Keeping Lights Lit

Transcript

Alright thank you very much, and hello again dear radio friends. How in the world are you? Doing Alright today? Oh I trust so, bless your heart. I think of so many of you whom I know personally, and the circumstances in which you live-my heart goes out to you. I just pray that God may keep His hand upon you, and that throughout this day or night as the case may be,( because some of you listen late at night I know,) throughout the time, the hours that lie ahead, you’ll be conscious of God’s touch upon you. The touch of the nail-pierced hand, oh how wonderful it is! Oh, I’m fine thank you. This is your friend Dr. Cook and I’m glad to be back with you, believe me, and we’re thinking about goodness: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life”. What comes under goodness? “The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance. Ordered steps, stops, and stumbles”. The Lord is good, ready to forgive, the Lord is good in relationship to the reproach and the opinions of others, the goodness of God extends even to your critics, how about that? “It’s the Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom”, that’s where we were the last time we got together. Don’t worry, look at the way God takes care of the birds and flowers. God cares about you. Put God first, make Him your treasure- that’s about as far as we got the last time we were together, looking at Luke chapter 12.

Then He says, “Let your loins be girded and your lights burning in ye yourselves like men that wait for their Lord when he returns from the wedding, and when He returns and knocks they may open unto them immediately”. Get busy and stay ready for His coming. “Your loins girded”, that means you’re ready to get to work. I’m amazed at the number of believers who have not the slightest intention of being busy for the Lord. As a matter of fact, if you asked them to do something which may require certain amount of time and effort they said, “Oh, I’m far too busy to do that”. What they’re actually saying without realizing it is, what I’m doing is more important than what you’re asking me to do for God. It’s kind of an insult isn’t it, to Him, if you put it that way, and yet that’s what we say, “I’m too busy, I can’t do that. I’m too busy. I can’t teach that Sunday school class. Why, I would have to prepare the lessons and I’d have to call on my students when they were ill or absent, and there are so many things, I can’t do that, I’m too busy”. Well, too busy doing what, beloved? Is what you are now busy at, to use a sentence that ends with a preposition, is what you are now busy at SO important, that it takes precedence over the work of the Lord? See that’s the embarrassing question that comes up immediately. He says, “Get your loins girded”, that means get ready to work for the Lord. God’s goodness puts you to work. Had you thought about that? God’s goodness puts you to work for Him. You never need to wonder about what you can do for the Lord, all you have to do is get on your knees and ask God to guide you and then get up and the first thing you see will be something that you can do for God’s glory. It doesn’t always turn out to be religious. It may be so ordinary and down to earth as cleaning the kitchen floor for somebody who’s sick, or diapering the baby, or bringing over a pot of nutritious chicken soup for somebody-I don’t know. There’s a lot of things that aren’t necessarily religious, but which do honor your Lord because you do them in Jesus’ name and you’re a blessing to somebody else in the process. All we’re saying is, the goodness of the Lord puts you to work, doesn’t ask you to sit around and sing yourself into sanctified senility. Want to remember that?

Oh, He is good. I look back over my own life and see how the Lord put me to work at different things. My father thoughtfully seen to it that I learned how to play the violin as a very small child. I took two lessons a week and had to practice two hours a day at age should 6,7, 8 around in there. One day when the teacher, Jay Garfield Chapman was his name, I remember a kindly gentleman and a very fine musician, took me aside after the lesson was over and he said, “Now, sit down my boy. I want to talk with you”, he said. “I’ll have to tell you, you will never be a great violinist”, but he said, “If you practice hard you might turn out to be a pretty good fiddler”. Well that was qualifying the buyer, wasn’t it? Well, he was being fair with me, and so the years went on and I kept up my violin, played in the high school orchestra, through high school, played in the church orchestras. I even played on Saturday in a Seventh-day Adventist Sunday school orchestra, because I was in love with the cello player, as I recall. She wouldn’t give me the time of day! Oh dear, life is cruel isn’t it? But I kept up with the violin, and lo and behold it became quite useful in those salad days when I was at Moody Bible Institute, and in college and otherwise. I don’t play now anymore. The kids gave me my old original violin rebuilt, as a present at our 50th wedding anniversary. That was so thoughtful of them. One of the presents that they gave mother and me, some different presents they had for our 50th anniversary dinner, and they came out with this violin. Wendell, my son-in-law, had taken it to a violin maker in Chicago, and he took it apart. It was an old Wurlitzer violin. Pretty good fiddle however, according to what he said, he took it apart and re-glued it, and strung it up once again and it had pretty good tone to it, and they gave it to me. Well, I play it very seldom. The sounds are produced now after all these years, are strange and wonderful, but in those salad days, it came out very good. See, God prepared me to give me something to do for Him. The point I’m making actually is, that if you just look around you, the goodness of God has given you the wherewithal to serve Him and to be a blessing to others. Right now, as you are, and where you are, you don’t have to wait until somebody gives you an honorary doctor’s degree or you get called to the First Church of I Will Arise, with 30,000 members. You don’t have to wait until something wonderful happens. Look around you. Jesus said, “Say not ye, there are yet four months and then, cometh harvest. Behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields for they are white already to harvest”. It’s all ready fellas. The harvest, of course, was people. Where He was standing, there weren’t any fields, right there it was right near the town, but the harvest was people, the men particularly, who came tumbling out of the town in eagerness to see this Man who had told them.

