Well, I can only tell you that it's going to be mighty lonely up here if you killed old Fritz. I was a little surprised at the infidelity of that fly. He was up here kissing me this morning. And to think he'd go from those exalted heights to kissing Dan this afternoon. Well, thank you for inviting me too. I've enjoyed being here very much. I've appreciated the ministry of Dan's ministry very much. It's been a blessing and refreshment to my heart. Thankful for that. Thankful for the time of fellowship we shared together. Thankful for all the people that have said nice things and done nice things. And a few people who just kicked me when I wasn't looking, I'm glad for that too. That always helps. I always appreciate the people who work in the kitchen and that set up the tables and set up the chairs. I've worked on both sides of these conferences. In our assembly for a long time, I was one of the go and get it guys. You know, take the legs off the table, set the tables up, put the legs back in the table, take the tables down. Wonder why the tables didn't fit in the closet anymore. Discovered that somebody put one in backwards, had to take fourteen of them out to get them right. So I know both sides of conference life and the speaker side is one of the nicer sides, if you'll forgive me for saying so. You come and harass the people, everybody looks at you politely, and you smile and leave a mess in the room. But thanks very much for inviting us. I appreciate all the work that's been done, the hospitality and all those things. There's not much more you can say than that. I'm an emotional fellow, and if I say too much, then I start to cry, and the whole day is shot. But I really won't miss that fly if he's truly gone, Dan. I won't miss him at all. He was here this morning, and there were three of his children over here with us this afternoon. And I'm not exactly sure, well, they might have been some other fly family. It's hard to identify them by genealogies. But anyhow, this afternoon I'll read in Malachi. Malachi. I'll read in chapter three, two sections in chapter three. I've been talking about the Word of God and our public performance. Talked about how for the Lord's people in Micah, he wants us to build our lives in the truth of God and how he wants us to keep our minds focused on God and the concept of Amos V. I took a short detour into Isaiah last night to tell us how God invites us to himself and wants people in their needs to come and turn to him. And this morning went back to Jeremiah in a very fragmentary study to look at Jeremiah and the lesson of yieldedness, the concept that God wants us to be yielded to him. I return this afternoon to Malachi. Before I read it, I will tell you that over on the Emmaus table, on the Emmaus table, there's one copy of the Emmaus Cool's commentary on the minor profits. There's just one copy there, I think, unless somebody grabbed it since I was there last. That's on the side where you pay for them. That's this slide over there. That's really worthwhile if you don't have anything in that particular area. On this side are all the free copies of the Emmaus Journal. And as some of my friends said this summer, we were chuckling up at the late Geneva, I have every copy. I have one of every edition of the Emmaus Journal since they started, but I haven't paid for one yet. I get them free at Bible conferences. I just show up. And, of course, occasionally I've sent a small donation to make up for the cost of carrying them to a Bible conference, about a dollar a year, I think, or something like that. But the Emmaus Journal is full of really good articles and nice book reviews and stuff like that. I've appreciated seeing it. They've even invited me to write for it. But I haven't done that yet because writing for me is a tough, tough, tough, tough job. And I don't mind tough jobs as long as they're productive. But if they're just tough for tough sake, then I'm not very enthused for them. So here we are in Malachi chapter three. I'll read verses one through six and then I'll go and read verses thirteen through eighteen. Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom you delight in. Behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming, and who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's soap. He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering of righteousness. Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the Lord, as in the days of old, as in the former days. And I will come near to you to judgment. And I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against the false swears, and against those that oppress the hireling and his wages, the widow and the fatherless, and to turn aside the stranger from his right. And don't fear me, said the Lord of hosts. For I'm the Lord, I change not. Therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. And at verse thirteen in the same chapter, Your words have been stout against me, says the Lord. Yet you say, What have we spoken so much against thee? You have said it's a vain thing to serve the Lord. And what prophet is it that we have kept his ordinance, and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of hosts. And now we call the proud happy. Yes, they that work wickedness are set up. Yes, they that tempt God are even delivered. And then they that fear the Lord spake often one to another, and the Lord harkened and heard it, and the book of remembrance was written before him, for them that feared the Lord and that thought upon his name. and they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, and that day that I make up my jewels, and I will spare them as a man spares his own son that serveth thee. Then shall you return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not. Malachi