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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/unknown-speaker/the-influence-of-maturity/
Now, probably you're wondering if he's going to encompass this grandfather mountain longer, and I will, because I'm not quite done. But I hope you understand that this is not just for the ancients that are here today.
This is so that you who are younger will understand where we come from, and will understand how we're trying to connect with you, so that in turn we can be united like this. Because assemblies are very unique.
They're a living thing. An assembly is not an organization. It's a living, breathing organism that has a certain impact that cannot be found in any other place in the world. As far as scriptural teaching, this is God's chosen way of instruction.
I probably mentioned to you, but you'll have to pardon if I do, but it's a senior moment. But it took a man from a denominational church who was a minister, and he brought all his congregation to our gospel meetings up in North Dakota one time.
And he took them to a conference, the first day of the conference. He wanted to come, because he appreciated the gospel. He was a genuine believer, paid for by two different denominations. Each church was small.
I don't know how he reconciled it, but that was his business. But he was there writing notes on the Bible reading that started at 8 .30 in the morning until 10, writing more notes from 10 to 12, writing more notes from 1 .30 to 3, and from 3 .30 to 5, wrote more notes.
He had pages coming over, and I could see him from time to time. And even in the gospel meeting, he took notes on everything. And on the way home, I said, well, Mark, what do you think? Did you learn anything today?
And he kind of puffed. He said, I've been four years in university and four years in seminary. And he said, I think I learned more today than I did in eight years. Now I said, that's kind of, to me, impossible.
No, he said, I'll tell you what's the difference. He said, when I went to university and seminary, I learned what people said about the Bible. We had books. And then we had professors, and they would lecture.
And we would pass if we were able to repeat what they said to us. But he said, here today, it was God talking to us. And he was half on the cry. He said, I can't explain to you how that impacts me. I've been listening to what people say about God.
And today, I heard what God says about me. Now that's what I want to pass on to you here today. And I'm going to just give you, I'm going to be quite brief on a number of different points. So I'm going to read them first, which I normally don't do.
But the first is in Psalm 103. And I would like to speak to you about the influence of maturity. And I would like to read the first verse. This is more or less one of these beautiful Psalms that a lot of people memorize.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. And notice the last verse. Bless the Lord, all his works and all places of his dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul. And in between those, the invocation and the doxology, we have, in the first two verses, a call to worship.
Then from verse 3 to verse 5, there's five distinct benefits that we receive from God. Then from verse 6 down through verse 9, we have comfort for those that are needy. And then from verse 10 through verse 12, we have a provision of grace.
For grace given, for grace needed. And then in verse 13 through 18, which I will read in a moment, we have a father's consideration. And then he concludes again with a call to worship at the end for all that God has done.
I call this, and I'm going to read to you then at verse 13. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame. He remembereth that we are dust. As for man, his days are as grass as the flower of the field, so it flourisheth.
For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone. And the place thereof shall know it no more. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him and his righteousness unto children's children, to such as keep his covenant and those that remember his commandment to do them.
And so if you take headings, this is the heading that I put on this. The influence of maturity is the promotion of righteousness. To promote righteousness, righteous living. Turn to Psalm 128 in verse 4.
Behold, that thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the Lord. The Lord shall bless thee out of Zion, and thou shalt see the good of Jerusalem all the days of thy life. Yea, thou shalt see thy children's children, and peace upon Israel.
So in the first reading, we have the promotion of righteousness or right living. The second reading, we have a peaceable family life. That's part of the influence of maturity. Turn over to the book of Proverbs, please.
Proverbs 13, and I want to read verse 22. A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children, and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just. I don't think he's talking about money here.
I think he's talking about passing on an inheritance of moral stability, of good, honest understanding of honoring the Lord and what it's like to be loved and to love. So we have the promotion of righteousness, the influence of maturity.
We have peaceable family life as an influence of maturity. We have passing on an inheritance to our children as part of our influence of maturity. Chapter 17, children's children are the crown of old men, and the glory of children are their fathers.
And here we have pleasure in prosperity, spiritual prosperity. Turn over to Jeremiah, please, for a reading in chapter 2. And verse 9. Wherefore, I will yet plead with you, saith the Lord, and with your children's children will I plead.
