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It is said in the Old Testament that Ezra was already scribe in the law of his God, and we of this church have a modern day Ezra in our community, and he, as you see, person of Mr. the Leskin family, has produced for us another beautiful chart. We shall not be commencing a study of this portion tonight, but it is here by way of forewarning. And those of you who can come fairly regularly, you would be helping me a great deal, not to say your own selves. If you could take notice of these divisions in the story of the life and experience of Abraham, and that you would be helping me if I could rely on it. But before you come, you have read a good deal of the text. Haven't had the time to read it, well, still come. But you will certainly get more from the studies if, before you come, you could have read up the chapters that lie immediately in advance. And secondly, if in coming to the periods two, three, and four here, the first great period, the second great period, the third great period, you could, in your reading, look for those themes that I have indicated. They are not the only themes in those chapters, but they are the predominant themes and exceedingly important. I recommend it to you, therefore, uh, so that we shall work together in our future studies in a workmanlike fashion. This evening we are to complete, with God's help, the study of the third creation story, which we began on Thursday last. We suggested on that occasion that the third creation story tells us, as its chief point, about man's constitution. We founded that observation on what the story tells us immediately it begins in chapter five verse uh one. This is the story, this is the book of the generations of men. Men, the new creature, different from anything that had been before, as far as we know. There had been angels before, there had been animals before. As far as we know, there had not been men before. And different in that man was in some part spirit, able to have fellowship and concourse with God, who is spirit. But in the other part of him was animal, not an animal, animal, that is, made of flesh. This new, wonderfully new, strange creature called man. We noticed in our study how that man, as originally made in the image of God, fell and in consequence died. We considered particularly his physical death and what it meant in terms of his constitution. To see a human form lying on the ground and externally all bare as before, and yet dead, must have been a very strange experience for people at first. They would have wondered what had actually happened to this man's constitution. Then we pondered the verse in chapter six, verse three, in which God himself comments on man's constitution, saying, my spirit shall not always abide in man. Notice that translation. My spirit shall not always abide in man, for that he also is flesh. We noticed again that as we read our Genesis, we must constantly be prepared to read its terms at two levels. Man Man was was breath, breast. or spirit, if you like, and flesh in the physical sense. So that chapter seven twenty two tells us that as a result of the flood, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, so it should read, died in the sense of expired. That is, if you drown a man, he can no longer breathe. He dies. You are left with the flesh, minus what chapter seven twenty two calls the breath of the spirit of life. But very soon, Holy Scripture goes deeper with its terms. And just as men physically is compounded of these two parts, flesh and the breath of the spirit of life, so at the deeper level of his constitution is man both flesh and spirit. Spirit now in the sense of true essential being that can hold fellowship with the Father of spirits. And we were reminding ourselves that when God judged this ancient generation of mankind, his judgment was not arbitrary, but exceedingly deliberate, a solemn object lesson. If you drown a man, as we have said, you do not destroy him immediately, the whole of him. You drown a man, you get left with flesh, which then starts to go bad and decay and goes to corruption. That is how God judged man at the flood, which becomes to us a tremendous object lesson of the realities at the deeper level, for man was made at the deeper level, spirit and flesh, with his spirit in control, master of his castle, and the flesh and its proper and healthy desires, nevertheless subject to his spirit, as his spirit was subject to God, the Father of spirits. And when man rebelled, he died spiritually. And if you would have an exact, pertinent description of a man, while he's still walking around on two legs, but he's dead towards God, dead in trespasses and in sins, spiritually dead, then the adjective you will use, if you follow New Testament, is that the man is carnal. That is fleshly. Not merely fleshly in the sense that he is a prey to his lower desires. Even a man's intellect is part of his flesh. And to be maintained in its proper health, intellect needs to be controlled as well as all the other desires of the body, with a spirit that is in touch with God. They say when man