Brother Gary Sunday Morning 1/12/14

Brother Gary Sunday Morning 1/12/14

Psa 48:1  A Song and Psalm for the sons of Korah. Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness.

Psa 48:2  Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King.

Psa 48:3  God is known in her palaces for a refuge.

Psa 48:8  As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the LORD of hosts, in the city of our God: God will establish it for ever. Selah.

The Word Selah always marked a pause, a time when the singers would stop but the music would go on playing.  This word always brings a conviction to my heart.  It is important for us to stop, to pause, to consider what God would have us to receive from His Word. 

Psa 48:12  Walk about Zion, and go round about her: tell the towers thereof.

Psa 48:13  Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces; that ye may tell it to the generation following.

Psa 48:14  For this God is our God for ever and ever: he will be our guide even unto death.

Walk about Zion and tell the towers thereof.  We know that Isaiah 60 teaches us about the walls.  There are walls of salvation that protect us from that which is evil and give us that place of security in Christ.  

On these walls there were towers and places built where individuals could look around and see the enemy from a distance. 

David had experienced this in his life, Ps 61:3 thou hast been a shelter and a strong tower.

In Proverbs Solomon wrote that the name of the Lord is a strong tower the righteous run into it and is safe.

The towers belong to God but they are open to His watchmen and open to His kings and priests.  Bible salvation makes us a king in that we reign over sin.  It makes us a priest in that we can pray and offer up spiritual sacrifices.

Songs that relate to the view from the tower:  “I can see far down the mountain, where I wandered weary years, often hindered in my journey by the ghosts of doubts and fears…”, and “I have come too far to look back again.”

We can look back down the road and say, “I wish I had put more effort into it or had a greater understanding.”  We don’t want just the negative thought; it is a place where we can see the king in His beauty.

It is wonderful to see the King of kings in His beauty.  There are times when we all need the refreshingness of getting alone with God and asking Him to help us to see Him and His son in the wonderful beauty.

We see the vision before us in the tower.  It is dangerous to live in the past.  We all have one but we want to keep the vision before us real.  We have a hill to climb; we have a mission before us.  We need to help the saints and witness to the sinner. 

There is a vast confusion that is out there.  It is wonderful that we can go into the tower and say, “God help me to have a vision of truth.  Help me to have a vision of those exploits that you want me to prepare to do.”

Every one of you that have ordered garden seeds have probably already started getting seed catalogs.  “God help me before I plan this or that to know what you want me to do for you.”

We live in a time where just life will fill your plate and leave God out.  We must learn to put God at the center of our plate and not otherwise fill it with earthly things and leave God out.

It is from the tower that we want to receive direction.  I have heard and I think I have read of ships trying to get into a harbor where the captain thought that they knew where they were.  They were headed one way and heard instruction, “Turn left.” 

In one instance the captain said, “This is the captain and I am going …”  He heard, “This is the lighthouse, if you go that way you will crash.”

It is wonderful that there are not only walls but we are instructed to tell of the towers.  These walls with these towers: the design put them there for the benefit of the ones within the walls.

We see from the tower the giants as grasshoppers.  We all face giants.  We all face troubled waters.  We will all face death.  There will be how many ever of us that will have major things go wrong in our body before death. 

Every one of us will face the crisis in our life.  We will decide whether it is a crisis or not.  “He will be our guide even unto death.”  It is a wonderful thing to let God guide us and not just with health issues.  Every one of us wants to use our time for the very best for God. 

We don’t have more than one life, so I want to use this one directed from the tower.  What matters is that you are guided from the tower, not whether you go to Haiti to work for God or stay here.  What matters is that you are laboring to see the Word of God planted in the lives and hearts of souls.

Wherever we are we want to do our very best there.

We see from the tower our afflictions as light.  Paul said, “Our light affliction…”  From the tower right in the midst of it we can have God help us to realize, “This affliction, however great it may be, compared to those that were sawn asunder or burnt at the stake is light.” 

Wherever you are this morning and whatever your affliction, if you will climb that tower, get above the affliction and see it from a higher height, you will have a better view.  “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run into it and are safe.”

2Co 12:7  And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.

2Co 12:8  For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.

2Co 12:9  And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

2Co 12:10  Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.

Paul had this thorn in the flesh and from studying there seems to be an individual that was giving him a really hard time.  There will be those that will contest you.  It could be your family, a neighbor, or whomever.  Paul had a real strong enemy that he termed a thorn in the flesh. 

He prayed about it and his thought was, “God remove this thorn in the flesh.”  He prayed again and again.  God spoke to him, “My grace is sufficient for thee:  for my strength is made perfect in weakness.”

Among the things that God was teaching Paul was know how to go through difficulty and not lose any ground spiritually.  This message is for us to know how we are going to handle difficult things.

“Most gladly will I therefore glory in my infirmities that the power of God may rest upon me.”

We need to acknowledge our infirmities and then acknowledge that this weakness will not be used for an excuse.  I have lost the dexterity in my hands and I would be embarrassed to tell you all the things I have dropped and all the messes that I have made in the last few weeks.  I need to know how to deal with this. 

We will be faced with infirmities.  If we allow it, it will position us in the place where we feel inadequate and can’t do anything.  I am endeavoring to grab hold of things and be careful.  I can’t quit doing just because my success rate is low.

I am married; I have daughters, son-in-laws and grandchildren.  Wouldn’t it be terrible for my wife to go to others and say, “Gary can’t stand company because he is always dropping things?”

