Cleansing

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much. And hello again radio friends. How in the world are you? Everything going alright at your house today? Oh I trust so, bless your heart. Nice to be back with you! This is your friend Bob Cook, and you and I can invest a few moments, precious, precious moments, together over the Word of God.

We are in 1 Peter 1:2. Now we talked about this matter of obedience. How do you generate obedience in your own life when each of us has been born with a, a somewhat rebellious spirit, we want our own way. And I told you reading and meditating and, upon, and memorizing the Word of God is the first step. Put portions of the Word of God into the computer of your mind. Second, pray over it so that it involves not only your mentality but also your emotions and your spiritual nature.

It is impossible to kid yourself and to remain in an attitude of rebellion against God while you’re praying sincerely over a passage of God’s Word. Now in a, in a welter of self-pity oftentimes you may have prayed, “Oh Lord, help me and bless me. And while that was a good prayer, it didn’t do much for your condition or your attitude. But if you take a passage of scripture and you begin to go over it in, in your prayer, out loud, reading it and saying, “Oh God this is what you’re saying to me. Fasten it upon my heart and mind.” You see what I mean? You, you pray over that, that passage.

It’s impossible to kid yourself, the truth is going to come to you strong and, and inescapable. And you’ll find that there’s an impact made not only then upon on your mind, but also upon your will, and upon your emotions. And you as a whole person will then have been involved in the truth of God. Oh I tell you, obedience is going to come a great little easier after that.

So read it, memorize it, and pray over it. And then what else? I like to say, “Try it on for size. Try this.” You ladies you know you, you’re in some ladies’ meeting and someone says, “Oh I’ve got this new, this new recipe.” — whether it’s sourdough bread or a new recipe for, for rice and, and tomatoes and zucchini and, and garlic and onions, and so on (Laughs) — you know, whatever it may be. They say, “I’ve got this new recipe.” And so you write it down and you say, “I can’t wait to try it.”

Coreen, my good wife of 54 years, says, “I want to try this new recipe on the family so that I don’t try it out when there’s company.” (Laughs) Wants to be sure it’s going to work. If it flops, well it isn’t quite so bad if it flops for the family, you know. What do you do? You try it out, don’t you? I want to try this out, see if it works. Well why not try out some of God’s Word in your daily living, to see that it does indeed work.

Some of these passages bear directly upon our conduct and upon our attitudes, isn’t that true? And because they do, and if we’ve memorized them and prayed over them, because they bear directly upon our conduct and our attitudes, we do very well to enter upon any given day saying to ourselves, “I’m going to try to live by this verse today.” And you’ll have it in your mind, uppermost in your mind, as you approach the various circumstances through which you must go in that given day. You follow me there? Try it on for size, and see for yourself that it does indeed work. And obedience will then be not an effort but a byproduct. It will be the result of having prayed about a passage from God’s inerrant word, the Bible, and then having put it to work in your life.

Obedience. Now he says, “Unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.” Why does he leave that last, why didn’t he put that first? Because my friend, we have the necessity because we’re, we’re faulty and imperfect human beings, we have the necessity every day of being cleansed by the application of that precious blood to our lives.

John the apostle says in his first Chapter of, of 1 John, “But if we walk in the light as He,” —that’s our Lord Jesus — “is in the, in the light, we have fellowship, one with another” — and as a result in other words — “and as a result, the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us.” And that’s in the linear forever, means ‘keeps on cleansing us’ — “keeps on cleansing us from all sin.”

There is that continual application of the precious blood of Christ to our hearts that makes us clean and keeps us clean. A continual adjustment, a continual adjustment keeps us going in the right direction. I remember flying with Paul Hartford, my good friend of many years. For a good many years he was a, a missionary pilot flying his airplanes across the Caribbean to Cuba and various other islands, and holding meetings and, and all of that. He had a flying school at one time and trained pilots. He and I were good friends because we were both involved in Youth for Christ.

And so it was that I went with him on an extended trip throughout the islands of the, the Caribbean. You call it Caribbean or Caribbean, which you like the best? Well it doesn’t matter, you know where it is. And there we were flying along. And as we took off I saw him turning a little gadget on the gyrocompass down there. And I said, “What, what are you doing?” “Oh,” he said, “you have to adjust that so that, so that it’s in line with, with all of the, all of the, the beacons that we’ll, we’ll meet along the way. You have to be sure that your gyro is set,” said he.

