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It comes to my ears, good friends, that in the second session it is more difficult to concentrate than in the first. That, I think, is the result of the tannin in the tea or something. It could be that I'm in part responsible. If, uh, particularly in the first twenty minutes of this session, you feel you need a little bit more refreshed, don't be shy, listen with your eyes shut for a while. You could safely take, say, twenty minutes sleep, because if you wake up after twenty minutes, I shall still be speaking anyway. So feel perfectly free.
These sessions are for hard work, and therefore, without further apology, let's proceed. And we have some unfinished business to do, to think a little bit more about what it means to be human, in the sense that the physical body is an integral part of what it means to be human. In chapters five and six, as we saw in the first session, Paul is dealing with one wrong extreme, the extreme of permissiveness, permissiveness and immorality. In chapter seven, he goes to the other side of the question, and what he is dealing with is the extreme of asceticism.
I want to spend a few moments in this session pointing that out, because it is important to grasp the nature of his logical argument and what he is trying to do in this chapter. He is not just sitting down with a blank sheet, writing the Christian view of marriage. He is writing to correct, in a large part, a wrong idea of marriage that existed among some of the believers in Corinth. And that is shown, if we turn to chapter seven. uh, allow me to point out, it is shown by the way he argues.
For instance, he says in chapter seven verse one, now concerning the things whereof you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. But, you notice that? But. So the first statement, it is good for a man not to touch a woman, is by way of being a concession. On the other hand, it is an idea that has immediately to be qualified. It is good in certain circumstances and with certain people, but... And with that but, Paul proceeds with several other verses, uh, to put the other side of the question.
We'll find the same way of talking in verse eight and nine. I say to the unmarried and to widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I. Admittedly, it's good, but... And then he proceeds to put the other side of the question. So, that is the first point. In chapter seven, he's still dealing with the topic of the human body, the fact that it is male and female. Now he comes to correct the one-sided view of the ascetics.
It is good, he says, for a man not to touch a woman. In saying so, he is somewhat different from traditional Judaism. The rabbis taught that the first commandment in the Bible is to Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. And some of them used to say that if a Batman doesn't get married and remains a bachelor, he is breaking the first commandment in the Bible, you'll see. And if that's all the Bible had to say, you would see that sense was on their side, wouldn't you? Christianity says that, yes, it is good in certain circumstances and for some people not to get married.
Our Lord himself indicated that there are some such to whom it is given, and for the sake of the kingdom of God they remain unmarried. It is good, therefore, but that must immediately be followed by the other side of the question. For the gift of remaining single is not given to everybody. And if you are not given that gift to remain single, then it couldn't be a perilous thing to try and live a celibate life if God hasn't given you the gift.
That can lead to all kinds of temptations and fallings, and in the event, sometimes a disgrace upon the gospel itself. It is the normal thing to get married. Look at verse seven: I would that all men were even as myself. We do not know whether when Paul wrote these words, he was a bachelor, or whether he might not well have been married in earlier life and his wife have died, or indeed whether when he was converted, his wife left him. He suffered the loss of all things you may remember.
So we don't know his exact status. At the time he wrote, of course, he had no wife, and he says, I would that all men were even as I myself. How be it, each man has his own gift from God, one after this manner and another after that manner. And this knocks on the head the false idea that somehow marriage is a rather less thing and not so spiritual, and certainly it reproves the notion that marriage and married love is something bad. That is not so. We shall not stay to consider the verses that talk about those practical things, but let us notice what he says in verse seven.
Yes, I would that all men were like myself. How be it? God has one gift for some. He has a gift for others. One gift to remain single. One gift to be married. And they are both God-given gifts. The word he uses for gift, charisma, is the word that we shall meet again, God willing, when we come to the famous chapters twelve, thirteen, and fourteen of this epistle, where the charismata are the spiritual gifts. It is marvelous that we have spiritual gifts given us of God.
