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Well, I want to tell you, first of all, that it is very, I am very glad to be here. I started out for this conference last year, and, uh, I got as far as Dawn Walters' home, and she treated us with great graciousness, as only Dawn Walters can. And it has taken me a whole year to get from her house to here. Now, you want to talk about a traffic jam? That was some traffic jam. No, really, I am very glad to be here, and, uh, having put it off by a year, I have the privilege of speaking with my good brother Jim Copt. What a treat that is.
We do thank you for all of your prayers over this last year. We're feeling a lot better, and, um, glad to be here and share a little of the word of God with you all. The theme of the conference, conform to the image of Christ. I take from that amongst there's a lot of ways that you can look at that and handle it. And yet I am thinking of this. What we're talking about is maturity. Growing in the Lord, coming from a babe in Christ into full maturity. And each of those areas of our lives, as we develop in our lives spiritually, we grow closer and closer to the image of Christ.
What a wonderful reality it is that the Lord Jesus will take a clump, a lump of clay, a sinful person, and work in his heart and in his life, leading him and guiding him, bringing him into circumstances whereby we can come to a place where God is glorified in our lives. For is- isn't that the final step? Isn't that the reality? It is that God be glorified in our lives. And what a glory it must be for him. When he gets us home to himself, to be able, as Jude tells us, to present us before the throne of glory, perfect and complete, wanting nothing.
And, and I love that little w- word in, in Jude, and there's a paraphrase I read once that said he's going to do it. Listen to this paraphrase. I can't remember what the paraphrase was, but I remember what it said. Jumping up and down with joy. Can you see the Lord Jesus filled with joy at what has been accomplished in our lives through his grace, through his love, with his guidance. One day, that's going to be true of each one of us here in this audience. What a glorious day that's going to be for him. What a wonderful day that will be for us.
Now, my take on this subject this weekend is this, that in order to come to maturity in the Lord Jesus, in order to grow into that which he would have us to be, cannot, and I repeat, cannot be done in isolation. We need each other to lead us, to guide us, to encourage us, to strengthen us. And as we grow older, there will be those younger than we.
It gets to that point, you know, it's interesting. Everybody is older than you to begin with, and then there's more younger than you as as time goes on. And growing older sort of happens naturally. You don't have to work at that. It just, it just happens, doesn't it, Dr. Gartz? It just happens. But growing to maturity is another story. And that takes the work of God in our lives and the Spirit of God in our lives and brethren and sisters in our lives to help us along the way to and to encourage us along the way. I have to tell one story. I've told my wife that I'm not going to tell many stories about Jim and I, but I am going to have to tell one.
Nineteen seventy four, I had just moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and I was working for Gospel Folio Press. Truro, Nova Scotia. A fellow by the name of Jim Comte called to have a, he was having a Sunday school conference up there. I went. And the moment I got off of the plane at Halifax, it took Jim and I about, I was going to say ten minutes, I'm not sure it took that, that long for us to know that we were going to gel together. This was going to be a great relationship. And, and the week went fine. We went to various con- various assemblies during the week, got went back home, and that's sort of the end of that in my mind.
About three months later, Jim called me and he said, Jim, there was a fellow that was supposed to take a teen conference or teen camp up in Malagash Bible Camp this summer, and had some, something came up in his family, he wasn't able to do it. Would you come up and take this ten-day teen Bible camp? And to this day, I don't know why I said yes, but I did. I had grown up in an assembly that didn't believe in Bible camps. I had never been on a Bible camp. I had no idea what a Bible camp was.
I had never preached a series of meetings. I had preached a few times on a Sunday, that kind of thing, in my local assembly. I'm in my early thirties at this time. I had never preached it, and I'm going to preach morning and night, a series, two ten-message series, all at the same time. Jim Comte met me and said, Jim, one of the male counselors has had a car accident, is not going to be able to be here at the camp. Would you counsel in his cabin? I had no idea what a counselor was, let alone being one. And Jim Comte had the horrendous task, the daunting task of taking an absolutely green individual and guiding him, instructing him, mentoring him, putting up with him for ten days of that camp.
You know, I, I, I keep, I look back at that as one of those events in my life that the Lord directed me into waters way over my head and gave me a brother to come alongside me. And if it wasn't for the grace of God and the patience of Jim Comte, I have no idea what would have been accomplished at that, at that camp. But I look back at that as a beginning of something in which the Lord was directing me that I had no idea at the time. That's what the Lord does in our lives. By the way, Paul Matu is one of the kids at that camp.
