Christ–Your Commitment

How are you spreading the Gospel? Are your sharing Jesus with everyone and are you committed to Christ?


Scripture: Mark 16:15-16

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much. And hello again, radio friends. How in the world are you? You doing Alright, today? Well, I trust so. I’m happy in the Lord, I’ll tell you that. So glad to be alive and able to serve the Lord. And so grateful, may I say, for the privilege of sharing God’s word with you, my dear friends.

We’re in the book of Mark, chapter 16, we’ve gotten into verse 15, and our Lord Jesus is saying to the disciples, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” Preach the gospel to every creature. Now, when you stop to think of that, it is so plain, so uncomplicated, it’s a wonder that the church hasn’t done more about that in the past centuries. “Go ye,” I’m it. I remember the feeling I had when I first played a game that involved some kind of running and tagging. As a little, motherless boy, I didn’t have too many children around me at one point to play with, so that by the time I was, say, six or seven maybe, I was awkward in some of these children’s games. And there I stood with a group of other children. And all of a sudden, I felt a tap on my shoulder and a childish boy said, “You’re it!” And they all ran away.

Now I had to chase somebody. It was up to me; no one would help me. And I remember that feeling of shock and helplessness and almost rage, “Why is this happening to me? Why do I have to do this?” All of it flashing across that little-boy mind in a hurry. [chuckle] Well, I got busy and chased somebody and finally got out from under that responsibility. Somebody else was, as we say, “it”. Well, my friend, you and I are it, “Go ye, into all the world.” May I ask you a question which may seem… Well, maybe it’ll irritate you, but let me ask it anyway. Have you given any thought lately to your personal share in getting the gospel out to all the world? Now, don’t start to tell me, “Oh, I can’t be a missionary,” or, “I can’t preach,” or, “I can’t do this, do that, or the other,” or, “I’m busy. I’ve got a job, don’t give me that now”. You know that all of these things are secondary when it comes right down to doing the will of God. Isn’t that true? Have you given, Beloved, any thought lately to your share? See, remember you’re it; nobody else can do what you can do. Right? Given any thought then, to your share in the gospel, to every creature? What are you doing about it? Has anybody heard the gospel from you, directly? Has anybody received a letter from you that explained the way of life?

Have you sent anybody as your substitute? Dr. OJ Smith used to say in his missionary conventions, “Either you must go, or send a substitute.” Have you sent anybody, or helped to send someone as your substitute, to preach the gospel where Christ has not been named? Have you helped people to publish the gospel, by way of books, and pamphlets, and leaflets, and all of that? Have you helped Christian radio? Many of these radio stations depend upon your donations for them to keep going. You know that. Have you helped Christian radio stations? Or Christian broadcasters? Have you helped any Christian colleges, and Bible institutes, and Bible colleges, that were preparing people to share the gospel? Well, that list could go on, and I don’t mean to annoy you with it. I would like, though, if the Holy Spirit of God would speak to your heart about your personal share in that command, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” Makes a lot of sense doesn’t it, really, when you think about it?

We are responsible. And like the hapless youngster in a childhood game, we’re it. No one else will take our place. “Go ye.” Oh, as long as I live I pray that God may keep me active in giving out the good news and helping people to know the Lord Jesus. That’s the one thing that’s important. A million years from now, Beloved, what will be important, will be what you and I did and said to introduce other folk, someway, somehow, to the Lord Jesus Christ. He said, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” That means everybody has the right to hear the gospel once before anybody else has a right to hear it twice. I think one the great failings of our country is that so many people have so much gospel by comparison with those who don’t have any, in some parts of our country as well as in many areas of the world. “Everybody,” OJ Smith used to say, “has more right to hear the gospel once, than anybody has to hear it twice.” Now, it says, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not will be lost.” We come into this matter, baptism and the Lord’s supper. I happen to believe that baptism does not save, but that it is an act of obedience to the Lord’s command.

