The Bible could be pleased to the third chapter of the Revelation tonight. The Revelation? The second and third chapters give us a preview of the whole church age. That is history written ahead of time, telling us what will happen all the way from the first century, right on through to the return of the Lord. And since the last of these churches is Laodicea, we believe that we are in that stage chronologically now. That doesn't mean that this church, this assembly of believers here, has to be Laodicea. We can be like any of these. That's a sad truth and it's an encouraging truth at one and the same time. We could be like Philadelphia. Some of the Lord's people are like Smyrna. They're suffering. But the sad part of it is that the most of the church at the close of its age is like Laodicea. And Laodicea means the will of the common people. In other words, democracy in the church. It is not right. It is never instituted of God. There is absolutely no basis for it in Scripture at all. But this is the day in which we live. We demand for our own right, our own opinions. We have just as much right to be heard as the next thought of. And so it goes. I want to read this short letter, verse fourteen of the third chapter of the Revelation. And under the angel of the church of the Leviticus, write, These things that the amen, the faithful and true witness. The way the Lord describes himself in each of these letters, you'll notice, is just the opposite of the way the church is acting. He's supplying what they say of supply. They were not faithful and true witnesses. He was. The beginning of the creation of God. This is in the objective genitive. It has nothing to do with his being created. But he is the one who is responsible for beginning it. He is the one who did the creative. Now he says, I know thy work, that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would thou work cold or hot. For then, because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest I am rich, and increase the goods, and have need of nothing, and knoweth not, but thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. I counsel thee that thy of me grow tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich, and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness did not appear, and anoint thine eyes with eyes have, that thou mayest be. As many as I love, I reduce, and chasten. Be zealous, therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door, and knock. If any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come into him, and will suck with him, and he with me. To him that overcomes will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and have sat down with my father in his throne. Even half an year, let him hear what the Spirit says under the churches. Can you imagine, can you imagine the church the company of the Lord's people, perfectly satisfied, saying that they need nothing, and the Lord is outside the door, and the door is shut on him. Can you imagine this? That's how far away children of God can get. You can't overestimate the possibility of a child of God or an assembly of God's people dishonoring the name of the Lord. We are capable of doing every culpable deed that has ever been done. Everything that has dishonored the Lord Jesus is within our possibility. Think about this, Brother Timothy. And we're going to do something either honor or dishonor the Lord Jesus. Right here. As we meet together as an assembly believers. This is a tremendous thought. It's an overwhelming thought. Now we've already considered, and you have the list on the board. of some of the early churches and what part of their departure. If you don't have this written, you want to copy it. This will be your last day. You get it. We were racist. I would like for you to have it. It's not too pleased at all. You might not make the list as I have done. You might ask some of it or delete some of these. But these are things that I saw in looking through these various epistles. You notice that I placed Ephesus down the line at number eight, although it comes in between Galicia and Philippi. And that's because the first letter to the Ephesians does not point out their departure. But the second letter, which is given here in Revelation chapter two, does. That is really the beginning of all the difficulty. Leading the first love is the first step of getting away from God as an assembly of believers. When we turn our backs on the Lord Jesus, we're on the way down. And it's very easy to do this. Many of these things that were wrong are related. For instance, in Rome there were people causing division. At Philippi there was disunity. Now the disunity had not set in in Rome. The division causes were there. But in Philippi the division was beginning, but it was not open. But in Corinth there was open citizens. The division had become open so that the people were opposing each other. They were taking sides. So you see, sin in an individual's life and in an assembly is progressive. It may begin in a very simple way and usually does. All sin begins in the heart. All sin begins with our own thoughts. If we cater to these, if we allow these, then it becomes a little more open and a little more open, so finally it's very flagrant. And so there's many of these other things. For instance, I have marked carnality down in Corinth because that's the word that's used in the third chapter. But carnality takes other forms besides that of worldlyness. It was worldly carnality in Corinth, but in Galatia it was legality, which is just as carnal as worldlyness. It's a different kind of carnality. It's a very fleshly thing. And then false teaching is emphasized because this is always behind the difficulties. You have false teachers in Galatia, you have them in Colossae, they were teaching heresy, and they were following the philosophies of this world. And you have them in Paya Chandra, where it had developed into a