Friendship With God (11/21/1999)

We're gonna look, okay, Deuteronomy chapter 6 and we'll start with verse 22 and hold on just a moment.

You actually got it ready too quickly because I thought of a verse while I was walking up here that I wanted to include.

Things been popping in my mind all morning. It's happening in Sunday school now it's happening up here.

Okay, I want to speak to you one more Sunday about this friendship relationship with God that we started

Sunday before last and follow along with me in Deuteronomy chapter 6.

Let's read about three verses here starting with verse 22. And the Lord showed signs and wonders great and sore upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his household before our eyes.

And you have a distinction in verse 22 before them and us. Do you notice that?

I mean between them and us. There's a distinction between Pharaoh and all of his household and us where it talks about our eyes.

That distinction is always there throughout all of history. There are

God's children and there are the devil's. We don't always know who the devil's children are but I think if you look in the eyeballs and you stay in the word and you stay around a person a while you can sense those things.

But suffice it to say that there are two groups here. Now I want us to focus in on God's group in the next two verses.

And the Lord commanded us. I'm sorry we left out verse 23. Where'd I learn to do that?

Miss B, why didn't you tell me? Verse 23.

And he brought us out from thence. Now where are they being taken out from?

Egypt. And what is that picture? That's right. The evil aspects of the world system.

He, God, is the one who brought us out from that place.

And you know there's a lot taught and especially in independent Baptist churches about the doctrine of separation.

In fact most other Baptist churches don't ever mention that anymore and probably very few churches anywhere mention it anymore.

So I hate to say anything negative about the independents mentioning that doctrine because at least they keep it in the light and they keep talking about it.

The doctrine of separation though I fear in their view, it used to be in our view, but we've seen the light on some of these issues as we've grown in the

Lord. But I think most who study this doctrine, be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers, come out from among them sayeth the

Lord and so forth, tend to focus on the coming out.

The going into the home and getting all the evil things out of it. We talked about that some yesterday that Frizzell's did along with me and Charlotte.

But we were talking a little bit about how at different times in our lives we've cast certain things out of the home like perhaps a

TV set or something like that or a record or an old CD or something. And you can get to the place where you focus on the coming out and getting the world out of everything and removing the world.

That tends to be where a brand new Christian will focus. And that's not entirely bad is it?

Because that is a part of this doctrine of separation that God wants to take us from the world and bring us over here.

Because the fact is this is where we've always belonged. And we had to see that.

And that's what happened to Paul on that Damascus Road when he saw that light and he heard the voice of the

Lord. And he said what would you have me to do Lord? And he was what we call saved at that moment.

God from a human point of view took him from the world and separated him out and brought him out from Egypt and placed him with his own people.

Now that's happened to each one of us at the point of salvation. And when he brings us out we for the first time see the world a little bit more clearly from God's point of view as not truly our home.

And so he has to bring us out. But notice that he tells us the purpose for bringing us out in the very next phrase.

Look at verse 23. You see that word that? That's a very important word in this verse.

Because the word that points out which part of this verse is the most important. It's not saying that the first phrase is not important.

It is important to separate ourselves from the things of the world. I think we should always be going back and taking inventory in that area.

Some of you teenagers it's a difficult thing to grow up in America and see how the teenagers in this country live and how the world says teenagers ought to be.

We have to always evaluate why do I dress the way I dress? Why do I talk the way

I talk? Why do I have the little phrases and the words that I say? Not just teenagers but all of us have to ask ourselves why are we doing what we're doing?

Are we getting that from Egypt? And we have to always be re -evaluating that with an honest pure heart before the

Lord. And as long as you do that that's all I ask you to do. But that's not the most important thing.

The most important thing is the next phrase. He brought us out from thence so that he might bring us in.

Now where is he going to bring us into to give us the land which he sware into our fathers?

That's the promised land and that pictures fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ. That picture is the abundant life.

That picture is walking in the Lord moment by moment. That is the purpose for why he brought us out in the first place.

So the separation from the world is important but it's not the most important thing. The most important thing is the relationship.

He brought us out that he might bring us into a relationship with himself. And it's pictured here by the promised land.

Now notice something else kind of interesting about this. And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes.

To fear the Lord our God for our good always. Isn't that interesting?

Obedience is for our good. It's so that God would be glorified but in the process of it all it is for our good as well.

We don't see it that way sometimes do we? But it's for our good always.

The Bible says that he might preserve us alive as it is at this day. And it shall be our righteousness if we observe to do all these commandments before the

Lord our God as he hath commanded us. Now we have to understand we all have to be dispensationalists.

