this in and recognizing that God is a father and therefore he loves us and that he gives us this guarantee that if we stick with him and stay with his program, that he has a plan and that he’ll give salvation when we realize that there is such incredible comfort.

6. 2:48

   So I hope that you enjoy this series. I hope you enjoy this first class and then ultimately the whole series. And I think that these talks are going to do a lot for us in helping us develop our biblical perception of God. So here’s Brother Jim Styles living as a member of God’s family.

7. 3:08

   This is class #1. What does God require of you? What I’d like to do is we’re we’re gonna have it more of a devotional study this week. It’s not really a Bible book study, but hopefully it’ll be very practical for a lot of you and everybody go home with some good lessons to try and apply in our lives. Little challenging things here and there, but I really believe the foundation of all our life in Christ has taken me so many years to realize is that this incredible love that God has for us, I didn’t hear much of that growing up in my generation. People didn’t talk about the love of God. It just was like maybe too evangelical to talk about that, but really that it should be the number one principle in our BASF that is the basis for all the things that God has done. He loves his creation, He loves us. And all these things that he has done. You know, planning for 4000 years to send Jesus and put him through what what he went through. And and all the the torture that they did to him so that God could win the victory over sin and save us into His eternal family.

8. 4:09

   Draw us away from sin. And and convince us to join Christ in a in a life that that’s like unbelievable love that God has for us. And it’s really important that all of us catch on to that. Because what I’ve discovered is that this is one of the most motivating things in our life.

9. 4:26

   Because if you look back at your own life I think most of you here will probably have to admit that your vision of God your understanding of God the relationship that we have with your God really effects who you become in a way of looking at our second studies on Job and I I can show you going through Job that Job had a relationship with God that I would say was more on the fear based side at least at least the three the friends pushed him to that he was always afraid about.

10. 4:54

    You know like God you’re watching over me every minute and you’re gonna you’re gonna shoot me with your arrows and he it was he was he was on that side of on the on the balance of fear base always thinking God was watching out for all those things that he did wrong. And if that’s the way you are and that’s your relationship with God you you’re you’re living with this fear based relationship where you’re thinking God is always watching and the angels are watching what you do so that they can get you in this life.

11. 5:20

    Then what happens is you feel justified treating other people like that. That’s sad. But I look back in your life. I I know I myself went through this. You feel like, well, I can. I can look at other people. I can see what they’re doing wrong. And if they do something wrong, I can. I can bring consequences into their life. I can judge them.

12. 5:40

    I can, I can punish them for what they’ve done. And it’s because we really do become the God who we worship. And that’s why we have to get it right. We we have to understand who is our God. How does he really deal with us, What what is he expecting from us? How does he treat us and and all of our sins and all of our mistakes.

13. 6:02

    You know, as you’re going through that job study in the second period, you look at all the things that Job said and did and he and he said some things that were wrong in the end. But God had unbelievable compassion towards Job. As we looked at in in James Chapter 5 yesterday, his compassion and his mercy was unbelievable.

14. 6:20

    A lot of us would written tobe off. We would have said, you said all those things and you you saw all this stuff, You know that now you’re going to pay for it. No, that isn’t what our God does. He looks at them as learning experiences, things that we’re going through in life, making mistake, a mistake.

15. 6:36

    But what do you want from those things so we can get closer and closer to him. And it’s really the challenge this week. So I think for all of us is what kind of God do you worship, You know what kind of relationship you have with your God. And that’s something that all of us have to get challenged on. If Jesus Christ walked through the door right now today, as that door opens up back there, if he walked in there and you saw him, would you want to run up and thank him or would you want to like sneak out the back door? And and it tells us a lot about our relationship with God and with Jesus Christ, his Son and with the angels that are working in our lives.

16. 7:13

    If we have a fear based relationship, brothers and sisters, then we will transfer that to our children and we will bring that out in our collegia. And it’s not a very positive way to live the truth that you you won’t find, you know, that’s really the aim of the goal of of vital characters.

17. 7:31

    They came to love their God. They came to have, you know a friendship with Jesus Christ. And that’s what we want to look at this week because our God really does love us. He loves us. He is full of compassion and he treats us that way as we’re going to see, and so do his family members with Jesus Christ and the angels.