doctrine, where they were not only practicing these things, but it was being taught as a doctrine, and so on. Now I asked you one night, a while back, if you would read the story of Sukhaya in Paya Chronicles chapter thirty-four. I'm not going to embarrass you by asking again if you did, but if you didn't, Let me ask you, please do so, before we thought to escape your mind. While we're still thinking on this subject, we have only one more time together. Next Monday night, I want to talk to you on how to avoid departure. We've been talking about departure and how to be restored. I'd like to talk a little bit about a preventive measure, because the Lord is much more concerned about keeping us out of trouble than he is getting us out of trouble. But if you will read the story of Josiah, you will see that here is a story which illustrates all three kinds of departure and restoration. That is, there is personal departure, which is always first. And then this departure broadens out until it affects the family. And this was true in the case of Josiah. Josiah was not only a wife of the Lord himself, and had to be restored, but the whole household of the king. The whole government was a wife of the Lord, his own personal family, and the whole government. And then you have the whole nation of Israel. And so this is the way it works out. We have a problem in our own lives. This extends to our family, and eventually extends to the whole assembly. Now, restoration follows the same order, usually. We have to be restored personally, in our own hearts, in our own lives. When this is done, then we ought to be working towards things in our family as restored. And it may be that you need to restore family Bible reading and prayer. It may be that there are things wrong between husband and wife, or between parents and children. It may be whatever it is, we need to get restored in our own souls and in our homes and then in the assembly itself. Let me suggest another little reading for you. This might be very helpful to you. Sometime when you are reading the book of Judges, and I hope you do read the Old Testament books as well as the New Testament, I want you to notice one thing. There are twenty-one chapters in Judges. The first sixteen chapters have to do with the conditions in the whole country, the whole nation, national departure. It's a very sad story. The Book of Judges covers that period of time when it says there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes. This is exactly what's happening today. This is Laodiceanism in the church. That's the way they were living in the days of the Judges. And so you have sixteen chapters telling you what awful things were going wrong in the nation. And then the last five chapters, he just takes the roof right off of the house. He just lifts the cover and says, now I want you to see why the nation is what it is. This is what's going on in the individual home. And then he uncovers the home. And he shows us the awful condition within the home. And he says, this is what's wrong. This is why I reject the national conditions that we have. And the same thing is true with our nation today. The reason we have a nation of godless people is because we have homes that are godless. When I was a boy, even the unsaved people thought that it was the right thing to have a little family, they call it the family altar, sometimes a little family devotion. Maybe there's nothing more than giving thanks at the table or reading a little, a chapter or something of this kind. But even when God went home, thought that they needed to do something religious. But not anymore. There are many Christian homes that never touch the Bible as a family. They don't get things at the table at all. And this is a deplorable condition. It's not only ignoring God, it's dishonoring God. We're leaving it out of our calculation completely. No wonder then that we have conditions like to do in the local assembly. I hope you will read that thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth chapters of Second Chronicles and just study what's happened in Josiah's life. It was both negative and positive. Negatively, he had to clean out the things that were wrong. Positively, he had to add the things that should be added. And this was the order usually in which we get restored to the Lord. We have to set things right, but they're not right. And then we have to begin to put into our lives the things that belong there. Or to put it in another way, as in Corinthians, in Ephesians and Colossians, over and over he talks about putting this off and putting this off. There are certain things need to be put off. Certain things need to be put on in our practical everyday living. Now we've just read together this little epistle to Laodicea. What do we do when we find out that there is departure in the local church? What do we do when we suspect, at least, that things are not all as they ought to be? And I suppose a very few times. in the history of any local assembly of believers when everything is right. I suppose there are very few meetings of this kind. There were two out of the seven churches that he did not review. And I would think that that would be a very high average if this were true today. If two sevenths of all the local churches today needed no review, I would be very surprised. I'm sure that we at Southside need to be restored to the Lord. Now what is the first thing to do? Well, I suggest that the first thing to do is to honestly face the fact of departure. The recognition of a problem is many percent of its solutions. Somebody's written. I think this is true. If you can get people to recognize that they have a problem, they'll do something about it. Alcoholism is a great problem in the United States. You know the greatest problem about the alcohol problem? It's the fact that you cannot get people to admit that they are alcoholics. They say, well, I don't have a problem. I know, and I don't know, he's got a real problem, but I don't have any problem. I can quit any time I want it. The truth of the matter is, he can't. Unless he quits, like the fellow said, well, I can quit any time I want to. I quit a thousand times. And he's still there. That's because he can't. But he won't admit it. But Christians have the same hang-up. We will not admit that we have problems. We think that if we come right out and say, Our assembly is in the doldrums, but then we're done. Well, that's exactly where we have to start. How does a person get saved? He gets saved when he acknowledges that he's lost. He will never get saved until he acknowledges it. That's why we preach repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. There has got to be repentance. Now, repentance is not part of our salvation, but it's definitely a provision and a precept toward this. It's the preparation. for conversion. We must acknowledge that there'll be a law if we're ever to be found. We must acknowledge that we're thirsty if we're going to take a drink of the water in life. We've got to admit that we're dead and we don't want the life givers to raise us from the dead. And so it is with restoration. Now, the danger, I think, first of all, in honestly facing this fact, is that we'd be like these Laodiceans. They had two things wrong. The first thing was they had a false standard. If you don't have a right standard for what is right, then you won't know when you're wrong, will you? I mean, suppose that we don't have any standard for mathematics. Suppose we have no mathematical rule. Suppose we have no multiplication tables. And so we say, well, I think three times nine is fifty. I don't. I feel like three times nine would be forty-seven. That would be a little more conservative than fifty. We're just wasting time. If you don't have a sandwich, we'll eat no use at all in talking about what's right and wrong. And the lay of this end should not have a sandwich. That sandwich is this. We're rich. We're increasingly good, and we have needed nothing. Was that true? Of course it wasn't true. The Lord said, you need to buy gold, sides of the fire. That's how rich you are. You're as poor as you can be. You need to buy white raven from me. You need to buy eye salve and anoint your eyes because you can't see. Their sanity was wrong. The second trouble was that they were complacent. They were lukewarm. The more you think about this figure of speech, because they were lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. Now that's a very polite, old English word. The modern word is vomit. You make me sick to my stomach. That's what the Lord's saying to us. And there's no question at all that I've made him sick to the stomach many times. By my lukewarmness. Neither this nor that. Neither fish nor fowl. Can't take a stand on anything. A man preached right here in the city. Not too long ago. I wasn't there, but I heard it from Jersey and other sources. And he made a statement. And then he said, Now, I'm not going to say any more about that because I don't want to take a stand. And after meeting one of these brothers, he said to him, Why don't you want to take a stand? When you take the place of preaching the Word of God, you have to take a stand. You don't have any choice. If you don't know, then you say, I don't know. You say, I'm ignorant. But when you believe that you know, then you say, This is what I believe the Word of God says. Now, this is the modern way of educating. It used to be that a college professor, well, any teacher, was supposed to tell the teachers, tell the children, tell the pupils what he believed to be the facts. He had studied this particular discipline. He should know this particular subject. He has covered all of the writings on it, or presumably he has, and he should have done a little research on it himself, and therefore he should have been convicted. And he should be able to say, now this, I believe, is the correct answer to this problem. This isn't done now. A teacher is frowned upon who does this. And you can affirm this by talking to any teacher. I've talked to a number of them in the last year. And it really bugs some of us. Especially Christians. They say, I don't like this idea. I'm not being able to say definitely this or that. Oh, no, you mustn't do that at all. You must just hash it all out. Make hash out of it. And then serve them to go out of that. And let them eat it or leave it. No hot and cold. No right and wrong. No black and the white. All gray. All trans. Now, the Lord doesn't want us to be this. I thought he'd be so cute. The Lord wants us to know exactly where we stand. He wants us to know what we believe and why we believe. If it's wrong, it's wrong. He'll never get any right. Is that right? All right. Now, agree with me once in a while. I know you're with me. I'm not sure that I'm getting across, you know, unless I see you nod once in a while. Okay. Thirds and sisters, the danger today is that we become so lukewarm that we don't take a stand on anything. And a fellow who doesn't stand for anything will fall for anything. Now, in honestly facing the fact of departures, and he suggests that the elders should take the lead in there. You know, most elders are human. And this is a fortunate thing, also an unfortunate one. Makes it very difficult for them. because a man hates to admit that he himself has problems and is part of the problem. But when elders find that the assembly among whom the Lord, the Holy Spirit, has made them overseers, the Church of God that they are responsible to feed is having problems, then they have to acknowledge we're part of this problem. We're all part of this problem. Nobody can be a part of a local church and not be part of the problem. Because we're all responsible. And in a special way, elders have to admit their share in the problem. But let me tell you something, brothers. This inspires confidence and trust. It