God’s Secret Code

Alright, thank you very much, and hello again, dear radio friends. How in the world are you? You’re doing alright? Oh, I’m fine, thank you. Happy in the Lord, feeling great, praise the Lord. Nice to be alive and to be able to speak with you concerning the Word of God. I look forward to these times like, well, just like a vacation almost. I feel so good about sharing God’s Word with you. It does me a lot of good in the process, you know that.

We’re in Colossians Chapter 3, and we just talked about set your affections on things above, not on things on the Earth. You can, by faith, determine what’s going to be important in your life. It better be God and His will, hadn’t it? Now, he says, “Why? “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory. Ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God.”

He says, the fact is that nothing of the old life means anything because you’re dead to it. Meaningfulness comes in relationship to Almighty God. Moses said in Deuteronomy, he said, “When thy son asketh thee in time to come, what mean the statutes and the ordinances, then shall ye say unto them, We were pharaoh’s bondmen and the Lord delivered us and brought us out of Egypt, and the Lord showed signs and miracles great and sore upon Pharaoh and all his hosts and the Lord brought us out that He might bring us into His, the land He promised us, and so on, and all these ordinances will be for our good if we obey them.” Meaning comes from God’s working in your life. So he says, “You’re dead and your life is hid with Christ in God.” Christ is our life. The only thing that gives meaning to you is that which is related to the lordship of Christ in your life. Live all of your life in relationship to what wilt Thou have me to do. Pray your way through the day. If you and I would pray more about the so-called unimportant details of life, we would have a far greater effectiveness and more joy and less troubles because God would have a chance to rule in all of the fabric of our life.

Small things can make a great difference. In the past months, of course, there has been a great deal of investigation and soul-searching concerning the tragedy that involved the explosion of one of our projected space flights. Now, as they studied all of the photographs and the enhanced computer read-outs and print-outs and all of that, it develops that from the very outset of this ill-fated venture, there was a very small leak in one of the seals, the O-ring they called it, that helped to seal one section of the great rocket to keep the gases inside so that the propulsion would occur and the vehicle would be launched skyward. And so, as these various pictures and diagrams are flashed on the screen, you can see from the very instant of lift-off that there is this wisp of smoke coming out from the side. There’s a leak there. It’s a very small one, but within seconds, the entire vehicle is exploding across the sky, and the view of horrified spectators and heart-broken relatives. Small things, beloved, add up to a great deal of difference. A great deal of difference in your life.

This happens in so many ways all the time, doesn’t it? Yes, it does. Years ago, I was in garage work. You didn’t know that, did you? The story in my life is from grease pit to pulpit. And so, you had to deal with the problems of people who came in with their cars, and on one occasion, there was this car that was running poorly. It was just barely running, coughing and spitting and back firing, and the customer brought it in and said, “I can’t do anything with this blasted thing, can you help?” And so on. He was really upset. Well, I remember my boss took a look at it. He said, “Well, let’s check this out.” And one of the first things he did was to take off the distributor cap from which the ignition wires go to the spark plugs. He took that off and looked at it. Wiped it with a piece of cloth, looked at it again, then he called the customer over. He said, “See here?” He said, “Here’s your trouble.” And there, barely visible to the naked eye, was a small crack running across the inside of that distributor cap. And what it was effectively doing was short circuiting the electrical charge so that the electricity didn’t flow to the proper spark plug at the right time. A very small, tiny, tiny crack in the distributor was making all the difference. And so, we set out to the parts store, and got a new distributor cap and put it on, hooked up the wires, and the car ran beautifully. Small things make a difference.

What about your life? He says, “Set your affections on things above for you’re dead and your life is hid with Christ.” Now, when he says, “Your life,” that means everything you do all day long, doesn’t it? When I say, “I am living my life,” what do I mean? Get up, get dressed, shave off my whiskers, have some breakfast, have some devotions, get going about the day, take care of the million and one things that are mine to do. If I work in an office or a shop or in a school room or in a hospital or in a court of law, whatever it may be, I do those things that I have to do. Come on home, have dinner, talk to the family, maybe watch television, take two aspirins and go to bed. I’ve been living my life, haven’t I? That’s what he’s talking about. He says, “Your life, your life, is hid with Christ.” So when I wake up, I ought to speak with the Lord Jesus, my savior. When I am about to greet the family, I shouldn’t greet them, as my old friend Joe Gunderson used to say, with a loving snarl. I should greet them in love and having been blessed by my Lord already.

