Audio file
N208_HIH_061924.mp3
Transcript
00:00:05 Colin Cook
First of all, my apologies for several repeats over the last few days, I’ve had, uh technical problems. UM and I’ve had to bring in my friend uh Eric, who is a computer genius, knows the computer and where everything goes and.
00:00:21 Colin Cook
Is like the back of his hand.
00:00:23 Colin Cook
And he sorted it all out for me. The thing is, I’m computer illiterate. If I press the wrong button and my programs disappear, I have no clue where they are and where to find them. So thanks be, Eric’s always been very helpful. He’s a 40 year old friend of mine. I mean, he’s Sir. We have had a friendship for over 40 years.
00:00:43 Colin Cook
And I’m very thankful for him.
00:00:46 Colin Cook
Help. So we’ve kind of lost the drift somewhat. Let’s try to do a little bit of review just to get the drift going again. We’re looking at chapter 14. Uh, these are the love chapters as you know that I’ve mentioned Romans 12 through 15 and Paul is talking about unity among.
00:01:06 Colin Cook
The believers who are Jewish, and the believers who are non Jewish, the believers who have come out of the Pagan world and the and the believers in Christ who have come out of the Jewish.
00:01:17 Colin Cook
There will obviously be differences in customs and culture and the way they eat and what they don’t eat and whether they feel free to eat a meat offered to idols that has previously been offered to idols and now is being sold on the market and also issues of whether a.
00:01:36 Colin Cook
Pagan, a person who is a Christian, having come out of paganism, should be required to keep the various sabbaths that are spoken about in the Old Testament for the Jewish people. The Jewish people keep those Sabbaths, but Paul says as some people.
00:01:54 Colin Cook
On a one day above another and another other people consider all days alike. Let each man or woman be fully persuaded is in his own mind. So you can see that Paul’s concern is for the unity of the church, and yet we must be careful because, well, you know, when I was a pastor.
00:02:14 Colin Cook
And not a pastor anymore. But when I was a preacher in churches, my conference president would say to me and to others preach the truth and keep the unity. Well, you try to do that and you’ll find it very, very difficult. Sometimes you will preach the truth and the truth will divide your congregation.
00:02:33 Colin Cook
And others say and others will seek to keep the unity by not preaching the truth. So it’s a very difficult balance.
00:02:43 Colin Cook
Anyway, this is the chapter that late leads us to ask ourselves, how am I keeping the unity and teaching the truth as a Christian? How am I supporting my community to draw us all together in Jesus?
00:02:59 Colin Cook
How can we do this? How can we operate in such a way to express our gifts to one another and through one another and as a gift to one another, in order to bring us all to a unity in Jesus Christ?
00:03:16 Colin Cook
And so Paul then says this in now longer, we are no longer in review.
00:03:22 Colin Cook
I love this passage for none of us lives to himself and no one dies to himself.
00:03:31 Colin Cook
For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lords. For to this end Christ died and Rose and lives lived again, that he might be Lord of both the dead.
00:03:52 Colin Cook
And the living.
00:03:53 Colin Cook
Goodness, this is enormously enormously comprehensive. I mean, we have to think about it and meditate on what it means.
00:04:03 Colin Cook
None of us lives to himself. What does it mean not to live to yourself? Well, it first of all means that we we do not consider ourselves the cat’s meow. We don’t consider ourselves the most important person around. We don’t live to see.
00:04:22 Colin Cook
Of ourselves to feather our own nest, to make our situation the best. We don’t come up to our 20s with plans to get a great career and find a wonderful wife and have a great family and buy our own house and all the rest of it.
00:04:44 Colin Cook
That is not in spite of what we may think and what we have already done, perhaps.
00:04:50 Colin Cook
It is not our primary goal. We do not live.
00:04:55 Colin Cook
To ourselves.
00:04:57 Colin Cook
We’re not.
00:04:59 Colin Cook
The main principle of life.
00:05:02 Colin Cook
We live.
00:05:05 Colin Cook
To the Lord, no one of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. OK, that’s rather interesting, isn’t it? So if we don’t live to ourselves, but live in reference to the Lord and serving him, then what an incredible comfort we have towards the end.
00:05:25 Colin Cook
Of our days.
00:05:27 Colin Cook
We’re not going to die alone either.
00:05:30 Colin Cook
We don’t live to ourselves.
00:05:33 Colin Cook
We live to the Lord and therefore we don’t die to ourselves. We die to the Lord in reference to the Lord. That is what is so encouraging in this passage, my dear brother, who died when he was 74 from various sicknesses said to me on the phone. I didn’t know he was dying at the time.
00:05:54 Colin Cook
But he said, I wish I’d had a faith like yours and I was so shocked, so surprised, so startled. I should say rather than.
00:06:03 Colin Cook
Marked by his comment because he had always resisted my approaches about God and faith in Jesus. I was so startled to hear that, and this was on the phone from he was phoning me from England and I said, well, you can know the Lord, you can have a faith like mine.
00:06:23 Colin Cook
Charlie, you can just put your trust in Jesus and ask him to save you, and he will.
00:06:30 Colin Cook
But and of course I didn’t realise, but five months later he died.
00:06:37 Colin Cook
I know my brother will be safe. I know that God takes people through their various judgments. Who are unbelievers so that they finally see their salvation in Christ? That is, even after death in the judgment because Paul says.
00:06:53
Because.
00:06:54 Colin Cook
For Paul quotes, as I have told you in Romans chapter 14 before, in fact we’re going to come to it in a short while that he quotes that that uh, those words of God in Isaiah as I live says the Lord every niche shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.
00:07:14 Colin Cook
But my point at the moment is to say how very comforting it is to understand that if we do not live to ourselves.