The taking pleasure is, “I’m going to seek God for grace for an anointing and for an inspiration.”  There is grace for our infirmities.  Paul said, “I take pleasure in our infirmities.” 

You say, “I won’t go door knocking because of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.”  That is exactly why we should go.  Take the message.  “I won’t go because what if I’m refused?”  There is grace in necessities to receive it and go forward.

There is grace for Christ’s sake.  Sometimes in Jesus’ sake we find our self in distressed situations.  I was visiting with a sister about a situation that she doesn’t have an answer for but she really needs it. 

There will be times when I really need to do my best for this soul for Jesus’ sake, but the situation is uncomfortable.

Some of the things that are there, for all of us that don’t watch television, aren’t very distressful because you can put yourself in a place where you cannot see.  We need grace if we are going to talk to someone.  We don’t want to get all upset.

Ps 48 15 mark the bulwarks.

Bulwarks are what make the safety of the city.  It is the foundation and everything that keeps anything from being able to tunnel under or get through and destroy either the wall or the inhabitants of the city.

The foundation is Jesus Christ.  There is no one other than Jesus Christ to build upon.

We also know that we are built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets and Jesus the chief corner stone.  Jesus is the foundation and also the teachings of the apostles and the prophets.  We are accountable to Jesus and the inspired word of God that He sent.

The City of God had twelve foundations.  Those apostles labored to bring that church that Jesus built into the position that God wanted it to be brought into.  The church of 2013 is to be identical to the church in AD 33: the church that Jesus built.

Ps 48 consider her palaces.

One thing that every one of us knows:

Isa 57:15  For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.

God dwells in the Holy Place, with the contrite, the broken, the humble.  He is there to revive the spirit of the humble.  It is not difficult to get things from God, to have audience with God, or commune with the Holy One.  But God always resists the proud.

The place of coming in contact with God is, “God I need you so bad.  I don’t have the answers to life, to the problems, but you have.  God I am here asking but I am also here promising, all glory goes to you.  I am here giving my life a living sacrifice.”

Heb 12:22  But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,

Heb 12:23  To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect,

Heb 12:24  And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.

Zion is a spiritual place that it is designed that we are either born in or come to.  It is a city of the living God.  It is an innumerable company of angels and the general assembly and church of the firstborn that are written in heaven.

It is a wonderful thing that we can walk about Zion and rightly enjoy the palaces and say, “God help me.  Help me to see myself as you see me.  God help me.  I got saved and I am measuring to everything that I understand in the scriptures. But there is a perfection that needs to take place.” 

God deals with us all on an individual basis.

Most of us, when we were in sin, picked up curse words and also slang words that represented curse words.  God wants to clean us.  God also cleans us up on exaggerating.  It is a hard trial. 

If your trial is harder today than it was yesterday, then be encouraged you are growing.  If you need milk again then that is dangerous.

Pray for manifold conviction.  When Sister Alice had that thought for Roger, I thought it was only just to pray that Alice and I also would have manifold conviction.  It is a wonderful thing because it brings a carefulness to us. 

The children on pew five are concerned about going to heaven; they often come to the altar.  That is good. Last Sunday a lot of people went to the altar.  That is good.  There is a perfecting.

Paul wrote that he had come to just men made perfect.  He had come to people that had confessed and turned from their sin.  They had measured to what he had said, “I am displeased with that.”  Most of us when we got saved had books, ideas, and other things that had to go.

Every one of us has to have an attitude, “God search me.”  We came to realize that there is a nature within that draws us away from God.  We had to say, “I want to lose my life and have His life.”

“Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst.”  It is a wonderful thing to have fellowship together and to have agreement of prayer. 

We come to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Able. 

We are blessed to have Jesus as our mediator.  There was something that I learned in reading Matthew.  In chapter 10, Jesus said, “If you confess me before men, I will confess you to the Father.”  I have been, as all of us, praying and seeking God and then I found this scripture.

In my mind’s eye I could see Jesus going to the Father and saying, “That servant is mine; he testified that I am the Messiah.”

When we are talking to sinners we need to stress that Jesus said, “Repentance.”  We live in a religious world that read the bible and don’t teach repentance.  It is obedience to the bible and it means to confess and turn from sin.  This is what Jesus taught.

1Sa 3:7  Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, neither was the word of the LORD yet revealed unto him.

Samuel didn’t know the voice of the Lord.  I asked a young man last week if God had been speaking to him and he answered, “No.”  I left there so burdened.  What will happen to young men that don’t get right with God?  The road that I see, whether he becomes a millionaire or not, the road of sin is ugly and will destroy. 

Unless they understand about the voice of God, they will not hear; He spoke to Samuel and Samuel didn’t recognize His voice.

1Co 2:9  But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

Dear ones I want to tell you:  May God help you and I to tell how wonderful it is to be saved, and humble enough to tell as the little Cuban lady said, “I was going down the road that way and now I am going up the road that way.” 

Some people cannot see that you have ever been sinners.  May God help us to tell it.  May God help us to get this seed of the word of God to sinners and to individuals that have no victory in their life.  There are those that pray but don’t get to God. 

This God is our God and our guide even unto death.  Remember where Jesus said that He puts his sheep out and goes before them.  He also said:

Joh 15:26  But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:

Joh 16:13  Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

Without the Holy Spirit we will go off into error of our ideas or other people’s ideas.