Heirs to Riches

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much. And hello again, radio friends, how in the world are you? Yes, that greeting establishes the fact that this is indeed your friend, Dr. Cook. And I am interested in how you are. You and I are in the world, but we don’t have to be of it. You don’t have to be tarred with the devil’s brush, thank God you can be kept pure and clean and victorious in a dirty world and that’s the joy of being a Christian. Ye who are kept by the power of God through faith in our Lord Jesus, alright. So I hope things are going alright in your life. And if you struck a rough day, look up and trust your blessed Lord to see you through and he will. For he hath said “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” The genius of the Christian life as we’ve been saying in these broadcasts is not just a belief but a wonderful person, the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so he says, Paul says in Colossians 1:28, after having remarked that the secret of the Christian message is Christ in you, the hope of glory. He says, “Whom we preach.” Him we preach. I’ve changed the relative pronoun to a personal pronoun. “Him we preach, warning every man, teaching every man in all wisdom that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.” Now, when you say “Him we preach” what do you mean? Well, just the last time we got together, we were looking at 2 Corinthians 2:2, we preach Christ crucified. Go over to 2 Corinthians 4:5, “We preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord and ourselves your servants.” it’s our word slave. You’re slaves for Jesus’ sake. The essence of the Gospel is the Lordship of Christ and the sacrificial service of people for his sake. That’s boiling it right down to the essentials, isn’t it? The essence Of the Christian message is Jesus is Lord and we’ll give ourselves to you in order that we might help you know him. “We preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord and ourselves your slaves for His sake.”

Small thought here. Have you given any thought and time to the idea of being helpful to other people so that you could introduce them to Jesus? Now, you don’t make a federal case of it, you don’t go around and say, “Brother, I’m going to be helpful to you today. How can I help you because I want to introduce you to the Lord?” you don’t do that. Don’t be officious about your religion. You don’t have to make a big thing of it. Our Savior said when thou doest thine alms, that word alms means when you do something good for people, He said, don’t even let your right hand know what your left hand does. Don’t make a big thing of it like the people who stand on the street corners and proclaim their good deeds. But he says, you do it for God and He knows what you’re doing. Alright, back to the point I was making, give some thought to being helpful to people at the point of their need as you see it. And remember that you’re doing it not for yourself or for them primarily but for the Lord Jesus.

“Whatsoever you do, do it heartily as for the Lord and not just for people, knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward for ye serve the Lord Christ.” So give some thought today, will you? Just a little detour here but it’s important. Give some thought today to being helpful with the point of view of revealing Christ to people. “We preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord and ourselves your slaves for his sake.” The essence of Christian living is the Lordship of Christ and sacrificial service for others in order to glorify Him and win them to Him, alright?

Now, the method of course is public and private. I have to smile a little when people say, “I don’t believe that mass evangelism is any good because the Lord Jesus spoke to individuals.” Well, of course he did but he also spoke to large crowds. And the verse that gives you the pattern for today’s evangelization, one verse at least could be Acts 5:42, “and daily in the temple and in every house they ceased not to teach and to preach Jesus Christ as Lord.” So it was in the temple, that’s where the crowds were, in every house, that’s where the individuals were. The essence of Christian ministry is both public and private. Put them together as God does and you’ll be successful. I remember preaching… [laughter] I remember preaching in a little church on Long Island. It was way back in 1962 now. And they just had a handful of people there. Just a handful, nice people but just a handful. And I didn’t say a word, I just preached as best I could and tried to be a blessing but as the service had been dismissed and I was chatting with folk at the door, one of the officials of the church came up and felt he needed to explain the smallness of the crowd.

He said, “Well you’ve noticed, of course, that we don’t have very many people here but he said we don’t believe in quantity we believe in quality.” And he stood a little higher, you know, a little taller as he said it. Oh dear, that tickled me because that is such a sheer excuse for not really being all that successful. We don’t want many people, we just want a few good people. No, beloved, that isn’t God’s way. To specialize entirely on crowds is a mistake but to specialize entirely on individual contacts is also a mistake. It isn’t either-or, it’s both and. Can you get that into your heart today? Pray for the Billy Grahams and the rest who are having large crowds. Pray for them. Pray for the people who through the use of electronics are reaching millions and millions of viewers. Of course, this is part of what God is doing, but also you be faithful as Philip the evangelist was when he had a whole city full of people listening to him, you be faithful in obeying God when he sends you to minister to one person, right?