00:07:23 Colin Cook
Then we do not die to ourselves either.
00:07:26 Colin Cook
A person may die alone.
00:07:29 Colin Cook
But not really. Angels are around his bedside. The Holy Spirit is calling him to faith, and the whole and and our father is welcoming him. We do not die to ourselves when we do not live to ourselves. Now look verse eight. This, by the way, is Romans 14. We’re looking at verses 7:00 and 8:00.
00:07:50 Colin Cook
If we live, we live to the Lord.
00:07:54 Colin Cook
The unbelieving world doesn’t realize that, but it will be taught that and will realise that in the final judgment, when these things will become incredibly and terribly frighteningly clear to those who do not believe. But Mercy will be given to all. According to Romans 11, verse 32, God plans to have mercy.
00:08:15 Colin Cook
On all.
00:08:18 Colin Cook
But the truth that we.
00:08:21 Colin Cook
For if we live, we live to the Lord is so very, very beautiful. What our message is to men and women in the world who have lost meaning is that your meaning is that you live for God’s sake.
00:08:39 Colin Cook
You have children, for God’s sake. You have happiness and peace for the glory of God. You have troubles that God may be known in your life.
00:08:52 Colin Cook
A friend of mine regularly asks how can we teach or preach the gospel to the modern man when he has forgotten all the OR lost all the thought forms and the paradigms that make the gospel sensible to us. The the world has lost thee the.
00:09:12 Colin Cook
Paradigms and the thought forms of the Christian faith of good and evil, of right and wrong, of the presence of God of Creation.
00:09:19 Colin Cook
As God’s act so that people are not a result of evolution but a result of God’s wonderful creative power, how can we preach to people like that? How can they know?
00:09:32 Colin Cook
And of course, there are many, many answers to that question, but he is one of them. To be able to tell people you know, you do not live to yourself.
00:09:45 Colin Cook
Whether you live to yourself now or not is irrelevant to the to the point that is being made here. You were not created to live for yourself. That’s why you’re lonely. That’s why you’re depressed. That’s why you’re anxious. That’s why you’re worried. That’s why you’re afraid. That’s why you feel guilt.
00:10:05 Colin Cook
You do not live to yourself, you live to the Lord.
00:10:12 Colin Cook
Now when we live to the Lord, does it mean that we live in fear and dread of his hammer coming down on us? The sword of Damocles, as it were hanging over us? No, it doesn’t.
00:10:25 Colin Cook
To live to the Lord means to live to our creator Redeemer. It means to live to to God, knowing that he has redeemed us. It means to to live, knowing that he has a home prepared for.
00:10:38 Colin Cook
Us that all things are going to work together for good in this life as we trust him that even though there are troubles all around, they are vanquished, Christ has gained the victory over all the troubles in the world. When we live to the Lord, we live to the daylight.
00:10:58 Colin Cook
We live to the dawn of a new era. We live to the certainty of eternity and beauty and joy.
00:11:06 Colin Cook
And wonderful relationships of of love and caring and and delighting in one another.
00:11:15 Colin Cook
When we live to the Lord.
00:11:17 Colin Cook
We live.
00:11:19 Colin Cook
But when we don’t live to the Lord, we’re actually dead men walking.
00:11:24 Colin Cook
Where we’ve lost meaning we can’t make sense out of life. It is so easy to become frightened, depressed, lonely.
00:11:34 Colin Cook
Angry. Frustrated.
00:11:38 Colin Cook
But we live to the Lord.
00:11:41 Colin Cook
For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we?
00:11:43 Colin Cook
Die.
00:11:44 Colin Cook
We die to the Lord.
00:11:46 Colin Cook
Are you afraid of death? Are you afraid of the the encroaching aging life experience?
00:11:54 Colin Cook
You needn’t be. You can lift up your heart every time that fear comes in, and you can say, Father, I thank you so much that you are piloting my life. You are guiding my.
00:12:06 Colin Cook
You are leading me to my home. I thank you for all the troubles that come to me in old age because these are troubles that turn me to my father. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want that Sam 23 becomes more and more precious to us the older we.
00:12:25 Colin Cook
Get.
00:12:26 Colin Cook
Because we know we have a home, this world is not our home and we are pilgrims on our way to the real real home.
00:12:36 Colin Cook
So if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lords.
00:12:45 Colin Cook
Now some people you know, when there’s a terrible accident that takes place and 20 people die, maybe from a school shooting or something, and the rest live. The people who live say I was blessed.
00:13:01 Colin Cook
As if the ones who die weren’t blessed.
00:13:04 Colin Cook
Well, this verse takes that idea completely out of the picture because if we live.
00:13:12 Colin Cook
We are the Lords and if we die, we are the Lords, therefore with whether we live or die, we are the Lords. If a person dies prematurely in this life, it does not mean that he was not blessed by the Lord. For whether we live or die, we are the Lords. Now. How can we say that as believers? Because Christ.
00:13:32 Colin Cook
Atoned for the sins of all the world, the Lamb of God which takes away the sins of all the world.
00:13:45 Colin Cook
Thank you for listening today. Colin Cook here and my program is how it happens. You can hear it Monday through Friday on the radio 10:00 in the evening, repeated at 4:00 in the morning in the Colorado and surrounding states areas on KLTT AM 670. If you would like to make a donation to this broadcast, it would be so very much.
00:14:06 Colin Cook
Appreciated because it’s listener supported radio. You can make your donation online at faithquestradio.com or you can send your donation to faith.
00:14:17 Colin Cook
Quest PO Box 366, Littleton, Co 801. Sixty thanks so much then and I’ll see you next time. Cheerio and God bless.