The Samaritan lady who’d gotten converted, (read her story in John chapter 4,) the Samaritan lady who had gotten converted, and had trusted Christ as her Messiah and her Savior, went back in town and said, “There’s a man out there that told on you”. You know what would happen, why they just tumbled out of the town in eagerness, to see this Person. Find out how much He had said about them indeed. After they met them they said to her, “Now we believe not because of thy saying only but because we’ve seen Him ourselves and believe”. Oh, that was a wonderful saying. Well, see, where you are, Jesus said, you fellas are waiting for something that happen, the harvest is there right in front of you. Where you are beloved, and what you are in the circumstances in which you are RIGHT THIS MINUTE, are part of God’s good provision for you to get to work. Now, all of that grew out of the phrase and in Luke 12:35, “Let your loins be girded about and your lights burning”. Get on the job for God. Look around you today, will you, and see perhaps to your surprise, that there are things and people and situations all around you, in which you can work for your blessed Lord.

Now, He goes on to say, “Be like men that wait for their Lord. When He will return from the wedding, when He cometh a knocketh that they may open unto Him immediately. Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when He cometh, shall find watching. Be ready also for the Son of Man cometh at an hour when ye think not”. Ready, ready. The goodness of God keeps you ready for every eventuality. Christ’s first illustration was the master coming back from a wedding party, “The servants are to be ready and then He will gird Himself and I said verily I say unto you that He shall gird Himself and make them to sit down and will come forth and serve them”, this is a forerunner Revelation 3:20, “Any man that hear My voice and open the door, I will come in with him and sup with him and he with Me”. The Lord Jesus turns around and is your Heavenly Host when you start serving Him, and it says this( He changes the illustration), “If the good man of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would’ve watched and not have suffered his house to be broken into, there be ye therefore ready also”. He takes the illustration of a person, a thief who breaks in. See you don’t know when He’s coming so you have to be ready. Well, both illustrations point out the fact that the goodness of God leads you and me to stay on the job and stay alert for God’s glory. That’s what it’s all about. When you do He says I’m going to come in and you’ll be my guest instead, He’ll gird Himself and make them sit down and will come forth and serve them. Jesus turns out to be your wonderful host when you honor Him by getting on the job for His glory. It’s good truth isn’t it? “The goodness of God is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom”, now the key word there is Kingdom. If you put Him on the throne of your life, then all these other things applied, you see, “You’re relieved of worry”, Luke 12:22 to 28, and you have all of the provision of God because you put Him first, “Seek ye the Kingdom of God and all the things shall be added unto you. And then you find that your treasure, your real treasure, is your Lord, “Where your treasure is where your heart be also”. Putting God on the throne of your life makes Him your treasure instead of something that will be destroyed with the passing of time, and then God’s goodness not only does all these things but He puts you to work for Him and keeps you ready for His coming with your light burning. I want to be that kind of a servant, don’t you? It’s the Father’s good pleasure to give you His Kingdom. What does that mean to you today, beloved?

Just before we sign off let me remind you that there are areas in your life where the Lord Jesus Christ needs to be made Lord. You need to put Him on the throne, so to speak, in those areas of your life. Pray to Him right now, say, “Lord Jesus, I’ve kept you out of this long enough. I’ve kept you out of this boy/girl relationship, I’ve kept you out of this relationship at the office, I’ve kept you out of my money, I’ve kept you out of my plans, long enough. I want you to be on the throne of my life. Tell Him, tell Him. He says, “He that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out”-you come Him and He will receive you and He’ll become the Lord and King of your life, and you’ll be able to reflect the blessing of Christ’s statement, “Fear not little flock, for it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom”. Little bit more about goodness before we wind up and we’ll take that the next time we get together.

Dear Father today, keep our lights shining, keep us on the job for Thee, reflecting Thy goodness, in Jesus’ name I pray this, Amen.

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