One of the biggest problems doctrinally in this country today is that there has been this false teaching that it predominantly comes from the charismatic movement that it is wrong to be a dispensationalist and that we should not be dispensationalists.

A dispensationalist is someone who understands that God deals with people in different ways in different dispensations throughout human history.

And the only way that you can say that tongues, tongues and prophesying and a word of knowledge and some of those things that they're wanting to keep doing in the church, the only way that you can say that those still operate or that they are still from God is if you say there are no dispensations.

Everything's the same now as it's always been. That's not the truth though. The greatest dispensation that is the most obvious is the cross.

If you take the time before the cross and the time after the cross we have the Old Testament and the New Testament.

Obviously we're all dispensationalists because we all believe that the cross made a difference. But that's just one example.

There are probably at least six dispensations, perhaps seven in the Bible. But as we look back at this

Old Testament time, isn't it interesting in verse 25, and it shall be our righteousness.

Now you see what a non -dispensationalist would do is take this and apply it to me today. Are you with me this morning?

A non -dispensationalist would say, well it's in the Bible so it's true. Well everything in the

Bible is true but we have to understand there are dispensations and the primary focus of this verse may not have been applied to us.

It may have been applied to the people it was written to 1451 years before Christ when this was written.

Now there are obviously going to be secondary applications to all of us. There are going to be everything in the

Old Testament is a physical example that teaches us a spiritual truth. So it's all for us.

But to take a verse like 25 and say okay if we observe all these commandments that will be our righteousness would not be true of us today would it?

At least not in the purest sense of it. In a roundabout way it is true because God works in us to do all of his good pleasure.

But I'm saying just on face value we would not say that our righteousness comes from the works that we do would we?

But that's what they said. So that proves you have to be a dispensationalist. Let me point out something interesting about this little verse 25 here.

Do you realize and that's what I was looking for I was hoping Greg would lose the tape and take some time back there so that I could find this because it just popped in my mind that I wanted to read it.

But I'm not going to be able to find it quickly enough. Some of you may go right be able to go right to it if you do raise your hand and tell me where it is.

But there is a place where it where the Bible shows the

Shekinah glory that if you remember the study on the tabernacle that Brother Rocky did last week and that Brother Otis is teaching through on Mondays and Tuesday nights.

There is the place within that place called the Holy of Holies from from above the mercy seat between the cherubim was what we call the

Shekinah glory. The presence of our God's presence to the people of Israel and it was inside the

Holy of Holies which during this time in Deuteronomy it's it was still out there in the wilderness during the time of Exodus in the wilderness tabernacle.

Later when they got into the promised land they built the temple and it and the Shekinah glory was within the innermost

Holy of Holies inside that place. And God's presence was there with his people and his people in a sense had a relationship with God but it was through the priest.

And did you know it's still the same way with us? Our priest is the Lord Jesus Christ and you cannot pray literally

I mean I'm getting technical here Dr. Landau I'm getting a little technical but you cannot literally pray to the

Father unless you pray in the Son or if you'd like to say through the

Son because he is the high priest who takes us into the presence of God and that is always true.

And the high priest did that in the Old Testament for these people. And I believe that the only thing that even made it possible for the law to have anything to do with their salvation is because of the relationship they had with God as long as his presence was there.

But you know what happened? You can go in and read this place I wish I had looked it up but it didn't even cross my mind till I was sitting right up here this morning.

But it vividly shows the Shekinah glory coming up from off the mercy seat moving out to the court of the temple and then moving from there to the gate of the city and then going into the heavenlies.

And he is gone. And it wasn't until and what you'll notice is after that time period the

Jews have never been able to keep any part of the law. They don't even do the sacrifices anymore.

They don't have a relationship. And the whole thing is that relationship is where everything comes from a relationship with God.

What we don't really understand until we study is that God's had that relationship with us from before the beginning.

And we came to the place where we had to be reconciled. You do realize that God never had to be reconciled to us.

We had to be reconciled to him. We counted him as an enemy. He didn't count us as enemies. When it says we were the enemies of God it meant we counted him as an enemy.

And we had to be reconciled by the blood of Jesus. And all of that took place because of what

God has done for us in Christ. Now turn with me to the New Testament and let's take a look at this in Hebrews chapter 13.

Another way to phrase this doctrine of separation where he took us out of the world so that he might bring us in to a relationship with himself is this idea of sanctification.

