0:00:00 - 0:00:21 OK. So I was encouraging you to read John chapter nine and what I want you to look for, write it out. I want you to go step by step through the chapter and show the call and the response. So what Jesus did, what this man did, what Jesus did, what this man did and sprinkled into there, you will see the 0:00:21 - 0:00:46 reaction of the man's parents and the reactions of the Pharisees and they're all reactions to the same stimulus. And I want you to think about that as you read that. OK. So the point you'll get out of that is that God always leaves clues, truth leaves clues no matter where it's found, uh or what it consists 0:00:45 - 0:01:11 in, it leaves clues and it wants to reveal itself. Jesus said He is the spirit of truth. He's the source of truth as far as we're concerned. And um God wants to reveal himself and it's our limitations that prevent that from Him, revealing himself to us. We have to become students of recognizing those 0:01:11 - 0:01:34 limitations and getting rid of them in ourselves. And we can, as far as we do, we can go help other people do the same, but I can't spend the time right now to go through John nine. I highly encourage you to. The final idea I wanted to go over was this idea of stopping people's mouths. I know no one 0:01:33 - 0:01:54 understands what this means. And so I figured I'd talk about it and, um, maybe this is the best way. I don't know. Um, but it's important that you learn this so that you don't do it. I should say so that you stop doing it. And um I've known about this for quite some time, I've experienced this for a 0:01:54 - 0:02:22 very long time, long before I understood it or knew what was going on. And um I knew there would be a day where I talked about this. Um And I will talk about it again. Let's start in Psalm 107 42. It says the righteous shall see it and rejoice and all iniquity shall stop her mouth. So without going into 0:02:22 - 0:02:50 the context here, I just want to present this as an example of a dichotomy of response to the same stimulus of truth. And one of these responses is perception and rejoicing or seeing and valuing what is given and then the other is to stop your mouth. And that's what the iniquitous people do. Now, in 0:02:50 - 0:03:13 reality, it's not a light switch, it's a dimmer switch, right? There's a line between all that these are the, the amongst the extremities. Um There is a thing that's worse that you can do than stop your mouth and that's killing the person who's presenting whatever is being presented. Um, but we're gonna 0:03:12 - 0:03:37 talk about stopping the mouth today. Um, and now we'll go to Matthew 1925. What the, um, because I might forget to say it in a minute. I will interject here that in a previous one of these videos I said in the series, I said, you should think if you're not receiving the Ministry of Angels, you should 0:03:37 - 0:04:09 think about why that is what you're doing to block that to prevent that. One of the things that you can do to prevent this is um reacting to the demonstration of greater light by saying nothing. Now there's a difference. I in this series, I've sort of uh had to stop talking because I was um contending 0:04:09 - 0:04:32 with emotion and, you know, the same thing can happen that a person can do the same exact thing outwardly as other people. And it can be from a totally different cause and mean a completely different thing. And we get in trouble when we judge others, when we assume that everyone does the same things 0:04:32 - 0:04:54 we do for different reasons or that when they do something, they could only be doing it for the reasons, we would be doing it. If we were doing that same thing, we get into a lot of trouble by doing that. And you really should assume the best motives in people when it comes to condemning them. Um That 0:04:54 - 0:05:18 , that's not the only sort of flavor of judgment. Um But if you're about to condemn someone else, there's a different and better process, which I don't have time to go into right now. I don't wanna get too far a field but don't do that. Um And so when I get choked up, it's because the intensity of the 0:05:18 - 0:05:50 love of God that I feel it cannot be expressed in words here because God's love is that great. And one of the greatest treasures we have in this life is to come up through guided experience with God to feel some share of that for others. And it's weird because we can't, there's so many things that are 0:05:50 - 0:06:10 coupled in reality that you can't separate them. And one of these is that you cannot experience the love of God without loving other people. If you have one, you will have the other. And it doesn't matter which way it comes from. It's like wisdom, wisdom and reason. It doesn't matter what you have wisdom 0:06:10 - 0:06:29 about. It doesn't matter what you're reasoning about. All truth comes from God. And it's like this spider web that's not the best analogy. This, it's like a mountain top that has a million trails to get to the summit and it, wherever you start, it's, he's gonna bring you in through that path. He's gonna 0:06:28 - 0:06:46 bring you. It doesn't matter if it looks sideways for a little while it goes up. Right. And he knows it and he's taking you in the exact way you need to come and then they converge as you get towards the top, they become more similar to each other. But anyway, love is like this. It's so coupled to so 0:06:46 - 0:07:14 many things and if you truly love God, so if you want, you can go reread the letters that John wrote. Um John had a tighter grasp on the love of God than any of the other