Heller, John: Spring Conference-2005-02 ~ God's Business

That our way we say, mm-hmm, they sure can sing, can't they? That was very, very pretty. Thank you. You know, uh, we had, uh, from up in the north country, we had a couple that, uh, was with us for a while in the meeting there in Little Rock, and, uh, he could play the saw. If you've never heard the saw play, well, you just almost have to bite your tongue if you're not used to it, because they can really, they can really make that thing sing, but it just sounds like it's crying and crying and crying the whole time they're playing. It was... He's moving that bow back and forth. He's got a bow string, you know, going back and forth. Oh, I tried to look like I was enjoying it, but I was going... And no offense to any of you who can play the saw, I just... Sounds like the sorriest thing I ever heard just trying to get over a long heartache, I tell you. Well, Phil, if you got one, brother, I... You'll make me hilariously happy to s- to have you play it. I was reminded some time ago, maybe you've caught this as the latest, uh, little, uh, uh, item to laugh at, but somebody brought this to my attention. 3, uh, young men had just recently been married, and they were comparing notes about how they were going to get their wives to get in line, you know, right after the honeymoon. And, uh, the first husband was talking, and he said, yep, he says, um, I laid it out pretty clear, said I wanted the meals at five thirty and, you know, I wanted this at this time, and, and, uh, and so, you know, uh, the first day it, uh, it it went okay, and, uh, the second day I could begin to see that she was coming around to my way of thinking, and and by the third day meals were at five thirty and everything was just hunky dory. Second guy said, well, you know, um, yeah, I didn't have it as easy as you did. I I I said all those things, and I'll tell you what, I was struggling with her, but you know, by the third day I could, I could see that she was coming around. She started to kind of think about getting in the kitchen and doing a few things that, uh, I, I kind of wanted, and I, I had real encouragement in that. Third guy, he said, yeah, mm-hmm. Said, yeah, I, I did the same thing. He said, mm. He said, first day I didn't see a thing. Second day I didn't see a thing. And he said, at the very end of the third day, my eyelids began to get just open enough to where I could see. I could really see a lot then. Oh, she must have whooped on him good. Yes, oh, now I get it. It is incorrect for any of us to say that, um, a proper sense of seeing justice served is not something that God has built into all of us. You let anything you have that's dear to your heart be yanked from you, and you'll find it to be a tremendously difficult thing not to go after it and serve justice on it immediately. But one of the things that tempers us in the whole process of learning not to allow our, our lives to be so embroiled over getting justice is that getting justice is God's business. Now, I want to say that carefully, adding this note. There are obviously prescribed avenues under which all of us must abide. We have civil authorities designed to make sure that justice is served in the world under our governments, and those were there for blessing by God. There are, in the local meeting, there are men that have been called by God to make sure that the heart of God and the word of God is, um, honored and held in that meeting. And there are times when it's needful for the oversight to make decisions that are in line with the word of God and carry out what appear to be, at times, very hard, uh, things, but they are designed for the ultimate purpose of recovery and blessing. We never want to get in the way of godly elding, we never want to get in the way of godly discipline with a view to correction and with a view to restoration. But one of the great difficulties that each of us battle with is when do we cease and when does God take over? I don't think there's a clear-cut easy answer in the one sense, uh, that that it is a a process by which we permit God to teach us where we are crossing the line and beginning to take into our hands a matter that is unbiblical, or it goes outside of the context of scriptural pattern for addressing the issue. One of the things that I think has, uh, helped, uh, many of the Lord's people in this matter of being able to determine whether they are caught in this avenue of bitterness is to do just a little quick inventory. Concerning the person or the situation at hand, do you find, number one, that you're quick to withdraw from that person? Now I'm gonna add a note. Not always is it wrong to withdraw from someone who has sinned. You see very clear biblical patterns in scripture. Uh, if someone's unruly, you're told to withdraw yourself from an unruly person. You're not to, uh, uh, associate with people who are insubordinate. They have, in essence, thrown away any submission to authority, whether it's in the local church or civil governing authorities, uh, particularly provided they don't violate, uh, God's, um, principles. Whenever we find there is, uh, a tendency, though, in our hearts to, as believers, pull away from a believer that maybe has hurt us or offended us or we're having a hard time with, eh, when I say withdrawal, I'm talking about the desire for long-term removal, with I never want to be around that person again. I