is the last book in the Old Testament. It may not be the last thing written, although most of us think that it probably is. There's a possibility that one or two Psalms are later than Malachi, but this is not the place to discuss that now. Certainly the last major work is that of Malachi. We date it somewhere around four hundred and twenty or four hundred BC. And scholars can't agree on that exactly either because he doesn't give us a date or a fix in it. And the name may be for a particular person, Malachi, or it may be the Hebrew word which says my messenger, Maliki, my messenger. So it could be a person's name or it could be identification for someone who did a particular thing. We don't know. It's part of God's word and it's a very remarkable part too. Like most of prophetic literature, it concentrates on where you live today. It really does. And it tells you enough about tomorrow to make today's living important and meaningful to you. And like another prophetic literature, he has some passages which are of great blessing and some of great judgment. You'll notice the section I read in the first six verses of chapter three. He's talking about a time of coming great blessing. But he says, in the light of that coming, he says, I want you to know that I will deal sharply with all those that are wicked. And then in verse six, he says, in a wonderful way, I'm the Lord, I change not. And almost as inside, he said, if it were any other way, you would have been destroyed by now, Jacob. If I were not the faithful God who is faithful at all times, you would have been destroyed by now, Jacob. It's just a kind of a nice way of saying, you ought to get in line with me because I'm the faithful God. And I do these things certainly, and you need to remember that. You just have to stop and think over the history of Israel for a couple of minutes. You can think about our history too, but just for a couple of minutes. You have to stop and go back and read Psalm seventy-eight. We won't read it this afternoon, but you can read it sometime. Or Psalm one hundred and seven. You can go back and read the historic Psalms. You can see how God brought them out of Egypt, how they forgot God. How God brought them across the ocean and the river of Jordan, they forgot God. How God delivered them from the Canaanites, they forgot God. You can see that their history is a repetitive history of a nation that was redeemed by God, kept by God, blessed by God. But forgot God. Now, we don't mean every person did. We mean the rank and file tended to do it. And their history is modeled with revival and falling back into sin. Modeled the whole way along those particular lines. So they went to Babylon for as a punishment for God that the land would have its rest since they hadn't observed the sabbatical years for a long, long, long time, if ever. And when they came back, there was a revival among them. Under Zechariah and Haggai, there was a revival and the temple was built. And then they sloughed it off a little bit. And then under Nehemiah, there was a further revival in Ezra. Nehemiah and Ezra a further revival. But the history has been pretty much the same to Malachi's day. A time of blessing and a time of growth and a time of falling back and a time of apostasy and then a time of revival. It's one of those interesting kind of cycles. You can read it more emphatically in the judgeship book. I'm not even happy thinking about it. History was always my thing. And history is a scary kind of proposition. It would weren't for God in it. It would weren't for the certainties that Dan spoke about a few moments ago. History would be a certainty. A condom. It would be a terrible thing. It's bad enough when we know the truth. That's why when people say we're going to make an institution that will never fall. They just don't know history and they don't know the weakness of men. Only God. And those things He's promised and given us, as our brothers said, are eternally certain, and they are eternally certain, and that's why it's so good to know that we're built on them and established by them. But here Malachi says, look, God comes to you and offers you this great word of grace, that He's a God that doesn't change, and He wants you to be faithful to Him. And my theme this afternoon builds along those lines. May God's people be true to Him. Let's say us. May we, well, let's say we. May we be true to Him. Now, if you don't know Jesus as your Savior, it's been mentioned in almost every message by my brother and by myself, too. If you don't know Jesus as your Savior, you need to come to the point where you recognize that Christ died, that you might know God. And this afternoon would be a great time to make that profession and come into the real family of God. But I suspect that the great majority of us could say with an open heart and an open mind, I have believed in Jesus Christ as my Savior. Hopefully, we're growing in Him. And the challenge to us then may the people of God be true to him. And being true means they are given in loyalty to him. They're not like Fritz who kissed me in the morning and kissed Dan in the afternoon. Not like that. And I know it's a silly illustration, but it's Sunday afternoon. And what kind of illustrations do you expect when we've gone this long in the conference and used all the good ones in previous messages? What do you expect if we go back and pick up some silly ones at this particular time? But whatever the case happens to be, may we be true to him. May we be faithful to him because he's a God that doesn't change. If he changed, we'd never know where we stood. But he doesn't change. May we be faithful to him. And being faithful means that you're true to him and recognizing him and honoring him and