Sincerity in Christian living is essential in all aspects of faith, including prayer, thanksgiving, singing, Bible study, and business dealings. The sermon emphasizes that genuine prayer is not mere recitation but heartfelt communication, and true thanksgiving acknowledges God's provision amidst scarcity. Singing should be done with understanding and spirit, not just melody, and Bible study requires diligent digging for spiritual treasures, not superficial reading. In business, integrity and honesty are paramount, reflecting Christ in all interactions, and service to the Lord must be motivated by love, not competition. Deviations from New Testament principles, such as embracing evolution or questioning Christ's divinity, undermine sincerity and must be resisted.
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solo. I think I enjoyed the solo more this afternoon because I was down there. This morning I was behind you and I didn't get it all. But sitting there I got the full beauty of your voice. Thanks very much. And I didn't know our sister Diane was an instrumentalist. You have a lot of talent here. Thank the Lord. Now shall we continue our study please of sincerity in Christian livings. And we might look again at our text Joshua chapter twenty four it has been pointed out that if a preacher does not have a text he's preaching on the pretext and we don't want to do that so at least we have a text and when you go home you know where the text was Joshua chapter twenty four verse fourteen now therefore fear the Lord serves him in sincerity and in truth.
And we found that same word in Philippians chapter one, sincerity. And we have seen that we should be sincere in our prayers. We are not to say prayers. We are to pray. You've heard the story of the man who was walking down the street and he saw the fire engines. And from all that he could gather, his neighbor's house was on fire. So he just prayed, well, Lord, don't let too much burn, and I hope all will go well. But you know the rest of the story. As he approached the place, he saw it was his house. Then he prayed. That's what we're talking about. Genuine prayer.
Then we saw that we should be consistent, serious, sincere in our thanksgiving. We had a wonderful meal yesterday. I don't know what you thought of it. consider the millions in this country that don't have anything. Are we thankful? We should be. And we saw that where the assembly of God is concerned, we should be thankful and sincere and support the local assembly. Now we've been doing some nice singing. How sincere are we in our singing? First Corinthians chapter fourteen. Sincerity in singing.
Now we're going to read a verse there. You will find that most of the commentaries interpret it differently from the way I'm going to interpret. But I think if you will read the whole chapter, you will see that my interpretation has the Lord's truth. First Corinthians chapter fourteen, verse fifteen. What has it been? I will pray with the Spirit. I will pray with the understanding also. I will sing with the Spirit. What does that mean to sing with the Spirit? Chapter three tells us that the Spirit of a man is that portion of the man that knows.
Man is body, soul, and spirit. So that spirit might be considered is intelligent. We're supposed to know what we're singing. Too often we sing words, and we like the tunes, and we like the rhythm. We are supposed to sing with our spirit. We are supposed to know what we sing. And with the understanding. Whose understanding? The understanding of the people that are listening to us. Now read the rest of it, and you'll find that that is correct. Hymn, hypocrisy. Do we practice what we sing? We sing a lot of hymns, but oh, we don't always practice them. Let me call your attention to some. I love to tell the story. Whom do you tell it to?
It's hypocrisy. That's not sincerity. Take my life and let it be. And most of us are saying, yes, Lord, please let it be. Don't bother me. But we're saying, take my life and let it be. Sweet hour of prayer. How many come? How many come? Have thine own way, Lord, with Sister Jones and Brother Smith. It's hypocrisy. This is not sincerity. I'll go where you want me to go, but not to Mr.
So-and-so or Mrs. So-and-so. We're not sincere too often. Take my might that I withhold to my silver and my gold. That's what we mean when we sing it the other way. so that even in singing we need to be careful of what we sing. I don't know if you sing it in the worship meeting but there is a hymn to this effect concerning our Lord Jesus Christ dying crushed beneath the load of the wrath of God. Do you ever sing that? Anybody? Don't know it. Dying crushed beneath the load of the wrath of God.
Is that true? Did the Lord die beneath the wrath of God? Was he crushed? Was he crushed? What? When it was all over, he said with a loud voice, finish. Does that sound like a dying man? Crush beneath the Lord's lips. We need to be careful what we sing. Don't sing rhythm and don't sing melody. Don't even sing harmonies. Sing words and know what the words mean. Let me go on to another one. What about our Bible study? Are we sincere in our Bible study?
Tell me, beloved, I'm going to ask you to raise your hands. I know you won't raise your hands. How many of you find Bible study boring? Thank you. We've got two honest people. Because a lot of believers find Bible study boring, dull, uninteresting. We have no appetite for the word. And yet we should, you know, the word of God has a flavor. Several times the word of God is described as sweet.