think there's an understanding that all of us have a little, uh, area in our lives that we've got to work through in learning to deal with someone who's hurt us or offended us. Um, there's a process in which we have to come to terms with it. The danger that we have to watch out for is, is that when we make withdrawing ourselves from that situation a permanent condition, and we say to ourselves, I never want to see them again. Bitterness at that point has, uh, pretty well had its, uh, its way with us, and I'd have to be careful, and I'd have to say that probably more often than not, when that attitude is present, then bitterness has had its, uh, its way. Often we will find quiet but subtle forms of anger at that person or situation. Um, one good test, and, uh, you find this in First Thessalonians five fifteen, if you can no longer seek the good of the other person, in other words, if you're not seeking the good of all men, in the sense that you pray for their well-being, and you pray for them that God will deal with them, and deal with them in a sense that will bring them back into a place of blessing. That may mean that God will have to bring something into their life to correct them, if that's of need, uh, but you're no longer praying for the benefit of that person who's injured you or hurt you or done something, uh, that has greatly offended you. Um, one of the real keys to finding out whether or not we're bitter is, is that we just have no desire for blessing on that person's life. We want all the full tilt wrath of God to hit them square in the face. Uh, one of the other things that, uh, we tend to, uh, find the as a, uh, indicator of bitterness is, is that we do tend to find ourselves retaliating, or we're in a retaliation mode. And what I mean by that is that there's sort of a quiet little horse race within us to find out how quickly or how, uh, accurately can we serve revenge on them and repayment for the hurt that they brought our way. And then the last one, which is pretty clear, is that there's an open attack of them. Now, let me make a distinction between an open attack and alerting people to someone who is dangerous. It is a job of godly, responsible believers in a right setting when somebody is walking contrary to the health of that meeting or the health spiritually of other peoples in that meeting, uh, they need to be marked. They have to be identified. God makes that very clear. We're going to look at some very specific passages later on, and I think to the danger of the churches of God today, um, the, the tendency is to always want to kind of hush it up and keep it quiet and hold it in the, the quiet sense of, uh, well, we don't want to shame the brother. And I think we have to be careful. There, when you, you look at the heart of the Lord Jesus, uh, he moved with great compassion, and he moved with a specific care to see individuals restored. But when somebody is hurting others, and they're doing it on a repeated basis in the body, or they show that tendency, and they show a lack of coming under the care and the love of the oversight of a local meeting, that individual has got to be for his sake, or their sake, or her sake, or whoever is involved, they've got to be identified. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the attacking in the sense of, yeah, I don't like that person either. They're, yeah, they, you know what, they bother me too. I don't, I don't care for the way they dress. I don't care for the way they, they sing. I don't care for the things they do. Um, I don't like them. They slobber every time they speak. They, uh, you know, they don't shower. They just, they're, they're appalling to me, and I think, well, I just don't see any need to even have to say hi to them, and you shouldn't either. Now, I realize I'm being a little facetious, but I think there's the, there's the danger that, uh, we don't want to be caught up as being agents of disseminating, uh, discord among the group. There's such a fine line, and I tell you, uh, it's not, it's not funny, and it's not something to trifle with, but, um, one of the great, uh, balances that we are called to in the body of Christ is that discernment between when an individual is, is not walking right and causing damage and destruction to the body, as opposed to someone who, uh, maybe they did something that may- you don't agree with, or, uh, it hurt you, or you didn't like something that was said, or they've snubbed you, or they haven't included you in the, in, in the group. Uh, rather than going around and sowing, uh, sort of a vote for me type of, uh, uh, atmosphere, we want to not be party to that. We don't want to build little groups within the group that say, well, this, this group, they feel this way, and we are going to cloister together and stay close and, and pal around and be buddy buddy. And then another group in the other part of that body sort of cloisters together, and they become pally pally, and, and they just sort of work in their little groups, and there's not a good interaction among the whole body as a whole. And that's what we have to really be careful with. And one of the ways we can detect, uh, the aspect of, uh, subtle, quiet forms of being a little bit bitter, a little bit hurt, is the fact that we just, we won't cross those lines. We won't get into that other little group. We have to guard against those things. Um, and again, I'm not trying to be