The Determining Factor - Colossians - Weekend Edition

We're glad you've joined us for Walk With the King Weekend Edition, Saturday morning extended broadcasts from Dr. Robert A. Cook. To help us reach more radio friends with daily encouragement from the Gospel, please visit WalkWithTheKing.org/donate. Thank you for listening and thank you for your support. All right, thank you very much. And hello again, radio friends. How in the world are you? You're doing all right? Well, I'm fine, thank you, feeling great, happy in the Lord. And mighty grateful I may say for the privilege of being back with you once again so we can share something from the blessed word of God. Oh, my, it's just so good to be able to share something from God's word with you. Why were you in Colossians 1, you and I? And we paused for a moment on that verse that says for it, "Please, the Father, that in Him should all fullness dwell." You've been talking about the fullness that there is in the Lord Jesus Christ. Foleness of peace and reconciliation, verse 20, fullness of Christian character, verse 22, "In the body of His flesh through death to present you wholly and unblameable and unreprovable in His sight." Foleness of assurance, verse 23, "Continue in the faith grounded and settled, you know, moved away from the hope of the gospel." Foleness of joy, verse 24, "I now rejoice," said he, "in my sufferings for you." "On to you it is given," says Paul to the Philippians. "On to you it is given in the behalf of Christ not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake." Beloved Peter says, "Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you as though some strange thing happened to you, but rejoice in as much as your partakers of Christ's sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, He may be glad also with exceeding joy." Well, the fact is that the Lord Jesus Christ has never promised to you and to me so-called a bed of roses. He's never said that everything would all be wonderful if you become a Christian. I think it's a fallacy, even in our test of monies, to say, "Well, since I became a Christian, everything's been wonderful." Well, certainly you've had peace and joy and forgiveness of sins and purpose for living and the lifting of the burden. All of this is delightfully true, but also you've had some trials and testings haven't to. Of course you have. So that's part of it. And so it's fullness of joy even in suffering. Now, he says, "We're off." And that word "we're off" refers to the church. His body's sake, the church, we're off. Of the church I have made a minister, I made a minister of the church. According to the dispensation of God, which is given to me for you, to fulfill the word of God. There's fullness of ministry. We talked about that on our daily broadcasts of "Wild Back." To minister is to help people at the point of their need and to do it for Jesus' sake. To help people at the point of their need and to do it for Jesus' sake. His body's sake, which is the church from which I have become. There's your word again, deoconos, deacons, our word deacon. A minister to minister to people means to give what they need at the point of their need and to do it for Jesus' sake. Paul says, "We then as ministers of God, beseech you that you receive not the grace of God in vain." That is to say, you give something from the very heart and holiness from the very purpose and power of God. Simon Peter said, "Silver and gold have I none but such as I have give I thee." What do you give him? Let me give him something of the very power and presence of God. And in that touch there was transmitted something more than the touch of human compassion. There was something more there. God himself invested in the touch of Simon Peter in that moment, the power to heal the man. So he said, "Such as I have give I thee, he actually gave him something of God's grace and power for his withered body and for his hungry heart." So to be a minister doesn't mean to be a lecturer necessarily. It doesn't mean to be a preacher or an orator or a great evangelist. It does mean that in whatever situation God places you, you specialize in meeting people's needs. Now you see that simplifies it a great deal. Because very few of us have the opportunity of addressing large gatherings and that's true of many of us who are preachers. We don't have the opportunity of speaking to great mass rallies. Now through the modern miracle of radio which God has graciously enabled us to use, we can speak to many of you at one time as you're listening by your radio. And we're very grateful for that. But in terms of widespread influence, I suppose that the number of people who have that kind of influence is relatively few, wouldn't you think so? For the most part we talk with individuals and we deal with smaller groups. And sometimes we tend to don great ourselves and say, "Oh, well, I don't amount to much." Well, I suppose humanly you might say that that's true. You remember the patient that came to the doctor and said, "Doctor, I have an inferiority complex. Can you help me?" The doctor thought a while and said, "No, I don't think I can. You see the trouble is you're inferior." Well, I suppose that's true of lots, I suppose, you know. We just don't amount to an awful lot, but the point is, the point is, dear friend, oh, hear it. You can minister to people's needs where you are regardless of the setting in which God has placed you. You made some jelly when the harvest came in and you had a little grape arbor out in the back there of your