Is it sweet to your taste? Oh, I tell you, the word of God is sweet. Now I've told several people that my favorite time to study is between two a.m. and five a.m. Now the folks where I'm staying, I don't know if they do that I've been up most of the during those hours. But oh, you get some delightful treasures from the Word of God when you get alone with it. No telephone calls. Now I'm not telling you to study between two and five. I wouldn't tell you that. But get alone with the Lord. The Word is sweet and it's thrilling. You talk about novels to thrill you. This will thrill you. I have a friend, some of you know him, he's down in Florida.
He used to work in New York City at RHV. He always had a little testament with it. And during the lunch hour, after lunch, he would go down to the locker room and read. And this day he was reading, he didn't know that anybody was around. He thought nobody was around. And as he read, he came across something and he said, wow. Have you ever found anything in the Bible to make you do that? It's there. Not there to make you say, wow. Oh, I wish I could get you youngsters together. We'd have some fun going through the wows of the Bible. The science in the Bible. The advanced thinking in the Bible.
Things that we think are big today have been in the Bible. You all talk about space. It's in the Bible. Do you know where it's right? Well, we better not get away on that. But the Bible can thrill. It can thrill. And you should get to the point where it has a flavor, you like to read it, and you like... It's a gold mine, by the way. You read that in, I'm not turning to these scriptures for the sake of time. The Bible is a goldmine. You get it in Proverbs. It's like getting gold. It's like getting treasure. Now tell me, do you go out in the street and pick up gold? Not unless you happen to find a gold piece.
That's not the way you get gold, is it? You dig for gold. And if you're going to know this book, you've got to dig. I remember when I was going to school, the very first day, at a medical school, there was a fellow there. He was, I knew him before. He was two or three years before me. I said, what's the secret of this medicine business? What's so difficult about it? You know what he said to me? Guards, dig. You want to know the word of God? Dig. Spend time at it and dig. The word of God is food. You get that in the first Corinthians, rather first Peter chapter two.
I'm not turning to the scriptures because I know you know, but take Acts chapter twenty. You know, from time to time we read about supplements to give you more vitamins and more minerals and more of everything and less cholesterol. You know, we've always, always reading about that. Do you know that the Bible is a complete food? Acts chapter twenty. Verse thirty-two. And now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up. It's got everything in it. Got everything in it.
Do you feed on a child of God? Do you feed on it? It's a complete food. Now, the secret of eating is regularity. Some people have to eat six times a day. Their condition required. Most of us, I see the doctor here, most of us three times a day. But it must be regular. Now, at your zoo, in the reptile house, we didn't go there yesterday. This was a few years ago. We went with our sister here, the reptile house. You see, they moved too fast. But I read all the signs. And there was this snake.
I was fascinated by the sign. This snake is fed one rat once a week, Tuesday at one o'clock. That's regular. That's regular. And so must the Word of God be taken in regularly. Young people especially find a particular time to study the Word of God, the same hour, possibly every day. We must feed regularly. It was Philip Henry who said, I find it easier to go six miles on foot to listen to a sermon than to spend fifteen minutes meditating on it at home.
Is that true of you? It shouldn't be. You remember what we read in Acts chapter seventeen? Well, we are near there. We might as well just can't do it. And verse eleven, speaking of the Bereans, they were more noble than those in Thessalonica in that. They received the word with all readiness of mind and searched the scriptures daily. Oh, I know you're busy. I know you have a lot of things to do, but oh, I would urge you to search the scriptures. My father always used to say, Christians shouldn't read the Bible.
That sounds sacrilegious, doesn't it? He said Christians should study the Bible. And by the way, folks, when you read, speed reading is all right for the newspaper. And don't you speed read the Bible? What meant for speed reading? And this is one of the problems I find with most of our younger generations. They read too fast. This was not meant for speed reading. You read gently and slowly and calmly. And we have fast food markets, don't we? We're famous for fast foods in this part of the world, aren't we? Well, the Bible is not to be taken in as fast food.
I remember when we went to Europe the first time. Well, we only went once. But that was the first time. And I'll tell you now, by way of, I preferred the Italian cuisine to the French. French supposed to be fancy. I like the Italian. But you know what? When you went to the Italian places, or even the French, in the evening, In the first place, they dressed to go to dinner. Not like the fast food McDonald's eat. And you know, we Americans are accustomed to bolting down our food.
