Action-Oriented

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much, and hello again, dear radio friends, how in the world are you? Yes, that greeting establishes the fact that this is indeed your friend, Dr. Cook and I’m delighted to be back with you for a little while to open up the Word of God and share with you so that there’s something there that you can get hold of for yourself.

We’re in Colossians the first chapter, and we stopped momentarily on that 28th verse where Paul says, we preach Christ. I changed the relative pronoun to a personal pronoun instead of “whom we preach”, we could say “Him we preach or we preach Him.” Elsewhere in Paul’s writings, he said, “We preach Christ crucified” and constantly the message of the early church was not a dogma, but a person. God’s passover lamb, slain, risen again and now Lord of all. And your eternal destiny depends upon whether or not you accept His pardon and make Him your Lord, or whether you reject Him and lose your never dying soul.

This is the essence of the message that the church has had to proclaim during the last nearly 2000 years. Him, we preach Christ. Christ born of the Virgin Mary. Christ living a life of obscurity and poverty for 30 years. Christ ministering a perfect ministry for three years. “He went about”, it says, “doing good”. Of his critics, he said, “Which of you convinceth me of sin.” A perfect ministry, a perfect example, a perfect teacher, and then a perfect sacrifice. He died our atoning death, atoning for our sins, paid the penalty for our sins on Calvary’s Cross. “God hath made Him to be sin for us, he who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him, risen again then bodily from the dead and now ascended at the right hand of God the Father,” where the writer to the Hebrew says, “He ever liveth to make intercession for them that come unto God by him.” His main task today is to name you beloved before the Father.

He knows your name, he knows your circumstances, he knows your weaknesses and frailties and failings as well, and he presents you to the father in the light of his perfect righteousness. “We are accepted,” Paul says later on here in Colossians, “we are accepted in the beloved, we are complete in him.” There isn’t a thing you lack when God looks at you, through Jesus. Perfectly complete, complete pardon, complete righteousness, complete redemption, complete assimilation into the family of God, and a complete destiny that is predicated upon the plans and purposes of almighty God for his loved and own, nothing lacking when you’re in Christ. Him we preach.

Now. I thought about that word, preach. There is a word that means to proclaim Kerusso. There’s another word that means to evangelize and then there’s another word that really has in it the idea of conversational information, we’d call it gossiping in a good sense that is. To preach is to proclaim, is to evangelize and is to share. Now you have here a definition of what’s involved if you’re really going to proclaim Christ. Very interesting. Take a look at the 28th and 29th verses of Colossians 1, if you’re in a place where you can, if you’re driving you better keep your eyes on the road. I don’t want you to be a statistic. He said, “We preach Christ, Him we preach.” Now what is involved? “Warning every man, teaching every man that we may present every man perfect in Christ, where unto I also labor striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily.”

What’s involved then in Paul’s preaching? Warning. Warning. A warning can save your life. You’re driving along and you see a big sign, it says “Warning, bridge out ahead”. Well if you keep on driving, you’re gonna fall in the river, aren’t you, so if you heed the sign, it saves your life doesn’t it? A warning can save your life, a warning can guide you properly, again using the illustration of driving along the road. You see a sign saying construction on route so-and-so, best route is such and such. Now that’s warning you that you’re going to run into interminable traffic delays if you take the road that you’re now travelling. And so you turn aside and you take a different road so as to avoid all that and the sign warned you.

God’s Word is full of beneficial warnings. And if we heed his Word, then we are benefited thereby. In this age of so-called positive thinking, it’s interesting to me that Paul puts warning first. You don’t hear many sermons on sin and judgment and hell nowadays, do you? Many of the sermons that are preached are good, but they approach this whole matter from an entirely different angle. You can be better than you are. You can be a successful person, you can like yourself better than you now do. And so on. Now this is all true but they’re by-products of a right relationship with God and oftentimes I may say, almost always, a right relationship with God depends upon heeding his warnings concerning sin and the wages of it. Moses said, “be sure your sin will find you out.” Solomon said, “he that covers his sin, shall not prosper, but whoso confesseth and forsaketh it shall have mercy.”