But Paul here does not hesitate to use the very same word as he uses for spiritual gifts to describe, on the one hand, marriage, and on the other hand, celibacy. It is a gift of God to be married, not to be thrown back in his face as though it were some second rate thing or not quite decent. Marriage and all that it involves is a charisma, a gift from God, and not everybody has the same gift. Paul had the gift, therefore, of living as a single man. He would like all people to be like himself for certain reasons, but it's not him to decide.
It is according to the gift that God has given. So does he argue then from verse eight onward when he comes to talk to the unmarried and to the widows. Some never had a husband, some have lost their husbands. It is good for them if they abide even as I, and not either to marry or remarry. But that is a thing impossible for some, because God hasn't given them that, that gift, and they don't have the necessary physical continence. Therefore, let them get married.
And so he follows with practical, uh, a- a- advice that we shall not this evening look into. Let's come now down to verse seventeen, where once more he deals with general principles. Only as the Lord has distributed to each, as God has called each, so let him walk, and so I ordain in all the churches. We come here to the question of God's calling. We are to consider what was our state and condition and situation in life when God called us.
Well, other things being equal, we are to remain in that calling. In other words, you don't have to change. Well, it depends, of course, what your state and condition was. If you're a professional housebreaker, you do have to change, yeah? A lot of things have to get changed when we become believers, but we're talking about this matter of the human body. And as examples, he gives circumcision. Suppose a man is circumcised because he comes of Jewish background, and now he gets called, is saved, and learns that circumcision does not contribute to salvation, not one iota.
And to s- you must be circumcised to be saved is to contradict the gospel. What is the man going to do? Must he take surgical steps, as some people did in the ancient world, to undo their circumcision. No, says Paul. It's neither here nor there. Remain as you are when God calls you. He takes up the matter of slavery. We are all to be devoted to the Lord, and you can imagine a slave saying, well, what am I to do now? I got converted and I've learned that I'm not my own. I'm, I'm bought with the blood of Christ. I, I must be free to serve the Lord.
That means I must run away and not be a slave anymore. No, you mustn't, says Paul. And you needn't. You are not your own, but you don't have to gain freedom from your slavery in order to serve the Lord. You can serve him as a slave. Whatever you do to the Lord, a hoeing of potatoes in the field or whatever, can be done as unto the Lord. In that you have freedom, because even if physically you are a slave, yet are you perfectly free to do your slave work unto the Lord, and from him you will get the recompense when he comes to reign.
And similarly, if when you were called, you were a free man, not a slave, but pray remember that you are a slave in some sense, aren't you anyway? You are the Lord's slave. So whether we are physically slaves or physically free, there is this, uh, similarity. We are both servants to the Lord. There is a great sanity in Paul's attitude to these things. Of course, he says to the slaves, if you can be free, well, use it rather. It is simply that you don't have to be free from physical slavery in order to serve the Lord.
You were bought with a price, don't unnecessarily become bond servants of men. But brothers, says he, let each man wherein he was called, therein abide with God. That's a lovely phrase, isn't it? I could tell you. No, I won't. But if I did. Well, I could tell you without telling you the names, couldn't I? Sometimes our husbands, Christian husbands are there, come to me and say, I wish, brother, I was like you. I'm not going to split on them.
No, no. So long as they turn up to the next meetings. What they mean is they'd like to be, what they imagine, irresponsibly free, you see, to to serve the Lord, you see. But they didn't get converted till they were married. Now they can't undo it, and it grieves them. Shouldn't do, should it? In that calling that you were in when you were converted, stay there with God.
Yes, and then he says, talk- begins to talk about another matter. Now concerning virgins, he says, I have no commandment of the Lord. I give my judgment as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful. I think therefore that this is good by reason of the present distress. It is good for a man to be as he is. Verse twenty eight: but, oh, here he comes again. It is good to remain unmarried, but if thou marry, thou hast not sinned, and if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned. Yet such shall have tribulation in the flesh, and I would spare you.
Now, Paul gives this advice in light of the peculiar circumstances of his own day because of the present distress. He doesn't say what the distress was. He leaves that to our imagination, and we cannot be sure. It may have been that he saw the rising persecution that would come upon the believers, as indeed it did. As Peter warned his fellow Christians in his first epistle about the fiery trial that was about to beset them. And Paul is therefore giving his advice in light of these difficult circumstances that were now surrounding the believers, the present distress.
