Point To Jesus

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much. And hello again, radio friends. How in the world are you? You’re doing alright? Well, I trust everything’s alright at your house. I know that for one person, it’s a birthday. And we wanna say, happy birthday. You wanna know who it is? [chuckle] It’s my better half. We’ve been married for 53 years nearly. [chuckle] And I’m grateful for a happy home and a godly wife, believe me. Say, we’re in John, chapter 1. And I wanna go on with you in verse 21, 22, 23, around in there, chapter 1. People came to ask questions of John the Baptist, and it says, “They which were sent were of the Pharisees.” I want you to see something here. Pharisees were the backslidden fundamentalists of their day. Their doctrine was fine, but their conduct, according to our Lord Jesus, as He spoke with them, calling them hypocrites, their conduct was way off. It left a lot to be desired. But they were the purists, they were the people who had the doctrine. So they were sent to check John out.

Now, their first question had to do with their understanding of prophecy. Said, “Who art thou?” He said, “I’m not the Christ.” He said, “Are you Elias? Are you that prophet?” And then he answered all of this, he said, “I’m the voice… “, we talked about that yesterday. And now it says, they ask him, “Why baptize us thou then, if thou be not the Christ, neither Elias, neither that prophet?” They wanted to know why he was doing religious things if he didn’t have a claim, either to be the Messiah or to be a human fulfillment of prophecy. Instead of answering, again, he points to Christ. He said, “I baptize with water. But there standeth one among you whom ye know not. He it is who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose.”

When people ask you why are doing something for the Lord Jesus, don’t bother giving a complicated answer, just point to Him. Most religious arguments wither away and die out in the presence of the Son of God. Do you wanna think about that for a while? Some of you have been having some arguments maybe in your church. Get down on your knees together with those with whom you’ve been arguing, and seek God until your eyes are wet and your hearts are tender. And I can guarantee you, you’ll have a lot less to argue about. I’ve always said to people who served on church boards, “Have a great prayer meeting before you start the business of the deacon’s meeting. You’ll have a better meeting and a shorter one.”

Pray through the agenda. I learned that from Dr. Corey. Vic Corey was my boss at Scripture Press for five years while I served there as vice-president and sales manager. They called it “distribution manager”, but that’s highbrow for sales. [chuckle] Oh, what a good man of God he was. Not only a very sharp businessman, but he knew his Lord. And well, we had a weekly… I guess, they still have a weekly meeting of the division heads, and before we ever did any business in that meeting, he would hand out the agenda for the meeting. All of the discussion matters that had been held over from the week before and all of the new matters that were to come before us. And then he’d parcel out the different items. I remember on one occasion we were troubled about the fact that every time there was a heavy rain, the drainage of our particular property was not such as to let the water drain off fast enough, and it threatened to flood the warehouse. And we had to have some way of seeing to it that that water got pumped away.

And I remember one morning he said, “Bob… ” He said, “You pray about that flood proposition will you? See what the Lord will do.” So, I had to pray about what God might do in helping us avert a flood when it rained hard. [chuckle] Pray through the agenda. Coincidentally, right after we got through praying about that matter, we got up off our knees, and Lloyd Corey, who was then in the editorial department, I think he since retired, Mr. Corey’s son, Lloyd said thoughtfully, “You know… ” He said, “There’s a fire engine for sale over in Itasca. It’s an old pumper, but it’s in good shape, I guess. We could buy that and start it up whenever it rained hard and pump the water over the hill and go down the other side of the hill.” Well, it sounded like a good idea. And someone was dispatched to go over and buy the old fire engine, which I think they bought for probably a $100 or so, whatever it was, but it was still in running condition, good shape, and brought it over and parked [chuckle] it out in the parking lot. And every time there was a heavy rain, we would start up the old pumper and pump the rainwater over the crest of a nearby hill, and it would run off harmlessly down into another sewage system. [chuckle] Pray through the agenda.

See, it’s not a matter of arguing about particulars. When you come right down to it, your Christian life is a matter of being dynamically connected with Jesus. And that doesn’t obviate the necessity for thinking. Some people are so spiritual that they’re no earthly good, I know that. But it doesn’t excuse you and me from using our brains or doing our homework. But what it does do is to take the gravel out of the situation and answer a lot of questions that really don’t have to be asked when you’re pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you follow me in that? Who are you? What are you saying about yourself? Why are you baptizing? Why are you doing all of this? The questions were coming with machine gun rapidity, he said, “Hey, there’s somebody here. You better think about him. You better get to know him. I baptize with water. He baptizes with the Holy Ghost and fire.”

Now my beloved friend, I can’t tell you how to do this in the situations in life. I can only tell you that if your heart is set on that kind of procedure… See, the psychologist talks about a mindset, that means the frame of mind during the point of view from which you reason. Well, if your heart is set on the idea of pointing to the Lord Jesus, the indwelling Holy Spirit of God, who indwells the believer, will find a way to do that in and through you every time. You don’t have to be constantly pious. You don’t have to constantly be preaching or quoting Scriptures. Anybody that’s constantly preaching and lecturing and quoting Scriptures turns out to be a bore, and people stay away from that kind of person. I don’t mean that, I mean a real genuine spirit-filled Christian who sincerely wants Jesus to get the attention, not you. Does that make sense to you? Oh, I hope it does because it is such an important truth. They said, “Why are you baptizing? What are you doing? What’s all this? What right do you have?” He said, “Look, Jesus is here.” That’s the reason.

Now, not only that, but John was careful to point to the real reason for Christ’s coming. John 1:29, “The next day John saw Jesus coming to him and said, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.'” Not only was our Lord Jesus Christ the fulfillment of prophecy, but He’s the Lamb of God, the one who bears… The word “take” means “bear, bears away”. I think it’s the Greek verb phero, if I’m not mistaken. Look at the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, bears it away.

What is my job in this matter of relating people’s questions to my faith in Christ? Number one, call attention to Him. Number two, say what He does. John said, “He’ll baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire.” He says He is the sin bearer. “Behold the Lamb of God that bears away the sin of the world.” You follow that? Call attention to Jesus. Now you don’t have to do it in an artificial manner. The Holy Spirit of God will do this for you and through you, but you can do it. One way to implement this whole matter is to be full of Scripture. I’m looking now at some verses that show up in this connection. Isaiah 53:7, “He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.” Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us, 1 Corinthians 5:7, “the Passover lamb.”

“You weren’t redeemed with silver and gold,” 1 Peter 1:19 “but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” Revelations 7:9, “All of these people stood before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands.” Revelation 15:3, “They sang the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb saying, ‘Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty, just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints.'” Revelation 21:22, the final vision that involves a new heaven and a new earth, “I saw no temple,” John says therein. “But the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.” He gave Himself for our sins that He might deliver us from this present evil world. The Lamb of God, God’s sacrifice for sin.

Now, how do you do this in a secular world? I know that you can’t walk up to the water cooler with a clump of well-meaning heathens standing around and say, “Fellas, let me talk to you about the Lamb of God.” I know that. It wouldn’t work. You have to start where people are. You have to identify with them where they are. That’s for sure. And you have to establish what we call rapport, which means they feel comfortable with you, they trust you. But somewhere along the line in that process, there will come opportunity to speak of eternal matters. And that, my friend, is your chance to share your joy and love in Christ. You think about it and pray about it, we’ll get at this again the next time we get together.

Father God, today, may we call attention to Jesus and share our love for Him with those whom we meet. I ask in His name, amen. Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing.