Leslie White – 1st Oak Lodge Convention – Sunday morning, 2005

In John’s Gospel; It’s a wonderful writing, John’s Gospel; the whole Bible is, and there’s no way to say how great it is and when you stand up to give your testimony – like the one brother mentioned this morning, “We can’t put it into words” then you understand that’s how it is with us. That’s why it’s a good thing that you give your testimonies. I remember my first testimony at Convention; I don’t remember what I said, but I remember my knees knocked as I tried to say something, but we know that this Word of God which God’s Servants try to speak as they go out into the world, and they seem so small. They wonder, and it seems so weak to speak to people. I remember my first Gospel Meeting. We got there and there was a little three by five card on the board saying that the Gospel Meeting was cancelled and I was so happy. So happy that the Gospel Meeting was cancelled, but I won’t go into the story about it, but anyway it was cancelled. When the Friends came we sent them home, but I still had to face it later. We wonder when people come – these are souls that Jesus died for, and they come and listen and we wonder, but we have confidence as we tell this Word of God.   
 
You remember that story of the rich man and Lazarus, and after that rich man died he was suffering and he’s wanting someone to go back and tell his brothers, and he said, “I’ve got five brothers.”  People can make a mock of this thing, and they can laugh at this Gospel, and they do. At our simple preaching they just smile when we tell them about God. In the beginning God created, and they just smile. We tell them what Job said, “He hangs the earth on nothing and stretches out the north over the empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing,” and they just smile at us simple people; at that simple kind of a faith, but that’s the way it really is with God. He did hang the earth on nothing, and he did stretch the north out over the empty space. That’s this great God, and we’re thankful that we know and have a faith in Him.   
 
Now, this man’s suffering and he says he has five brothers back on the earth and he says, “If somebody would go back; be raised from the dead and go back and talk to my brothers so that they wouldn’t come to this place.”  Sometimes we think, if that could be so they wouldn’t smile at this, because it’s so simple to have this kind of a faith. If somebody from the dead could come back and tell them. Abraham said, “They’ve got Moses and the Prophets, and if they won’t listen to them; that word, they won’t listen even if someone is raised from the dead.”  The weakest little one of God’s Servants; and you too even in your neighbourhood you just hold that word of truth and the people; your neighbours and those that come to our Meetings, if they won’t believe this word that we speak to them, they won’t believe even if someone was raised from the dead. That’s what we do today, we just think about this word and talk about it together, and that’s what we are going to do this morning.  It’s a beautiful thing and it does something for us in our lives and God planned it that way.  
 
We think about Jesus, we think of Him on this first day of the week; and the resurrection and then we think of these emblems that are going to be taken a little later on. As I was saying to someone before, there is a little bit of a difference. I can say that I’ve never been at a Convention where we took the Bread and Wine and I’m not saying anything against it, and I think it’s great, but I’m just saying that it’s just little things like that. It’s not the way you do it that counts, like our our brother spoke to us the other day.   
 
We’re here thinking about Christ; we’re thinking about the cross; we’re thinking about the resurrection, and we can go back. John in his writing he gave the reason that he wrote the Gospel of John. He said that – in it he mentioned those I am’s. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life,” and then with the miracles that he mentioned he connected them up with an “I am.”  Most of them were messages with an “I am.” After He had raised Lazarus, “I am the resurrection.”  After He’d fed the multitude with the natural bread, “I am the bread of life.”  He said, “I am,” and that’s tremendous.   
 
Both words and works. Those are the signs He gave and there were the signs of the works that He wanted the words to really be, and He said, “If you won’t believe my words, Jesus said, then believe me for the work’s sake.”  John, so when he wrote this story of Jesus, he would tell about a natural miracle that Jesus did and then put an “I am” with it, and when he got through, He said, “There are many other miracles or signs truly that Jesus did in the presence of the disciples, that I haven’t written,” but he said, “These are written, that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, and in that believing, you might have life through His name.”  
 