all gushy, gushy and lovey dovey about it, but it's just body dynamics, things that are important for us to bear in mind, that, uh, all of us are, uh, as a good friend of mine told me after the fall, we're all lopsided. We are. We're all just a little like that. And it is the goodness of God when he plants individuals in the body of Christ that they come along, and the lopsidedness of the other person can sort of be used to bring us all upright under the authority of the word of God. And, uh, one person's strength can actually be a great benefit to somebody else's weakness. We don't all have to have it together. We don't all have to know everything. We don't all have to be just like the other person. One of the great joys in a body of Christ is learning to let go of I have to be something to be accepted. I have to gain a certain sense of stature within this group to be received and thought of. One of the great joys in the body of Christ is to know that the blood of Jesus Christ has made us family members. We are tr- this is the true bloodline. If you wanna, if you wanna talk about the true bloodline of the king, we are a royal generation. Uh, we are a king of, a kingdom of priests. Uh, we are a family of very peculiar people, Peter describes it. And some of us would go, yeah, amen to that, they are very peculiar. So peculiar, I have not figured out how to get along with them yet. But that's part of the dynamics. One of the things that we often battle with when we think about the area of, uh, dealing with bitterness is learning how to separate our feelings of animosity towards someone and the need to be moving alongside of that individual and correcting, encouraging, lifting up, building, so that we as a body enjoy spending time together. That's one of the critical things that, uh, I think we, we, um, must have as, as we seek to be effective in this world today. Now, one of the other things that I'd like to point out in this area of, um, the secret power that, uh, destroys is, um, the, the tendency to, as I mentioned earlier, to hold God accountable. I would just simply say this, all bitterness ultimately holds God accountable, ultimately, if not checked. Now, those who are mature enough, they know better to think those thoughts, but most don't arrive at that state. They ultimately hold God accountable for the problem that happened. Now, they may say it was so and so, and they may say even that it might have been myself, but, uh, if, uh, if not carefully, uh, dealt with properly, that bitterness will ultimately hold God accountable and say, God, it's your fault. And that's the dangerous thing, because when the one who is the only one who can straighten up our attitude and put our hearts right is no longer esteemed in our hearts, what hope do we have? And, uh, again, I think the, the enemy does a good job sometimes, even among the body of Christ, of impugning the character of God to our own hearts. It is much like anything else in the matter of walking by faith. These areas we learn by faith to dismiss as garbage and satanic attack, whether it's flesh, the world's attitude, or satanic, uh, interference, we must not weary in the battle. And folks, if somebody didn't tell you that being a believer is a battle, I'm here to tell you you'll battle till the last breath you draw. But it's a good fight. Paul said it was a good fight. The peace is not worrying about, oh, you mean I got a battle till I go home? The peace is knowing God will sustain you in the battle till you go home. That's the peace. And that's what gave Paul great rest. So, carefulness, um, a lot of times people are quick to strike out in anger, they're quick to hold their, their opinions, and those are not necessarily bad things to hold things in, but it's not healthy that they stay held in and fester and brew over into a real disease that spreads. Folks, I just want to say this, I know you know this, let me just be one of, of, uh, the brothers and sisters this afternoon in this sense to say we cannot afford to treat the infesting, infectious nature of bitterness lightly. I know we know that, but let me be a voice publicly that echoes that thinking in our mind. I believe this to be one of the serious cancers that eats away at the productivity and the blessing of God's people as they're united together in the body of Christ. We're going to talk a little bit later on about the need to deal with problems the right way, but suffice it to say that, um, this is a very serious issue. You know it to be that way. I'm not really telling you anything new. Number one, recognition is the key thing. Be willing to say, do I find myself pulling away? Do I find myself thinking thoughts of revenge? In other words, retaliation. Do I find myself not wishing blessing anymore for them? Do I find myself wishing calamity for them? Do I find myself ready in my heart to lash out and attack them? One of the things that we learn in this area of recognizing bitterness is that if we don't do it, somewhere along the line, somebody else will see it, and they'll have to come to us if they love us and say, you know what, I'm afraid you look like a bitter person, and that's harder to take. Then they make your day, hi, my name is John, you look bitter. Oh. Who are you anyway? None of us like to be told those things. We know it's a, it's a need, so be willing to, to take the, the inventory, the spiritual inventory of the Holy