You Yield, He’ll Guide
When you yield to God habitually, you make it possible for the Holy Spirit to guide you in everything.
Transcript
Alright, thank you very much. And hello again, radio friends. How in the world are you? Are you doing alright today? Oh, I’m fine, thank you. Nice of you to ask. I feel great, just like Tony the Tiger. Thank God for good health. Thank God for salvation through the Lord Jesus. Thank God you can wake up to a new day, and pile into it with joy, and hope, and enthusiasm. Joy, and peace, and hope, do you know this? Joy, and peace, and hope, and the presence of the Holy Spirit are all by-products of committing yourself to the Lord in true faith. Romans 15:13 is the verse, “Now, the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace, in believing that you may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost.” An overflowing life full of love, and joy, and peace, and hope, and power when you believe God. And that word ‘believe’ is not just in your mind, it’s a commitment word. When you turn your life over to the Lord, the by-products are wonderful. Well, threw that in free, no charge.
Now, John 13 is the passage at which we are looking right now. And it starts out by saying, “Before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come, that He should depart out of this world under the Father, having loved His own, which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.” One of the great poignant verses of Scripture, “Having loved His own, He loved them unto the end.” What does that mean? The end. It means the Last Supper. That means the betrayal by Judas. That means the denial by Simon Peter. That means they all forsook Him and fled, the forsaking of Him by disciples and other followers. That means the trial, and the flogging, and the long march to Golgotha, and the crucifixion, and the exquisite agony of ours hanging on the cross with every bone out of joint, every nerve, and sinew, and muscle screaming with pain. “Unto the end, He loved them.”
Oh, I don’t know that you and I will ever be able to take that in, even on into eternity, as we look at our Lord Jesus there, and the Glory, still bearing the marks of the cross. The Bible puts it, “I saw a lamb as it had been slain.” The Lord Jesus is the Lamb of God, and He still bears the honor, and the Glory in that resurrection body, the God man in the Glory. “We have an advocate with the Father,” Paul says, “Jesus Christ.” The fact is that you and I will never really know, because we can’t, in our finite intelligence, all that it meant for our Lord Jesus to keep on loving to the end. What it does mean, however, to me and to you, in everyday life, is that you and I can count upon His love, in all of the circumstances of the life we have to live. He said, “Lo, I am with you all the way, even to the end of the world.” For He hath said, “I will never leave you, nor forsake you.” You can count on the love of Jesus Christ, no matter what.
Now, it is a fact, of course, that human actions have human consequences. If you jump off the Empire State Building, you’re going to keep on falling, regardless of the fact that God loves you. So human actions have human consequences, but over, and above, and around, and beneath it all, is the great fact that Jesus doesn’t stop loving you when circumstances go wrong. And Jesus doesn’t stop loving you when you make a mistake, or step out of line. “He loved them unto the end.” Am I talking with somebody today, who’s discouraged about yourself, really? You say, “There’s no more hope for me. I’ve blown it. There’s no more hope. This is it. Might just as well blow myself away.” No, don’t do it. Don’t do it. Suicide doesn’t solve anything and it hurts so deeply those who love you. Don’t take that route. That’s the one mistake you can’t fix.
Instead, back off a little, look at the situation, turn it by faith over to the Lord Jesus, and then relax in the fact that you know, oh, yes, you know that He hasn’t stopped loving you. How often when I’ve been discouraged, I’ve been in prayer and I’ve said, “Oh, God, just put your arms around me and love me. I need somebody to hold onto.” And in those hours, when circumstances were dark, or my own mood was indigo blue, in those dark hours, how wonderful it has been, and continues to be, that God the Father wraps His arms of love around me, just as He will for you, beloved. Jesus loves you all the way. I’m so glad that’s true, aren’t you? Don’t give up today. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.
