Word-Motivated

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much. And hello again, radio friends. How in the world are you? You doing alright? Well, I trust everything’s alright at your house. Bless your heart. Nice to be back with you. This is your friend, Bob Cook, and we’re opening the Word of God looking these days at the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John. Some of these days are very special days, and today’s a special day for somebody I know, a birthday. Well, God bless every one of you who, today, are celebrating something special. And for all the rest of us, may it be a day when we walk with the King, amen. [chuckle] Now, look at John 6. Jesus said, “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.”

In these few words there is the profoundly important principle of the difference between what you can do as a human being unaided or, on the other hand, a human being filled with the Spirit of God. “It is the Spirit,” says He, “that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.” He uses two verbs there, one is quickeneth, that means make alive. The problem with old, fallen, sinful human nature, yours and mine, is that it is spiritually dead. Paul says in Ephesians 2:1, “You hath he quickened,” same verb, “who were dead in trespasses and sins; wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now worketh in the children of disobedience.”

He said, “You’re spiritually dead, and God needs to make us alive.” It is the Spirit of God that quickeneth, makes alive. Now, that’s the first great concern that I wish to lay upon our hearts today. There are some, I must say, who listen to this broadcast but who never have opened their hearts to the Lord Jesus Christ so that he can become your Lord and your Savior, and the blessed indwelling Holy Spirit can begin to make you spiritually alive. You haven’t done that yet. And our Lord Jesus is saying there isn’t any other way. He said, “The flesh profiteth nothing.” Paul says “By grace, he is saved through faith and that not of yourselves; it’s the gift of God not of works.” There’s nothing you can do, however good it may be, that will make you acceptable before a Holy God for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, and that all includes you and me, doesn’t it?

So He says, “The flesh profiteth nothing.” Anything that I can do is not going to bring me any closer to acceptance with a, Holy God. What God wants is not something I can do, what God wants is the evidence of His wonderful life in my life, quickeneth. See, there’s the difference between life and something done. To use a grotesque illustration, some human being passes away and you call the undertaker. And the undertaker takes that dead human body, brings it back to his office, and embalms it. And then by use of various types of cosmetic arts and all, makes the human dead body look really, very real and very much alive. And so then you go to pay your respects to the family and you stand there listening. And someone comes up and looks at this person now who has now been, let us say, very much improved in his looks even though he’s dead. And that person stands there and says, “My, he looks almost as though he we were alive, doesn’t he?” Almost as though he were.

The use of the subjunctive means it isn’t really true, is it? You and I know, don’t we, that the kindness of the mortician can make the agonies of sorrow and death a little more bearable, but death is still there. They’re still dead. You can’t do anything that brings life. That’s what Jesus is saying. Dress up your conduct, drop off your old habits, go to finishing school and learn the niceties of getting along in society. Go to success school and learn how to manage and how to climb the ladder of success. Do everything you wish, and when it’s all over, God says, “The flesh profiteth nothing.” Why? Because without the indwelling Holy Spirit of God you’re spiritually dead, that’s why, and there’s nothing you can do that can take the place of life.

So you find me saying again and again to you, beloved, by faith, take all that the Lord Jesus Christ is into your life. The exchanged life, by faith, give to Him your hang ups and your hopes and your failings and your fears and the whole package of what is you. Give it to him, and in exchange, take by faith what Christ can be to you. 1 Corinthians 1:13, “Christ is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.” All that you’ll ever need is wrapped up in the Lord Jesus. My God shall supply all your need according to His riches and glory how? By Christ Jesus. And this sort of thing grows on you. You have to start it somewhere. But as you practice this matter of living in dependence by faith upon the Lord Jesus, you’ll find it a wonderful, wonderful thrill to receive by faith what you need in that moment.

