Saved To Live

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much. And hello again, radio friends. How in the world are you? Doing alright today? Well, sure, I always wait for you to answer, you know that. [chuckle] I trust everything’s alright at your house. And if, per chance, I’m talking with someone who’s struck a rough day, look up, say, “Lord Jesus, I don’t like it, but see me through for Your Glory. Help me to be a blessing. Give me Your touch and Your victory, just now.” You trust your Savior and He’ll see you through. And if I’m speaking with someone who’s just happy, and blessed, and bubbling over, remember to share that with Jesus, will you? Our Savior said, “The Father seeketh such to worship Him.” God looks for people whose heart is open to Him, and who will share with Him their worship, and their praise. So either way, whether the clouds are hovering over your life, or whether the sun is shining with all of the joy and happiness that you may feel, share it with your Lord, casting all your care upon Him, for He careth for you. Amen? [chuckle] Bless your heart.

My heart goes out to many of you whom I know, because I know that, in some cases, you’re going through the wringer, and in other cases, you long for God’s special touch upon your life in different ways, and I just pray that God may use these moments, as we fellowship around His Word, to meet some special need in your life. Let’s trust God that that may be so.

We’re looking at John chapter 17 and our Lord Jesus said, “And the Glory which Thou gavest Me, I have given them.” That’s verse 22. “The Glory which Thou gavest Me, I have given them.”

Now, when we use the word ‘glory,’ ordinarily, we think of something you can see. “That was a glorious sunset,” someone will remark. What do we mean? Well, the colors, something that you could see. All of the beauty of God’s creation. Glorious. Or we think of something that you can experience, “That was a glorious meeting.” What do we mean? Well, we mean it was great that everything worked well, and that God’s blessing was there, and that maybe some people were brought to faith in Christ, or whatever. A glorious occasion.

Now, when our Lord Jesus speaks of His Glory, most certainly… and His appearance is involved, “They beheld His Glory.” We go over to Matthew 17 and our Lord Jesus is said to have taken Peter, James, and John into a high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them, and His face did shine as the sun, His raiment was white as the light. Glory. Peter says later in his epistle, “We were eyewitnesses of His Glory.” So most certainly, there is something there that is visible. When we see the Lord Jesus in His Glorified return to Earth, we’ll experience something of that visible shining of the eternal. John, the beloved Apostle, as he wrote about his experience with the ascended and Glorified Christ, spoke of that, didn’t he? Do you remember that? He said, “I turned to see the voice that spake with me, in the midst of the seven lampstands, one like the Son of God clothed with a garment down to the foot, His head and His hairs were white like wool, His eyes were as a flame of fire, His feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace, His voice as the sound of many waters, His countenance was as the sun shineth in His strength.”

So when you speak of glory, you speak of something visible and you speak of an experience. Peter, James, and John certainly were completely overawed by the experience they had, as they looked upon the Lord Jesus in His transfigured Glory. My old seminary prof, Dr Champion, used to say, “The light was always there, but the wick was turned down. And in that moment of transfiguration, the wick was turned up, so that the light of God’s Glory could shine through.” Well, they experienced something. Peter says, “We were with Him in the holy mount.”

And so there’s something having to do with experience as well. But I’m thinking, particularly now, of John 1:14, “We beheld His Glory, the Glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” Yes, in your Christian life, Jesus said, “I’ve given Him My Glory.” In your Christian life, there is something visible. There’s a shine, the shine of God upon your life. There’s an experience that goes beyond any of the telling. But beyond, and above, and beneath all of that, there is the reality of God’s grace, and the solidity of God’s truth, which make up the Glory of the Savior in your life.