house. Maybe half a bushel or a bushel of grapes out of the vine in its entirety. You said, "Let's make some grape jelly so you did. You boiled it down and you strained it and you added the right amount of sugar and all the rest. I don't know if you do add any pectin to grape jelly. I guess you don't have to, but anyhow, whatever you did, you made some delicious jelly and put it up in jelly glasses and poured some paraffin on top of it and then put the tin lid on top of the glass. There you had a cup of dozen jelly glasses. Well, that was last fall. Now it's several months later. And how are you going to work out this concept of ministering? Well, here's an idea. You'll take a jelly glass in your hand and as you go calling, you'll remember the thing. There's a mother who's been ill and she just doesn't have too much strength yet and she's very busy. So you go over to call on her and you say, "You know, a girl, true to whatever name is, I thought maybe you might enjoy some of this jelly that we made last fall and I'll leave you a glass of it." Then of course you'll notice that there's a sink full of dishes there and she's so weak and she can hardly sit up in a chair and you say to her, "Would you mind if I just tackled the dishes and wash them and dried them?" Oh, she smiles. She said, "Would I mind? I'd be so grateful." She said, "I'm so weak. I can't put one foot ahead of another." And so you take off your hat and coat and you fill the sink with hot, sudsy water and you do the dishes. And then you dry off your hands and put back on your hat and coat and you say, "Well, you're good, God bless you. It's just been nice to be with you." It's a little prayer together and you lift a prayer for God's blessing upon and you go away. Now you've ministered to her. You matter need at the point of her need, you see? And so it's a fullness of ministry. I made, he said, "A minister." According to the dispensation, that's the gracious giving of God. Dispensation is a gracious giving. The gracious giving of God, which is given to me for you to fulfill the word of. See what God does for you is that you might give it to others. Have you learned that yet? What God does for you is that you might give it to others. The gracious dispensation of God, which is given to me for you to fulfill the word of God. Now if you'll look at your abilities, such as they are. Most of us are pretty limited. I often envy people who can sing beautifully. I don't have a singing voice. And I often wish that I were gifted in other ways. But we do have certain abilities that God has given us. And as you look at yourself on what abilities you do have, you can say, "Oh Lord, you've given me this so that I could give it away to other people. His book I read years ago that said, "Try giving yourself away." That was the title of it. And it's a pretty good advice, isn't it? What God has invested in your life is for the purpose of your giving it to other people. The dispensation of God, which is given to me, for you, he said. Now then look and see what it is you can do. Go back to our illustration of the jelly. Maybe you can make delicious jelly. Maybe you can bake good bread. Or maybe you've got a naturally cheery nature. And like Irma Bombak, you just create a chuckle in people's hearts and minds over ordinary things. I heard her the other day talking about once she was going to do some growing fruit and so she planted 12 paratries in her backyard. And all the rejoicing when that first pair appeared. And her little daughter came in and said, "Mama, our first pair, they were so proud of it. They put it up on the mantelpiece for display." Five weeks later, when they had gone through part of the pair harvest, you know? And they'd had sliced paras and paras over cereal and paras salad and paracacer oil and parapizza or whatever. And then they decided to go calling on other neighbors and give them paras, you know? And they became as welcome as a welcome lady with the small pox because people saw them coming and grown. Oh, well, you know, you may have the ability to grow a few things. Who knows? Or you can bake or you can make good jelly or you can sing or you can write a letter. A cheerful, loving, gracious letter is something that is almost alive. It breathes of inspiration. Have you found that out? If you're going to write to somebody a missionary or a service man or woman abroad who is, you know, they're they're they're far from home and they get lots of them. Don't tell them the troubles. Don't say, "Well, the sewer stopped up and flooded your room, junior." And so on. I'm sorry, it's a mess. And the girl you used to go with, she started going with with the neighbor boy now. Don't give all the bad news, see? But instead, write an encouraging and cheerful letter. It can be such a lift, such a help. Of course it can. Well, I'm talking about ministering, fullness of ministering. Now, where does this start? I'll tell you. I can't tell you how this will work, but I can tell you that it does work. The more you yield to the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord, see that in all things he might have the preeminence. You know, that's the text that that we looked at before. The Colossians 1-18, "The more you yield to the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord in any given area of your life, the more you are enabled to minister to other people's needs." Now, what a precious realization that is. What a wonderful thing it is, just let the Lord Jesus run things and find out that he's actually using you to bless other