332: David Smith - The Moral Imperative

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

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   Welcome to good Chris Selfian talks. I’m Levi. I’m Chris. I’m Jason. 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. Each week we post talk that we previewed from suggestions sent in by listeners from around the world.

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   Then we record a short intro beforehand as a personalized recommendation to you on why we are sharing the talk. And now let’s talk more about this week’s talk.

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   Welcome to the good Christadelphian Talks podcast. This is brother Brian. This week’s talk is a class that was given by brother David Smith of the UK back in 2000. The classes title and topic is the moral imperative or more specifically the idea of God being the source of absolute truth and righteousness and how that should be the foundation for our moral compass. The class is structured very well along the lines of if we accept this truth, then here is the next logical step. And some of the key points that Brother David brings out are obviously that our morals should not change with the times, but that we should always be anchored to what and how God declared to be right, and how the basis of our morality should be driven by the doctrine that we believe. And that if the black and white words on paper are not driving us to change our behavior, then either our doctrine is wrong or our hearts are.

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   I found it to be a solid big picture reflection on how we manifest the holiness of our Father, even though we as his children can only return a flawed version of God’s character. But He wants us to think which parts are easier than others to mimic.

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   So, as always, we hope that this strengthens your faith and brightens your day. Brother David Smith, The Moral Imperative. Good morning, brethren and sisters. And Shalom very good. Not quite, but nearly. You know, you see in Hebrew where if you meet somebody with a Shalom, you’re going to have a Shalom back, but it’s going to be a proper Shalom.

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   Not 1/2 of Shalom or 1/4 Shalom, but a whole Shalom. So brethren, sisters, Shalom, wonderful. There we are. I’m here just one minute and everyone’s speaking Hebrew. I, I bring you good wishes and greetings of all the brethren sisters on the North East coast of England. That’s just about as far as you can get from California in England, if you’re in England anyway. And we don’t number too many in Sunderland, which is my home ecclesia, just about 35.

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   It’s probably the first couple of rows, but we’re very pleased to see you all. Should you drop across to the East Coast of England anytime, Just drop in. A little notice would be welcome, especially if you’re going to come at once. My subjects, this Bible school are the moral imperative. I want to talk about morality and this first session is about the source of all morality, even even the Lord God himself. Morality is not an easy subject to to discuss either publicly in the political arena or indeed in in the brotherhood. We don’t really like being challenged about what we do or what we think or what we say.

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   We feel uncomfortable about it. And one of the first and one of the early reactions that we have towards such a person who challenges in this way is, well, I bet he’s no better, but he’s got a few skeletons in the cupboard. It’ll beholds him to talk about right and wrong. And that is absolutely correct. Brothers and sisters, as far as this speaker is concerned, I have absolutely nothing to offer you than what you already know in terms of your own personal standards of morality. But that is not a reason for not talking about morality. In fact, if we had to wait for somebody who was a paragon of virtue and an excellent exponent of all morality, we’d be waiting a long time.

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   In fact, this sort of subject would never be addressed at all. So we need to address it for ourselves, each one individually, not out of any self righteousness or pride or arrogance or wishing to challenge purely for the sake of challenge, but nonetheless we need to talk about it. I’ve heard that another good reason for not talking about morals is that godly principles may on occasion appear to conflict with one another, especially when they’re handled by flesh and blood. And this has challenged our brotherhood for a very long time.

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    You see, on the one hand we have the attitude that says we must contend for the faith. We must uphold the highest of personal and community standards. And yet, on the other hand, we must deal with one another in love, not being the first one to cast the stone. And there probably is very little dispute between us about the principles or the standards with which we have to deal.

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    But how that in the community and for the sake of the individual within the community is handled when one should fall from those highest standards that we espouse, that is very often a source of great tension. And it’s there in the Scripture. It’s there in First Corinthians, for example, Second Corinthians when the man took his step mother and they effed and but about it and pontificated and some defended and some didn’t.