18. 7:51

    That’s how they treat us as well. He treats us as a father does his children, and this is part of why he has put us in families. He could have raised children on this earth entirely different ways, but he he put us into a situation where as young people grow up, the men and the boys and the girls, they find relationships with each other. Many of them have children, or they have children they work with in the Ecclesia.

19. 8:14

    And you learn as a father how to deal with your children and children with the parents. And we we we start to understand how our God feels about us. But if mom and dad are always like looking at what we do wrong and and we’re looking at our kids and we’re like spanking them for every little thing they did wrong instead of explaining to them why and hoping that I hope you learn from this like our God does and showing compassion and mercy. How are our kids ever going to understand our God if if we if we bring them up with a fear based relationship. And when the teens get to the point where they’re teenagers now and and they’re in that teen class, we’re still treating them like that, then in the end they think, well, if that’s where you are, that’s the way God is and they and they walk away from the truth.

20. 8:58

    This is serious about how we view our God. It’s a serious subject. And I don’t really think we spend enough time on it myself. Some people think that when they look back at the Old Testament, they, they read the Old Testament, They see all these things that God did. He was angry with the children of Israel, They punched the children of Israel. He did all these things.

21. 9:14

    He said to a whole generation, you won’t go into the land because of unbelief. And he made him wander for 38 years. But we missed the fact that that was a national thing. He was dealing with a nation of people. That’s not the same as you here today. We you can’t superimpose those things of the Old Testament on national Israel and say that God is treating all of us the same way.

22. 9:38

    We we weren’t forced into this. We volunteered to come here. We weren’t circumcised at 8 days old. We were baptized and we willingly joined Christ and said to God we want to have a death like his for his help to live a new kind of life patterned after the resurrection of Christ. It’s it’s a totally different thing.

23. 9:58

    And if you go back and look at how God wanted to treat his nation, you see, you see things like Deuteronomy 7, that verse six there. For you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth.

24. 10:16

    That’s what he wanted. And and most God said the the Lord did not set his love on you nor choose you because you were more in number. It’s because you’re not the biggest group than any other people, for you are the least of all the peoples. But because the Lord loves you, and because he would keep the oath which He swore to your Father’s, he’s faithful to his oath.

25. 10:35

    And the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the House of bondage. And that’s how God wants to treat us. That’s the relationship He wants with us, like a father with His children. That’s what he’s after, hoping that we then will live like that in the way we treat other people.

26. 10:52

    You see it again in Deuteronomy 10, starting there at verse 12. And And what does the Lord your God require of you but the fear of the Lord your God to walk in his ways? Well, that fear of the Lord your God, that that doesn’t have to mean be afraid of him. It’s respect him.

27. 11:07

    Realize that she She’s the God who gives us these principles to live by, and yet they’re good. They’re good principles to live by. That we agree with the righteousness of God. He’s right about how we should live. That’s what he’s after, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes and so on.

28. 11:27

    But she’s commanding you this day for your good. Yet the Lord set his heart and love on your father, as it shows their offspring after them. You above all peoples, as you are this day circumcise, therefore the force get of your heart, and no longer be stubborn. It. It was a tough thing for Moses to get to, but as you go through this you see like that in verse 18, that God executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and He loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Therefore you are being asked to love the sojourner. Therefore, for you were you were sojourners in the land of Egypt, you see the connection that he’s making between how God treats people, how He treats you and expects that that will translate into then if you understand your relationship with God and how merciful He’s been with you, that you will be motivated other people the same way he’s treated. It’s not rocket science.

29. 12:29

    It it’s just totally understanding our God, That’s what he’s really after. But although Paul does say it in Romans chapter 2, there’s an expectation there. He’s hoping that when God is merciful to us and and he’s, he’s kind to us. Even Paul goes on to tell the Jews, you O man, you know everyone of you who judges these Jews. They read back in Romans one all these nasty Gentiles and God gave them up.

30. 12:52

    But he said, look at you Jews. You the judge, you practice the very same things you know and and he goes out in verse four, Do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? He’s expecting a response to his mercy and his kindness. But that response is that we we repent. We we realize that I want to be like God. I I want to be more like Jesus.

31. 13:18

    I want to live like them. I want to be like Christ the resurrected man, but because of your heart and and penitent heart, you’re storing up a wrath for yourself on the day of wrath because there will be a a day of wrath for those people who are not willing to respond. So what?