In this passage and in other passages in Acts and elsewhere, you have baptism always associated with a beginning faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And as I see it, it is an act of obedience that confesses your faith in the Lord Jesus. “What doth hinder me to be baptized?” And Philip said to the eunuch, “If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest.” You see, the saving process depended on his heart. The witness and the obedience, and the profession, the public profession of his faith followed. Now, some of you may quarrel with me about that because you may believe in what we call baptismal regeneration, and that’s Alright. We’ll be in heaven someday, and things will be made plain to us. But I’ve explained to you how I see it and where I’m coming from. The point that really is important is the second half of Mark 16:16. “He that believeth not shall be… ” I hate to pronounce that word because it’s such a tragic word, damned. Means condemned, lost.

Now, there are other passages that say the same thing, quite apart mind you, from the ordinance of baptism. “He that believeth is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” John 3:36, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, but he that believeth not the Son, shall not see life but the wrath of God abideth on him.” So your commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is the one thing thing that determines whether or not you’re saved. I’ve had numbers of people, who had been baptized in water, who later realized that they’d never been born again. As a matter of fact, I’ve re-baptized several when I was in the pastorate, re-baptized several who had gone through the formality of baptism but had never really committed themselves to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so they were still unsaved, though members of a church. Now they came to a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus, and they came to me and said, “Pastor, I’d like to have what we call believer’s baptism ’cause now I’m a believer. And I know Jesus, and I’d like to confess Him as such. And so I’ve re-baptized them.

Well, however that goes, you know and I know that what determines your eternal destiny is whether or not you’ve believed on the Lord Jesus. That word believe means commit, whether you’ve committed yourself to Him as your Lord and trusted Him as your Savior. Do you follow that? Oh, that’s so important. And, of course, that really is what angers unsaved people in the world. You go on television and some pagan television host will say, “Do you mean to tell me that if I don’t believe on the Lord Jesus that I’ll go to hell?” Oh, it’s so hard to take that sort of thing and answer it in love. But you have to answer it, and say, “Well, I didn’t write the Bible. God did. And He said, ‘There’s no other name under Heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, but He that believeth not shall not see life but the wrath of God abideth on Him.'” That’s what it says. And so the Gospel is an exclusive message and a demanding message, just as exclusive and demanding as a compass. There is no approximate north, or south, or east, or west. Those degrees are there. You don’t monkey with them. You don’t change things around. It’s as demanding as mathematics. Two times two has to be four, unless some wag is gonna remind me that if you get into nuclear physics, sometimes it doesn’t quite add up that way.

Alright for you. But in ordinary mathematics, you know it’s pretty definite, isn’t it? We still teach children what we call the times table; two times two is four, and two times four is eight, and two times eight is 16, and so on. It never changes. You don’t fool with that. You don’t fool with the law of gravity. Stand on top of a tall building and say to yourself, “Well, I know there’s the law of gravity, but maybe it won’t work this time.” You jump off, you’ll find out it works. A lot of the things by which we live are quite demanding, aren’t they, and inflexible? And so it is that when you deal with Almighty God you have to do it His way. “As many has received Him,” Christ that is, “as many has received Christ, to them, gave you power to become the sons of God even to them that believe on His name which were born, not of blood, nor of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

Born of God, how? By receiving a wonderful person who brings His life with Him. My oldest seminary prof, Dr. John B. Champion, now with the Lord for a good many years, used to say, “Every life has its law. The law of the acorn is the law that develops into an oak. And the law of the tadpole is the law that develops into a frog. Every life has its law. And so, as a sinner, you are under the law of sin and death.”

That’s the law that you have, until, that is, you meet the Lord Jesus Christ. And then you begin to experience what Paul calls the law of the spirit of life in Christ. It made me free from the law of sin and death. Every life has its law. And so when you receive the Lord Jesus Christ into your life, He brings His own wonderful life with Him. And that in itself has a law of action, and you begin to live under His direction in accordance with His nature, His will, His purposes, His plans. Oh, the Christian life is wonderful. I wish you knew it, some of you listening. You’re still skeptical, still asking questions. Let me tell you something, you’ll always have questions until you commit yourself to Jesus; and when you do, He answers the doubts. Why don’t you do that today? Ask the Lord Jesus Christ into your heart and let Him make you His very own child.

Dear Father, today, oh, may we invite the Lord Jesus in and live according to His power. I ask in His name, Amen.

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



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