fell, it wasn't merely that he did some wrong thing, but he so injured himself as he became a different kind of thing. He became a freak, such as God had never designed. Calm. Out of touch with the Father of spirits. His own spirit, therefore spiritually dead. When a man becomes carnal, sooner or later and inevitably, he will become more or less corrupt. Eventually, his very body will go to corruption. But long before his body goes to corruption, a man who is carnal will find places within him of spiritual corruption. Sometimes that corruption will go to very advanced stages, even in this life, let alone what it shall be in the eternity beyond. Then we passed on to notice that when God brought that judgment upon man, because God was not prepared to maintain such a freak on the face of the earth, God provided a salvation. And we noticed on Thursday its first part. The salvation provided for Noah was an ark. And strictly speaking, its rationale was this: it didn't save Noah from the judgment. It saved him through the judgment. God's sentence upon man as a race was this: the end of all flesh is come before me. Notice the tone. The end of all flesh is come before me. There is a sense in which Noah did not escape that sentence. It wasn't a question of God saying, look here, Noah, boy, I'd rather like you. So look here, there's a particularly high mountain over here. We'll just put you there for a moment while I drown the rest and then let you carry on. No, no. Noah had to go through the flood like the rest. Whereas they went through it on their own, unprotected, Noah went through it, hidden in that ark. We found in that a ready example of the glorious salvation that God has provided for us in Christ. You may look at it one way, if you like, as you think of Calvary, that Christ died for us, over there, out in history, at Calvary, on a cross, by himself. He died instead of me. Very gloriously true. There's another way in which we're called upon to look at it. That way in which, which we profess when we are baptized. That when we receive Christ, we were acknowledging that the judgment of God that descended on Christ was the judgment that we deserve. We acknowledge that that severe judgment under which he died, not just suffered, but actually died, was not too severe. For it was the judgment that we deserved. We admitted that we, as part of all flesh, should come to an end before God. What would have meant eternal disaster for us by ourselves, since we have received Christ, proves the very art of salvation. When I am baptized, first I say that I have accepted God's judgment. I deserve to die and be buried and got rid of underneath those waters. The end comes. Not just a little cleansing of some certain spots here and there, but the end under that water is life. And the symbolism is true because it points to this mysterious thing that when I receive Christ, he and I become one. What happened to him, God can count as having happened to me, legally speaking. And therefore, as I look back to that symbol, I see myself going through the judgment. Dead with God. Buried with God. Then to rise, as Noah did, coming out of the ark into a world that's been cleansed. I rise from my baptism to walk in the image of God. Wonderfully comforting thing it is to see that. God's forgiveness is not some kind of favoritism that bends the rules to let me pass where others are judged. Indeed, my security, my security from the fear of judgment lies in this, that for me the judgment has happened, has taken place, and has been exhausted. But this evening we must do what we promised ourselves we should do, and that is to observe that the salvation that God provided for Noah was not merely a saving him through that judgment. And I may go on to say it would have been very little use if it had been. God provided a salvation that not only saved him through the judgment and brought him out into a clean world, but laid down certain principles and powers for the way he should hereafter live. That insofar as was possible in those far off days, he might receive a taste of God's great scheme of redemption. And in his humble, I nearly said infantile way, at the early stages of the brain, learn to become a spiritual man. And I spent the whole evening on this again this evening. Oh, we're getting hopelessly behind the timetable, but then I generally do it. Because it is so easy to forget it. So easy for us so to enjoy the glorious security and certainty that there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, as to forget. In practice, if not in theory. God's salvation is not merely concerned to save me from the wrath of God and to assure me there is no condemnation ahead. God's salvation is meant to restore me as a man as to what I should be, constitutionally, to make me a real man, as distinct from the freak I used to be. God has no interest in saving rotten corps. And God has no interest in saving carnal men and women. Our salvation, I repeat, is not only to save us from judgment, but to turn us once more into men. That is, people that are spirit and flesh. Whose spirits are in constant touch with the Father of