in two or three things that I'll put together in just a couple of minutes. I stopped performing weddings a few years ago. I stopped because they took too much emotional, too much of my emotional strength. The wedding itself didn't do it, but those hours of counseling beforehand and that insipid reception afterhand, those things took too much of my strength. Now, I'm serious about it. You have to learn to put your strength where it's productive. There are other brethren in our assembly who were anxious to perform meddings, and weddings, and I was happy to let them do it. Once in a while, I still perform one in a case of some special thing, like my grandson wanted me to execute his wedding, and an older couple in the chapel older than I am wanted me to see them safely through the vows, and so once in a while I come out of retirement, but I'm not anxious to do it, and it's just because the emotional things that took out of me. But I used to look at a fallacy, or a girl, try to get them all together, but I'd say, you know, you're not keeping your old date book, are you? I never knew exactly how to say it, but I wouldn't have married a couple if the fellow had looked up and said, well, I've got the names of ten other girls, and if this doesn't work, I'm going to start calling. I wouldn't have married a couple like that because that implies a total lack of faithfulness to the person you're marrying. I've discovered a lot of people in preparing for marriage will promise the sun, moon, and stars, and then won't give the dust to the floor when it comes down to the practical realms of it. And there's very little you can do about that, I think. I would say to couples today very easily that if you love the Lord first and obey him with regard to loving your other partner, everything will go well. You'll have a few wrinkles and a few bumps because you need those to appreciate God's grace more. But when you get rid of selfishness by trusting the Lord and trusting one another, a lot of blessing comes. But I would just say quite freely, if you're thinking that you can go off and marry somebody else later than this, get rid of the idea and the girl ought to drop you like a hot potato. Because as my wife says, it's like finding a streetcar. Another one will come by after a while. Streetcars aren't common anymore. We've got to update that line because hardly anybody knows what they are anymore. Like waiting on a bus. Another one will be along after a while. And if none comes along, you're better off to be alone in the will and honor of God. than to compromise some standard or some principle just to have somebody to nag. And that nagging comes from men as well as from women. In fact, men are great naggers. It's just that the sisters in our fellowship don't get to preach about it and denounce these things. And it's one of those interesting things in life. Ah, be faithful to him. May we be true to him. Well, there are three lines of thinking that dominate in Malachi. And the first one is this. Let us be honest in testimony. In chapter three, The writer gives the denunciation of these people in verse five, all those people who profess to be among the people of God. He says the time is coming when things will be done well. He's looking at the millennium in verses one through four, but he says, I want you to know that I am opposed to all those people who do these things contrary to God. We read over in first Corinthians six how some of us were those things once, but we've been saved through faith in Jesus and are not that anymore. But he says, all those who stood against me, I am opposed to those particular things, because all the things they do are contrary to my righteousness and make a lie out of my salvation. That's what they do. That's what they do. Ruth and I used to have a joke between us. I think I can tell you because we're near the end of the conference. When we had children at home, I didn't travel. So I taught, see. I'm teaching every day, five days a week. that I would have conferences on the weekend and different assemblies or preaching, and sometimes they'd be far away, not this far away, because I couldn't get back. But if they were within five hundred miles, I would take them, then I could be sharp and Monday morning to teach, never fazed me a bit. But Ruth didn't travel with me a lot when we had little children, because somebody's got to stay with them. We tried to slip out a couple times, but couldn't do it successfully. So a lot of times I'd go back, and then years later, I'd remember, I'd think she'd been with me. I'd say, you remember when we were at Schnuckel's house and it burned? And she'd say, I wasn't there. And I'd say, yes, you were there. And she'd say, I wasn't there. And to tell you long story, she'd always be right in these things. She'd always be right. And we'd meet the people, say, oh, we never saw your wife before. I'd say, well, I thought she was here. They never saw her before. So I said that. I'd say, I thought you were there. And after a while, Ruth said one day, she said, it must have been that other woman. And so we laughed about that. We laughed about that. We chuckled about it. But in the last three or four years, I've had friends in the ministry to whom the other woman was not a chuckle. And they abandoned them and gave up their ministry and everything else in some licentious manner of living. And so we kind of said we wouldn't say that anymore because we wouldn't anybody get even the slightest idea there is no other woman. I talk about Agnes because that's a pet name for her and that sometimes gives people a false impression too. We ought to get rid of Agnes. But it's hard to do that. That's a lifetime calling, Agnes is. And you can't just drop a lifetime name anymore and