doesn't limit it. It doesn't turn people away from you. My happiest memories of my father were of hearing him admit that he was wrong. And I'm sure that many fathers never admit that they're wrong, because they think if they do, that their kids will put them down. They say, well, I just don't dare to admit that I ever made a mistake, because I have to make my kids believe that I'm on a pedestal. Well, if you think you're kidding your kids, you're kidding yourself. They know you're not on a pedestal, and they tell you behind their back, too. We all know that each of you has a prayer being appalled, and we ought to admit it to each other. My father chastised me one time, wrongfully. I hadn't done what he accused me of at all. He didn't bother to find out. He was pretty hot about it, and he let me have it. But when he found out, I didn't tell it. Not me. But when he found out that he was wrong, he called the whole family together, though he had not done it in front of the family, he called the whole family together, and in front of the children, as well as his mother, he apologized to me, a nine-year-old boy, because he had punished me, chastised me unjustly. And I tell you, I love my dad from that time on more than ever before, and really appreciate it. And I had much more confidence in him. So if elders would feel free to admit this, then we might get along so much better in helping to solve the problem. Now let me suggest four things that ought to be true of every elder if he's going to do anything for helping an assembly to return, to be restored to the Lord. First, I believe that he should be well taught in the works. Now, I can't set a standard for this. I can't say that he could be able to quote so many verses of Scripture. I can't say that he has to have the gift of teaching. He does have to be apt to teach, but he does not have to have the gift of teaching. But he should be well taught in the Word. And if you feel that you don't have a good grasp of the Word, and you want to shepherd the Lord's people, by all means get into the Word. There is no shortcut to it. They're talking about an electrical appliance. You can clap on your head and hook it up to a recorder, and it'll put something into your brain while you're asleep. But they haven't got it yet. So far, it has to go into your eyes or ears and get into your mind and memory. And it takes time. And that's why most people don't do it. They've got time for a lot of other things. And you can talk to them about sports, and you can talk to them about business, you can talk to them about cars, and they've got it all at the fingertips. Mr. Charles Gibbs said that there was a young man that he had looked to and expected to be a very fine, helpful young man. His father was an elder in a local church, and he believed that this young man was headed for useful things, but somehow or other he never developed. He just didn't know anything. One day, having young people get together before the meeting started, he said, you know, I was thinking about you. He had him alone in the morning. He said, I'm little surprised that you aren't participating any in meetings and you aren't studying the Word of God and you aren't... Well, he said, Mr. Gibbs, I just don't have a gift and jab like my dad does. That's just not my bag. I don't seem to be able to talk much. But he said, after the whole thing was over, they were sitting around having refreshments and you heard somebody going a mile a minute over in the corner and all the young fellas gathered around and he peeked over to see who it was, it was this young fella. And he was just talking to the street. Well, he said, I wonder what he's talking about. So he had a little culture. And he heard he was talking about it in the car. He was telling him how to shave the head and how to change the manifold and how to put on a better exhaust system and, you know, the whole bit. And he said, then Mr. Gibson, I understand. I understand. I know exactly now the young man's heart is a garage. Every time he opens his mouth, he can smell the exhaust and hear the crack of ears. That's why he can't talk about the Lord's things. He's full of automobiles. Fair to hear. Now, you're filling your mind with something. There's no such thing as a vacuum. You can't just sit and not think. Not unless you're from the hills. One of the old boys said, they asked you what he did in the long way. He said, well, sometimes they just sat and think, and sometimes they just sat. Now, there are people who can just say, but most of us don't do that. We can't have any brains in between our ears at all. We're thinking, and we're accumulating knowledge. But if you're getting it from the Bluetooth or from flexible magazines or any other place, it may have some value, but not much. But if you're getting it out of the Word of God, then you'd be able to help the Lord's people. And let me encourage you, if you want to be useful to God, get started, and start yesterday. It's already too late. Now, the second thing that I suggest that elders ought to be doing is to be prayerful, individually and collectively. I have attended some wonderful prayer meetings right here in this building. Many years gone by, when elders got together and prayed for half an hour before they discussed anything, every minute and prayed. And I've seen tears running down sheets, too, when they named people among the Lord's own who were out of touch with the Lord, and they're not going anywhere else. And I know of men who had to give up this very strange work of shepherding the sheep, because there was such a grain on them as they got older. They were not able to get their sleep after going home from a meeting in which they were so concerned about the care of the Lord's people. God give us praying elders. We pray alone and we pray together. And then the third thing is, they should be the kind of men who are described in Ezekiel thirty-four, especially