Now I don’t propose to know anything about that technical end of the business. I only know that’s what he said and that’s what he did. You have to adjust it to be sure it’s set in the right direction because it’s not magnetic it’s, it operates off a the gyro — you understand that. Well, the, the correction by the master pilot made sure that we would be headed in the right direction. And in the same way it seems to me the Lord Jesus Christ our master pilot, through the application of the precious blood shed on Calvary by faith, by faith to our lives, Christ is made unto us.

Paul says, “Wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption, by faith” you can take what the Lord Jesus purchased for you with His precious blood. You can apply it to your life, and you can be sure, thank God, that you’re headed in the right direction–the direction of obeying God’s will.

Now he gives this wonderful benediction, which is common both to Peter and Paul and others. “Grace unto you, and peace be multiplied.” The grace of God is that which provides salvation to the unworthy. God’s riches at Christ’s expense. Someone has used the, the, the letters in the word grace to indicate something or the meaning of it. I remember hearing, who was it? Dr. Pettingill, one of the old-time Bible teachers talking about the grace of God. He said, “Suppose there was this rich man who parked his Rolls Royce at the curb, and went into a, a, a bank building and came out and found a dirty little ragged urchin had thrown a stone at his car and had left a big scratch on the fender of that expensive car. Now what would grace mean?”

Well somebody in the class lifted their hand and said, “Well, he would forgive him.” “Yes,” said the doctor, “but that isn’t all of it.” Somebody else said, “Well, he wouldn’t punish him, he wouldn’t punish him, he wouldn’t call the police.” “Yes that, that applies, but that isn’t all of it.” So finally we got around to the, the, the whole definition that the good Dr. was after.

Grace, if it was go-, if it were going to be, if it were going to be displayed toward that ragged little orphan urchin there at the curb, a naughty boy who had thrown a rock at this expensive Rolls Royce car, what would grace do? Number one, grace would, would not punish, grace would not arrest, grace would not, would not make him pay the consequences, grace would forgive. Yes, but what else? Grace would take him home, clean him up, give him new clothes, adopt him, and give him a bank account of his own.

See, we have been born again by the grace of God, and we are now members of God’s family. “We are seated,” Paul says, “in the heavenlies with Christ. We are in Christ, we are children of God,” Paul says in Romans 8. “And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.” God’s grace. He said, “Grace be multiplied to you.” What is he talking about? The grace that takes me as I am, that forgives me, cleanses me, adopts me, gives me a place with the Lord Jesus, and makes me a co-inheritor of all the riches of glory.

“All things are yours,” said Paul, “in ye are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.” The whole package of heaven is wrapped up and, and marked with your name and mine because of God’s infinite grace. And we who deserve nothing but the judgment in hell are now part of the family of God. ‘I’m so glad,’ the song goes, ‘I’m a, a part of the family of God’. Yes I’m glad, and I know you are too. Then he said, “Grace and Peace.” You girls who are named ‘Irene’, that, that’s a Greek word for ‘peace’. I suppose you know that, don’t you? Grace and peace be multiplied.

Ah, what about the ‘Peace of God’? Well it’s the peace that comes from, from the war being over, “Being justified by faith we have peace with God.” It’s the peace that comes from committing everything to God in prayer. Be worried, be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known unto God, and the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” It’s the peace that comes from focusing on a superior objective. “Great peace have they that love Thy law and nothing shall offend them.” It’s the peace that comes from being connected with a superior person. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee because he trusteth in Thee.” It’s the peace that comes from walking close with the Lord Jesus.

He said, “Peace I leave with you, my peace give I unto you, and not as the world giveth give I unto you.” God’s peace. Now, He said, “grace and peace.” And then he used this, this verb. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a verb, well it comes from the idea of being full. Plethuno, a verb that means from, to be, to increase, to be full in terms of so full that it’s running over. So I can paraphrase this and say, “May God’s grace and God’s peace be so full in your life that it’s just running over.” Full of the grace of God, full of the peace of God, to the running over place.

You see God doesn’t want you to minister out of the scrapings. We talk about witnessing to others — that’s not something that you try to do. You will find that a good witness about the Lord Jesus is a byproduct of being running over with His grace, and peace, and joy. You try it for yourself.

Dear Father, today may our lives be running over with the peace and grace of God, the love of God. and all of His holiness, I ask in Jesus name. Amen.

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