That's such a blessed thing,
to know Christ. A lot of people know a lot of
things about Him. They can tell you about the incarnation, tell
you about His virgin birth. They can tell you a lot about
Him. But, boy, to describe Him, try
to describe a person, and talk about a person, and who that
person is, and what that person did, what he accomplished, who
he accomplished it for, and where he is now. Oh, to know Christ. Paul said, I want to know Him.
I want to know Him. I want to win Him. I want to
be found in Him. And that's what I wanted. I want
to be found in Christ. I want to be found in Christ.
All right, here in Job chapter 4, I'm going to start reading
here at verse 12 and go to the end of the chapter. and say a
few things. Now a thing was secretly brought
to me, and mine ear received a little thereof. In thoughts
from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men,
fear came upon me in trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before my
face. The hair of my flesh stood up.
It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof. An
image was before me. There was silence, and I heard
a voice saying, Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall
a man be more pure than his maker? Behold, he puth no trust in his
servants, and his angels he charged with folly. How much less them
that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust,
which are crushed by the moth. They are destroyed from morning
to evening. They perish forever without any
regarding it. Doeth not their actually which
is in them go away? They die even without wisdom. Eliphaz, you remember they sat
for seven days and nights and didn't say anything. And then
Job spoke and Job, Job wanted to, wished he had never been
born. wished he had died as a child or an infant, because of all
the grief. I mean, he had grief. They saw
his grief was great. And Job talked, and Eliaphaz,
he's still talking. He's the first one to talk, to
tell Job some things about, to himself. And here's the difference. These three men that were Job's
comforters, and you gotta get a hold of this, and even we'll
see it tonight, that these men had natural religion. And natural
religion says is if you do good, God will do good to you. If you
got sin in your life, then God's gonna treat you bad. And that's
the long and short of it. And that's why preachers are
always preaching us, you better quit your sinning, you better
get out, you better quit your sinning, you better live right,
you better pay your tithes, you better do all these things to
keep God from getting angry with you if God mistreating you. And
preachers, they always think and believe that if there's something
wrong in your life, it's because you've got sin in your life. And that's natural religion.
But the wisdom of God says that Christ put away sin once and
for all by the sacrifice of himself. He has perfected forever them
that he sanctified. And as Houston prayed tonight,
said, when God looks at us, he don't see us, he sees his son.
We sing that song in his righteousness be found. And that's where God
sees us in the righteousness of Christ. And he sees us that
way every day, 24 hours a day from the day we trusted Christ.
That's the way he views us. Now we don't view ourselves that
way. That's why we keep coming here in the gospel. Because we
want to hear that over and over and over again. That we stand
perfect and complete in Christ. Not gonna be, we do right now.
We do right now. But Eliaphaz, he's still talking.
And I want to talk tonight about a spiritual world. He had a spirit
come before him. And there's a spiritual world.
And I'm going to talk about a spiritual world tonight. Eliaphaz still
talking to Job. It's the first time any of his
friends have spoken to Job, and Eliphaz is still talking. And
Eliphaz, he relates a vision to Job that he had. And there's
three things we need to see here about a spiritual world. A spiritual
world. You know, and like I said, if
you're righteous, and you act righteous, God will treat you
righteously. If you do bad, God will treat
you bad. But first of all, I want to make, I want to tell you that
there is a spiritual world. There's a spiritual world around
us right this moment, right this moment in time. Look what he
says, the world is unseen. He says there in verse 12, there
was a thing secretly brought to me, and I received, I received. Mine ear received the little,
and he says, and in the thought, the vision of the night, when
deep sleep, fear came upon me, a spirit passed before me. It
stood still. He had a spiritual experience
here, and you notice all those are small case letters, so he's
not talking about the Spirit of God. There's an unseen world
around us right now. You know, when Job, when Satan
came to God, and God asked him what he was doing, that was a
spiritual world, that was a spiritual world going on, that nobody,
Job didn't see it, Job's wife didn't see it, Job's family didn't
see it, nobody saw it, what was going on in that spiritual realm
between God and Satan. He didn't know what was going
on. There's a spiritual world out there. And let me show you
something. You keep Job, but I want you to look over with
me in 2 Corinthians chapter 10. 2 Corinthians chapter 10. And you know, it's a spiritual, spiritual
world we live in. And the scriptures tells us that. In chapter 10, in verse 3. And oh, here's a spiritual world
now. He said, for though we walk in the flesh, we're in this body,
we're walking in this flesh right here. We're in a war, but it's
not a war with the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare
are not carnal, not natural, but mighty through God to the
pulling down of strongholds. What kind of strongholds? Satanic
strongholds. Evil strongholds. Imaginative
strongholds. and casting down imaginations
or reasonings, these things that goes on in our mind. And he brings
every high thing, things that exalts itself against God and
the knowledge of God, the scriptures. And he exalts himself against
the knowledge of God, bringing, he comes down and brings into
captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. And that's
what is in, let me show you another one in Ephesians 6, 12. Let me
show you another one over here. Look there in Ephesians 6, 12. For we wrestle not against flesh
and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers
of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness
in high places. And I tell you, that's what he
says, there's spiritual wickedness going on around us. And you know,
he said that the spirit of the prince of the pair of the air
that worked in the spirit of the children of disobedience. Now, I'll tell you something.
