Blessing His Will

Transcript

Alright thank you very much, and hello again dear radio friends. How in the world are you? Everything going Alright at your house? I certainly trust so, bless your heart. I know some days are worse than others and some are better than others. and you may have struck a rough one today, and if you have, don’t despair, don’t give up, and don’t blowup, but trust your blessed Lord. Look up just now and say, “Lord Jesus, see me through this one”, and He will for He hath said, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee”. Merv Rosell used to say that an old gentleman in one of his early churches, before he went into worldwide evangelism, an old Swedish gentlemen, would get it backwards and used to say, “Thee forsake nor thee leave, never will I”, and another one used to say, “He’ll never sake me nor foreleave me”. Well however you want to say it. (laughs) However you want to say it, it’s true, Jesus never fails. Hallelujah!

You and I are looking at the 23rd Psalm. We’ve come all the way, almost all the way, through verse five, “Thou preparest a table before me even in the presence of my enemies”. You don’t have to handle your enemies, leave them with God. He’ll take care of them and you. “Thou anointest my head with oil”, the anointing of God upon your life, never lose it. Don’t lose the blessing of God. Oh, the sadness in lives of people who have had God’s blessing in large measure and through, either through their own foolishness and backsliding or whatever reason, they’ve lost the blessing of God, and they try so hard but they cannot manufacture it and like some shorn Samson they go out to meet the Philistines of life and there is no power there. That’s said, so sad. Don’t lose God’s anointing. Whatever else you do, stay close to God, and let the Holy Spirit of God have full sway in your life. The anointing of God upon your life. Then he says, “Thou preparest a table, Thou anointest my head, my cup runneth over”. That’s where we are today, the cup. Want to talk about that for a while?

Now, of course, it could mean a physical cup, obviously out of which you drink some liquid. It also stands for the very essence of life, for good or ill, “The Lord is the portion of my cup”, said the psalmist in Psalm 16:5, and the Lord Jesus used this figure of speech in referring to the need for a life, a whole life, that is clean on the inside as well as burnished and shining on the outside. “Woe you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you may clean the outside of the cup and platter but within is full of a rottenness and dead men’s bones”, remember that passage in Matthew? Matthew 23 it is. He said, “First, make the inside of the cup clean”, make the inside clean, referring the cup there, referring to the essence of your life. Your whole life is like a cup. I had a friend, many years ago, when we were first married and we lived in Philadelphia. And there was a man who shared my same last name, Cook. A good man, a printer I think he was by trade, and we became friends and I followed his life through the years. I think he now is with the Lord for quite some time. In any case, the Lord called his dear wife to be with Himself and so my friend and his little boy needed someone to sort of keep house, and they found an elderly lady who came in to keep house and do the cooking. My friend liked to serve the evening meal patriarchal style.

He would carve the roast right at the table and dish out the meat and the vegetables and pass them around. And so it was that one evening as he was preparing to serve the meal, he picked up a plate, looked at it and said as he handed it to the housekeeper, “This plate is dirty, miss so-and-so”, and she burst into tears, highly insulted. She said, “That isn’t dirt, that’s just a fragment of food from the last meal”. (laughs) How often, how often, you and I say to God, “Well, that isn’t dirt, it’s just a little something you know, a little something that’s on the inside of the cup and platter”. Jesus said make it clean. Make it clean, make it clean. You wouldn’t want to drink cup of coffee that still had on it the marks of somebody’s lipstick or the ashes of somebody cigarette, would you? No, indeed! You want it clean, and God looks at your life and mine, He says, “Make it clean on the inside”. Oh, how do you do this? Very simple. Tell God the truth about yourself and plead the merits of Christ’s cleansing blood. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all, not some, ALL unrighteousness. So, if we walk in the Light, as He is in the Light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ. His Son cleanses, that verb actually means keeps on cleansing, keeps on cleansing us from all sin. Beloved, give some thought would you, to making sure that the cup is clean on the inside. The essence of life. And then of course it does stand for the blessings of God to us, I think that’s what the psalmist has in mind here in Psalm 23 verse five. The prepared table, the anointed head and then he said my cup runneth over. It is as though you are a guest in a rich man’s home and he keeps saying to you, have some more, have some more! And you’ve just got a super abundance of everything. A super abundance of everything. “God is able to make all grace abound toward you that ye as always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work” .More than enough, the overflowing blessings of God.