you kill a fly. I think you missed him, incidentally. But whatever the case happens to be, I can't guarantee he's the same one. Might have been a cousin. But whatever the case happens to be, but the concept is to be honest in testimony. And the writer says, the people that dwell back into these things, God opposes those people. And they give a living contradiction to the truth of God. So when a man who's a believer becomes an adulterer, he gives a living contradiction to the truth of God, or a woman. Or if he becomes a thief or if they move in any situation, they give a lie to the fact that God has saved them. Now, God, I'm not saying they lose their salvation. We don't think you can do that. God has saved them, but they make it look like God is not the righteous God. And those are big maximum sins. You can boil it down to smaller areas, too. But to be honest in testimony is to live in the truth of the redemption that God has given. Not a legalistic life, a life of grace and the knowledge of Christ. and the demonstration of what Christ means. When the writer talks about it over in verses thirteen and fifteen, he picks up on it too, and they say, how have we said anything against you? Well, he said, you know what? You said it's vain to serve God. That's what you've said. You've said we don't get anything out of this serving God. And that is a giant lie, because God is no one's debtor, and God cares for us beautifully. In Christian work, funny things happen. Funny things happen. And because Christians are still people, you understand, have a lot of weaknesses and foibles. And every now and then you work for a Christian employer who fires you. Well, maybe not you. You look like a good, honest bunch. But it happens. In the academic world, they come and go. They don't often fire with the professors because he's got tenure. And if they fire him, they'll have lots of problems. But variously, it happens a lot of times. I had a friend who was released from his position, and he said, you know, he said, the believers treat you worse than the world does. That is not true. That's not true. Because the world can never treat you. I mean, the believers can never treat you like the world does. The world leads you into condemnation and loss and eternal remorse. The worst the believers can do is make you feel bad for a little bit. That's all they can do. Make you feel... I'm not saying they should. But it's a false testimony when you say the church is worse than the world. So you've been in a church with troubles. You've been in an assembly with problems. You've been in places where the believers yell at each other. They ought to get back and get yielded to God and enjoy the salvation that God has given them in a full sense. But it still is a fellowship of believers. It's not a house where people are going to hell. We need to be careful with what we say. Let's say, look up and say, well, it's vain to serve God. I was a few preachers a couple months ago, and this fellow said something that scared me. It's just a group talking. It scared me. He said, my wife is praying that our daughter will not marry a preacher. He felt he'd been abused in the ministry and had lost this and that. His wife was praying that his daughter would not marry a minister. One of the other fellows in the circle, much more rash and loudspoken fellow than I am, said. Well, he said, I hope she's also praying she won't be a street woman. He said, I hope that. He said, let's keep that. You have to live near Philadelphia and understand it fully, I suppose. But he said, let's pray that too. And I thought it was kind of too bad, see. I don't know if his wife was really praying that or if he was a husband that made things up because sometimes they do. But he said it, and it hit me in the heart in a big way, that a man would think that serving God is less meaningful and useful in serving the world round about us. It's a lie. It's not. And you have to come to the realization that in serving God, well, I don't mean just being as a preacher, being a housewife, or a husband, or a worker, or an employer, in serving God, whatever is done for the Lord, First Corinthians, fifteen, fifty-eight is not done in vain. And so when they looked up and said, well, you don't get anything good for serving God, the Lord says that's a lie, that's what it is. You've not only said that, but you've said we keep the ordinance and we're unhappy because of it. Not true. When we honor what God has said, we are the richer for it. I know that sometimes we get attracted by worldly things like that mythos and the flame I mentioned last night, and we've got out of balance completely, but it's not true. The things the world offers are short-lived and not satisfying, but what God gives is eternal and blessed. You're called the proud happy. Oh, these people that really have the big image and whatnot, and they're happy. No, they're not happy. All you have to do is sit in the doctor's office and read People Magazine a few times. People is kind of legitimate, the biographies, but all you have to do is read a lot of the lives of the rich and famous, and you don't find many of them happy. We visited the big estates, the big Vanderbilt estate down near Asheville, North Carolina. If you're down there, you need to see it. It's three times the size of Buckingham Palace. Monsters Place, built for Joseph Vanderbilt, a Commodore's son. who died of something or other in his middle forties. But they have some notes on him, and one of the notes from his diary reflects that he never knew a happy day in his whole life. With billions! Billions? Sorry to shout it like that. I'm impressed. I didn't say nickels, but with billions and with possessions and with enormous amount of stuff, never happy, he said, one