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    And the Apostle Paul stepped straight in and said no, he must be excluded from the community. But then he in the second epistle came back and said don’t, don’t leave him. He will be over much grieved. So this, this whole business of how you handle people who fall, as it were, from grace within the community is a tension that’s always been there and it’s just as much there today. And we continue to wrestle with it. But it didn’t stop the apostles talking about it and preaching about it in a very forthright manner and very direct manner. And it, it means that we must consider the whole issue of, of, of morality ourselves today.

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    I have been told by somebody, it had been suggested to me that we should not overly burden our young people with such high standards, such high demands of morality, because they have to live out there in a very, very difficult and a very, very immoral world. And if they tried to observe these things in their world, then they would inevitably fail.

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    So they won’t try or they become embarrassed by it, or if they do try and they fail, they’ll feel terribly guilty about the whole process. So let’s not start. Well, Brendan says, I, I can’t go with that one, and I’m sure you can’t either. That’s the quickest way to produce spiritual pygmies in our community.

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    And if we don’t teach the right sort of behaviour today, then what will it be like tomorrow? Will the Lord find faith on the earth? And maybe it says something about the way we talk about morality and the way we teach morality. Perhaps we overemphasize the negative aspects of morality and of God’s behaviour rather than the positive. So to me, none of these reasons are good enough to not consider the whole business of morality and to challenge ourselves again.

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    Perhaps one of the best known passages is in Second Timothy 3, which talks about the last days. And you know, it’s talking there about perilous times, perilous times, fierce times, lunatic, literally lunatic times where it’s almost impossible to govern. And what what are these times? In what way are they perilous? Well, if you have a look at second Timothy three the first few verses this know also that in the last days perilous times shall come.

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    And of course, we use this standardly in evening talk or a gospel proclamation to point out how bad and how immoral the world is. And I’m sure that the Apostle Paul is doing it in a similar way, but he is couching it in the terms of the ecclesia being in the context of that society.

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    The same level of immorality that’s out there may well creep into the ecclesia. And so the last day warning is not merely about perilous times out there, but it’s about perilous times within the community. And what is the perilous bit? The perilous bit might well turn into violence or severe deprivation of one sort or another for one part of the community or an individual or another. But the essence of the perilous nature of the times is that they are immoral.

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    We have a look at that in verse 2. For men shall be lovers of their own selves. Revised Version. They shall also be lovers of money, boastful, and all the rest of the list of things that lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. So the perilous nature of the times in which we live are that they are immoral and all the priorities are completely upside down. And he goes on to say something interesting there in verse five. He says these are people who have a form of godliness, but they have denied the power thereof. The sort of godliness that is displayed can be a sham. It can be avenir like clothes that we put on and take off so easily, not deep rooted within our own hearts. People have denied the power of godliness. That’s the same word that’s used of the apostles. Peters denial of the Lord Jesus Christ. He said no, surely you know this man. No, never heard of him.

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    But you’re a Galilean. Your speech betrayed you. No, no, no, no, I sorry. It’s nothing to me. No, He heard himself say no. And we hear ourselves say no to the power of godliness on a daily basis, don’t we? But the Duncan’s mentioned it already. We hear something said, perhaps with which we don’t agree, but for the sake of of not being embarrassed or upsetting somebody, we say no to the power of godliness.

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    And we need to be very careful about that. So we need to pay attention to godliness because godliness is the whole essence of this moral imperatives, it’s the whole essence of our morality in these days. And the pastoral epistles and particularly the ones written by Timothy have got a lot to say about godliness.

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    God likeness, choosing to live optimally with God according to his character. Indeed, if we turn back, where do we get godliness from? Turn back to First Timothy 6.

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    The foundation of our godliness as it comes to us, as it’s perceived by us, as we share it, as we grow in it, is the essence of doctrine. You see, our doctrine very often

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    is merely black words on white pages, and there’s a list of them, and you probably know them very well, and probably you, like me, made sure that you knew them to 1° or another when you made your statement, your faith. And no doubt you believed it as I believed it, and still do. But it’s not the sort of thing I carry around with me, Brendan sisters.

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    So the sort of thing I can quote to you in terms of the declaration. But I know I’ve got to live that doctrine because if doctrine doesn’t change lives, it’s no doctrine at all. Either the doctrine is wrong or we ain’t got the doctrine. I think that’s the essence of what the Scripture is saying with regard to doctrine.