32. 13:32

    What does the Lord require of us? What is He after in US today? What does He want from us? What are we going to learn from this week about what we can take home and apply in our life? You know what’s He after? So some of the religions around, at least in the US, I’m sure you have some here in Australia as well.

33. 13:48

    Some of them really pushed the idea that you got to be out there doing good works, good works, good works. And whoever does the most good works wins. And you’re the ones that have earned your salvation. That’s that’s a that’s a push that some religions have. It’s that’s what the Jews did, isn’t it?

34. 14:02

    The the Jewish Pharisees, they pushed works works works thinking that somehow they were going to make themselves look good before God and therefore you can earn your salvation. Now this isn’t just Christian religions either. I’ve I’ve run into this in the Muslim community and the different religions the Jewish community. It’s a common practice to think that what we got to do is make sure in the end that our good works outweigh our bad works.

35. 14:25

    And therefore we we now we come out on the end of where we’re we have a positive to our life and the and God will then have to give us eternal life. But that isn’t what our God does. That’s that’s not the way he works. I I think for the young people here today especially if you’ve got to understand this God isn’t weighing up your life and watching what you do today and saying well how many good things did you do.

36. 14:46

    How many bad things did you do? As long as the good ones outweigh the bad ones then all right. You’re OK. That isn’t how God works. Not at all. What he does is he gives grace. He gives grace. He’s, He’s put us into these lives with this nature that’s so prone to sin.

37. 15:05

    And he’s, he’s going through life watching us where we sin day after day we sin, hoping we will learn from that that that our God is merciful. He’s gracious, He is willing to forgive that. That in turn will treat all of you like He treats me. And you’ll treat your, your other, the children like that. And the children treat their parents like that and will treat other ecclesial members like that And and look around in our colleges today.

38. 15:31

    And I just watching as I I’ve grown up in the truth for years. It’s so sad to watch in a collegial life where elders will make very gracious decisions about their own children when they when they sin. But if it’s somebody else’s children, they come down much more judgmental. And that’s not good. Brothers and sisters.

39. 15:49

    That’s what the Bible calls showing partiality. Partiality. That isn’t what God does. He doesn’t show partiality. What God is after is helping everybody and bringing the right circumstances into the life. When we sin, they’ll send those angels out. They’ll bring the right circumstances that help us develop and help us to learn. And that’s what he did with his own son. As you’re going through Job, you’re gonna see that although Job starts out a very righteous man, he’s learning as he goes through this, he’s developing, He’s maturing his spiritual character.

40. 16:21

    So by the end he says, wow, I’ve heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. Now he had a relationship with God based on love and saw how God was using suffering to bring about good things. It was a total different way of looking at God or look at Jesus Christ. The ultimate case.

41. 16:41

    Whatever model we create in life has to fit Jesus Christ. He goes through life perfect, never making mistakes. How did God get him there? He learned obedience by the things that he suffered. Suffering is a huge part of that. God doesn’t use suffering in us. The way he uses wrath on the nations, a wrath on on those who walked away from God. When Jesus Christ returns, he’s treating you like children, Paul says in Hebrews 12.

42. 17:11

    That’s what he’s doing with you. He’s disciplining you for your good, that you might share His Holiness and all those people that Paul ends up saying, if you have been trained, you’ve been trained into that righteousness. It’s a training program that He’s running us through so he doesn’t weigh out the goods and the bads that we do. What he’s doing is just constantly bringing circumstances into our life to help us learn to become better children, to learn his eternal way of life. Eternal life, as Jesus called it, or as John calls it in his letters.

43. 17:45

    He talks about eternal life, eternal life. It’s not immortality. That’s a huge mistake to make. If you read eternal life and from Jesus or from John when when Jesus said this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ and you have son, that’s not immortality, That’s an eternal way of life.

44. 18:05

    Or as John would say, you have eternal life. Now abiding in you, you have it. It’s a way of life. It’s God’s eternal way of life. It’s his way of life, and he’s trying to train us to live like him. And he found out the best motivation he could ever give was to send his son and put his son through all those circumstances and show us that no matter what happened when he was reviled, he didn’t revile in return.

45. 18:34

    When he suffered, he didn’t threaten. Why? Because he trusted that the one who judges justly, you know, that’s what he did. And by His stripes, we are healed. We’re healed because we’re learning from that to behave like Him. That’s the whole goal, man. Peter summarizes it like that in first Peter 2. So that’s what our God is doing with us.