day in his life. Well, I'm sure you could find somebody that had billions that was happy a few days, too, because the world is not uniform. But the concept is pretty simple. When people say there's nothing in it for serving God, that's a lie. We need to be honest in the testimony. If we mean that God hasn't done everything the way we want it done, that's probably right, because a lot of us would want things done in contrary ways. A lot of us would want it to rain when we didn't need rain, and others would want it not to rain when we did need rain. We went through that at our conference once. Our conference was held on the Saturday of Memorial Day when Memorial Day wasn't on a fixed Monday. Our conference was kind of died, too, which is a sad thing. But in our area, it was a big thing on the old Memorial Day. But, you know, we had to set a lot of chairs outside. The auditorium was that big, and there were a lot of people coming. We couldn't get them in the auditorium. So we had loudspeakers and set them outside. Well, it's tough if it rains. It's tough if it rains. And so the night before the conference, about the first year that I was in the fellowship at Grace Chapel, Curly Hill in Pennsylvania, we had a prayer meeting before the conference, and one of the men said, let's pray that it won't rain. And one of the farmers said, we need rain. And one of the other men said, well, then let's pray that God's will will be done. And if it rains, we'll be happy. And if it doesn't rain, we can really pray fervently at will the next day. I can't remember exactly what he said, but that's about what he said. And I was struck by that. I was new in that meeting, so I didn't say much at all, but I was struck by that because you can actually get people wanting things in contrary purposes. And God would have a terrible time pleasing everybody if you were praying that the chair was padded and the fellow next to you was praying that it was unpadded. Fortunately here, you don't have to worry about that. But whatever the case happens to be, let's see on us in our testimony. I have a lot of concepts like that. I was walking to the seminary building one day and the chaplain came through. The chaplain was in his nineties. In his nineties. He was a godly brother and I admired him as long as he lived. But he was about ninety-six. He's coming through and he met me and he said, well, Tom, he said, how are things today? And I said, oh, about as well as they can be under the circumstances. And he put his hand on my shoulder very softly. He was a gentle man. Tom, he said, is that the best thing you can say for God's dealing in your life? And I said, no, no, brother. I said, it's not. I felt really ashamed. If you can feel ashamed at seventy, you're in good shape. I felt really ashamed. I said, no, that's not. I said, the Lord blesses us so. He said, that's right. That's right. And he said, we ought to be witnesses to that fact of God's blessing. So he said, if you're having a tough day, Tom, say God is good. And he gave me a few other words I can't remember right now. By then I was wishing he'd stayed home. But I knew what he was saying was right. I knew what he was saying was right. What he was saying was we need to be honest in testimony to be true to God. Because I'll tell you, if you are having a bad day, with rare exceptions, you've had fifty good ones to balance it. And I have moaned a little bit about my feet being bad on me, but I had sixty-five years on flat feet that never made a pain, climbed lots of mountains, carried lots of burdens, did lots of jogging, never had it grown. So you see, to balance it out, I need sixty-five years of bad feet just to get even. I don't think I'll have it. I don't think I'll have it. And I don't mean to be light-hearted about anybody's problems. Praise the Lord. We understand them. And we've already had some advice this afternoon on how Jesus understood and how he ministers to us. So we're not going to get any hang up on that. But we are going to say this. You've got to be honest in our testimony. God is good. God is gracious. His salvation is real. Secondly, we need to be trustworthy in service. To see it in detail, you have to go back to Malachi too. I didn't read that this afternoon, but you can scan it with me for a couple of minutes in Malachi too, where he's talking to the priest. And you know, in this day and age, we're all priests, we who believe, we're all priests. I got really irritated at a family conference I went to where they talked for an hour on how the believing husband was the priest of his home. Irritated me for a whole hour while the guy talked about it. And while, when he was done, when he was done, I said to him, I said, I thought every believer was a priest. He said, that's right. Well, then I said, my wife is a priest too. Well, he said, yes, he thought that was right. And I said, I've got three little kids that all believe in Jesus. They're priests too. So I said, the most you could do was say that I was the chief priest. And I said, that sounds more like Jesus. So I was really irritated at his logic. I was bothered. It's funny how you get bothered by a little thing, you know, but I was bothered by it very much because I thought he was taking what belonged to all believers and concentrating in one believer. I didn't want that responsibility for my gang. So here's a word to the priest. Note what he says about Levi in verse four. You shall know that I have sent this commandment unto you, that my covenant might be with Levi, says the Lord of hosts. My covenant was with him of life and peace. I gave them to him for the fear with he feared me, and was afraid before my name. The law of truth was in his mouth. Iniquity was not found in his lips. He walked with