spirits. In whom, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the spirit is assuming and resuming control of the personality. And because this is so tremendously important, I beg leave of you now, as we begin to read, to justify my exposition. Let us begin to read in chapter six And his famous first paragraph. To notice again what it was that was going on when man went wrong. It was not merely that man became corrupt, violent, vicious, unclean, corrupt intellectually, but it would also appear at this stage that satanic, evil forces, in their rebellion against God, carried their sin to such length as in itself began to turn certain parts of the human race into monstrosity. It came to pass when, not certain men, please. I won't do as a translation. It came to pass when man began to multiply. That is this new creature, man. Not certain men among the race, but man, the creature. It came to pass when man began to multiply upon the face of the ground, and daughters were born unto him, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men. Please. Not that the sons of God saw certain daughters of certain men. I don't know, the Hebrew will not allow it. When the sons of God saw the daughters of man, that is human females, that they took them wives of all that they chose. Scripture is talking about beings other than human, sons of God, perverting in their own perversion, human be married. It's useless to protest the words of our Lord that angels do not marry. That may be true, is true, certainly true, of unfallen angels, of whom he was then talking. And secondly, he said they do not, he said, didn't say they cannot. But anyway, we're not now talking of unfallen holy angels. We are talking, by definition, of exceedingly unholy angels. And therefore, God said, my spirit shall not always abide in man, because he is flesh. I want to turn you to the passage in the New Testament that discusses this very paragraph, and I do it that I may offer you a check on the exposition that I am proposing to see whether I got it right. I am saying this paragraph in Genesis is dealing with man's constitution, spirit, flesh, spirit, flesh, and that man went wrong, terribly wrong. Partly as a result of his own fallenness, he became carnal and corrupt. Partly because of the inrush of evil fallen spirit beings, the race began to get corrupted. Corrupted at the very level of their constitution. But let us hear some Peter. He quotes, as we all know, this passage of Genesis about the flood in his first epistle, chapter uh three. Let us hear what Peter thinks are the leading concepts in the passage. This is one Peter three. And we shall take up at about verse seventy, for verse seventeen of chapter three. But you will see, glancing down the page, that round about verse twenty, Peter is going to come to talk of Noah and the flood, and those who were saved there in eight souls. Let us read the thing in its context. Verse seventeen. For it is better, if the will of God should so will, that you suffer for well doing rather than for evil doing. Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened, made alive in the spirit. Oh, so here are our two words. Put to death in flesh, made alive in spirit, in which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which afore time had been disobedient, when the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is eight souls, were saved through water, which also after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is on the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, angels and authorities and powers. Who are they? If not spirits. Being made subject to him. For as much then as Christ suffered in the flesh, arm you yourselves also with the same mind, for he that has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that you should no longer live the rest of your time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but that you should live the rest of your time in the flesh to the will of God. For the time past may suffice to have wrought the desire of the Gentiles and to have walked in lasciviousness, lusts, wine bivings, revelings, carousings, and abominable idolatries, wherein they think it's strange that you run not with them into the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you. Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead? For to this end was the gospel preached even to the dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit. And you will see at the very opening then of that last paragraph and at his close, Peter is picking up what Genesis is specifically saying, this matter of man's constitution, flesh and spirit. He has reference to this great occasion in which evil spirit forces tried to corrupt our human race. He makes reference to that great attack when Satan and all his hosts concentr- concentrated on Jesus Christ, our Lord, that second man. Oh, what a lovely, lovely specimen of humanity he was. Ever since Adam had sinned, there had never walked on earth a man in the full sense of that term. None had seen, since Adam had been fallen, a perfect specimen of humanity, nothing but wrecks, more or