46. 18:56

    Then He. He’s not really comparing all of our sins with all our good deeds and weighing them out. That’s more like a fair, safe, a way of looking at life. What he’s hoping is these sins that we commit are going to help us learn to become better members of his family. And you see, He doesn’t look at sin like we do.

47. 19:13

    Somebody sins in our community and they do something wrong. And a lot of us, we have these tendencies to think, oh, right, what are we going to bring? What consequences are we going to bring into their life? And and we we look at this as though we’ve got to somehow do this to them and they’ve got to be punished. Because if you have a relationship with God where you think he’s where he wants to punish you for your sins, you feel justified in doing that to other people. But that isn’t what our God does. He gives more grace.

48. 19:38

    James says that’s what he does. That’s how he solves wars and and ecclesial members. And in chapter 4, James says, well what does God do? He gives more grace, same way. So we know it’s by grace that we have been saved and it’s not from ourselves, it’s the gift of God and not by works so that no one can boast. That’s the reason.

49. 20:00

    It’s like nobody can boast. And what God has done is he’s brought us into a family. He’s training us to be his family members, training us to be ready for eternal life. That’s what he’s doing. Have you ever thought about the concept about, like, if he was weighing out good and bad things and it was based in any way on our works?

50. 20:17

    Well, what we could do rather than sisters and young people? Just think about it. You know, it’s it’s almost like a job that you have if we treat God like our employer. And and you, you go to work today, you go to a teacher at school and you think, well, if I do a good job, if I really do this right, they’re going to give me more.

51. 20:31

    They’re going to pay me more or they’re going to pay you more. But our God can’t afford to run eternal life like that. Immortality. That is just how he works. What he does is he says here you can have it. It’s a gift. I’ll give you grace. You’ve been saved by grace. And then he waits to see how we will respond to that. What are you going to do with that? You just going to squander it?

52. 20:54

    You’re going to just like, not treat it seriously? Or is it going to change your life and how you treat other people That’s what he’s looking for and and you see why. If if it was all about like I’m trying to do works and I’m trying to earn my way through and I’m piling up comparing my good and my bad when it came behind to the Judgement seat and he gives us immortality, what motivation is there anymore to do good things? You see that?

53. 21:19

    That’s, that’s this whole issue of that we have to love God’s way of life. When when Jack was going through that with Job, I mean, look at what Job did, He kept holding on to this idea and his integrity of the righteousness of God. God’s way of life is right. That’s what God’s looking for, not people that are just doing it for what they can get out of it in this life. Because as soon as that’s over, there’s no motivation anymore. He wants people that will hold on to it even when they’re going through rough times, even when they’re being challenged. Even when things aren’t going well, you still commit to it. Those are the people that endure to the end for whom he can graciously hand out immortality and say welcome to the family. That’s that’s the way our God works. And it changes how we treat other people. So we’re not here by accident today. You know, it isn’t a case where somebody just happened to preach to us that you were born into a Christadelphian family or or whatever you are here because God wants you and his family. He loves you, John.

54. 22:18

    Jesus says in John 15 that you are my friends. If you do whatever I command, you no longer do, I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master’s doing. But I have called you friends or all things that I’ve heard from my father I have made known to you.

55. 22:33

    You did not choose me. See, sometimes we think, brothers and sisters. We did all our Bible study. We did all this work. I learned the truth. You know, I did all this stuff and I got baptized and you know, I did it. And then we continue that process through our life. That isn’t how it works.

56. 22:50

    We’re we’re only here because God chose us. Jesus chose you. He chose you. That’s what he did. I I remember learning years ago that in our BAS stuff, right, we’ve got this clause that we put in. We amended the BASF years ago and we have this clause. What is it? Clause 25, right? Or whatever it is in your BAS.

57. 23:10

    Over over here, we got this one about The Who are the responsible people, right? The responsible. Well, who are they and and what we would rattle off? The responsible people are those that know the revealed will of God, right? You did your studies, you know all the answers you could pass the pass the baptismal interview. You know it.

