Trusting God's Kingship Over Worldly Solutions

Now you remember the story, God had done marvelous things for these people. He had created them as a nation out of Abraham, and after a while, He'd led them down in a time of famine into Egypt. But there they'd undergone terrible suffering and told hardships, persecution, trial. But God had delivered them through the hand of His servant Moses and his brother Aaron, and He granted them a very great deliverance. [00:51:04]

There are phases, there are stages. You may come into the Christian life in a very dramatic manner, in a very spectacular manner, but inevitably you will come to a stage when that will have gone, as it were, and you will just find yourself fighting the fight of the faith, battling daily problems and difficulties and perplexities, temptations, and trials. Everything seems to be conspiring against you. [00:45:10]

The whole tragedy of the children of Israel was that they faced it in the wrong way, and this led to consequences. Those of you who remember and are familiar with the history will know exactly that to which I'm referring. So many of the problems that came later to these people came as the direct result of this fatal error, this great mistake which they made just at this point. [00:59:36]

What they began to do at this point was to assert their own ideas, their own desires. They brush aside the teaching with which they'd been brought up, and they say, we will have, we must have, we are going to have. Now here is always something which is very fatal. The first thing we should realize in this life is that it's a life that in a sense doesn't belong to us at all. [01:13:00]

They wanted something new, they wanted something different. All their story, as I told you, had been in terms of their being led by God. They hadn't had a king. They were a nation, but they didn't have a king. But they've got tired of this. They feel that this is no longer adequate, and they want to change. They want something new. [01:40:36]

They said, why should we be different? Why shouldn't we be like every other nation? Other nations are led to battle by their kings, but we haven't got a king. They felt that they got a grievance. They felt that God was being unfair to them, but somehow they were being deprived of what was the lot and the portion of all these other nations. [01:48:39]

The church has said, now the only way to face this is to meet the world at its own level. The world has become learned. Well, the church must become learned. We must have a learned ministry. So instead of asking whether a man who was offering himself the ministry was truly born again and filled with the spirit, they said, what are his degrees? What is his culture? What's his learning? [01:56:40]

They had forgotten their history, and my dear friends, if there's any one trouble from which we are suffering more than anything else at the present time, it is that we have forgotten our history. The Christian church has forgotten her own history. This was perpetually the trouble with these people. We read in the second book of Judges in the 10th verse, another generation arose after them which knew not the Lord. [01:59:48]

The moment you ask that question, you come to this inevitable answer: it is always the Lord. These people have never been in existence but for God. They're not a nation like other nations. It's the Lord who's done everything. They are His own peculiar creation, His own peculiar possession. And so you see, Samuel rehearses their history with them, and he reminds them, and we need to be reminded of all this history in exactly the same way. [02:11:08]

The church which starts in Pentecost after a while begins to wane and to lose her power, and she's helpless, and the enemy seems to be conquering, and she looks as if she's going to be destroyed finally and completely. And then they cried to the Lord, and God heard them and answered them. What's what am I talking about? I'm talking about revival. The Christian church is still in existence because of revivals. [02:41:12]

Surely the great trouble, the greatest trouble with all of us as at the present time is that we are failing to realize our privileges as Christians. Are you grumbling and complaining as a Christian? Do you feel you're having a hard time? Do you sometimes feel envious of those who are not Christians because of the things they can go and do on Sunday or some other days? [03:08:12]

The Lord will not forsake His people for His great name's sake because it hath pleased the Lord to make you His people. My dear Christian friend, examine yourself, and if you find anything of this spirit and outlook of the children of Israel of old in yourself, go back to Him and acknowledge it and confess it. Let the whole church do so. Let the Church of God do so everywhere. [03:42:68]