John the Baptist said “repent,” Jesus said “repent. Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish,” said he. Peter said in his sermon on Pentecost, “repentance and faith is preached by him in His name.” All the way through the Word of God you find this emphasis on warning, folk, warning to flee from the wrath to come, it says in another place. “Oh, generation of vipers”, said John, “who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come.” Warning. And yet we have very little of that today. Now most certainly I’m not among those who claim that you have to be abrasive and abusive in order to be true to the Word of God. Strangely enough however God has used some preachers in days past to bring great revival with that kind of preaching. Jonathan Edward said to his congregation, “God holds you over the pit of hell much as you would hold a noxious insect momentarily over the fire before dropping it in.” Quite a figure of speech, you will admit. And under that kind of hardy and unsparing preaching it says his congregation, many of them held onto the pillars of the church beside which they were seated, so as to keep from slipping down into perdition. That very moment so real was their conviction of sin.

Well, we wouldn’t take that approach today, I suppose. And yet I have to remind you that if you’re a Sunday school teacher, or a pastor, or a Christian worker, or a missionary or just like all the rest of us a garden variety ordinary Christian shall we say, your approach to other people must include a loving declaration of the fact that those without Christ need to be warned that they are indeed lost. Love, yes, consideration, yes. Empathy, yes. Compassion yes. Understanding of the other person’s point of view, yes, all of these things to be sure. But let’s make sure that they understand that “except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Warning everyone, and then he says, teaching every man.

Now you don’t teach a person merely by imparting information, you teach in the biblical sense, effectively only when you have enabled your friend to reproduce in another the spiritual experience that he or she may have had, “the things which thou hast heard of me among many witnesses,” Paul said to Timothy. “The same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.”
So it’s Paul to Timothy to faithful men to many others. Multiplication. Teaching beloved has to do with enabling the person whom you are teaching, enabling that person to reproduce himself or herself in another soul by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Multiplication. Teaching every man.

I think one of the sad things as you watch people here and there is to see folk who have all the information, but who have never made that information effective in their own lives and so they are informed sinners, but they’re lost. This word teaching means to inform so as to bring about action, to inform so as to bring about action. That beloved is the goal of the teaching that you and I should do in Sunday School classes, in conversation with others, in our preaching if we are in the pulpit, in our ministry if we are on the mission field somewhere. That should be our goal, information that leads to action.

Oh what a joy it is to hear someone say as you ask them, “Do you understand now what I’ve been telling you?” “Yes.” “Are you ready now to invite Jesus Christ into your heart?” “Yes.” “Well then let’s do it.” And to hear that person pray and invite the Lord Jesus Christ into his or her life, what a blessed, wonderful experience that is teaching every man.

But he says, in order that, little Greek word hina which means in order that, purpose clause. In order that we may present every man perfect, grown up, mature that means in Christ Jesus. What is the goal then of your preaching? To warn people so that they turn away from sin, and turn to God. To teach them so that they are informed to the point of action and commitment. Then what? To help them grow up in Christ to a place where they realize that they are indeed complete in Him. “Ye are complete in Him,” Paul says in Colossians 2:10. We’re gonna get around to that later on, but the goal of your teaching is not simply to warn, not only to inform leading to action, but also beyond both of these to help your friend to grow up in Christ to a place where he or she realizes they’re absolutely complete perfect in Christ Jesus.

What a joy that is beloved. When you helped somebody to a place where the individual realizes they are perfectly complete in Christ and there’s no more bondage and no more burden of sin, and no more slavery to old things because they’re in Christ and He is Lord and has delivered them. What a blessing that is, present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. Well there’s some other things that are involved in preaching and we’ll get at them the next time we get together.

Dear Father today, may we be found preaching Christ. In His name, Amen.

When I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!