The High Way

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much and hello again, radio friends. How in the world are you? Yes, this is your friend, Bob Cook, and I’m glad to be back with you to share from the Word of God. Boy, I look forward to these times when I can open God’s Word and just share with you. What a wonderful privilege it is. Thank God for it and thank God for the people who make it possible at their radio stations and their open hearts. It’s great. Well, I trust everything is going well at your house and if it isn’t, if you’ve struck a rough day, look up and say, “Jesus, see me through this one.” He will, for He hath said, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” He’s there. He cares. He’s able. The Bible says, “Able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.” What’s with you today? A broken bone mending or a broken heart? Whatever it is, Jesus is there. He cares and He’s able. You trust Him.

You and I have been looking at John 6. John 6:36 reminds us that seeing doesn’t always mean believing. We have that old cliche, “Seeing is believing.” You show me and I’ll believe. I’m from Missouri, show me. “Seeing is believing,” they say. Not always. Jesus said, “I say unto you, ye also have seen me and believe not.” A heart that is determined to rebel against God will find every plausible, possible reason to do so. I’ve had conversations with people recently who when you answered one question, would come up with another and you knew in your own heart that they were playing games with you and with God. Just determined not to say yes to the lordship of Jesus Christ. And so they would find one reason after another to delay any decision about Him.

If I’m talking to somebody like that right now, beloved, God knows your heart. He knows all about you. He knows how you feel. He knows the things in your life that may have hurt you or left scar tissue in your heart and mind and memory. He understands that, but please level with Him. And please do the thing that He said you should do, “Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Out loud, say it to Him. “Jesus, save me. Make me God’s child. Forgive my sins and make me a child of God and begin to live in my heart.” Pray that prayer. Call on the name of the Lord. I can guarantee you, many of your questions will immediately disappear. Well, that was a review. Verse 37, of course, gives us the great invitation, “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out.” I can guarantee you that if you’ll call on the Lord Jesus, He’s going to answer you. He won’t refuse you.

My father used to sing, sit in the old rocking chair and sing songs after we had supper. I would be doing the dishes and he would pick up a song book and run through the pages. He was a great collector of song books, had a couple of hundred of them at least in the book case there to his left. He would sit with the book case on his left side. Immediately in front of him was the cook stove and on the right side, just behind him would be the kitchen table where we had eaten supper. Across the room was the sink where I was washing the dishes and then on the other side of the room was the big double bed where he and I spent our sleeping hours. That was home sweet home in those days. I was a high school boy and helping him keep house as we say. Well.

He would pick up a song book and he’d thumb through the pages. Sometimes he’d sing, “Does Jesus care when my heart is pained too deeply for mirth or song.” But other times, he would turn to a song that he liked almost as much and it was called Telephone to Glory. “Oh, what joy divine! I can feel the current moving on the line, built by God the Father for His loved and own. You may talk with Jesus on the royal telephone. Central’s never busy, always on the line. You may talk with Jesus anytime.” You never get a busy signal, beloved, when you call up heaven. Never get a busy signal. God is always there. Always listening, always waiting to hear and to answer your prayer. “I will in no wise cast out.” You’re never too bad or too old or too weak or too much of a failure to come to Jesus. The only thing that will keep you from Him is if you’re too proud. Like the man who turned to me one day and said, “No, I’m not going to do it. Why should I ask Jesus to save me when I’m such a good guy?” See? Only thing that’ll keep you from God is your pride. So today, ask the Lord to save you. Ask Him to be your savior. He will.

Then we came to the great motivation, that’s the next verse. And I think that’s where we wanna start walking around in the passage a little bit today. Jesus said, “I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of Him that sent me. I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of Him that sent me.” That verse breaks up, obviously, into three statements. “I came down from heaven.” Anybody that tells you Jesus never claimed to be divine is lying to you. All through the gospel record, you find Him saying exactly who He was and what His origins were and people understood Him there. The people who listened to Him understood Him. As a matter of fact, they planned to kill Him because it said He claimed to be God. “Here,” He said, “I came down from heaven.”