less. Until he came, Jesus Christ our Lord, true man in flesh. He had conceived of the Holy Spirit and anointed of the Holy Spirit and led of the Holy Spirit. Perfect and unfallen, in whom all the destiny of the human race was involved. Satan and his evil hosts at the cross made their great attack on him, and he was done to death. It is not a very nice word that Peter uses. Not sacrificed as some reverent offering to God, but brutally done to death in the flesh. Flesh being used not in a bad sense, but in the constitutional part of him. In that very moment, it was demonstrated that humans can exist not merely according to the flesh. Instead of Calvary being the end, it was but the doorway into vastly bigger things. Down to death in flesh, lacerated, torn, horn-crowned, and spear-thrust. He was quickened in spirit, and he went hither, and he went thither. All gods mastered desire. We had a little inkling of it. In those far off days, we're reading down that great catalog, he died, he died, he died, he died. We suddenly came across a man called Enoch, and he didn't die. When without dying, into who knows where in those days. Little him. That man, as man can live in other realms. Ah, but see the greater wonder of a man done to death in flesh, made alive in spirit, with a spiritual body. He went to the breach, heralding his great victory, and hence their doom. The evil spirits that had tried to destroy the race. And he went into heaven, angels, principalities, and powers being subject to him. And Peter adds that, not as a little bit of decorative icing to the cake, but because it is germane. Consider him, my dear fellow Christian, the man Jesus Christ. Oh, what a triumph God's plan has led to. Satan may have turned the original man into a freak, but there has been a second man, and he has triumphed and triumphed gloriously. He's not merely gone into heaven, slipping in through the door. He's gone into heaven, all that vast myriad song of vast intelligentsia and spiritual powers being subject to the man, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Man has risen in the universe. For man was originally made a little lower than the angel and could die. Never read of an angel dying yet. But in Christ, he has been raised, manhood has been raised two degrees in the universe and sits tonight of our principalities, power, might, and dominion, a man-step. Just before he went, he said, handle me and see. See, it is not flesh and bone like you see me have. Oh, what a thrill for our hearts. We sit here buffeted and beaten by Satan and his tricks. Sit here at the end of another week, perhaps feeling defeated in our souls, how we have lost control of ourselves to our greatest man disappointment. Cheer up, brother. The man in whom your salvation is is above these parities and powers. God will have you one day like him. You shall reign in life as a man. Yes, you have a right to groan in your tabernacle, and hope so to put it on. God's intention for you, that is not that you shall be bodiless for all eternity. Don't you get into that sort of defeatist attitude. Wish I could get rid of this body, it's defeated me so many times. No, sir. You shall have a body eternally, and he shall reign in it. A body like to his glorious body. But Peter is not done simply telling us of the great triumph of Jesus Christ our Lord. He is concerned to tell us that because Christ has suffered and is now risen and gone into heaven, we must arm ourselves with the same mind. Eloquent words of Peter, who armed himself with a sword or two to stop suffering and to avoid it. We must be prepared to face it because it is an integral part in God's good hand of subduing this unruly question. For the time past should have sufficed us to engage him deeply. Life for us, as for love, has been divided by a big flower, at least. Hope it has. A very literal flower, I hope. Now lived in the flesh, then came the flower, then came the rest of its time in the flesh, the flower in between. The time passed ought to have sufficed him, but oh, alas it didn't. And one of the last things we read of Noah is coming under the influence of the wrong spirit, they want, getting drunk and showing himself desperately animal and crude. We need to be warned. Take our salvation seriously. There is provision. But that isn't God's intention, just to save us and guarantee us eternal security and let us live as we like. God isn't interested in it. There is provision that we learn to become spirit-led men and women. See it then begin to happen. Now it was in his ark, the rains had ceased. Now he wanted to know whether it was safe to come out and set his foot once more on earth. So he devised a little device. Opened the window and had a bird or two. The raven wasn't much good at it, but the dart proved very reliable. She went out first and found no place for the sole of her foot to rest. Came back to the ark. Sensible thing. Felt safe there. Then she went out again, sent by Nair, and came back this time with an olive leaf in her. And Nair, because he couldn't look through the side, there weren't any windows, else he might have trusted his own judgment. He