Devine, earthly, repribution, and reward. Let's talk about it on this edition of Key Life. That's Steve Brown and this is Key Life. It doesn't think of himself as super spiritual but he is honest. He loves the Bible and he loves to teach you. To apply it to daily living. Steve? Thanks Mike. If you have your Bible open into second chronicles, if you're in a place where you can open your Bible, we have gotten to this point in our Old Testament survey. We're taking each book of the Older Testament, spending a little bit of time and sometimes a little bit more than a little bit of time. Two, three, maybe at the outside, four weeks on each of the books of the Older Testament and we're up to the book of second chronicles. Yesterday, I told you that if you want to handle for the final chapters of the book of second chronicles beginning at the 15th chapter, there are five revivals or awakenings that happen within the context of that book. Joe Hosephat, Joe Ash, Hezekiah, and Josiah. In each of those places, God comes and does His name. He revives His people. He's still doing that. Yesterday I talked about how I had become a prophet earlier in my ministry when the church was in serious trouble and God had died and all the people in our culture were saying the day of the church was over. I said, don't count on it. I was quite wise and it wasn't because I had a supernatural gift. It was because I had a supernatural book and a supernatural God. I was a part of a supernatural institution, the people of God. We're never going to die. You want to go with the winter, go with the church because it's the bride. Eventually, it's going to be without spotter wrinkle. It's going to be presented before the throne. That's us. We're going to not be without spotter wrinkle between then. If you know the statement, if you like hot dogs or the law don't watch either one of them being made, I would add to that if you like hot dogs and the law and the church don't watch any of them being made. You can lose your faith. The reason Paul said that leader or an elder or a presbyter in the church shouldn't be a new believer wasn't because the older believer knew more because the older believer had gotten more cynical. An older believer doesn't lose his or her faith every time they find out that human beings are well human beings and sinners. At any rate, the church is God's church. And the campus crusade may die. Key life will die. Every organization that you know is going to die. But the church is never going to die. It's going to be sick. It's going to be crippled. It's going to be wounded, but it's not going to die. We have a tendency. And I'm not saying this. We always look back to the olden days when God, you remember that you remember that song, grandpa. It was written by Jamie O'Hara and the judge saying it. Grandpa, tell me about the good old days. Sometimes it feels like this world's gone crazy. Grandpa, take me back the yesterday when the line between right and wrong didn't seem so hazy. Did lovers really fall in love to stay stand beside each other. The other come what may promises really something people kept, not just something they would say and then forget families really bow their heads to pray. That he's really never go away. Grandpa, tell me about the good old days. I want to say to the judge when they sing that. All right, honey, I'll tell you about the good old days. No, lovers didn't fall in love to stay. No, they didn't stand beside each other. Come what may. No, promises really. They weren't something that people always get. No, they were in fact something they would say and then forget. No, families didn't always bow their heads and pray. And daddy's did sometimes go away. Grandpa, tell me about the good old days. I just told you and that's the truth. Because we're not any less or more sinners than they were in the good old days. But I tell you there is a sense in which we can look back and say do it again, God. Not because the good old days were better, but because periodically in the history of the people of God, God brings revival. Now he does it in his time and his way and you can't manufacture it, aren't you? Don't you get tired of people to keep trying to manufacture revivals? God is in this place. And if we can psych ourselves up and yell enough, then maybe we'll come to believe it and God really will come. And then work that way. God looks down and sometimes when we need it, he comes himself. He pours out his spirit on his people. And we are revived. If you like a winner, stay with the church. The church is the visible manifestation of the kingdom of God on earth. And to play on Ethel Waters quote, God don't sponsor no flops. So the book of Chronicles, at least starting at the 14th or 15th chapter, deals with the awakenings that took place among the people of God. Let me share something with you about chapters 1 through 9. Now if you'll take the time, and I'm expecting that what I'm doing by teaching you about the Old Testament books is that you'll read the Old Testament on your own. That it won't be such a horrific job to go and read the Old Testament books because they're great. But if you go and read chapters 1 through 9 of 2 Chronicles, you're going to see the description of the splendor of