people, as such a great truth. The dispensation given to me, he says, for you to fulfill the word of God. Now, give some thought. Would you, my dear friend? Give some thought to letting the Lord Jesus give you a fullness of ministry. Not the occasional thing once in a very great while, but as a daily lifestyle, looking about to see whom you may help. Don't make a federal case of it and say, "I'm going to help you, brother." Not that. Not that. People stay away from you by the thousands if you become officially helpful, a blundering busybody trying to intrude into other people's matters. That isn't what we're talking about. You know it. Just step in where there's a chance to help. There's a suitcase to be lifted, lifted. If there's a bag of groceries to be carried, carry it. If there are dishes to be washed, washed them. If there's something kind that you can do, do it without being asked. This, in the last analysis, when you do it for Jesus, makes you a minister of His grace to other people. Let me tell you again the story that Dick Hill has told. He was itinerizing in the mountains of Taiwan, where they have many different dialects, not all of them related to the mandarin Chinese, which he speaks so beautifully and flawlessly. And so it was that if he wanted to reach those people with the gospel, he had to get an interpreter. He found a man who knew those mountain dialects and hired him. He wasn't sure really, not really sure whether the man was a Christian, but you have to have somebody to interpret for you. And so he took him on and they traveled together. One day the man turned to him and he said, "I am now a Christian. Your father is my father, your God is my God. I am a Christian. I trust the Lord Jesus as my Savior." Well, Dick Hill has said he was overjoyed. He said, "Oh, I'm glad. I wondered really where you stood. Although you talked the language, and all of that, but I just wondered. I'm so glad to hear you say that. When did you make that decision?" Oh, the man said, "Do you remember when we came to such and such a mountain town and it was late in the evening?" And there was no place for us to stay. Yes, he said, "I remember." He said, "Do you remember when we went from house to house and nobody would take us in?" And finally there was a farmer who said, "Well, you can sleep in my shed out back." And so he slept in that shed out back of his house, just lying down on some rough boards there. And you remember how cold it was? The man said, "Oh, yes, Dick Hill has said, I remember." He said, "Do you remember when you woke up, I had all the blanket and you were frozen, Steve?" And Hill has laughed, hardly. He said, "Yes, I remember." But he said, "That's when I became a Christian." Well, he said, "What connection is there between the blanket and being a Christian?" Oh, he said, "When you woke up in the morning and I had the whole blanket and you were very cold, you didn't even get mad. You weren't even mad." I decided that you must have something real that I needed. That's when I became a Christian. Now you see, you minister to people with very simple things, dear friends. A piece of bread or a corner of a blanket. Sometimes can be a ministry. The real determining factor is, is Jesus Lord? Are you doing it for Him? Does His presence shine out through your life as you help somebody else in the ordinary of life? Remember the first deacons? They didn't do their preaching first of all, although they did some preaching afterwards. But the first deacons were charged with a very ordinary, mundane task of seeing to it that people got enough to eat. There arose a murmuring of the greetians against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the daily administration. That means at the table. And so they said, "Let's find seven men of honest report full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business while we give ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word." So they chose Stephen a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost and Philip and progress and Nikina and Taiman and Parmenus and Nicholas. And they set before these people before the apostles and when they laid their hands on them, then they prayed and they gave them this job to do. Well, it must have worked because the Word of God increased the number of disciples in Jerusalem multiplied greatly, great company even of the priests, obedient to the faith. Not just Stephen, full of faith and power did great wonders and miracles among the people. He went from serving the tables to preaching the Word of God and all of that. Philip, as well, turned out to be an evangelist. He's called Philip, the evangelist. Philip went down to the city of Samaria, preached Christ under them. The people who won accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spoke, seeing and hearing the miracles which he did. An unclean spirit, crying with a lot of voice, came out of many that were possessed with them. And many taken with pauses and that were lame where he, those great joy, in that city. So there's Philip. He's an evangelist. So the point being ministry, ministry very frequently starts with very ordinary service. Don't cut yourself down to your friend because you're like all the rest of us kind of an ordinary person. Most of us are garden variety Christians aren't we? Nothing very special about us. But oh, we can be filled with the spirit of God and we can be dedicated to our Lord Jesus. And we can do what we do for His glory. Oh, yes, we can. And in the process, He can use us somehow to give His