got Mrs. Nair and said, what do you think, my dear? Do you think that, do you think that's mud down there? Shall we go in up to our elbows, up to our oxen, or, or, or, or what shall we do, my dear? But he couldn't see out that way, mercifully, so he didn't rely upon his own judgment. He was left by this bird coming in the top through the window. You say, what a little story. Well, so. And I leave it there. I must watch my critics, lest they thought I was going to interpret it as a type, and I'm going to do no such thing. I'm just going to leave it altogether. So don't you accuse me afterwards of having made an intertype, and then say that Genesis could never have meant that. So I'm leaving it, please. And I'm going over to the New Testament, to an actual account. Watch the great John the Baptist calling on men to repent, to acknowledge that the end of flesh has come before God, and they better be baptized in confession of their guilt and sin. Go down under that line. Guilty tax gatherers, hitherto pompous Pharisees and women off the streets that have learned their corruption. They own God's judgment is just. John puts them under the wall. Presently comes Jesus of Nazareth to be baptized, says John, you ought to come to me. I have need to be baptized of you, not you of me. John knew what the significance of his baptism was. It was a confession of repentance, and this man had no sin to repent of. Why will he then be baptized? Ask it, my friend. Did you see him stand in the mud of Jordan along with the sinners, the poor, the weak, and the corrupt and the bitter? Is this holy Son of God doing, standing in the mud with them? I ask in God's miracle of grace. Oh my friend, if you can face God's judgment, and God will put yourself where you deserve to be, down in the mouth. If you get no love, the water's about to go over your head. You'll feel an arm stretched out around you. It is God's only son standing where you stand, or sinless himself, standing in your place. That's what he did at Calvary. No man went so long as what Christ has stood at that man's side. Sinless himself. To take our judgment. Guilty. Why? Helpless we. Spotless Son of God was he. Full atonement. Can it be? What a statement. Then continuing his great illustration, he came up out of Jordan, and I saw it, said John. Heaven opened. God said, this is my beloved son, and I saw the Holy Spirit in Paul as a dove. And as he came out of the waters, the dove came on him. The next Jesus being led of the spirit went to meet the great and famous three temptations. All a lovely, lovely thing in the world. Please, no types, no, no, no, no, no types here. In fact, my brother, Christ led to the spirit, who, so that we could see it, came in form as a bird, as a dove. Old Noah's dove wasn't content merely to be a bird, was he? Came with an olive leaf in its mouth, and anybody who knows anything about types, if you're going to start talking about types, or my dear brother, if you know anything about tides, well, olive trees and things, I'll leave that to you. We said or I fall, but we'd better keep just to that. Tides, men. Obviously. So are we too. Say through the judgment to the other side, to do what? To walk in newness of life. How? How control this unruly flesh? That you be led by the Spirit. As many as are led by the Spirit, these are sons of God. Well, that is how godlike character is built, by constantly being led by the Spirit. That doesn't necessarily mean constantly hearing voices from heaven. I can be led by Mrs. Beaton because I read her book. Well, I don't, but some do. I get her book so in my mind, you know, eggs, three minutes and a half, uh, and so, well, it's second nature, isn't it? You know it all. Being led by the spirit is not just sensations down the spine. It's a person. That person is God. I'm not there to use him. So I switch him on like I switch the electricity on. So he was so much stuff. He's a person. To use me. Glorious thing about God's Holy Spirit is that he will not repress my personality. He will develop it. He will play within me. He will play alongside me. He will play his great desires, and he'll allow me to express them the best I can. And if my expressions of the desires are, are faltering and sometimes wrong, yet God will root them as the Holy Spirit has tended them. But he will strive against the flesh. I am called upon to live according to the Spirit. To live after the Spirit. You walk after the Spirit, you can live. If you walk after the flesh, you shall die. Paul is not at that juncture talking about eternal destiny. He is talking about present experience. If I would know virile, vigorous spiritual life now, then God has made provision for it, thank you. Holy Spirit. And walk after him. But if I persist in walking after my old flesh, it is corrupt. My spiritual life in practice will die and become so thin that you wouldn't know whether it was alive or dead. Or if I sit off to a dear brother or sister who feels himself just there, I scarce right to talk to them. My brother, say not in your heart you've gone so far that it would take a long while to come back. Say not that you