You see a spiritual world in the scriptures. There are angels,
fallen angels, there's good angels. There's devils. Our Lord come
to a man one time and said, what is your name? He said, my name's
Legion. What do you mean? He said, there's so many of them,
I'm like a legion. I'm like a whole, I'm like a
legion of, I'm just a legion like they are in the Roman Empire.
I'm a legion. So many devils was in him. And
I tell you our Lord Jesus Christ, when they come to get him, to
bring him out of the garden, he said, you never took me when
I was in the temple. You never laid hands on me when
I was in the temple teaching. But now, your hour has come,
and the power of darkness. He said, that power of darkness,
it belongs to you. So a darkness has spiritual war
going on there. And I tell you something, this
material world that we see, it has a material world, a world
you can touch, taste, handle, and feel. It's gonna all pass
away. It's gonna pass away. And it'll
all wear out. But you know two things that'll
go on forever and ever and ever? Heaven, And hell, they both will
go on forever. And man, I tell you, man has
the capacity to communicate with the spiritual world. Now how
in the world are we talking about that? Well, here we are, we're
trying to commune with God tonight. God is a spirit, and they that
worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. But you
can't worship a spiritual being without being made spiritual
yourself. You can't commune with God unless you have the nature
of God in you. You can't talk to God unless
you've got the nature of God in you. And so we're able to
communicate with the Spirit. When we communicate with God,
we're communicating with the Spirit. We don't see Him. We only hear Him through His
Word. But yet we commune with Him. We speak to Him and He speaks
to us. Now, how does that happen? How
do we commune with the world that's up there? How do we commune
with a Christ that sits at the right hand of God? How do we
commune with God who is pure spirit and inhabits eternity?
You have to be made spiritual. Well, how are you made spiritual?
By a new birth. By a new birth. That's what he
told Nicodemus. He said, Nicodemus, you must
be born again. Oh, how in the world can that
happen? He said, the Spirit comes. The
Spirit of God comes. He must be born from above. And
he blows where he listeth. And you hear the sound of it
and you see the effects of it. But there's a world, an unseen
world going on around us. And man has the capacity to commune
with the spiritual world. And he can receive and feel from
the spiritual. Now, Eliaphaz here had the capacity
to receive what the Spirit said. Look what he said in verse 13,
12 and 13. He said, now a thing was secretly
brought to me. And listen to what he said here.
My ear received just a little bit. My ear received just a little. What I got out of this thing
that happened to me, I got just a little bit. He said, my ear
heard just a little. Just a little. My ear did. And he's laying there, and the
Spirit woke him up. Now a thing was secretly brought
to me. And it woke him up. My ear heard just a little bit.
And I tell you, the man who receives the most, he receives just a
little. Just a little. Now God speaks freely. You know
God speaks to speaks to man every single day. Every single day,
every person on the face of the earth, God speaks to them. How
does He do it? Well, let me show you Psalm 19,
I'll show you. Psalm 19, let me show you how
He speaks to the world every day. Don't forget this, God speaks
to the human race every day, and this is why they're left
without an excuse. This is why they're left without
an excuse. And the spiritual world's all
around us and we receive so little of it. The heavens declare the
glory of God. The firmament shows his handiwork.
We look up and we see the stars, sun, the moon, and all the glory
of God's up there. Oh, we see God's glory making
all the constellations. And here we look at the front
of him, we look at the earth and all it is, and you know he's
made the Grand Canyon. He's made them redwood trees
out in California that almost, you know, two of them would,
I mean they're over 300 feet high and 12 feet wide and takes
10 people to go around them. He creates them, and you can't
see. They're just incredible. He makes those things. And how
you look at that, and you look at His handiwork. And then you're
His handiwork. And then He says, day under day,
He speaks. He preaches. Night under night,
shows the knowledge of God's glory and God's handiwork. Every
day, utters it. He's speaking. He's preaching.
And there's not a speech, wherever there is, there's not a language
in this earth where God does not speak, where His voice is
not heard. And I tell you what, when you
get up every day, God's speaking. He speaks to this whole world
through His own creation. That's why men are without excuse.
And so we're like children. We can only take a little bit
at a time. Now I know some of you, and you're like I am, on
Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening, you get a little tired. You know,
you watch ball games and different things, whatever you do on Sunday
afternoon, take a nap or whatever, but you get tired. You get tired. And you know why? That's why
you receive just a little bit. Now when you're fresh and the
Lord's blessing, I mean, you can take a whole bunch, but you
know when you leave, you know how little you remember. It's
that moment, it said, my brain's like a sieve, said a lot goes
into it, but a whole bunch leaks out before I get to the house. But oh my, we know in part, is
what Paul said. Now we looked through a gasp
darkly. And you know how long the apostles spent, three years
with the Lord Jesus Christ, and they knew so little, just so
little, after three years with him. And a couple of times they
had said something, and they was afraid to ask him what he
meant. And then after he resurrected, and after he appeared to them
several times, they said, then they remembered the words of
the Lord Jesus. So I mean, we just get a little
tired. And I tell you, you can feel spiritual communications.
You can feel it. Look what he says down here in
verse 14 through 16. And he said, fear come on me.
He said, fear come on me. The thoughts and visions of the
night, when deep sleep, fear came on me. Trembling came on me. And I got
so scared that I felt like my bones were shaking. This is figurative
language. His bones didn't really shake. But what he's saying is,
I felt like I was trembling all over. Like it made my whole bones
to shake. And then he says, then a spirit
passed before my face. It just passed by. And the hair on my flesh stood
straight up. And it stood still, that spirit
stood still. But I couldn't tell what it looked
like. He said, I couldn't tell what it looked like. I know there
was an image before my eyes, there was silence and I heard
a voice say, you know man has a heart, here's the thing, man
has a heart as well as a head. One that can cause great joy,
great fear, and all kinds of emotions. And he was contacted
by this spirit here, whatever this spirit was. I don't know
if it was an angel, I don't know what it was. It don't tell us,
it's just a spirit passed by. A spirit come among him, a spirit
come, and it shook him up, it really shook him up. And I've
heard, you know, I'd rather, I can get to your head, I can
get to your ears, I can get to your understanding with words
that I say. And you can read and you can
understand the words that you read. But to be got to the heart,
only the Spirit of God can get to a person's heart. Only God
can get to a heart. Only the Spirit can get to a
heart. I can get to the head, but the Spirit... And old Scott
Richardson used to say all the time, quick, don't preach to
my head, preach to my heart. My heart, because our heart,
our heart, that's where we feel the joy. Our heart's where we
feel the fear. That's heart where we have all
these different emotions that go all over the place, all over
the place. And spiritual impressions often
come upon us unexpectedly. Look what he said in verse 13.
In thoughts from the vision of the night, in the night, he was all alone.
The house was locked up. Nobody could get in. But he had
thoughts. And these thoughts woke him up.
And he had a vision. And then this spirit comes. He's
all alone and the spirit comes. And how often during the night,
I'm sure this has happened to you many a times, that you woke
up in the night and spiritual thoughts came into your mind. and it come on you suddenly.
I wake up and the first spiritual thoughts that I have is I ask
the Lord please to have mercy and then I start thinking of
other people. I think if I'm up in the middle of the night
and my eyes are open and I'm sitting there and I'm thinking,
I start wondering if Bruce is awake. I start wondering if somebody
else is awake, what they're going through. If they're able to sleep,
what's going on in their heart, what's going on in their mind?