presence and His blessing and His truth. and his eternal life to those who will trust as a result of having been ministered to by us. Fulness of ministry. Ask God to give you a full ministry because of Jesus. It pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell. Now in verse 27, Paul talks about this mystery that's been hid from ages and generations, but now's made manifest to the saints to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Relationship with the living Christ, Christ in you. That's the mystery of the Christian life. You see every other religion in the world depends upon a religious point of view and it has its sayings and its sacred writings and people devote themselves to those sacred writings. I ask Hubert Mitchell, my good missionary friend, of years ago. I ask him one day as we walked on a street in Calcutta, I said, "How is it Hubert that it's so difficult to talk with these holy men, so-called holy men, the Sadhus, who by the scores and the hundreds were always clustering around here and there dressed in their saffron robes and saying over passages from the sacred writings of the Hindus?" Oh, he said it's difficult because they are constantly filling their minds with their own sacred writings. They don't have room in their thinking for anything else. He said, "This illustrates the importance of what we talk about concerning Bible memory." He said, "If you will constantly be going over the word of God, you'll have very little room in your mind for doubt." And he said, "Conversely, the same thing is true with teachings that are not God's teachings. If the mind is filled all the time with them," you see. But now and again, you would find that a person even in spite of his constant preoccupation with the sacred writings and with the things of this world, the heart hunger that was still there would break through. I remember this tall handsome man speaking to me. And I'd been asking him some questions. I said, "You know, I've noticed that in the shops here in Calcutta, they have steel gradings in front of the shops and then when the shopkeeper locks up, he uses not one, but five or six huge padlocks." I said, "Why is it that they have so many padlocks?" He looked down at me. He was about six foot five or six. He looked down at me and he said, "You know, sir." He said, "There is something in the heart of every Indian." He pointed to his own heart. There's something wrong. He said, "He in the heart of every Indian that needs fixing." And, "Oh," he said, "until that is taken care of, will still need padlocks on the shops." And, "Oh," he said, "there's such a heart hunger in the hearts of each one." Well, you see, it was a joy to be able to present Christ to a man like that. And to have the saying, as I've heard it not once, but different times in various meetings across the world. But there in Calcutta, to hear, it said, "This is what I've been waiting for all my life." Ah, yes, Christ satisfies. Beyond the barrage of words and ideas that has raised up every other religion depends upon preoccupation with an idea. We depend upon the indwelling of a living person. There's the difference. Ladies and gentlemen, between the Lord Jesus Christ, our living Savior, Christianity, there's the difference between the Christian life and every other religion in the world. Right? Oh, how wonderful to depend upon him as the indwelling source of all of your life and power. Christ in you said he, "Now, not only is he the source of life and power, but he's the source of hope, Christ in you the hope of glory." It has to be admitted that many of us are not very glorious. Somebody said, some wags said, "God must have a sense of humor because He made middle-aged men." Some of us are not all that elegant, are we? No, that's right. Not very glorious. And life itself turns out to be not glorious and glamorous, but pretty routine. Very few of us are either shot at sunrise or help save somebody from drowning or become national heroes. It just doesn't work that way. We don't have too many glamorous days. They're pretty routine. But oh, the presence of the Lord Jesus, the presence of the Lord Jesus can give you a foretaste of the glory of God as He dwells in your life. Christ in you the hope of glory. And you know, there's something heavenly about every spirit filled believer. There's something otherworldly, something heavenly, something beautiful, something glorious, if I may use that term, about every person who is filled with the presence of the Lord Jesus. Yes, we're pretty ordinary. Yes, we're kind of lumpy and we sag in the wrong places and we get older as the days go by and we lose hair and teeth and all the rest. Somebody saying, "Come on, stop it. I know that. All right." Not very glorious, are we? Not very glorious, naturally speaking, but oh, Paul says, "There are outward man-perish, yet our inward man is renewed day by day and there is something absolutely beautiful about a Christian whose life is filled with the Lord Jesus Christ." Isn't that great? It pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell and its fullness of relationship with a person. Everything I need to satisfy me in all of my personality is found in the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, let's pray. Dear Father, today we ask that our ladies may be absolutely full of the Lord Jesus Christ through the ministry of the Blessed Holy Spirit. Amen. God bless your dear friend all the way. That's all for now. Till I meet you once again by way of radio. Walk with the King today and be a blessing.