don't know what to do and you can't feel anything. No, of course you can't, of course you don't feel much. But you can repent. You can tell God, look God, I'm in a poor mess. I don't even desire you. I don't even love your word. I don't even love the meetings of the church. I don't love the Lord's Supper. I love evil things. But I'm willing for your spirit to raise his protest in my life and to begin to bring me to sanity, willing to repent. My brother, if you're prepared to pay, you do it. You mustn't complain if it's costly, if it's painful. And how much you mean business. His gracious work is as much bringing us to repentance as believers as it is giving us the power to walk in newness of life. So Noah came out of his ark, led by the dove, and what first did he do? Well, he built an altar to the Lord. And God smelled the sweet odor of rest, tells us the end of chapter eight, the last paragraph. Noah builted an altar unto the Lord, verse twenty, verse twenty one, and the Lord smelled the sweet savor, literally a savor of rest. And the Lord said in his heart, I will not curse again the ground anymore for man's sake. While the die you. I don't even love your world. I don't even love the meetings of the church. I don't love the Lord's Supper. I love evil things. But I'm willing for your spirit to raise his protest in my life and to begin to bring me to sanity. Willing to repent. My brother, if you're prepared to pay it, you'll do it. You mustn't complain if it's costly, if it's painful. And so much you mean business. His gracious work is as much bringing us to repentance as believers as it is giving us the power to walk in newness of life. So Noah came out of his ark, led by the dove. And what first did he do? Well, he built an altar to the Lord. And God smelled the sweet odor of rest, tells us the end of chapter eight, the last paragraph. Noah builted an altar unto the Lord, verse twenty, verse uh twenty one, and the Lord smelled the sweet savor, literally a savor of rest. And the Lord said in his heart, I will not curse again the ground anymore for man's sake. While the earth remaineth, seed, time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. So some principles now for living in this cleansed world. That's the principle of an altar and a sacrifice, and God smelt rest. Overwhelmed. Did he say, well, now Noah has been through the ark, he's been through the waters, now I feel jolly well contented with Noah. I feel I could rest. Indeed not. God didn't feel contented with you, my dear brother and sister, that he gets you home to glory either. I'm not being rude, I'm being factual. God loves you, yes, that's a different thing from being contented with you. Indeed, the very fact that he loves you, he'll be constantly trying to bring you to repentance and pointing out that's wrong, and this wrong, and that wrong, and you mustn't think he doesn't love you because he keeps pointing out things wrong. It is because he loves you that he points out the things wrong. Not contented with you. Don't get, uh, be contented until we've lost all our wrinkles, spots, blemishes, and what have you, and we're like Christ, but he loves us. We can find rest of heart where God finds rest of heart already. Well, let me get it clear. My peace with God, my rest of heart, not to be based on my attainment. My rest of heart based always and only on acceptance with God through the sacrifice of Christ. You see, my good friend, you found it out, I dare say, like I have to, that Satan, if he can't get you worldly, will trip you up by your very godliness and spirituality. He doesn't mind which way he does it. He'll get you so introspective, looking after yourself and putting yourself tremendously high standards, which of course you shouldn't have low standards anyway, and he'll fill you with glory on Monday morning. Oh, you triumph for the Lord. Now you do feel a respectful Christian. You've never felt such a good Christian. Now you are making the grade. Now you feel you could call yourself a Christian. Always were a little bit unsure before whether you were, you know, absolutely sure you were saved, but now you feel you are. Tuesday afternoon? All the time you were proper for your knees. I don't think I'm Christian at all, huh? Ah, no good. And all the puff goes out of it, doesn't it, Mark? We didn't say it's no good. There's never any good anyway. And he's got you wobbly because he's got, uh, your feeling of contentment based on your attainment. That will sap every bit of strength your got, or if it doesn't, it will end you up as a hardened old cardboard a Pharisee has ever walked. Learn to be content with Christ and permanently discontent with yourself. Accepted through Christ's sacrifice. Come and celebrate it every Lord's Day morning, my dear good friend. Therefore facing with, having the courage to face all those things on which you have every right to be discontent. Then said God, as he provided for man's food, I'm going to give you some basic assurance of Noah. See, time and harvest, summer and winter, heat and cold shall not cease. Had application, of course, primarily to the physical world. Noah