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"Whose Faith Follow" — When Failure Tests Our Confidence (B.Prost) · (Un) Common thoughts of Christ

• 0:00
  Bernard: The following message was given by brother Bill Prost at a Bible Conference in 2017 which takes up two verses in the last chapter of Hebrews.
• 0:10
  Bernard: He shares wisdom for those that may be younger and those that are older in the path of faith.
• 0:18
  Bernard: Perhaps we can turn to two scriptures in the word of God that I believe bring some balance before us in what, to me anyway, seems like a bit of a sensitive subject.
• 0:33
  Bernard: Turn first to the same book in which we have had our readings- Hebrews.
• 0:39
  Bernard: This time to the last chapter 13.
• 0:42
  Bernard: Chapter 13 and verse seven.
• 0:46
  Bernard: Remember them, which have the rule over you who have spoken unto you, the word of God, whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation.
• 1:01
  Bernard: And then further on in the same chapter, verse 17-"obey them that have the rule over you and submit yourselves for they watch for your souls as they that must give account that they may do it with joy and not with grief.
• 1:19
  Bernard: For that is unprofitable for you." I am looking around at many in this room who, like myself, grew up under the sound of what I fully believe is the whole truth of God.
• 1:34
  Bernard: I don't mind confessing to you that there were times in my life when I was brought to rock bottom and where I went to the Lord and said,"Lord, show me the precious truth of thy word, and then give me the grace to walk in it.
• 1:52
  Bernard: And I look out here today on a group of people, and many of you are young people, and maybe you are going through something of the same exercise, but possibly you look around and you don't see what we talked about this morning, at least not in your eyes.
• 2:10
  Bernard: The fruit of what you feel the truth ought to produce.
• 2:16
  Bernard: Turn back to a scripture in Matthew.
• 2:18
  Bernard: I think it's chapter 23.
• 2:21
  Bernard: That to me is very solemn.
• 2:23
  Bernard: Matthew 23, going back to when our Lord Jesus was here on earth.
• 2:30
  Bernard: And notice what He says here in verse one.
• 2:33
  Bernard: Then spake Jesus to the multitude and to His disciples, saying:"the scribes and to the pharisee, sit in Moses seat.
• 2:44
  Bernard: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe-that observe and do.
• 2:51
  Bernard: But do not ye after their works for they say and do not.
• 2:58
  Bernard: Sometimes it becomes difficult to do what the older ones say when through the eyes of younger ones- perhaps we say and do not.
• 3:09
  Bernard: I, for one, have to hang my head because there have been too many times in my life when I have had more to say with my mouth than I walked in with my feet.
• 3:23
  Bernard: I started university back in the early 1960s.
• 3:28
  Bernard: And there are others here who can no doubt relate to this.
• 3:33
  Bernard: Because beginning with the 1960s, there was a tremendous upheaval, a tremendous rebellion by young people against what they perceived was an established authority.
• 3:46
  Bernard: The establishment, if you like.
• 3:49
  Bernard: And they rebelled against it.
• 3:51
  Bernard: Why?
• 3:52
  Bernard: Because they saw what they perceived to be an outward form with no reality to it.
• 3:59
  Bernard: I must say that I sympathized with them in their feelings because I knew what they were talking about.
• 4:08
  Bernard: And I hasten to say, I'm not talking about the local assembly where I was raised or about those gathered to the Lord's name.
• 4:15
  Bernard: But back in the days in which I grew up, the world in general, at least paid lip service to Christian principles.
• 4:23
  Bernard: When I went to public school, the Bible was read in the school, the Lord's Prayer was said every morning.
• 4:28
  Bernard: And it was even true when our children went to school as well.
• 4:32
  Bernard: We respected that it was very good.
• 4:35
  Bernard: But then young people who grew up suddenly began to see that all of that outward form good though it might have been, didn't really translate into practical life with their parents and with many people to whom they looked up.
• 4:50
  Bernard: And as a consequence, they said, what is the point?
• 4:54
  Bernard: What is the point?
• 4:57
  Bernard: The young people began to say, what is the point?
• 5:00
  Bernard: Why should we pay lip service to something?
• 5:03
  Bernard: That does not seem to have any substance to it.
