Jeremiah's object lesson of a marred linen girdle to illustrate God's judgment on Judah and Jerusalem for their disobedience and idolatry. The girdle, initially meant to cleave to a man and symbolize God's people set apart for His purposes, becomes ruined, mirroring the nation's spiritual decay and worthlessness. The core lesson emphasizes that refusing God's word, following one's own imaginations, and worshipping other gods leads to ruin. The application calls believers to 'cleave' to the Lord, staying close to Him to live lives that bring Him praise, glory, and honor.
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Good evening. We've had another wonderful day, and I trust you've all enjoyed it, and I hope you've all enjoyed the wonderful meal and time of fellowship we had together. I trust you've really enjoyed it, as we did. It's good to see you all tonight. We've just sung a very beautiful hymn. Like quite a number of other hymns in our hymn books, that's a hymn of prayer. We just ask the Lord to speak to our soul, and I'm sure that if we... asked that prayer with sincerity and reality, the Lord will answer it, and he will speak to our souls, and we trust that we will hear and listen to what he says.
Let's turn again back to the book of Jeremiah. The book of the prophet Jeremiah, we looked at the first chapter on Sunday evening, and we're going to turn over the pages, a few pages, to the thirteenth chapter of Jeremiah. In the next few nights we are going to look at some of Jeremiah's audiovisuals, his object lessons, the illustrations he was given to use in his ministry. There's a lot of them. We're not going to speak of them all, but we'll select a few from them and try to learn lessons for us today from the lessons that he presented in his day. Let's turn then to Jeremiah chapter thirteen and we are going to read the first eleven verses.
of this chapter together. I'm reading from the King James Version. Thus saith the Lord unto me, Go and get thee a linen girdle, and put it upon thy loins. Put it not in water. So I got a girdle. According to the word of the Lord, I put it in my loins. And the word of the Lord came unto me the second time, saying, Take the girdle that thou has got, which is upon thy loins, and arise, go to Euphrates, and hide it there in a hole of the rock. So I went, and hid it by Euphrates, as the Lord commanded me.
And it came to pass after many days that the Lord said unto me, Arise, go to Euphrates, and take the girdle from fence, which I commanded thee to hide there. Then, I went to Euphrates and dig and took the girdle from the place where I had hid it. And behold, the girdle was marred. It was profitable for nothing. Then the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Thus saith the Lord, after this manner will I mar the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. This evil people, which refused to hear my words, which walk in the imagination of their heart, and walk after other gods, to serve them and to worship them, shall even be as this girdle, which is good for nothing.
For as the girdle cleaver for the loins of a man, so have I caused to cleave unto me the whole house of Israel, and the whole house of Judah, said the Lord, that they might be unto me for a people. and for a name and for a praise and for a glory but they would not hear. I'm sure the Lord will bless to us the public reading from his holy word. Let's ask him to do that just that as we speak to him again in a moment of prayer. O God our Father we thank thee that thou hast lessons to teach us from all of thy book for we believe that All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable.
Help us, we pray thee, as we meditate upon and contemplate and study together this passage from the book of the prophet Jeremiah. Help us, we pray thee, to hear thy voice speaking to us. As we have already sung together, we would say again, Speak to my soul, Lord Jesus. Speak thou in tenderest doubt. May we realize that it's thou that's speaking to us and help us, we pray thee, to respond with prompt obedience. Grant us thy blessing as we wait together, for we ask in the holy name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Audiovisual methods. are being used very widely today, and increasingly so, in teaching and training in various branches of life. You'll find it in government, in business, in industry, and of course in all parts of schools and college education. Audiovisual methods, including lantern slides, including films, videos, TV, and so forth. It's being used widely all over the country and all over the continent. And of course, this is not the beginning of it.