Spirit. Next, release your expectation. Not the standard. Release your expectation. We never let go of the holy standard of God. When we do that, we're sunk, folks. We don't have anything to stand on. But oftentimes, the difficulty is to be able to learn that it is God who will do the work. I must stand where I should, but I must stand with a pure heart. And again, I just referenced the Lord Jesus Christ as our example. Many times, I believe, if you look at his, his testimony on this planet, it would have been, um, it would have been convenient for me as a man to be very, very, very upset and very bitter. His heart was to be truthful. He was right on the mark. He was willing to stand up and take the hit that would come in standing for his father. But as the passage that we were referencing earlier, he kept entrusting himself to him who judges righteously. That was the joy of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is, folks, there are very few things that I could offer you this afternoon that would be, quote unquote, a cure to long-term bitterness, other than the reality, the moment you have a willing heart to let eternity invade your present situation in time, that's the moment you're going to begin to taste a bit of the release of the bitter grip of bitterness. We must be willing to yield to the timing of God's intervention. One of the things I, I, I, I know it's, you know, I say this and I tell you I, I struggle myself. It's so much easier to give advice than to live it out. I'm going to tell you that right now. But the thing that I know that I will be held accountable for when I stand before the Lord won't be the fact that I didn't take a stand. That may be the issue, but let's say I'm taking a stand on an issue I know is right. The thing that I'll be held accountable for is how did I hold that stand? And I don't mean that I, I went around apologizing, well, you know, after all, oh, well, you know, you know, you really, oh shucks, you know, you really ought to do the right thing. I mean, you know, it is the right thing after all. I mean, I'm sorry, I'm holding the right way. I'm sorry, it's offensive. Don't say you're sorry it's offensive. But let the heart of Christ grip you as an agent of his, knowing that if you suffer because you stand with him, your joy is going to be because you've entrusted yourself to him who judges righteously. He will take up your cause. He will stand for you. Now, the Lord Jesus didn't see immediate vindication, did he? He languished on the cross. They hurled their spittle and mucus at him, they ripped him to pieces, they they were, uh, ruthless to to him in all accounts. He didn't receive immediate deliverance. And I think sometimes we need to be at peace with the fact we're not going to see immediate deliverance necessarily. We might. God is gracious and sovereign, and he works as he wills. But don't lose heart if you don't see an immediate resolve to the situation. The whole blessing for you being able to do what you have done, or to take a hit because you've, uh, taken it innocently, or somebody's come after you, is to be able to stand with a Christ-like spirit and say, Lord, I don't know, you know, I know you don't make mistakes. And to stop listening to the argument of your flesh and the enemy in saying, why me? My question is, why not you? You say, well, that's awfully bold of you, John, to say that about us, and you're up there, and we're down there listening. That's what I say to myself. Why not me? It's easy to get up here and say this. I'll probably have a whammy going home after I'm done with all this, and I'll be eating crow and humble pie and everything, and I d- I'm not playing games on this situation. This is real life stuff, and we know it. But the reality of it is, is that we are his, and we are his to do with as he wishes. And the sooner we release ourselves to that reality, the happier we're going to be. Because then his expectation for us becomes our expectation, rather than our expectation being forced upon God our own way and saying, God, you've got to do this or else. I think a lot of people today are frustrated with their lives because they have carved out what they believe is the way things ought to happen for them, and it isn't really what God wants. And they waste a tremendous amount of energy hammering it out, hoping they can make God have it happen for them, and it doesn't pan out the way they want it to. And isn't because God's playing hardball. God in love is moving towards his own, asking them to realize that he knows best. Those of you from Wichita, you get royalties on this story. You've heard it before, you have to endure it, but most here haven't. Unless you've heard one of my tapes somewhere. For that, I apologize. But I've got a new dog now, and his name is Otto. Okay, yes, John, we've heard of this new dog, Otto. Now, Otto is a, he's a surrogate grandchild. Oh, John, you're in trouble. My kids know this. John Scollin told me one time, I need to go to garage sales and get all the old play toys that I can think of and throw them in their backyard when they're gone, and maybe they'll get the message. Good advice. When it's time, they'll have children. Just hope I get to see them. I'm sure I will in the Lord's time. So, uh, we've taken, uh, the, uh, dangerous, uh, step of having a dog in the house. He's a miniature schnauzer, and, you know, he's the proper little British chap, you know, a