me in peace and equity, and did turn many away from iniquity. For, note verse seven, the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law in his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts. But ye are departed out of the way. And the writer goes ahead to point out the failure in the Levitical Order after that. Let them be trustworthy in service. Let us be trustworthy in service. We're not all preaching priests and that sort of thing. I don't mean to imply that. But the concept is that whatever the service God has given to you, let's be trustworthy in it. Let's be dependable in it. That's why I said earlier we appreciate the people who set up the tables, the people who run the food lines, the people who help pick things up. But if anybody says, I'll help pick things up, and when you go to look for him, he's out playing soccer on the field, it makes a difficult circumstance. Being trustworthy is not being perfect, it's being willing to do what's given you to do. We had a brother that we asked him to serve as one of the greeters at the assembly, just to meet people. He was a great fellow for meeting people. The problem was, when he met anybody, he latched on to them in such a way that twenty other people could pass by before he even saw them. We wanted him to greet people. We wanted him to say, hi, how are you? Hello. A few other choice words. He could say whatever he wanted. We don't tell the greeters what to say, but we wanted him to greet people. We didn't want him to grip one person by hand and talk to him for twenty minutes. Well, a lot of other people came in. Do you understand the rationale of that? It's not like we had millions of people, but the people come. Most of them come looking like they're about to be shot, but they come. And it's nice to have a friendly voice in the lobby to meet people. We weren't badgering them or asking for their letters. We want to meet them. And so eventually the brethren in charge of the operation had to say to him, you know, we're going to have to get somebody to help you. Well, he says, I meet everyone. They're here. Don't meet everyone. You meet one person and talk to him until the time for the meeting to start. Well, you see, he's a good brother, but not trustworthy in that position. He was willing to have eight other people help him so they could all get somebody and talk to him for half an hour before the meeting would start. But it's complicated. It's like the people who pass out bulletins. It's a little thing. Not every assembly uses bulletins. But it's a little thing. But if you're a bulletin passer out or you're supposed to get one in the hand of everybody that goes by, you're not supposed to stand with a bunch of them in your hand looking out the window while people straggle behind you. And you can expand that to the greater thing, preaching the gospel, working with any area you want. But the concept is let us be trustworthy in our service. You'll see that emphasized in chapter three and verses seven through eight, where the writer talks about the ordinances that should be kept. And when he talks about men robbing God by not bringing the things that they ought to bring to God, very powerful concepts. I always carried into the New Testament in the second Corinthians six. where we are told that we're workers together with God. In Second Corinthians four, where we have this treasure in earth and vessels. I work to take it into those passages too. Let's be trustworthy in service, whatever it is. And for the Apostle Paul, the great testimony is found back in First Corinthians nine, where he tells us how he fights, not as one beats the air, and he runs, not as somebody that just jogs a little bit around the field, but gives himself totally trustworthy in service. Well, you have to preach it to myself. And by being trustworthy in service, we don't mean that you never sleep, that you're never tired, that you never rest. We mean that what is yours to do by the grace of God, you do it. You do it as a testimony to God because you're true to God. And God, the Lord has allowed you to have it. And you're being faithful in it is a great testimony to him. And the East Coast, there's a rather large assembly. And they had a brother who I think was, from a human point of view, not enormously gifted in an overt sense. He was at the door of the assembly early on Sunday mornings. He wasn't appointed or asked to. He was just there. And he met everybody with a smile and a handshake, unless fifteen people came in at once. But he met everybody with a smile and a handshake. And then before the service would start, not the breaking of bread, but the preaching service, he would walk around and shake hands with anybody he thought he'd missed before that. That's all he did. He didn't pray publicly. He didn't preach at all. That's all he did. He didn't lead the singing. That's all he did. And in the province of God a few years ago, he died. He was called to glory. So I was up at that assembly to harass the brethren there one Sunday. And we were talking about things in general. And a man said to me, he said, you'll never know how much we miss so-and-so. You know, he said, he never really did anything in the meetings. He said, he never really did anything when we repainted the building. But he said, every Lord's day he was here with a smile and a handshake for anybody who came in. And he said, we have lost a great servant of God in that brother. Well, you say he should have done some other things. I don't know. God knows that. I'm not going to get into that right now. I'm just going to say that he was trustworthy in a particular area, an area that wasn't defined by statute or by law or even by the elders, but welcomed by everybody. But when he was no longer there