A Time of Distress

[Music] well good afternoon or good morning wherever you are wonderful beautiful sabbath day and i hope it's that way wherever you may be i'd like to thank all of you for the cards and notes of encouragement that i receive from time to time often when we send these sermons out put them online we cut out the opening comments and i certainly want this to be left in there because i appreciate all the notes and cards and sometimes i say these things and then it's taken off and you don't always get that message because because i can't always uh send out uh to everybody or respond to everybody some say don't respond and i'd like to respond in a general way and i try to respond as much as possible but thank you very much for your encouragement uh all the time and especially during these times of distress that we're going through i read the following in the living church of god video update this week and i suppose that many of you have seen it but there are those who have not seen it so i'd like to just begin by reading this that came out in christianity today now of course we don't believe in the world's christianity but they are facing similar problems to the problems we sometimes face and the question is should you reopen your church and the answer is thankfully it's not a question you have to answer alone you have that guy in your church who spends a ton of time on facebook emailed you the pandemic p-l-a-n plandemic video and is insisting the church reopen now because the coronavirus is a hoax wake up pastor if you grab a cup of coffee with this guy he'll let you know that bill gates has a sinister plan to slip a chip into your vaccine ps hillary clinton might be involved too and i'll throw in here anthony fauci and even jeffrey epstein is involved in some grand plot so whoever the bad guys are at this time in the world they've been thrown into this whole big plot uh as as is going around out there now if that's not enough help you have another dude in your church the one who left that somber voicemail message reminding you that lives are at stake and that if you reopen the church one day earlier than you should the virus will tear through your congregation like a california wildfire and you'll be responsible for anyone who dies this is the same person who if you ever do reopen will demand glass partitions in the sanctuary a hundred feet of separation between each parishioner and greeters clad in hazmat suits and then it finishes off by saying meanwhile guy number one will show up proudly with mask with no mask shaking hands in sight and hands in sight every hand in sight and it says now go ahead and make a decision that will please everyone now we understand this is in the world this is in the church of the world but it's also right here in the body of christ we have these problems we have different ideas about these things and as mr smith was pointing out in his terminette god does not leave us without understanding as to how to go forward are we always going to make a perfect decision any more than as he pointed out husbands always make a perfect decision no of course not we are not infallible we do make mistakes mr armstrong made mistakes dr meredith made mistakes they all admitted that and i'll certainly add that i'm going to make mistakes have made mistakes sometimes in the way that things are communicated a lack of communication you know proper communication but nevertheless god does not leave us in doubt as to the process by which we are to make these decisions and who it is in the church of god that is to make those decisions sometimes brethren we reflect too much of this world and as i said in the video update this is mostly an american problem and a u.s american problem we don't find the same problem in canada and australia new zealand other places around the world this is a problem here especially because we are so individualistic we have our rights our first amendment right and we're thankful for these rights that have been given to us through the constitution but i've said time and time again the constitution of the united states is not the bible and while we're thankful for it and god may have inspired some of these things to be put in place for the sake of his work knowing that he would use this country to to preach the gospel of the world we must also as the people of god be able to stand back and analyze what's happening around us and not get caught up in this and we have people all over the internet social media fighting back and forth on these things in the various churches of god and sadly some of us have gotten i'm going to say some of you because i haven't gotten into that i don't do social media uh sometimes my wife shows me something because she keeps up with the family and it's not wrong keep up the family but to get out there and start arguing these things and debating these things frankly brethren is just plain carnal and we need to step back and ask ourselves what is happening in our world what is happening within my life what am i thinking and is this god's thoughts or are these my thoughts over in the the 10th chapter of jeremiah favorite scripture here jeremiah 10 verse 23 and 24 it says oh lord or o eternal i know the way of man is not in himself it is not in man who walks to direct his steps his own steps now who was saying this this was jeremiah a prophet of god that was powerfully used by god and he goes on to say oh eternal correct me with justice now my friends do you pray that prayer i confess that it was a lot of years that i was in the church before i was brave enough to pray that prayer oh lord correct me but with justice not in your anger lest you bring me to nothing i always ask god to help me to learn the easy way help me to be able to read and understand and correct myself so that you don't have to correct me we all know that children are different some you you know you you have to use a lot of correction harsh correction and others you just look at them and they break into tears and so we're all very different in that way but when it comes to god's correction i i hope that i can be tenderhearted because god is able to get through any one of us uh if if it's going to take harsh correction he loves us and he wants us to learn certain lessons and we have to learn the lessons of of uh you know the overall the big picture of what god is doing he's called us not just for personal salvation but to do a work and if we splinter and we you know separate in every which direction everybody doing his own thing how are we going to do the work of god and the sermon today i i'm going to go to the bible showing that it's not silent on how to handle these controversies building a little bit on what mr uh smith already said and give specific decisions a church must make during this time of stress to promote unity now how does god instruct his people to settle matters of controversy i think that we we know uh mr smith uh mentioned a couple places uh over there in uh deuteronomy the 17th chapter please read that verses 8 through 13. read that in the full and read it prayerfully and ask god to help you to understand what he's saying there because what we find in the new testament is really built on the foundation of the scriptures that were available to the new testament church the only scriptures that were available to them were what we call the old testament scriptures and they learned those things as paul talked about timothy you've learned these things from your youth the scriptures the holy scriptures which are able to make us wise under salvation and and through jesus christ let's take a look at one new testament passage acts the 15th chapter and i don't want to spend a lot of time on it but i do want to bring this out because it is such a powerful message for us it says here in verse 1 of acts 15 certain men came down from judea and taught the brethren unless you are circumcised according to the custom of moses you cannot be saved now we have the the luxury of going back to acts the 10th chapter and that was was generally known but this was not in writing as far as we know at this time in fact the book of acts had not been completed and when we look at the bible we go through it in a way that they did not have the opportunity they didn't have multiple you know millions and billions of copies of the bible for everybody to read but they went up to the uh the synagogue and they they perhaps they could read their libraries that that we know and and to what degree they had access it's hard to know we know that the ethiopian eunuch must have been a wealthy individual because he had a copy of the book of isaiah or the scroll of isaiah but the fact of the matter is that they came together because there was a controversy and the controversy involved what the scriptures said and there were those who were absolutely certain that they had to be circumcised and therefore when paul and barnabas had no small dissension and dispute with them they determined that determined that paul and barnabas which were apostles at the time and certain others of them should go up to jerusalem to the apostles and elders about this question they were going to go to the headquarters of the church to determine what was the answer to this and so there had been much disputing as we see there they brought were sent on their way by the church in other words the congregation in antioch sent them on their way and when they had come to jerusalem they were received by the church and the apostles and the elders and they reported all the things that god had done to them but some of the sect of the pharisees who believed rose up these were believers these were not reprobates in that sense they were believers but they sincerely believed that you had to be circumcised whether you were a jew or a gentile you had to become a good jew before