My mother used to say to us, don't bolt your food. We were in a hurry to go out and play. We want to get it down and get it over and go out as late. Well, I'll tell you this, and we learned it fast. You go to dinner at seven, you never got out before nine thirty. You know why? Because they brought the first course. Now you could eat as fast as you want. The man wasn't coming back for a half hour. So you learned to die. To eat slowly. And that's the way to feed on the Word of God. Slowly. Take it in. Every word has significance.
I think it was J.D. Darby or J. Ed Darby who said every punctuation mark has significance in the Word of God. We need to feed on the Word of God. Let me read something for you. It's called Bolting Your Spiritual Food. This comes from the Power Magazine. I don't know how many of you get it. We use it in the Little Assembly there in connection with the Sunday School and the Bible class. Choose your way to help was the motto of Horace Fletcher, who in eighteen ninety-five, succeeding in reversing a lifestyle that was making him an old man at the age of forty. Fletcher became an advocate of a regiment that taught that every bite of food must be chewed thirty to seventy times.
Anybody do that? This and other substantive changes brought Fletcher to vigorous dynamic health. Hearing of his success, it was not long until people were Fletcherizing, eating slowly. There is little doubt that Fletcher was advocating a practice that we might well benefit from in our own lives. In our day of fast lanes and fast foods, there is a tendency to speed up everything we do. Sadly, this includes not only eating, but Bible reading as well. I said don't read the Bible fast.
Read it slowly, digest it. You know, many people boast that how many times I read the Bible? I've gone through the Bible six times. That's not important. How many times has the Bible gone through you? That's what it's all about. The scriptures are not meant to give us knowledge. The scriptures are meant to transform us. And we read in first Corinthians ten, knowledge puffs up. Oh, and I know some brother knew. They know all with the Lord now. One brother in particular. I tell you, he knew. There wasn't any question you asked him that he couldn't answer concerning the Bible.
Whether the answer was right or wrong, he answered. That's not the purpose of the Scriptures. The purpose of the Scriptures are to transform us. There are many editions of the Bible coming out. Every two years there's a new edition. And I forget just how many Bible new editions came out in the last twenty-five years. But it's not a new edition. Some people say, which is the best edition? Which do you like? Very cautious about that. Because some people, I remember one very lovely brother. And he liked a certain version of the Bible which I did not care for. And he got angry with me.
So when they asked me which version I prefer, I give a very general answer. But do you know what's the best version of the Bible? The best version of the Bible is a believer who is living. Amen. Let people see you living the Bible, and they will be attracted to it. We need to be sincere in our approach to the Bible. Psalm one, meditation. Mention was made of that this morning. The need for meditation. The psalmist said while I amused. Today they want to amuse.
Be careful of that young folks, this amused business. I'm not saying you shouldn't have fun, but do a little meditation. And I do not mean transcendental meditation. I mean meditation on the Word of God. Don't you go in for any meditation where you surrender your will and your mind to some unknown person. Satan will get ahold of you. But we need to learn to meditate over the Word of God. Kind's still going fast. But now let's take another one in which sincerity is necessary. We mentioned attending the meeting. What about our business lives, our daily lives?
Again, we need to practice as before the Lord. We need to be serious in our daily living, in our business dealings. Numbers chapter sixteen. And this is one area where, as believers, we can get into a lot of trouble. As was mentioned, you know, the desire for more, more, more, for things, things, things, and we become unscrupulous and do things that we should not do. Numbers chapter sixteen, verse fifteen. Moses was very raw and said unto the Lord, respect not their offerings.
I have not taken one ask from them, neither have I heard one of them. In his dealings, his business dealings with those around, he was sincere. I know a brother who was in business, and another brother in the assembly did some business with him. And this particular brother, it was known, he was rather crooked in his business dealings. And when the brother whom he had wronged approached him about it, what do you think he said? Oh, brother, this is not for your assembly. This is business. But your business life should be the same as your assembly life.
Read with me something of interest. Genesis chapter forty-three. Genesis chapter forty-three. verse twenty three now you remember the story of joseph and how after he was elevated to next to pharaoh there was a salmon and his family came to purchase corn and necessary things he recognized them put their money back in the containers everybody remembers that fine Genesis chapter forty three You know the story, so let's start at verse twenty-one.
It came to pass. The brothers are speaking. When we came to the inn that we opened our sacks, and behold, every man's money was in the mouth of his sack, our money in full weight, and we have brought it again in our hand. Other money have we brought it down in our hands to buy food. We cannot tell who put our money in our sacks. And the overlord said, Peace be to you. Don't be afraid. The God of your Father has given you treasure in your sacks. Now notice. Notice what this keeper says now. I had your money.