Now, I’m talking to somebody who today, who is saying rather bitterly, “Cook doesn’t know what I’m going through. I don’t have any overflowing blessings. I’m going through the ringer. I’m broke and there isn’t enough money to pay the rent and this place is a miserable kind of a place we have to stay in, and my kids are in trouble, and who knows where my husband is,” and so on. You’re just bitter and upset and burdened, bless your heart. No amount of preacher talk is going to make you feel any better, is it? I know that. We don’t make people feel better by giving them advice. But I want to tell you something. Are you listening beloved? Somebody is in a difficult situation today. The Person who changes you in the situation is Jesus. Turn in, turn to Him now in prayer. Focus your attention on Him. In Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. All of the overflowing blessings of God are found in the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s your loving Shepherd, He hasn’t forgotten your name and address, and although things may be rough right now, He’s waiting for you beloved, to turn to Him and to say, “Lord, you’re the One”. And when you start thinking about the Lord Jesus, I can promise you, you will find something for which you can thank God. You can thank your Lord that He loves you and that He hasn’t forsaken you and that He’s on the throne today and that you are His child and you can by faith receive His supply of your need. Yes you can! While my advice isn’t going to make you feel different, when you turn to the Lord Jesus Christ, turn your prayer and your faith and your love toward Him beloved. Not only will your feelings change, you’ll change in the circumstances and will be changed as well, I promise you. The overflowing cup starts with the Person of the Lord Jesus the Shepherd, “The Lord is my Shepherd”, is directly related to the statement, “My cup runneth over”. Focus your attention on your blessed Shepherd and you’ll find that He does indeed, take care of His sheep. The cup also, in a number of Biblical references, refers to the outpoured judgment of God. Jeremiah 25:15, speaks of the wine cup of God’s fury, the dregs of His anger and so on. You’ll find it in many of the different references in your concordance. And so we want to remember that this figure of speech is used, not only for blessing, but also for judgment upon those who reject the will of God, and then the cup also represents the will of God, specifically for you. Of course the example of this is found in our Savior the Lord Jesus Christ who prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Father if this cup may not pass from me, except I drink it, Thy will be done”, not My will but Thine be done. A wonderful Savior praying, a wonderful prayer, directly related to the fact that you and I today can say Abba, Father. If the Lord Jesus had backed away from the cross at the point where He was praying, “Remove this cup from me”, if He had backed away from the cross, you and I would be without hope today, but thank God He went on through with it. And so the cup in that case and in many cases in our own lives, the cup of God’s blessing is also the cup of His specific will for your life.

I heard evangelist James Robinson saying, “If God tells you to do something, do it. For if you disobey Him spiritually you die away, your usefulness is gone”. A very potent warning to all of us. The cup in this case as represented by our Lord Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane represents the specific Will of God. When God is revealed to you, something He wants you to do, you better do it. John 2:5 has Mary saying to the servants, “Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it”. Ecclesiastes 5 says, “When thou vowest a vow differ not to pay it, for the Lord hath no pleasure in the death of fools”. God isn’t happy when you say before the avenging Angel,’ Oh I was just kidding I didn’t mean it.’ Read that passage for yourself and find out that the wise men had learned a lesson which all of us need to learn and relearn, that is level with God, mean what you say to Him, and keep your promises to Him. The Will of God, the cup represents God’s specific will for you. And then of course Paul speaks about the cup of blessing which we bless, and that is directly related to the communion service, isn’t it? Jesus said, “This cup is the New Testament in the New Covenant in my blood, as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till He come”. We call it the Lord’s table and there’s a very special sense in which when you approach that wonderful communion service-you can become aware of Christ’s Presence, and as it says concerning the two who were on their way to Emmaus on that post resurrection day it said, “He was known of them in the breaking of the bread”. When the Lord Jesus invites you to sit down at His table, it is indeed the cup of blessing which we bless. Oh, have you known something of that? I think one of the greatest experiences that can come to the believer, short of his conversion and believers’ baptism and the infilling of the Holy Spirit, one of the greatest experiences that can come to any believer, is the realization of Christ’s Presence, when you bow in worship and in love and in gratitude and remember the Lord’s precious, atoning death on Calvary. His Presence is there and it’s the cup of blessing. Well we’ll have just a few words more about this matter of the overflowing cup the next time we get together, God willing.

Dear Father today, may we be found people who are not only enjoying the cup of blessing, but drinking the cup of God’s perfect Will. I ask in the name of the Lord Jesus, Amen.

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