to do it, there was a great service that was suddenly lost. The problem there is that when other people come in, I have problems myself too. I can't just shake your hand. I've got to say, how's it going to fight from the kids? Your car is still running. And I'm like the man who talks twenty minutes while people walk by. But a really good handshaker knows how to press the flesh and rush you in. tell you where you can sit or whatever and say here's here and he sees somebody else go by and he says brother snook come here and talk to this brother or something like that a really good handshaker does the job he gets you in that's all and you don't feel well you just go it let them be trustworthy in service let us be trustworthy in service whatever God has allowed you to do the concept is to be faithful in us because we're not really being faithful to the people we're not really being faithful to the assembly we're being faithful to God because he's the real administrator over all of these things. So what I'm saying to myself this afternoon is let us be true to him. First of all, let's be honest in testimony. And secondly, let's be trustworthy in service. And in the third place, let's be fervent in worship. You see it in those last verses in chapter three that I was reading a few moments ago about the company that feared God and feared His name. But you also see it back in chapter one in a negative sense in verses one through six, where their worship meant nothing to them. And you'll see a summary of that in verse twelve, that chapter, where they talk about how the Lord's table is polluted and they don't want anything to do with it because they don't bring the right things to it. Let us be fervent in worship. The concept of being fervent in worship is that we go into the spirit of John four and we worship God in spirit and in truth. We put our hearts in the Lord Jesus. We put our minds on the will of God. And as someone said this morning in the morning meeting, I can never keep track of who says these things. But we don't spend all of our time thinking about the blessings we've received. We spend a lot of it thinking about the one who's given those to us. We think about God. We think about the Lord. We think about his sacrifice. We think about this full salvation. You can't help them think about the things he's given you to. You can't help it because they're part of our life. But you've got to remember that the great thing is the Lord. What he's given to us is a great proof of his being and wonder. The great thing is the Lord. I have struggled sometimes in meetings keeping my attention on what was going on. Yes, when people are preaching, even when I'm preaching, I sometimes have that trouble. But I have it more in worship meetings than in prayer meetings, especially in prayer meetings where Brother Snook, just make him up. In central Pennsylvania, you can't say Brother Snook because there are hundreds of people named Snook. But around here, I think I don't see many that look offended yet. Brother Snook is covering the continent in his prayer. He's moved slowly through Africa, naming forty missionaries you never heard of, and he's now somewhere in Middle India. He's been going for twenty-five minutes. We shouldn't be critic. You have to understand, but it's hard to keep up with him. Hard to keep up. When you're praying, I try to pray what you're praying. If you say, Lord, bless the Aztecs, on my mind I'm just two words behind you saying, Lord, please bless the Aztecs. But by the time you've gone through a place of... So my mind begins to wander. It's out the window somewhere. I come back ten minutes after Brother Schnook finished and everybody's staring at me and wondering what I'm doing. I've had those problems. I've discovered that if your mind is on the Lord rather than the circumstance, it's a great curative. I do try to pray by following the people's prayers and worship. That's why we like them to speak up. We like them to hear what they say. And if they can't speak loud enough, then go to the microphone. We like to hear it because it's hard to say amen when you don't know what the fellow just prayed. He might have prayed, and may Brother Taylor fall off the chair and break his leg. You'd hate to say amen to that. And the Trenton Assembly one night after, on a snowy night, a snowy night after I'd been there all day preaching, and a man got up to pray at the end of the meeting, and he said, Lord, he said, please take Brother Taylor safely home. And somebody snickered in the first row. knickered. And somebody else said, as soon as the service was over, somebody said, he wants you to die. I said, he didn't really mean that. He didn't really mean that. And the poor fellow hardly knew what he had said. See, you can't pray to make all the saints satisfied. And I don't mean to sound like a big... But my mind would wander. My mind would wander because it wasn't on the right thing. My mind was on. How long is Snook gonna pray? How many missionaries did Mexico, did he miss? on the wrong thing. And that's happened once or twice in worship meetings, too. We'll not get into account of my many problems. But I'll tell you, if I'm committed in worship, then it's to the Lord. We've had some brethren who just can't resist thanking the Father for dying on the cross. That is a theological blunder of enormous proportion. But no matter how many times you preach on it, speak of it or talk to them privately when they just get their hearts Their hearts and heads don't mesh. And with their heart they say, they start out praying to the Father, thank Him for dying on the cross and for raising from the dead. Well, I think prayers ought to be theologically sound, but I've learned that there's something better than criticizing