little bit of a bushy eyebrows. And, uh, he, uh, he likes to get out and run, and I have, uh, yet to train him not to get away from me when he's in open. And I didn't realize this, and so I took him over to the property where the building is one day, and I had him in the back. I had the weed eater out, and I wanted to do a little work over there, and, uh, so I said, Otto, you stay in the back right there. So I was out weed eating, and before I long, I I saw this little brown thing go out of my peripheral, and sure enough, it was Otto, and he was headed for the busy street out in front. Cars going every which way. And I mean, he was like this. And here I am, you know, son of flubber, and I said, here I am, I'm, you know, and I'm yelling to the top of my voice, oh no, oh no, oh no, no, bad dog, turn around right now, stop, cease, whoa boy. He ran right across that street, cars going just like that. He ran over across the street, I ran across the street, I was... And he turns around, sits down, looks at me right in front of the garage there and says, wasn't that fun? Folks, did I hate Otto? Somehow that didn't go the way I wanted it to. But I ran after the little pet that I cared for. And I was making as much noise as I knew how to make. Folks, I think sometimes we think he sits on a chair up there and he is unmoved by our afflictions in our lives, and nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing. We don't always understand this dynamic right now, being in time and living a life by faith. To us, it seems like God is immovable. But it is in this quiet time when we ache to hear thunderous voices of God and supernatural appearings and his obvious demonstration to us almost instantly, it is in these times when we're stretched, when we can't touch, we can't see, we can't reach out and grip, we're developing the ability to apprehend the Holy One by faith. We're being stretched to leave our natural senses, and we're being convinced in our inner being, the new man, the real us, that there isn't anything more real in this universe than the abiding presence of God. And it's the apprehension of this awareness and the presence of his glorious being in our lives that renovates all of us. And so when we think about the prospect of wondering why it is we don't seem to have all the power we need at the moment, we're reminded of Deuteronomy thirty three twenty five, as thy days, so shall thy strength be. And it is to this that we have to ask in this area of bitterness that, first of all, we must be willing to recognize it. Number two, we must be willing to let eternity come into time and rearrange our expectations. We must be willing to let God come in and do the work that only he can do. No one else can do this for us. The elders, mom and dad, they can help, but really there comes a time when all of us have to fall flat on our face in the presence of God and say, God, I, I want to know you, and I want to know the reality of your work in my life. I want reality with you. So it's learning to let go of the expectation. And if you've been hurt, if you've been wounded, if you have been critically, mortally injured, and you feel you can't go on, then you must come to an understanding that Romans twelve nineteen is still yet to be carried out. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. I will repay. Sometimes I think the accomplishments that we so ache and long for in life are better offered up for, Lord, let it be said of me, regardless of whether I get to see the accomplishment or not, that I was close to you all through life. Whether I could taste the sweet fruit of victory, or I had to learn to abide in the emptiness of some of the dreams that I thought I would never get to see fulfilled. The key is, is that you learn the secret of being content as you wait upon God to reveal to you in eternity the blessings of being faithful in time. Those are some of the things that learning to wait on the vengeance of God teaches us. I don't want to bore you half to death with my past, but I have to say that I think at some time it is good just to reveal it, uh, for those of you who are new and don't know me. I did not grow up in a Christian home. I grew up in a very, very, um, pagan home. Uh, it was a wealthy home. We had lots of money, and I often tell people this, don't come see me now, I don't have any more, it's all gone. I can't help you. But I, the earliest childhood memories I have in my home were a very violent mother and a very absent dad. My mom could scare me so bad, I don't mean to say this to be crude, but I could just wet my pants on the drop of a hat, she was so fierce. I won't tell you all the details, but the night that she died, I went out, got stone drunk, and said I have been delivered from the wicked witch of the West, or is it the East? I don't know which one it was, but anyway, the evil one. And so I felt I could take upon myself the license of liberty to cut myself a few breaks of my own in life because I had been dealt a sour deal by God. Got married, had a nice little family on the way, and all of a sudden my dear wife began to realize I was a very angry man. All you had to do is just go Mount Vesuvius immediately. And the long and short of it is this. I knew in my heart I had felt very wronged at the way God had dealt me parents. I felt I had a right to have good parents. And so what I was doing in the back of my mind is I was holding God