Where did he get it from? Joseph said, return each man his money. But he says, I had your money. Where did he get it from? Have you ever thought of that? I'll tell you where he got it. Joseph paid for them. Now, Joseph was next to the Pharaoh. He could say, well, these are my brothers. Just let them have it. It'll be all right. But he was careful in his business dealings, and he paid for his brothers. We need to be very careful in our business dealings. Have you heard the story of Joe the Butcher? Has anybody heard the story of Joe the... Well, I'll tell you the story of Joe the Butcher.
Saturday night. Joe had one chicken left. Lady came in, Joe, I want a chicken. All right. Brought out the chicken, put it on the scale, waited. So many pounds, so much money. Mm-hmm, Joe. Do you have a larger chicken? Oh, yes. St. Mamaki, you only had one. He went in, brought out the same chicken, put it on the scale. said it way more than total the cost. And what do you think the lady said? Joe, I think I'll take both.
We need to be careful in our business dealings. This thing will catch up with us. We need to be sincere in our business dealings. Then I think of another. weekday Christians. Some of you probably came across this. Those of you that read our daily bread. Well, this was back in January of this year. A young man was being interviewed for a position in a business firm. He had on a neat suit and made a good appearance. Nothing wrong with that. His resume listed as references, now listen to his resume now, his Sunday school teacher, one of his elders, and a deacon.
Nice recommendations. After study, the interviewer said, I appreciate these recommendations from your church friends. But what I really like is a word from somebody who knows you on weekdays. That's where it counts. And that's where people want to know. We need to be serious. We need to be honest. We need to be sincere in our daily walks, in our business lives, and in our service for the Lord. This voice seems to be going and going and going and may soon be gone.
In our service for the Lord, we need to be sincere. Philippians chapter one, please. Philippians chapter one. Verse fifteen. Some preach Christ, even of envy and strife.
and some also of goodwill. Can you imagine serving the Lord out of envy, out of the spirit of competition? Terrible. The one preached Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds, but the other of love, knowing that I am set for the defense of the gospel. Let me ask you, child of God, in your service to the Lord, what's your motive? Why do you do what you do? Why am I up here today? What's your motive? God is going to judge motives.
And it's a disgraceful and shameful thing for one to enter into the Lord's spirit out of a spirit of competition. I can do it better than you. I know more than you. And this sort of thing. The spirit of competition. Now I want to just call attention, and I'm not going to go into any detail, on one other item. A number, even since I've been here, have asked me concerning certain changes. They asked me, have you noticed any changes in the assembly as compared with, say, thirty years ago?
There are changes. And yet you know there shouldn't be. Now read the first epistles of Paul to the Corinthians. At least six times he says, what I have written to you, I've written to the churches. And at the end he says, what I've written to you is for the church and there to see it. Now if all the churches are following the same general principles, there should be a sameness to all assemblies. You know, you make me smile. Over our way we say amen sometimes. This way, I don't know if you agree with me or not, but it doesn't matter. Because this is what the Bible said. If we're all following the same scriptures, there should be a certain sameness.
Now that doesn't mean you use the same hymn book. Doesn't mean you use the same tunes. Doesn't mean that you're having meetings at the same hour of the day or night. That's not the point. And thirty years ago, twenty years ago, there was a certain sameness. But today we're getting deviations. from what I believe to the scriptural teaching. How sincere are we when it comes to New Testament principles of gathering? Are we all sure that this Bible is divine in its authorship? There are some among us who feel known is not divine and they're causing trouble.
There are a number among us who feel that the scriptures are not the sole source of truth. You can get it from other places. And they reason this way, all truth is truth. Well, all the truth that God wants for his church is in here. You don't have to go anywhere else to get his truth for the church. But too many are deviating in various ways. Let us be sincere in our commitment to New Testament principles. Now, I'm going to ask a question. I know everybody's going to raise his hand or her hand. And yet I have reason to wonder, how many of you here believe that God created the heavens and the earth?
And I see your hands. Thank you. How many of you here believe that evolution was the means that God used to create and bring into being and to develop the heavens of the earth? And nobody? Oh my, you're here. You're far back. You're not scientific. You're not up to date. One of the saddest experiences I had was about five or six, no more than that, maybe eight years ago. My wife was away and I went to a certain assembly. Broke bread, just as I'm sure you do.
