Riddle, John: Young People's Meeting ~ Lev 21:17

Well, first of all, thanks very much for the good singing. I really think that piece that you sang in parts was absolutely delightful. I've not heard that before. Worth recording. Now, it's almost the end of a busy day, and you don't want a heavy sermon, I'm pretty sure of that. And I want to say you won't get one either, but it might seem like it to start with. And I want to read just a few rather unusual verses with you from the book of Leviticus. And you say, did you say you wouldn't be heavy? Leviticus? Well, let's just read a few verses from chapter twenty one. Leviticus and chapter twenty one. This is what the Bible says in verse seventeen. speak unto Aaron saying, whosoever he be of thy seed in their generations that hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God. For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach, a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or anything superfluous, or a man that is broken-footed, or broken-handed, or crooked-backed, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy or scabbed, or hath his stones broken, no man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the Lord made by fire. Now that will suffice for our little reading from God's word this evening. One of the wonderful things that happened to us when we trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ was this: we all became priests. I was saved on the twenty third of October nineteen forty nine. It was a night rather like this, typical Vancouver night, raining, would that be right? Haven't thrown me out yet, so there we are. And I remember coming home with my father from the gospel meeting in Hertfordshire, which is one of the home counties around London, and I went up to my back bedroom and I knelt down by my bed and I thanked God for a very wonderful savior, and I trusted him that night. And that was my first act as a priest. Now, I know in Canada quite a lot of people speak French, and so possibly some of you do, and you may know that in the French Bible the word for priest is sacrificateur, or one of the words for priest, which simply means someone who offers sacrifices. And that really is what the word priest means anyway, someone who offers sacrifices. And you and I have the most wonderful privilege, once we've trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior, of approaching God with our spiritual sacrifices, our thanksgiving, our praise, our worship, our adoration. We had an ex-boxer, a great preacher in the south of England. His name was Stan Ford, a very well-known preacher indeed. And he once said this, that God can serve himself, but he cannot worship himself. Whether you agree with that, I don't know, but I think there's some mileage in it. And you know, your great privilege of mine is to come into God's presence and worship him and praise him. Now, what's likely to stop us doing that? Are there any circumstances that might spoil our enjoyment of God, that might spoil our approaching him? That's why I read these rather unusual verses from the book of Leviticus with you this evening, because they list a number of things. In this case, of course, they were physical defects, but I want to think of the spiritual application of them here tonight. What I want just to show to you is there are certain things, if we let them stay in our lives, if we don't deal with them, could spoil us and spoil our approach to God and stop us drawing near to him and bringing to him the praise and worship of which he is so worthy. After all, he's worthy of our best, isn't he? Years ago in London, we used to have some enormous missionary meetings, possibly something like fifteen hundred, two thousand, two thousand five hundred people used to converge on London, and they used to take the great big central hall at Westminster, not very far from Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, and all that kind of thing. And I remember being in the overflow meeting one night, and a missionary who served God many years in India was giving a report. He told us a very interesting story about his early days in India. He said, I went down to the river, and there, standing by the river, was an Indian mother, and she had two children, one in each arm. One of them was a very hearty, hale, lusty kind of child, absolute picture of health. The other one was a poor, weak, emaciated, thin, sick looking child. And the missionary said, now this was years and years and years and years ago, he said, to my horror, she threw one of her children into the river, and it was the healthy child, the best child, the fit child, and she threw the child into the river as an offering to the river god. The English missionary was absolutely horrified. In any case, he would have been horrified whichever child had been bundled in the river. But he said to the mother, why did you do that? And if you're going to make a sacrifice to your river god, why did you give your best son? She said, my god must have my best. And that was a pagan woman. That was a lady who knew nothing about the true God and nothing about the gospel of Christ and nothing really about God's love, nothing about the Bible. But she said, my God must have my best. I