verse six and on down. When you have time to read the thirty-fourth chapter of Ezekiel, it's a complaint. The Lord complains about the shepherds of Israel. Now, of course, they're not exactly like the shepherds in the church in our day, but there is a resemblance. And we can learn a lot from the thirty-fourth chapter of Ezekiel. You'll remember that's the same number as one I suggested that you read in Second Chronicle, chapter thirty-four. Ezekiel chapter thirty-four. Read it and think about it. Now, the Lord wants these shepherds. to seek the strain and the sick sheep. Seek them. You can't hang out a shingle and expect them to come to you like a doctor or a dentist. We have to make house calls. We have to get among the people. I was in a certain city and I said to a man who took the place of being an elder. I said, what's happened to so-and-so? I mentioned it by name. He said, who's he? Well, I said, when I was here, ten years ago, he was teaching a Sunday school class. He was participating in the meeting. He said, I don't remember him. And he sat there for twenty years, though he said, I don't remember him so. So he called him another of them. He said, you remember so-and-so? No? He said, he still is? So I told him about him. Oh, he said, I remember about him. He worked with such and such a place. Oh, that's the guy. Oh, yeah. I said, where is he? I don't know. Did either of you ever go visiting when you dropped out? No. Spread your heart. This is going on everywhere. And in that same town, and from that same assembly, I collected the names of twelve couples who used to be in fellowship, and they were all grown, and were living right there in that city, within driving distance of that particular center. Twelve couples. Now we work like fury to see somebody say, and then we do everything we can to turn them into the meeting, and then we let them sit right on and out the back door, and never look up. Boy, I shouldn't say that. Some do look up. Some go and look them up. Some do the visiting that they ought to be doing, but not enough of it is being done, and you know it. This is the crying need in the church today is for men who care enough to get out among the people and find out what's lost. Listen to me. Don't go out and draw them. Don't go out and scold them. Listen to them. We've got to listen to people who have problems. We've got to give them a chance to speak. And to speak to that case. I was in the place where a man told me that he had asked for an appointment with the elders six months before and had never gotten it. He said, I called the man twice. This is the first time that I asked him. And he said, he told me it's hard to get him together. Six months, that man has asked to talk to the elders about a problem. Oh, brothers and sisters, you want to help God's people get out where the sick and straying sheep are. And the fourth thing is that they should be gentle but fearless in discipline. I was in a certain place where they had a man who was very obstreperous, to say the least. He just didn't bow to any authority at all. And he insisted on coming to meetings where he didn't have any business. And just because he had a loud voice, he could just take it away from people. And they talked about it, and they talked about it, and they didn't do anything about it. He was driving people away. He was a jack leg, you know. He thought he had to be on his feet every time there was a law. And he'd be up in the bread meeting, the Lord's Supper. He'd be on his feet four times for an average. Just in a minute, because there was a little law, he had springs in his knees. And he was right on his feet to say something. You know, he just couldn't stand by it. Well, I put up with this for a long time. And they were asking me what I thought about it. And I said, don't you know what to do? Well, except the Bible says let the prophet speak two or three and let the other judge. I said, well, you judge that he is thinking is unprofitable, don't you? Oh, definitely. Well, have you told him so? Well, no. We talked about it, and we decided it ought to be done. I said, well, it's the case of the mice thinking they ought to put a bell on the cat, but none of them wanted to do it. That's the case. Well, I guess so. They went to that man. and told him how the cow ate the cabbage, and he straightened the whole thing up in thirty minutes. And then they could have kicked themselves because they didn't do anything soon. Now, the man might have needed another task. He might have needed another way of handling. Maybe another case like this would need gentleness. In this case, they had been gentle for a long time. And finally, they said what needed to be said. So you need to be fearless. But at the same time, you need to be gentle. Now, each believer has to share the responsibility for the difference in the assembly. And this is part of facing the fact of departure. The reason for this is that departure is personal. Seen is personal. An assembly doesn't sin. The individuals in the assembly see it. Therefore, the individuals in the assembly have to get restored individually. So restoration is an individual matter. And as I mentioned a while ago, it's a personal and a family and an assembly affair. So let each other take our responsibility and harmlessly face the fact. Next Sunday I'll be through with this little series that I've been trying to give you. My wife and I will be going up to Denver for a couple of months with our trailer. We're going to try and do some work around the city there. And you will have the responsibility. can do something with the scriptures that we've tried to read together and talk about. You can either do something about it or you can refuse to do anything about it. But each of you will bear the responsibility to join us. Each of you can pray. Each of you can confess and judge sin in your own life. Each of you can get your own family life straightened out. Each of