you could become a good christian and really in reality that's what it was and that's much of the controversy of the book of galatians it says but some of these sect okay we just read that it's necessary to circumcise them and to command them to keep the law of moses now the apostles and others came together to consider this matter and when there had been much dispute peter rose up and said to them men and brethren you know that a good while ago god chose among us that by my mouth the gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe so god who knows the heart notice god who knows the heart because the whole controversy controversy over circumcision had to do with what is in the heart not the outward physical circumcision but what is in the heart and sometimes we look at outward things far more than we look at what is in the heart so god who knows the heart acknowledged them by giving them the holy spirit just as he did to us and made no distinction between us and them purifying their hearts by faith now therefore why do you test god by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear and you can read the rest of it but very clearly you get the impression that peter is just a little bit upset over this situation because it should have been clear but brethren let's be honest with ourselves many of us would have been on the wrong side of this discussion because it says there in the old testament they had to be circumcised and and we could turn to scriptures on that subject but they looked at the heart they looked at the circumcision of the heart not of the flesh and they looked at the fact that these were gentiles in a very different world than we live in today i mean circumcision is no big deal one way or the other with most of us there are those who do get into big arguments over it there was nothing wrong with male circumcision in fact from a a medical standpoint there are many authorities that believe that it is a very good practice and sometimes it becomes a necessary practice as i've known of one or two situations over the years but nevertheless we don't think of it as a big deal but i'll tell you what it was a big deal back then if we think that masks and singing are a big deal it was huge back then and so they settled the issue and because the problem had come from jerusalem james who is the leader of the jerusalem church stood up and said my decision and he made a decision and it was expected that people would follow that whether they could turn to this scripture or that scripture in the old testament it didn't matter a decision had been made now brethren it's interesting that when decisions are made uh as long as we agree with them we believe in church government don't we we believe that jesus christ is the head of the church that he works through his appointed servants as long as they agree with us but if ever they don't agree with us then that's a different matter now just think about that brethren think about it does that make logical sense how can we possibly have unity because you have people on two sides of an issue and a decision is made then does the other side go out and say well that's not scriptural that's not what i'm going to do we're not talking about doing away with the sabbath we're not talking about you know changing the holy days this is not something that took place in the past and i understand the sensitivities on that but brethren we have to we have to get past some of these things you know when things got off track back in the 70s and there were accusations and against the leadership there and i was confused by it for a little while and a couple individuals came into my office they said what are you going to do and it forced me to answer a question i said i'm going to let jesus christ settle this issue i'm not going to get out in front of christ you know that was the right answer at that time mr armstrong was still alive and he came back and he straightened things out satan is very clever because he throws us a curve so the next time this apostasy began to set in the answer the right answer was from first samuel that uh you know that that uh we don't want to reject god and so we wait and we wait and we finally realize that no this is not the same situation as it was when mr armstrong was live this is a situation where people are deliberately taking the church away from the truth it's not a matter of a a time of stress they're just simply trying to take the church away from the truth and that became extremely obvious at some point and that's why we're here many of us now many new people we have a lot of new people that this is ancient history and you don't know much about what i'm talking about but uh you know this is a very different situation that we're facing today and we have to make decisions otherwise everybody's doing his own thing and then you have division and fighting and squabbling and and i'm more righteous or i have more faith or i this or i that brethren we can't be that way and we need to understand that that that is a huge problem let's uh uh let's go to um a favorite scripture of dr meredith uh he turned to first corinthians the sixth chapter first corinthians six and there was a problem it seems like the corinthian church was the most rebellious church uh i don't know if i if i could absolutely say that but the corinth corinth had a lot of problems didn't they and paul was just slamming them all the time correcting them as a father does his son and fairly strongly uh he he really got on to them about a number of things and he says here in chapter six verse one dare any of you having a matter against another go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints do you not know that the saints will judge the world he's saying get the big picture understand the saints and saints are not people that the catholic church knights or or saints whatever it's talking about the servants of god you are a saint i am a saint uh and we don't understand that in the traditional religious context it's just saying that the people of god as you can read there in the seventh chapter of the book of daniel the saints of god are going to the the kings of this world are going to become the kingdom of our lord and as christ and and it speaks of the saints taking over it there i think it's verse 27 of chapter 27 verse 26 or 27 of daniel you can look that up and see how the word saint is used in scripture but he says do you not know that the saints will judge the world and if the world will be judged by you are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters do you not know that we shall judge angels and sometimes we say manage angels well however we want to take that we're going to be over angels and and we're going to have to make judgments in some situations here going forward at least during the millennium when we get into all being spirit beings uh you know christ or god the father is in charge of everything christ under him and we're all going to be under him and i don't know how that's all going to work out for sure there's a lot that we don't know but what we do know is there's coming a time in the future when we are going to manage angels and when we are going to be judging people in this world as spirit beings ruling over cities and perhaps larger areas in case of some of the apostles and of course king david he says do you not know that we are to judge angels how much more things that pertain to this life you know what we're facing here is is so small compared to some other things that we're going to face in the future and it's just amazing to me how we can get tripped up over something that is in many ways very trivial i know it's not trivial in the minds of everyone and please understand in fact let me just turn over the book of jude because i want to i want to make a point people who have different viewpoints on on the subjects i'm talking about today are not our enemies but that doesn't mean that they can't be influenced by our enemy as all of us can be peter was james and john were influenced by the spirit of this world and we can as well and i say dear brethren sincerely but here in the book of jude very single chapter verse 20 but you beloved building yourself up on your most holy faith praying in the holy spirit keep yourselves in the love of god keep yourselves preserve yourselves in the love of god looking for the mercy of our lord jesus christ unto eternal life and on some have compassion making a distinction but others save with fear pulling them out of the fire hating even the garment defiled by the flesh you know everybody's not in the same same camp not everybody's in the same situation there are people who are genuinely confused they're just not sure what to think on some of these subjects then they're the absolute rebels out there that are out on the internet fighting back and forth some cases using wrong language and showing hatred in a way that no servant of god ever should and we just don't need to be in a food fight on social media it's wrong it's carnal it is part of this world and as somebody said to me on the phone even last night he wished that everybody just get off the internet get off social media i i can't make you do that we're not threatening to throw anybody out of the church because you use social media my wife does keep up with the family on it but you won't find her out there arguing back and forth over these issues or any issue for that matter uh some people are just more bold in that way but brethren if we are the people of god if we are the body of christ we must be united we must speak the same thing we must have patience and love for one another but jude says that there are some that we have to pull out of the fire because they are in the fire and they don't even realize it they are in a situation where they could lose their eternal life they