Beautiful order. Since my wife was away, they invited me to dinner. And almost all the believers that broke bread that morning were at the same place. Isn't that nice, you know? All the believers together sharing the good things of this earth. Then we got into conversation, and poor me, I was the only one who didn't believe in evolution. They had just broken bread, and I believed their believers were going to heaven. But they believed that God got it started and then left it to evolve. You believe that? I'm glad you do.
But there are a number of believers among us getting away into this area. It makes them sound, they say, intelligent. But very frankly, to me, it makes them sound foolish. Our dear brother, where is he sitting? I don't see him here. And his daughter, son, as I mentioned earlier, we went to the zoo yesterday. And in the course of conversation, he said, can you imagine, there he is, can you imagine looking at a lion and a tiger? all these and the things they can do and the way they carry themselves and actually the intelligence that they show you need that that evolved by some of those animals know more than i do that's right when i was down in trinidad they told me to go to the swamps nice and right and then they said between six and six fifteen The red ibises and the blue egrets would come in from South America.
And I was there. There was my watch. Five to six. Well, they're not supposed to come here. Five after six. No birds. Ten after six. No birds. Thirteen after six. And I heard this noise. And all these birds came in. How did they know the time? I knew it because I looked here. And you talk about evolution. Oh, young people, don't let them deceive. And child of God, don't be carried away thinking that you are with the intelligentsia, as they call themselves. God says they're fools. Then there is the matter of the incarnation.
There are those who tell you, that the Lord Jesus Christ was not God. He was a man and all sorts of mixed up things. But of course that started way back in the time of John the Apostle. Don't be deceived by that, especially young people. Jesus Christ was very God, the creator of the heavens and the earth. And don't argue about it. And then there is the matter of the coming of the Lord. Do you believe the Lord is coming back to take us? It's a wonderful thought, isn't it? Be terrible otherwise. Who's going to stay down here with all this confusion? Gray country like the United States going down and down and down.
It's sad. I'm glad the Lord is coming. But there are some believers who feel that he won't come until we improve the earth and make it fit for his coming. And yet the Bible, you read the revelation, you're not going to get better. God is not improving the earth. He is not improving the world. He is taking men out of the world, improving them, and this earth is going to be destroyed. And I like the expression in the first Peter, it's going to be burned up. Not burned, burned up. There's a big difference. But these are some of the areas in which we are getting away from the truth.
Our sincerity is being trusted. The priesthood of all believers. Do we believe that? Every believer is a priest and has access to the Almighty God. No special one. I'm tempted to read this. I'm reading from the book of the Revelation. a note concerning the Nicolaitians. I'll just read it. You don't have to. This is the old Scorpio. And I like the old one, you know, for two reasons. First Bible my dad ever gave me.
And I just know where to find things. I may not know the verse, but I can tell you what side of the page it is. I think many of you understand that. But that new one, you see, it's all right. I don't know it that way. So I use the old one. Now it says, Nicholatines comes from a word meaning to conquer, and lay us the people, or laity. And so we have the introduction of the clergy and the laity. Now you look in the New Scope of the Bible, you will find that note. Does everybody know that? Do you know why you will find that note? Because certain denominations say, if you put that note in there, We won't let our people buy the Bible.
They want clergy and laity. And that's coming into our assemblies. It doesn't belong there. Leadership in the assemblies. We're getting away from that. We're getting to the one man leadership among so many assemblies. It's not in here. It's not in this book. Multiple elders. Multiple leadership. And that's where the wisdom is. One man doesn't know everything. We need the counsel of others. That's one of the beautiful things I liked when I was in New York City, associated with the assembly there. Oh, there were many times we didn't see eye to eye.
You know what we did? You defer it with prayer. Sometimes it took six weeks until we all saw the same things. But when you have one man, he may be wrong. And if you follow him, everybody's going to be wrong. And then you have the matter of one-man ministry. You see, that would never appeal to me. Because any message that I present takes me a long time to prepare. Now, you may not have that trouble. I can't prepare messages fast. It takes me a long time. And where you have a one-man ministry, it places a load on him that shouldn't be.
Besides which, there are other gifts in the assembly. You don't have some of them. Your young men don't develop. Beloved, we must be careful of these trends among the assemblies. Keep to the truth. Be sincere in our following of the Word of God. I'm not going to talk about salaries. We know about salaries, don't we? My time is up. Now for me it has been a joy. I'm sorry my voice is what it is. I know it's harming your ears. But I have enjoyed being with you. And I thank you again for the privilege of sharing. And trust that as the days lie ahead and the Lord doesn't come, that we will all serve him in sincerity and in truth.