the reign of Solomon. He was perhaps the most blessed and honored reigning king in the history of Israel. And these chapters incidentally constitute a commentary on Matthew 6.33. See first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be yours as well. Now what Jesus is talking about in Matthew 6.33 is illustrated by the reign of Solomon in particular and all the revivals in Israel in general. The doctrine is divine earthly refribution or divine earthly reward. It's an absolute principle. No, it's not. But it does work and I want to talk to you a little bit about it. You said, well what is it? Divine earthly refribution says that before you die, you're going to get what you deserve. Some of the time, maybe even most of the time. The doctrine of divine earthly rewards suggest that you're going to get what you deserve before you die, not all of the time, but some of the time. The principle of reward and retribution works in the same way the principle of gravity works. I remember no preacher telling me one time. In fact, he was speaking at our church. And he was talking about it was man for George Gootsky just before he died and he come to preach at the church where I was in the pastor. And he said, let me tell you, when Jesus said I didn't come to destroy the law, I came to fulfill it. Let me tell you what it meant. God gave us his law because that's the best way to be happy and prosperous and healthy. You live by the law, you may still get sick, you may still be poor, things may still not work out all right. But mostly, this is the way the world works and if you, and if you live by it, you're going to be better off because of it. And then he said, those of you who aren't believers who are here tonight. I want you to know Jesus, but if you don't, I'm going to tell you something that's going to help you if you'll listen. If you'll do the best you can to live by this law, this is the way the world works and you're going to be better off than you would be. If you had not lived by the law, you know, people are always saying that AIDS is the curse of God on people who are homosexual. Though you ever say that, that's not right. If you ever held a baby with AIDS, oh man, what about people that got it through blood drains fusions? God's not saying, you know, I have bad aim and I'm going to get all the homosexuals, but I, oops, I missed. I got that poor little baby. That's not what that is, but I want you to know there is built into the nature of the universe and principles. If you live with sexual purity, you're not going to get AIDS. It's that simple. It isn't that God says, I don't like you because you're homosexual, I'm going to get you, but it's built into the universe. And so what we see in the reign of Solomon is divine, earthly, refribution and reward in this case reward. Solomon was asked by God what he wanted and he didn't say he wanted to be rich, he said, I want to be wise. And wisdom we know has to do with God and because Solomon lived that out, God blessed what he did because that's built into the nature of the universe when my wife Anna and I took our first past, we did a couple of things. First, we took a significant pay cut and secondly, we tied. Was that dumb or what? I want you to know, man, I took so much. I was doing really well financially. I was mourning this jockey in Boston and they paid really good. And all you had to do was talk spin records. I do that. I mean, I do that with my eyes closed and they paid me a lot of money to do it. And then Jesus came along and messed it up and I took this little church now on Kate God. And I think I was making $3,500 a year and Anna said, we ought to tie. Then I said something profoundly spiritual. Like, are you a fruitcake? We can't even pay the bills with this kind of money, but we did. You know something that happened. We lived better. We ever lived before. I had stayed more often than I did before. We had lobster because we had lobstermen in our church that gave us lobsters. I was able to pay the bills for the first time in a long time. Was that because God said, you're a nice pastor. And I'm going to bless you. No, it's because we started watching our money and being faithful with it. And that's divine earthly reward. There's some laws built into the universe. Abave them. You're going to be better off. Trust me on this. Then if you disobey them, you think about that. I'm in. Hey, listen, if you're not a part of our key life tape family, I'd love for you to be a part of it. If you'll give us a call at 1-800-keylife-24-hours-a-day or write key life post office box 5,000, Matlin, Florida, 327-94, or key life Canada post office box 321-50, Cambridge, Ontario, N3H5M3. Are you email us with your regular mailing address, v.edkeylife.org, and ask to be a part of our key life tape family. You'll start receiving a tape every few weeks automatically. Now, these aren't the tapes of the broadcast. You have to subscribe to those. And if you ask us, we'll tell you how. These are tapes of places where I teach the Bible at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando at the Billy Graham Training Center at our Lake Barkley Fellowship at a missions conference. We send those tapes out. 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