There are really two parts to this story. John gave the reason why he wrote the Gospel, and why Jesus gave those signs. That we could read it, and believe it, and in believing we might have life – Some people do believe it mentally, but in John 2, it says that, “Many believed on His name when they saw the miracles that He did.”  They saw the miracles, but they didn’t see the real Heavenly meaning. They believed in Him, but it says, “He didn’t commit Himself to them.”  In their believing they did not get life, because He knew that they could just make a choice. He knew what was in their heart so He didn’t commit Himself to them. Could we say this? “If there is anyone with a seeking heart who reads the the Gospel of John, anybody in the world, they could believe.”  I think we could say that.  
 
There was this little Jewish girl that we knew and her people were strong in the Jewish religion of the Old Testament, and she kind of got involved with some “Youth for Christ”, and when she did, her parents got angry and separated her, because those people she associated with were not acceptable and they don’t even want the God of this Gospel. Her parents think it’s a disgrace to them that she is thinking about this Jesus, and in a different way. That night she gets out of her bed. There’s a little light there; a street light, and she gets her Bible and opens it up and reads in the Gospel of John. She opens it up to the 10th Chapter of John. That’s where Jesus said, “I am the Good Shepherd, and the Good Shepherd gives His life for the sheep,” and she was converted that night. She believed when she read that. What she had read before about God, and the glory of God in His word in the Old Testament, and about the Messiah; about when the Messiah is come He would set up His Kingdom, and when she read, that He’d be a shepherd and He’d give His life for the sheep, she gave her life to God. You know where she is now? She’s over in Israel preaching this Gospel. What a beautiful thing. John said, “I’ve written these things that ye might believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that in believing, you might have life through His name.”  
 
John begins his Gospel by saying – I’ve been reading a bit in Johns Gospel  in the 1st chapter, “In the beginning was the Word.”  He’s talking about this Jesus. He’s so great, and he spoke this, “In the beginning was the Word, and The Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  Then in the 14th verse, “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of Grace and Truth.  No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.”  We would like to go back before the beginning wouldn’t we? That’s the human mind that we’d always want to do that. In the beginning, that’s time, you can’t begin unless you have time, but eternity is before that, but in the beginning John said, “There was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  The little children sometimes ask you some hard things. We sometimes come up against these things, “How did the Son get there with the Father as He’s the only begotten One it says here?”  If you try to figure that out, what you do eventually you come up with something that satisfies yourself. We can’t understand, we don’t know, but in the beginning He was there. In the beginning was the Word and He was with God and He was God, and now that’s a great mystery. One of the great mysteries that we have in our country and some of our Friends have been silly enough to have got involved in it, and that is that some try to explain the Trinity – The Father, Son and Holy Ghost, nobody can explain or understand that; none of us can understand that. No one can really, fully understand that, but we believe in those three and that they are one, but He is with God.  He is God; He’s not man; He’s not an Angel; He’s God-kind. He’s like His Father; He’s the Son. Just like a natural boy is like his dad, but he’s not the dad, but he’s got those qualities.  He’s God the Son; God the Father and God the Holy Ghost. We don’t understand that, but He was the expression of God, so He’s called the Word. He’s the expression of God, but we don’t know what He was, up there in eternity except that He’s the expression of God, and when he became a man He’s still the Word; the expression of God, and He said, “If you have seen me, You have seen God,” so His presence for a while wasn’t there in Heaven, that expression of God; that Word.   
 
The Word was made flesh, and we can read these things so easy, but then in between, John tells about Him.  Daniel (Bell) was telling us last night about this John the Baptist. I like to read those first verses in that book just in a sequence.  In the beginning was the Word / The word was with God / The Word was God  / The same was in the beginning with God / All things were made by Him; this One (He hadn’t became Jesus yet, but He was the Son of God up there).  All things were made by Him and without Him, was not anything made – and then this. In Him was life and the life was the light of men and the light shined in darkness, and the darkness didn’t comprehend it. I think of that. When Jesus came to this world He was always the light, the only light; He’s always been the light and that light shined in the darkness over all those years before He came; even before this man sent from God, John the Baptist who bore witness to that light; and then it says that light came into the world and He was made flesh. He was always the light of the world; it was His Spirit that was enlightening people teaching them all through those years of darkness.   
 