58. 23:26

    You’re the responsible people and we forgot to read the rest. Who knows how that ends? Do we know RBASFI didn’t I got taught this by unamended brother sisters in in North America. They said just read the rest of the clause. What did they put in there? It says those who know the reveals what of God and have been called upon to submit to it. You totally left out God’s calling. You didn’t realize it’s up to God to call you. It’s not.

59. 23:55

    You don’t call your children. You don’t make your children responsible to the truth. That isn’t what we do as parents. We pray that God will call them and that we will then help in that process by teaching them the truth. But it’s not up to me. It’s not up to me. Maybe I learned that the hard way, having an autistic child, that no matter what we did, we we couldn’t force things. It’s totally up to God and his calling, and it all made sense in the end.

60. 24:22

    In in Romans 9, when Paul actually deals with this, though, you, Paul Jesus said there that you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit. It was up to Christ to do the calling or up to God and they are the ones who call.

61. 24:37

    I I learned a lot by doing a study of the angels years ago and I was really impressed with the fact that I had been reading angels the wrong way. I knew all these Bible stories and I know you do too. You know all about Abraham and lot all this stuff. We we knew all the stories.

62. 24:51

    But what I had never done is read them from the perspective of angels. And I found that very helpful to start out in January when you’re doing the Bible readings. And every time you run across a story where angels are involved, just try to understand and think about what? What are they thinking? What are they going through?

63. 25:08

    Because they’re already in God’s family. Watch how they treat people with these people and learn from them about how to treat one another. I found that very useful. So look at the three men in Genesis 18. The three angels, they they rose from there. This is after talking to Abraham and Sarah. And what did they tell them? They told Abraham, here you are, old man, You’re going to have a son, Sarah, you’re old, but you’re going to have, you’re going to have a child.

64. 25:33

    And they came to tell them that news personally. And then the three angels, they left there from from Abraham, they started to walk away. Where were they going? They’re going to Sodom, Genesis 19, right? And they have a conversation on the road. And they look at one another and they say, wow, we’re going down to Sodom. We’re probably going to destroy it. Abraham’s nephew went down there. Do you think we should tell Abraham what we’re going to do? Do do you, do you read your Bible that way? I mean, that’s what’s happening.

65. 26:02

    They’re having a conversation. These angels were empowered to make a huge decision. They’re they’re having this look, the Lord said. So we get fooled by reading. The Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing? See, the three that are having this discussion are three angels who Abraham refers to as the Lord or Yahweh.

66. 26:21

    And Lot in turn calls them Yahweh as well. So it’s these three angels that are there, I’m doing since Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and for all the nations of the earth are going to be blessed in him, or I have known him. Now isn’t that interesting, that phrase I have known him. Do you realize that the Hebrew words there that are used are the same words where Abraham knew his wife and she conceived? That’s the same word.

67. 26:48

    And in the Hebrew I have known him. This is an intimate personal relationship. The angel’s head with Abraham. They came to talk to him personally. Friend. I really believe this first time Abraham was ever called the friend of God, it’s referred to him. It wasn’t there. There’s 40 righteous. What are you going to do? Angel talks with Abraham, says OK, he’s talking with Abraham. That’s what this Angel did.

68. 27:14

    Look at that idea that God, in this case, or the angels that were there, they talked to Abraham as their friend. It fits in with Jesus and John there where he said that, you know, I don’t call you servants anymore. You’re my friends, you know. I I know you. I want you to understand. We want a relationship with you where you will learn to live like me.

69. 27:34

    That’s what he’s after. So look, in John 6, this was also an interesting one about God’s calling, because the Jews therefore answered, Jesus answered the Jews here, and he said to them, Don’t murmur among yourselves, for no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. See, that’s a blanket statement. It’s not just here you’re going to find. That’s all over in John’s Gospel and elsewhere in the Bible. Sometimes as parents, we think that we just got to drill the Bible into our kids.

70. 27:59

    We got a Bible Mark. We got a CYC. We got, we got to do all this stuff about the Bible, do the Bible rings home. And we got to be careful because in the end we think that when they’re baptized, we look back and say, oh, look at that, look what I did.

71. 28:12

    And we look at somebody else in the truth whose child walks away and we judge them and say, well, you didn’t do as good a job as I did. That’s not right. Brothers and sisters, we we should be doing the Bible readings at home. We should be going to Cyc. We should have our kids here at at these guys.