What's happened here? Something's gone wrong. For pass over the isles of Chittim, and see, and send on Niketer, and consider diligently, and see, if there be such a thing, hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods?
But my people have changed their glory, for that which doth not profit. This is a pleading for repentance. We don't always have everything good. Another reading in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 37. So we have the promotion of righteousness, peaceable family life, passing on inheritance, pleasure in prosperity, and pleading for repentance, all influenced by mature people on those who are younger.
Notice verse 25 of Ezekiel, chapter 37. And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob, my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt, and they shall dwell therein, even they and their children's children, forever.
And my servant David shall be their prince forever. And now he's looking forward into the future, and laying out a promise for the future, for those that have been influenced by mature believers. One final reading in the book of Joel.
Joel, chapter 1, and verse 2. Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land. Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers? Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.
And then he tells basically what could go wrong, but actually what he's doing is giving us a principle to remember. Promotion of righteousness, peaceable family life, passing on an inheritance, pleasure in spiritual prosperity, pleading for repentance when there's failure, promise for the future ahead, and principles to remember today.
You know, God never goes back on a promise. And I think about Psalm 103, and I'm thinking about the mercy of the Lord, God's mercy and his loving kindness, his love, personal love, has been extended to us, and the same grace he gave to those of us who are older, the same blessing that we've experienced for years in our lives, he is willing and wanting to give to our believing children and believing grandchildren, who will reverently and worshipfully fear God.
So the challenge to me, as an older person, have I been able to demonstrate in my life to you, and a good many of you know me for a long time, have there been possibilities that I was able to demonstrate to you that righteousness pays, that living for God is the way life is supposed to be, that success in business is not necessarily righteousness, that using your intellect for things that don't last is not necessarily good.
We're here to promote the kingdom of God. We're here to build a church that helped build the church that our Lord started. We're here in our generation, in our place, and in our time to represent our God and to do it righteously, with righteousness in every choice that we make, every place we go, every business that we engage in.
Righteousness is what's needed in the lives of God's people, in every aspect of life. And God says that His mercy will be from everlasting to everlasting upon them that show reverential fear of God. That overrides everything in our lives that we will ever do.
If that's not in me, it may not be in my children, and it may not be in my grandchildren, but I'm passing on to those of you who are younger. It's your time now to decide what you're going to do with the righteousness that God expects of you in your life, where you are, doing what you do, exactly as you're doing it now.
Is it right, or is it wrong? If in your heart of hearts you know today, and have been listening to the Word of God over this conference weekend, that there are one or two things that you are going to have to make changes on, may I urge you in God's name, before you walk through that door, between you and the Lord, sitting on the seat where you are, resolve with God as your witness and your Bible in your hand, that you are going to submit to the One who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.
As those who are older, we're here to promote righteousness. But not just that. Notice in 128, we have something else here. If you are people who have young children, I would suggest to you that quite often you read Psalm 127.
That's the family portrait. That's God's family portrait as how He expects parents to deal with their children and how they're to live their lives at home. These Bible portraits are very, very significant.
But it says, The Lord shall bless thee, thou and thy children's children, and peace upon Israel. The man who's going to be blessed, according to what we have read here, first of all, fears the Lord. That overrides every other obligation or responsibility in your life, the fear of the Lord.
That's where wisdom begins. The second thing that will happen, you will commit yourselves to walking in His ways. The man who fears the Lord will rejoice in the results of his honest labor from one day to the next.
He will be able, before he gets on his John Deere tractor, well, that's a favorite of mine. But, you know, I'm back when they had two cylinders too. But whatever kind of machine you have, before you get a board of that and start setting your GPS, getting your coffee pot all ready and seeing what you're going to read from one end of the one mile long field to the other, that you will understand that God has placed you where you are.
I was in a farming area one time, and a man was driving his big John Deere tractor, and he had his planter going behind him, a big wide swath, and he'd been coming out to gospel meetings. And so I thought, best place to find him and talk privately is if he'll give me a ride in that John Deere tractor.
Well, he pulled down to the end of the field, and he saw a man, he stopped, he actually shut her down, climbed off, what can I do for you? I said, well, I came to ask you, have you thought about going to heaven?