don't think that nobody thinks they're in that case but a jude is saying that that's the case he's saying some are you know have compassion on others who are just weak and caught up and they really don't know what's going on but then there are others that are going to need stronger corrections you know and and the book of hebrews the 12th chapter it says don't be discouraged when you are rebuked by him for whom the lord loves he chastens now god can rebuke you or those of us who are in leadership positions can gently rebuke you so that you don't have to be rebuked by god for whom the lord loves he chastens god loves us he chastens us sometimes and scourges every son whom he receives if you endure chastening god deals with you as with sons or daughters for what son is there whom a father does not chasten but if you are without chastening of which all have become partakers then are you illegitimate and not sons so brethren don't be afraid of god's correction i mean we should fear getting out of line to where god has to correct us let us learn the easy way and not the hard way because we can get away with certain things for a period of time we can develop very bad habits such as rejecting where god is working and sooner or later that bad habit that we have developed of just okay i'm going to do it my way is going to come back and it's going to bite us it's like a little child that runs out in the street he doesn't get a run over the first time usually hopefully but the father or the mother corrects him because they don't want him running out there they understand the difference between a small child and a large heavy you know ton automobile or a truck we always call mack trucks i don't know why there are all kinds of trucks we say get hit by a mack truck sometimes uh and and we don't want that to happen so we we discipline them but if left to himself and he runs out in front of traffic think oh i'm okay i'm safe nothing happened to me we know that sooner or later tragedy may strike it may not in every case but uh very likely if he's running out in traffic and his heavy traffic sooner or later it's going to happen we don't want that to happen do we i i'm going to just refer you to uh well let's go over to the 11th chapter of first corinthians 1st corinthians 11. first corinthians 11. now this is a dispute that took place in the church obviously there was something behind it again we're in corinth and obviously there there's something wrong here and he says imitate me just as i also imitate christ and how often we hear that well i'm just going to follow christ or i follow you as as you follow christ and that's and that is true but that can also be used as an excuse to have our own way we have to be very careful of that we cannot take one scripture and throw everything else out he says now i praise you brethren that you remember me in all things and keep the traditions just as i deliver them to you so some say well we have traditions and we can never change a tradition we can never set aside a tradition for a period of time well our traditions do change over time don't they there was a time when mr herbert armstrong had his daughters singing on the telecast back in the 50s kind of like what we see on many other religious programs it was like a religious service but eventually he saw that was not the way to go the tradition was that services could go three or four hours and then it was set at a different time the tradition was that we would meet twice every day during the feast of tabernacles but for necessity's sake because the piece got larger and because people could uh you know go to services each week and they could be fed in that way whereas we had a lot of people in those earlier years who didn't have the chance to meet with anybody they didn't have the internet to pull up a sermon they didn't even have you know cassette tapes going to them and all the things that we enjoy today they didn't have that and so mr armstrong had services twice every day during the feast but when we found that people couldn't even get out of the feast site while other people already had eaten lunch and are coming back it just did not seem reasonable it was it was one of those things that mr armstrong decided to change that tradition now we are not trying to change the tradition of the church so that we will always wear masks for here on forever or we will never sing hymns again in the church this is a temporary a time of stress and in fact the title the sermon is a time of distress and when we look at the scriptures there we find that there are times when we do have to make exceptions to the traditional practice of things and i'll give you several scriptures here very quickly but here in first corinthians 11 the discussion was over hair length and he's saying that some some women were wearing their hair not long enough it was more like a butch haircut and so we don't find the apostle paul quoting scriptures here but he is using biblical principles from the old testament that men are to be men and women are to be women and he even says there does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair it's a shame unto him i've heard people dispute that well how does nature teach us that well according to the apostle paul we ought to be able to figure that out when you see some guy with a long ponytail and he's doing construction work and you know there's an interesting thing women really take good care of their hair for the most part not all women but many of them put a lot of a lot of effort into it guys it just doesn't work the same way for the most part now i know that there are some that even with short hair they they they are so they've been feminized i think because they they uh they treat their hair like a woman retreater here you know i don't have to explain all that these are what the scriptures say but notice verse 16 he he knows that there are those who would not accept what he was saying and he says but if anyone seems to be contentious we have no such custom nor do the churches of god say we're not gonna we're not gonna tolerate it we're not gonna put up with it now obviously the apostle paul is trying to work with him trying to explain things trying to teach trying to to give a a positive explanation of something but at some point decisions have to be made and it's time for us to follow those decisions or i guess you know go elsewhere we don't want that but brethren we've got to be unified we can take all these scriptures and then throughout first corinthians 1 10 that we are to all speak the same thing that timothy was to to rebuke certain individuals i mean very strongly rebuked people because they got off track they probably thought they were right to strongly rebuke people so brethren we have to understand these things it just turned to i'm not turned to but i'd like to reference the january february and the march april 2010 living church news magazines and in those dr meredith wrote a couple of very valuable articles that you would do well this is not something we're not saying anything new this has been here all along as january february of 2010 and march april 2010 we're faced with matters of controversy even in the body of christ and that's why you have church government that's why you know jesus christ is the head of the church and he works through fallible weak human beings who are capable of making mistakes that's why he works through husbands and you ladies know as mr smith pointed out including mrs smith that husbands are fallible but do we do we cast aside the laws of god because god knows that even in spite of that adult you have for a husband in some cases but you married him you chose him uh even in spite of that god is going to work it out far better if you work together as a team and submit to the leadership that you have there unless he's telling you to do something that's totally contrary to the law of god and we'll get to that in a little bit we held a um a council of elder meeting this past week for about four and a half hours and discuss several matters and one of the things that we brought up is that we are living in the present distress we are living in a time there's like none other that any of us in north america have ever seen unless you were often another foreign country uh perhaps during a time of of war and some people have experienced that but most of us have never experienced a protracted period of time such as we have had since about february we're only in august just beginning in august it's only been six or seven months that we've really been in this situation most of it really settled in in march but we're facing something we haven't before in first corinthians the seventh chapter we have to turn to corinth so often because this is where the problems are uh he says now concerning the things of which you wrote to me it is good for a man not to touch a woman some think that that was presented as a question or that they had wrote written wrote they had written to him saying that or he is saying it whichever way it is it becomes clear uh what his his answer is to the question let's notice verse 6 but i say this as a concession not as a commandment now here the apostle paul is really stepping out into an area that that you know we we we say not as a commandment in other words he had no commandment from god regarding this particular matter but he's going to make a judgment that has affected how we conduct ourselves down to this very day because the divorce and marriage situation that took place back in 1974 when we changed our direction on that really had a lot to do with what the apostle paul wrote here but in verse 7 it says for i wish that all men were even as i myself but each one has his own gift from god one in this manner and another and that he's saying look i wish that all of you were like me i'm single we