And he says, in light of that, it would be a good thing if you're not married already, to remain single. And we can think of all kinds of practical reasons why that should be so, isn't it? A man who is res- eh eh eh responsible just for himself, if faced with a trial for his faith and possibly imprisonment. If he's faced at work with a situation that if he confesses the Lord, he'll be out of a job. It's easy for an irresponsible old bachelor, isn't it? It's a very different thing if the man has got a wife and six children.
So for the present distress, you could transfer it to other areas, couldn't you? God calls you, my good brother, to be a missionary to some cannibal tribe in Papua New Guinea or somewhere, and you might be wise to sit down carefully and ponder Paul's advice. Is it really sense to get married and take your wife there and the little children? Or even to leave the wife at home, worried out of her skin every day of the week in case you've gone into the pot of some cannibal and are in the process of being eaten? Might be sense, mightn't it?
Not to get married. But you can't lay it down as a rule, not even for missionaries you can't, can you? If they get married, they haven't sinned. And you will notice the greatness of God's heart. He leaves the decision sometimes freely to us. If you do this, you don't sin. If you do that, you don't sin. You must decide before the Lord. When he comes to verse twenty nine, he does begin to generalize. But I say, brethren, the time is shortened, that henceforth both those that have wives may be as though they had none, and those that weep as though they wept not, and those that rejoice as though they rejoiced not, and those that buy as though they possessed not, and those that use the world as not abusing it, for the fashion of this world passeth away.
Now the lesson becomes general to us all, married or unmarried, in business or not in business. The time for all of us is short, whether you think of the interval between now and the Lord's coming, or whether you think of life itself. The time is short, isn't it? And this certainly it should do, it alters the perspective. Marriage or not marriage, business or not business no longer become the dominant concern. But how I might live to please the Lord becomes dominant.
And how may I, in my circumstances, can I serve God to the best? And that may mean adjustment even in the married home, may it not? For husbands and wives, as what they consider life's major objective. The time is short. You can't do everything in life, and the overwhelming danger is that we get our perspectives wrong, and instead of living primarily to serve the Lord in whatever circumstances God has placed us, we allow other things to become such necessities that they crowd out the service of the Lord.
We haven't the time for everything, which reminds me, when the Israelites came out of, um, uh, uh, Egypt, you know, the first reason why they had to eat unleavened bread was not particularly a spiritual one. The whole thing became spiritualized later on and has served us as a very good spiritual lesson. But the first reason why they had to eat unleavened bread was that they came out in a hurry. They hadn't got the time, the poor ladies hadn't got the time to bake the leavened bread. It was no good. Old Hezekiah saying, wifey, as the thunders and the lightnings came round, you'll see, and the howl of the oxen and the noise and the commotion, and they were going out, wifey, where is my leavened bread?
Oh my dear, I haven't had time to cook it, but I always have leavened bread. Um, yes, I know you do, and I'll get you some as soon as we are. I want it now. I always have leavened bread for breakfast. What? When you're at the beginning of this colossal thing in life, setting out for the great promised inheritance. It's like a man, you know, going on holiday with his wife. He's got one of these special super duper holidays all his career they're going to the Sahara and to the Himalayas, and I don't know where, you'll see. So they're in the airport, half an hour before the flight is called, husband bethinks himself.
Time we had lunch. Now I want fish and chips. Where can we get fish and chips? And wifey says, you can't get fish and chips here, my dear. We're going to be called in half an hour's time. Ah, but I, I always have fish and chips. You do? Yes, but now, now we'll get something on the plane. Will it be fish and chips? No, it won't be fish and chips. I always have fish and chips. But you can't. I must. But you'll lose the plane. I don't care. He's got to have his fish and chips, even though he loses the plane to go to the Sahara and the Himalayas. Yes, you wouldn't do that, would you? Oh, friend, we started on God's great scheme.