you can contribute to the welfare of the assembly by being subject to the elders, by being concerned about the meetings, by stopping the gossip. Remember that is one of the things that caused a couple of treats. Number seven on that list. And they had some very natural traits these people did. But one of the problems they had was gossip. Just plain old-fashioned gossip. One of the wickedest things that ever has happened. And it's condemned in the Word of God many, many times. Now, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about criteria for determining departure. How do you decide whether you are out of touch with the Lord, as an individual, as a home, or as an assembly? I mentioned that there's danger of taking a legacy and attitude, of not having the right standards and being too complacent. But we do have criteria. And first of all, we have the Old Testament example. I've mentioned those three of them tonight. And then we have the New Testament teaching, which is specific. I find that a good way is to learn the teaching or the doctrine in the New Testament and then look for an illustration of it in the Old Testament. If you do these two things, you'll find that the Word of God just dovetails in together, just fits together perfectly. You'll find in the New Testament a real teaching about this. The Lord says, this is what should be done. And then in the Old Testament you'll find examples of it when they fit together. Now the New Testament teaching is complete. I believe it with all my heart. Nothing can happen that hadn't already happened. There is no new thing under the sun. He actually says, this is true about sin. There are no new sins being invented. They use new tactics. They use new tools and new props. But all sin is just as old-fashioned as the Ten Commandments. And whatever happens in our lives, we can still go back and see it's already happened in some assembly of believers, some local churches already have the same problem. Perhaps it's happened many times. And we can find complete teaching in the Word of God. Second, it is relevant. There is no such thing as irrelevant teaching in the Word of God. Some young people today are saying, well, the Bible isn't relevant. Well, you can just bet your bottom dollar is relevant. Let me tell you that. It's just as relevant as anything you get. It's so relevant that people can't stand it. That's exactly what the truth of the matter is. It just gets right down to where we live. Somebody said to Mark Twain, there are so many things in the Bible that I don't understand. He follows. Well, he said, there are a lot of things in the Bible I do understand that may bother me worse. And the Bible has a lot to say about things. It's very relevant. And then the Holy Spirit has promised, the Lord promised that the Holy Spirit would speak through the Word. If we go to the Word of God, He will teach us exactly what's ought to be done. Now, a third thing is about criteria for determining departure is don't compare yourself with others. In Second Corinthians ten, in verse twelve, he says, We're not a son who compare themselves by themselves. And he says, They are not wise. It's so easy to pick out somebody who's not as bad. Compare yourself with him. You say, Well, now, after all, I've got problems, but no problems like his. Or we can say this of the Assembly of Believers. We can say, well, now, of course we've got problems here at Southside. But now you take Dr. Foubaugh's church downtown. Now there, they've really got problems. And so we feel so good about that that we just lean back and go back to the next week again. At least we're not as bad as that. But you see, you can always pick out something worse to compare yourself with or contrast yourself with so that you feel good about it. This is very unfair. The trouble of comparing ourselves with others is that the standards are so low. We're living in the days of lower standards. Most people today do not believe in the high standards of the Word of God. We've got what they call a new morality. We've got situation ethics. We've got all of these things that have made it easy to slide by. If we can't reach the standard, we pull the standard down. And for that reason, it's very wrong to compare yourselves with others. And then some people use tradition as a kind of a criteria. They say, well, you see, I remember how it used to be, and I think we've improved some over the way it used to be. They'll say, well, now, you know, years ago, we had a company of believers here in this town, but they weren't doing so well. And we've changed some of our ways, and maybe we've gotten away from the Word of God a little bit, but we're doing better. Pragmatism. The pragmatist says, if it works, it's good. Isn't it? No, it isn't. Pragmatism is not a basis for judging the thing's value. Just because it works doesn't mean that it's good. You know that the first combustion engine was run on gunpowder? Did it work? Sure it worked. It blew the whole top off of the thing after about twenty feet. Gunpowder will work in a combustion engine, internal combustion engine, but it's kind of dangerous. And a lot of things will work for a while. They told me out in California that they'd hired a pastor in a certain new assembly, and they said, you know he's had better attendance than we ever had. I said, if you get a circus, you get twice that much. If that's what you're looking for, if you want your attendance hooked up, all you need to do is entertain the people. Yeah, but they said, we don't have any arguments. I said, you bet your lad you don't have any arguments. If you do, he'll pat you down. You hired him, but you'll find out that he's in charge. And that's exactly what happens. But you've got a man who has been pastor of a church. He takes charge. And you've got five men on the board of deacons. And they can vote against him. If he votes for it, he'll go for it. And I know what I'm talking