You know, there’s many a person who has shined for awhile, and then the light has gone out. And there’s many an experience that has delighted you for awhile, and then the thrill has disappeared. But you never get over the grace of God and you never get beyond the truth of God. You follow that? “We beheld His Glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” Grace of God and saving grace. “By grace ye are saved through faith and that, not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.” God’s riches at Christ’s expense. Grace. The grace that is enough for your situation. He said unto me, ” My grace is sufficient for thee.” The grace that always has an inexhaustible supply, so there is more coming, more to follow. James 4:6, “He giveth more grace.”

The grace of giving. “See that ye excel in this grace also,” Paul said to the Corinthians, when he was reminding them about their giving. Grace to live, and grace to suffer, and grace to die. I remember saying to an old servant of God years ago, I said, “You know, when I read about the way some of these dear saints have faced death and have gone triumphantly through the hour of death, it staggers me. I don’t think I have that kind of grace and courage.” And this dear man looked at me, and smiled, he said, “Well,” he said, “Bob, you don’t have it now, because you don’t need it yet.” He said, “When you come to die, God will give you dying grace. Right now, you need grace to live for Him.” It was a pretty good idea, wasn’t it? Yes. “Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus,” Paul said to Timothy.

What is the essence? Let me ask myself and ask you, what is the essence of this grace that we’re talking about? So far as being saved, I use the little acrostic, G-R-A-C-E, God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. “God hath made Him to be sin for us, He Who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” So saving grace has to do with God’s sovereign action in justifying you, making you a child of His very own, adopting you into His family, and giving you all that belongs to the Lord Jesus, so that you are joint heirs with Christ. Everything you have is His and everything He has is yours, joint heirs. That’s grace, so far as salvation is concerned.

But when it comes then, to your own life, what does that mean? Well, it seems to me, that it has to mean that the attributes of the Lord Jesus, as manifested in what the Bible calls the fruit of the Spirit: Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance are reduplicated in your life, and that what you say betokens, and exhibits the grace of God.

It was said of our Savior, “They marveled at the gracious words that proceeded out of His mouth.” And it was said of the apostles, shortly after Pentecost, it said, “With great power, gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and great grace was upon them all.” That’s Acts 4:33, I just looked it up. “With great power, gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and great grace was upon them all.” Grace. So what actually happens, is that the Lord Jesus, through the indwelling Holy Spirit that indwells within the believer, and as you open your heart house to Him, reduplicates in you those qualities that constitute His grace. Not just to save, but to live. Not just to live, but to give. It said, “Great grace was upon them all, neither was any among them that lacked.” It was grace to give, and sacrifice, and grace to witness, grace to be true under pressure. All of that and more is meant, when Jesus our Lord said, “The Glory which Thou gavest to Me, I have given them, full of grace.”

Then the other part of that definition is found in John 1:14, “We beheld His Glory, the Glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” This then, gives solidity, firmness, foundation to your life. Grace without truth becomes sentiment, and truth without grace becomes Pharisee-ism, and sometimes hypocrisy. But the combination is Godliness, grace, and truth. And now, let me speak with you for a moment, as the time goes by here, about this matter of truth, “Full of grace and truth.” Our Lord Jesus embodied the truth, of course, in a way that you and I cannot. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” In Himself, He is the Logos, the Word of God, the Living Word. But in a lesser way, yet similar, you and I can be the truth of God. “Manifesting,” says Paul to the Ephesians, “Manifesting the truth in love.” “Manifesting the truth in love.”

How do you manifest something? You betoken it. You demonstrate it. You package it. You present it. And that’s exactly what happens, when the believer is under the control of the blessed Holy Spirit of God. The truth of God is patterned by your life. Yes, we have reference to God’s written Word, the infallible, inerrant Word of God, the Bible. And God will never lead you to be, or to do anything that is in contradiction to that Word. But the outgrowth of it, beloved, is that the way you and I live, led by God’s Spirit, will be a walking demonstration of God’s truth. Paul said to Timothy, “Be thou an example of the believers in Word.” Let your life today be proof that Jesus is Lord and that His truth endures to all generations.

Father God, today, help us to be walking demonstrations of what Jesus is, Amen.

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