There's an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and it fades not away. If you have to go without your fish and chips, go without them, man. You say, what's wrong with fish and chips? Nothing. But God give us a sense of proportion in life. The time is short, this little life will oh how soon be gone, and then the great eternity, and the time is short, be you married or unmarried. God, give us the grace not to let life's ordinary things become so predominant that they obscure life's main purpose, to get ready for the great inheritance ahead.
And with that, he comes back to talk about his motives. I'm not saying all this, he says, to put a lasso round your neck to stop you going ahead and enjoying yourself. What I'm considering is this, so he says, that, uh, uh, I, not that I may cast a snare upon you, but that which is seemly, that you may attend upon the Lord without distraction. If we're going to serve the Lord, then there are seemly ways of serving the Lord and unseemly, aren't there? We are to be ready for the Lord's service, like a servant standing by his master's side.
And we must do it seemly, without distraction. I'm serving the Lord. Half a minute, Lord, I can't start yet. I must have my fish and chips. Is there a way for a servant to serve the Lord. You know, I would serve you, but I've got so many other interesting things to do. You have really. And they can't wait, but the Lord can. I'm thinking how you may serve the Lord without distraction. He's not contradicting what he has earlier said. Husband and wife together can serve the Lord just as equally as the bachelor missionary in some foreign field.
Of course they can. But all concerned, and you take it from me, from no one else, even bachelors will have to order their time and activity as to what is more important and what is less. So that we may serve the Lord without distraction. In my travels, I sometimes see churches that have gone downhill. And sometimes I think it is this, that modern business puts such pressure upon senior men, that their service for God as elders in the church is, well, a little bit hurried and unprepared.
Done when they can do it. They wouldn't serve the head of income tax like it, let alone the Lord. God give us the grace to get our proportions right. And finally he comes to speak, so he says, in verse thirty six, If any man think that he behaves himself unseemly towards his virgin, if need so requires, let him do what he will, he sinneth not, let them marry. Now these verses have created a gray puzzle of interpretation for commentators.
I am going to give you what I think is their true meaning. I am probably wrong. I was perhaps wrong about certain things in the first session. Here I'm probably wrong, but there you are. I speak as to wise people who judge what I say. I personally think that here Paul is talking to a young man, not yet married, but he's begun a friendship with a charming, they're all that way, lady. He suddenly hears some, uh, emotional preacher calling upon him as a redeemed child of God he ought to serve the Lord. And realizing that now if he continues his friendship and, uh, actually gets married, then life's cares and responsibilities will limit him in what he can do, what kind of thing he can do, compared with what would happen if he remained single.
So what must he do? Uh, must he throw the girl over forthwith and at once? Well, no, not necessarily. What he's got to do is to act once more in a seemly fashion. You'll see, here's this good friendship. The girl has got it into her head that they're going to be married one day, and he's enjoyed her friendship, and now he's going to ditch her? Would it be seemly? If the man comes to the opinion that this would be a very unseemly thing to do, unfair in the extreme to the woman whose friendship he has developed and now ditches her against her will.
Then Paul's advice is that they marry. It's not sinful. He hasn't sinned. And they marry. You will notice, won't you, how Paul is constantly here in this chapter rebuking the extremists in Corinth who wanted to lay down rules and regulations far beyond, beyond what the Lord lays down. On the other hand, oh, here he comes again. On the other hand, says Paul, if you can remain single, and you both decide that that is best for the Lord's work, and it's not unseemly and unfair to the girl concerned, then remain single.
The one way is good. This for you would be better. It is God who gives us the gift, isn't it? But you know, it is a thing, young folks, if I may talk to you, for I was young once. It is a thing to be considered, isn't it? In traveling in many mission fields, so very often the question that rises in my heart is, where are the men? Single sisters in countries of great danger and peril, all alone.
Where are the men? Why aren't they there? Perhaps it is because some of them didn't face what Paul is saying here. And so got married, when perhaps they should have remained single. But I mustn't fall into the trap of laying down rules, of course not. But says Paul, now I speak by permission.