Because to sanctify means to set apart. To set apart from the world unto

God. And in Hebrews 13 12 it says, Wherefore Jesus also that he might sanctify the people with his own blood suffered without the gate outside the city.

The cross was not within the gates of the city of Jerusalem. It was outside the city. And look at the next verse.

Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp bearing his reproach.

That is a beautiful message on the doctrine of separation. Do you know what

God is telling us there? God is telling us that if we are truly sanctified, if we're truly born again, we cannot live inside the camp anymore.

We can't be just like all of our old buddies in the world. We can't be accepted as just a normal friend of theirs.

We have to go outside of the gate and follow the Lord Jesus Christ to that very same cross and we have to bear his reproach.

And that's a part of what sanctification is all about. We cannot be just like the world.

We can't be like the world and its fads. We have to be very careful about our music. We have to be very careful about what we watch, what we listen to, who we hang around with.

Because if we do everything just like the world does it, then we have not gone outside the gates.

We're not truly sanctified. And so verse 13 says, let us go forth therefore unto him.

Verse 14, for we have no continuing city but we seek one to come. This place, this world is not our home.

And I was talking to this young man, Timothy, I guess he's 25 or something like that.

And to me he looks, he looked like a, you know, a high school person. Not that you're babies if you're in high school, but he just looked very young to me, let's put it that way.

But here this young man was speaking to me with the wisdom of a 35 year old. And I told the young man,

I said, when I was your age, Timothy, I thought the world was a pretty good place still.

I had not experienced the loss of two brothers within the space of 24, of 12 months.

And I said, but I can see on your countenance that you're not the way I was.

That to you this world is enemy territory and you have a job to do and you're passing through it doing the job for God on your way to home.

And he said, that's right, David. He got a tear in his eye.

Now most of you young people sitting towards the back have not had that kind of suffering yet.

You can look around you and music's fun, the place is fun, the world is a grand old place. You know that doctrinally it's not your home.

But when someone that means as much to you as life itself is taken to the real home, some of your affection goes there with them.

And that affection leaves this place. And you don't love this world quite as much.

And God is working in our lives throughout our lives to bring us to that place where we truly are ready to be in our true home.

In first Peter chapter 3 verse 14, it's interesting that it mentions suffering.

But if you suffer for righteousness sake, if you suffer for righteousness sake, happy are you.

And be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled. And look at verse 15, but sanctify the

Lord God in your hearts. Do you see that? Sanctify the

Lord God in your hearts. And the last phrase at the end of verse 16 talks about your good conversation in Christ, your good lifestyle, your good walk in Christ.

Notice it goes from suffering to sanctifying God in your heart to having a good walk.

What does it mean to sanctify God in your heart? You know what that means? It means in all of the hobbies we have, all of the jobs we have, all of the duties, all of the cares of the world, all the friends that we love, all the parents we love, all the children we love, all the boyfriends, girlfriends, spouses, and all of that,

God has to have a place in our hearts that has been set apart for him and him alone and no one else enters that room.

And we have to go to that room every day. Now that's what that means. And that does not come easily to us.

It's not just natural that when we get saved we're that way. It comes through suffering usually.

It can come through learning and that's why I'm so glad we got a good group of young people here today because if you can hear

God's voice today speaking to you through this book, you can get to the place where you can sanctify the

Lord in your hearts. But if you don't get to that place, God will bring you there and it'll be through suffering.

Because it's more important to God that we get there than it is some of the things that we think are so important on this earth.

When we have a loved one who's taken away, that's the most important thing in our life at that time and we cannot understand how

God would do that. Those who are smart enough to know that God is in control, then they have the problem of questioning, well then why did

God do this? Why did God cause the tragedy in Bryan's College Station?

You say, well he didn't cause it, the devil caused it. Well who's in control of the devil? Can the devil do anything without God's permission?

So in that sense I say cause and you know what I'm talking about. Why did God do that? Why, in Sunday school, talked about how bad things happen and Brother Otis corrected us and said nothing's bad.

Well you gotta think about that, I mean, and you said well I've seen some bad things. You saw those from your point of view and I've seen them from mine.

But do you know that God says that he finds pleasure in the death of his saints?

Pleasant in the sight of the Lord is the death. Now what if those logs fell down and just, and I don't know how much one of those would weigh

Brother Russell, but one of those logs was I don't know how many hundreds of pounds and there were multitudes of those that fell on these young people and they could hear scratching under those logs for some hours and then the scratching stopped and then they found two or three more of them dead because they had died over time underneath those logs.