accountable for a bitter experience as a child. And I was not willing then to take any more responsibility for my actions. You see the danger of being bitter? It gives you a false sense of license to go out and say, you know what, I've had a bitter pill to swallow. I've been robbed, I've been cheated, so therefore I'm going to entitle myself to a couple of bennies in life. I'm gonna cut myself some easy deals. And some of those easy deals were just blatant sin. Until that individual, and until I was willing to come to the point and realize I was blaming God for the set of parents that he gave me. I was blaming God for the hurt that I had as a kid. I was blaming God for the heartache and the hardness of my life. Then I began to direct it to others, so much so to the point that if any woman came into my li- life that looked like my mother, I immediately snubbed her. Wanted nothing to do with her. She could have been the sweetest person on the planet. I wanted nothing to do with her. Now you say, oh, come on, John, that's, that's extreme. You know, I hate to say it, but that form of bitterness these days is kind of mediocre. That ain't the bad stuff. No, this, I'm sorry, this didn't, this is not a psychology class. This is being honest with God. This is being willing to be honest with the fact that we've all been dealt, to a certain degree, some of us more than others, sour apples that we didn't want to taste or eat or digest. And the only way of release for me, my folks died at an early age. My dad at, I think I was thirteen. my mom nine months later with the same thing, a heart attack. She was thirty six, he was thirty eight. And it wasn't until after I was married that I realized I was taking out the hurt, the anger, and there was anger there. You see, maybe it's not a hurt, maybe it's just anger. The bitter pill of being deeply, deeply affected by something that to you or to me would seem so unfair, so unjust, so unright. Why would God permit something like that to happen? Two things hit me, and now it is to this that I want to shift into the next part of what we want to talk about. Why there's a power shortage in the local church of God today. I'm not saying that is true of Lawrence. Don't, please, I didn't come here with my guns cocked to go. I'd still like to preach when I'm done. But I can't be weak-kneed either. I can't be sharing a great ache in my spirit as I see different places and different individuals and hear the horror stories that are going on among God's people. I just don't want to play any games anymore. Time is just utterly too short. And I do believe it's possible for all of us, wherever we are, to see tremendous encouragement from God. One of the great recognition or recognitions of all of the great saints in the past and in the present who know revival is the premium they put upon sober, wholesome relationship to those in the body of Christ. Not an unrealistic pseudo love fest that ignores sin, but a wholesome fear that every true member in the body of Christ is indeed just that, part of the body of Christ. When you and I look at one another, I know this is going to come as a shock to you, but I'm property of the Lord Jesus. Really? And so are you, if you know him, you're his property. You belong to him. I don't mean property as cattle. You are dear to him. And what I do to you, I do to the Savior. How I look at you, how I size you up. Do I look at you when you come in the building and go, boy, they sure are ugly looking. Wow. Whoa. I mean, they really are. They, boy, that's a dork for sure. If ever I saw a dork, that's one right there. Better take that up with Ward. He doesn't make mistakes. Does he? What's the second great commandment? You shall love your neighbor as yourself. And when the Lord said, you shall love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, he said, and the second is like to the what? First. It's dangerous business to treat callously the body. It's dangerous for us to hold one another in contempt. It's a dangerous thing for the people of God to have contempt on the people of God, and to down them in our hearts and our spirits, and to promote division, and to promote an ungiving, forgiving spirit, and to rip and to claw, and to find every little weakness we can and drag them down. This is supposed to be our healing station. This thing called the body. This is our place where we come in and we lick each other's wounds. It's where we learn to get over our little petty grievances and our own little petty idioms, and we learn, we've learned to realize that one of the great zeals of the early church was the tremendous compassion that they had received from the Lord for one another, and they cared for one another. Every time you go to a place where God has broken out in genuine revival, you find a genuine care and concern for the saints. It isn't people worship that God calls us to. It is honoring the Lord Jesus Christ. It is valuing what is obviously of incalculable worth to him, or he wouldn't have shed the best he had to redeem it to. When we think about these things in Matthew chapter six, we begin then to understand that in the heart of God, there is no middle ground in the way we treat and deal and act and respond to one another. We can't afford to let ourselves hold long-term tiffs. I'm not excluding the need there may be to stand on a biblical principle and to be as gracious but as firm as we can to hold