I should relate my connection with my family to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And so, when I begin my daily work, I’m going to ask him to superintend it. I know for a fact if you’re a salesman, if you’ll pray about your calls, God will send you to the right people and save you a lot of wasted mileage. Same thing with you, Pastor. Do you pray about your pastoral calls? You better learn to do that. God knows who needs you or who would rather not see you. God knows, and he can send you to the right people. Pray about the details of your day. Pray about laying out your day, busy home-maker. You have to do the washing and the ironing and the shopping and pick up Junior and take him to the boy scouts’… The cub scouts’ meeting, or whatever it may be. And you pray about your schedule so that God will keep you going the right way. Christ is our life. Let the Lord Jesus into the business of living, beloved. Let Him into the business of business. Let Him into the process of home making. Let him into the details of every day’s decisions. Let Him in. Let Him be Lord. That is the truth that you have there. Christ is our life. Ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God.

Now, there’s a further thought here and I want you to get it. Your life, that’s what we’ve been talking about, your life. Get up, get dressed, go to work, so on. Your life, he said, is hid with Christ in God. So what you do at any given moment is directly related to the purposes of Almighty God in this world. What you do at any given moment is directly related through the Lord Jesus to the purposes of Almighty God in this world, so that your life is not just so as you say, “Well, I’m just a housewife,” or, “I’m just a janitor,” or, “I’m just a mechanic,” or, “I’m just a college president.” Whatever it may be. You are not just somebody humanly, you are somebody because of Jesus. Hallelujah.

And what you do and what you say and the kind of person you are, makes a difference because it’s connected with God. I often say to people, “When you walk into a room, people should feel God’s presence. When you open your mouth, people should hear God speaking. When you make a decision, people should see that God is working in you to will and to do of His good pleasure.” As we read there in Philippians 2, “You, beloved, and I, through Jesus are connected with Almighty God.” The word “hid” is an interesting word. It’s a crypto which mean… From which we get our idea of encryptation. When a thing is put into code, for instance, by the military, it’s encrypted. That’s a direct take over from the Greek. He says, “Your life is God’s secret code.” Isn’t that something? Your life, beloved, is God’s secret code. He is saying something significant through you because you’re connected through the Lord Jesus with the very eternal purposes of God.

And he says, “There’s coming a day when that secret code is going to be revealed “when Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.” And the word appears phaneroo which means to show up in a human package, to be revealed in a blessed package when Christ who is our life shall appear, then you’re gonna be shown off. You’re gonna be God’s exhibit A in the glory and all of the encrypted message of God in your life is going to be shining out throughout all eternity. “Set your affection on things above.” Why? Because you’re dead and your life is hid with Christ in God.

You can decide whether Christ is gonna be first. You can decide whether God’s will is going to be most important in your life. You can, by faith, turn yourself over to the Lord Jesus, and you will become then, as I said a moment ago, God’s blessed secret code in Christ. He is saying something special through you because of Jesus. All of these things are wonderful, blessed possibilities for your life.

Now, what’s the prospect? Well, he says, “When Christ who is our life… ” And you take out the two words “who is” because they’re in italics in your Bible, that means they were added in order to make sense in the English language, but you can say, “Christ our life. When Christ our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.” What is the hope that I cherish every moment of every day as a believer? It is that any moment now, my savior and yours will appear. The trumpet of God shall sound and the dead in Christ shall rise first, then we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so, shall we ever be with the Lord. Jesus is coming again. He’s our life this minute. By faith, we turn over every detail of living to him. But there’s coming a day when we’ll see him and we’ll be like him, and we’ll appear with Him, it says, in glory. You’re gonna be part of the shining of God’s glory in that day. The joy of being redeemed is not just that you’re going to heaven, but also that you are going to be part of the shine, so to speak, of God’s ineffable glory throughout all eternity. Hallelujah for that.

Dear heavenly Father, teach us today the secret of living in Christ, putting all of our life into Thy care. Amen.

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