Rooted in the Right Place

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much, and hello again dear radio friends, how in the world are you? You doing alright today? Well, I’m fine, thank you. [chuckle] Happy in the Lord. [chuckle] So glad to be back with you. We’re going on in Colossians the third chapter, we’ve gotten into this famous 3:16 verse. As I said to you the other day, look up the different 3:16s in your Bible that have great meaning, John 3:16 of course is one, Timothy 3:16 is another. Here’s another, 3:16 of Colossians. “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.” Now we got… As far as this word teaching, when you teach another person, you don’t just lecture at him or her. To teach means to transfer knowledge so that it’s usable. You teach a person to change a tire, he’s able to change a flat tire when he’s out by himself. You teach a person how to use a computer, he can set it up by himself and operate it without having that famous phrase in the bottom of the monitor called syntax error. [chuckle] Have you computer buffs, seen that often enough? I guess we all have.

To teach someone the things of God means to impart knowledge in a way that it’s usable by the other person. Then he says admonish, the word in your Greek New Testament that’s translated to admonish actually means to put it in your mind. It’s a combination of the word for mind and put or place. And so, when you admonish a person, you put it on his mind and in his mind, so that he thinks about it and thinks of it in time, to act about it. You admonish a person, he’s going out, you’re giving the keys to the car to your 18-year-old. Yeah, no, he’s going… You admonish him. What do you admonish him? You say, “You be careful now. Don’t speed, don’t do anything foolish, and you get home on time, will you?” You’re admonishing him, you’re putting it in his mind. My father used to say to me when I was a teenage boy in high school, I’d be going somewhere he’d look at me straight right in the eye and he’d say, “My boy, remember, you bear my name now you take care of it.” [chuckle] Yeah, that’s it, admonishing.

Now, where does that come in in religious and spiritual and Christian things? Teaching and admonishing one another. Well, now it’s an outgrowth of the Word of Christ dwelling in us richly, God’s Word at home in your heart makes it possible for you to share that word with another person in such a way that he or she is able to use it, teaching. I think that for the most part, we teach people by the kind of folk we are, by the attitudes which we manifest, by the things that so to speak, rub-off from our lives onto others. As a by-product, mind you, of being just full of the Word of God. Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. That is to say every factor, every facet to change the figure of speech of life is related to what does God say about this, what does God’s Word say about it? You are so full of the Word of God that every part of your life is affected by it, that’s what it means when he says, “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly.” As a result you’ll be able to spill over the wisdom of God in all wisdom teaching. Wisdom. Christ is made unto us, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1, “Christ is made unto us wisdom. By faith, you trust the Lord Jesus Christ, not only to save you from your sins and get you safe home to heaven, but to become Himself your wisdom, your source of heavenly wisdom.

The presence of the Lord Jesus Christ in your life through the blessed indwelling Holy Spirit produces God’s wisdom and that in turn is a by-product of His Word filling your life. You follow that? Now that then becomes the basis for any teaching you do.

Show another person how to pray effectively. Show another person how to read the Bible so it says something to him. Show another person how to lead someone else to Christ. Teaching. Now, admonish means help him have it on his mind. Put in mind. Huh? Have you given any thought to this? And have you thought how delicate a matter it is, and how important it is that you be full of the presence of Christ when you admonish anyone? But it is important. Every married man probably owes his life, at least once to a vigilant wife who looking out the window, said, “Watch out John.” Or in my case, “Watch out dear,” [chuckle] she said. Somebody was coming that I hadn’t seen. Fellas don’t get upset when your wife sees something on the road that you haven’t yet seen. I know the male ego is delicate thing, [chuckle] so is mine. [chuckle] But listen, be thankful for the admonishment of people who have helped you.