72. 28:28

    But at the same time, we should be praying and pleading with God that he will call them. It’s up to him to call them into his family. And he doesn’t always call everyone. Abraham had to deal with that with Ishmael. He said, oh, that Ishmael might live in your sight. God says no, it’s not going to go through Ishmael. And later on, Isaac, you know, pleading with God about he loved Esau.

73. 28:54

    And God says no, it’s going to go through Jacob. And we sometimes fool ourselves into thinking that Jacob was a better man than Esau. Well, you know, read the account of Jacob’s life. He’s a schemer. He he tried everything he could to scheme his way through life. And yet God trained him. He worked with him.

74. 29:12

    He patiently worked with Jacob because God was calling Jacob and it’s a lesson we have to learn. Paul deals with this in Romans 9 when he talks about God’s election. And he says from the same lump of clay he can make one vessel to honor and another vessel to dishonor. Not different lumps of clay, not one good lump and one bad lump. No, from the same lump, same lump. He can do that.

75. 29:37

    Why John Baptist said of these stones God can raise up children to Abraham? He can. That’s what he can do it. It’s not that there’s better stones. And you know, that was a mistake the Jews made. They they thought, oh, we are the people. We have the promises, that we’re better people than those nasty dog Gentiles.

76. 29:54

    And God had to constantly remind them, no, you’re not better people. You’re you’re in a better situation. Because I love you. I’ve. I’ve given you these things. I’ve given you all these privileges. Now I’m expecting something from you. And he got so disappointed in the nation where for all the things God had done for them, they had not responded.

77. 30:14

    And it was frustrating to God and to the angels that we’re working with them. So we have to remember it’s all about God’s calling. God’s having a family. He wants to have a family. He’s I had with God because our God, he really is our coach now. Have you ever played a sport where you play for a coach where everything you do wrong, he just wants to like wack you on the head or he wants to like punish you? Go ride, go run ton lap.

78. 30:36

    Do you really want to play for a coach like that? I didn’t. I didn’t find them very fun to play with. The game plan, It’s his game plan. It’s God’s righteousness, his right way of life. It’s all gonna be right because the the judge of all the earth will do right and he guarantees success. Wouldn’t that be great, to go into a A, a school, a class in in school or somewhere in business and have somebody teaching about this and guaranteeing that if you cooperate with the program, you will be successful? You’ll make it.

79. 31:08

    It’s a guarantee you’ll make it. If by faith you trust him, whatever he brings into your life, whatever happens when we go home, whatever’s happening today in your life and my family life, we got to trust him. He’s in control. It’s God’s family. He’s got his angels. They’re out there working. Jesus is over them now, and he’s controlling all these things. We just have to trust and treat people the way he treats people. We don’t have to force an issue.

80. 31:36

    We don’t have to say, well, the ends will justify the means. So I had to do it that way. No, we don’t. God’s in control and that’s what he’s after. And he knows what we need. He knows it better than any of us. You know, I’ve, I’ve watched this on arranging boards before I’ve been on and and a young person will make mistake and people talk about, well, what consequence or punishment we have to bring in their life so that they will learn, you know, that this is wrong or something.

81. 32:00

    You’ve got to set an example for the other young people and all these things. But brothers and sisters, you know, look at the life of David. What did you learn from David with his mistake? Like David was the king. David committed adultery, David committed murder. And what did God do? By law, he should have been stoned, should have been stoned. But God doesn’t treat him that way. I I think for a lot of times we’ve misread the law, but the law told us what we deserve for our sins. But did you realize that so many times people who made terrible mistakes didn’t receive what the law said they should receive? Because the law accepted that people were living under you would learn after a while that wow, I deserve this, I deserve that.

82. 32:46

    But God, I’m pleading for mercy. God is merciful and he hoped that we would catch on that that’s what we should be doing for other people. Have you ever noticed, like reading through the New Testament? Remember when Mary became pregnant? Do you notice how the Manti goes out of his way to say that Joseph, being a just man, decided to put her away privately? Well, that’s not what the law said. Oh no, you get pregnant like that. You should be stoned.

83. 33:16

    They were engaged, should have turned her into have her stoned. But the Bible trying to tell us that Joseph being a just man, didn’t bring on her the punishment that the law said she deserved. Don’t read the law like that. If we don’t have to apply those punishments, we don’t have to. We can extend mercy like our God.

