Scripture reading: Job 1:21; 2:10; 42:5-6; Heb. 11:24-26; 1 Pet. 1:6-7; 2 Cor. 4:7; 12:9-10<\/p>\n
I.Moses considered suffering affliction with the people of God to be most precious, for he considered the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt\u2014Heb. 11:24-26:<\/strong><\/p>\n A.Moses saw that all the enjoyments in Egypt were the pleasure of sin; he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter\u2014Heb. 11:24.<\/p>\n B.Regarding the change in values, he saw most clearly; he was willing to suffer any affliction and reproach because he saw the greatness of the reward which is unseen\u2014Heb. 11:26.<\/p>\n II.Suffering causes the believers’ faith to be tested and proved precious, more precious than the testing of gold which is tested by fire and yet perishes\u20141 Pet. 1:6-7:<\/strong><\/p>\n A.The genuine faith that God has given us must all be tested by hardship; faith is like gold, which must be put in the fire of hardship to be tested before it can be proved precious\u20141 Pet. 1:7.<\/p>\n B.The tested faith is strong, bright, and precious, and can be found unto praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ\u20141 Pet. 1:7.<\/p>\n III.Job no longer treasured what he was and what he could do; after we are broken, we can receive God’s double portion of blessing, which is the Holy Spirit\u2014Job 42:5-6:<\/strong><\/p>\n A.Job said to God, I had heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You\u2014Job 42:5.<\/p>\n B.In the New Testament sense, to see God is to gain God; to gain God is to receive God in His element, life, and nature, so that we may be constituted with God\u2014Job 42:5-6.<\/p>\n C.God’s giving man a double portion of blessing prefigures God’s giving of Himself as the Holy Spirit to man; if it were not so, God would have treated man harshly\u2014Job 42:10.<\/p>\n IV.We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not out of us\u20142 Cor. 4:7:<\/strong><\/p>\n A.God has shone in our hearts, bringing us a treasure, which is the glorious Christ who is the embodiment of God and has become our life and everything\u20142 Cor. 4:6-7.<\/p>\n B.But we who contain this treasure are worthless and fragile earthen vessels; a priceless treasure is contained in a worthless vessel\u20142 Cor. 4:7.<\/p>\n C.This causes worthless vessels to become ministers of the New Testament, having a ministry of supreme preciousness, and this is through the divine power in resurrection\u20142 Cor. 4:7.<\/p>\n V.We must change our values and see clearly the seriousness of stumbling, being willing to cast away parts of our body to remove sin\u2014Matt. 18:8-9:<\/strong><\/p>\n A.A believer in the Lord must change his values and see clearly the seriousness of stumbling; before a person believes in the Lord, he can do many sinful things and look at many defiling things\u2014Matt. 18:8-9.<\/p>\n B.Christians must deal with sin so severely that they would rather cast away their members in order to keep themselves clean and sinless\u2014Matt. 18:8-9.<\/p>\n VI.A man casts his precious treasures, gold, and precious silver in the dust in order to deal with iniquity and to have Jehovah as his delight\u2014Job 22:23-25:<\/strong><\/p>\n A.This is again a change in values; for this reason, he can lift up his face to God, and he will receive three kinds of blessings from God\u2014Job 22:26-28.<\/p>\n B.Sooner or later, we must uproot the new believers from their original values; you must help them choose God’s righteousness and cast away precious treasures, gold, and precious silver\u2014Job 22:23-25.<\/p>\n C.The value of righteousness is far above the value of all precious treasures\u2014Isa. 42:1-4.<\/p>\n VII.If we separate the precious from the vile, we can be God’s mouth\u2014Jer. 15:19:<\/strong><\/p>\n A.The first qualification for a prophet is to separate the precious from the vile or worthless\u2014Jer. 15:19.<\/p>\n B.In order to speak the word of God, we must separate all vile or worthless things from the precious things\u2014Jer. 15:19.<\/p>\n C.If you and I today do not know how to distinguish value, God will cast us aside and not use us; God requires that we be able to distinguish between the honorable and the base, the precious and the vile, so that we may be His mouth\u2014Jer. 15:19.<\/p>\n VIII.The Lord must open our eyes that we may see His value; the whole issue is how precious He is to us now\u2014John 12:3:<\/strong><\/p>\n A.When we truly treasure Him, nothing will be too good or too costly for Him; even if we pour out all our most beloved and valuable treasures upon Him, we will not consider it a shame\u2014John 12:3.<\/p>\n B.In her estimation, the Lord was more valuable and more lovely than anything else; in her eyes, the Lord was the most precious and most costly\u2014John 12:3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" PERFECTING THE SAINTS SERIES ONE FELLOWSHIP FOR THE CHI […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seq.qingmingshanghetu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seq.qingmingshanghetu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seq.qingmingshanghetu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seq.qingmingshanghetu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seq.qingmingshanghetu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/seq.qingmingshanghetu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160,"href":"https:\/\/seq.qingmingshanghetu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions\/160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seq.qingmingshanghetu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seq.qingmingshanghetu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seq.qingmingshanghetu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}