Don’t bristle when people offer to help you. The fact remains however that if you and I are gonna do any admonishing it has to be done carefully and in love, and as a result of the truth of God in our own lives. To say to another person, “You ought to pray more,” isn’t going to have much weight unless that person knows that you and I have spent some time in the presence of the Heavenly Father that very day. Isn’t that true? To say to someone, “You ought to be a good steward of your money,” it isn’t going to have much weight unless that person knows that you and I have given God His share of the money that He has entrusted to us, that we are good stewards ourselves. You see the point I’m making, don’t you? Admonishing has to grow out… Number one, has to grow out of the Word of God in your life. Number two, has to grow out of consistent Christian living. That’s the force of that; dwell in you richly, consistent Christian living. Then perhaps you may lovingly say to another person, “Hey, watch out for that.” Alright?

Teaching and admonishing one another. Now, he says in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. Well, I don’t do much singing myself. I never developed any kind of a solo voice. Years ago, back in the 1960s, I guess it was, John Camp who’s now with the Lord, who helped me get started in the radio ministry, John said to me, “You know, you ought to have some music. Ought to have a musical theme and you ought to have some music in your broadcast.” Well, I thought, “Well, alright, I’ll ask the radio folk.” So [chuckle] I said one day, “Do you think we ought to have some music? We ought to have some singing or something? You want me to sing?” I said half in jest. Back came the letters, scads of them. “Don’t sing.” [laughter] Now they were trying to tell me something weren’t they? [chuckle] Oh, in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your heart.

Mrs. Robinson died a while back maybe two, three months ago, dear little old lady. Her boy, we called him Shorty, he was 6 foot 7. Shorty Robinson worked for us, yeah, at the college as an electrician. And he and another boy were on their way up to a farm home for a Thanksgiving dinner. Thanksgiving morning, it was. And as they went north on route 9, I guess, or 9W, whichever, someone who had had too much to drink pulled across that two-lane highway and struck them head on. The one boy was killed outright. He was dead on arrival. Dan Miles, I guess, was his name or Dave, one of the Miles boys. But Shorty clung to that thin thread of life. I saw him moments after the accident had taken place. He was now in the emergency ward of a local hospital, both legs with compound fractures and the bones sticking out through the skin, terribly hurt in terms of internal injuries and his head out of shape from having hit the windshield frame.

And yet he was still alive. He lingered for good many days. His mother came up from Baltimore, and day after day she would sit beside his bed and she would sing for him. Now she didn’t have a very good voice, as I recall. And it wasn’t always on pitch. But she would sit there and softly sing to him “Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me”. “There’s a home beyond the river. We shall meet in the sweet by and by”. “Amazing Grace” and “My Jesus, I love thee” and “just as I am without one plea”. “When the roll is called up yonder we’ll be there”. “What a friend we have in Jesus”. She’d go through the whole list of songs with which she herself had lived through the years, and somehow, although the boy was in a coma, I thought that those tender, gracious, loving sounds must have pierced through the mist of his own unconsciousness. The last thing that people lose as you know is hearing, and before death sets in and it’s been true in so many cases that people heard although they were in what we called a coma, they heard clearly what was going on. And so I thought, “Oh, it must be a source of comfort and help to that dear boy, with his broken body, the pain that racks him to hear his mother’s voice singing with grace in her heart.

Now, it’s not only singing to people but he says singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. Do you ever sing to God? Dave Morkan told me one time he was driving in Montana or some western state and he was thinking about this very verse, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord and he thought, “I never sang to my Heavenly Father. I’m gonna do it right now.” And he rolled down the window of the car. He said, “Dear Father, I’m gonna sing this one for you.” And he sang a hymn out the window, his face alight and his heart full of joy as he sang with grace in his heart to the Lord. [chuckle] Well, that may be a new concept to some of us. God likes to hear you sing to Him. You want to try that? It’s part of praise and part of worship. Let it be so in your own life. Well, we get at some more of this the next time we get together.

Father God, today, may we have our hearts full of grace. May our lives, as well as our songs please Thee, Amen.

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