about. I know the politics that goes with a higher tactic that doesn't solve anything. Pragmatism is not the answer. And then the fourth thing that people use, and this is a wrong determining criteria, and that is conscience. You'd be surprised how many people think that if your conscience doesn't bother you, it's all right. Have you ever read in the first ten of me? I think it's chapter four, where he says, Having your conscience seared as with a hot iron. I used to be a watchmaker. I was in the jewelry business for a number of years, and I had very sensitive fingers. And this was necessary. If you're going to be a watchmaker, you have to be able to feel things through the tweezers that you're using. And I burned my fingers one time. I was not able to touch the watchmaker tools until that all healed up. because I had no feeling in my fingers. Teared with a hot iron. Your conscience didn't get like that. Don't ever say let your conscience be your guide. Your conscience is like a compass. You have to check the compass by a sextant when you're traveling, on the going across the water, going across the ocean, or flying. They always check their compass by a sextant. You wouldn't think you're trusting a compass because a compass can be thrown off. It isn't absolutely accurate anyway. And so the conscience, God's given us a conscience. So unless you check it for the Word of God, you're not going to know whether you're right or wrong. Paul lives in good conscience before you say it. He said, I barely thought. I ought to do many things contrary to the Lord Jesus Christ. I barely thought it. I was sincere. That's what Paul said about putting Christians in jail. I was perfectly sincere. So you can't determine whether you're away from the Lord by how you feel. Now, one more thing. Danger, false remedies. Twice in the book of Jeremiah, chapter six and fourteen, and chapter eight and verse eleven. That one put those scriptures down, let them up, and you had a little time. Twice in Jeremiah that I know of, he says, Thou hast healed the hurts of the daughters of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace. One of the worst things that can happen is to gloss over a difficulty. Walk over a problem. Cover over a sin. Whoso covers his sin shall not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them shall find mercy. If I deny the existence of evil, if I deny that I am out of touch with the Lord, then I close the door of anything that the Lord might want to do for me. A second false remedy is increased activity. More means. We're not getting along very well. Someone has the more means. We'll add another meeting. Or we'll form a new committee. You'd be surprised how many things die in committee. Because people have the idea that they've appointed the committee to look into them, and I like to forget it. That's the other word. Or they say we need to be more entertained. Let's make our meeting more interesting. Well, what is more interesting than the Word of God? Nothing to a spiritual person. There's nothing more interesting than the Word of God to a spiritually minded person. And if he's kindly minded, of course he'd rather have entertainment. Of course he'd rather have all kinds of things than the Word of God. Now, a third Paul for Emily is organization. Now, when I say organization, I'm not talking about orders. I believe in orders. First Corinthians, verse, very plainly says, the forty-first, he tells us that God is not the author of confusion, but of orders. Orguliness is not organization. Organization is an attempt to get the thing all set up so to run by itself. You just turn it on and then it goes this way. That's organization. And this is wrong. Very wrong. And I'm very much against organization. And especially when it centers in some area and becomes a kind of a control for many assemblies. It becomes a kind of a way of reaching out and putting all of them into the same mode. And this is being done. Every large city is organizational. And the Christians who live there fall into this thing just the same as non-Christians. And it's a very dangerous thing. Don't ever let anybody in Chicago or Los Angeles or New York or Detroit or any place else tell you how to conduct the local assembly of believers. If you do, you're dead. Just that sure. Let's watch out for organizations. It ignores the Holy Spirit. We don't believe in the presence of the Holy Spirit. if we believe that we've got to organize. Get stereotypes of the Lord's people. Make them rubber-stamped. Make them all white. There you are. Turn them on. That's what you do with organization. But an organism is a growing thing. You see? There are no true leaves alike, no true blades of grass alike, no true Christians are alike. So you can't say, how do you always handle this problem? Well, you don't always have that problem. These problems vary in great detail. And you have to get before the Lord in prayer about it. And so you can't do it by organization. Organization stifles gifts. The local gifts in the local church. Christians who have a gift to do things don't have the opportunity to do them. And finally, it brings them into bondage. Now, the fourth thing that I wanted to mention in Paul's remedy is better tools. You know the old saying, we can do anything with men, money, and machines. Can we? No, we can't. We cannot do it. Some of the greatest organizations in the world have just fallen flat on the faces, and this is especially true among the Lord's people. If a man has a vision, and the Lord needs him to do a certain thing, he should do that thing. But when he forms a group to perpetuate that, then what was a man's work becomes merely a machine. And if this is perpetuated beyond the time that the Lord intended to use it, then it just becomes a monument. And it would be far better off if it was torn down and used the bricks for something else. So we need to be very careful that we don't just do things because we've got the money to do them. Buildings and equipment, music, movies, hired pastors, psychology, they all belong in that same category. These are things that people fall back on. instead of getting on their faces before God and confessing their sins. So now let me just draw it to a close by saying that true restoration, first of all, has God's part. And then it has man's part. What is God's part? I want you to read one more verse with me in the book of Haggai, which is very close to the close of your Old Testament. Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Third book from the end of the Old Testament. Haggai, and Zechariah prophesied at the time when Nehemiah and Ezra were leading the people of God up out of Babylon because Darius had given permission. Cyrus had issued a proclamation. Darius had given permission. And these men were rebuilding the city of Jerusalem and rebuilding the temple. And then some people, enemies, came in and said, you can't do this anymore. So it just stopped. Everything stopped. They gave up. And here they sat. They were out of the land where they've been for seven years. Most of them been born down there. They're back in the land that they can't do anything. They don't have any cities. They don't have any temples. And here they sit, terribly discouraged. Now let me read to you what they said. The second year of Darius, the king, the sixth month, the first day of the month, came the word of the Lord by Haggai, the prophet, and to Zerubbabel, the son of Shabiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Georgia, the high priest, saying, Thus speaketh the Lord of those things. This people say, The time has not come, the time that the Lord's house has been built. Now, that's rational. They thought the time hadn't come yet. Had it? Well, read on. Then came the word of the Lord by Haggai, the prophet, saying, Is it time for you? Oh, you need to dwell in your sealed houses and this house, why wait? If it's time for you to make yourselves comfortable, isn't it time that you did something about the Lord saying? If it's time that you feed yourself, isn't it time that you feed your soul? If it's time that you do some work on your own house, isn't it time you did some work on the Lord's house? Now therefore thus says the Lord of hosts, continue your way. Now that's repeated down at verse... Seven. Thus saith the Lord and host, consider your way. Now this is the word to the conscience. To the conscience. Later on he speaks to the heart. This is the way God speaks. You know I don't like some of our hymns. I've told you that a number of times. One of the hymns I don't like is that speak to my soul, Lord Jesus. Speak thou in tenderest tone. And you need a breakthrough. And you tell the Lord, speak to me in tender tone. Let me now hear thee whisper, thou art not left alone. Nonsense. You don't need to be whispered to. You need to be jerked up by the collar once in a while. So do I. And don't you tell the Lord to speak to you in tender tones if he sees that he needs to speak to your conscience and shake you loose a little bit. You'd be willing to take what the Lord has to give you. And you'll be a lot healthier Christians. I never told my dad speaks out in tender tones. Let me tell you. And I'm not going to tell my Heavenly Father to do it either. So when you sing that song, just excuse me if I don't sing that line. I don't feel free to do it. I believe that the Lord wants us to consider our ways. And he tells us some of the reasons for that. And then, when the people did what they were told, and the Lord told them that's why they were having all the troubles, verse twelve, then Zerubbabel, the son of Yalachiel, and Joshua the son of Joseph, the high priest. with all the remnants of the people obeyed the voice of the Lord their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent him. And his people did cheer before the Lord. Then, if you mark your Bible, put a line into that word, then, then take Haggai the Lord's messenger and the Lord's message unto the people, saying, I am with you, says the Lord. Now here comes the tender tones. Here comes the encouragement. Here comes the words of the heart. They've listened to the word of the conscience, and now they're ready for a word for the heart. I am with you, saith the Lord. And the Lord stirred up. The Spirit is the rubble, the Son of Shaldeel, Governor of Judah, and the Spirit of Joshua, the Son of Joseph, the High Priest, and the Spirit of all the remnant of the people. And they came and did work in the house of the Lord of Hosea, God, in the four and twenty-a-day of the sixth month and the sixth year of Darius the King. Now that was twenty-fourth day, and it all started in the sixth month in the first day. So in three weeks, A whole nation was restored to the Lord and got busy and did what the Lord told him to do and got the assurance that the Lord is with him. It doesn't take long, brothers and sisters, if we really want to obey the Lord and get back to himself. Shall we pray? Our Father, we pray that thou would help us to look to thee to do thy work and then help us to do our work. Help us to be honest with thee. Help us to acknowledge our problems and our needs. Help us to confess our sins and judge ourselves and to forsake these things that are wrong. We ask, Lord, that thou bless those who have a responsibility for caring for the flock. I know it what a thankless job this can be. We pray that thou would encourage our brothers and lead them on and grant that they may become more like the Blessed Lord, a true shepherd, a good shepherd who is even willing to lay down his life for the sheep. Lord, help us to be real shepherds as David was, and not mule drivers as Saul was. Now, Lord, we commit us into thy chair, ask that I bless you, and meet one of thy people. Those who are here, and those who are not. In the precious name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.