believe that paul probably was married he seems to have been sitting on the sanhedrin or the the council there in judaism which uh apparently you had to be married in order to do so so we we don't know all the history of paul but uh it may be that he was married at one time his wife could have died we often say well his wife perhaps died he might have been divorced we don't know so much that we don't know but what he does say here is that i wish that all could be as i am he wasn't bothered at this time by the fact that he wasn't married his whole heart was thrust right into the work of god that he was doing that was his life it kind of reminds me of uh gerald waterhouse for those who remember him he traveled the world and and what was the message he gave well i know that some people were bugged by the fact that he might go three hours on a wednesday night or a thursday night or three and a half hours and that was problematic but uh and he got very speculative and he talked about going to petra we're going to build a lake there we're going to do all this sort of thing and some people got bugged by that i always saw him speaking in a broad general sense of talking about government of of working within government because that was the basic message that he had and he was trying to paint a colorful picture to help people to use their imagination of what was going to happen in the future now the apostle paul here says that it didn't bother him that he wasn't married and he said i wish that all men were even as i myself i wish that they had the same gift you might say of not being a feeling that that they just had to get married because we know that there are people like that that they that's just their whole way of thinking i remember a young man not not such a young man i don't know 40 or 50 years of age it seemed like i think it's probably closer to 50 and he wanted the whole church to fast for the single people it was though his whole life revolved around his singleness now i i have walked in his shoes and i can understand that it was a big thing for him but oftentimes there are reasons why people made choices and and they find themselves that way and other cases it's uh they just don't make the connection and for for 100 different reasons a thousand different reasons and we're not judging them on that but that was his whole life he says but if they verse 9 or verse 8 but i say to the unmarried and the widows if it is good for them if they remain even as i am but if they cannot exercise self-control let them marry for is better to marry than to burn as it says with passion here now the apostle paul is saying that one he's saying that this is a little bit better way but is that what genesis says when you read there in the second chapter at the end of it that a man has to leave his father mother and cleave unto his wife the whole old testament supports getting married and here's the apostle paul seemingly saying something different notice verse 12 he says but to the rest i not the lord notice i not the lord he didn't have a specific scripture to turn to but he was certainly using biblical principles and the authority that god had given to him if any brother has a wife who does not believe and she's willing to live with him let him not divorce her now that contradicted what we read of in uh ezra and nehemiah and various other places where they married wives of the nations around them they were unbelievers and they actually made them separate from their wives so this would seem to contradict what was written in the old testament but paul was seeing it from a different perspective of having god's spirit that the nation of of israel today is not a physical nation which is you know over here and if you allow certain things happen it's going to get out of control it was a different situation the situation was different but i would imagine that there were people who contradicted the apostle paul in this because they could turn to scriptures that told them they need to put away their pagan wives but we know that these people in the in the mediterranean at that time if their wives were unbelievers that many of them were worshiping pagan gods and goddesses and yet he says here if they're pleased to dwell with you don't put them away he says uh and the woman who has a husband who does not believe if he is willing to live with her let her not divorce him so he gives these recommendations based on god's spirit guiding him and i'll tell you what i i would say that and in terms of actual scriptures he could turn to to prove his point some of these things have a whole lot less uh evidence than say circumcision um or some other decisions were made even hair length which uh you know the masculinity feminine and not wearing something that pertains to a woman all those things there was a lot of you know you could turn to a lot of principles there but the apostle paul made those decisions and god was working through him i don't think you're going to find us making that kind of a decision certainly not something that's going to go for any length of time we may make a decision for the president to stress but that's the whole point of this notice verse 17 he said but as god has distributed each one as the lord has called each one so let him walk and so i ordain in all the churches he was making decisions that were controversial in the church there notice verse 25. now concerning virgins i have no commandment from the lord yet i give judgment as one whom the lord in his mercy has made trustworthy he says i suppose therefore that it is good because of the present distress that is good for a man to remain as he is because of the present distress now exactly what they were going through at that specific time i i don't know but it was a stressful time for whatever reason and he's saying there is because of the present distress now brethren we're going through a timeless distress uh 500 years from now if time just went on or 2 000 years from now if if christ hadn't returned by then he certainly will but before that but let's just say we go 2 000 years down the road will anybody know about coven 19 probably not because in the grand scheme of things there are a lot bigger things that have happened and that will happen in the future so this is not that big of a deal in one sense but it is right now for us because we are living through it and it is a stressful time notice verse 29 um he says here but this i say brethren the time is short so that from now on even those who have wives should be as though they had done and those who weep as though they did not weep those who rejoice as those who did not rejoice those who buy as though they did not possess and those who use this world as not misusing it for the form of this world is passing away they thought that the end had come or was just right around the corner and in the 15th chapter he talks about you know those of us who were alive at the remaining of the coming of the lord they thought that the return of jesus christ was immediate and that's been the case all down through history we we look to the circumstances that we're going through right now and we think it can't get any worse this has got to be the worst you know this is this is the worst time i've ever seen in my life and i'll tell you when you look at what's happening in the united states you know i wrote that article last uh was august i think it was a year ago about the income suddenly this whole house of cards could come crashing down around us a whole lot quicker than we might suspect but we've also seen over the years that sometimes it takes a little bit longer than we expect it'll move forward and then it'll kind of back off and we can try to be profits but we haven't been very good at that in predicting what's going to happen in the future so we just need to hang on to see how things are going to go but we need to be ready certainly to uh to follow god you know god made exceptions in various cases for example in numbers the 9th chapter and verses 6 and 11 or just the whole chapter of numbers 9 we find that there were individuals that this was the second year the year after their first passover and they kept the passover on the 14th day of the first month and that was you know that's one of those situations it was has been controversial over the years in the church and people read the scriptures differently and people have left the church over that it's been a it's been a big bone of contention that that crops up from time to time down through the years and the church has ruled on it and that's the way it's going to be we really don't need another paper on it i think we've seen everything that could possibly come out on the subject of is at the beginning of the 14th or is it the end of the 14th that the the passover's kept and or actually the lamb was killed and then you know so i don't want to introduce that but that's been a controversy hasn't it some of us have been around long enough to say that what we face today in terms of controversy is nothing new we've had to deal with these things down through time we've had people who either very sincerely or just out of vanity have their point of view i think right now we're dealing with people who very sincerely have gotten caught up in this and i'm not talking about the rebels out there they're just arguing back and forth of whether the everywhere masks and the pandemic and all this kind of stuff okay what if it is a pandemic what are you going to do about it you know really when it comes right down to it let's get on with preaching the kingdom of god let's get on with with living our lives humbly recognizing our own shortcomings instead of worrying about the politicians shortcoming and all the people that are out there let's see the big picture let's let's focus on what god has called us for he he didn't call you