I haven't any exact word of the Lord Jesus to quote to you, but I am entrusted, indeed inspired, to give you my opinion as one upon whom God has had mercy and full of compassion. What I desire for you is not to keep you back from enjoyments and joys you could have had, but to help you see what is the best way for you to enter in that supreme joy of knowing that your life counts to its maximum for the Lord Jesus.
These are highly practical things. And I speak conscious of the fact that some of my younger brethren and sisters may be at that time in life when the field is still wide open. Oh, my brother, my sister, do seek seriously what is God's will for your life, that you may embark on it in the assurance it is God's will, and serve him in those circumstances to which he has called you.
But make sure, lest when life is running to its end, you should find yourself saying, I wish I had taken the other road. What I could have done for the Lord. But I missed it. And now we have fifteen minutes, which is enough for a sermon, isn't it, by any standards. Sermon shouldn't last more than fifteen minutes. So, now I'm going to preach a fifteen-minute sermon, just to show I can. And in that time, I shall need, for the day of miracles has not yet passed, to comment on chapters eight, nine, and ten, if you please, in a fifteen-minute sermon.
This will be a, a real example of how it should be done. But as you'll see from the handout you have, or can have at the end of this session, if you haven't it already, the third major part of this epistle, chapters eight, nine, and ten, is concerned, as all the others are, with the gospel and what does it mean to be human? These chapters turn back to the question of man in his relation to God. Chapters one to four, it was man in relation to God, and the question of man's confidence is man's confidence in God or misplaced in other things and people?
Now, as we come back to the topic of man in relation to God, it is not so much a question of man's confidence, but of man's loyalty to God. And if I can impress that on us all tonight, then I have done well in my fifteen minutes. When first we meet chapters eight, nine, and ten, they look at first sight to be rather uninviting and almost irrelevant. Paul is talking about the question of eating meat that has been offered to idols, a matter that vexed the early Christians, but of course doesn't vex you and me.
We get our meat at Stewart's supermarket or somewhere else, and there's no question of it having been offered to idols. The matter doesn't arise. You don't keep an idol shelf in your lounge, sir? Of course not. And so the whole question of idols is irrelevant, you see. Nothing to do with us. Before we come to that alarming decision that is nothing whatsoever to do with us, let us observe what the question is. It is a question of idolatry. And what's wrong with idolatry? Why? Because there is only one true God, but there are many little gods that try their best to compete with him.
And number one, number one, absolutely fundamental condition of what it means to be human is that we should be loyal to God. Let loyalty to God be compromised, then we are compromising the very basis of our existence. It is as serious as that. You gather that from the Ten Commandments, don't you? Thou shall have no other gods but me. You gather it from the very, uh, elementary statement of what's involved in conversion.
one Thessalonians and one, you turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God, far from being irrelevant. This is a very fundamental principle of our human being, loyalty to God. So when it came to this practical question, was it all right to eat meat offered to idols, many of the Corinthians took the view that they knew what the answer to that was. It was simple. An idol, bit of an old wood or stone or something, sat there on its perch.
It's a nothing. And if the meat is offered in front of it, it doesn't do any harm to the meat. So there's nothing wrong in eating thing- meat offered to idols. And so far they were right. They knew the facts. But Paul from the outset warns them, be careful, for knowing the facts is one thing, loving the Lord is another. Oh, my good friend, you can have your head full of theology. You see, and not really love the Lord.
You would have your head full of theology, and some liberals have, but they're not loyal to God. The supreme thing is not just knowing the facts, for knowledge in that sense puffs up, but love edifies. If a man loved God, then he gets to know God and is known by God. Love and loyalty. See it work out in practice. You have freedom of conscience to eat meat offered to idols. Very good, carry on. But here is a dear brother, and perhaps converted out of heathendom, to him an idol is a very powerful reality.
He has a conscience, therefore, about eating meat offered to idols. You come along, and with your freedom, you overpower him. He's perhaps a timid kind of fellow. He doesn't like to offend you. You invite him to your dinner party, you've got all this meat, you'll see, and he doesn't like to offend you by refusing it, but in his heart of hearts, he has a conscience. He feels it would be disloyal to the Lord to eat this meat, but he daren't object. You overpower him and say, oh, come on, eat it, man. And he eats it all the while with a conscience that has been disloyal to the Lord.
