LOOK
# 27
Look
and Live
Brian
Kocourek
PP.
147A <read>
Brother Branham makes some real keen statements here
in this
paragraph.
Point #1.
He
say's, " What are you looking at?" Now that is something that
we could spend an entire sermon on, " What are
you looking at? "
What are the people looking at? But we shall
list this as point
number one this morning.
Point #2.
He then says, as He quotes Hebrews 9:28, "To them who look
for
Jesus a second time He will come in Glory unto Salvation, to take
us out of this sinful world, out of this sin and stuff
we're in."
Finally point #3.
He
says, "look and live. The only thing you can do
is look! Take
the Word."
I
would like to begin this morning by examining:
Point
#1.
He
say's, " What are you looking at?" Now that is something that
we just might spend our entire sermon looking at,
" What are you
looking at? " What are
the people looking at? We shall list this
as point #1 this morning.
What
are you looking at. And why are you looking at what
you look
at. Now we know that we should be looking to the
coming of the
Lord. But what are the people really looking at. To find out what
you are looking at let's just take a little test.
1st
of all, what does it mean to look at something.
A)
To "look", really means to focus your attention on something.
B)
We usually do not focus our attention on something unless
we
have some reason or purpose in doing so.
1st of
all what is the center of our attention. How do we
know what is the center of our
attention. What do we
talk
about the most.
"FOR
WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS THERE WILL YOUR HEART BE ALSO"
MATTHEW 6:21
then
LUKE
6: 45 <read>
"OUT
OF THE ABUNDANCE OF THE HEART THE MOUTH SPEAKETH"
If
you are honest with yourself, then ask yourself this question.
"WHAT DO I TALK ABOUT THE MOST?" In answering this you will know
what your treasure is, what you are looking at and focussed into.
C)
What then is our purpose, in looking at the things we do?
Why do we look at what we do?
There are various reasons why we look at
what we do.
Out of Curiosity?
Self aggrandizement? such as : Lust?, or greed?,
or for some sort
of gain?
Self fulfillment? It makes us more complete?
Now
as I have made this point many times throughout this series,
that two people who have two different back grounds
and have had
different
training, will have two
different sets of values and
two different opinions, even if they are watching the
same event.
As brother Branham said, Moses and Pharaoh both looked out the
same window and one saw mud dobbers
while the other saw children
of the promise.
MARK
Now
let's look at this word "MEASURE." = a limited portion
WEBSTERS:
Any standard of valuation, comparison or judgment.
MATT
23: 29 - 34 <read> esp:
vs 32 what did the measure or
judgment
or opinion of their father produce? vs
30-31, = 34
The
very fact that you say, "If I had been back there I
wouldn't
have done it," shows that you would have. That's exactly what
Jesus is saying. But the true believer would
say, "Oh, God help
me to never be like that and since I know that I have
crucified
Your Word in my past all I can ask is for you to forgive me
and
help me to see straight enough to never do so again."
Why
did they crucify Him? And remember He is the Word. So why did
they crucify the Word made flesh?
And remember, the scripture
says that it will repeat again.
HEB
6: 6 <read> why do they crucify the word? The same reason
they did
at His first coming?
I
COR 2: 7 - 8 <read>
So if
they had known Who he was, they would not have crucified
Him, right?
Then they crucified Him because of their ignorance.
Correct? And why were they ignorant.
Didn't they have the same
Bible you read? Weren't they looking for the same Christ to
Come
on the scene that you and I are? Then why did they miss Him when
He came if they were looking for Him to
come?
Let's
look at two examples of people who had the same opportunity
to receive Christ when He came.
JOHN
10: 22 - 39 <read>
JOHN
1: 29 - 51 <read>
Now,
why were these men so different from each other?
MATT
How
can they fill up the measure of their fathers? remember
that
the word MEASURE means = any standard of valuation or
judgment.
In other words they had the same opinion as their
fathers. And
notice that it was not Gods opinion but their fathers
opinion.
JOHN
8: 31 - 47 <read> esp. vs 38
Now we
are all taught by someone. The only thing we have
ever
done on our own is probably going for mothers milk right
after we
are born, and some of us did not even know enough
to do that
right. Someone stuck a bottle in your mouth and
changed even that
which nature had placed within you. From that time every
response
became a learned response. We spend our whole life learning from
somebody. There is no man that can truly say he is true product
of free moral agency because every opinion we
have, is learned
from somebody. Every fact, every opinion, every reasoning
we have
is because of information that we have received from
some one or
some institution, or some book, some classroom. And didn't some
body write that book? Doesn't somebody teach in that
institution?
Then how can we say we have a true free moral agency. We can't.
Every thing we think and do and say is the product of
somebody
else. And these men
were the product of their father, who is
Satan.
All
of God's creation must learn in order to be able to live.
