He Is The Truth

Transcript

Alright thank you very much, and hello again dear radio friends. How in the world are you? Yes, this your friend Dr. Cook and I’m glad the back with you and minister from the Word of God. Well, we’re looking at the gospel of Mark you and I, and we come now to the verse 13 of chapter 3 of Mark said, “The Lord Jesus went up into a mountain and called unto Him whom He would and they came to Him, and He ordained 12, that they should be with Him and that He might send them forth to preach and to have power to heal sicknesses and to cast out demons”. Simon, he surnamed Peter, and James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother surnamed them Boanerges, which is the Sons of Thunder”. Jesus knew they had a short fuse already. God will not make any discoveries about you, beloved if you yield yourself to Him, He knows it all, already. Sons of Thunder, and Andrew and Philip and Bartholomew and Matthew and Thomas and James, a son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeas and Simon the Cannanite, and Judas Iscariot which also betrayed Him, and they went home. Now, what was His purpose in choosing and ordaining these twelve? It says, “That they might be with Him”, number one, “that He might send them forth to preach”, number two, “and to have power, heal sicknesses cast out demons”. Want to think about that for a moment? What does the Lord Jesus want most out of you? What you do? No, not primarily. He said, “That they might be with Him”. John 4, “The Lord Jesus said the father seeketh such to worship Him”. There is a lonesomeness in the heart of God, that is only satisfied when you and I commit ourselves to Him and walk closely with Him. “Enoch walked with God”, it says. “To be with Him”, what does it mean to be with the Lord Jesus? Now, He’s gone back to the father, He seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high, and He intercedes there for you. His main business is to name your name and mine, before the father. “He ever liveth to make intersession for them that come unto God by Him. Any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one and He’s the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world”. He’s there in the presence of the Father, naming your name beloved, as you come to Him in simple faith.

So, what does it mean then to be with Christ in this day and hour? Well, the blessed Spirit of God has been given to reveal the things of Christ it says, “Jesus told His disciples He shall take the things of mine and show them unto you”. The Spirit of God reveals all that the Lord Jesus is and the presence of Almighty God is made real in your life through the indwelling Holy Spirit, when you’re saved when you become a Christian, born from above, born-again, then the Holy Spirit of God enters into your life. Your choice of course, is to yield your whole life to Him, so He can fill your life, “Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess”, Paul says in Ephesians 5:18, “but be filled with the Spirit”. So, that’s your choice and your answer to God’s command, but the Holy Spirit of God comes to dwell in your life, when you receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your Lord and He becomes by faith your savior. So, to be with Christ means to be aware of the presence of God and to spend time in His presence.

I made a pastor call years ago, when I was a pastor in LaSalle, Illinois, down there in the Illinois Valley. I spent some very happy years with the saints there in the first Baptist Church of LaSalle, and of course my rule in the pastorate for 18 years was make three calls a day, a thousand times a year, go tell somebody about the Lord Jesus. A home going pastor makes a churchgoing people, you know that preachers. So, I was busy calling as usual, and I made a stop at a certain home for a while. No one came to the door, and I thought, I guess nobody’s home. I was about to turn away when the mother of the family came to the door with her little 3 ½ or four-year-old with her, both of them smiling broadly, welcomed me, and as I went and she explained the delay, she said, “I’m sorry you had to wait, but we were just talking to the Lord you know”, she said, “We believe in practicing the presence of the Lord”, and she smiled and the little girl smiled with her so sweetly, so early in life she was learning to be with the Lord Jesus. Now, this takes time, you don’t rush into the throne room of God with your laundry list and quick, good rattle it off and then go out again and think that you really been in this sense at least, in His presence. It takes time, takes time. “Wait on the Lord. Be of good courage and He shall strengthen thine heart. Wait I say on the Lord”. This is with the psalmist says and he had learned it, I suspect, the hard way. “Wait on the Lord”. Take time to be with God, “Be quiet before God, be still and know that I am God, I will be exalted”, our Lord says.

How do you do this? Well, how do you pay attention anybody? Number one; you focus your mental machinery, your attention, on the person. Number two; you get quiet. You don’t learn anything while you’re talking at the top your voice, you keep still. Number three; you think along the lines of the other person’s reasoning. See, the law of listening is to be quiet, and put out of sight and out of hand, what you may have been thinking about and doing and then you focus your attention on the other person. Try this when you’re in the presence of the Lord. Get still in your own heart and mind. It takes a while because we are so upset with the things that are on us ordinarily, pressures of one sort and another, that when we come to praying it turns out that there were still fussed, and we’re still sort of turbulent, you know. Isn’t it true? Well now, take time then, to get quiet before the Lord and be still before Him and wait on Him and let Him talk to your heart. As I said to you a day ago or so, when you’re in that position, always have a notebook and a pen or pencil handy because what God whispers to your heart in those quiet moments is apt to be very, very important in terms of His revealed will. Be still, to be with Him. Now, what else does it mean? It means to invoke His presence and His guidance in the circumstances of every day.