just want to say to myself, and I want, please, if I may, to say to you, let's bear that in mind, shall we, as we think about these verses together. Our God should have our best. Isn't he worthy of it? When we think of the fact that he sent his son, the Lord Jesus, to die for us upon the cross, when we think of the agony and the shame and the pain that the Savior endured at Calvary, isn't he really worthy that we should give him our very best? And surely, as we think about these things together, we probably haven't got time to think about all of them. I trust that if we find we've got some of these things in our lives, let's have the grace to deal with them and exclude them so that we can give God our best worship and our best love and our best service. Now, the first thing that the Bible says is this, that a blind man wasn't able to approach God as a Christian. Now, can I just underline, these were physical details. I want just to bring out the spiritual significance of them. Can a Christian be blind? Oh no, you say, no, no, no, of course a Christian can't be blind. A Christian is someone who says, once I was blind, now I see. And I just want to pause for a moment and say, I hope that's true of every one of us, that we really have seen our need for the Savior's forgiveness, and we've trusted in him and made him our Savior. But you know, a Christian can be building. Peter tells us about that in his second epistle. In his second epistle in chapter one, he talks about various things that Christians ought to be building into their character, and he lists them for us, and this is what he says. Add in with your faith virtue, knowledge, temperance, self-control, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, love. And then he says, he that lacketh these things is blind and cannot see afar off. In other words, says Peter, if you can't see the need of developing your Christian character and going in for those virtues, those graces that will please God, if you just can't see the need of going in for these things, you're blind. You can't see a part. I hope none of us think we've arrived spiritually. You know, when I was nineteen, which I imagine might be the age of at least some of you here, I thought I knew all the answers. I listened to the learned preachers talking about the problems at the end of um one Peter chapter three, the spirits in prison, and Riddle, that's me, knew all the answers. Why on earth didn't these gray heads, you know, really get the explanation? I knew all about it. Now I am a little older than nineteen, forty one years older than nineteen, I can assure you I don't know all the answers, and I'm absolutely persuaded that I haven't arrived spiritually, and there's a long, long way to go for me, a long, long haul ahead, so that I need to be building into my life all these important things that Peter talks about, patience and godliness and brotherly kindness. I hope they're there in some form, but my, oh my, they need refining, don't they, in all our lives. And Peter says, if you think you've arrived and you've got the whole lot and you really can't see the need to make any progress at all, you're blind and you can't see afar off. So I hope none of us are going to be spoiled in our approach to God because we can't see the need for spiritual progress. And then the Lord Jesus, of course, speaks about spiritual blindness amongst God's people. He's talking in Revelation chapter three to the church at Laodicea, and he says this, you know, you're a very wealthy bunch of people, and indeed they were. You know, their wealth derived from their gold, from their black wool, and from the chemical deposits outside Laodicea from which they made eye ointment. Now, says the Lord Jesus Christ, your wealth has been based upon these three things. Now, what you really need to do is to go in for the spiritual counterpart of these things. Buy of me gold tried in the fire, the true wealth, and white raiment, not the black stuff you manufacture, and anoint your eyes with eye salve that thou mayest see. And said the Lord Jesus Christ, don't you know that you're wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked? What did the Savior mean when he said they were blind? They were blind because their materialism, their wealth, their opulence had just robbed them of spiritual value. Now, I'm not going to dare stand before you this evening and say that we shouldn't make our way in life and carve out our careers, and if promotion comes along, we shouldn't take it. I wouldn't dare say a thing like that because for many years I was in the City of London, I was in the financial services side of a shipping company, I looked after their pension fund, and it would be absolutely hypocritical for me to say that we shouldn't look for promotion and opportunities and progress. But what I'm going to say is this: keep the balance of your values correct. Just remember that when you stand before the Lord Jesus Christ, it won't be that he'll say, well done, because you've got a seat with the board of directors, or you've made it to the top in industry, or you've done so well materially. I'm not saying we shouldn't go into these things. What I'm saying is let's remember, let's temper, let's balance up our lives