If those young people were born again God found pleasure in that. How can that be?

Well is he evil? No, we're evil if we think that way.

God just doesn't think like we do. His whole vantage point is different than ours. God has the ability to look at this little speck of time that we're living in and compare it to all of eternity and to look at this training ground and boot camp that he's placed us in to train us to persevere and to be overcomers and to be humble and to be selfless and to bring about all of the characteristics of the

Lord Jesus Christ in our lives through suffering. He sees that that is not as grand and beautiful and perfect and marvelous as all of the life we will have with him forever in the next life.

So that's what's important to him and to us. This is what's important and so when we have a loved one taken away we think it's the most horrible thing in the world and it will seem that way and feel that way to our hearts and in fact from our point of view it is the fact.

But we have to understand from God's point of view it's not. It was a good thing.

Now that's meat isn't it? The important thing is that we have a deeper and more abiding relationship with God as we grow through this time.

That's more important than the things that we tend to focus on. That is the important thing.

That young man Timothy has grown years in spiritual maturity beyond those of his age.

But would you want to pay that price in order to get where he is? How many of you ladies and gentlemen would be willing to lose one of your children?

They would go to heaven. You'd be willing for them to go to heaven right now so that you could be a more mature

Christian tomorrow. Raise your hand. No don't. You couldn't raise your hand could you?

Not really. Now if you got alone in prayer and you walked with the Lord about that you might get to the place where you could be honest in your heart and say

Lord I'd be willing for that if that's what is needed to bring me where I have to be for you.

But you see we don't like thinking that way do we? It's tough.

I did a study once on some of the men, this was ten years ago so I probably remember who most of them were, but ten or fifteen years ago, oh goodness it was nineteen years ago, time flies when you're having fun.

I did a little study on the men at that time that I thought were the most awesome preachers that I'd ever heard preach.

I remember one of them was Lee Robertson and I found that in each case, and there were three or four of these men, each case they had lost a child to death.

Lee Robertson lost a little two -year -old girl named Joy and he almost quit the ministry.

Truett, the great founding pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, shot his best friend on a hunting trip and killed him with his rifle as they were going through a fence and he did quit the ministry.

And his wife and that church got around that man and said you cannot quit. He went on to be one of the greatest preachers but he never smiled again for a little bit.

Well, Lee Robertson named a camp after the little girl,

Camp Joy. And for I guess at least 20 years, maybe 25 years now, they have taught deaf people, deaf children in that place and had the most marvelous things happen.

But he went on to be just an awesome, awesome preacher. Why? Because he sanctified

God in his heart. When that little girl died, this world didn't mean so much to him anymore.

Now, God's giving us a message today because we can learn from a message.

We can learn from his word. He may be favoring us today and saying I'm not going to take that child from you.

I'm going to give you that kind of heart this morning. I'm going to give you that kind of thought life so that you'll bring it all in and you'll come back to that place and you'll place me there and no other

God will be before me in your heart. Let's look at James chapter 2.

Scary if you knew how little that was in this message. James chapter 2 and verse 21.

Was not Abraham our father justified by works? This is one of the most puzzling passages to the

Baptist. Was not Abraham justified by works?

Well, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar, seest thou how faith worked with his works?

And by works was faith made complete. It's like heads and tails of the same coin.

True biblical faith is like this. It always has works attached. We find even some more puzzling things about faith as we read this little passage and this is why

Martin Luther wanted to eliminate this from his Bible because he thought it was teaching works salvation.

What he didn't understand was this is simply looking at everything from God's point of view. That's what this is doing.

This is not looking at salvation from man's point of view. This is God's point of view. God's saying it all comes as a package.

God's saying you don't just pray this little prayer, dear Jesus come my heart, save me, amen, and you avoid hell.

That's not what it's all about. When you get born again, you get a new nature. The divine nature is imparted into your life and that changes some things.

You cannot possibly be the same before your body was the temple of the living God as you are after he dwells in your body because when it comes to dwell in your body you have a relationship better than what they had just with the

Shekinah glory and the high priest going in on their behalf. Your body is that temple and the

Shekinah glory lives inside of you and you have a relationship that does allow you to obey the law.

You're not under the law but God never said we're not supposed to obey it. Jesus said

I came to fulfill the law. He said my law is tougher than the law that you think as you think of it because I say if you look after a woman to lust at her, you've committed adultery already.

I say if you hated someone, you've murdered them. We may have some murderers in our school, Miss Rogers. Some children who are literally murderers because they had a moment of hate towards another child in that school.