Oh, my dear friend, if you do that. Oh, if you do that, you make your fellow Christian do something that he believes in his heart is disloyal to the Lord. Whatever shall the poor man say when he gets before the Lord? My good sir, why did you eat that? Did you think it was wrong? Yes, Lord, I thought it was wrong. Well, why did you eat it then? Well, Gooding said. And shall not the Lord, with all his imperial dignity, say, who is Gooding? How can it be loyalty to the Lord on my part to influence a brother or sister to go against his conscience and do something that he feels is disloyal to the Lord.
Oh, that's oh, but I've got my rights. I'm free to eat the meat. I'm not going to have my, my, my freedom hemmed in by some little quirky believer like that. I see. You asking me to forego my rights? I haven't got far, have I? If I don't realize, if I haven't yet realized, it is one of the great privileges given to every child of God to forego his rights, and to develop the idea that I stand on my rights, I'm not going to give up my rights, is in the end a very perilous thing.
Paul takes his own example. I have a right, you know, when I go around preaching, to be paid for it by the church. I don't accept the money. Why not? Well, I want to be able to preach the gospel without charge, you'll see. Uh, when I go to these different places, if they're Jews, as far as I can, consistent with true Christianity, I live as a Jew. If they're Gentiles, I live as a Gentile. I cog in with their culture. May not be an enjoyable experience, but I do cog in with their culture.
Why do you do that, Paul? Why don't you stand for your own rights, my boy? Well, don't be stupid, says he. I'm wanting to win the most people possible in the gospel. If I stand on my cultural rights, I can't be able to win so many people. And I'm thinking of the day when I stand before Christ. Oh, how silly my little rights will look then. I want to see the maximum amount of people there that I won for the Lord as my eternal reward. And for that reason, I give up my rights. And I'll tell you another reason, says Paul.
Very dangerous attitude, that to stand on your rights. It can so easily topple over before you're aware of it into lack of discipline and self-indulgence, the slippery road that leads to sorrow. I discipline my body, says Paul, I beat it black and blue, lest having preached to others, I become so self-indulgent and in my private life live inconsistently, and in danger when it comes to the day of reward of being disqualified.
And it comes home to our hearts, doesn't it? You see, idolatry is a much more subtle thing than you might think. We, like Israel, are on a journey. And when Israel were on their journey, they were tested. And the thing they were constantly tested about was this: would they be loyal to God? And so many of them failed the test. Be assured, my fellow believer, that on our journey home, we shall be tested.
And the thing that will be tested is our loyalty to God. Paul cites some examples. Now these things were our examples, he says, to the intent that we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. They also desired. You know, desire is a very important part of our makeup, isn't it? A very powerful motor is desire. It's like those motors in self-propelled rockets that have a gadget in them that they follow the target.
Wherever the target moves to, they follow the target until they are drawn right onto the target. So is desire. Desire God and his things. Lay up your treasure in heaven so that really gets hold of your heart, and the very desire will pull you to heaven, pull you to God. Desire unworthy things, and those desires will pull you to those unworthy things. How are the Israelites on their way to Egypt? They got tired of the old manna.
It became breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner, supper, manna. He said, we remember the cucumbers and the garlic, you know, we had in Egypt. Pity they didn't remember the taskmasters as well. And they lusted after evil things. You mustn't be surprised that when they got to the promised land, they found they hadn't got a taste for that. And refused to go in. Oh, my dear brother, you suppose you're going to enjoy heaven when you get there? Have you really got a taste for heaven?
And for God? Well, that will come out in your taste now, won't it? Beware of your desires, says Paul, lest you let your desires uncontrolled, standing on your rights, as you call it, pull you back into this evil world, instead of pulling you up to God and the glorious inheritance. Neither be idolaters as some of them, as it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to pray.