Yeah, he said, I think about it for over 40 years. I said, have you done anything about that? Well, he said, I'm waiting for God to do something, and he hasn't done anything yet. I said, don't insult me, let alone insult God.
That's an arrogant word from an arrogant man to say that God hasn't done anything. I thought he was going to haul off and hit me. I said, don't be so arrogant. What do you mean? You're breathing God's air.
You're bringing out of the fullness of God's earth truckloads of God's fullness that comes from the dirt, and you say God hasn't done anything for you yet? Well, he said, I never thought about it. I said, 40 years, and you haven't thought about that?
I said, no wonder you're not going to heaven. Not likely you'll ever get there until this whole attitude changes. Then he stopped. I said, I actually came here to try and get a ride in that tractor, but I said, anybody that insults my Heavenly Father, I'm having nothing more to do with them.
I turned and walked away from my vehicle. I was driving a pickup truck. And he called after me by name. He said, well, come on. I said, no, absolutely not. Anybody that insults my Savior insults me. And I was gone clear off his field before he climbed up on the tractor and before he drove off.
A week later, I was gone way from there. The meetings were over, and I was gone. And I get this ring on the phone. Mr. Goff. I said, yes. And he told me his name. He said, I have been saved by God's grace.
I thanked him. I thanked him. The first time, honestly, from my heart. I thanked him for everything that he's given to me. And then he said, I realized he gave his son for me. He died for me. And I thanked him.
Sometimes when a person enjoys the results of honest labor as a farmer or as a mother, and you're happy in your marriage, you will find that your children will look upon you and say, I'd like to be like my folks.
Actually, if there's any two people in the world I would love to be like, my mom and dad. Father was a farmer. But every morning, well before five o 'clock, there was a place in the living room of our house where Father knelt to pray and read the Bible on his knees.
And my mother was a lady who read the scriptures dutifully and studied the Bible. And at 95 years of age, she never read novels, but she was reading five books. One of them was The Triumph of John and Betty Stamm.
Another was A Geographical History. Another was A Commentary. Another was The Bible. And another was A Personal Autobiography of a Missionary. My mom never was in the hospital more. I think the last two children were born in the hospital.
Apart from that, she was never in the hospital. But the last day of her life, she got up on a Saturday morning and ate her breakfast and said to my sister, funny, I'm not feeling too well all of a sudden.
Went into the other room, sat down and died. And I thought, what a blessing to have a peaceable family life. It began with her father way over in Ireland. Her mother, way up in Canada and passed on down through the age in her life with my father.
His parents came from North Dakota, well England by way of North Dakota and then to Oregon. And it was passed on to us from day one that God was the most important thing in our family. I would challenge any of you young mothers and fathers, you be sure that you understand you've been given those children as a heritage of the Lord.
They have been given to you by God. Be sure your family life represents what God intends in your family and in his family. Over in Proverbs, we read of how you pass on an inheritance. A lot of people, they're wanting to know how much grandpa's going to leave them.
And so they're really in turn generally calling how much money. And then when their dad dies, well, he had grandpa's money and grandma's money so he should have a lot. And how much is going to be to me?
And so you start dividing it up between you and your brothers and sisters. And all of a sudden you realize, I hope you realize when you read this, that's not what this inheritance is. A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children.
But you consider yourself a morally stable man? I'm speaking to people now who are married men between the ages of 25 and 50. There's a lot of the Lord's people allow certain things to come into their lives and they know that they have something on that screen of their computer that should never be there.
Or they've listened or watched something that they should have never seen. And it undermines the moral stability of sons and daughters and children that look on and realize there's something different about dad in the last three or four months.
Wonder what it is. And it won't take your teenage son very long to find out. I see in this case, our God is filing a lot of prayers of a good man who makes those prayers on behalf of his children. I would like to ask you to pray for my children and grandchildren.
I would like to ask you that you would pray for those that you know who are struggling in family life. It's an awful thing to see a son or daughter go off to university and come back within a semester or the first year with a whole different view of life.
They've abandoned the biblical worldview and claimed the secular worldview. And they change almost overnight before our eyes. You know, the good example and good advice that passes on from older people and quoted perhaps from somebody else can do you good in the long haul.
Perhaps you have done things that are dishonest. Pass a little story on to you. A young man was saved in meetings that we had and he used to bring drugs from Mexico to Canada. And his parents, they weren't living together.
