What Drives You?

Your interests drive your life. Always remember that even when you feel unrecognized, God remembers your service. Honor Him and spread the Gospel's good news anywhere you can.


Scripture: Mark 14:10-11, John 4

Transcript

Alright. Thank you very much, and hello again, radio friends. How in the world are you? Doing alright today? Well, I trust everything’s okay at your house. I’m feeling fine, thank you, and so glad to be back with you.

We’re looking at Mark chapter 14, and we’ve been talking about the gift of love that Mary lavished upon our Master as she brought that expensive perfume container and opened it and poured it upon Him, and there were people around that said, “Why, this was a waste. Why did she waste that? Could have been sold for 300 pence,” that’s approximately a year’s wages for a laboring man in those days, “and given to the poor.” John the Apostle adds, knowingly this, he said, speaking of Judas, “Not because he cared for the poor, but because he carried the bag, the common purse, and helped himself to its contents.” His main interest was money.

Small thought here. You will interpret the events of life depending on your main interest. Have you noticed that? You will interpret the events of your life in a manner that depends upon your main interest. Is it money? Is it pleasure? Is it sex? Is it power? Is it popularity? Is it comfort? Is it ease? Is it play? Is it intellectual pursuits of one sort and another? Whatever that may be, well, that main interest in life, you will interpret the events of your life on the basis of your main interest. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,” said the wise man.

Well then, it’s pretty important for you and for me to take stock once in a while of our main interests. What is it that drives us? What makes Sammy run? What is the main motivation in our lives? What is it that we are really interested in? What is it that would really upset us were that particular factor to be removed? There you have a very telling index of personal character. I think you and I’d be very smart to use it now and again just to see which way we’re moving. Judas’ main interest was money. And it led him then to covet, it led him to thievery, according to the Apostle John. It led him to betray the most wonderful person he had ever known, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Well, our Lord Jesus said, “Let her alone, she’s wrought a good work on me. You have the poor always, you can do whatever you wish for them, but you don’t have me always. She did what she could. She’s come ahead of time in faith to anoint my body for the burying because there isn’t gonna be time to anoint my body when it’s time to bury me.” That’s what he was saying.

Then he used these words, verse 9, Mark 14, that’s about where we got to the last time we got together. “Verily I say unto you,” our Savior said, “wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her.”

Now, you got a number of things there. Number one, the Lord Jesus expected the Gospel to be preached throughout the world. His expectation was that. And that’s the basis then of the Great Commission, “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.” But remember, God’s plans are never thwarted. And the Gospel to all the world is still God’s plan and that’s why our Lord delays his second coming. “God is not willing that any should perish, God is not slack concerning his promise as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering to us, were it not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance,” Peter says. “And so the reason that the Lord Jesus Christ has not appeared as yet is that God is waiting in mercy for others to come to a knowledge of Christ as Savior.” So Jesus expected the Gospel to be preached throughout the whole world, and the Lord Jesus also makes room in his thinking for remembrance of faithful generous servants. God remembers.

God remembers your service. You wanna think about that the next time you get discouraged when you’d tried so hard and nobody said thank you? When you worked so hard you got tired enough that you didn’t know how to put one foot ahead of another, and still it didn’t seem that anybody cared? Just be aware, would you, beloved? God remembers. It says, “The Lord hearkened, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for them that love Him and think upon His name.” God remembers people who care about Him. A wonderful, reassuring, blessed thought.

Now, why did Jesus say, “This is worth remembering. Wherever this Gospel is preached, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her.” Why is this so worthy of remembrances? Hmm? Well, you look back in the text, number one, it was done for him, “She hath wrought a good work on me.” Second, “She did it in faith.” He said, “I’m going to die, and be buried and rise again,” and she, with that deep intuition that God gives to the female of the species, somehow felt there may not be time to anoint his body when he’s buried, before he rises again, “And so I’m gonna to do it now.” Third, she did what was within her ability. “She hath done what she could.” God doesn’t expect you to do more than you can, but He does expect you to do what you can. And fourth, he said, “This Gospel is going to be preached and we’re gonna talk about her.”

So, we leave Mary and the perfume, and we go on to something quite more serious and somber, Judas Iscariot, verse 10, “One of the 12… ” There’s always a note of surprise and shame in that additional phrase. Judas Iscariot, one of the 12. He was one of us. See? “Went unto the chief priests to betray Jesus unto them.” And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money, and he sought how he might conveniently betray Him. Now, Judas loved money, they made him the carrier of the common purse, he helped himself to the contents of it. But that wasn’t enough; he had to have some more. And he saw a chance to get a large amount of money, if he revealed the Lord Jesus Christ to his would-be captors in a convenient situation that would not create an uproar.

Your main interest in life is progressive, it increases in geometric progression. Your main interest in life always continues to increase and to drive you. That’s one of the big reasons why you and I need a miracle meeting with the Lord, so that he can change our interests. “If any man be in Christ, he’s a new creation. Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new.” And while God doesn’t change your basic personality, Simon Peter was a blurter before Pentecost and he kept on blurting afterwards, but God was now filling every one of his words with power.

The basic personality of an individual is not changed, but the use of it, the use of it, is changed. The basic interests that drive a person are changed. Paul said in Philippians 1, “According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that as always so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death, for to me to live is Christ and to die is a promotion.” The meeting with the Lord Jesus changes the thrust of your life. It’s that simple. The lady who was no lady who came to the town well, just outside of the town of Sychar, we read her story in the fourth chapter of the book of John, that lady came out guilty, she went back cleansed; she came out solitary, she went back a missionary. She came out defensive and questioning, she went back proclaiming.

There was an entirely different relationship and it said she went back into town and said to the men… These were the people with whom she had consorted, more than one of them had known her in guilty, sinful fashion. Now she’s going back to talk to those same people about the Lord Jesus Christ, a different reason for talking to people. Now whenever you talk to anybody, you have a reason. We meet hundreds of folk in the course of any given day, most of us, and we say different things to different folk. But when you come right down to it, there’s generally a reason for whatever you say. This woman, as we read her story in the fourth chapter of John, had a different reason for talking to people when she went back into town, having left her water jar there on the stone coping of the well and hurrying back into town, said to these people, “Come see a man that told me all things that ever I did is not this the Christ.” Announcing the Lord Jesus Christ was now her reason for talking to people.

You wanna think about that for yourself? What are your reasons for intermingling with people and talking with them, communicating with them? Do you have a God-given reason? That is to say, are you busy about sharing the Lord Jesus when you have opportunity? Mind you, I’m not talking about going about and preaching a sermon to everybody. Don’t do that, they’ll stay away from you by the hundreds. [chuckle] They’ll avoid you if they know the minute that they meet you, you’re gonna preach to them. But there is this blessed possibility of sharing your Lord with folk by your friendliness, by your smile, by your enthusiasm, and by witness for him when opportunity presents itself. What you say to other people and how you interact with them can be transformed by the grace of God.

Now you take, for instance, a sense of humor, here’s a fellow whom I could name for you, who, before he became a Christian, was known for his dirty stories and he could tell ’em, one after another. Now, he was saved. What did the Lord do? Did God take his sense of humor away? Oh, no. That man can still tell some of the funniest stories you ever heard, but they’re clean now. The dirty stories have no further place in his talk and thinking. Now, what he says is just as funny, even more so, but it’s clean and it honors the Lord. Let the Lord Jesus Christ clean up your act. He wants to do that, my dear friend, for you.

Dear Father, today grant that we may be driven by our knowledge of Thee to say and do things that honor our Lord, amen.

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



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