So how do you preach Christ? You preach him in every situation in life. In the conversations of every day when it’s just you and one other person or in the large crowds where you may have opportunity to address the millions, as the case may be, the message is the same. Now, let there be no mistake about your relationship to Him. In Acts 17:3 you’ve got something there I think that may be helpful along this line. Let me turn over to it because the emphasis that Paul gives I think is a good one for you and for me today. He says, “Paul, as his manner was, went in to the folk at the synagogue and reasoned with them out of the scriptures opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead.” See, the scripture teaches not only the coming of the Lord Jesus to Bethlehem but also his rejection by God’s ancient people, his crucifixion and the fact that he died as God’s passover lamb. A sacrifice for all the sins of all the world. This is part of what was foretold in the Scriptures.

Isaiah 53 for instance. He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him and by his stripes we are healed. The whole 53rd Chapter of Isaiah is prophetic scripture, concerning the Lord Jesus Christ and His sufferings for us. So Paul had reference no doubt to Isaiah and other passages when he reasoned with them out of the Scriptures saying, “This is how it had to be. Christ must needs have… ” It’s a very strong word in your Greek New Testament. It says it had to be, “have suffered and risen again from the dead and that this Jesus,” that’s his human name, “whom I preach unto you,” there you have that relative pronoun again, whom we preach. “This Jesus whom I preach unto you is the Christ.” You see the essence of proclaiming the message of Jesus is to proclaim that he is God’s Christ, that he’s the Messiah, He’s the chosen one, He’s the only way to God. That’s the essence of it.

Now that immediately divides you hearers into two groups. Those that receive and those who don’t. It was true in this case as Paul spoke to people and it’s always true, but that’s the way it is. Your message is to proclaim that the Lord Jesus Christ is Lord and Christ. He’s the Messiah, he’s God’s way, there’s one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Peter said, “There is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.” Jesus our Lord said, “No man cometh unto the Father but by me.” And if you claim that the Christian message is exclusive, yes, it is. It’s just as exclusive as a fire escape. If you don’t take the fire escape you’re gonna be burned up. And it’s just as exclusive as a road map. If you don’t take the right road, you’re gonna be lost. It’s just as exclusive as a compass, if you don’t follow the compass but follow your own inclinations you’re gonna be lost. It’s just as exclusive as mathematics. Mathematics says, “This is the way it is and you can’t stretch a number and make it a different number.” See, there are certain exclusive things in the world because they’re true, Right?

And this also is true that God has said, “If you wanna be forgiven, you wanna be a child of God, you wanna be born from above, you wanna have this miracle life where Christ lives in you then open your heart to Him, there isn’t any other way.” That’s involved in this statement, Him we preach. There’s another passage over in Ephesians that I’ll refer to momentarily. Paul says, “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.” in another place he says, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him but God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” “Now, we have received,” he says in 2 Corinthians 2:12, “not the spirit of man but the spirit which is of God that we might know,” and that word know means be intimately acquainted with, that we might get intimately acquainted with “the things that are freely given to us of God, the unsearchable riches of Christ.” In another place he says, “All things are yours and ye are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.”

You have the privilege my dear friend of reaching up by faith today and receiving all that Jesus can do and be for you. Paul says in Colossians, we’ll come to it a little later on, ye are complete in him who is the fullness of the Godhead body… Bodily. “Ye are complete in Him.” Oh, the unsearchable riches of Christ. Do you know anything about that? We talk about it, we believe in it. I know you do, but have you experienced any of these riches? How do you get at the riches of Christ?

Well you start with the fact that if you’re born from above and you know the Lord Jesus as your Lord and Saviour, the blessed Holy Spirit dwells within you. His job is to reveal Christ, that’s what the Savior said himself. “I’ll give you another comforter.” “He shall not speak of Himself, He shall speak of me.” The purpose of the indwelling Holy Spirit is to reveal Christ. And so one of the first things you and I need to do is to make sure that every room in our heart house is open to the blessed Spirit of God. Paul says in Ephesians 5:18, “Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess but be filled with the Spirit.” Open every room in your heart house to the Holy Spirit by faith. And then again, by faith, just as you trusted Christ to save you, so by faith, trust him to reveal himself to you in the blessed Word of God, as you read it and in prayer as you commune with him. Oh, the riches of fellowship with your living Lord. We’ll talk about that again the next time we get together.

Dear Father, today, may we know something of the riches of Christ as He lives through us, Amen.

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