He told me about that a number of years later. I had no idea. I couldn't remember anybody at the camp. It's this idea of being together, of allowing the Lord to do things in our lives, of growing in the things of God, of stepping out and getting in over our heads on occasion, that will cause us to mature and come to be what God would have us to be, and that God might be glorified in our lives. In order for that to happen, we need to... there are two things that need to happen in our lives.
First of all, we need to be obedient to the Word of God, and obedient to the Holy Spirit of God, who takes the Word of God and effectively uses it in our lives. And as we become obedient to him, he makes us what we ought to become. And you know, that brings me to the very first point. The very first time that the Spirit of God begins to use the word of God in each of our lives is when we hear the gospel message. And as we listen to the gospel message clearly presented, note that, clearly presented, in which the Holy Spirit of God can take the word of God and effectively use it in our lives, that we come very first, that very first time of being born again.
Yeah, I, I have a concern. I have a concern that the gospel message stays clearly presented. I'm concerned at what I'm seeing in the evangelical world concerning the gospel. The things about the gospel message that have not been presented, and things that have been substituted for the clear preaching of the gospel. Now, one of the things that we need to address in the gospel message is what I would like to look at this afternoon, and that is the subject of sin.
You know, too often, I believe we're listening to the gospel message, and we're saying, we're, what I'm hearing, what I'm hearing is, well, if you believe in Jesus, your me- your life will be better, and your marriage will be better, and uh, you know, you do all kinds of good things. It's, it's good for you. Well, the Lord may do that in your life. That's, that's very true. But what are we saved from? Do we listen to, do we hear the old-fashioned word anymore? Do we ask it? Do we hear it?
Are you saved? Are you saved? One of the elders in our home meeting in Holland. I'm not going to get done with this, I'm going to pick it up later. I just look up at the clock, and there's just no way. We'll just, we'll just keep working at it. We'll catch up as the time, as the time goes. That's one of the nice things about having more than one, one shot at it. You can start and hopefully catch up somewhere. One of the elders in our assembly grew up, thought he was okay for heaven, and at thirty five years old, someone asked him this question on the street. He said, calling him by name, he said, are you saved? And this elder who is in our meeting now, his name is Vern, Vern said, saved?
Saved from what? And the, the person that asked him the question told him, saved from sin. What do you mean? And this led to a dialogue which led to, uh, my, this man's conversion. And he looks back at that, and every time he's, every time he stands up to say anything publicly in the meeting, he goes back to that because it was such a dynamic reality in his life that he had lived thirty five years in a religious community, went to church every Sunday, and never heard the fact that he needed to be saved. And that's where we need to start.
Let's read Ezra chapter one, the first five verses. Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, so that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and put it also in writing, saying, Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, the Lord God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he hath charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.
Who is there among you of all his people, his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord God of Israel? He is the God, which is in Jerusalem. And whosoever remaineth in any place where he sojourneth, let the men of his place help him with silver and with gold and with goods and with beasts, beside the freewill offering for the house of God that was, is in Jerusalem. Then rose up the chief of the fathers of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites, with all them whose spirit God had raised, to go up to build the house of the Lord, which is in Jerusalem.
The little phrase that I'm going to use as my handle for the weekend is this little phrase which is used three times in the book of Ezra, here in chapter five verse two and in ten verse six, then rose up. It is a, it is an action. It is the idea of an action. They rose up and they did something. But in each of those scenarios, there is a different story leading up to that word. And what I like to deal with just briefly this afternoon, I'm probably going to end up doing it, finishing it up this evening, is that sin brings distance.
Sin brings distance. The children of God, the children of Israel, had sinned. Their basic sin was idolatry. You know, there are hinges, I think, in Israel's history that I, I think we need to, to see. The very first hinge in Israel's history was in Mount Sinai. And there at the foot of Mount Sinai, before Moses could get down from the mount with the law of God in his hand, Israel had sinned by forming an idol.