It was a dysfunctional home. He made good money transporting drugs from Mexico to Canada. But a Christian, not far away, got talking to him, a Christian businessman. And a connection was made. This poor young fella had a young wife and young children.
And this Christian businessman said, you've got a fine family. What are you doing with these children? Two of the girls were teenagers. And they were already advertising themselves. You girls know what I mean.
Never advertise yourself. And for what it's worth, men, from the neck up, that's where you look. It's very important that we understand that. But this young man came to listen to the gospel. And it convicted him so much that he went to a bar and got drunk and he was put in jail.
A few days later he got out and God in mercy saved him. But a year later he said, Mr. Goff, I've got a problem. He said, and he told me that he was in trouble with the law in a different country. And he said, what should I do?
Well, I said, my suggestion, and I would make the same suggestion to you, if you know, and nobody but you and God knows, that something is wrong that needs to be made right, I said, write it down on a piece of paper so you're precise as to what's the problem.
90 of solving a problem has been able to define it in a sentence or at the most a small paragraph. So he wrote the problem. And I gave him a couple of suggestions and he sent it off to a judge in the place where he was wanted.
And I was amazed. Within the week he got a letter back from this judge. He said, I would like you to appear before me on such and such a day. I want you to know that what you wrote to me, this has never happened to me before in my life.
Where a person has honestly volunteered to acknowledge their own guilt. He went and stood before the judge. The judge said, now please tell the court what happened to you to make you write this letter to me.
The judge read the letter. The man told how God saved him. And that since then his wife had been saved. And his children were coming to a, well they were going to a gospel hall. And his children were attending a Sunday school.
And he told them, there's a 180 degree turn in my life because Christ has come in. And instead of about being divorced, almost being divorced, my wife and I have come to love each other more than ever before.
And the judge sitting on the bench said, this court finds this to be exactly what we want to happen to everybody. But as far as I know, it has never happened in my hearing before. He said, you are free without restrictions.
If you are one of those people here today, and it happens with Christians, that you know there are things yet that are keeping you from being able to pass on a good, spiritual inheritance to your family.
Commit yourself today to dealing with that without reservation. Between you and God. And if you have to write it out on a paper, do so. And if there's people you have to connect with, do so. But the reason behind this is because there's little eyes watching you.
And there's smaller feet that are going to be following you. And there's lives that will be lived after you and I are gone if the Lord doesn't come. And they will be affected by what you do. Notice, not only promotion of righteousness, a peaceable family life, passing on an inheritance, but there's pleasure in prosperity.
Children's children are the crown of old men. And the glory of children are their fathers. I guess gray hair is supposed to be a crown too, but I'm trying to make it appear there's more than there is actually there.
And that's a problem today when the wind's blowing. So I have to follow the wind with my fingers to see which way it's going. But it is an honor. It is an honor to see our families following the way of virtue.
It's an honor to see a generation that follows us serving the will of God according to the word of God. It's an honor, a privilege to have children and godly parents sitting at the Lord's Supper together.
What an honor. And I'm wondering, is that prosperity? I was there this morning and I listened to some of these young men here speaking to the father. I said, Father, thanks for these children. I'm one of them.
That have finally learned how to respectfully represent God's people in public with words that have meaning to them and reaches the hearts of those who are older. I don't know your folks, but you're a good representative of your parents.
And the reason I'm mentioning that, because you're going to be hit by the devil soon. So hang in there. He can't overcome us only if we let that happen. But when we have I remember sitting with my father and mother and I was married and gone.
My older brother was married and gone. My youngest brother was 16 years old when he was saved. My older brother was 18 years old when he was born. But I remember the first Lord's Day. My older brother and his wife, my older sister and her husband, my wife and I, my younger sister, my younger brother, all sat around the Lord's Supper.
In different places, it's true. I think it struck my father the way it struck me. He stood up to pray. And Father wasn't a teary-eyed man. But when he said, he said thanks to his Heavenly Father. He didn't mention the fact that all of the family was there.
But everybody knew that. And my father filled up. So did I. My brother, here's my youngest brother, for the first time, reaches out his hand and takes the bread. Reaches out his hand and takes the cup.