Bernice Cory and Vick Cory founded Scripture Press many years ago. They’re now, both of them, with the Lord. It was my privilege to work with them, for them actually, as vice president and sales manager of Scripture Press for five years, and I got to know them very well indeed. One day, I spoke admiringly to Bernice Cory and I said, “Bernice, you seem to have such a grasp of things. You put down the exact word that describes what you’re trying to say.” She looked at me and thought a minute and smiled and she said, “You know, Bob, I have to live by that verse that says, ‘Christ is made unto his wisdom.'” She said, “You don’t know how often when I’m working here, in my work as an editor, I have to bow and say, ‘Oh, Jesus, be my wisdom now.’ And by faith I take from Him what I need and He gives me the right word.” Isn’t that beautiful?

Now, that works not only for writers and editors, but it works for engineers and doctors and nurses and lawyers and students and office workers and salesmen and homemakers and all of us. You may take today from Jesus what you need, and instead of your poor dead works, He can give you life so that all that you do and all that you say is saturated with the very life of God, and when you walk into a room, people will feel God’s presence. That is normal Christian living, and you may have it for the taking by faith. Well, I get excited when I talk about God’s plans for us. [laughter] You have to forgive me if I start to preach a little, I know. Somebody says, “Hey, you’re shouting, brother Cook.” Well, yeah. [chuckle] Something to shout about, isn’t it? Amen. It is the Spirit that quickeneth, makes alive. Something’s dead. The flesh profiteth nothing. No markup in dead works.

Businessmen, you know what I mean when I say markup, don’t you? You buy something at the manufacturer at a given price then you add your, what we call, markup; that is your profit. And you sell it then at a different price which enables you to make a profit. Jesus said, “There isn’t any profit in anything you do based upon your old human sinful nature. The flesh profiteth nothing.” All your good works, yes. All of your talents, yes. All of the fine things that you might do, yes. My dear friend, unless God is doing it through you, there isn’t any markup there, no profit. None whatsoever. Jesus said it, not I. He said it, and He never had to say, “I beg your pardon, I was mistaken.” “Every word of God is true,” the Bible says, and Jesus said this. So I have to tell you, if you wanna profit out of life, you have to put God in it as your partner and Jesus, by the indwelling Holy Spirit, is the one who makes everything you do eternally alive.

Our Savior used that same concept in a different way. He said, “What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or, once having lost it, how’s he gonna buy it back? What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” There’s no profit in anything except that which God does through you. Then, happily, He takes your abilities, He takes your talents and He makes them eternally valuable because the Holy Spirit of God is breathing life into and through them. So if you sing, or you speak, or you sell, or you smile, or you write, or whatever it may be, what you are doing now becomes eternally significant because Jesus is doing it through you for His glory. “I live the life now,” says Paul, “by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me, Christ liveth in me. What I’m living now,” he says, “is the life of Christ.” How do you do that? I told you the last time we got together, open your heart by faith just as you trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior, so now you trust Him to fill every part of all of your life.

Galatians 2:6 says, “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus Lord, so walk ye,” that means live every minute of every day, “in him.” Pray your way through the day, and by faith, receive what the Lord Jesus Christ can give you through his indwelling Holy Spirit. Now, the presence of the Word of God in your life is that which makes the difference. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life. And the motivation of human nature is good, but it doesn’t really work. It gets tired and quits. Have you ever gotten a tank full of gasoline that had some water in it? And the motor seemed to run pretty well for a while, and then all of a sudden it quit. And the starter would turn and the motor would turn over, but there wasn’t any ignition. And so when the mechanic looked at it and investigated, he said, “Well, you’ve got water in your gasoline.”

And so he had to drain out that whole tankful of gasoline and you had to clean out the carburetor and then you put in some high test gas and depressed the starter button or turned the ignition key and the motor leaped into life. Why? Because there was a different kind of fuel there. That’s a very poor illustration of what I’m talking about. He says, “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.” If you will take the Word of God and feed on it and meditate on it and memorize it and put it back into the computer of your mind so the Spirit of God can use it, you will have high test fuel, beloved, running your life. The Word of God is what keeps you going. We’ll talk a little more about that the next time we get together.

Father God, today, may we be motivated by the Word of God and the indwelling Spirit of God. I pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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