that biblical principle, but it's the spirit oftentimes in which we hold it that poisons and kills, rather than brings in and heals and corrects. In Matthew chapter six, we read verse fourteen, for if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you don't forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. And one of the glaring oversights sometimes that can be made in the matter of learning to deal and to work and to get along in the body of Christ is to never cross that thin line where we move in our idea of standing for what we believe is right, whether it's our own personal rights or what we claim to be the right of God being abused and violated in the body. We have to guard ever so carefully against crossing that thin line of turning into I will never forgive them. The Lord says, if that's your attitude, I won't forgive you. Pretty blunt, isn't it? Pretty straightforward. It's not intended or designed to scare us to pieces, as though we're going to be absolved of our salvation and then thrust and cast out into eternity without hope. The Lord is simply telling us that as you now know me, and I know you, and you have a family that's been given to you, you're to learn to get along in that family. And this follows on the heels of the request by those that knew the Lord Jesus to say, Lord, teach us what, what do we pray for? Notice what it is that he, he called them to. He called them to first, you keep in mind how beautiful and holy the Lord is. That's the first thing you bear in your mind, is he is so glorious and so beautiful and so holy, never let that leave your thought. That holiness beams and shines all around us. You know why we don't comprehend and see the beauty of God in this dark world around us is because the filters through which we attempt to see have been stained with sin. And the sin may not be the debauched sin of, uh, adultery or fornication or lying or stealing or hatred or whatever those things may be. It may be just the simple sin of taking God casually. Yeah, I'll take, yeah, give me some of that. Yeah, oh yeah, pass me a little dot on the, the platter there. I think I'm hungry for a little God. Let me taste a little God right now here. Yeah. Hm. Good taste of God. Ah. Oh. I am a Christian. It is understanding that the greatest sin of the universe is that we would ever pull away from the living God. Doesn't mean we don't conduct our business and carry on and enjoy things, but it is the repeated turning away at his invitations to pull us to himself. And sometimes, because we're so taken up with other things, sometimes we have to be, but sometimes the danger is, is that becomes the thing that replaces the time that God so affectionately longs for in our lives. So what the Lord says is this. It really isn't a matter of losing your salvation. I'm just simply giving you the reality that if you don't forgive your fellow believers, don't expect me, when you come to me and you seek forgiveness in your life as a believer for the sins that you, that you commit, that I'm gonna, I'm gonna clean them up. You're forgiven in Christ at the cross. That'll never be a contestable issue. But you won't know the joy of your salvation. You're not going to taste the freedom of what it means to live and walk in the fullness of God's fellowship. And as a consequence, when we begin to ask God to do great things in his namesake, but we are holding a hard heart and an unforgiving spirit towards others in the body of Christ, unjustly, uh, condemning them in our spirits and maybe talking to others or maybe even saying those th- those things to the Lord, you know, so on and so forth. Man, God, you ought to just blast them. We'd be a whole lot better off around here. Somebody once told me, yeah, the best way to take care of problems in the body is just pull out a gun and go, well, problem solved. Next. Well, that doesn't sound very appealing, does it? We know that's foolish. We know that's evil. But what God is saying is, I can't give you the blessing you want if you're holding back from what I've asked you to do towards your fellow believers. So it's the, it is the inevitable power shortage in any gr- local group of God's people that we have to be very careful of, and that we seek never to be part where the f- the beauty of God can't flow through my life and be a blessing to the corporate body as a whole. Dear believer, dear young believer, dear individual who's in here today, I want to say this, there are stages in which you're, you have expectations from God. He doesn't expect the young ones to carry on the responsibilities of the older ones, but I want to say this, all of you are in a family here. We're all a family, and we all have a place. Those of you who feel maybe you're just quiet and tucked away and no one notices you, you are part of the body. You have significance, or you wouldn't be here. Take encouragement in that. You were not placed here by accident. God didn't run out of places to put you and said, oh, well, they got room down there, throw him in. Hey, can you take a couple more? I've got, I don't have any room down in that place. Take these here. You didn't go- get booted from somewhere else so that you could come here. You're all here. Wherever you fellowship, you're there because God wants you to be there. And you have a purpose for being there, and you have a contribution to make. All of us have a contribution to make. One of the