In the natural creation God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. I like to ask the children what day that was and they tell me, “That’s the first day when God made the light,” and then I ask them, “When did He make the sun?  When did He do the sun?”  Some of them know and some of them don’t.  He did that on the fourth day, but that was the same light that was in the beginning, and He incorporated it into a body that could be seen, that Son of God. The natural sun, on the fourth day God gave a body that would light this natural earth, but that’s the same light that was in the beginning. On the fourth day, and I don’t like to get into the thought about a thousand years being as one day, but on the fourth day  from creation was when that Son came into the world. God gave that One, who was the light that had been shining in the darkness. He gave Him a body that men could see and understand. Jesus quoted from Moses, and He told those people, “I won’t condemn you, I’ve come as a light into the world.  I didn’t come to condemn the world, but this is what will condemn you, that light is come and men love darkness rather than light.”  Men won’t come to it and He told them, “You think that in the Scriptures you’ve got light.”  Then He mentioned what Moses wrote, “The Scriptures spoke of me.”  He mentioned what Moses wrote. Jesus quoted Moses, and these men in the world today can quote what Moses wrote in those first five books and they may smile at them, but Jesus quoted from that. He said, “If you haven’t believed Moses, what he wrote of me, then what he wrote is going to judge you.”  God has always given light and on the fourth day on this earth He gave that light a body, the sun, so that we could see Him.   
 
Moses! The reason I’ve mentioned Moses – Remember one day Moses said, “God is going to give you another one like me.”  God said, “I will speak to them all that I command him.”  Keep that in this setting. I don’t think Moses was saying, “I am just like that Christ who is coming,” although he was like him, we know that the Spirit of Christ was working in him, but what he was talking about there was, that God had spoken on that mountain when God said that He would come down. That mountain was all on fire and there were earthquakes and thundering and the trumpet was blowing, and Moses went right up into that. The people, they were scared and Moses got the commandments. They were scared and they said, “You go because we’ll die; we can’t hear this any more, but you go and you get the word from God and you bring it to us and we’ll do it.”  Moses said, “God’s going to send you one like that.”  That comes from Himself, and gives you the word.  He said, “You listen to Him.”  There is going to be One that does that, and that’s what God did. That’s then, God living in a body; that glory of God that no man could look on, but then that’s Jesus who He sent in a body. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He didn’t have this body of flesh or anything, but He was in the form of God; He was God-kind.   
 
When Paul wrote about it to the Philippians he said that we should have that same kind of mind that Jesus did, that being in the form of God – (That’s before he became Jesus the Son of God), and He was in the form of God, but Paul said in that 2nd chapter of Philippians, “You have this kind of a mind too; you believe and you do it.”  He said that Jesus is in the form of God but He didn’t hang on to that, but he said, “He made Himself of no reputation and took on Him the form of a servant.”  He was in the form of God – All powerful; with all authority; all knowledge and wisdom and everything He did, because He’s then in the form of God, and He chooses – He makes a choice in this plan of Salvation. When God is going to make man He tells His Father, “I’ll become your servant. I’ll do the work that these men that we are going to make, I’ll make it possible that someday they will be with us.”  He takes on Him the form of a servant and He did that back in eternity and then He made, everything that was made. He became a servant. I like giving the children another question. He took on Him the form of a servant; now He’s a servant to His Father; that’s the choice He made – He made himself of no reputation but took on Him the form of a servant. Now He’s a servant, and then I say, “From being a servant when did He become a man?” Being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Him and given Him a name. What name did God give him? What name did God give him? That at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow. When that little boy was born He came into the world. Joseph and Mary had this little boy and they were told to call His name Jesus because He would – (This is prophetic), He would save His people from their sins. They named that little boy Jesus, that the Will of God might be done, and after the cross He went back to His Father and He became the Saviour. He was there with His Father and God gave Him a name, Jesus, that at his name every knee would bow and every tongue would confess.   
 