So these visions that we have, they wake us up, these things
wake us up, and they get us because of our thoughts. And it comes
on a sudden when we wake up, and thoughts start coming into
our mind. Spiritual thoughts come into our mind. Spiritual
thoughts. And nothing can keep them out. No, not walls can keep them out,
not locks can keep them out, sleep can't even shut out a thought. You see, God knows man, and God
can break into a man's thoughts at any time, any time. Stan was telling us back in the
study this evening, he walked outside, and walking around outside,
He said, boy, if he said all of a sudden, it's just a thought
come to me, just a flash in my mind that God's sovereign. God broke in his mind, broke
in his heart. Ah, God's sovereign. That's a good thought, ain't
it? That's a good thought to wake up to in the night, ain't
it? God knows man, he can break into
his heart, thoughts, and mind just like that, just like that.
And I tell you what, I don't know how many times I've been
preaching or been in the service, and your daddy was as bad about
it as anybody I've seen about it. He'd get a thought, and he'd
hear me say something, he'd get a thought, he'd get a piece of
paper, he'd just write it down, forget anything else I said,
he had to write down that thought. Had to write down that thought. I don't know if I've ever seen
him write it down or not. But he'd do that. But that's
what I'm talking about. When you get spiritually impressed,
God impresses something on you spiritually. And here, the greatest
spiritual impression he can make on a soul in this world is to
impress him that he needs Christ. The greatest impression God can
make on a man's heart, make on a man's mind, make on a man's
soul, is how desperately he needs Christ. And God gets a man to
make him understand that I ain't got no ability, I got no rights,
I got no works, I got no worth, I got no merit, I ain't got nothing. So how shall I appear before
God? And if God will impress that
on a man, that's the greatest impression God will ever make
on a man. And when he makes that impression on a man's mind and
heart, it'll stay there all the days of his life. Ain't that
right? It'll never leave. It'll never
leave. And I'm so thankful. Now I tell
you what, God knows man. He can scare a man, he can terrify
a man, he can terrify a soul, or he can bring such blessed
peace and assurance. And look what he said here now.
I think it's in, yeah, he said in verse 15. The Spirit passed
before my flesh and the hair of my flesh stood up. Now I'm
gonna tell you something here, you know, He's having this vision
here. I don't think it's a vision from
the Lord because it terrified him so bad that his flesh stood
up. Now when God speaks to a man,
like we sung, that's be still. When God deals with a man, He
gets him quiet. He gets him still. And he ain't
gonna scare you to death and make the flesh rise up on you.
He's not gonna do that. He's gonna bring quietness and
peace and assurance. And so I believe that Eliaphas
here shows that he was in his proper state before God. He's
a depraved creature. And then look what he says. Man's
character, I'll tell you this second thing, that's the first
thing we learn. A man can commune with the spiritual world, and
man's character will determine what spiritual world he'll live
in, he'll exist in. You know, when the Spirit of
God come through our Lord Jesus Christ, what He does is He takes
the things of Christ and He shows them unto us. That's the difference
you can tell between the Spirit of Christ and another spirit.
But he said here, you know, the spirit came before Eliphaz and
shows man's depravity and distance from God. He said it stood still
in verse 16. He said it stood still, huh? Stood still. And then he brought
this question to his mind. This is what this vision brought
to his mind. Shall a mortal man be more just
than God? Shall a man be more pure than
his maker? Behold, God puts no trust in
his servants, and his angels he charged with folly. And what
he's telling us here is, is that he found out that, and he thinks
Job was a mortal man, thinking himself more just than God, and
a man more pure than his maker. But the Lord God Almighty is
infinitely, infinitely greater than any angel or anything that
happens in this world is infinitely greater. You know, even the angels
obey Him. They move and move at His beck
and call. And man is inferior to angels. He says he puts no trust in his
servants and in his angels, he's charged with folly. Before God
and man, And this is what we're dealing with. We're dealing with
God. I wish people really, really, really understood that. We're
dealing with God. We're before God. Sitting here
right now in the presence of God. God Almighty, who inhabits eternity. And God, before God Almighty,
man is not accepted by anything that he's ever done in this world.
I don't care how wealthy he gets. I don't care how much he knows.
I don't care if he's a genius. I don't care if he's an Einstein.
It doesn't make any difference. Before God, he's nothing. Nobody's just before
his Maker. Unless God makes them just. And
no man is purer than his Maker. And I tell you that He charged
His angels with folly, charged them with foolishness. So how
can a man be just then before his Maker? Do you all remember years and
years and years and years ago, when I first learned the Gospel,
and we was over in that little building, And we had, remember
we partitioned it off on one side because it was so cold and
we built us a wall on one side and we had about three or four
or five pews in this one side of this little building. And
God began to teach me the gospel. And for two solid years, all
I preached on was how in the world could God Be just and have
anything to do with a bunch of miserable, blind, God-hating,
Christ-rejecting sinners like us. How could He have anything
to do with us at all? How could He be just and still
save us? How can He be holy and still
save unholy people? How can he be just and take a
sinner, and justify that sinner, and take away his sin, and make
him acceptable to his God? How in the world can that happen?