saddest things that I think is hard for any of us is when we come to the point where we will not forgive. We've just made it a decision in our mind we won't let that person ever in again. A lot of this involves this matter of judging. I've told you this story before. Most all of you have to take a royalty concession on this one, but this is one of the Wesley brothers, you remember, preaching one day, and he got through, and dear lady came up to him, and she looked at his tie and said, it was one of those string bow ties, and she said, Mr. Wesley, that, uh, string bow tie of yours is just grotesquely too long. And, uh, so Mr. Wesley looked around and and said, okay, would any of you here happen to have a pair of scissors? And sure enough, somebody in the group there had a pair of scissors, and he says, may I borrow them, please? And they gave them to him, and he says, okay, ma'am, now where? Is this too long? She says, no. He moved it up. Is that too long? Yes. How about there? That's not, that's not, uh, short enough. What about here? And she had him snip that thing, I guess, pretty high on the ladder there, and he went like that, and the little tassels fell to the ground. He looked at her and he says, now, ma'am, would you stick out your tongue, please? A lot of times, uh, we hear stories like that, and so we begin to be afraid to judge because we don't want to turn into some nitpicky legalist that's, uh, judging everything from A to Z. Now, we're right there in Matthew six. You'll just turn over briefly to Matthew seven. This will be a reminder for those of us that, uh, have heard this before, but for you young ones who have not heard this before, there's some things I want to leave with you as we, uh, close up, and boy, I'm way over time. Some of you are going, I hope he looks at the clock occasionally. Please. So I'll have to try to finish this up, but let me just start, and then we'll close and give thanks for the food. I think the cooks are probably ready. Matthew seven verse one, judge not that you be not judged, for with ju- what judgment you judge, you shall be judged. And with what measure you use, it will be measured back to you. Now, why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? You know, God is not telling us not to judge. Especially you young folks in a generation where people are telling you, don't, don't, you don't have the right to judge somebody else. I'm gonna tell you something, the Go- the God of the, of the whole of creation, the God of this, this Bible, the God who put you here, calls you to judge. If you're not judging, something's wrong. What he warns against is sinful judging. And one of the things that, um, in this particular passage that you're called and I'm called to look at is the attitude that we have in judging. And I think, since we're well over, I'm going to stop right there because this is really good, good for us to go over this with a little bit more time, and then we'll pick this up after dinner. I want to say, this is a composite series. I- I'm having to move through this in chunks. If you need to leave, I understand, but the beauty of, I think, of what we're going to get all the way through this thing has to come as a unit. And, uh, for those of you that, uh, maybe, um, uh, have a choice to come back, I want to encourage you, please come back because, uh, there are very clear ways God has lined out for us to move out of the bitterness, the grip that it holds on us, how to learn to be able to forgive, I mean, genuinely forgive when you can't and you don't feel like it, and then how to learn to build not only a good atmosphere, but to be able to build others up in the body of Christ. These are critical things that are going to touch your life, that are going to touch my life, and they're desperately needed in our day. So I encourage you, look at the unit as a whole. I can't get it all in in one shot. I wish I could, but this, we have to move through this section at a time so that we get a good foundation for the problem, and then we see the biblical cure. Father, we thank you again for being faithful to us. Thank you for being, as one has put it, and I say this to you with great respect, but Father, I thank you that you're the most joyous person in the universe. It delights all of our hearts to know that you have anointed your son with the oil of gladness above all. There is no one who is gladder than the Lord Jesus. Father, in a day when it's easy to be cynical, discouraged, to be depressed, to be disappointed, to have our dreams broken, it's good to know there is one who is in control, who is filled with joy, who is filled with peace. He's not fretting, he's not chewing his nails. And Father, we thank you that you have called us to come under the care of one who is eternal and loving like the Lord Jesus. Who longs to never let his mercy run out. Our Father, we thank you for one like this, the Lord Jesus. Thank you for being honest with us today. Thank you for the food that you've given us. Lord, we know these are pretty serious, uh, subjects we've been considering, so we're looking forward to being able to lighten up a bit and enjoy fellowship, take a bit of a breather. And Lord, I just pray that you'll help us all to value the importance of the need of our day as we give care one to another in the body of Christ. We ask this for the glory of your dear son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.