Well anyway, here is Jesus, and He’s in the form of God and now He has became a servant. The question I ask the children is this, “How long after he made that choice to become a servant; for how long is He a servant?”  Was that just for thirty years or maybe longer, but I’ll tell you what I think. He became a servant and we’re going to be like Him. Someday we’re going to be given a body like His, and we will be like Him, and we can say, that if He’s got a body and our vile human body is going to be changed and fashioned like His glorious body and we will be joined to Him, our Heavenly Bridegroom. It says When He gets all that done; He gets the Kingdom all finished and everything, He’ll turn it over to His Father, that God will be all in all. He then becomes subject to His Father and we will be like Him. That’s the hope of this Gospel, and in these Meetings if we could just get a glimpse of that like someone said in their testimony. When we think of that One, then, what does it matter the attractions and all the little things along the way? We think of this One who loved us and gave Himself for us, and gone back to The Father and there we are going to be with Him for ever.   
 
There is always the power of the flesh and it speaks about Esau, “Who for one morsel of meat, sold his birthright and afterwards” – there is an afterwards, so you young people just keep that in mind. If there’s a choice made, there is always an afterwards, and Esau chose some little bit of something to please his flesh; a mess of pottage. He sold his birthright and afterwards when he would have inherited the blessing he found no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears. You know what’s going to happen in the afterwards of everyone of us? If we kind of hanker after something of the flesh and we go after it, there is going to be an afterwards, and there is going to be a time of blessing. When that time came in the life of Jacob and Esau, the father gave the blessing to Jacob, and Esau wept and he said, “Don’t you have a blessing for me?”  He sold his birthright, and with it went the blessing, but it was too late, and Jesus said that’s the way it’s going to be on that day. In the time of blessing there is going to be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth and there is going to be no way to repent then – because there is no place of repentance there. The time of blessing is going to be according to our choice.   
 
Anyway, the Word was made flesh – we can read that easy, but we also read about the light. Jesus was that light shining in the darkness – He hadn’t come into the world yet; God hadn’t given Him a body yet and He’s shining in the darkness, and then in the process of time, God sends a man to tell people about Him; to introduced him, and Daniel (Bell) was telling us about that man last night, John the Baptist, and he was given a body too, a God given man. It was a tremendous thing how God was working with him. You don’t know how God is dealing with me and I don’t know how God is dealing with you, and He is getting ready to have this John come into the world, so God works away. He works away in your life and He has a plan before you were ever born like He did for John the Baptist and all of us. He’s getting things ready, so there was a little Levite man from the tribe of Levi – that’s who the priests were. He and his wife, they had a little boy, and they called him Zacharias. Do you have an idea what the word Zacharias means?, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t, but if you look it up you will find this is what it means “Jehovah has remembered.”  God had remembered, so here God’s getting ready, and this Levite family they had a little son and those names meant something. The names you give children today don’t mean so much, but those names meant something back in those days, so this family they had this little boy and they called him Zacharias meaning God has remembered. Then there is another little Levite family and they have a little girl, and they think of a name for their little girl. Of course God gave them the name which was Elizabeth, which means, “The Oath of God.”  
 
Now when John’s going to be born – John the Baptist, who does God bring together to be his parents? God remembered His oath that He promised to Abraham. He remembered His oath and He began to act, so what does God do? He gets this Zacharias and this Elizabeth to marry. He picked them out to marry, and you young folk you think of that. I think God can pick out somebody for you, but I’m not going to dwell on that. I tell our young people that God can pick out somebody for you, and He will if you give Him a chance. I got a letter since I’ve been here – a little girl, although she’s not so little now, she’s in her thirties and she’s got a little social difficulty of getting along somehow, but she’s a nice girl though, and she kept waiting and waiting, and I don’t know how it will go, but it seems to be that she has a friend now, and she feels God is directing her and that’s such a beautiful thing.   
 