The sin was idolatry. They sinned against God, and as a result of that sin, three thousand plus died right there at the foot of Mount Sinai. Later on, hinge number two was at Kadesh Barnea, where Israel failed to go into the land. They sent spies, the spies brought back bad reports, except for Joshua and Caleb, and Israel did not go into the land as they were supposed to go into the land, and for that sin, a generation died in the wilderness. The next hinge was at Ramah under the leadership of Samuel, and Samuel's sons weren't what Samuel was.
Happens. And the children of Israel rejected the leadership of God and desired them a king. They failed at Sinai. By den- by raising up idolatry. They failed at Ca- Kadesh by not believing the word of God. They failed at Ramah by not understanding the leadership of God and desiring a king.
And fourthly, and this is the one we are at here. Go back to two Chronicles chapter thirty six, begin reading at verse fourteen. Moreover, all the chief of the priests and the people transgressed very much after all the abominations of the heathen, polluted the house of the Lord which he had hallowed in Jerusalem. And the Lord God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up quickly and sending because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. But they mocked the messengers of God, they despised his words, they misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people. Notice this next phrase, till there was no remedy.
And the Babylonians had no compassion. Believe me. And thus the children of Israel found themselves because of this, of these sins, the sin of idolatry, the sin of unbelief, the sin of rejecting God's leadership, the sin of turning away from God's word, being raised up by the prophets until there was no remedy, and God cast them out. And here they were in a distant land. Sin brings distance. It still does today.
While they were in the land of Babylon, Jeremiah had told them, believe me, in Jeremiah chapter twenty nine, go down there, build houses, r- raise families, you know, have your gardens, settle in. You're going to be there for seventy years. And so that's exactly what they did. You know how easy it is to settle in when you're away from God? Settle in to just going through the life that you have chosen away from God, at a distance from God.
Somehow you forget it. Synagogue worship starts. You go to the synagogue on Friday night, you go home on Saturday after the synagogue service, you've done your bit, you go home, you raise your families, you do your thing, you have your jobs, you go about thing, and God suddenly becomes a distant figure in your life. You know what? That's happening today in the Church of Jesus Christ. We're rejecting the word of God and the prophets of God. We're rejecting the leadership of God, rejecting the Lord's words, and we're filling our lives with idolatry.
Oh, I know we're not bowing to gods of silver and gold, but we're bowing to gods just the same. The gods of finance, the gods of career, the gods of hedonism. The goals of this world have become the goals of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. You put a believer against a good, hard-working man in the world, and there's precious little difference. Except maybe the believer goes to church on Sunday.
But God... I'm fighting with myself right now, excuse me, because I see it's a quarter till, and I'm not going to go over time. God will not leave us there forever. God will not allow us to stay there indefinitely. There will be a time in our lives individually where God will seek to reach us where we are.
He had a time limit in Israel's day, it was seventy years. And this man, Cyrus, predicted by name by Isaiah in chapter 44, the beginning of chapter forty five of Isaiah, one hundred and fifty years before his birth, the time came when the word of God by the mouth of Jeremiah would be fulfilled, that God began to stir, first of all, the heart of a heathen king. That's amazing to me, by the way. I want to tell you somebody else's heart he stirred that I know of. There was one of God's people down there in Babylon, his name was Daniel.
Now, Daniel hadn't forgotten his God. Daniel had desired to seek the Lord his God and live for him in the midst of the heathen kingdom that he was in. And Daniel happened to be reading the book of Jeremiah. And Daniel happened to know what the rest of the Bible had to say, in at least the Bible in Daniel's time, had to say about what to do. And in Daniel chapter nine, we have Daniel looking at the calendar and saying, you know, the seventy years is about up, and I know exactly what needs to be done. We need to fall on our knees and pray. We need to repent of the sin that we have found ourselves in.
We need to seek God that he might, that we might cast ourselves upon his mercy, that he might deal with us once again. And Daniel poured himself out before his God. Read Daniel nine and Daniel's prayer of confession and repentance. And you know what? Daniel's prayer was answered. God began to work. The Spirit of God began to stir people up. Then rose up.
May we hear the voice of God this weekend. May God's Spirit begin to work in our hearts. May we begin to ask ourselves, am I comfortable living at a distance from God? Am I ready to rise up and go back? We don't have time to finish that. We'll pick it up right there this evening at seven thirty. Father, we just pray that this weekend, that you will speak to our hearts, that you will stir us up, that we will not go home the way we came, that we'll be ready to rise up and go back to build the house of the Lord.
We would ask this in our Savior's name. Amen.