What God Is Like
When you have some need, take it to God by faith. And if you ever wondered what God is really like, Jesus is the answer.
Transcript
Alright, thank you very much. And hello again, radio friends. How in the world are you? Everything going alright at your house? Well, I trust so.
If you struck a rough day, look up and say, “Lord Jesus, see me through.” He will, for He hath said, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” I know there’s some days when the alarm goes off, you groan and think, “Oh, do I have to get up today?” and everything seems to hurt and nothing seems to work right, and you get out – as they used to tell me when I was a little boy – they’d say, “Robert, you got out of the wrong side of the bed.”
Well, whatever it is, I know that some days are not as good as others, and then, by the grace of God, it can be turned into a great day, as you trust your blessed Lord. The Holy Spirit of God indwells the believer and His job is to reveal Christ in you and through you, and if you’ll trust Him, He’ll do it. Look up today, and say, “Lord, see me through this one.” He will.
We’re in 1 Timothy, chapter 1, verse 17, “The King eternal, immortal.” “Immortal.” Now, this is a significant word because you and I are mortal; “mortal” means “capable of dying.” While you’re alive, you’re mortal, and after you die, you’re corruptible; that’s why Paul uses both terms in 1 Corinthians.
He said in 1 Corinthians 15… You remember that passage? “This mortal” – that is, capable of dying – “has put on immortality” – no longer capable of dying – “and this corruptible must put on incorruption” – no longer capable of decaying after you’re dead – “then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory. Oh death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?’”
Paul speaks about the work of the Holy Spirit, “If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, the Spirit of Him, that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies.” Not “you’re corruptible” – this doesn’t talk about the final resurrection – it does talk about the work of the Holy Spirit of God within you while you’re still alive. “Shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit which dwelleth in you.” Oh, that’s a great truth, isn’t it? “The Spirit of Him.”
Here it is, Romans 8:11. I was looking for and quoting it inexactly, I must admit. “If the, of the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead” – that’s the Father God – “shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you.”
Therefore, we’re debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. “If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body shall live.” See, he’s talking about going on living, not dying. Mortal, you’re mortal. You’re capable of dying and you need somebody to quicken you, make you alive. “The seeds of death are sown in you because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, and as by one man sin entered the world and death by sin.” Death, the seeds of death are in every human life because sin entered into the human race, and so you need someone to quicken your mortal body.
Missionary On Call Jaffray – any of you Christian Missionary Alliance people remember him? Don’t you? Doctors told him when he was still a young man, “You, you have a very bad heart. Terrible heart trouble. You can’t go to the mission field,” and then later on they told him, “You can’t stay more than this one visit to the mission field,” and he sought the Lord and received assurance that God was going to see him through, and he had a long, long and fruitful missionary career. Died at a pretty advanced age. God quickened his mortal body, that but he was capable of dying, but God quickened it.
Now, I don’t have the gift of divine healing, but I do believe that when you’re engaged in, in, in the Will of God, you know you’re doing the Will of God. You, you have a right to trust God to give you the strength, physical strength to do it. That makes sense doesn’t it? My God shall supply all your need and if I need physical strength and, and emotional and mental strength to do what God has told me to do, then, then I have a right to believe Him for it. That’s the thrust, I think, of what Paul said: “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” Someone has paraphrased that verse to read, “Anything God asks me to do, I can do because He strengthened me.”
In any case, what I’m getting at here is, that we live in mortal bodies, dying bodies, and the great miracle of continuing Christian faith is that the Holy Spirit of God quickens – that is – makes alive our dying body, and you can receive new strength, a new touch from God, this very day.
Am I talking to somebody who’s so tired that you just can’t put one foot ahead of another? I know that there are folk like that in the listening audience. The burdens and responsibilities of life – maybe it’s a growing family around you, maybe got a sick folk to take care of, maybe you yourself have been ill and you don’t have any strength left, and you, you feel so wrung out.
Well, beloved, listen: the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead will quicken your mortal bodies. God is immortal, that is to say, He doesn’t have the capability of dying, and He also has the ability to give that same immortality to you while you’re still alive and breathing. Today, take fresh courage in trusting your blessed Lord, not just hoping and say, “Lord, help me,” and then go away and sigh and feel bad anyway, but by faith take from God the strength that you need.
I think the best illustration of this, and I’ve told you I think once or twice before through the years, the story of Stella Meyer, the lady who taught our two older girls piano. She taught at Moody Bible Institute for a number of years, taught music there, a dear lady, a deeply devoted Christian, and we got pretty well acquainted with her because she would come to our house and give piano lessons on Saturdays to our two older girls.