• 5:07
  Bernard: Getting closer to home, and I'm not talking only to young people, but maybe in your local assembly and maybe sometimes when you go to a Bible conference, you say there doesn't seem to be the substance there in the lives of those who hold on to and maintain that this is the truth of God.
• 5:28
  Bernard: Rest assured that you are in some good company.
• 5:32
  Bernard: I remember well hearing an address when I was a boy from a brother that was old enough to be my grandfather who said quote"I did not want to be part of Brethren.
• 5:43
  Bernard: I thought they were far too narrow." It's nothing new.
• 5:49
  Bernard: And there were those way back in the 1800's who listened to those who wrote our written ministry, and they said,"that's far too narrow.
• 5:58
  Bernard: I want a wider path." They could hardly accuse some of those dear brothers of not walking in it.
• 6:05
  Bernard: But even in that day, no doubt there were those who at least maintained the truth in an outward way, but perhaps didn't walk in it in the way that they should.
• 6:14
  Bernard: I say to each one, you and I have to be ready to go right back to the word of God.
• 6:21
  Bernard: Yes, we should obey those that have the rule over us and submit ourselves.
• 6:27
  Bernard: But I can well remember a brother who is now with the Lord telling me about how when he was a young man and he was concerned about some failure in one of the older brethren in his local assembly, an older brother who took considerable part in the meetings.
• 6:43
  Bernard: He approached his father about the whole question and said,"father, what about that?" His father's remark was rather terse and to the point.
• 6:53
  Bernard: He said, son, referring to Hebrews 13 and seven, which he didn't refer to.
• 7:01
  Bernard: He expected that his son would recognize the scripture.
• 7:04
  Bernard: He said, son,"it does not say whose failures follow It says, whose faith follow?" I say that to each one of us today.
• 7:16
  Bernard: The truth of God stands firm.
• 7:18
  Bernard: We talked about it a little bit in Lawrenceville and some here.
• 7:21
  Bernard: Were there where we read in the scripture where the Lord Jesus would say to his disciples, and ye shall know the truth.
• 7:28
  Bernard: And the truth shall what?
• 7:31
  Bernard: Constrict your life.
• 7:33
  Bernard: Restrict your usefulness.
• 7:35
  Bernard: Absolutely not.
• 7:37
  Bernard: And the truth shall make you free.
• 7:42
  Bernard: Free from what?
• 7:43
  Bernard: Free from everything in this world.
• 7:45
  Bernard: Free from ourselves to be like.
• 7:49
  Bernard: If we walk in it, that vessel about whom Paul speaks in Second Timothy two ready for every good work.
• 7:58
  Bernard: Is there a need to look up to and honor those who minister the word to us?
• 8:03
  Bernard: Indeed, there is not only in the setting of a conference like this, but in the setting of your local assembly, but in looking at them, you are going to see failure in every one of them.
• 8:15
  Bernard: Yes, you are.
• 8:16
  Bernard: Don't expect perfection down here.
• 8:19
  Bernard: There is only one in whom you and I will find absolute perfection.
• 8:27
  Bernard: It reminds me of a story that took place in the same area where I now live.
• 8:31
  Bernard: As most of my wife and I moved a little over a year and a half ago.
• 8:35
  Bernard: To Eastern Ontario and in that area many years ago, I suppose at least 130 years ago, there was a difficulty among the people of God and there was a brother there who got so discouraged and so downcast by all that was going on that he was prepared to leave.
• 8:53
  Bernard: But as many brethren were in those days, he farmed for a living and as he was out there in the field plowing, he had plenty of time to mull things over because he didn't have to pay a lot of attention to things.
• 9:06
  Bernard: He knew how to plow very well, and once he got going with that furrow, once he, as they say in farming jargon, once he was able to strike out and get one or two straight furrows in the field, then he just followed the one that he'd gone along before.
• 9:20
  Bernard: And so he was meditating and as he thought about it, the Lord laid this scripture very heavily on his heart.
• 9:27
  Bernard: This man hath done nothing amiss.
• 9:32
  Bernard: Oh, he thought, why am I there?
• 9:34
  Bernard: Why am I there in that assembly?
• 9:36
  Bernard: Is it because of my brethren?
• 9:38
  Bernard: And the Lord brought it very forcibly home to him.
• 9:41
  Bernard: You are there because the Lord is there.