apostles. And none of them would be offended by me saying that because when you love truth, it's not about who gets credit. The point 0:07:13 - 0:07:48 is that everybody sees Jesus for what he really is or to a greater extent than you do. So, John wrote those letters and one of the central themes is the love of God. And one of the things he says is one of the ideas he presents is that you can't love God without loving your brother, your brothers, your 0:07:48 - 0:08:14 fellow men. And uh you can't love your fellow men without loving God. And one idea that is going to sweep the earth is that righteousness is not about how many times you say the word God. And it's not about what you profess to believe. It's about how you feel about how God really is and how you demonstrate 0:08:13 - 0:08:43 that and how you feel about and act towards everyone else. And there will be harlots and tax collectors in the Kingdom of Heaven who loved, who had more the love of God in them. Then Popes and priests and Pharisees and whoever else. Many, many. When the uh when dinner is served, when the wedding occurs 0:08:42 - 0:09:13 , the hall will be filled with strangers from the highways, not with the people who were invited and who had better things to do. So, uh Matthew 1925 uh getting back to stopping mouths, that's where we were going. Um Jesus teaches that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of Heaven. That's 0:09:13 - 0:09:33 verse 23. And uh he says it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. I'm not even gonna touch what he meant by that. That's not the point here. The point is that this was a highly offensive teaching to people listening to him. He says when his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly 0:09:32 - 0:10:03 amazed saying who then can be saved. In other words, we can't fathom how someone could get through life without desiring or having riches or without preferring to keep them over, use them uh opportunities to use them for the benefit of other people. Um And they're, they're thinking like, well, we know 0:10:03 - 0:00:00 a lot of people who have died, who had some money when they died. So how does that work? Right. And Jesus says, with men, this is impossible with God. All things are possible, but I want to zoom in on to the, they were exceedingly amazed. So some translations say astonished if you look up the Greek. 0:00:00 - 0:10:45 And of course, there are billion references of when this word is used across scripture. When we say astonished, I think most of the time it has a positive connotation and it's like, oh, you know, I didn't believe that. But wow, that's really cool. So someone says, like you're gonna get a corvette in 0:00:00 - 0:00:21 OK. So I was encouraging you to read John chapter nine and what I want you to look for, write it out. I want you to go step by step through the chapter and show the call and the response. So what Jesus did, what this man did, what Jesus did, what this man did and sprinkled into there, you will see the 0:00:21 - 0:00:46 reaction of the man's parents and the reactions of the Pharisees and they're all reactions to the same stimulus. And I want you to think about that as you read that. OK. So the point you'll get out of that is that God always leaves clues, truth leaves clues no matter where it's found, uh or what it consists 0:00:45 - 0:01:11 in, it leaves clues and it wants to reveal itself. Jesus said He is the spirit of truth. He's the source of truth as far as we're concerned. And um God wants to reveal himself and it's our limitations that prevent that from Him, revealing himself to us. We have to become students of recognizing those 0:01:11 - 0:01:34 limitations and getting rid of them in ourselves. And we can, as far as we do, we can go help other people do the same, but I can't spend the time right now to go through John nine. I highly encourage you to. The final idea I wanted to go over was this idea of stopping people's mouths. I know no one 0:01:33 - 0:01:54 understands what this means. And so I figured I'd talk about it and, um, maybe this is the best way. I don't know. Um, but it's important that you learn this so that you don't do it. I should say so that you stop doing it. And um I've known about this for quite some time, I've experienced this for a 0:01:54 - 0:02:22 very long time, long before I understood it or knew what was going on. And um I knew there would be a day where I talked about this. Um And I will talk about it again. Let's start in Psalm 107 42. It says the righteous shall see it and rejoice and all iniquity shall stop her mouth. So without going into 0:02:22 - 0:02:50 the context here, I just want to present this as an example of a dichotomy of response to the same stimulus of truth. And one of these responses is perception and rejoicing or seeing and valuing what is given and then the other is to stop your mouth. And that's what the iniquitous people do. Now, in 0:02:50 - 0:03:13 reality, it's not a light switch, it's a dimmer switch, right? There's a line between all that these are the, the amongst the extremities. Um There is a thing that's worse that you can do than stop your mouth and that's killing the person who's presenting whatever is being presented. Um, but we're gonna 0:03:12 - 0:03:37 talk about stopping the mouth today. Um, and now we'll go to Matthew 1925. What the, um, because I might forget to say it in a minute. I will interject here that in a previous one of these videos I said in the series, I said, you should think if you're not receiving the Ministry of Angels, you should 0:03:37 - 0:04:09 think about why that is