It's been used for many years. I have a friend in Peterborough, Ontario, that's about ninety miles or so from Toronto, who was a teacher. And here it had a few years ago, but for the last twenty years or so of his life, he was director of audiovisual instruction. for the Board of Education that he was associated with. He had the responsibility to collect all the material that should be given to students and all the methods of presenting it. Of course, audio-visual methods can be used also in teaching the Word of God and in preaching the Word of God.
That at all levels from children upwards. I'm sure we can all look back to the days of our childhoods if we attended Sunday school and went to children's meetings, and we can remember some of the ways that were used for our instruction. I can remember what we called the magic lantern. Do you remember the magic lantern? I don't know if it was called that here, but from the nods I see, I gather, it was called the magic lantern. That was the old term for the projector that we use nowadays. And we used to laugh when there was a magic lantern presentation with these big slides that were presented that were used to project on the screen.
And I remember children's speakers used to come armed with their colors and crayons and chalk. If they were artists at all, they would paint a picture. That was their audiovisual lesson. That was their object lesson. Some who weren't as good at painting and artistry. presented an object lesson. They would present a house and people in that house in various ways. Ultimately they learned the art of flanograph and presented it in that way. And I'm sure all of us have been acquainted with the use of object lessons even in Sunday school and children's classes.
Do you know object lessons go a long way back? They go way back into Bible type. Audiovisuals were given to God's people in the Old Testament. We call them types. Types were simply God's audiovisual presentations to his people. He gave them a message in a picture and he told them in words what it was all about. And so when we read about the offerings and the tabernacle and the feasts of Jehovah, these were God's audiovisual. God's object lessons. Not only for the people who were living at that time, but for us today.
We can learn a lot of lessons from the pictures that God presented to his people in old and time. The parables of the Bible, some in the Old Testament, but especially the parables of the Lord Jesus in the New Testament, they were object lessons. And the Lord Jesus chose object lessons from simple things and events in life. And he painted the picture in words. And he gave the message and the challenge that still lingers with us today as we read the parables. The prophets of the Old Testament had many object lessons. For example, Zechariah.
Have you ever read through Zechariah's prophecy? What a wonderful prophecy. The prophecy of Zechariah is to know that Zechariah had eight object lessons presented to him to pass on. Eight object lessons, probably all given in the space of one night. You'll read about them in the first five or six chapters of the book of Zechariah. Ezekiel was presented with some object lessons from the Lord. I don't think anybody more than the prophet Jeremiah. He had some wonderful audio visuals. God gave them to him. We looked on Sunday evening at two of these that were given to Jeremiah.
Jeremiah saw a branch of an almond tree. That was God's object lesson. He saw also a burning, a boiling cauldron, a seething pot that was turned towards the south, away from the north. And that was God's object lesson to Jeremiah. And tonight we've looked at another object lesson. We've read about it. and we're going to look at two or three of these in the next few nights. As we do so, we're going to examine a number of principles that should guide us in studying any of these audiovisuals. Whether we're studying a parable or whether we're studying a feast or another type, such as the tabernacle, or whether we're studying one of Jeremiah's object lessons, there are some important principles.
I would suggest to you that we divide our thoughts into three sections. First of all, we should consider carefully what the object is. Obviously, that's important. We can never draw the lesson unless we know what the object is. When we're looking at a parable, let's think what the Lord is presenting in that parable. Or if you're looking at an offering, let's look at the description of that offering, what it really meant. The second thing we look at, having considered the object, the second thing we look at is the immediate lesson, the lesson that God had for the people of his time. That's how we should study the tabernacle, or how we should study the offerings.
We should say, well, what did this mean to the children of Israel when they saw this? What did this offering mean to them? What did the parable of the Lord Jesus mean to his first listeners? And what did Jeremiah's object lesson mean to the people of Israel, the people of Judah and Israel, whom he presented it. And having looked at the object, and having thought of the immediate lesson, we turn to the third important section, and that is the present continuing lesson for us. We have to examine what this means to us, and what lessons we can learn from it. You see, God didn't give these lessons only for the people of the time.