just for personal salvation god could have called the whole world right now he didn't he called a certain number of people for a job to do and if we don't do that job then god is going to hold us accountable or if we damage the work that's doing that job god is going to hold us accountable and i'm not trying to threaten i'm just trying to say that please please brethren don't allow satan to deceive you in such a way that you damage the work of god because there is a cost to that and god will take care of it not me and i'm not threatening and i certainly will pray for for people's benefit that god will be merciful to them as he's been merciful to me because i know better than anybody what my sins have been over the years and i probably don't know all of them some of you know my sins better than i do in some areas but i know what most of my sins are a good many of them and i know i need the mercy of god just like anybody else but in numbers 9 he said that there were people who came up that were not able to keep the first passover from being unclean or on journey or something and so a decision was made moses appealed to god and god said okay the second month they can keep it they can keep it in the second month and so that was an exception to the first now over in second chronicles let's turn over their second chronicles 30. second chronicles 30 we have a situation where they've gotten away from from keeping the passover in the days of unleavened bread and a new king comes along hezekiah and he sent in verse 1 to all israel and judah and also wrote letters to ephraim and manasseh that they should come to the house of the eternal at jerusalem to keep the passover to the lord god of israel and then in verse 2 for the king and his leaders and all the assembly in jerusalem had agreed to keep the passover in the second month this is not where they were on a journey or something but they were in a situation where they did not have time to properly uh cleanse themselves and do all the things that the jews did at that time and that god instructed them to do in terms of the whole sacrificial system they didn't have time to to keep the first pass over so they they agreed we will keep it keep the second pass over we had members this year that had to keep the second passover uh in some cases we may have had people who missed it all together because they were caught off guard we take for granted that we can just go down to the grocery store and buy a bottle of wine that's not the the case in other parts of the world and africa as an example and i'm sure that there are many other places in the world there are only so many places you can buy alcoholic beverages or wine and so they were caught off guard this thing suddenly came down on there was a couple months for passover and all of a sudden they're locked down and they're told not to go out of their home now some of our ministers i i know one of our ministers had to go and get a bunch of little bottles and bottle wine and pour it in and distribute it to all the members and was able to do that but not everybody some of these places you are found outside your home and they don't treat you like they're going to treat you here in this country we might get fined a little bit but in some parts the world is much more harsh and so some people simply were unable to get out of their homes and if they got out of their homes unless they broke in someplace they couldn't get a bottle of wine south africa they shut down all purchases of alcoholic beverages for a period of time i don't remember now whether they're that i think it was lifted just before passover uh but these are situations people say well i'll make my own well you don't have grapes i know a minister from another church of god group not even anybody associated with mr armstrong directly except for way back and he said that it just says the fruit of the vine it could be uh watermelon juice or he said it could even be coffee uh well i i don't think that we're gonna make that decision like i know we're not gonna make that kind of a decision we have people in prison who are unable to but we bust our tails mr gary eamon uh for example uh has really worked hard to be able to get these little kits passover kits into prisons for our prisoners but sometimes they're they're unable to have the wine what are you going to do break out of prison sometimes you you have to make decisions say well look we just do the best we can under the circumstances so what we find here is they decided to do it in the second month then verse 13. it says now many people a very great assembly gathered at jerusalem to keep the feast of unleavened bread in the second month and they rose and took away the altars that were in jerusalem and they took away all the incense altars and cast some of the brook kidron these were pagan altars and everything and then they slaughtered the passover lambs on the 14th day of the second month the priests and levites were ashamed notice ashamed and sanctified themselves and brought the burnt offerings to the house of the eternal verse 16 then they they stood in their place according to their custom and according the law of moses the man of god the priest sprinkled the blood uh sprinkle sprinkled the blood received from the head and the hand of the levites for there were many in the assembly who had not sanctified themselves therefore the levites had charge of the slaughter of the passover lambs for everyone who was not clean so there were those who had properly uh cleanse themselves not touch the dead body all the different things that were involved there who slaughtered their own lambs but for those that didn't the levites did it for them now that was departure a departure from the norm it says for a multitude of people many from ephraim manasseh issachar and zebulun had not cleansed themselves yet they ate the passover contrary to what was written contrary to the written laws there but hezekiah prayed for them saying may the good lord provide atonement for everyone who prepares his heart to seek god these were people who came down to jerusalem to keep the passover they hadn't been keeping it for some time and now they've come down they've prepared their hearts god saw what was in their heart they were striving to obey god as best they knew how at this time on a very short notice you might say they didn't have a long time to prepare for it it says the lord god of his fathers though he is not cleansed according to the purification of sanctuary and notice verse 20 and the eternal listened to hezekiah and healed the people now they even went further verse 23 then the whole assembly agreed to keep the feast another seven days so they kept the feast of unleavened bread in verse 21 for seven days and then they agreed uh with the king's permission to to keep it another seven days that's a little bit of a departure from from things i i'm not sure that i want to make a decision like that okay but i guess we have this as a precedent if the church hadn't kept it you know if there's such extreme persecution we can't get out of our house or something you know who knows i'm not i don't speculate on something that we've never looked at and hopefully never have to look at but what we see here brethren is that decisions are made that are contrary to what is normal notice over in leviticus 24 verses five to nine it shows i'll just refer that little linux 24 5-9 it shows here that uh only the the priests and the levites were to be involved with eating of the the show bread it was reserved for the priest there and it was not for the common man so that when they removed the showbread then it would be eaten by the priest and they had to even be clean even the the priests had to be ceremonially clean in order to eat the showbread but then in first samuel 21 we're all very familiar with the the passage and so i uh i'm i'm only on page two so i'll just skip over this by saying that you can read that first samuel 21 verses 1 1-6 this is where david is fleeing from saul and he goes to the priest and he he says i need some food and he says all i have is the showbread that we've just removed we put some new one out there and and uh the priest then says well have the men been kept keeping themselves from women and david affirmed it and so he gave them the showbread these were this was contrary to what the law had said this this physical law of uh cleanliness and all not talking about something bigger and he's not talking about something for forever they didn't make the rule that okay from now on anybody can eat the show bread this was a human necessity and christ put his stamp of approval on what was done there in mark the second chapter very familiar passage for for all of us mark 2. and i'll begin in verse 23. here was something else that was controversial he said now it happened that he that's christ went through the grain fields on the sabbath and as they went his disciples began to pluck the heads of grain just stripping off the heads of grain and rubbing between their hands blowing chaff off and popping in their mouth a kind of organic health food fast food you might say and so then he he says here and the pharisees said to him look why do they do what is not lawful on the sabbath now this was their interpretation of the sabbath the pharisees interpretation of what should be done why they do what is not lawful on the sabbath now have you ever thought why did they come to the conclusion that it was unlawful to to eat this fast food along the way well if you go back remember that when they went out to pick manna on the seventh day they were rebuked for doing so in other words the pharisees well they were wrong in this particular case they no doubt in their minds and i'm sure that they had legitimate reason for saying that it's unlawful they could turn to a scripture they could turn to