Don’t collapse into either despair, or self-pity, rage, or all of the above. Instead, turn to God. There’s hope for anybody who will turn to the Lord, no matter what the circumstance is. Will you get hold of that? Somebody? Who needs this? I don’t know. Somebody needs to hear it. Now, listen, there is hope for anybody who’ll turn to the Lord Jesus, no matter what your circumstances may be. Yes, human actions have human consequences, but Jesus loves you. Somebody’s dying of AIDS and you think, “Why should this to happen to me?” Well, human actions have human consequences, but Jesus loves you. Turn to your Savior, right now, in faith. Let Him put His arms around you. Let yourself relax in the knowledge that Jesus loves you and He’ll see you through. He’ll care for you all the way.
Somebody asked a great theologian, “What was the greatest thought he ever had?” He pondered for a moment, and then he said, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” “Having loved His own, He loved them unto the end.” He’s not gonna leave you now. He’s not going to leave you now. He’s with you and He’ll carry you through. Alright, now, Verse Two, John 13, “Supper having ended, the Devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him.” Stop there for just a moment. Judas had paved the way for Satanic control by his continual disobediences and compromises before. John remarks, as recorded in Chapter 12, Judas said, “Why wasn’t this ointment sold for 300 pence and given to the poor?” This he said, not because he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief and had the bag, that is, he was the treasurer and helped himself from the contents. That’s what John said.
Judas had been making a number of compromises and doing a number of wrong dishonest things, as a matter of routine, long before he betrayed the Lord Jesus. Great downfalls that become public are always preceded by lesser private downfalls, that God and the individual see. Nothing that becomes a public scandal happens instantaneously. It is always preceded by a process of habitual compromise with evil. This is what happened with Judas. And so he was conditioned now, because he had been stealing from the common treasury, because he had been dominated by greed, because he had a dishonest heart, and was yielding to it, he was now conditioned to yield himself to the control of Satan. It says, “Satan, the Devil, having put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray the Lord Jesus.” This now was the entrance of Satanic control, made possible by human willfulness and sin.
Now, what I’m saying is this. Let me talk to you, teenage and young person, you’re just in your salad days, and you’re so full of life, and bounce, and energy, and you hate to have people tell you, “Don’t do this and don’t do that,” and you’ve found yourself saying, “Dear father, daddy, don’t preach to me. I have to be myself.” You’ve got that longing to exert your own will, and to try out your own wings, and to be your own self, and to find your own destiny. That’s borne in everyone of us to a greater or lesser degree. Let me talk to you. You yield to God habitually and you will make it possible for the Holy Spirit to guide you. You disobey God habitually, and enter upon a life of self-will, and disobedience to God, whether it’d be from finer motives or not, and you will make it possible for Satan to influence you in the direction of evil.
How many young people have said to me wistfully, “I don’t know how this ever happened to me. I don’t know how I ever got into this condition. Life broken and ruined, drugs, alcohol, sex, broken life, broken home, broken health. How did I ever get here?” Well, you got there by little steps, one at a time. You opened your life to the entrance of evil. That’s how you got there. Conversely, if you yield to the blessed indwelling Holy Spirit of God… See, the Spirit of God dwells within the believer, if you’re a Christian. The Spirit of God is dwelling there. Perhaps you’ve been grieving Him, perhaps you’ve been resisting Him, and perhaps you’ve been quenching Him, using the three terms that the Bible gives us, but the Spirit of God is there. And if you start yielding to the Holy Spirit, you will make it possible for God to lead you in His divine purpose.
The awesome fact is, we choose by little decisions which way we shall be led. We choose by little decisions which way we shall be led. Is God going to lead you or is Satan going to lead you? The choice, after all, is up to you and to me. Well, time is going. I’ll remind you just one thing. “Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son.” The Bible always says, “This is Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son.” How that father of Judas must have agonized over his bad boy who grew up to be a bad man. Listen, young people, so live that your folks could be proud of you, will you? Don’t bring shame and heartbreak to your father and mother. “Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son.”
Father God, today, may we yield to Thee, so that Thou canst guide us, 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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