They are recorded in the page of his word for people in our time, for us to learn lessons as well. And that's what we're going to try to do as we study these object lessons of Jeremiah. Let's do that with this particular story that we've read together. First of all, let's think of the object itself. What was the object? Well, the object was a linen girdle. a linen girdle. There are different opinions as to what this was. It doesn't really matter what it was really. It was obviously something that was adhering, cleaving to Jeremiah when he wore it.
It may have been a belt, it may have been a sash, or it may have been a short skirt that was worn around the hips and going halfway down the thighs. That's what some people feel it was. Well, it may have been any one of these. We're not told exactly its dimensions or its anything about how or where it lay, except it was a girdle. We're told also that it was a linen girdle, and that's going to be important as we think of it. The main point of this linen girdle, as we'll see, is that it cleaved to the loins of a man. Look at verse eleven. For as the girdle cleaveth to the loins of a man, this girdle that Jeremiah was given, it cleaved to his loins.
It stayed close to Jeremiah. Well, Jeremiah went and did exactly what God told him. And you may have noticed, as we read, that that's exactly what he did all the time. Look at verse two. So I got a girdle. God said, Get a girdle. So I got a girdle. Look at verse five. God had said, Go and take it to Euphrates. So I went and hid it by Euphrates. And he came back. Look at verse seven. He had to go back and get the girdle. And then I went to Euphrates. There's an important lesson for us to learn from these statements. And the lesson is that Jeremiah did exactly what God commanded him to do. He was obedient to the word of God.
Now that was in sharp contrast with the people amongst whom Jeremiah lived. They were characterized by rebellion, apostasy, blaspheming. blasphemy departure from God that was their characteristic they went away from God to seek other gods they forsook the Lord their God but Jeremiah obeyed the Lord his God all the time that was his characteristic how many of us are like Jeremiah in spite of the difficulties of our time are we prepared to obey the word of the Lord so Jeremiah did exactly what God said.
He took this girdle, he got it, he bought it, or he obtained it from some way or another, and he put it on and he wore it for a tie. And then God said, I want you now to take that girdle, and I want you to take it as the King James Version to Euphrates and hide it there in a hole of the rock. And Jeremiah did exactly that. Now there's something I should tell you at this time. The word translated Euphrates is the Hebrew word para. And of course that is the Hebrew word for Euphrates. It's also the Hebrew word for a place called para, which was a few miles from Jeremiah's hometown, Hamathoth.
Now it was probably just about two or three miles away from his home. To go to Euphrates, which was about three hundred and fifty miles away, Jeremiah would have had to go on a hundred-day tour. That was the journey to and from Euphrates. And then you had to do the same again, another hundred days. And it seems maybe a little more likely that Jeremiah had really to go to this little place called Parah, which was very close to his home, which could be reached in an hour or two. Rowell and spend three months or more getting to the place. It doesn't really matter.
It's of no significance for our understanding of the story. But it's possible that this, which is translated Euphrates, and probably rightly so, may not have been Euphrates, but been a little village fairly close to Jeremiah. Well, he had to go back and find the girdle. He knew where it was put. He hid it in a hole of a rock, and he found it there. And when he found it and brought it back, lo, it was marred. That means it was ruined. And it was profitable for nothing. That means it was worthless, useless, good for nothing. Well, you say that's an unusual kind of object lesson, isn't it?
You wouldn't think you would get much information out of that object lesson. I will discover that Jeremiah got quite a lot of information. given to him by God to pass on to the people about this object that he presented to them. Very important material. So let's look at the second part. Second part that we do in our study is to look at the immediate lesson. What was the lesson that Jeremiah had to give to the people that God gave to Jeremiah and through him to the people of his time and ultimately to the people of our time? What was the lesson? Well, we can tell that if we look at verses ten and eleven.