and ensure that spiritual things are not neglected. I have a friend, very good friend, who was at one time in the assembly from which I come, which is twenty miles to the northeast of London. He worked for a big merchant bank in the city of London. My, oh my, they pressurised him to come in early. They pressurised him to do all the overtime he possibly could, and they paid him, and they paid him, and they paid him, and they paid him. But Keith discovered he hadn't got time to read his Bible, and he had to miss the meetings. So he resigned his job and took a lesser job. But God is no man's debtor. He made it up to him and is doing very well and can actually walk home in his lunch hour if he wants to. He doesn't anymore work in the city life. Now, I'm not saying throw up your job, do this, that, and the other. I'm just saying this, get your balance of values right in. Make sure you discipline your time so that you can spend time at the beginning of the day on your knees in God's presence. And spend time reading your Bible. Don't please think it's going to happen. You've got to make the time. And if we don't see the need for spiritual development, and if we let material things just take away from us the value of spiritual things, we are blind. And so says our passage back in the book of Leviticus, one of the things that will preclude a priest from actually functioning is, is if he were a blind priest. Now let's just extract one or two of the things with you. I just want to notice one or two of them. You can do your homework and put the meat on the bone. A lame man, someone who couldn't walk properly. We'll leave that one there. One that hath a flat nose. Now we ought to stop and think about that, didn't we? A flat. Why did a priest become precluded from drawing near to God if he'd got a flat nose? Seems a bit odd, doesn't it? But you just remember these priests had to handle incense, perfumes, sweet smelling ointments, and so on and so forth. It was ever so necessary for them that they had a jolly good sense of smell. And if our friend the priest had a flat nose, well, sadly, God provided for him, there was food for him, he wasn't put out to starve, but he couldn't draw near to God. Very important not to have a flat nose. You say to me, what on earth do you mean? How on earth can you apply that to us sophisticated people here in British Columbia in nineteen ninety six? What's the meaning? Is there a meaning? Well, may I take you to a man in prison? Here he is. Not a miserable man, not a jellyfish quivering spinelessly in the corner of his cell, a man who's rejoicing in the Lord, and it's Paul in Philippians. There's a bang on the door, in comes a man called Epaphroditus, and he's bringing him some materials and gifts from the city of Philippi, Paul enjoyed. Paul says, you know, I have all in the family. I received the things that were sent, an odor of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well pleasing to God. I tell you what, Paul hadn't got a flat nose. He was able to appreciate the sweetness and the loveliness of that Christian fellowship that had been extended to him. I do hope we value one another and value Christian fellowship and appreciate one another as God's people. Sometimes we look at one another as if we were emitting a bad smell, don't we? But not so with Paul. My, he said, when I think of your fellowship, it's like the odor of a sweet smell. If we're in the Bible reading this morning, the two Greek words actually come out again in second Corinthians and chapter two. We noticed it as we passed it. You see, if I don't appreciate the love of Christ in my brothers and sisters, if I don't appreciate their fellowship and their help and don't seek it, in other words, if I don't see the loveliness of Christ in my fellow Christians, I'm not going to be much of a priest, am I, in the presence of God. Well, now, after the flat nose, we've got the man with anything superfluous, which actually means one leg longer than another, but we'll leave that for the moment. The broken-footed person who can't stand any weight, and the broken-handed person who can't work. Then now look at the next one, the crook back. Here's the man who's always looking down and can't look up. I don't know if you've ever read, um, any works by the Tinker of Bedford. Well, you know who the Tinker of Bedford was? Well, the Tinker of Bedford was John Bunyan, and his most famous work is Pilgrim's Progress. And if you read Pilgrim's Progress, he describes a number of characters in very interesting detail, and one of them is a man with a muck rake. There he is in a compost heap or whatever he's doing, and he's raking away, and he's got his head down over the vile stuff he's turning over with his rake, and if he lifted his eyes up, he'd see the glory of the heavens above him, but he's so earthbound, he just can't somehow look up. And here we've got the man with the crook back. He's looking down, he just doesn't seem somehow or the other to be looking up. I wonder, is that true of you and me? You know, the Apostle Paul says we're to set our affection on things above. When I was a boy, you know, in London, there was a lot of popular cliches about, and one of them was this: it's possible to be so heavenly minded