That's something I never got over. That here, beloved, we
stand, and Job said, he asked this question, how can a man
be purer than his maker? How can he be just with his God? How can we, with our sin, with
our imaginations, with our words, with our actions, with our coldness,
our deadness, and our lifelessness, and our lethargy, how can we
be just with God? God made a way, bless His holy
name. And that way, that way, He said,
I made a way. I've got the wisdom to do it
and I've got the power to do it. He said, where's the wisdom
at? He said, my son. Where's the
power at? He said, my son. I'm going to
show you how wise I am. I'll send my son made of a woman
and I'll send him into this world made of that woman. And he'll
grow up as a child and he'll grow up as a man. And He'll be
a sinless man, a holy man, a perfect man, a God man. And He said,
and I'll take and show you my wisdom. I'll take all your sin,
all your transgressions, and I'll put them on Him. I'll charge
Him with them. He doesn't charge His angels
with folly, but He charged His Son with sin. And oh bless his name, Christ
willingly went to that cross and took that sin upon himself.
And he took that sin upon himself and he died for that sin, put
that sin away once and for all. And now, by the very wisdom and
power of God, through the power of the gospel, through the power
of Christ dying, through the power of his blessed word, through
the power of the Holy Spirit, God comes and he takes what Christ
did, what Christ accomplished when he said it's finished, and
he brings that news to us and tells us that the you believe
my son, You trust my son that put your sin away. You trust
my son who's got the power. You trust my son who bore your
sin. You trust my son who died in
your room and place. You trust him and you know what
I'll do? I'll justify you and clear you of every sin you've
ever committed. I'll put every single one of
them away. And you know what? I won't remember them anymore.
I won't remember them ever again. He said, I tell you what I'm
going to do. He said, I'm going to make you
perfect. I'm going to make you without spot, and I'm going to
make you without blemish. I'm going to make you unreprovable
and unblameable in my sight. And the only way that I can do
that is through my son. Oh, my. Let's just quit and go. That's the most glorious news
you'll ever hear in your life. And for God to put that on you
and impress that on you? Oh my. Oh my. That's why we gotta be, we must
be born again. Oh my. The Lord Jesus is the
only person that can make a man acceptable to God Almighty. He's
the only one that can take us to the place where the spirits
of just men are made perfect into innumerable company of angels.
And I tell you, I started preaching at, back in late 77, somewhere
in 78. And you all remember that, those
two years, I mean, we just, all we'd do is just sit and cry,
just sit and cry. I'd preach a while and we'd cry
a while, preach a while and cry a while. Found out we was God's
elect and we were just absolutely overwhelmed. Every time you mentioned
election, oh Lord, thank you. As you know, I'll tell you something.
We ain't got over it yet. After all these years. Dirk turned
60 today. Started coming when he was 17
years old. Turned 18 when he started coming. So he's been
with us. You've been with us all these
years. Kim has. Pam has. Oh my goodness, Marlene
has. 42, soon to be 43 years. And he's still sitting back there
listening. She still comes and listens.
That's amazing, ain't it? And I say the same things over
and over. But let me show you this. And
this is my last point. This is my last point. So there
is a spiritual world. A spiritual world that is full
of men, angels, and devils. And I'm so thankful that God
rules this world. He even rules the devils. He
does. Oh, Lord, don't let them lead
you. He said, don't cast us out. Don't cast us out. We ain't got
no place to go. He said, get in them hogs right
there then. And the hogs went crazy. The
only place a devil can live is in a man. He can live in a man. And I've seen lots of people
say, well, have you ever seen anybody that's a devil? I have.
I really, really, truly have. And I know you have too. You
just start thinking about some of the people you've met in your
life and some of the things they said, some of the way they act. But let me get hurried up here.