And so it was, that is, I spoke with her. I discovered that, that for many years while she was giving lessons to up to 42 pupils a week, she also had the care of her invalid father. He was bedfast and needed constant attention, so that this was an assignment that was just almost too much for any human being.
Well, I said, “You must have gotten terribly weary. Didn’t it just wear you out”? She said, “Yes, it did,” but she said, “I learned something during those years, a very precious thing.” She said, “One day,” said, “I, I thought I just couldn’t live any longer and I went next door to my neighbor and I said, ‘Olive, will you come over and, and, and just sit with my father for a little while? I’ve got something I must do.’”
So the neighbor came over and sat beside the dear old man and Stella went into her own room, she said, and closed the door and got down on her knees beside the bed and said, “Dear Father, I can’t go any farther. I, I haven’t any more strength left.” She said she waited there before Him in prayer and then suddenly she felt in her own body that she was strengthened and helped, and she felt refreshed. And so she thanked God for it, got up, said “Amen,” and went into the other sick room and said to her neighbor, “Alright, Olive, thank you very much. I’ll take over now.” And she felt so refreshed, she said.
Well, that very evening, of all things, who was coming but her brother, I believe she told me with his family, four or five people coming for dinner. That’s all you need when you’re exhausted is to have to have company, you know.
Well, there they were at the door and you know what her brother said when she opened the door after they rang the bell? He said, “Stella what happened to you? You look as though you had a couple a weeks’ vacation.” God had quickened her mortal body.
“Your heavenly Father knoweth that you have need of all these things,” Jesus said, and you can trust Him for the strength to quicken that body that you live in and give you the strength to do God’s Will. Now, He won’t give you strength to play around and do your own will. There’s the difference. If you want strength to show off, or if you want strength to fool around and then do your own bidding and, and waste your time, God will, will just let you stew – as we say – in your own juices.
But if you’re engaged in doing His Will, living for Him every minute of every day – and not everything you do is religious; I understand that. Some of you are, are in business and others in the professions, and others of you are homemakers and others are students – all of these different things – and they’re not religious in nature; you don’t go to work singing “Holy, Holy, Holy” at the top your voice. If you did, I think the men in white coats would have you by 10 o’clock.
So, you can’t be religious all the time, but you can be full of the Spirit of God and living in the Will of God for you at that moment. God’s Will for you includes what you do to gain a living, but you do it for Jesus, you understand? And so it is, that this very day in the days that lie ahead.
Latch hold of this lesson, will you, beloved? You may have God’s undying quickening in your body because of Jesus our blessed Lord. Hallelujah for that!
He’s immortal. Then it says, “Invisible.” Why did he say that? Well, because the constant question that comes, even from the lips of a little child is, “What does God look like?” And when I was a very small boy I had a mental picture of God as a very old man with a white beard, that sat off in the corner of the Heaven somewhere and looked down at me, and frowned when I was naughty, and smiled when I was good. “Is God mad at me?” I would ask sometimes if things went wrong. I suppose that’s a common caricature of God that we have in our, in our human way of visualizing Him.
Paul answers the question, “What is God like?” and he has it in Romans 10. Have you ever seen the truth in that passage? Let me turn to it in these last couple moments before we have to go off the air, may I?
He says, “The truth is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach.” Now what is that? Well, he says, “The righteousness of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven?” What is God like? That is to bring Christ down again from above.
Listen, you know what God is like. Jesus came down the stairways of the stars and made us know what the Father’s like. He said, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. How sayest thou then, ‘Show us the Father?’” You know what God the Father is like if you know the Lord Jesus, and the Lord Jesus is a very real person.
There is one mediator between God and men: the man Christ Jesus. There’s a man in the glory, long before we ever put a man in space, God did it. The Lord Jesus Christ is the man in the glory, perfectly human and absolutely divine. He’s the God man. No hyphen in between those two words. Altogether God and altogether man and He is altogether yours as Savior when you trust and obey Him. Oh, invisible, yes He is, but you can know Him through the Lord Jesus Christ.
If you haven’t opened your heart to the Savior, please do so before another hour goes by. Find a quiet place somewhere where you can say, “Lord Jesus come into my heart and forgive my sins, and make me a child of God. I accept Thee as my Lord, ask Thee to save me.” Pray that prayer somewhere along the line and let Him save you.
Father God today, grant to us to enjoy Thy leadership and Thy guidance and Thy eternal purposes in our finite lives, 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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