You stop to think what that involved. The Lord Jesus Christ, the jewel of heaven’s universe, laying aside all of that, coming down to be born of the Virgin Mary, carried for those nine months under her heart and then being born as a helpless little babe. Not in sumptuous surroundings, mind you, but in a stable, and then living the life of a poor person. He wasn’t clothed in purple and living in palaces. He was the son of a humble carpenter. Legal son, that is. And so there He was. “I came down from heaven.” Have you ever taken the time to thank Jesus for coming down to you? You see, it was a long trip. From perfection and glory and being the object of heaven’s adoration. The second person of the Godhead. “All things were made by Him and by Him all things hold together.” Laying aside all of that glory and all of that power, and lived voluntarily, limiting Himself to the dimensions of human nature so that He could save you and me. Have you ever thanked Him for that? “I came down, said He, from heaven.”

But the motivation for Him and then therefore for us is found in that next phrase. “Not to do my own will.” This is something that goes counter to all of human nature. Most of us feel the way the originator of that Pennsylvania Dutch proverb did. “First me then me, after that you but not for a long time.” Erst komm ich denn komm ich noch einmal, denn kommst du lange nich.” [chuckle] “First me,” that is human nature. Jesus said, “I came down not to do my own will.” In another place He said, “He came not to be ministered unto but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many.” “I delight to do thy will, O my God, yea, Thy laws within my heart.” This is what was written prophetically of our Lord back in the Psalms. “Not to do my own will.”

Now, what does that mean then to you and to me who claim to be followers of the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, beloved, it means that there has to be appointed, which you decide, do I want it my way or His way? And that is something that He waits for you to do. God will never intrude upon your life, my friend. And those of us who are believers, let me remind you, God is not going to intrude upon your life. He chastens and He disciplines and He deals with us in love to remind us of our need of Him. As a friend of mine said when I visited him in the hospital, he said, “I guess God had to get me flat on my back so I’d take time to look up.” He had been too busy to walk with God before. And so God chastens us and disciplines us, that’s for sure, but He’ll never intrude upon your own will. You still have the power to say yes or no to God. “Not to do my own will.” Have you crossed that Rubicon? Have you come to that place where as a great watershed in your experience, you said, “Forevermore, after this, I want God’s will.” Have you done that?

Oh, yes, we’ll make mistakes, you and I. John the apostle said, “These things write I unto you, that ye sin not. That if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. And He’s the propitiation for our sins and not for us only but also for the sins of the whole world.” The sacrifice of Christ was big enough to cover everybody’s sins. It is efficacious to those who receive Him. Yes, there’ll be mistakes and there’ll be shortcomings. You’re still a human being and still subject to the limitations that are upon us because we are sinners. But oh, there can be that heart decision. There can be that heart decision that says, “I want God’s will. I want God’s will in my life.” Have you crossed that point?

It’s so important, beloved, nobody can do it for you. You may have been a Christian for years and years, and never really faced this matter of what is the difference between what I want and what God wants? And which side am I on? Take your stand with God today, will you? Say, “Lord, not my will but thine be done.” Jesus said it, “I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of Him that sent me.” You always have to remember that God has the right to give orders. We forget that sometimes. My father would remind me sometimes when I would delay obeying or when I like a little boy, like I would say, “Why?” He would look at me sternly and say, “Because I said so, my boy. I’m your father.” [chuckle] There was never any question about his authority at that point. And I think sometimes when you and I deal with God on a little child basis of delaying and playing games and saying why, we need to hear our heavenly Father saying, “Because I said so, my child. I’m your father.” “The will of Him that sent me.”

That word “sent” indicates that there’s a purpose in life for you. You don’t send somebody somewhere unless you have an idea of what he or she is to do about it. Isn’t it so? God sends us. Jesus said, “As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” God has a purpose for your life and that purpose is wrapped up in doing the will of God in introducing others to the Lord Jesus Christ. Have you achieved any understanding of God’s purpose in your life? What it’s all about? The typical teenage dilemma of why am I alive and what is life all about need not continue throughout all of your life. You can know what God wants you to do and you can be busy doing it. And in that discovery of purpose, God’s purpose, that is, you find wonderful peace and fulfillment. That’s the thing for you to get. I’ll talk about that a little more the next time we get together.

Father God, have your way with us, help us to do Thy will. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

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