was to be informed that, generally speaking, the elements would not mock his labor. If he sowed, there would be, normally speaking, a harvest. We're not talking about little fluctuations in temperature and climate. There wouldn't come a great flood. And from now on, physical life would in fact be governed by laws that you can rely on. If Farmer Giles sows barley, well, Farmer Giles will get barley. It would print the sky if it didn't that way, wouldn't it? If you sowed barley and got poppies. You say, what is the good of sowing anything? Yes, so nature has to be fairly rigid, and you reap what you sow. How lovely, isn't it? It's a glorious encounter. You reap what you sow. Marvelous, my God. Thing to praise God for, isn't it, that you reap what you sow? For if you sow to, we've already raised it a candidate. We left behind now the law at the physical level of nature. It applies in the spiritual level too, doesn't it? Says Paul to the Galatians in chapter six. God is not mocked, don't be deceived, whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. If you sow to the Spirit, you will of the Spirit reap eternal life. Again, Paul is talking in terms of practical enjoyment, and God won't mock you, nor will he be mocked. My dear good young brother and sister, if you give yourself to the hard work of following Christ and cooperating with God and being led of the Spirit and filling your mind with his word and seeking his grace and power to carry it out and attending to the divine institutions that Christ has left you. I don't seem to be making much progress, perhaps you don't, but you can rely on God's faithfulness for what you sow. You will reap. Let's not be weary in well-doing, for we shall reap if we faint not. You mustn't expect to grow or sow barley on Tuesday in the physical world and reap barley on Wednesday afternoon, nor the week following, or a fortnight later. It'll be quite a long-term process, and generally speaking, apart from crises that come and go, spiritual progress is a long-term operation. Dare to trust God and don't seek a lot of fizz and pot. Dare to trust God's long-term operations, his natural laws in the spiritual realm. You shall be if you Faith. faith. But the word is a warning. If we sow to the flesh, we eat what we sow, my God. God has no magic wand. I take my life. Because I'm sure I shall never come into judgment, I just serve to the flesh. Not necessarily vicious flesh, drinking my methylated spirits every day before breakfast, but nice cultured flesh, but mere flesh. Inevitably, as sure as summer follows winter, and harvest follows summer, I shall of thee be corruption. Father, forgive you my brother. If we do it, when we're sixty five and a half, we see what fools we've been. We've ruined ourselves and perhaps our families. For we didn't encourage them to sow to the spirit. We thought being good social people was enough. When we repent of it, God will forgive us. There's no magic. Yes, he can, by his message, fill those last years. Years that the locusts have eaten can he restore, in a sense. Yes, that is true. Nothing will make up ever. Years. It's not arbitrary, it's not magic. It is a regular law of the... Then said, uh, God, now, now, now, oh boy. You know the world you used to live in, that got impossible. Violence, evil. So now we better have magistrates. And for the first time now we read of government set up magistrates to judge. And this is very important, uh, for the historians and the sociologists and whatnot. The dawn of the need for some kind of human government. Tonight, we are chiefly interested at it for its lesson at the spiritual level, aren't we? Yes, for those that have been buried with Christ and raised again to walk to new life and are being led by the Spirit and trying to sow to the Spirit, God will expect us to exercise judgment. If you would judge yourselves, you would not be judged. I'm not meant to go through life as a believer supposing I'm all right. I might jolly well know it that in a, in a great proportion of my life, I'm, I'm not all right. Ask your wife or your friend if you, if you think you're all right. I know standing here I'm not right in some things, and some things that I haven't got a clue about, but other folks can see, and some things they can't see anyway. And therefore, I am to judge myself. Not to get morbid, I'm to judge myself. Guard it as one of life's chief duties that I should constantly be putting myself alongside God's word, saying, oh Lord, thank you for your love, thank you for my security. I know your criticisms are not rejection, but expressions of your love, so where am I wrong? Show me what I ought to be repenting of next. Don't wait, my brother, till you've blotted your copy book for all the town to see, before you discover that in your flesh it was no good thing. Keep it constantly in the light of God's word. Judge it. At the very same time, know the assurance that God gave to Noah. For along with the word about setting up magistrates to judge the local community, God said, now I want to make a covenant with you. I do put my soul in the covenant. My covenant that I shall