Walk Worthy

To walk worthy of the Lord means to walk in the newness of life.


Scripture: Colossians 1:10, Romans 8, Galatians 5:16-18

Transcript

Alright thank you very much, and hello again radio friends. How in the world are you? Doing Alright today? Well, I’m fine, thank you, nice of you to ask. Feeling great and so glad to be back with you.

You and are walking through the book of Colossians: we’ve gotten to verse 10. Paul says, “I’m praying for you people at Colossae and asking God that you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God”. Worthy, walk worthy, a worthy walk. Worthy of the Lord. Quite a concept, let’s walk around in some of these related passages.

John the Baptist said, “Bring forth fruits worthy of repentance”. If you’re going to get anywhere with God, your actions have to be worthy of the profession that you’re making. You can say, “I repent”, but if it doesn’t follow with action, it doesn’t mean a great deal, and so John was reminding these people, many of whom were just going through a religious form frankly, he was telling them you better do something that is worthy of the profession that you’re making. John didn’t have much tact, did he? I don’t think he ever attended a Dale Carnegie course. He said to the multitude that came forth to be baptized by him, “Oh, generation of vipers”, he says, you’re a family of snakes. Oh boy! “Who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’”, and so on. See, they were proud of their heritage while being slaves to their sin.

Now that happens in every generation and it’s happening today. I may be talking with someone right now, who’s quite proud of your background, your grandparents and parents and you yourself have been staunch church people, and your reputation is impeccable: you have good standing in the community and you feel pretty good about yourself, but as a matter of fact, down in your heart you’ve never really repented of the sin for which Christ died, and from which He came to redeem you.

That’s what John the Baptist is talking about. He said to that crowd, you’re religious and you’re proud of your religious heritage, and you’re trusting in that, but he said, you better bring forth some actions that justify this whole matter of repenting of your sin. Worthy of repentance. Walk worthy of the Lord.

Well what else is involved? He said, “As we have, as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” If you’re going to walk worthy of the Lord, there has to be a manifestation of His Divine life in your own day by day existence. To be worthy of the Lord you have to have His kind of life.

Now, when I went to seminary, my old seminary prof, Dr. Champion, used to say, “Every life has its law. The life of the polliwog is the life of the frog, the life of the Oak Tree is in the life of the acorn”, and so on, and he would bring out the fact that every form of life has its law and develops, therefore, according to that law. And then he would bring out also the fact that the Divine life that we get in receiving through God’s grace by faith, the new birth, that also has its law and he would quote then from Romans 8, “The law of the Spirit of life of Christ hath made us free from the law of sin the death”. So, he says, ‘Walk in newness of life”.

Now, let me ask you something. Could you say that people who meet you, day by day, can sense in your life and in your lifestyle, anything that reminds them of the fact that you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ? I just had a phone call from a man who is a physician who cares for eyes, an ophthalmologist. He has an office somewhere in the Washington, D.C. area and listens faithfully to our broadcast.

We had a moment to talk on the phone and so I ask them about how things were going and he told me that at his practice had grown to a point where he and his family were not really able to take care of the office work that was involved, and he called in a consultant to help him reorganize his business, and that consultant was taken on in a contract that provided for four weeks of study and recommendations. A lady she was, and so there she went to work with them, analyzing every part of all of this good doctors practice, and his fixed costs, his overhead, his projected income, the way he handled things, his manner of accounting, bookkeeping, billing and all of that, and made some very helpful recommendations, he told me.

Well, the four weeks went by and still the consultant kept on showing up, and after three or four days had gone by he happened to be out of the office and so it was just the doctor’s wife and this lady consultant who were there in the office. He told me that this consultant turned to his wife and said, “I want you to tell me”, and at this point her tears began to flow, she said, “I want to tell me what it is that makes you so different. Whatever you have is what I want”, and so there they knelt and this, this businessperson who had been trained as a consultant, got acquainted with the Lord Jesus Christ. Made heart hungry, you might say, through observing the daily walk, this precious servant of God. Now, that’s what we’re talking about- walk worthy of the Lord means walk in the newness of life. A different kind of life. “I have to find out”, said she, “what it is that makes you different”. Ah, yes!