Now look how much. Now we're going to talk about
man's earthly state. We just have a very temporary
existence. Look in verse 19. If God puts
no trust in His servants and His angels, He's charged with
foolishness or put light in them. How much less, then, them that
dwell in houses of clay, whose foundations in the dust, which
are crushed before the moth, they are destroyed from morning
to evening, they perish forever without any regard. You know,
how much less are they that dwell in houses of clay, We is made out of dust, and dust
will go. That's what he said in Genesis
3. He said, I got four men out of the dust, and to the dust
shall he return. Do you know we live in a house of clay? Our
house, I want you to look with me over here in 2 Corinthians
5. Let's look at there again. 2
Corinthians 5 with me. Talking about these earthly houses.
These earthly houses. And he says, you know much less
man that dwells in houses of clay. And that's why we are just
our foundations in the dust. We dwell in houses of clay and
we're crushed before the moth. These bodies are just a house.
And that's what it tells us right here. For we know that if our
earthly house This tabernacle were dissolved. We have a building
of God and house, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Now, beloved, our body and spirit
are intimately connected. Now, let me see if I can explain
this. I live in this house. This house,
though, is not me. This house right here is not
me. No more than the house I live in is not me. It's a place to
dwell. And this house is not me. Me, it's a house that I have to live
in until it's destroyed. But I have a spirit and a soul
inside this house. And this earthly house is going
to be dissolved. He said going back to the dust.
It's going to cease to be. But what are we looking for?
We're looking for a heavenly house. It says a house that God
made. Look what it says here. A house
not made with hands. That means that we God made man
out of dust, but this house that God makes for us, it's not made
with hands. You know what He says? Come forth, and we're coming
out of the grave. There's going to be a resurrection
one of these days, and we're going to have a body that God
made, a new body. Oh, and that's why we're groaning.
That's why, oh Lord, let us, let's get this thing over with.
We earnestly desire to be clothed upon with our house. That's from
heaven. And I tell you, why do we want
to be clothed upon with that house from heaven? If so being,
so that being clothed, we shall not be found naked. We won't
be found naked. We're not naked now. We won't
be found naked then. For in, that in this tabernacle,
this body, we've grown. Being burdened, being burdened
with sin, being burdened with life, being burdened with all
this troubles that goes on. Not for that we will be unclothed,
but clothed upon that mortality by be swallowed up in life. I'm
gonna change, I'm gonna change one of these days. You know, if I come visit you
at your house, I'm going to leave your house, but you'll still
be there. And I'm going to leave this house,
but I'll still be. You understand what I'm saying?
You get that? I'm going to leave this house, but I'll still be
me. I'll leave your house, and you'll
still be in your house. But I'll leave this house. Oh
my. I tell you, this body is going
to turn to dust. Death is just changing houses,
that's all it amounts to, just changing houses. We change from
this house of clay to a house made with God, God making it.
This body is just a partition between us and perfection, between
a perfect world or damnation. And it's inevitable. Look what
it says. Back over here in Job. How much
less them that dwell in houses of clay. Houses of clay. You notice this doesn't say houses
of brass. Don't say houses of iron. Not
houses made out of hard rock. Clay! Clay! Exposed to all the elements of
nature. Sun hardens it. Rain softens
it. And this foundation is not rock,
it's dust. It's dust. The house of clay
comes out of the dust. And oh, it doesn't take a great
force to tear it down. Look what it says there. You
talk about how frail we are. Look what it says. Whose foundation
is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth. A little old
moth crushed. That's how frail we are. And then this is constantly progressing. It just keeps on going. You know, these houses are getting weaker
and frailer and weaker and frailer and older and older and older
until one of these days you're going to wear a plum out. Look
what it says here. It says they are destroyed from morning to
evening. I mean it just, Paul said I die daily. You know, this
body is going, just get destroyed every day, every day from morning
to evening. You know, there's no pause from
this decay. Oh my. There's change and decay all
around I see, thou that changest not, abide with me. There's no
pause for the decay. Every second, every minute of
every day, We're moving toward that next world. And we can't stop one moment
of it. From morning to evening. Every
day, another day older, another day older, another day older,
another day older. And that's from morning to evening. And it ain't bothering me. It
ain't bothering me a bit. The only place you'd see how
old I am is looking at my neck. I'd only look old in my neck.
I'd look younger. So that's why I keep this button
up. I tell you, if we can laugh together,
we can cry together, can't we? But that is, there's no pause
from it. We see it. We see decay coming around us.