the uh 216th chapter of uh the book of exodus about the manna and people going out on that day but there's a difference here and this is where we have to be able to rightly divide the word of truth mana was something they did every day they had to go out and pick it up and and they had to pick it up on the ground one time i was trying to figure out how to earn some money for some of our teenagers and i was up in michigan and there's a lot of fishing up there and in the spring of the year when it's starting to thaw just a little bit night crawlers you know big worms go across the road and i i can still remember a section of highway coming coming down i was a 27 i guess it is i think uh out around higgins lake area and jillions of these these night crawlers and sometimes even in our neighborhood one night they were coming out there i thought you know this would be great because they sell it like a dollar something per dozen that's all you have to do is pick up night crawlers and you can make a lot of money so i went out one night and just to see how many i could pick up so maybe get the the teams out there and uh try to sell these and different things and i i spent a half hour and i was in pretty good shape i did a lot of running and i exercised back then a lot and and yet just that act of bending over for about a half hour picking these things up next day i was sore it's a lot of work and to pick up mana which probably took them several hours to get enough for their their families and all was work that's different than picking an apple off a tree or just scraping something up as you're going through there on your way to the temple or the synagogue it was a different situation but the pharisees all they could see was oh this violates the law of god or their restriction their ideas of the law of god now when we continue to read on here uh they complained uh verse 25 he said to them have you never read what david did when he was in need and hungry he and those with him how he went into the house of god in the days of abiathar the high priest and ate the showbread which is not lawful to eat except for the priests and also gave some to those who are with him so he gave it to david and those who are with him and he said to them the sabbath was made for man and not man for the sabbath now it goes on to say uh you know in certain these cases that they were guiltless they were guiltless christ is saying it was all right for them to do that because of human necessity they could have gone on hungry had their stomachs growling and everything like that they weren't they weren't out there trying to harvest wheat on that day they were just trying to grab a quick bite to eat just like you go to the refrigerator or you go to your pantry or something it's a very different thing but all these technical do's and don'ts that they put on people so we have this example elijah is another example god told him to hide out by the brook cherith or karis and so i i said for three and a half years we don't know it was three and a half years but remember the the the famine on the land was three and a half years that elijah had pronounced on the land there so at some point in time whether it was day one or day 151 or day 200 or even day 300 that's still less than a year but you have three and a half years he was told to hide out and so he had hit out by this brook and raven brought food to him now can you imagine the jews of christ day a raven as an unclean bird where did he get this food did he get from chariot kill you know run over by a chariot i don't know where he got it but i know that god would have given him clean food but nevertheless uh he brought food to him he didn't bring up for a whole band of people we we don't have that sense at all we don't even know if there was anybody with him at that time he might have had a servant with him we don't know but he was fed there now he didn't have the opportunity to meet with a lot of other people in the sabbath for how many weeks or months this was a different situation you know there's a time when you you stand up to be counted in a certain way and there's a time when god knows that it's best just to get out of town and god told him instructed him to do so ahab and jezebel were not very nice people especially jezebel and so we we have that situation let's turn over first corinth first kings 18. first kings 18. first kings 18 and uh let's start in verse 5. it says and ahab had said to obadiah go into land to all the springs of water and to all the brooks perhaps we might find grass to keep the horses and mules alive and they won't have to kill the livestock so they divided and nobody went one way ahab went the other way verse 7 and now as obadiah was on his way suddenly elijah met him and he recognized him and fell on his face and said is that you my lord elijah and he answered him it is i go tell your master elijah is here you know obadiah was on his way he recognized him notice he recognized him elijah was not an unknown figure he was recognized and so if he tried to just slip in someplace into the synagogue someplace he would have been recognized you couldn't just hide out that way and and then go in any place you wanted so he said uh obdai says look have i sinned that you want to to kill me uh notice verse 10 as the lord your god lives there is no nation or kingdom where my master has not sent someone to hunt for you now did you mean china and japan i don't think so it's you know in other words in that general area he he searched for you all around here and how far and wide we don't know but he says there's no nation we can take that in a very literal sense or as probably it's intended that there's you know he's looked for you all over the place uh just like we say the line was endless well the it does end but you know it just goes on forever uh and he's taken a a vow from them saying he is not here he took an oath from uh the kingdom of nation that they could not find you and now you say go tell your master elijah's here and then you're going to run off and i come back and my master's going to kill me verse 13 was it not reported to my lord what i did when jezebel killed the prophets of the lord she was out killing the prophets of the lord now i i suppose that all the prophets of the lord could have just said okay uh i'm i'm not gonna run i'm not gonna hide i have i'm full of faith i'm gonna stay here well notice what it says uh how i hid 100 men of the lord's prophets 50 to a cave and fed them with bread and water had you not heard that i did that these were schools of the prophets these were students apparently if you go and you look here the schools of the prophets and and so obadiah actually put his life on the line that was courage that was faith he put his life on the line to save 100 people 50 in this cave 50 in that cave there was a time of hiding out this was you know did they could they go up the temple could they go to keep the feast of tabernacles could they do all those things we find that elijah then had to go up eventually when the brook ran dry to zarephath which is north of of tyre up in lebanon and he stayed with a widow woman for a period of time did he go down and keep the feast of tabernacles with everybody now please don't misunderstand what i'm saying i'm not saying we don't keep the feast of tabernacles because that has bothered people and understandably so that some who are healthy some who really could go to the feast just think of well it's just an option well yes it is an option in the sense that you have to make up your mind what to do but there's coming a time brethren when we have to come out of our basements and there's a coming a time when this whole thing is over when we're going to have to cut off the live streams to just anybody and i think we'll have to do that because otherwise people say oh i'm so comfortable here at home why why do i have to dress up and go all the way over here i i i would maintain that when we assembled together uh over the the internet uh because you know that all everything's closed down and all kinds of things that happen i i'd say that that's still assembling together when we convened with the council of elders like we called the council of elders meeting and so 18 of us were there all together including advisor or a couple of advisors you might say we were there together we had uh we called together an assembly but this is not what we want to do forever uh we know that there's some areas that are just totally shut down still there are other areas that are wide open circumstances are different but we want to be together we want to be singing songs together we want to be doing all the things that we ever did before but there are times when you have to make decisions based on the stress of the time elijah hid out there he didn't know that there were seven thousand individuals who had not vowed the need to bail why didn't he know that there are seven thousand obviously because these people are scattered god knew who they were but they weren't going down to jerusalem to keep the feasts at that time you know jezebel ahab they would had their you know all the all the servants of god if they they could have there are times when we do hide out you know mr smith uh mr wally smith uh noted three things about these incidents that we read there these exceptions and he gave the first one was these were not decisions made by lay members and every one of the cases i've given there these were not made by lay members but by duly ordained leaders and judges that god had placed in a position of authoritative judgment you know we have a situation today where people are saying that well i can't sing i'm not going to go where the church has placed its name for the feast we're just going to have our own feast please brethren did god ordain you with the responsibility to decide