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    Doctrine changes lives and it produces godliness. So if you believe in the nature of man, for instance, or the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, or you believe in the Kingdom of God as espoused by ourselves, or the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ as we do, then in what way does that impact upon your life practically and morally? Because if it has no impact, and go through all of the fundamental doctrines in that way, if it has no impact upon your life, if the fact that the Lord Jesus is going to return has no impact upon your life, then you’ve got the doctrine wrong.

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    Either the doctrine is wrong, or your perception of it is wrong, or my perception of it is wrong. And so he says here that the whole business of doctrine is to produce godliness. If any man, verse three, if any man, teach doctrine or teach otherwise. And consent not to wholesome words, sound words, healthy words, good life, giving words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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    And to the doctrine which is according to godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing. So doctrines got to change lives. Doctrines got to produce godliness. And of the doctrines that we espouse, which is the one that most impacts upon morality? I know they all do, but which is the one that impacts most upon morality? Just think for that about that for a minute yourself. Get it labeled in your mind, underlined it. Which is it to me, it is the doctrine of God and what we believe and understand about the Lord God and his manifestation throughout the whole of creation right up to this present time. And I’ve been through what’s written in our statement of faith.

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    And there are under each of the statements, as you know, a number of passages which underline and emphasize the importance of the things that we believe. And there are in the under the heading of the statement of the our doctrine of God. Many passages in Isaiah in particular emphasize the supremacy and the power and the uniqueness and the oneness of God, His all knowing, omniscient omnipresence, concentrating heavily upon His power, and that He knowses better than we know ourselves the supremacy of the living God. And that is fundamental in our understanding. But there are quite a few verses missing under that statement that talk about the character of the Lord God and knowing Him. And one of the things that you might do, those of you who are charged with the responsibility of organizing Bible classes, is to get that out and to go through it again and to fill in all the gaps, because the doctrine of God is the fundamental doctrine that impacts upon our behaviour. Now then that was always the case. For example, if you go back to the prophets and you go back to Jeremiah 9, you will find there statement by the prophet in a chapter which by and large is relatively gloomy. There are two beautiful shining verses that come out of it. It’s a chapter all about entropy. Brother Stan was describing yesterday a breakdown of a decline in the community and judgement to come. The Duncan’s been talking about that this morning. Verse 23.

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    But this is the whole purpose of belief in doctrine. Thus saith the Lord. Verse 23. Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory, or boast, or take comfort, or solace, or conviction and hope in his riches. And you note that the apostle Paul picked this up in the 1st chapter of his Epistle to the Corinthians, when he talked about not many wise, not many mighty, not many noble. After the flesh are those that are said, but those that are poor, those that are weak, those that are base in this world. These are the things that the Lord God has chosen, that no flesh should boast in His presence. Rather, verse 24.

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    But let him that Gloria glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord, which exercise loving kindness, judgement and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, saith the Lord. This is the number of it Roman sisters. The bottom line is to what degree do we know the Lord God not merely know about, we know about all sorts of things in in this life. And you’ll have your own particular favorite subject. I know people, for example, in my country, brethren and sisters who know an enormous a lot about tiny little things. You know about engines in cars and double overhead Cam shafts and the thickness of what it should be between a spark plug and this, that and the other and all the latest of this, that and the other and computers or sport or whatever it is. There are people with a huge amount of knowledge and commitment to all sorts.

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    Of things and yet, and yet, what do? What do we know of the Lord? It is not a knowing about. This is an actual knowing. It’s a knowing that comes by observing and reflecting. It’s a knowing that comes by experiencing. Try and see that the Lord is good. That’s the process. And we are challenged in this very fundamental foundation principle of morality to know the Lord our God like that.

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    Now, how well do you know about God and how well do I actually know and understand the living Lord God? Do you have an image? Do I have an image of the Lord God game we used to play? What is the shape of your God? What does he look like, the old man, grey beard, nice smile?