Look at verse nine, for instance, after this manner, the same way as this linen girdle was marred, after this manner I will mar the pride of Judah and the pride of Jerusalem. This evil people who refused to hear my words and so forth shall even be as this girdle. Look at verse eleven. For as the girdle cleave to the loins of a man, so have I caused to cleave unto me the whole house of Israel, the whole house of Judah. Now what do we learn from that? We learn from that that this girdle that Jeremiah used and presented as an object lesson was a picture of God's people.
A picture of God's people. That's an interesting picture as we'll see because it has very interesting points for us to think about. as we relate it to ourselves. A picture of God's people. You'll notice what this girdle was made of. It was made of linen, linen. And that's interesting because as we look at the Old Testament, we discover that linen was what was used, the material used for holy garments. The holy garments of the priest. For example, in the Great Day of Atonement, One day in each year, when the high priest on that one day had to go into the holiest of all before he did anything, the first thing he had to do was wash himself with water, and then, because it was holy garments he had to wear, he had to wear a holy linen coat, linen breeches, a linen girdle, linen mitre, these holy garments.
Therefore, we are told, shall he wash his flesh with water and put them on? So Lenin was a symbol of being set apart, of holiness. And holiness speaks of being set apart, set apart for God, for his service, for his glory, for his worship, set apart. And what was the purpose for which they were set apart? Well, we're told that purpose at the end of verse eleven. The purpose, said the Lord, that they might be unto me for a people and for an age and for a praise and for a glory. You see, God had chosen one nation out of all the world, all the nations of the world, and He had set apart that particular nation, that that nation would be a people for His name, and that that nation would be to His praise, and that nation would bring glory and honor to the Lord who chose them and who set them apart.
And there was a time in that nation when that's exactly what they were. We remember the days of David, that nation that God had provided, that God had set apart. That nation indeed was a nation for his praise and glory. It brought renown to the Lord for a great part of the world. It was for the renown and praise of the Lord. But alas, that nation had fallen on evil days. And God had to say, this evil people which refuse to hear my words and walk in the imagination of their hearts and go after other gods, they become that linen girdle that was put in that hole in the wall on the rock.
They have become worthless, ruined, marred. And God was going to bring his judgment upon them because of that. One of the great messages of Jeremiah. that this people no longer adhered and harkened to the voice of God, and God was going to judge and punish them. They would not hear. So you can see how that linen girdle in its various phases was a picture of God's earthly people. And it came to pass exactly as Jeremiah predicted in this object lesson prophecy. But what we want to do tonight is to consider this lesson for us.
We're going to consider not only its immediate lesson, but its continuing lesson. Can we here learn a lesson for us? Surely we care. And I would suggest to you that if that linen girdle was an object lesson that symbolized God's earthly people, and the purposes that God had for that earthly people, That linen girdle can also symbolize God's heavenly people. It can symbolize his church, can symbolize you and me. That linen girdle is a picture of what God would like to have for us.
That we should be set apart for him, that he has a purpose for us in our lives. Let's link to what that purpose is. What is God's purpose for you? And what is God's purpose for me in my life? What is God's purpose for the church and for his people? I'm going to suggest to you that we have that purpose at the end of verse eleven. Just the same as his purpose for his earthly people was that they might be for a people and for a name and for a praise and for a glory. So you and I have been brought for that purpose. And you know, You and I have been brought close to the Lord Himself for that purpose.
Every one of us has been brought close to Him. The day we trusted Christ as our Savior, we were brought into close relationship to Him. And just as that girdle cleaved to the loins of Jeremiah and was in close relationship to Him, so God has put us in close relationship to Himself and to His Son. The hymn writer has said, in the person of thy son, we are as near as he, close to him. That's God's, how God has placed us in his sight. He has brought us into intimate relationship with himself. Why? Well, he's got a wonderful purpose.