where christ is going to place his name you know if you do that you know you're doing so at your own peril i'm not making a threat and i'm not saying you're all going to die or anything like that but if you start making the habit of violating a very strong principle that is the place that god has chosen to place his name and that was settled when i first came into the church back in 1964 my first feast they were you know explaining that at that time what it means where god places his name you can't just decide on your own this is where the feast is going to be please think about it see the big picture secondarily they dealt with temporary circumstances and temporary conditions for which an end was in sight these were temporary things the showbread it was a one-time event the passover deciding will keep in the second month or deciding the levites will kill the lambs instead of the individual because of the circumstances this was not to be a precedent for all time it was for a period of time and i wish i could say to all of you that in one month we're going to be back to normal what i can say is we will get back to normal at some point at least that that that's what i believe we'll get back to normal at some point and we we may have to make different decisions down the road we may reverse decisions we've made but it will be done in a lawful way according to the scriptures so they dealt with temporary conditions thirdly they did not represent a discarding or dishonoring of god's law but an intent to be consistent with the spirit behind the law while dealing with those temporary circumstances so in this present distress should members wear face coverings and refrain from singing and services is it biblically wrong to wear a face covering some have turned to exodus the 34th chapter where moses came down from the mountain his face shone so he put a veil over his head but when he went in to talk to god he took it off so does that mean that we can't wear a veil before god i think that's pretty much of a stretch and when you look at second corinthians 3 verses 12 to 18 we we see that it was a a symbol of of them not seeing clearly god in that sense it was like a veil over them in the reading of the law they they took everything in a certain way they did not understand how to judge the the law that god had given them how to properly discern it but what about in the presence of god is it wrong to wear a a veil let me go back there in exodus 34 there was no reason to put a veil on before god because god was the one who made his face shine he was putting the veil on to protect the people scared the daylights out of them i mean if if you know mr strain here all of a sudden his face is showing you know shining like a big light it'd scare me i mean he might scare me anyway but it would certainly scare me if he had you know his vice his face shining now brethren he they put the veil on to protect the people which was an outgoing concern if you think about it he didn't do it to hide himself from god so there's no reason when he's before god now is it wrong to go in the presence of god with a veil okay read song of solomon i'll just give you the verses i'll give you three of the four the fourth chapter verse three the fifth chapter verse seven and the sixth chapter verse seven so chapters five and six verse seven in those places and it shows that the woman was wearing a veil and she at one point she says that they they came and they they caught her and they did these things and they stripped off her veil like this was a bad thing like she you know this was like hitting her beating her up uh you could also read isaiah 47 verse 2. it's talking about the great okay uh where it talks about her veil now the point of these passages solomon song of solomon and isaiah was that during those times a veil was a common thing apparently it was something that was was common so when they went up during solomon's day to the temple after he had built a temple and during isaiah's day women did wear veils i'm sorry my wife she worries about are we gonna wear you know these things in the millennium uh she hopes not but she's thinking about the kind of garb that the the the muslims wear and they're all black and they're just their eyes showing and everything like that you know i don't know what we're going to address are we going to have levi's during the millennium i i don't know we'll find out when we get there but the point is that from the scriptures we see that veils were still being worn 200 years after david wrote all those psalms 200 years after solomon had built a temple did they take it off when they went to the temple there there would be no indication of that i think that reason would tell us that that they were the veils so is it a sin to wear a veil when you go before god now i know that a veil is different from you know something covering your mouth we do know that um uh we have the example of the lepers that they were to cover their mouth uh apparently with a a cloth a linen cloth uh when you read those things but um i i think that we need to uh you know see it uh properly that uh it's not a sin if you have a covering for a legitimate reason when you're in the presence of of others here uh there are those who who think differently but that's why we have uh church government uh what about singing you know you can turn to a number of psalms that exhort us to sing and i think anybody knows me knows that i believe in singing and believe in and praising god you know i commissioned uh the work to begin to expand our hymn book not with protestant songs but originally written songs that praise god that are scripturally accurate and no i didn't talk to anybody about that as far as i know until and one of our luncheons i i just brought it out as one of the points i want us to begin thinking about a hymn book that you know maybe three four years down the road it's not going to happen tomorrow but if we don't start thinking about it it'll never happen and it says sing the lord a new song and what we've been singing for the most part well really all the songs in our hymn book have been there how long 20 30 years more and yet he says sing to the lord a new song uh you know i i put together i say put together i asked mr jonathan mcnair to put together the virtual choir that we heard earlier online when we were still locked up a little bit more i don't know about you but you know i i really choked up i thought that was so wonderful thank you to all of you who participated in that i don't know they were 20 or whatever it was it was done so beautifully and i i'm just thankful for that that was praising god far better than my voice and you know when you think about it you don't have to think very long for that one um i've asked that we put together a virtual choir for the feast at last i heard i think it was mentioned 80 singers i last heard from mr mcnair was that uh they found a hundred singers across the well let me rephrase that they found a hundred people that are willing to to be online and make a joyful noise and some of them they're gonna have to tune up a little bit and some tune down but thank you uh people all over the the the world of every shape and color and size and age who are willing to contribute to that and i wish we could do more and i've always wanted to promote these things there are some people you know right here in this room at least one here in this room uh and maybe several that can attest the fact that they ask me can we cut back on the special music because it's maybe burdensome to some of the singers i said look with all the talent we have here if we cut back we'll cut back cut back i said no i want special music every week and they complied with that you know when i was in greenville south carolina pastor in greenville south carolina and asheville north carolina i was hoping that we could put together an ensemble of some sort you know different different instruments and it took about three years because we didn't have anybody that could put it together we didn't have the talent but finally we found a fellow or fellow moved into the area that played violin and he had some real understanding of it and so we had a little ensemble of i don't know about seven people that accompanied the hymns each sabbath just not all the hymns but at the beginning and at the end and it added to it so we're not against music but there are those who take a look at some of the psalms and say well they say we have to sing during the services it's a command of god so let's take a look at psalm 81 psalm 81. and i'm going to i'm going to approach this from uh something that mr dexter wakefield had sent to us uh he asks this you you can we'll get to the actual verses here but he says why shouldn't we consider dancing timbrel's loots shouting etc to be commandments as well as singing since all those things and more are mentioned by david in the same context it's hard to figure why singing should be a commandment the violation of which is sin and the rest aren't i'll get to the objections here in a minute but when you think about it if singing is a commandment and he uses the same language for instruments and dancing and different things then why aren't those commandments the church has never considered any of those things to be commandments suddenly we have commandments we didn't know we had the reason why why is that those things are exhortations by david not commandments by david the psalmist exhorts us to praise sing dance shout play the loot and the trumpet etcetera which are good things to do especially before the tabernacle and david's day and before god in jerusalem and the kingdom when all the lands will come up and we sing and we play before the lord today some are confusing exhortations with commandments as exhortations we want to do them that is our desire we want to do