Time: An Eternal Investment
It takes time with your Lord to have this element of divine majesty in your life
Transcript
Alright, thank you very much. And hello again, radio friends. How in the world are you? You doing alright today? Oh, I trust so.
Yes! I always wait for you to answer. A lady wrote me the other day and she said, “It’s a good thing you can’t hear me talk back to you because this morning, when you asked ‘How in the world are you?’ I said, ‘Don’t ask! Everything’s terrible!'”
Well, you strike a day like that now and then, don’t you? Not every day is the same, and not every day is as happy or as good as the days before, but when you strike a rough one, beloved, look up and say, “Lord Jesus, see me through,” and He will. “He hath said, ‘I will never'” – that is never – “’leave thee nor forsake thee,'” so that we may boldly say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear.”
Hallelujah for that promise! You look up and trust your Lord today.
Well, you and I are walking through 1 Timothy, and we’re in chapter 3, verse 4. We came to that word “gravity;” “having his own children in subjection with all gravity.” The word “gravity,” in your Greek New Testament, is, is, capable of several different meanings. “Dignity” – we talked about that. “Gravity” – hooking all of the routine things in family life to eternal values.
And then we came to this word “majesty,” and just as we went off the air the last time we got together, I said: You take a middle-aged man, bald, wearing bifocals or trifocals, got a little extra spread around the middle… “Everything’s going to pot,” as we say. He’s out of shape, he can’t run for a train without puffing and huffing and, so all the marks of what we call “middle age.” They call it “middle” age because that’s where it shows up first, I guess. All the marks of what we call “middle age” are upon him, and then you hang a title “majesty” on a figure like that, and you burst out laughing. Who in the world could think of “majesty” in that connection?
Now, what are you gonna do with it? Well, you see, everything depends upon your point of view in relationship to Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 1 says that, “Christ is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption.” There is no question, is there, about the majesty of our Lord Jesus Christ? The Bible ascribes majesty to Him, that is, kingly qualities. When you’re in the, in the presence of a king, you say “your majesty.” Kingly qualities. One of our stateside visitors, I think, offended the king of the Zulus when, he was visiting. Everybody else used the proper term “Your Majesty.” This person walked in and said, “Hi!” He wasn’t gonna “majesty” anybody.
Well, what are you gonna do with this term as it, as it, applies at home with father, or grandfather? Mother, for that matter, because God is on the side of parents. “Honor thy father and mother,” it says. What are you gonna do with it? Well, the point is, (I know this is a great truth) when you commit yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour, beloved, by faith you take all that His is.
We are “accepted,” Paul says in Ephesians, “in the Beloved One.” Because of the Lord Jesus, God, our holy God, accepts us sinners because of Jesus, Who paid our penalty on the Cross. “God commendeth His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” The word “for” is a Greek word, “huper.” “Up, over, instead of.” He died instead of us. He died in our stead, in our place, He paid our penalty.
And so you have, in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the One in Whom and from Whom you may derive qualities that are not yours but His. “The Lord Jesus is made unto us.” I’ll quote that passage again from 1 Corinthians 1: “He’s made unto us wisdom” (that’s knowing what to do with what you have), “righteousness” (that’s the quality of being spontaneously good), “sanctification” (the quality of being set aside for God’s use without, incidentally, without being sanctimonious about it), “redemption” (that’s the quality of wrapping all of life up in the package of miracle and living every day as an adventure with deity). “Redeemed! How I love to proclaim it, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. Redeemed through His infinite mercy, His child and forever I am!” said the songwriter. So when you commit yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ, you may, by faith, claim all that He is, and all that He has, and all that He can do.
Paul says to the Corinthians, “All things are yours. Whether life or death, or Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come – all are yours and ye are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.” According to, as His glorious power hath given us, Peter says, “all things that pertain unto life and godliness.” All things that pertain unto life and godliness.
That’s just about enough, isn’t it?
Well, now, how do you translate all of that into this concept of “majesty”? Majesty is the quality of a king; the attribute and quality of a king. Our blessed Lord Jesus is our King – King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Now, how do you get that into your own life?
Let’s go back to our middle-aged, bald-headed, bifocalled, middle-aged spread, out-of-shape man. How do you, how do you get that into his life?
Number one: He needs to walk closely with the Lord. Your age and your position in life have nothing to do with the quality of godliness. Godliness is something that you don’t drift into. Godliness is something at which you work – day by day – by faith, bringing the Presence of the Lord into the routine matters of life. When God comes in, He brings His own majesty and dignity with Him. Do you see that?
When God comes into a life, He brings His own dignity and majesty with Him. His own attributes come with Him, obviously, so that if my life is full of God through the indwelling Holy Spirit, filling every one of the rooms in my heart-house, if my life is full of God then it will also be full of the attributes that God brings, and there will be a sense in which the unbelieving heart will stand in awe of the presence of God in your life.
Someone said, concerning a man whom they had met, “There’s something so different, different about him. Different. I don’t know quite how, I don’t know quite how to, how to describe it.” And someone else said, “Could it be that you felt God there?” And the answer came back, “Yes! That’s it, that’s it!”
Well, can you, can you yield yourself today, beloved, to God in such a way that His presence will be felt in your life?
Now mind you, this is not something contrived. You can’t say to yourself, “Now, I will have the quality and the attributes of my Lord in my life today. I’ll do it.” No, it’s not something you do, it’s something He does. Paul says in Romans 6, “Yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead.” The, the triad of truths that old Dr. Ironside used to preach from that chapter 6 of Romans is “reckon” (make up your mind), “yield” (cave in), “surrender to God” (obey). That’s where you and I can exercise our wills. We can will to obey God in matters concerning which He’s dealing with us. But you can’t make up your mind and say, “I’m gonna be holy today. I’m gonna, I’m gonna have that quality of divine holiness and majesty in my life.” No, it’s a by-product; it’s something that follows your yielding to your Lord. Time spent in prayer – “We all, with open face beholding…” – you can’t behold your Lord with just a glance. “We all, with open face beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
It takes time with your Lord to have this element of divine majesty in your life. Father, grandfather, mother, parents, all. It takes time.
Susanna Wesley used to spend time fasting and praying for each of her many children on their birthday, and she reared that brood of children to be outstanding Christians, John and Charles Wesley among them. Singers and preachers and the, the founders of the, the Methodist movement; a great revival time that came to Great Britain and then spread around the world in another century. Time spent with God makes the difference.
Do you dare to do that, beloved? Do you dare to spend a little extra time with your Lord?
A high school sophomore got that idea years ago, and, because she lived in a very poor family, she had to sleep on the couch. That was the only place she had to sleep. There was also only one alarm clock and it generally was kept in charge by the mother of the family, who would then get the rest of the family up. Now this little girl, whose name was Wilda, got the idea that she ought to spend some extra time with her Lord, and so she asked her mother – who was not yet then a Christian – she asked her mother if she might have the alarm clock so she could get up a little earlier to have her devotions. And her mother sneered at it and said, “You’ll probably sleep through it and if you do I’m going to get you. It’ll be too bad for you.” But finally she allowed her to have the alarm clock, and Wilda took the alarm clock with her to bed there on the couch. And then, when the alarm went off, she spent some extra moments in the morning praying, reading her Bible, seeking God before she waked the rest of the family. Do you know the result of that time spent with the Lord? First the mother, then the brother, then the little brother, and then the father all came to know the Lord Jesus.
Spend time with your Lord. The majesty of God will come on your life; oh yes, it will.
Dear Father today, may we spend enough time with Thee so Thy attributes show up in our lives. I ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!
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