other people's prayers. It's talking to God yourself and concentrating on the Lord. And that doesn't mean we want to overlook mistakes and problems and errors, but it does mean we want the emphasis on the Lord. And hopefully that brother will learn someday. And someday hopefully he'll learn that when Jesus said on the cross, my God, my God, it didn't mean he was talking to himself. Hopefully he will learn that. I was sitting with a group in prayer meeting one night and some brother prayed. And after the service was over, they were talking about him. He had already left. That's the time when you talk about these guys. He left. And someone said, you know, he said, I don't think his prayers go any higher in the ceiling. And a happy thought hit me, just once it hit me. And I said to that man, I said, where do you think God is? What do you think God is? I said, do you think God is not in this room? They always look at you like that like they wish you hadn't come. But anyhow, we chuckle about it at some length. But let us be committed in worship. Let us be that company of people who love Him, who fear His name, who remember Him, and delight to do it. But do you notice the emphasis in all those verses at the end of chapter three is not on the people who think about themselves or their meeting or about their future, but their minds are on the Lord, and He will write the book of remembrance, and they will be His jewels. They don't look around and say, I wonder if I need to shine my crown more today. They will be His jewels. They think upon the Lord. They fear Him. They're remembrance of Him. And I've kind of enjoyed that very much. So once in a while, when the morning meeting drags, whatever you want to call that meeting. I hate to say the worship meeting because we worship in all the meetings, or should anyway, but the breaking of bread. That's a nice term. In that particular meeting, sometimes when it drags and nobody seems to want to do anything, just keep your mind on the Lord. Maybe, brother, he'll have you do something. I went to a very small assembly one Sunday. The man met me and guided me to it. And when we got there, he said, now he said, you know how it is in your meeting. One man gives thanks for the bread. One gives thanks for the cup. One prays for this. One gives to him. I said, I certainly knew that. He said, that's not the way it is here. He said, it's you and me. He should have said, you and I, but you can't be critical of all these guys. He said, it's you and me. He said, it's you and me. And he said, if you're not willing to help out, he said, it's just me. I looked at him quizzically. This meeting was a young meeting. It's pretty healthy today. He said, well, he said in the meeting this morning, he said there will be one man who never has professed to know Jesus but comes all the time. He said he never says anything. He just sits and looks mad. And he said there will be four sisters and there will be you and me. So he said you. So he said, if all you do is give one hymn out, they didn't take an hour either. The meeting was, I forget, it wasn't great and long, but he said that. So I was happy to do that. I was happy to pray a couple of times to read a verse or two, to give a hymn or two, and to give thanks for one. I was happy to do that. It wasn't artificial because you love the Lord. But we've been in meetings sometimes where it'd be a hundred men, and they'd sit there like they had all, like they were Zacharias in the temple, you know, the dumb priest who couldn't speak. But whatever the case is, In such a case, you turn your mind on the Lord. Don't turn it on to criticizing the brethren. Don't look around and say, what's wrong with the rest of these clutches? Turn your mind on the Lord. Be faithful to him. Well, that's what I wanted to say this afternoon. Ruth and I have both enjoyed being with you very much. Very much. We appreciate the courtesy, the hospitality. We're glad to see a few people we've known for years and to meet a few new ones. Somebody's probably told you that Jim Nichols and I were in the Army at the same time for a little while. For a little while. They moved me to a more important post in California, known as pre-Korea shipping. But they didn't ship me there, and they kept him in Georgia. But we were together in the Army a little while. And some of the rest of you I've known in other places and different. So thank the Lord. We're glad for the Christian companionship of many people over the years. But it's been a pleasure for us to be with you. Thanks very much. I'll just pray that the reality of God's salvation will grip and remold your life, as our brother has said. And you'll think every day as we go on, living in the love and knowledge of Jesus of what the Word of God tells us about the performance in life. Let's pray. Gracious Father, we thank you this afternoon for your many blessings and mercies to us. We thank you for your love and care. We thank you God for keeping us. We thank you that our assurance is based not on ourselves, but on a Savior who lives for us and who intercedes for us and a God who doesn't change. Help us to live in the light of your truth and to live gloriously for Christ. We pray you've blessed the many assemblies that are represented here. We pray you'd give them unity in yourself and give them health and strength. And help them, Lord, to continue to be places where Christ is honored day by day, week by week. We pray especially for those that are smaller meetings. We pray, God, you'd encourage them in their love for one another and in God's love for them. And now we ask you to watch over us today and help us to live profitably for the kingdom of God and for the truths of the salvation of the Lord Jesus. We pray in His name. Amen.