God’s Truth Is Absolute

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much. And hello again, radio friends. How in the world are you? Doing alright today? Oh, I trust so, bless your heart. This is of course your good friend, Dr. Cook, and I’m glad to be back with you. I look forward to these times when I can share from God’s Word. Oh, just like a, like a, an hourly worker looks forward to coffee break. I tell you it’s refreshing to my own heart, just to be with you and with God and with His Word and share these precious truths.

We’re walking around now in 1 Timothy, chapter 1, and we come to verse 15, one of the great verses of the New Testament. “This is a faithful saying,” Paul says, “and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.” There are four verses that mention faithful sayings. There’s one in 1 Timothy 4:9, “Godliness is profitable unto all things having promise of the life that now is and besides of that which is to come. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation.” That’s what makes us work, he said, makes us willing to pay the price even of reproach because we trust in the living God who is the Savior. The faithful saying is that, “Godliness pays off,” that’s 1 Timothy 4, then, and in 1 Timothy 2, it ought to be about verse 11, “It is a faithful saying: if we would be dead with Him, we shall live with Him. If we suffer, we shall reign with Him. If we deny Him, He will deny us. If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful, He cannot deny Himself.”

There you have a wrap-up of the facts concerning the resurrection life of the believer, the inevitable consequences of compromising your faith, and the fact that God will never, never let you down. “Faithful saying”, it’s great. Then you have over in Titus, I think, there’s another one, let me look and see. “It is a faithful saying, and these things I will that Thou affirm constantly.” What is that? Why, “not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which is shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior; that being justified by His grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” This is a faithful saying. “These things I will that Thou affirm constantly.” What is it? You’re saved by grace through faith, plus nothing and you again, by that same grace, justified by His grace, you get an inheritance. We’re made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

There are certain things that you can be sure of. I’ve just ticked them off for you. Now, we come back to 1 Timothy 1:15. He said, “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation.”

Small thought here: There are no exceptions in God’s truth. You go to a science class and, and you are saying something that has to do, let’s say, with some formula or other, the question comes up, “Is this always true?” Like as not, you, the prof, or someone will say, “Well yes, it’s true, except in the case of…” Life is full of exceptions, isn’t it? It’s full of discoveries of things that we thought were so, that turn out not to be so. You know about that. Exceptions. But when you’re dealing with God’s truth, there aren’t any exceptions. “Worthy of all acceptation.” Learn that attitude when you come to reading your Bible, beloved, that what you’re reading is absolute truth. There’s no give to it, there’s no exception to it, that we – well, instead of saying “we” I’d better say “I” – I don’t know where some of you stand, but I don’t buy the idea that you look at some of the writings in the Bible and say, “Well, these were written to people in another age and other circumstances, and it just doesn’t apply to us.” Oh, yes, it does. God’s truth is absolute, and murder is still wrong, and adultery is still wrong, and lying is still wrong, and sexual deviation is still wrong, because God’s Word says so, and righteousness is still right, and faith is still right, and grace is still available, and hope is still genuine, and love is still outpoured by the Holy Spirit. These things are absolutes. Get that point of view when you read your Bible, beloved, and you’ll find that it strengthens your faith and gives you a bedrock kind of a foundation for all of life and all of your decisions. God means exactly what He says.

Now Paul, “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world.”

Just a small thought here: This presupposes that He was in being before He came into the world, and of course that brings us back then to the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit; one God, three persons, eternally co-existing. Before there was any life, before there was any creation, before the universe as we know it existed, there was God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Then creation occurred and God knew when He created this old world, and when He created man with the possibility of saying no to the will of God, God knew and God planned then redemption. “Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from before the foundation of the world,” Our Lord Jesus says. God planned salvation and so He came into the world. His mission had to do, not with being a good teacher, not with being a supreme example – although He was both of those things – but His mission had to do with salvation. He came to be God’s Passover lamb. Son of Man came to give His life a ransom for many, to seek and to save that which was lost. Not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many. “No man taketh my life from me,” said He, “I lay it down of Myself.” The good shepherd giveth His life for the sheep.

The mission of the Lord Jesus coming into this world, specifically, was to save you and me. Have you thanked Him for that? Recently, anyway? Have you ever thanked the Lord Jesus for coming down the stairways of the stars and being born of the Virgin Mary, spending those helpless years as a little babe, those growing years as a young lad, those developing years as a young man, and then launching His ministry as a thoroughly human, but altogether God man, ministering here on this earth and then dying as God’s Passover lamb, sacrificing Himself for the sins of the whole world, you and me included?

Oh, my heart breaks with gratitude as I think that Jesus died for me. Have you thanked the Savior for that? Christ Jesus came into this world with you and with me in mind. He came not only to live and to teach and to minister, and to do miracles, to raise the dead, cast out demons and to give to us marvelous teachings which have down through the years been the benchmark of spiritual life and progress. All of that, but specifically, He came to die for my sins. What a tremendous thought! Let it break your heart with gratitude as you think of your loving Savior and what He did for you.

So you go out in that great verse, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” not to reform them, not just to teach them, not just to reorient them, not just to make them comfortable with their feelings, but to save them.

Now, I have some dynamic tension in my own thinking here because I know that some conditions – emotional and, and nervous, and, and, and motivational conditions (not to say that the client is psychotic and, and really mentally ill) – even those, those conditions that are deep-rooted and that go way back into childhood trauma of some sort, those conditions are not served successfully by any kind of religious formula.

You can’t just quote a Scripture verse and say, “There, now. Just believe that and it’ll be alright.” Nor indeed can you have what we call a word of prayer – say a prayer over the person, however sincerely, and, and, and expect a change. It takes time to work through many of these things and that’s why we have Christian counselors and Christian psychiatrists and doctors, and I have respect for all of that wonderful profession. These are hard-working, dedicated people, and I appreciate them.

But by the same token, it is a fact that the damage done by sin in the life is subject to the transforming grace of God, and I know personally and I presume many of you, my listeners, know of people whose lives have been transformed because Jesus came into their hearts and lives and saved them. That is to say, He took control of the thought processes of the motivations and the memories and the feelings and the habit patterns and of the whole individual, and there was a difference. Now, we know about that, don’t we?

I guess my position is it’s not either therapy or salvation. It’s both, and you have to start somewhere. Start at Calvary. God wants to make a difference in your life. Do you believe that? I can say that with complete confidence, for I know it to be true. God wants to make a difference in your life. He has plans for you and those plans include a transforming of your attitude and your outlook, your motives and your desires. He does want to make a difference in your life. God looks for people to worship Him in spirit and in truth. Jesus said that. God is out looking for people who will, who will obey Him and respond to Him, and He said, “A new heart will I give them and a new spirit will I put within them,” and he said, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, a new creation.”

God wants to make a difference in your life. Would you let Him today, my friend? Perhaps you’ve never accepted Christ as Savior. Will you now bow and say, “Lord Jesus, come into my heart and save me from my sin”? Call on Him, He will answer. I promise you.

Dear Father today, may we be found trusting the Savior who came to save sinners, I pray in His name, Amen.

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