That's a tough law isn't it? How can we live by that law? Jesus said your righteousness must surpass the righteousness of the

Pharisees if you're going to enter the kingdom of heaven. How can that be possible? Only through relationship.

Only through the relationship that we have with the Lord Jesus Christ. He says verse 23 in the scripture was fulfilled which said

Abraham believed God and it was imputed unto him for righteousness. That's the part we Baptists like to teach and I love it.

This is one of my most favorite doctrines in the Bible is what I call the doctrine of imputation that for God's people when

Jesus was on the cross, all of the sins of God's people past and present and future were taken and placed upon his body while he was on the tree.

The Bible says in the book of 1st Peter but not only were the sins of his people placed upon him but the beauty and the righteousness of him was placed within us.

So you have a double imputation. Our sins going to him, his righteousness coming to us.

This verse teaches this even about Abraham. He believed God and it was imputed to him as righteousness.

It means that it was not Abraham's own righteousness that saved him or made him righteousness. It was Jesus's righteousness that he now had because of belief.

But you know what we don't study much and I never have until this past three weeks. Look at this next phrase and he was called the friend of God.

Now in this verse I'll teach you something if you hadn't seen it before I did which somebody probably did.

But this is not just talking about the imputation of his righteousness to us. It's talking about the imputation of a friendship of us to him.

It's very interesting to me to look at this word called. You see here where it says and he was called the friend of God.

This word called is the same word that we find in Revelation 17 14 where it says these shall make war with the

Lamb and the Lamb shall overcome them for he is the Lord of Lord and kings of kings and they that are with him are the called and the chosen and the faithful.

The same calling that brought us to Christ brought us to friendship. When Jesus asked

Peter do you love me? Do you agape me? Do you agape me? And he said well Lord I'm fond of you.

Then the third time Jesus said well are you my friend? Are you my friend?

He said well you know I am. Are we? Because it is in that relationship that comes the obedience.

We must be just like Abraham the friend of God. Well I can see here there's another

Sunday's worth of this but I just want to leave with you this thought this morning.

Do you like Jesus? Do you like him so much that you have sanctified a place in your heart for just him?

And do you go to that place or do you just go out fishing naked? First thing that Peter did when he saw him on the shore was his heart melted.

He jumped in the water I'm sure to cover his nakedness but also to swim to the shore and be with his

Lord. And that's what God's calling us to do this morning. It's not so important that we focus on being taken out of Egypt.

What we need to focus on is being taken in to the land. Let's stand in that prayer.

Father we pray this morning that you've touched each heart. I thank you that you've touched mine.

Cause us to go into this Thanksgiving holiday not thinking about friends and family so much.

Not thinking about the activities of the holiday of this world.

But sanctifying a place in our heart for you and going there every day. And maintaining that friendship with you so that we might go about feeding your lambs and your sheep.

And we might understand that that is our purpose. And Father we pray that you would touch each heart in your own way and move us to the place we need to be to go into the coming weeks.

We thank you for the messages this morning and for the service and our time together. And we thank you that you've touched our hearts.

We pray in Jesus name. Amen. This morning I want to give a brief invitation to anyone who would like to respond.

So let's bow our heads and close our eyes for a moment. The faith, by the way

I will say this, faith without works is dead is about the only verse I've ever found in the whole

Bible that justifies an altar call. But to me it does justify it. Because I remember a time when some preacher told me well you can just stay right back there and hold on to the back of that pew and say

Jesus come in your heart and save me amen and you'll be saved. You don't have to come down to this altar and show everyone you meant it.

And the interesting thing is I would hold that thing and you've heard the story if you've been around me much but I'd hold that thing and say

Jesus saved me, Jesus saved me, Jesus saved me, Jesus saved me. And then I felt great because he had told me

I would be saved if I did that. But you know in the depths of my heart I knew I was lost. But when

Jesus saved me the first thing I wanted to do was come down an altar and let people know that I was their brother that they were my brothers and sisters.

And that was very important and so sometimes we need that I think and sometimes when the God touches our hearts we need to come down and put some works to it and get our legs moving and come down to this altar and kneel a knee to God and get with him and thank him for what he's done in our hearts.

It's not the coming to the altar that does anything. The thing has already happened. We just want to come before the

Lord and thank him. So if you have that need this morning or if you want to make any commitments to him or let him know or to seal in your heart that you've heard him today, you come this morning.

Amen. All right let's stand and Brother Greg I'd like to ask you to dismiss us in prayer.