I used to tell the young people at the college, “Pray your way through the day.” Pray when you wake up, “Good morning Lord”, instead of, “Good Lord, morning”, you know, there’s a difference. Pray before you greet your roommate or your families with a loving snarl. You can be pleasant early in the morning even before you had coffee. Pray before you start that first job of work in the morning. Pray before you enter a class something other than, “Lord don’t let him call on me today”. Pray before you make a decision, pray before you start a trip, pray before you go on a date, pray before you answer the phone, you don’t know who’s on other end of the wire, pray before you open a letter, you don’t of it’s a check or a bill or an anonymous note you know, you don’t know, so pray your way through the day. Pray before you sign a contract. God has already read the fine print. The large print giveth and the fine print taketh away you, know that, so why not pray before you enter into such an important mental transaction.

Pray before you hire a person, God knows whether he’s pure gold or just a gold brick. Pray before you transfer or do some other personnel decision, certainly before you fire anybody, if you’re in supervision, the most expensive thing you can do my corporate friend, is to fire somebody, so you better pray that God will guide you in all these matters, right? Pray your way through the day. Oh and by the way, there are situations that happen, we never know quite when they’re going to come up, but that you can just feel yourself getting tense about the blowup, can’t do? You can just feel yourself tensing up or either getting defensive or getting angrier, getting irritable or whatever it may be. Oh, before you reach, long before you reach the blowup or give up point, whisper a prayer and say, “Lord take hold of me and guide me”. What a joy it is to feel the Holy Spirit of God defusing a situation inside of your own heart. To be with Him means to spend time waiting on God. It means to pray your way through the day, to consult Him in every action.

Does God know which way, which route you should take for instance, to get somewhere? One road is going be full of detours, the other is going to be clear, does God know that in advance? Of course He does. Does God know where you should buy a certain item, whether it’s a new suit or a new car or a new typewriter whatever may be, does God know where the best bargains are apt to be? Of course He does. “In all Thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths”. Jesus wants you to be with Him in the living of everyday, “That they should be with Him”, and then I think when it comes right down to it, you and I reserve for our best friends, the times we spend when we’re just together and we don’t have to say anything or prove anything or do anything, relaxing in the presence of God.

Have you ever done that? Just relaxing with your Lord, get your Bible, read a little prayer little, sit still a little, just relax in the presence of your Lord. He longs to be with you in that kind of a situation, where you can talk, you can fellowship, or you just be quiet and you don’t have to prove the thing. Said, “He chose them that they might be with Him”. Then what else? “That He might send them forth to preach, to preach”, ordinary word there that is used translated preach, Caruso, to proclaim, I think that’s the one that’s used here, although I don’t have my Greek New Testament in front of me. To proclaim the truth. There is a sense in which your best usefulness is telling other people about the Lord Jesus and what He can do. Now there are many religious things we do, there are many different kinds of work that we do, but when you bring it down to what the accountant calls the bottom line, the one thing that really counts is whether somebody else hears from you or from me, that Jesus is who He says He is and that He can do it He says He can do.

Bob Pierce used that very phrase one evening in a evangelistic rally someplace over in Taiwan, and the next day he was leaving for the Tokyo airport and from which within an hour so, he was going to transfer planes and leave for the U.S., and as he was getting on the plane in Taipei, this man followed him and he said, “Are you the man who spoke last night?”, “Yes”, “Is it true that you said Jesus is who He says He is, the son of God, He can do what He says He can do? He can save?”, and Bob Pierce said yes, he said, “I’ve got a talk to you some more about this”, he says, “The flight has been called and I have to get on, I’m sorry friend, I have to get on the plane”, he says, “I’ll see you”, and after the plane had taken off, sure enough here was this man and coming down the aisle of the airplane, he stopped beside the chair where Bob Pierce was seated, he said, “I got to talk to some more. You say Jesus is who He says He is, the son of God and that He can do what He says He can do, He can save me from my sins”, and Bob Pierce says, “Yes”. “Would He do that right now”? Bob Pierce said, “Yes”, and he said, “Can I ask Him”? He said, “Yes”. So the man kneels down right in the aisle and the stewardesses are walking back and forth, you know stepping carefully over him, and there he kneels in the aisle, gives himself to the Lord Jesus. Jesus is who He says He is, the son of God and He can do what He says He can do, He can save me from my sins. Dear friend let Him do that for you today.

Dear Father today, may we look at the tests, and the trials and the tears and the heartaches, as well as the victories as part of thy perfect plan for us, in Jesus’, 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!