Anyway, God got Zacharias and Elizabeth together and they had a little son and they were told to call his name John, which means “The Lord is with us.”  So God remembered His oath- Zacharias “Remembered,” and Elizabeth “The oath of God.”  God remembered His oath, and sent them John to pave the way for Jesus. This John, you think of it. He came from a Levite priestly family and he’s supposed to be a priest but he’s out in the wilderness.  When do you think maybe he went out into the wilderness? They didn’t just drop him there as a little baby. I tell you what I think, and I may not be right at all, but this is what I think could have been. When those priestly boys; Levites, whose dads were priests, when they were twenty years old they began to do their priestly duties, and then when they were thirty years old, they entered into them fully, and here’s what my little mind says. Maybe when John was twenty years old he began his priestly duties and he tells his father Zacharias – I don’t know how he explains it to him, but he tells him, “I’m going out into the wilderness.”  Just think of it, he’s out there now for ten years getting ready to introduce this Jesus to the world. He’s out there in the wilderness. Just think of the power of God to take a young man, maybe he’s twenty years old now as I said, and God used him. His dad and others would be thinking he was going to be a priest but God used him to go out in the wilderness. You young men, God can use you, and for ten years maybe he’s out there in the wilderness. You know what happened in that place? I think he realises that I am that man that we heard about last night “The voice.”  He realises that this one that Isaiah wrote about, “That’s me!” Then it says in that third chapter of Luke, “The word of the Lord came unto him” and when you read that third chapter of Luke which we heard about last night, you read about five rulers and two of them are high-priests – Annas and Caiaphas. You read about those five that are rulers – The emperor Caesar, and Pilate, and Herod the tetrarch and so on, and then these two priests.   
 
You know what Luke included them for? Just to set the time; that you would know the time when the word came to John. John’s out there in the wilderness, and when Luke writes that he writes of five rulers and the two priests and it was at that time the word came to John. He speaks to him and he goes and he begins to tell the message that he heard. This God that we spoke about that is still working today; He’s still working in young boys and girls; mums and dads and He’s got wonderful plans. John finally when he’s thirty years old he comes, and in this chapter we read then about this Word that was with God, that He became flesh.   
 
We can read that there too, as we read about John and as John introduced Jesus. What about this One who was the Word; and He was God and He didn’t have a body, but He was going to become flesh? We can read that easy. Then God He sees a little girl, Mary, and she gets picked by God. I don’t know  if they played with dolls in those days, like girls do today. I think of Mary in her younger days playing with her dolls; she gets a little older and there comes life’s temptations, but she just keeps true to God; she somehow keeps true to God – a true little girl and then she meets this man Joseph and they get engaged and Joseph is a good man, a Godly man. They get engaged and then during that engagement an Angel comes to Mary. During that time an Angel comes to Mary and tells her. I don’t know what their plans had been; or whether Satan had tried to interfere; I don’t know, but that Angel came down and spoke to her. He didn’t come to the Temple but we can be thankful that he came to that little house. A simple, humble little home and there’s a young lady there, and he tells her she is going to be the mother of this One who is to come. Mary, she says, “How can that be?”  She said, “I’ve got no man, I’m not married.  I haven’t been unfaithful and I don’t intend to be as well.”  She’s thinking, “How can I have this?”  Then the Angel said, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the Spirit of the Highest, He will come on you.”  He said, “It will overshadow you.”  What does it mean to overshadow? It means that there has to be a light, and he said, “This Spirit will come on you and overshadow you, and therefore that Holy thing that will be conceived in you, will be called the Son of God.”  Mary said, “Be it unto me according to Thy Word.”  We’ve heard that in these Meetings and that’s what we want to do, whatever the Lord says. She just  believed it, even though she knew, “I’ve got no man, but I can have this child,” so she said, “Be it unto me according to Thy Word.”  
 
Now we think of this Jesus, so then this little boy is born, and what would you call Him? I’ll tell you what I would call Him, and again like I said, you’ll have to figure these things out the way you would in your own  mind, but I would call Him, both God and man. He’s not a man with God living in Him as it is with us, boys and girls, men and women, a people with God living in them, but this One is different. This One, He was God and He’s with man. He didn’t have a body because He was with the Father; He was like His father, He was there with Him, but somehow the Holy Ghost does the work and that One that was everywhere, all knowing and everything. I think of this sometimes and I don’t know how you say it, but now He’s in a body. That little boy that was born and Joseph held in his hands, (and we don’t know how much He weighed), but just right there, was the creator of the universe. This is a wonderful story, and we can read this story, and if we believe, God can do something for you, and He can do something for me.   
 
