Get in There!

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much. And hello again, dear radio friends, how in the world are you? You’re doing alright today in this old world? Thank God you can be in it, you don’t have to be of it. That’s the basis for that little corny greeting that comes your way day after day. You who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed at the last day. You can be kept in this dirty world, kept clean and shining, among whom you shine as lights in the world. You can light up the darkness today and you can be clean and shining kept by the power of God. That is how I wish for you to be in the world.

Well, dear friends, we’re looking at Colossians chapter 1, we’ve come now to verse 26, we have to back up a little, get a running start into it. You’re talking about the gospel and the body of Christ, the church. In verse 25 he says, “Whereof,” that is of the church, “I am made a minister according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you.” You have a ministry beloved, and God gave it to you and it’s for the sake of other people, not for your sake. I’ve sometimes heard clergymen and others saying, “I have to protect my ministry.” Well, I suppose in some cases what they meant was I have to protect my mailing list or in other cases they may have meant I have to protect my reputation or in other cases they may have meant I have to protect my sources of donations. [laughter] I remember one time I was talking to a man in a certain church, I wasn’t trying to get anything from him, I was just talking with him and the minister walked up, looked at me, took the man by the arm and said, “Joe, I have to talk to you right now.” and walked him right away from me. He was protecting his donor. [laughter] Well, that’s alright.

I have long since learned that God sends you the people He wants you to have, and He sends you the help He wants you to have. God’s work done in God’s way will never lack for God’s supply, someone said long ago and it’s very true. But your ministry is for others, not for you. God has given you a special relationship to His work. Your particular gifts are planned and fitted by God into the place where you now are and it’s for the sake of the people whom you can touch for the glory of God and for the blessing of others. “A minister,” he said, “according to the dispensation of God given to me for you. To make full” of meaning that is to say, “the Word of God. Even,” now we come to verse 26, that’s the verse we’re going to talk about today, “even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations but now is made manifest to his saints to whom God would make known the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” I read those two verses 26 and 27 together ’cause they belong together.

Mysteries. There’s a lot of things that we don’t understand about the way things work in our world. Why do wicked people prosper? Jeremiah said, “righteous art thou oh Lord when I plead with thee yet, let me talk with thee of thy judgements wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper, wherefore are all day happy that deal treacherously.” The Psalmist had the same problem. Asaph complained. He said, “I was envious when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.” And he goes on to describe the fact that they don’t seem to have troubles like other people. And then he said “This was all too painful for me, I just couldn’t stand it until I went into the sanctuary. Then I understood.” You get alone with God, beloved, and you’ll understand what He’s doing. There’s the new birth, you can’t understand how that happens either. Jesus, our blessed Lord said, “The wind bloweth where it listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth so is everyone that is born of the Spirit.”

The Christian life is a reality, there’s no doubt about that, believer, isn’t that true? You know, whether or not you met the Lord Jesus and whether he is indeed your blessed Savior. Oh yes, you know. But you don’t know all about how it happened any more than you know how two very small, microscopically small, human cells can unite and those cells can multiply and form a human body. No, you don’t know how that works, you only know it does. I remember singing… Did you know I used to sing on the radio? Aren’t you glad I don’t now? Well, I remember singing an old song with a guitar, “I don’t know how He does it, I only know He does it, He just comes in and cleanses every sin.” Ah, yes. There’s the mystery of God’s providence, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out.

There’s the mystery of death and resurrection. “Behold, I show you a mystery, we shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.” There’s the mystery of the union of Christ with his church. Paul says, “this is a great mystery but I speak concerning Christ and the church.” There’s the mystery of the incarnation and godliness that comes as a result of your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. Without controversy, Paul says, “Great is the mystery of godliness. He was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached among nations, believed on in the world and received up into glory.” Our Lord Jesus Christ came down the stairways of the stars and took on him a human body in order that he might share our woe and open heaven to us. There’s the mystery of suffering. “No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous but afterwards, nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness out of them which are exercised or who receive it and profit by it,” in other words.