not again overflow the water, overflow the earth with water. It must have been a comfort to know if you've been through one flood, you don't forget it easily, you know. You'll see those clouds rolling up and the very windows of heaven opened in the earth shaking, the whole planet shaking under your feet. You don't forget it easily. Now, in his later life, to see a cloud coming up, poof, he got a bit sweaty under the collar. Yes, under weather. God says I can give that rainbow now significance. Whenever you see that rainbow now, you'll see it, of course, only when there's rain around and when there's cloud around. And you remember my covenant no more. How wonderfully God puts the two things together. I judge myself in the security that I know that there is no condemnation for me. I judge myself knowing that if I judge myself, God will not in daily life judge. So it should have been, all handled. And so it was for some time. The time past of the flesh didn't suffice. And he became drunk and lost his self-control and was exposed, crude, and out of control. So I wouldn't do anything like that. I hope you wouldn't, my love. I do sincerely. But don't forget, God's catalog of sins doesn't show the same order as ours, I would say. We are still animal, aren't we? And there's nothing wrong in being animal, so long as the animal is under the control of our spirits by the power of God's Holy Spirit. But let that animal get its own way and get out of control. What do you mean by animal, you say? Well, have a word with James. Now, says James, uh, animals. Now, on the topic of animals, all wild animals in the world are ferocious beasts, but they have been tamed. Every animal has been tamed except the tongue. Human tongue. I didn't know that was an animal. I'm afraid it is. What an animal. How are we gonna watch it? Tame it? The Holy Spirit with our spirit, to tame the animal of the time. My brethren, how well do we do? And we repented of it, and its animalness. Oh, when it gets loose, it will tear a strip off you onto. It will tear you to shit. People sometimes will be proud of having done it. How many a Christian tea party is spoiled because the old animal of the town, under the guise of being very spiritual, is having the gossip of the neighborhood, every assembly it knows. Talking of things is awful. I don't want to know about Mrs. Smith Shorts coming in your assembly, my dear child. Unless you think I can help. I got enough troubles of my own to keep my own animal in place. I want you to come and tell me about Christ and his Holy Spirit. Listen, says Paul, you must get this. If you bite and devour one another, take heed that you don't be consumed one of another. You see, you're in danger, says Paul, of confusing two things. Through the death of Christ, we have been saved from the penalty of sin, but we've not been saved from its consequences. Yes, if with my tongue I retell cheap gossip about believers, and ministers to people, minister to people's pride, I'm better than them, and have you heard what so and so has done, and he's a preacher too. Yes. Well, if then I repent of it subsequently, yes, there is forgiveness. There's no penalty. There's consequence. You sow barley when God has told you not to sow barley. You know your words, I shouldn't sow barley. I was a fool. I don't know what made me sow bar- sow barley, but look, here it is, and all its way he talked to it, now barley, all fields of barley. All of that little seed, I didn't think it would come for so much anyway. Oh God, I am so sorry. Forgive me for sowing barley. Yes, God will forgive you. I tell you what he won't do. He won't sign off. And no writing around you. Half of it, ever get that down. Change it into beef. No. There's no penalty. We're saved from penalty. We're not saved from consequences. Take heed, says Paul, if you fight and devour one another, what will happen? Will it turn out all right in the end? No, you'll be consumed one of another, says Paul, for what you sow. That you will reap. This business is real. God. They hold up a wonderful salvation. Person in bleeding of the spirit. God helps respond to his marvel of triumph in Christ and the victory he designs for each one of us to conform us to his image, to make us perfect specimens of humanity, spirit, and God help us realistically and seriously to cooperate with him in the ongoing development of our personal purpose. Oh Lord, we bring thee thy holy word, we thank thee for it. We have sensed its reality in our hearts. Lord, we've realized that the understanding of it is not the doing of it. And therefore, even now as we have been blessed in our reading and in our understanding, help us by thy grace to seek that infinitely greater blessing. If you know these things, happy are ye if you do. May thy leaving peace be upon us. Restore us, thou great shepherd of the sheep, and lead us in the paths of righteousness. What the name says. And it if if it is not thy pleasure to take us home, go before us into tomorrow for our privileges and our duties, that in them we may glorify thee, and in the very doing of it, step that much nearer the home of our Christ.