Let's examine that purpose. First of all, he says that they might be unto me for a people, for a people. A way back early in the journeys of the children of Israel, They had just got out of the clutches of Pharaoh, when God was about to give to them the Ten Commandments in Exodus twenty. In Exodus chapter nineteen, God said to them, I have chosen you. I have brought you out of Egypt. And I have chosen you for a very special purpose, that you should be a peculiar treasure unto me, that you should be an holy nation unto me. And you know Peter in his first epistle, takes that message of God to his earthly people and applies it to his heavenly people, to you and to me.
And he tells us that we are, for God, a peculiar people, a holy nation, a royal priesthood. Note that word, a peculiar people. Some of us live up to that characteristic and description, and we are sometimes a peculiar people. But the Lord didn't mean it in the sense that we sometimes take it. He meant it that we were to be a people for himself and himself alone. That we were to belong to him and to know others. That we were to set apart completely to the Lord. And we were to bring him pleasure. And so the prophet Jeremiah received this message from the Lord that they might be unto me for a people.
And you and I have been brought apart and set apart by God so that we might be a people for himself. But he said more than that. And for a name, that means a source of renown, a name. God has a possibility and a prospect and a purpose for each one of us to be a name for him. It's not our name, but his name. He wants to implant on our lives. It's not for our renown, but it's for his renown. It's not to make more of ourselves. It's to make more of himself. It's not to bring us honor, but we are there set apart to bring him honor in our lives.
We're to be a name for him, to bring him glory wherever we go, wherever we are. That's God's purpose for us. He's given us this being set apart so that we might be for a people and for a name. And then he says for a praise. And the word praise means a song or a hymn of praise, a hymn of gratitude to God. That the music of our lives may bring praise to God in heaven. And that as people see our lives, they may give glory to God because of what they see in our lives. And that God is praised by the way we live, by what we do. We are set apart for his.
That we may cause others to sing his praises. And then finally he says, for a glory, for a glory. The basic meaning of that word glory, I understand, is a beauty, splendor, an ornament, to adorn, to beautify. We were thinking this morning, and I misquoted a little poem, let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me. All his wondrous compassion and purity, O thou spirit divine, all my nature if I let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me and that's exactly what God wants in your life in my life that his beauty the beauty of his sat may be seen in us that we reflect his glory wherever we go and that we show to others what the character of our Savior is that people look upon us may take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus that we adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things.
That's the meaning of this particular phrase that will be for a glory. Adorn his doctrine in all our ways. I'm going to ask you a question. Do you think that the doctrine of God is adorned by your life? Is the beauty of the Lord Jesus seen in your life? Is God being honored and magnified in our lives day by day? I trust he is. Well, you see, what is the clue to that? How can we fit into it? How can our lives possibly measure up to this? And so let's examine the great secret.
And we can examine it from this passage from a negative standpoint and from a positive standpoint. First of all, let's examine it from a negative standpoint. The negative standpoint is presented in verse ten. And the positive standpoint in verse eleven. Verse ten tells us how the people had failed to honour the Lord. How they had failed to bring praise and glory and a name to him. And verse eleven tells us how they could succeed. So let's look at the negative standpoint. How they had failed. It says this evil people. Why were they evil? Well there are three things that were characteristic of that people.
that caused them to be failures. Let's notice what they were. First of all, they refused to hear my words. So that means that if we refuse to hear the words of God, we cannot possibly live lives that will be honoring to Him. They refused to hear His words. There was the basis of their problem. The prophets one and another had gone to the people with the words of the Lord, and they had refused them. Jeremiah had now been bringing the word of the Lord to their hearts and their minds and their lives, and they refused to hear. The word here is a word that means harken, listen carefully, attend obediently.
It's the word that's used way back in the beginning of the Bible when we are told that Adam in the Garden of Eden, when he heard what Satan had revealed to his wife, harkened unto his wife. He harkened unto his wife. He listened to her instead of listening to God. That's exactly what the children of Israel have done. They have listened to other voices, to the voices of other gods and false prophets instead of the voice of God himself. And it's possible for us today. not to heed the word of the living God. We have his word here in our own language.