Mysteries. There’s the mysteries of the kingdom that Jesus talked about. And there’s the wisdom of God wrapped up in a mystery that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians two. The mystery of Christ himself and the mystery of the body of Christ. And there’s the mystery of the Gospel that we’ve just talked about. There’s the mystery of iniquity. Why does God allow Satan to have anything to do with this old world? Why doesn’t he just burn him up? The mystery of iniquity. There’s the mystery of the faith. How can trusting God make a difference in my life? Mystery of the faith, mystery of godliness, the mystery of the seven stars. Jesus, our blessed Lord, holds the church in his nail-pierced hand. And then there’s the mystery of Babylon the great, the organized forces of ungodliness in our world, religious in nature oftentimes but completely ungodly.

Well, that’s just an overview of some of the references that have this idea of a mystery. Now, what really is involved? When the Bible uses the word mystery, the sacred writers refer to something that was hidden for a while but now is revealed. That’s indicated here in verse 26, hid from ages and from generations but now is made manifest to his saints. To them God wants to make known the riches of the glory of this mystery among the nations, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Couple of thoughts here. Number one, if you don’t know all about what God is doing, it’s because you don’t need to know yet. Now, Abraham and David and Daniel and the other great people of God, in other ages did not know about the church. They had prophetic insight, obviously. Read Daniel’s prophecies and you can see an overview of all that God was going to do in history as we see it. They had prophetic insight but as I understand it they didn’t really know that the church was coming. And certainly those of Jewish ancestry had no inkling of an idea that God was going to include Gentiles in his covenants of grace. So that there were some things that people didn’t know during their lifetime but that God has revealed at his own time. That’s what he says here. It was hid from ages and generations but now made manifest to his saints. So, as I say, if you don’t know everything about what God is doing, it’s because you don’t need to know yet.

Second, whenever God does a new thing, don’t fight it, receive it. The idea of all people being open to the Gospel was repugnant to the folk who lived at Jerusalem, for example. They felt, many of them, that if you were going to be accepted of God at all, you had to accept the Jewish religion. Now, from the point of view of history, looking back across the thousands of years, you and I, Christians, cannot fail to be very grateful for the Judeo-Christian heritage that we have. It’s impossible for a true Christian to be anti-Semitic because we owe such a debt of gratitude to God’s chosen people, the Jews. No question about that. Our Lord Jesus Christ came from that blood line on the side of Mary, begotten of the Holy Ghost and born within that virgin womb, the Lord Jesus Christ was heir according to human lineage to the throne of David. We cannot fail to be profoundly grateful for the scriptures. You read the Old Testament and much of the New Testament, you find that you have a debt there to people who are children of Abraham so far as their human lineage is concerned.

So it’s impossible for… It’s impossible for a truly born from above person to be anti-Semitic. They just don’t mix. At the same time, looking back in the record of the Book of Acts, you’ll find that there were many people who found the idea of allowing a Gentile person to be fellow heirs and to be part of God’s eternal purposes and to be part of the body of Christ, that was a new idea to them and they resisted it. We look at it today and we say, “How foolish.” of course, God wanted everybody in on it. Our Lord Jesus said, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” So we more or less take that for granted. But in those days, it was a new idea. Now, God does a new thing in our days as well. Make up your mind that when God is doing something different because He’s now revealing a new facet, so to speak, of his many faceted plan for this world, you’re not gonna fight it. You’re going to accept what God does and you’re going to work with it. Dr. Bob Jones Sr. Used to tell his students, find out where God is working and get in there.

Get in where God is working. That is the place of action and that is the place of blessing. Don’t fight God’s new things. Now that isn’t to say that you’re gonna take up with every hair brained idea that comes across. You know, the difference. Donald Grey Barnhouse used to say, don’t be afraid of fanaticism, fanaticism is not too much religion, it’s too little brains. If you got any brains, use them. You’re not going to take up with every wild eyed, hair-brained idea that comes along. But you’re going carefully to examine what is happening in your world and in your life and you’re going to accept and work with what God is doing. Good idea. It says, but now is made manifest to His saints. Well, we’ll get at this the next time we get together.

Dear Father, today, may we be open to Thy new ideas in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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