what you're doing to block that to prevent that. One of the things that you can do to prevent this is um reacting to the demonstration of greater light by saying nothing. Now there's a difference. I in this series, I've sort of uh had to stop talking because I was um contending 0:04:09 - 0:04:32 with emotion and, you know, the same thing can happen that a person can do the same exact thing outwardly as other people. And it can be from a totally different cause and mean a completely different thing. And we get in trouble when we judge others, when we assume that everyone does the same things 0:04:32 - 0:04:54 we do for different reasons or that when they do something, they could only be doing it for the reasons, we would be doing it. If we were doing that same thing, we get into a lot of trouble by doing that. And you really should assume the best motives in people when it comes to condemning them. Um That 0:04:54 - 0:05:18 , that's not the only sort of flavor of judgment. Um But if you're about to condemn someone else, there's a different and better process, which I don't have time to go into right now. I don't wanna get too far a field but don't do that. Um And so when I get choked up, it's because the intensity of the 0:05:18 - 0:05:50 love of God that I feel it cannot be expressed in words here because God's love is that great. And one of the greatest treasures we have in this life is to come up through guided experience with God to feel some share of that for others. And it's weird because we can't, there's so many things that are 0:05:50 - 0:06:10 coupled in reality that you can't separate them. And one of these is that you cannot experience the love of God without loving other people. If you have one, you will have the other. And it doesn't matter which way it comes from. It's like wisdom, wisdom and reason. It doesn't matter what you have wisdom 0:06:10 - 0:06:29 about. It doesn't matter what you're reasoning about. All truth comes from God. And it's like this spider web that's not the best analogy. This, it's like a mountain top that has a million trails to get to the summit and it, wherever you start, it's, he's gonna bring you in through that path. He's gonna 0:06:28 - 0:06:46 bring you. It doesn't matter if it looks sideways for a little while it goes up. Right. And he knows it and he's taking you in the exact way you need to come and then they converge as you get towards the top, they become more similar to each other. But anyway, love is like this. It's so coupled to so 0:06:46 - 0:07:14 many things and if you truly love God, so if you want, you can go reread the letters that John wrote. Um John had a tighter grasp on the love of God than any of the other apostles. And none of them would be offended by me saying that because when you love truth, it's not about who gets credit. The point 0:07:13 - 0:07:48 is that everybody sees Jesus for what he really is or to a greater extent than you do. So, John wrote those letters and one of the central themes is the love of God. And one of the things he says is one of the ideas he presents is that you can't love God without loving your brother, your brothers, your 0:07:48 - 0:08:14 fellow men. And uh you can't love your fellow men without loving God. And one idea that is going to sweep the earth is that righteousness is not about how many times you say the word God. And it's not about what you profess to believe. It's about how you feel about how God really is and how you demonstrate 0:08:13 - 0:08:43 that and how you feel about and act towards everyone else. And there will be harlots and tax collectors in the Kingdom of Heaven who loved, who had more the love of God in them. Then Popes and priests and Pharisees and whoever else. Many, many. When the uh when dinner is served, when the wedding occurs 0:08:42 - 0:09:13 , the hall will be filled with strangers from the highways, not with the people who were invited and who had better things to do. So, uh Matthew 1925 uh getting back to stopping mouths, that's where we were going. Um Jesus teaches that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of Heaven. That's 0:09:13 - 0:09:33 verse 23. And uh he says it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. I'm not even gonna touch what he meant by that. That's not the point here. The point is that this was a highly offensive teaching to people listening to him. He says when his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly 0:09:32 - 0:10:03 amazed saying who then can be saved. In other words, we can't fathom how someone could get through life without desiring or having riches or without preferring to keep them over, use them uh opportunities to use them for the benefit of other people. Um And they're, they're thinking like, well, we know 0:10:03 - 0:00:00 a lot of people who have died, who had some money when they died. So how does that work? Right. And Jesus says, with men, this is impossible with God. All things are possible, but I want to zoom in on to the, they were exceedingly amazed. So some translations say astonished if you look up the Greek. 0:00:00 - 0:10:45 And of course, there are billion references of when this word is used across scripture. When we say astonished, I think most of the time it has a positive connotation and it's like, oh, you know, I didn't believe that. But wow, that's really cool. So someone says, like you're gonna get a corvette in 0:10:45 - 0:10:54 the mail and you say like, yeah, bro, doubt it. And then all of a sudden the car drives up and the, the truck drives up with a corvette on it and the guy says, hey, here's the keys and you're stunning.