Our bodies get weak. Our bodies get frail. We get
sicknesses and it's harder to get over them. And it don't stop
for a moment. It don't stop for a moment. And
oh my. And I tell you, after it's happened,
after it's happened, look what it says. They are destroyed from
morning to evening. They perish forever without any
regard. You know, when we leave this
world, what he's saying is, it's just hardly anybody pays any
attention to it. Hardly anybody pays any attention
to it. Oh, when we leave this world,
no matter how powerful, how influential, it will cause a lot of attention
among those that we leave behind. We perish when most people don't
even regard it. I've been to funerals where there
has been great, great crowds, and I've been to funerals where
there were just four or five, and I've been to funerals of
just one person. And it won't cause a lot of attention
among those that we leave behind. We perish without any ever regarding
it. No matter how much we think we're
held in high esteem. Todd tells me that all the time.
He said, I hold you in the highest esteem. And I appreciate it. And by others that seem to be
important to us, whether whatever we do in this world, whether
we're statesmen, a great writer, few will stop and think of you
in death, and somebody might even shed a tear. But you know
in a short time, and I know this from experience in just a short
time, After you put your mother away, your dad away, your brothers
away, your sisters away, in just a short time, life among those
that you loved and left behind, their lives will be filled with
laughter, joy, and they'll go on living. Go on living. You see, the world, when we step
off this stage, can do without us. Everything will go on just
always as it did without us while we're lying silent in the grave.
And that don't bother me a bit. I want you to laugh. I want you
to go on living. That's the way it's supposed
to be, ain't it? Somebody leaves one day and a brand new baby
comes into the world. And that's what we ought to do.
And I don't want to hurt you. I hurt Shirley's feeling, but
her and I have talked about it. You know, my wife prepared for
me leaving when she left. She prepared for me so many things. She bought me new furniture,
bought me a washer and dryer, and she told the kids, says,
now your daddy's gonna get married again. I tell you, he's gonna
get married again. He'll be married within sight
of six months. And she said, I want y'all to
do this. Well, whoever he marries, you treat her right, you respect
her, and you be good to her because your daddy's one chosen. And now here I am, married again,
laugh, full of joy, full of peace, full of assurance. Does she know
anything about it? No. Do I disregard her? No. But that's what happens no
matter how much you love somebody and how much they go, in a little
while, life goes on. Ain't that right? And then this
departure, this departure, I got to, well, here I am again, oh
boy. Look here in verse 21, this departure,
Job 20, 21. This departure ends all earthly
glory. Doeth not their excellence which
is in them go away? They was excellent people. They
had lots of glory. They had lots of excellency,
oh my. They had things that distinguished them from other people. But the
things that distinguish us here and separate men here will be
gone at death. Those who were born to wealth
and born to beauty and born to power will be all like the rest. All of their ecstasy will go
with them. All entitles and all the power
that they have just goes right on with them. Oh my. And then look what it
says there in the last line. They die even without wisdom. And what that means is that if
anybody had great, great wisdom, And Henry Mahan was one of the
most spiritually wise persons I ever, it was unbelievable how
spiritually wise that man was, the wisdom that God gave that
man. And yet I don't care how great a man's wisdom is, and
Paul had great wisdom, but when he leaves this world, that wisdom
goes with him. It don't mean anything. So I
tell you, beloved, The only thing I want to know
of is that when I leave this world, I'm going to go be with
Christ. Go be with Christ. The only spiritual world I'm
interested in is the world that I'm in now with Christ. Amen? Our Father in the blessed name,
strong name, saving name, precious name, the precious blood, precious
faith that our Lord gave us. We come to bless your holy name
for allowing us again to meet here with your precious, precious
people. Your people are precious to you.
They're your peculiar people. They're your treasure. They're
your jewels. They're the apple of your eye.
They're your elect. They're your loved ones. They're
your children. They're your sons. They're your
vessels of mercy. They're your vessels of honor.
And Lord, I thank you for every one of them. And God bless this
word to our hearts and understanding. And as the brother read in the
study tonight, Lord, make me to know my end. Lord, make me
to, Lord, to understand my end and measure my days. And oh God,
teach us these things. And let us, O Lord, never, ever
be found anywhere but in our Lord Jesus Christ, looking to
Him, trusting Him, believing Him, embracing Him, and bowing
to Him. Above all else, let us find that
to be our life, for He is our life. God bless these dear saints
as they go their ways. And Lord bless those who are
not with us tonight through their weekly bodies. bodies that are
so weak and frail and sick. God bless them. Thank you, Lord. Amen. Amen. Turn your eyes upon
Jesus. full in His wonderful face. And the things of earth will
grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.