84. 33:39

    But look, look at how that played out with the woman caught in adultery. Jesus knew she was caught in adultery. He doesn’t push the law to say, well, he kept the law perfectly. He doesn’t push the issue to say Chip Stoner, she committed adultery. Nope. He he he guilts the other guys into the point. They all walk away.

85. 33:56

    And then he tells her, go away yourself, you know, But sin no more. Learn something from this. That’s what he’s after. Learn something. Yeah, I’ve learned to read the Bible an entirely different way by by just being careful about these stories and trying to figure out what’s God trying to tell us. And it’s it’s just amazing to me how as a younger person, I was much more judgmental, much more into thinking that we had to carry out all the consequences instead of leaving that in God’s hands and letting him bring the right consequences into someone’s life, as he did with David.

86. 34:27

    You know, he, he brought the right things into David’s life. But the angels take care of that. They do that. And so nobody gets away with anything in the life. These are all just mistakes that we make and we hopefully learn from them. And God reminds us through the circumstances. So, Micah, you know this story. And Micah 6 Micah talks about coming before the Lord. You know, what are you going to bring? What are you going to bow down before the high God with him? Right.

87. 34:49

    Shall I come before him with burnt offerings and calves? A year old? Will the Lord be pleased with 1000 Rams and 10,000 rivers of oil? Is that what he really wants? The law said, you know, you bring all these sacrifices. Did God want sacrifices? No. He wanted us to learn from the sacrifices, about the higher principles of his life.

88. 35:11

    That’s what he was really after, you know, He’s shown you, O man, what is good and what what does the Lord require of you, but to do justly to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. That’s what we should be learning on Sunday mornings when we take and bread and the wine. Doesn’t that remind us how we are? We are.

89. 35:30

    We are responsible. We committed it baptism to join Christ in a death like his and come out of the waters walking in a new way of life patterned after his resurrection. So we promised. And every Sunday morning we take bread and wine. We can be reminded that we’re God is allowing us to take those emblems to remind us that this is the promise we made. And yet look at all the failures we’ve done during the week. And we all plead for mercy.

90. 35:56

    We do oh, what are you going to do the next time somebody else makes a mistake and they’re pleading with you for mercy? And we have to learn from this, Brothers and sisters, this is our God and we be we. We become people that are connected with the God when we worship. How do you understand how God took care of these things?

91. 36:16

    He he didn’t want sacrifices. He wanted you to learn from the sacrifices to identify with Messiah. Lay your hands on that animal, my son. This animal is perfect without blemish. That’s the goal and the objective. To be like God, to be obedient to God. And yes, it’s gonna require suffering, but you are gonna kill that animal. You kill the animal, not the priest. You commit to die with Christ, to sin, as Paul calls it in Romans 6, and then rise to a new way of life, and you put that animal on the altar.

92. 36:46

    In the end, at all the trials of this life that we go through the sufferings, they burn that animal and you ascend to God as a pleasing odor. See, a lot of times I’ve watched my brother and argue about animal sacrifices and what they mean, and all they ever get to is the point when they kill the animal. And it’s all about sinners deserve to die, sinners deserve to die.

93. 37:04

    And do you deserve a violent death or do you deserve, deserve a regular death? And it was never about that. The animal sacrifices were to Paul. The great thing about studying Romans for all of you, especially the young ones that are here, study Romans someday and notice how Paul gives a whole exposition of the atonement in Romans 1 to 11 and never mentions sacrifice because he tells you what it means with You can’t argue with Paul.

94. 37:31

    He doesn’t use words like sacrifice. He doesn’t talk about devil and sin and all those things. Well, he talks about sin but all being slaves to sin. But he doesn’t use those catchwords that we use and we understand a certain way. He explains it in words that everybody will understand and he says, look, what you do in baptism is you commit to die with Christ, to sin.

95. 37:51

    That’s what this was all about. And and he instead of talking about animal sacrifices, he tries to tell us what they were supposed to do to teach us to live justly and love mercy and walk humbly with our God. So the key thing is that God’s in control, not us. We’re not in control of our families, our children, our parents, our collegians.