This little, redheaded boy bounced into a Youth for Christ meeting many years ago, out in the Kansas City area, and said to nobody in particular, he said, “Either you guys are going to have to start praying for me or else tell me how to get saved”. Well, there’s power in prayer and there’s power in an effective Christian life. God uses your life style to preach a more powerful sermon then your words ever could. Then we walk by faith, not by sight. If you’re going to walk worthy of the Lord in line with Colossians 1:10, it has to be by faith, by believing God.

Jim Rayburn came to visit my church back in the early 1940s, I would suppose, 1940 or 41, and ministered over a period of several days, to my young people. And so it was that we were in conversation, he and I one day, and he looked at me steadily- he had an engaging, almost disturbing directness of vision when he looked at you. He looked at me steadily with that direct look and said, “Bob, do you believe the Bible”? Why I said, “Of course I do. You know that”. Well he said, “Which portion of it did you believe today”?

Well, that got me because although I’d had my morning devotions and I’d said a prayer or two during the day, and was not aware of being backslidden at that point, I really couldn’t come up with any statement that I had really believed, that is to say, launched out in faith on the basis of any of God’s particular precious promises.

He went on then to remark and he passed along the information later to my young people in my church I was serving then, that really to believe God’s Word means to take a portion of it and risk the situation on that. Faith, as I’ve so often told you in these broadcasts, is the quality of risking the situation on God and His Word. “We walk by faith, not by sight”. If you could always see and make sure how things were to happen, you wouldn’t need to trust God, would you? But that moment when you don’t really know how things will turn out, and you do have to trust God’s Word and God’s Promise and God’s faithfulness, ah then, you begin to know what it is to walk by faith!

My sister Mildred sent me a tiny little card which I carry, even to this day, in my wallet, and it has these words printed on it, “When you are down to nothing at all, then for the first time you will know that God is enough”. That’s pretty good, isn’t it? Yes, when you’re down to nothing at all, then for the first time you will know that God is enough. Oh, beloved, if you’re going to be worthy of your blessed Lord, that means you have to risk the situations of daily life on His Word and your obedience to it. Walk worthy.

Then he says, “Walk in the Spirit”, Galatians 5:16, “Walk in the Spirit”. What does that mean? That means trusting the enablement of the blessed, indwelling Holy Spirit of God. The Spirit of God comes to dwell in your life when you’re born from above. Your privilege and actually your duty according to Ephesians 5:18 is, “To open by faith, every room in your heart house to the Holy Spirit so that He can fill your life”, and having done that you can begin then to depend upon Him in all of the situations of daily life. Walk in the Spirit means live the whole day long trusting the Holy Spirit of God.

The early church learned this secret quickly. “Peter, full of the Holy Ghost said”,” Saul full of the Holy Ghost put His eyes on him and said”. You have quotations, long after Pentecost mind you, of people who trusted the Spirit of God at the time when there was a point action that needed to be taken, they trusted the Holy Spirit of God to guide them in what they said.

Now, let’s you and I employ that same procedure, shall we, in daily living? It doesn’t take but a second for you to whisper a prayer and say, “Blessed Spirit of God, guide me now”. I have never regretted what I said after praying a prayer like that. Do you know that? I have never regretted something that I said after praying a prayer like that, “Blessed Spirit of God, guide me now. I have cause however, to regret a great many things that I said without praying about it.

First, pray, then plan; first pray, then speak up; first pray, then decide. Depend on the Holy Spirit of God, beloved. “Walk in the Spirit”, said Paul in Galatians 5:16. Now, you’ve been given a calling, a sacred calling. Jesus said, “Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain”. Our calling is to be fruitful in terms of creating others, by the grace of God, who choose the Lord Jesus Christ as well. Called to be Saints, called to suffer, called to glory, called to faith.

All of these different things, you can look up in your own concordance, but the basis, really, of your calling is that Jesus said, “I chose you that you should bring forth fruit and that your fruit”- the fruit of the Christian is another Christian, just like the fruit of an apple seed is another apple tree- so then He says, Your fruit, other people who will come to Christ because of you, will remain throughout all eternity.

Now He says, “Walk worthy of the calling, the vocation wherewith your call”. Learn to evaluate every decision on the basis of this question; What will this do to my usefulness as a soul winner? What will this do to my usefulness as a soul winner? A very good procedure to follow.

Dear Father today, may we do good works for Thy glory, Amen.

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



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