We should be reading that word and we should be responding to it and hearkening to it, hearkening to the voice of God. But alas, we live at a time in the history of the Lord's people when there's a tendency to set aside the direct principles and commandments of the Lord. And we find it even among some of the Lord's people. that they're setting aside the principles that are laid down in the New Testament, the principles relating to our personal lives and the principles relating to our church life. They're being set aside instead of the Lord's words. We're hearkening to the voice of others.
Well, there's the first step in the downward decline of God's people. The second step follows. They walk in the imagination of their heart. imagination of their heart. Instead of following the principles of God's word and being obedient to his word, they're taking their own imaginations of their heart and they're walking in the imagination of their heart. Now this word imagination is an interesting word. It occurs ten times in the Old Testament and eight of these times are in the book of Jeremiah. It's a word that means twisted. It means Stubbornness. That's the meaning of the word.
In other words, they walked in a twisted way. They twisted God's word. They twisted their lives to suit themselves. They were stubborn and they wouldn't obey God's word. Instead of obeying God's word, they set out their own imaginations. And they said, this is what we're going to do. We're going to do what we want to do. Do you know there are people amongst God's people who are like that? Instead of taking the word of God at face value, they say, well, that was given for the people in that day. That was given for the culture of that day. That's a cultural distinction. We don't follow that culture today.
We are in a different culture. So we don't take these principles for our day. That's walking in the imagination of their own hearts. Whether it applies to our lives, or to our church walk and characteristics. And that leads to another steady decline. First of all, they refused to hear my words. Secondly, they walked in the imagination of their hearts. And thirdly, they went on from there to walk after and to serve and worship other gods. That's exactly what the people of Israel will do. They were worshipping other gods, the gods of Baal and Timosh and Moli, the gods of the nations round about.
They were worshipping other gods. That's what they were doing. They were worshipping the gods of nations. That's the end of this story. That's the end of that direction. We fall away from God when we go along that pattern of refusing to hear God's voice, of walking after the imagination of our heart. And then it leads to the stage of worshipping other gods. That's a sad story, isn't it? I trust it doesn't apply to any one of us here tonight. Incidentally, there is one reason why we might say that the Euphrates here is a literal Euphrates, and not just a little town close to Angathar.
And that is that that girdle was kept in a hole of the rock in Euphrates. And it was therefore influenced by the dirt of Babylon, which was across the Euphrates. And those people of Israel were being influenced by the gods of Babylon. They were having that kind of influence on their lives. Well, that's the negative side. What about the positive side? We shouldn't certainly refuse to hear God's word. or walk in the imagination of our hearts, or walk after and serve other gods.
But what should we do positively? Well, we find out in verse eleven what we should do. And notice the key and critical word in verse eleven. For as the girdle cleaveth of a woman, so have I caused to cleave unto me. If that girdle had still been cleaving to Jeremiah, this wouldn't have happened. And God is saying, these people have got away from me. Instead of cleaving unto me, they've been leaving me. Instead of staying with me, they've been departing from me. The essential thing is to cleave to the Lord, to cleave to him. And so it's important for us to examine the meaning of this word cleave.
The word cleave is used quite a bit in the Old Testament in the sense of physical cleaving, physical cleaving. For example, in the book of Job, you remember Job having had all these boils and his physical condition was very, very poor indeed. He had lost a lot of weight. He looked at his bones and his arms and his limbs, and he said, My bone cleaveth to thy skin and to the flesh. It was cleaving. Couldn't get away from you. If you've seen somebody who's emaciated, that's the evidence you get. That's the effect it has. The skin seems to be cleaving to the bones. Cleaving, like that.
Jeremiah wrote about it in the book of Lamentation. There he said in the book of Lamentation, the tongue of the sucking child cleaver through his mouth. So much dehydrated. that the child who had not had anything to drink, their poor little tongues were cleaving to their mouths, cleaving, sticking to them. Same is true about Ezekiel. God said to Ezekiel, I will make thy tongue cleave to the roof of thy mouth. So shall thou be done. I am amused when I look at some of David's mighty men. For example, one of his mighty men was Eliezer. Eliezer was the son of Dodo, the Ahuai.