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    Or is it the God, it’s just light? Or is it the God which is just vast and you’re not going to shape of God in your mind? Difficult, isn’t it? Brother and sisters, inevitably we have to come back down to what the Scripture says as it paints the Lord God in all of his supremacy. But the bottom line is, how well do we really know God? Lord Jesus Christ picked up the same story in John 17. If you have a look there at the end of the Last Supper, sharing these most intimate moments with His disciples, what did He leave them with?

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    John 17 verse one these words spake Jesus lifted up his eyes to the heaven and said, Father, the hour is come, glorify thy Son, honour thy Son, that thy Son may also glorify thee. And and, and the Lord had been honoured. He had been glorified in being given the message of life, of eternal life to hand on to those in his generation.

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    But more particularly, would he be glorified when he was raised from the dead? And this is what he said to them, verse 3. This is life eternal. That’s a quality of life that happens now in the same way that we follow Kingdom principles in our lives now. It’s got that quality of eternity about it, that eternal spirit. That’s what we pick out of the word of God, out of the mind of God, out of the mind of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. This is life eternal.

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    The same way that Duncan has been talking about judgement as a now thing, we need to talk about eternal life. Don’t get me wrong. Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not challenging any fundamental principles about the real nature of eternal life and the eternity that we shall share with the Father, but but this is talking about the quality of life, an eternal quality of life which we are called upon to have and to know about now. And it’s what distinguishes us from any other group, community or individual.

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    This is present tense life eternal that they might should know not know about, but know completely and understand completely, take knowledge of so that the understood thing is recognized and realized. Like that word realized. It’s got the idea of real, isn’t it? Where the knowledge of God is made real in our thinking, in our daily intercourse one with another and within ecclesial life. This is present tense life eternal, that they should know, not merely know about the the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.

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    And that’s the bottom line of the doctrine that we hold of the Lord God and of God and of God manifestation. We have got to know it. And the Lord Jesus did, of course, and he more than any displayed his Father. Verse four. I have glorified thee on earth, I’ve honored thee. I have accomplished the work which thou gave us, me to do. And sisters, we’re called upon to glorify the Father as well in the way that we live in our godliness and we achieve godliness when we do the work that He has asked us to do, and that is to manifest His name.

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    Verse 6, the Lord Jesus could say I have manifested, I have shown, I have openly revealed, I have made it patently clear. You cannot miss the fact that the character of the Lord God oozes out of the Lord Jesus Christ in everything that He did and said, in all of His demeanor. And we are called upon to manifest the name of the Lord God. I have manifested Thy name unto the men which thou gave us Me out of the world thine they were, and Thou gave us them to me.

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    And we are within. I believe we’re within that company of people who are, as John later says in his epistles, called to be the sons of God. And beloved, that is what we are called upon, to display the Lord God to any and all who will see it. It’s meant to ooze out of us, and it’s tough and it’s hard. That’s the role of the believer for today. Now, I suppose that what we need to do then is get fairly clear in our minds, just to emphasize and underline the point that it is God that we are manifesting, to remind ourselves of the supremacy of God.

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    I’m going back to to Exodus, Exodus 33 and 34, but on the way I’m calling in at Psalms and it’s Psalm 50 that I’m looking at. Because there is in our world by its very nature, a predilection to diminish the character and the standing and the status and the power and the holiness of the Lord God, to make him a mini God, to reduce him in size and to make him contingent upon the needs of other people.

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    So it depends what people need in terms of whether they turn to God or not. And that would be the gravest of mistakes if we were to fall into that trap. The essence of this particular talk is that God is God. And when you look at Psalms 50, you’ll see that that’s what the people of God were doing. They were picking and choosing on on their morality. How?

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    Look at verse 18. Thou sawest a thief, then thou consensus with him, and has been partaker with adulterers. Maybe not done it yourself, but you know you make excuses for those that do. Verse 19. Thou give us thy mouth to evil, thy tongue frame with deceit. And sometimes we hear ourselves saying and thinking the wrong sort of thing, and we we marvel at our stupid.

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    Some of the things that we do and say and think are thou. Sit us 1st 20 and speak as against thy brother. The very thing that brother Duncan was talking about, Thou slanderous thy known mother’s son. These things, verse 21 This is the verse. These things hast thou done. And I kept silence.