you're no earthly use. Now, I don't know where all these heavenly minded people were in any case, I never really met them, but I want to tell you this: the more heavenly minded we are, the more earthly use we'll be, because to be heavenly minded means to fix our eyes upon Christ and to be looking off unto Jesus. But there's one more I just want to mention, and it's the war. Let me take you back to London. If you go to Kensington Gardens, you'll find a sculpture there. It's by Barry, and it's Peter Pan, the little boy who never grew up. There he is, you'll see him there, the legendary Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up. There he is, lovely little chap, smiling face, beautifully sculptured, but what a tragedy, he never grew up. I hear a man saying, grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Because unless we're developing as Christians and we're coming back to where we came in almost, if we're not developing, how can we really appreciate God and bring to him our worship and our love and our adoration as we should as Christians? Tell me, are you making progress? Can we do a stop take? Do you know more about the Lord Jesus than you did twelve months ago at conference time in Vancouver. You've read your Bibles a lot more. In fact, you've perhaps read it through in the whole intervening year. You're spending more time in prayer. You're thinking more in terms of witnessing to others, more loyal in attendance at the meetings of God's people, really getting to know the Lord Jesus, not know about him, but getting to know him. There's only one person really, I suppose, on planet Earth who knows me, and that would be my wife. And the reason she knows me is because she has the misfortune to live with me. And that's how you get to know a person, by keeping their company. And so says Paul, that I might know him, and the tense is I might get to know him better and better. And if you're going to know Christ, then you've got to keep his company, and you keep his company in prayer and fellowship with him. That's the way we grow. Here's our poor dwarf, and he's not growing at all. Your spiritual dwarf? You say, well, we've all got to bring, begin somewhere, Mr. Riddle. Yes, like the blind man. One thing I know, once I was blind, now I see. I hope you've begun there. But remember, says Peter, be ready to give an answer to everyone that asks if you a reason of the hope that is within you. That's progress. I hope we're in a position now to become defenders of the faith and workers for God, spiritual swordsmen, able to witness and take our place amongst God's people and serve him and work for him. And it's going to have a terrible effect on us if we don't go into this. We won't be able to enjoy the presence of God. We won't be able to draw near as priests and worship him. You know, if you're nothing in God's presence, you are nothing, full stop. We've been talking once or twice this conference time about the book of Ezra. We might do it again, it depends how things go. But we did notice that the first bunch of exiles who came back were guided by two men. One was Zerubbabel the priest, the other one was Josadak the priest. One man was public, the other man was working before God in prayer. He was a more private. You know, I cannot expect my public life for God to be strong and healthy unless there's that private life in the presence of God. So we're going to go on, aren't we? We're going to be more heavenly minded and think more about Christ. We're going to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. We're going to have our eyes really open to enjoy spiritual things and trace the mind and will of God, and our presence before God will be healthier and happier, and our spiritual life will be sustained and blessed. May God help you all and bless you all as you go into these spiritual things in the days that lie ahead. Our God and Father, it's a very wonderful privilege just to bow in thy presence to me. We think about that. Remember that when the law was given, there was thunder and lightning, and even if a beast were to break through upon Mount Sinai, it was to be thrust through with a dart and put to death. But our God and Father, we don't live in days like that now. Thy word says, let us draw near, and we can come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. And we thought of some of those things that might spoil all that, and we ask our God and Father, if perhaps some of these things really do exist in our lives, that we're not growing as we should, and we're not walking with thee as we should. Help us, our God and Father, to get in thy presence tonight and deal with them ruthlessly, so that we might be able to come boldly to the throne of grace and obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Bless our public lives, our lives of testimony and witness, but help us in our private, quiet, spiritual lives to be men and women who love thy presence and know thee as a personal God and know Christ in a personal way. Bless us then and help us, we pray. Take us home safely and bless us in the remaining part of our Christian lives, we ask, until that wonderful day comes when we see the Lord Jesus and we keep his company for all eternity. We ask it in his worthy