And I thought I would love that for my family when God gives one to me. I hope we understand that that's what we call prosperity. I don't want to linger too long on this next one, but I feel I must speak about it.
Because some of the Lord's people had hewn them out cisterns. Broken cisterns that hold no water. And the problem is some of the Lord's people are doing that today. They're hewing them out cisterns. And the only thing that's filling them is money, pleasure, the desire to seek more.
So early this morning, I wrote this and I'm going to just briefly read it to you. Sometimes we're wondering what's happening to our young. There's assemblies that used to have 20 and 30 young people, young married couples, in the fellowship.
And for some reason, they're not there now. They go one place, then they look for another, then they look for another, like a rolling stone. And then finally they settle into a little group of a few people.
And they sit around on sofas or chesterfields or whatever they call them, and they talk about God a little bit. But they, quote, form relationships. That's the problem with the emerging church movement today.
This worldwide movement that many of our children are being caught up with oftentimes starts on some of these big mega churches. And our kids go to those places for a while until they find themselves lonely among 4 ,000 people.
So they find a little clique. They gather in somebody's house and they discuss people that come onto the internet. Or you can go into most Bible bookstores and find a whole section and maybe some of them are half.
And these books are written by well-read and studied authors. But they're involved in this mystery of trying to find out what really is truth. They've abandoned the hard and fast doctrines of the Bible and call them allegories.
They don't like the hard, stated facts and positive statements of truth. This is a quote. We want to embrace mystery rather than conquer it. Another person said, I don't think we've got the gospel right now.
This came from people who one time were called committed Christians. And this is what he quoted. I don't think we've got the gospel right yet. I don't think the liberals have it right. But I don't think we have it right.
None of us have arrived at the truth of the gospel. That didn't come from some stranger. And they favor sitting around having conversations instead of listening to preaching. They compromise instead of forming convictions.
And they have questions instead of in the place of truth. A quote among those who say the gospel can't clearly be known. And this is what they read. They presume one certain thing. This is the quote. The Bible doesn't mean what traditional people think it means.
And in fact what they're saying is that God hasn't spoken. He's just kind of mumbled. And we really don't know. This undermines everything. It undermines the Bible. It undermines the church. It undermines the gospel.
It undermines souls of men and women. When people do not accept the authority of the Bible and the clarity of the Word of God, this leads to the saying, well, the Word of God is not really clear. Or you'll hear words like, well, I'm not comfortable with that.
Well, who cares whether you're comfortable or not? What does the Bible say? And if I'm not comfortable with it, then that means I'm not responsible to follow it. And that really must be an insult to God who took the Holy Spirit over hundreds of years, thousands of years, to give us this Word.
It's an assault on the wisdom of God and the integrity of God. You know, if you don't believe anything solidly, you'll never offend anybody. And that's what we're in today. Be tolerant. Everybody has a different opinion about some things.
Just be tolerant. One girl said something like this, I'm a Jesus girl, but I like to go out and drink with my friends. Any of you young people do that? We've come to the place. I wondered how far back this goes, but we were up in Portage La Prairie one time preaching the gospel.
And a young man came who had heard the gospel and professed to be a believer and was coming to the gospel meetings, but he had graduated from a seminary. And one time he came to us with his pastor. We were talking privately.
And I said to the pastor, what's the difference between what you preach and what we are preaching here? Well, he said, I'm not wanting to insult you, but what you preach is not seeker-friendly. And I said, why should it be?
Why should it be seeker-friendly? Well, he said, that's why we can pack our churches and your gospel halls are going downhill. I said, so are you going to tell God if you're saved? And at the judgment seat of Christ I fill the church because I was seeker-friendly?
That's where all this started. And a lot of our young people have fallen into that trap. And it is your duty and mine to guard and proclaim and pass truth on to the next generation. Paul told Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 6, Keep that which is committed to thy trust.
So we're passing it on to you. I don't know whether I'll be speaking to you again because at my age, you're not sure what's going to happen next. Peter's father passed away at my age and he was full of vim and vigor until he passed.
But we're passing something on to you here and you have a responsibility to God and to the assembly that you're a part of and to God's people and to the gospel to stick with the Bible. It is time for all of us here to commit ourselves before walking through that door that we will commit ourselves to earnestly contending for the faith that was once delivered to the saints.