That One who was with His Father He’s now a man. When we are born again, and Jesus taught that we have to be born again to be a part of God’s Kingdom. When we’re born the first time, and that’s a mystery too. Solomon, that great man with all his wisdom, he said (My time is up, but I haven’t got to it yet), Solomon said, “We don’t know how the bones grow in the womb of her that is with child, and neither can we know the way of the Spirit.”  We don’t know how God can do that, and we don’t know just how God puts the spirit in there. When God made Adam, he made a body and then he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul. But now, this little One, this Jesus – I was going to say, when you are born again the Holy Spirit of God comes and lives in you and me and we become a temple for Him.  My question is going to be, “Is there now, two spirits in us?” We have our little weak spirit in there and then there’s the Holy Spirit of God, so have we got two spirits in us? Paul said, “He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit, so in other words that Spirit of God; the Holy Spirit joins right with your spirit and my spirit and works there and they are one Spirit when we become His child.”  He’s living in us, and our little spirit that’s so weak just isn’t able to do and be what God wants us to be in this body. We act the same tomorrow, but now, when His Spirit joins ours, we have got the possibility of being like God; like Jesus; like His Son.   
 
What happens if you sin? I don’t have time to get into this, but I’ll just mention it because time is gone, so I’ll just quickly say this because I’ve started in. What happens if you sin? Now, His Spirit and your spirit is joined together. Before your born again, what happens is we sin and we die, and then we believe this Gospel message. Our Soul is dead and we’ve got no hope. I’ve got no hope of eternal life and I’m dead, but when I give my life to God, then in the Spirit I give to Him a sinful unclean thing that’s dead, and what’s the first thing He does? He cleanses me by the blood of Jesus; so He makes me clean, and then by His Spirit He comes into the cleansed life and joins with my spirit. Now that’s why the death of Christ is so important, but let me ask you another question.   
 
This human nature that I’ve got, that we’ve heard about in other Meetings that what God made in creation was very good, but what do I mean when I say that this is an awful human nature I’ve got? What do I mean when I say that? This nature is weak but it’s not dead and those little babies when they’re born; that little spirit that’s in them has just came from God; just like He breathed into the nostrils of Adam the breath of life. We don’t know how the body is formed; we don’t know how He puts that little spirit in there. I knew when I was a little boy – my mother went to the hospital. In those days we didn’t talk about any of those things but nowadays it’s more common – Times gone, but mother went into the hospital, and I didn’t notice anything different, but I was seven years old and when she came home from the hospital I had a little brother. I remember thinking, “How did I get a little brother?” She went to the hospital, then she came home with a little brother. The neighbour boys had told me about some things, but I wondered, “How did the spirit get in there?” My mum and dad could only produce a body, but how did the spirit get there?  Then later I realised that they couldn’t give the spirit, but that spirit came right from God.   
 
That little life, if you’ve been entrusted with one of those little ones the spirit is right in there. Sometimes I go to the hospital and go to the nursery and see the little ones in there, the little spirit came from God, the spirit in that little body, then you folks look after it. Wonderful, wonderful the working of God. God made man in His image, so by the working of the Holy Spirit God can make it worthy. That little spirit is weak and God knows it is weak and that it doesn’t have the power; that little spirit that we have.   
 
Paul said, “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient.  All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.”  He was saying, that what you’ve got by nature; any desires, – and you think of it now. Any desire that you have by nature, is it wrong? Think of it. It isn’t, there’s some strong desires; a lust for food, whatever it is, it’s not wrong, but what can happen is we can fulfil it in an unlawful way, and then it becomes sin. That little spirit that God gives us – Think of anger, is it wrong? Anger? No!  Jealousy, is it wrong?  No!  God can be angry and God is jealous, and this is all part of God, and He’s given that to us, but His anger is always directed right and ours often isn’t. His jealousy is always right. Think of jealousy, if your a man and you’ve got a wife you should be jealous of her like God is. If you touch one of God’s children; you abuse one of God’s children; He’s angry. If I touched your wife you would be angry because you should be jealous of her. It’s the same with God. All of this God has given us, but then, we are born again by His Spirit. That little spirit has all the help of Heaven, but we sometimes get out of line and go wrong.   
 