96. 38:11

    Nothing. It’s all gods, all gods. And all we’re doing is trying to help those people in that family, to make it to God’s Kingdom. And and look at how does God help us? Well, let’s help other people that same way. Look at how Jeremiah, when he talks about what God really wanted in Jeremiah 7, he mentions the fact that look at when I brought you children of Israel out of Egypt, when I brought you out of Egypt and brought you up there to Mount Sinai, what did I tell you? Did I tell you offer a bunch of sacrifices? No, he said.

97. 38:42

    What I asked you to do was obey my voice and I will be your God and you shall be my people and walk in all the ways that I’ve commanded you that it, and be well with you. That’s what he was after. Obedience. Not obedience to law. Not sacrifices and rituals, but obedience to God’s principles, His way of life, of doing justice and loving mercy and walking humbly before our God.

98. 39:07

    That’s what he was really after. But faith is the key rather than it says. If we talk a lot about faith, but faith really helps us in the sense that it’s a belief. It’s that that that substance of things hoped for where we really do believe. And we have that assurance that God is in control, that in everything God is working for good in everything. No matter what happens today, you you can stand back for a moment and say, I know God is working for good. That’s what faith does.

99. 39:35

    It becomes real that you start to realize what what I wonder why the angels did that by getting you start and questioning about God working in our life instead of reacting in ways we get angry. Or we just treat it like, well, God’s not involved in that or whatever He is involved. He’s very involved in our lives, trying to train us and guide us into his family. But the peace that we have to provide is faith. Trust God, believe that he’s really working in our lives and faith will change our lives.

100. 40:02

     A faith in God’s love for us and his ability to change our lives to save us, that’s what we’re looking for. Or faith that God’s in control, He’ll guide our lives so that will develop into his children. It’s a faith that trusts God completely, no matter what happens, no matter what happens. And I see that having raised six kids, no matter what happens with your children, you have to stand back and realize God is in total control. He’s totally in it for our good, as Paul says, so that we can share His Holiness.

101. 40:32

     And what it does is it motivates us then to be obedient to God, to follow in the steps of Jesus. Not because we want to show God how good we are, but because we love his way of life. We love it and we want it for ourselves. Not to show God that we deserve it, that we deserve eternity life. It’s just this is the kind of life we want. We want to be like Jesus, we want to be like God. And faith is that key.

102. 40:56

     Go look at how Paul word’s AT and Hebrews 11. That faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. And this is what the ancients were commended for, that their faith motivated them to make decisions for God. And without faith we know it’s impossible to please God. Impossible.

103. 41:14

     I love the way the NIV words Hebrews 11. Oh, as you’re going through it because instead of saying that these all died in in faith it it’s it says instead that all these people were still living by faith when they died. Now those of you that have studied Hebrews 1011 and 12 will will know that within the context of 12 and and and 10 that it’s bounded by the fact that for endurance Paul says you’ve got to endure. It’s all about endurance to the end. And he lists all these people and Hebrews 11 that endured to the end, and they still had their faith when they died. And that’s what God’s after.

104. 41:48

     And all of us, we’ve got to maintain that faith and have it still there when we die as well. So that’s what God is after. And he promises to save us and his family. That’s a promise. It’s not like, well, maybe he will or he could if he wants to. He has promised that if you follow the game plan, it will take you to the end of you will be given eternal life. That’s what he will do.

105. 42:11

     And to become part of God’s family forever, we’ve got to learn to live like his family members. We’ve got to be like those angels. They’re already there. They’re in the family. They they don’t bring out reviling accusations of people. They don’t distrust people. They don’t treat Abraham or they hide things from each other. They go to Abraham and say, look, you’re our friend, our intimate friend.

106. 42:30

     We want to tell you what we’re doing, but we’re not going to do this behind your back. That’s what they do. Or when when they brought Lot out of Sodom, those two angels that grabbed Lot and his wife by the hand and they walked them out, the Lord being merciful to him, That’s how God’s family members behave, brothers and sisters, and he’s left it there in the Bible for us to read. But we can read the Bible for 50 years and never notice that the angels are revealed in the Scriptures that teach us about how God’s family members behave.

107. 43:01

     So I’ll leave it with that and thanks very much. We’ll pick it up there tomorrow. Thank you for listening to the good Christadelphian Talks Podcast. We hope this talk helped you in your walk and brightened your day. If you would like to hear more, please subscribe for new episodes. We are on all major podcast platforms and also on YouTube.

108. 43:33

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109. 44:12

     God bless and talk to you next week.