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    Thou thoughtest that I was all together such an one as thyself. But I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eye. By making excuses for ourselves and our indulgences against the Lord God, we can diminish the Lord God that thought us that I was merely just like yourself. I’m not like that.

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    And we must never cheapen or reduce the supremacy of God in our minds. So no proper talk on the moral imperative and God manifestation could miss out on Exodus 33 and 34 called the occasion when Moses was right at the crossroads with the people of Israel and the Lord God said that he wouldn’t go up with the people because there were stiff necked people. They wore all their wealth superficially, everything that they brought out of Egypt that they thought was theirs that had been given to them by the Lord God, they wore it and dripped and oozed and displayed their wealth like ornaments. And the Lord God said if he went up with them and they were like that in their morality, then he would end up consuming them. And so Moses interceded and said, well, Lord, if you’re not going to go, I ain’t going.

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    If your presence doesn’t go with us, then we are lost. I’m not moving an inch. And so there was this godly negotiation, as it were in verse 15. If thy presence go not with me, carriers not. Hence verse 17 The Lord said to Moses, I will do this thing also, that thou hast spoken, for thou hast found grace in my sight. I know thee by name.

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    And Moses said, I beseech thee, show me thy glory, Show me the weight of the quality of what you are. You know, the Old Testament word for glory has got this sense of a heavyweight to it. And we still assess the quality of something, something these days even by assessing the weight, don’t we? Whether it’s got quality or volume or or or gravitas to it. And so Moses asked to see the quality of the Lord God, and God said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord Yahweh before thee. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on him on whom I will show mercy. So this underlines again the fundamental importance of the supremacy of the Lord God.

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    He worketh all things after the counsel of His own will. He is supreme. He has no equally, dwells alone, and knows no equal. From everlasting to everlasting. Thou art God, I am God, and there is none else, the only true God, and we are as nothing in thy sight. The nations. The nations are like a drop in the bucket or the small dust on a balance they don’t even register. This is the quality of the supremacy of the Lord God with whom we have to do.

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    We contemplate His knowledge as He does whatever He needs to do. Thou knowest my down sitting and mine uprising. There is not a word in my tongue, but LO Lord, thou knowest it all together. We are naked and laid open with Him with whom we have to do. This is the vastness of the Lord God and we got to get a grip and a sense of humility in coping with that. It says here verse 20, thou canst not see my face. This is the Lord God who is the only immortal God who dwells in light which is unapproachable by man. And we should feel a sense of awe that needs working out. Brothers and sisters, it’s all too easy to expect to turn on a quick sense of awe, and I don’t think that comes without considerable meditation and contemplation and being quietly by ourselves with our God.

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    But it is a skill and it is a pastime and an activity that we ought to cultivate. I know, for example, when I’ve been in the Caribbean, that I was quite surprised to wake up one morning. I was staying with a, an elderly sister who was looking after me and I woke up and I, there was a very strange wailing sound and I thought, well, I wouldn’t can’t actually make out whether it was a dog or whether it was something else, but it actually it was, it was the sister.

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    I don’t mean to be critical of her singing, but it was the sister. And she was going through her daily devotions and she had her hymn book open and she was singing to herself. And then she read aloud every day her readings and talk to herself about them. And, you know, I was humbled by that experience.

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    And I felt as though I’d intruded very much on the privacy of her devotions when I when I rather clumsily burst into the room. And she quietly sat me down and continued going through her devotions in her own way. That taught me a very great lesson, and it’s one that we could all do with emulating. And so it is that we are called upon to sense the awe of the Lord God, even as Moses would have done when the Lord God passed by him and then removed his hand and he just got a little glimpse of the after glow of the power of God. But it’s in the next chapter, isn’t it, that we read about what he actually saw or felt or heard, because we have to experience, experience the character of God to understand it.

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    That means going out there and trying it. Verse 6, The Lord passed by before him and proclaimed the Lord Yahweh, the Lord God, full of compassion. Revised Version, gracious, slow to anger, plenteous in mercy and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. And this is the weight of the glory of the quality of the character of God.