them but there are times when all these things may be appropriate and times when they are not dancing and shouting are not listed among the statutes the helpful word is exhortations now he goes into psalm 81. sing to the lord or sing aloud to god our strength and some would say okay that is a commandment he's saying it's an exhortation which we would agree 16 men in the council agree okay make a joyful shout to the god of jacob raise a song and strike the timbrel the pleasant harp with the loot now people say well we don't have anybody telling enough to do that but wait a minute if this is a commandment maybe we need to figure this out blow the trumpet of the time of the new moon at the full moon on our solemn feast day for this is a statute for israel and a law of the god of jacob he says verses 3 and 4 where it says blow the trumpet our reference references to numbers 10 which is a statute for the priest to blow trumpets over burnt offerings at the feasts it's not something we do since we aren't levitical priests and we don't do sacrifices we understand what the trumpet symbolize this is my addition we understand what the trumpets symbolize relating to the feast of trumpets and sometimes we do blow a trumpet we try to blow a trumpet if we have somebody that can do it or shofar which is a little bit difficult but we don't understand that as a command that we have to physically do that every time the feast of trump comes around or we're violating the law of god no this is an exhortation but it was specifically concerning the levites that were to blow the trumpets not any tom dick and harry numbers 10 10 also on the day of your gladness and your appointed feasts and at the beginning of your months you shall blow the trumpets over your burnt offerings and over the sacrifice of your peace offerings and they shall be a memorial for you before your god i am the eternal god in other words numbers 10 10 shows that this is the statute but verses 1 and 2 are exhortations even your bible probably has a little space between verses two and three mine certainly does that there's a little disc when it says this is a statue it's not talking about the the singing to make a joyful noise and playing the timbrel and the harp and the loot because of that as a command it's a command or is it an exhortation but blowing the trumpet at the time of the new moon when this was written was a statute in a law of god now i'll just continue with my thoughts on this if we say that singing is a commandment and this is at the crux of the matter then how do we say that playing instruments dancing etc are not this reasoning is not consistent it's not logical and and and someone might say well we don't know how to do okay we can figure that out we can come up with some kind of dance other churches have it i had a in hickory north carolina we had a tomorrow's world presentation a lady came there and asked me about i forget the term exactly exotic dancing or something she was an exotic dancer not exotic that wouldn't be right uh she was a uh i know spiritual dancer or something she was lending her services so she could dance around the place there are people that believe they have to do that we do not because we believe that is an exhortation we know that david danced before the lord out in the middle of the street when the ark was being brought that was not in an assembly of on the sabbath at least we don't think was on the sabbath but you know these things have to be taken and the balance in which they are stated they are exhortations we want to do it but are we going to make it a commandment of god that we have to sing and if we don't personally sing we're violating that commandment you know we had singing here today granted it was taped but we heard the words we could read them now if if you don't believe that satisfying you know what we the the spirit and the intent well i i guess that everyone has to make up his mind on that but uh the answer often comes back well singing is listed more often and is therefore more important more emphasis is given to it wait a minute is it a command or is it not a command it's just because it's only listed three times to dance does that make it any less a command brethren think use the mind that god has given you with the spirit of god and with the counsel people get hung up on one thing and they throw all this other stuff out about jesus christ being the head of the church all of us speaking the same thing paul telling timothy to rebuke and correct these people who had different ideas is wearing a face covering and not conducting congressional singing a lack of faith because it has been presented that way is it a lack of faith or is it a prudent man for seeing evil and hiding himself as it says there in proverbs 22 verse 3. in matthew 4 jesus shows that scriptures can be misapplied to tempt god you can read that matthew 4 verses 6 through 7. god emphasizes showing love toward neighbor as mr mario hernandez who has anybody knows mr hernandez knows that he has faith i don't think anybody that knows him thinks he doesn't have faith but as he pointed out here when you have a deadly pathogen and you know that you could bring it into a group does it just mean that okay because we're here god is going to protect us how many feasts have you gone to where somebody comes in sick and passes it to other people except that this is a little different situation as mr hernandez pointed out in uh deuteronomy 22 verse 8 that we put a parapet around the earth uh the the the roof of the house so nobody falls off in exodus 21 verses 28 to 32 if an ox is known to gore somebody you make sure he's pinned up because if he gets out and he's known to gore people then you as the owner of that aux you have your life on the line now it does say that in this particular case he could purchase his life he could buy he could have a penalty a financial penalty in exchange for it but god does not hold us guiltless blood is on our house or our head if we do something that is does not show love toward our neighbor and wearing masks is not to protect me it's protect you i you know everybody's wearing a mask here we have social distancing here but i think we understand that sometimes you have to go without a mask but when i'm sitting here i i have a mask on and take it off when i come up it's a cumulative effect matthew 22 verses 36 to 40 you shall love your neighbor as yourself that is a law of god it's a summation of god's law in fact the second part of it and romans 13 verses 9 and 10 love does no harm to a neighbor therefore love is the fulfillment of the law is it wrong for us to think about our neighbor or to just say well i've got faith and i'm going to come in here because i don't think god would ever let anything happen as long as i'm here well i think history says that that's not necessarily so there's a time to hide out there's a time to take cover isaiah 26 verses 20 and 21 look it up there's a time to hide out hebrews 11th chapter verses 37 and 38 after showing these examples of faith and all these people had faith but he said some were stoned they were sawn in two they literally did saw people in two we saw that in a museum down in mexico but it was talking about europe not that long ago actually um there was slain with the sword they wandered about in sheepskins and goat skins being destitute afflicted tormented of whom the world was not worthy they wandered in deserts and mountains and dens and caves of the earth they hid out yes there's a time to stand up and there's a time to hide out and who are we to judge the faith of some other individual you know judges five and verse two i heard this from carl mcnair never really thought about it before but it's talking about the time of deborah and barrack and it says when leaders lead this is judges 5 and verse 2 and the people follow it takes leaders leading and it takes people voluntarily submitting to that leadership very powerful passage there so what do we conclude well we conclude that uh this is a time of stress a time of confusion in this world uh there are controversial matters these are controversial matters that we are discussing but god has given us the mechanism to cite to decide controversial matters those who reject jesus christ are not capable of yeah those who reject that jesus christ is uh capable of guiding very imperfect very very in very fallible servants uh do so at their own peril and i'd like to quote uh granny coats or i guess i don't know how to pronounce his her name i think she was in arkansas i think she is deceased but she says if you don't think that jesus christ can rule his church then you do not know jesus christ a very powerful statement we will encourage music during our services but in a safe manner ephesians 5 verse 19 we will make melody in our hearts and god is going to look at the attitude that we come to services not just the outward appearance of something we'll avoid the confusion of every man doing what is right in his own eyes and we're not going to judge one another over matters of faith as instructed in romans 14. i'd like to conclude with something that was sent to me and i i don't mean to uh to put down people's sincerity please understand it is a confusing time for many people but this was sent to me by actually sent to somebody else is passed on to me by one of our ministers you have to wonder how we will explain all this pettiness to others in the first resurrection quote you were tortured by the inquisition or lions or whatever wait until you hear about how we had to wear masks and not sing sometimes i don't know how you can put it much better it puts it in perspective please brethren let's work together as one body and let's do the work of god [Music] you

Channel: Living Church of God

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Published: Wed Aug 26 2020