How would you like to be called the son of Dodo? I don't think any of us would like to be called Dodo or his son either. Well, we're told that he was second in the list of David's mighty men. And we're told that he smote the Philistines until his heart was weary and his hand clave unto his sword. Clave unto his sword. That's the meaning of the word cleats. Tears to it, sticks to it. number of years ago we were in the city of Peterborough at the time and our little children our sons were little children they're no longer little nor are the children the tallest one is six foot eight and they're all equal to or taller than I am so they're no longer little but they were little at this time it was winter time and they were playing childish hockey really they weren't they were young they didn't play good hockey but they were playing childish hockey with the hockey sticks and pucks Maybe you don't know what hockey is like.
Some of you will know what hockey is like, I suppose, for they play hockey even in Florida here, we understand. But my wife was out with them at the time, and they had a goalpost made of metal, and my wife, Margaret, saw one of the neighboring little children with his tongue stuck to the hockey cage, to the metal. He had tried to see what it was like, and immediately got stuck. That was cleaving to that cage. I sometimes tease my wife about this because what she did, she had the clarity of mind to breathe on that little child's hand and the hot air that she breathed.
And that's what I tease her about, about her hot air that she's able to breathe. And that hot air released that tongue from this being stuck to the hockey goal. Cleaving. But it is also used in a spiritual sense in the word of God. God has used it in the same spiritual sense. He said, In Joshua, thou shalt love the Lord and walk in all his ways. Cleave unto him and serve him with your heart and soul. What does that mean? Well, it means to stay close to the Lord himself. Don't get away from him. Cleave to him. Stay close to him.
It's the same word that's used of a man cleaving to his wife, leaving his father and mother and cleaving to his wife. That means to stay close. And that's what God urges us to do. And if God's earthly people had stayed close to him instead of leaving him for other gods, it would have been a different situation altogether. And God calls upon us to cleave to the Lord. Barnabas was a great man in the New Testament. You remember Barnabas was sent to the new infant church at Antioch. He was sent by the apostles in Jerusalem to see how it was getting on, to see if everything was normal and right.
And when Barnabas got there, he found that the Lord was doing a great work there. And with using what gift God had given to him, the gift of encouragement, he exhorted or he encouraged them. that ye should cleave unto the Lord. And that's what we need today. We need each one of us to cleave to the Lord, to stay close to him every moment of our lives. How can we stay close to him? Well, just as the branch of a vine stays close to the vine, that's cleaving to the Lord. How does it do it? Well, it derives all its strength and support and succor from the vine.
And you and I stay close to the Lord day by day, deriving all our succor and support from the Lord himself. Abide in him. And he says, abide in me, and my words abide in you. And you'll ask what you will that will be done unto you. How important then it is for each one of us to crave to the Lord. That, my friend, is the secret. For living a life that will bring praise and honour and glory to our Lord. Let us see to it that we cleave to him. That we don't get away from him.
But that we cleave day by day. Close to thee. Close to thee. All along my pilgrim journey. Only let me walk with thee. May that be our prayer as we leave this service this evening, that we'll stay close to the Lord, cleaving to him, day by day, and not getting away from him at all. Let us pray. O God, our Father, once more, we bow in thy presence, humbly acknowledging our need of thee, and humbly acknowledging that so often we have got away from thee.
Help us, we pray thee, to be cleavers, to be those who abide in thee, who stay close to thee day by day, who live for thy glory and honour, and who seek to bring blessing to others as they come in contact with our lives, that they may see something of our Saviour living in us. Now part us with thy blessing, we pray thee. Be with us throughout this week. May thy name be honoured. and magnified and glorified in our lives, in whatever we do. For we ask it, in the name of the Lord Jesus,