• 9:46
  Bernard: And if the Lord is there, He is the one to whom you must look.
• 9:50
  Bernard: Your brethren can be a tremendous help to you, but they are a help only insofar as they bring you closer to Christ and minister Christ to your soul.
• 9:59
  Bernard: But then if there is failure there, and the Lord allows failure, because Satan will attack what is true more than anything else.
• 10:10
  Bernard: Satan will, even if I can say it this way, tolerate blessing in the gospel if he can take a good shot at the truth of the one body, at the person of Christ in that way, because he knows that if he can drag believers, as we were saying in the readings down to the level of a worldly religion, humanly speaking, he has gained his point over them.
• 10:32
  Bernard: Oh yes.
• 10:32
  Bernard: They may still preach the gospel.
• 10:34
  Bernard: They may still be in that sense of testimony and we thank God for it.
• 10:38
  Bernard: But if he can destroy that heavenly calling, if he can bring them down to the level of a worldly religion, he has succeeded in making them lose.
• 10:47
  Bernard: Humanly speaking everything.
• 10:50
  Bernard: So let us remember that and let us remember, and this remark was made in Lawrenceville as well.
• 10:55
  Bernard: Don't put your brethren between yourself and the Lord.
• 10:59
  Bernard: And that's what happens as spiritual power declines.
• 11:04
  Bernard: What happens?
• 11:05
  Bernard: The clerical system takes over, lets someone else do it.
• 11:10
  Bernard: And pretty soon we become those who want to listen.
• 11:13
  Bernard: Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about the exercise of gift.
• 11:17
  Bernard: That's a different thing.
• 11:18
  Bernard: But as we had in the readings today, every believer is a priest, and the Lord looks for believers to be a company of live Christians who hold the truth in exercise and who use.
• 11:33
  Bernard: And you have a gift.
• 11:34
  Bernard: Every believer has one who used that gift for the Lord in the right time and place.
• 11:39
  Bernard: What's the other side of the coin?
• 11:41
  Bernard: Let's turn to First Peter, chapter five.
• 11:45
  Bernard: We've been reading in Hebrews 13 about the need to submit ourselves about the need to obey those that have the rule over us.
• 11:55
  Bernard: Very needful.
• 11:56
  Bernard: But now the word of God is beautifully balanced.
• 11:59
  Bernard: And notice what it says here in one Peter five.
• 12:03
  Bernard: The elders, which are among you, I exhort, who am also an elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed feed the flock of God, which is among you, taking the oversight, not by constraint, but willingly.
• 12:24
  Bernard: Not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind.
• 12:27
  Bernard: Neither is being lords over God's heritage, but being in samples to the flock and when the chief shepherd shall appear, you shall receive a crown of glory.
• 12:38
  Bernard: That fadeth not away.
• 12:41
  Bernard: And then notice after all that, we get the comment.
• 12:45
  Bernard: Likewise, you younger, submit yourselves under the elder.
• 12:49
  Bernard: Yay, all of you be subject one to another and be clothed with humility.
• 12:54
  Bernard: For God resisted the proud and it grace to the humble.
• 12:59
  Bernard: In the previous verses, the exercise and the exhortation was to those who are in a position of submission.
• 13:07
  Bernard: But here we have an exhortation to those in a position of elderhood.
• 13:13
  Bernard: Those in a position of responsibility, authority.
• 13:17
  Bernard: Very important.
• 13:18
  Bernard: There is a character in which the truth should be maintained, and that is why when the Apostle John, by the Spirit of God, addresses those seven assemblies in Asia.
• 13:31
  Bernard: Whom does he write to?
• 13:34
  Bernard: To the angel of the church in Ephesus, in Smyrna, in Pergamos, in Thyratira, and so on.
• 13:41
  Bernard: Why the angel?
• 13:43
  Bernard: Oh, because God looks to those who take the leadership in the local assembly and holds them responsible for the character which they foster in that assembly.
• 13:54
  Bernard: What a responsibility.
• 13:57
  Bernard: Permit me to reminisce a little, if that's okay.
• 14:01
  Bernard: I well remember listening to an address, and I could even tell you the year- it dates me 1958.
• 14:11
  Bernard: Wow.
• 14:12
  Bernard: Long time ago.