Jesus said, “If you’ve seen me, You’ve seen God” so all the the wisdom and everything Jesus lived here on earth came from God the perfect one, but if you irritate me, like our brother Bruce (Smith) has been telling us, we get out of line and maybe there’s some words, and there could be some words back, and then you get out of line, but you know what happens to these old Friends of ours who’ve given their testimonies here? God’s perfecting them. God’s working with them and working in them, perfecting them, and they are looking ahead to eternity, but in the meantime this spirit is in us.   
 
Sometimes we wonder, and we sang that hymn, “Dawns first wakening” and that speaks about the dawning and those little blooms are all wet with dew. That’s the beginning of life in these little ones, and God working within the Spirit. They are like little blooms all wet with dew, and God knows that, so He works and that’s what happens. Then we sang in that hymn about the evening time, “Perhaps I may be fearing it says, when my little barque is going to be loosed.”  I’m tied to this earth. Often times we speak about a little boat going on the sea of life and going over to the other side, but that hymn uses it in another way. That hymn speaks of it as our little barque that’s tied to this earth, which is just another way of seeing it, but then there are eternal things we don’t understand. “Maybe I’m fearing as my little barque is going to be loosed and I go across times lonely bar, right into that eternity.” It says, “If perchance I may be fearing,” or in other words, when we are leaving this earth and crossing this sea and wondering if we can make it. Sometimes Satan tries to tempt us and maybe we could be fearing. What’s happened? Sometimes the thought could come to us, and we’ve heard here about praying for the Lord’s return, and maybe not having the courage to do it.   
 
What is it that makes me ready to be received into eternity?  Just this, because I’m born again! Born again! Not all the good works we could do; but God has cleansed us by the blood of Jesus and put His Spirit in us, because we are His Child, and sometimes. Let’s say that you didn’t have too good a day, and Satan would try to make you sin. Let’s say just say for instance, (and I know you wouldn’t do this) but let’s say before you go to work and maybe some things happen and lets say that little wife of yours irritated you, and you said something unkind to her, well, that’s not right and you know it, and you get into the car and you go to work. You think that’s awful, but that’s the way it is, you’ve said that unkind thing. As soon as I get home I’ll going to ask for her forgiveness, but you don’t get home. An accident; something happens in front of you and you’re gone. Does that mean that because you’ve sinned and you haven’t had a chance to make it right, does that mean that when you face God He remembers that?  No! As long as His Spirit’s in you, remember that. God made you His child. You were nothing but a sinful, unclean dead thing, and by His Word He cleansed you with the blood of Jesus and then by the Holy Spirit He came and lived within you and you are now His child. If we sin enough and don’t make it right; and don’t repent He’ll take His Spirit back. We have a religion back in our country that says that once we’re saved, we’re always saved  and God doesn’t remove His Spirit, but we know He would. As long as His Spirit is in us and I’d like to get more of this into my life and you would too, but anyway we’re thankful for it, and what He has done for us and the love of God, that He would even bruise that One who was in eternity and made everything that He would bruise Him and put my sin upon Him so that I could be clean. We’re thankful for that.   
 
Thankful that we can go out and be like Jesus. I think of it like this – This is a simple story, and Isaiah says, “Who shall declare His generation?” and I think of Jesus standing there (as I said I’ll keep it very simple), and He’s got a paper in His hand and He’s saying, “Who’s going to do it?”  Who’s willing to deny himself; who’s willing to take up the cross; who’s willing to follow me? I think of these little boys and girls, and men and women when they think of the kindness of God. I’m willing for it; I’m willing to declare Him at school the little boy says, and as we heard, to give thanks for my food; I’m willing. The little girl says I’m willing too; men and women too, and they say, “Put my name down, I’ll stand true.”  
 
I think as we leave this Convention that’s the way we feel, “Lord Jesus, put my name down, I’ll stand true, I’ll suffer for you as you’ve suffered for me, I’ll do it.”  Like we heard this morning, just keep on; keep on in the Way, and may He help us to put this into practice.