That is the story of the golden calf, as you remember. Israel were on their journey, they came to Sinai. God put a proposition to them. I brought you to myself, now if you'll have it, you'll be my peculiar treasure, a kingdom of priests to me. And what is more, says God, if you will have it, I will come and dwell with you in the tabernacle which I should like you to make. Would you like that? They said, yes, Lord, we'd like that very much. Righto, says God. Uh, I'll get Moses to come up the mountain, and I'll give him the model to follow to make, uh, the tabernacle, so that when he's made it, I can come and dwell among you, do you see, and walk with you on your road to your great inheritance.
They said that was jolly good. So they sat at the bottom of the mountain, do you see? And a week went by. Well, that was it. Somewhere was it about the middle of the next fortnight, I don't know when it was, when suddenly some young man, I suspect he had a PhD to start with, at least that, for he suddenly observed his fellow man. Do you know, he says, have you noticed what a funny position we're in? No, said the other chap. What position are we in? Well, he said, I mean, look around you, chap. Here we are in the middle of a wilderness, landscape like a moon, sitting at the bottom of a mountain, do you see, hmm, twiddling our thumbs, getting nowhere fast.
There's not nothing to do with your life like this, sitting around here. Oh, but Moses has gone up the... Yeah, I know he's gone up there, but can't see him, can you? No means of support when he went up. Could have been eaten by a, a mountain leopard or something. Oh, but he's coming again. Oh, tell that to Marines. They said that three weeks ago. He hasn't come back yet. And you can't, he said, you know, I mean, all sense have hundred thousand of folks, three or four hundred folks sitting around twiddling their thumbs, and life is going by, getting nowhere.
Well, what do you suggest? Well, he said, having been to Harvard School, you want an aim in life, do you see? Oh yes, we do. Well, what shall it be? So they all got around to Aaron, and they said, look here, Aaron, we've had enough of this, this Moses, we don't know what's happened to him, and the God he represents, well, who knows, do you see? And all this business of an inheritance out there, none of us has ever seen it yet. You see, you must be realist in this life. So look, come on, Aaron, they said, make us, we want a different, a definite different goal to aim at. Make us gods to go before us. You've got to have something going before you, haven't you? You've got to aim at something in life, I mean, otherwise you go around in circles getting nowhere.
What kind of a god would you like to aim at, said Aaron? I mean, have you any ideas? Well, they hadn't particularly. So they said, what about your earrings? Well, they said that would be an idea. So they got their earrings and made a god out of them. That's a very funny thing to aim at, isn't it, earrings? You see, should under- you should understand that in the ancient world, where there were no banks, people put their spare cash into golden ornaments and wore it on their persons, you see. It was their spare cash that represented life's financial potential, that they now made a god to go before them and follow it.
And God, he nearly destroyed the whole lot of them. They don't want me. They can have the gold. It was through Moses' intercession that they were spared many of them. But it was near disaster. And these things are written as examples for us. What are my goals in life? Are my goals set by love of the Lord and loyalty to him?
Is that my chief concern in my job? Is that my chief concern in my home? Or could it be that sometimes lesser ambitions come to take the place that only God should have. Oh, may God help me. Who knows the heart. How often must I say, Lord, I knowst that I, at least I meant to love you.
But Lord, it's so easy to wander and have misplaced goals. If loyalty to God is the basic thing of what it means to be truly human and what it means to be truly redeemed, oh, may God help us to love him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, that through our pilgrimage, the desires of our heart may keep our compass needle firmly on God.
So will he bring us through the desert and bring us home without regret to his glory. Shall we pray? O God, we thank thee for thy word, for the joy of studying it, and the opportunity so to do in freedom. As we go, we praise thee for our redemption and the magnificence of thy grace. Help us now, we beseech thee, for these things are so easily said.
Grant us, Lord, to live consistently therewith. And here is all our hope, not only in the reality of the inheritance that lies ahead, but in the magnificent wonder that thou, blessed Lord Jesus, has designed to dwell even in our bodies. Be thou Lord, we pray, and life's glory here, so leading us to the glory that lies beyond, for thy name's sake.
Amen. And I finished in twenty two minutes, and that's not bad for a beginner, is it?