• 14:14
  Bernard: And the brother in that address, he was reminiscing and he went back a long way too, and he said something like this, he said- I could tell you today what Brother Potter ministered on at the St.
• 14:29
  Bernard: Louis Conference in 1,905.
• 14:32
  Bernard: He said, that's 53 years ago.
• 14:34
  Bernard: He said, I could tell you today what he ministered on, but then he made a comment that really stuck with me and I was, as you can well imagine, pretty young at the time.
• 14:45
  Bernard: He said, I have listened to many gifted brethren, but he said what impressed me was not so much their gift but their godliness.
• 14:56
  Bernard: And that is what lent the weight to their words.
• 15:01
  Bernard: Brethren.
• 15:01
  Bernard: It's true.
• 15:03
  Bernard: It was their godliness that lent the weight to their words.
• 15:06
  Bernard: And as I look back on the brethren under whose ministry I have been able to sit, and many others in this room would stand here and say the same thing.
• 15:17
  Bernard: What was it that impressed us perhaps more than anything else?
• 15:21
  Bernard: It was their walk and their ways.
• 15:24
  Bernard: Oh yes, they were gifted.
• 15:25
  Bernard: Many of them, and we thank God for their gift.
• 15:29
  Bernard: But sometimes there were those that did not say a whole lot, but their godliness made its mark on us and changed our lives.
• 15:40
  Bernard: They may not have been terribly gifted, but there was something about them that when they did say something, it really carried weight.
• 15:50
  Bernard: And so here the elders are exhorted.
• 15:53
  Bernard: Not so much as to what they say, although that is included in it, but what their walk is like.
• 16:01
  Bernard: They were to have the character of shepherds.
• 16:04
  Bernard: They were to take oversight willingly with a ready mind and above all by being examples to the flock.
• 16:16
  Bernard: The best character of those who take the lead is to have such a life that someone else looks on and says, he makes me want to follow Christ.
• 16:30
  Bernard: And he attracts not primarily to himself.
• 16:34
  Bernard: And I might also say to herself.
• 16:38
  Bernard: He attracts, she attracts not so much to themselves but to Christ.
• 16:45
  Bernard: How precious that is.
• 16:47
  Bernard: I say to each one of us, let us remember that.
• 16:51
  Bernard: Sometimes, and I say again not specifically to young people, but maybe more so to them.
• 16:57
  Bernard: The grass does look a little greener on the other side of the fence, but let us remember, and pardon my stressing it, but we had it in the readings.
• 17:06
  Bernard: It is never right to do something that you know is contrary to the word of God.
• 17:14
  Bernard: Others may be able to do it and the Lord may bless them because maybe they do not know any better.
• 17:19
  Bernard: And maybe the word of God has not had that same impact on their soul because of where and how they have been brought up.
• 17:27
  Bernard: But if you and I know the precious truth of God, we are responsible to walk in it, and God, I do not believe is going to bless that which deliberately and willfully goes contrary to His word.
• 17:42
  Bernard: Let's remember that.
• 17:44
  Bernard: But on the other side of the coin, the if there are those whom the Lord is using in our local assemblies to take the lead in ministry, oh, let it be with the whole truth of God presented as we get in Ephesians chapter four- the truth as it is in Jesus.
• 18:06
  Bernard: As the truth is in Jesus.
• 18:09
  Bernard: What does that do?
• 18:11
  Bernard: That connects me with that blessed one, with everything that He is and all that He exhibited and absolute perfection down here.
• 18:21
  Bernard: The embodiment of everything that is the truth is found in that blessed one.
• 18:27
  Bernard: And so the truth of God is not simply some high sounding group of principles that we hold It is that it's a group of precious principles that are revealed in the word of God, but it is much more than that.
• 18:41
  Bernard: It is connected with Christ Himself and all that He is in the preciousness of what He is and in the living out of that new life which we have been given in Christ which delights to walk according to that truth in every aspect of our lives down here.
• 18:59
  Bernard: May we remember the beautiful balance in the things of God, and may there be that interest on the part of myself not to walk or to criticize the failures of others so much as to see their faithfulness, but on the other hand, for those in responsibility and those in influence, may we remember that there is a way that the truth of God needs to be ministered and above all walked in that will commend it to others.
• 19:29
  Bernard: And that's what we need.