EZEK
19: 1 - 3. <read> Even the lion whelp must learn
to prey.
HEB
5: 8 - 10 <read> and Jesus Himself was no exception.
Now the Scripture tells us that there are those who are always
learning but they are learning wrong.
II
TIM 3: 1 - 7 < read>
Isn't
this exactly what Jesus said to those Pharisees in JOHN 8?
ROM
15: 4
In
fact Jesus tells us that we must not only hear the Father, but
we must learn of him.
JOHN
6: 44 - 45 <read>
You
must hear first, then learn in order to come. And it is very
important from whom you hear.
II
TIM 3: 12 - 17 <read> esp. vs 14
PHIL
4: 8 - 9 <read>
So by
this time we should understand why we look at things the
way we do. Did you know that the same reason you look at things
and react as you do is the same reason you may not be looking
at
some other things. So not only does our past training effect what
we see when we look at what we look at, but it also
affects what
we even choose to look at. That is why the Scripture
admonishes
us in PROVERBS 22: 6 "to train up a child in the
way it should go
and it will not depart."
DEUT
6: 4 - 18 <read>
Brother Branham said, instead of people training their children
to look to the Word of God for every Divine promise of
God to be
made real to their children, the people today train their
kids
how to cheat, lie, steal, take drugs, (that's
what smoking and
drinking is) listen to boogie woogie
music etc. No wonder each
generation of kids becomes more perverted and twisted until
you
wonder if there is any sanity amongst this younger
generation.
Now
in order to finish let's move onto point #2)
He then says, as He quotes Hebrews 9:28, "To them who look
for
Jesus a second time He will come in Glory
unto Salvation, to take
us out of this sinful world, out of this sin and stuff
we're in."
Now you know that last week we covered this thought quite thor
oughly, and saw that the word salvation here as
we see it in
scripture actually speaks of deliverance. "To those who look for
HIM will He come in Glory unto salvation. Now the word unto
speaks of a transition from one thing to another. So
we see that
when He comes in Glory which is a word in the Greek (Doxa), means
an opinion, judgment, or estimation. So we see that this Glory
which is the OPINION of the Father that he
comes in brings a
deliverance with it. This Opinion of God, this Message of God
which is only His Opinion in a spoken form, comes with a
specific
purpose in mind and that is to bring forth a deliverance to
those
who are looking to Him to Appear the Second time.
Now in
order for this OPinion to bring deliverance,
the person
must see this opinion. They must not only be looking for Him to
Appear,(
and remember, He is the Word), But they must also be
able to recognize Him when He is here. And thus they
must be able
to see the word in it's Vindicated Fulness
before them. This
recognition of the word then brings the
deliverance that is
promised.
And what is the first thing we need deliverance from? Our own
opinions which have become as they are from our
previous train
ing. Once we open our hearts to hear God's True Vindicated Word
it becomes a new and living Word and we then willfully
give up
our old thinking.
Our
own mind must first be delivered from our own thinking
which
is based upon wrong conception before we can
receive a body
change. The New birth is not some great mystery but one of plain
and simple truth. If our fleshly birth was dependent
upon an egg
and a sperm coming together, then the spiritual birth
must be
done the same. For it is the nature of reproduction to do
so. And
God is the author of nature. If God said
in GENESIS 1 that every
seed must bring forth after It's kind, then if we are
to receive
a new birth, it must be after it's kind. Then it must come from
God's SPerm,
which is His Word coming into contact with a predes
tinated seed thought, that
God had about us before the world was
even made. Once the Light of His Glorious Presence
strikes the
seed, up, up , comes the seed in the image of
the Father. Our
deliverance has begun.
I
don't want to spend to much time on this today, because I
want
to focus more time on point # 3.
He
says, "look and live. The only thing you can do
is look! Take
the Word."
This is the beauty of how God our True Father operates. All we
truly can do is Look. Brother Branham types it with the Brazen
serpent in the wilderness.
NUM
21: 5 - 10 <read> Who can tell me what this
serpent
represented.
Brass represents what?
JUDGMENT!
And
what is to judge in the last days! JOHN
So
what is the brass serpent a type of for our day? The Word.
So then, we need to look to what and Live? The
Word. Brother
Branham said, " AS
THE SERPENT ON THE POLE REPRESENTED THE LIVING
WORD THAT WOULD BE MADE FLESH, SO DOES THE WORD TODAY
REPRESENT
THE PRESENCE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT WHEN WE SEE IT
VINDICATED AMONG
US.
I
JOHN 1: 1 - 3 <read>
JOHN 5 : 25 - 27 <read>
JOHN
14 : 18 - 21 <read> ROM 1: 17 <read>
GAL
2 : 20 <read> ACTS 17: 22 - 31
<read>
HEB
9: 28 <read>