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    And this is what we are called upon to know and to understand. And it takes a lifetime. I speak to those younger members of the audience. Make a start. And if you don’t know how to go about the process of meditation or the process of prayer or reflecting upon verses like this or making a phrase come to life for yourself, then go and get somebody who does. And those of you older brothers and sisters who have learnt these skills, personal or otherwise public, maybe make sure that you pass this on to the next generation because we are called upon to manifest the name of God. Now I want you to turn to Ephesians 5. You know the Apostle Paul when he in his writings as he was, won’t reflected and meditated upon the the quality of the character of God.

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    Sometimes you find just a little burst of praise in his writings. This is a digression. As you’re turning to Ephesians chapter 5, you find a little burst of praise that suddenly pops out. It’s almost as if he wasn’t thinking about it, but he was overtaken when he was writing about the quality of the Lord God, and he can’t stop himself from speaking out the name of God.

58. 38:06

    I’ll just read 1 to you if you want to make a note of it. It’s in Romans 11, verse 33. Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God, the knowledge of God, such knowledge is too great for me, said the Psalmist. How unsearchable are his judgements and his ways past, finding out who hath known the mind of the Lord, who hath been his counsellor, who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again. For of him and through him and to Him are all things to whom be glory forever.

59. 38:44

    Amen. And he just pops out like that has a great sense of awareness of the presence of God in what he was doing. And there’s another one in, in, in first Timothy 1 and verse 17. Now unto the only wise God, immortal, invisible, eternal. And he just, he just has to throw it in as he’s overtaken by the thought of knowing the great God of all the universe who has stretched out the heavens like a span. And you’d have thought that if that kind of God came and lived in your house, people would know about it, wouldn’t they? Anyway, it’s knowing the quality of God in that way that brings us to Ephesians 5.

60. 39:27

    Now, because we’ve been saying all the way through that this is the fundamental issue with regard to morality. We must know, not merely know about God, we must understand him. And it says here in chapter 5 and verse one, be ye therefore followers or imitators or mimics of God. We’ve just been reading in Romans 11 that his ways are unsearchable and past finding out who can know him, who can counsel him, and yet we’re called upon here. This is non negotiable, brethren and sisters, this is the point, isn’t it?

61. 40:08

    If we have the knowledge of God, if we understand an iota of the quality of the mind and the character of God, then we are responsible. Some of you will not perhaps have made your decision yet whether to go with the Lord Jesus Christ or or not, but if you have some of this knowledge, you are responsible. Not in a threatening way, but in a whole together glorious way of manifesting what you know about the Lord God. To others, it says, be therefore mimics of God himself as dear children.

62. 40:47

    Isn’t that lovely? It brings it back to our level again. We’ve all seen our own children studiously observe fathers and mothers and copy them almost imperceptible. But day by day we see our children grow up, and they are a wonderful book of what we are or what or what we should have been or what we might have been.

63. 41:16

    And day by day, the exposure that children have to us means that they pick up all the little features of the parent. And we’ve got to do exactly the same because it says in the previous chapter that we have put on verse 24, we have put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness, our lives have taken a completely different dimensions. We now have not we, you’ve heard the phrase the heebie Bee Gees, haven’t you?

64. 41:52

    Or something like that. Well, this is the holy He be be ye. You got that? He be be ye. It’s the holy He be be ye. What do I mean by that? He be meaning what God is he God is holy, therefore be ye holy. He God is merciful. We read it in Exodus 34. Therefore be ye merciful, as your Father which is in heaven is merciful.

65. 42:23

    Our God by nature is a God of love. Therefore the the new commandment that we have is that we love one another. He God is faithful. Therefore be ye faithful. He God is patient therefore be ye patient. James chapter 5 and verse 8. These are the holy, He be be ye’s, and we observe them in the character of God our Father. And because we observe them, and because we profess that we know the Father, he who emits life eternal, it is non negotiable. Brethren, sisters, our morality has to change. Our doctrine tells us we have to change, that we might manifest the Lord God in all of His beauty, in all of His Holiness, all of His righteousness, in all of His love. Thank you for listening to the Good Christadelphian Talks podcast.

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67. 43:55

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68. 44:28

    God bless and talk to you next week.