What Is Your Life - Part 6

Or any of us, you only need entertainment when you've lost the joy of the Lord. And when we've no joy we need entertainment, and when we've entertainment we've no joy. That went over like a lead balloon but that's true.

You're dead and your life is hid with Christ. Now he says if you're risen with him that deals with the past. You're dead and your life is hid with Christ in God.

Not when I die but even now on this earth I bid the world goodbye. Not tearfully but cheerfully. All of its pleasures, its pomp and its pride.

Paul puts it best as he usually does when he talks in Galatians 5 and he says from henceforth let nobody trouble me. I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Weymouth translates that, Weymouth Moffat translates it, I bear in my body the branding.

They know a lot about branding around here. You might get to see some cattle branded. And when Paul wrote this a man who was a slave could run away from his wicked master, his cruel master that nearly took the skin off his back every day, that demanded a full day's work and hardly gave him enough food to last an hour.

This man gets away. The first thing he does he flees to a temple and there were priests always awake. At least they were always there, maybe not always awake.

And the altar fires were burning. And the man runs in breath and wakes a priest and says brand me, brand me in the name of which God and there's different irons to brand him. And the man puts his hand out and closes his eyes and the branding hands put on his flesh and it sizzles and he yells and then if he's a garment he's stamped in the back of his neck and then he lifts his foot up and he's stamped in his instep and they rub a kind of ointment and leave him there for days until he's able to get out.

He goes out and as he goes down the street his old master sees him and says to his friend Marcus, there's Aristarchus, go bring him back here. And Aristarchus comes up and his master says listen, I'm going to take you back and whip you like you've never been whipped before. You're going to carry loads, you'll never drink, and he starts telling him what he'll do and he says, just a minute sir, what do you mean? He says look, look, look there.

And the old master says, I've got no claim on you, I've got no claim on you, you're the possession of a God. And Paul says listen, I got branded there at the base of my head because all my thinking is going to be about Jesus, this mind being you which was in Christ Jesus. Do you think he went to the Olympic Games because they had them in his day? Do you think he's fooled around with the material things of the day? His head was branded, his hands, his feet.

So a hymn writer says let my hands perform his bidding, let my feet run in his ways, let my eyes see Jesus only, let my lips speak forth his praise. All for Jesus, all for Jesus. All my being's ransom powers, all my thoughts and words and doings, all my days and all my hours.

Listen, are you just a Sunday morning Christian? Do you live and move and have your being in Jesus Christ every waking moment of your life? Has he got your thinking? Would he be embarrassed to rap to you at some certain point in your life? Or your habits of life? Paul says I bear in my body the owner's mark. Come on now, listen you kids. You listen.

One at a time talking, thank you, now do it. He says I bear my brands of Jesus. These hands will never do anything Jesus wouldn't do.

These feet will never walk where Jesus would be uncomfortable. This mind will never think of anything that wouldn't satisfy the heart of God. And then he kisses the world goodbye, says henceforth let no man trouble me.

I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus, for the world is crucified to me. I can make a safe guess, I've traveled the world a couple of times around it. I've seen a lot of strange customs.

In many countries I've never seen a crucifixion, I'm not sure I'd like to see it. But as dear Dr. Tozer used to say, Len, you knew one thing about a man that was carrying a cross out of the city, you knew he wasn't coming back. Just come to a malter and we go back the next week, and we're as fascinated, we haven't spent half an hour with Jesus, but we'll stake two stinking hours in a movie house.

We haven't witnessed somebody who's going to an eternal hell according to our theology, but we talked about some tribute to them. We sit at the table with unsaved parents, and instead of being submissive and kind and loving, we're sassy, and we don't come in at the time we're supposed to come in. And mother says, you know our John's to be saved, he's no better, he's as rebellious as our daughter is.

But look at this figure for a moment. Here is a man stretched on a cross. As soon as that man is nailed to the cross, he has no rights of his own.

You can take a bucket of filth and throw it over him. You can take a stick, if you like, and break his legs. You can have a game of pitching rocks, and you knock his right eye out, I'll knock his left eye out, and so forth.

He's no rights. He can be battered and bleeding and broken. And maybe 5,000 or more people are there to see him die at six o'clock at night.

And then the trumpet sounds in the city, and nobody stays after the trumpet sound. You have so many minutes to get in the city, and the gates are locked. Maybe 5,000 people watch that hideous crucifixion.

Six o'clock at night, six o'clock at morning, there's nobody there. I remember going to India. There were bees, there were birds that were this height from the ground.

They have about an eight-foot wingspan. They keep their necks in until they fly, and then up comes this long neck with no feathers. They look hideous.

They beat. Oh, they must be this length. Huge, curving.

You know what they do? They go onto the arms of the cross as the light comes up, daylight. And those big hideous things reach down and peck out the eyes, if they're still there, and they tear the body, and it becomes bloody, and the entrails run out of the man, and the blood runs on the ground, and the doves come out of the city to drink up the blood. Even a woman who saw a husband crucified would never go back in the morning.

You didn't see a woman with her arms around a bleeding, horrible, wretched form of a man saying, Darling, I love you. And Paul says, That's what the world is to me. It's a system of corruption, and rottenness, and vileness.

It's anti-Christ from the world go. Is the world crucified to you tonight? Or does it fascinate you? Oh, I'm coming down the line. I mean, Jesus isn't looking for some sissies to serve him.

He's looking for some men with guts, and men with grace, and men with determination. You still comfortable to sit in the ballpark and say, Here, somebody take the name of Jesus in vain? Oh, you're saved. You're going to hellfire if you're not.

But you've only gave him a few sins. That's all. That's all.

Just gave him a sin. Now, look, you've been in this lovely environment today. I don't know how much forced labor there is, how much time you have to sweat, and grind, and whatnot.

But surely about one or two hours, did you use them to sit around and talk to pretty girls and nice guys? Or did you get along with God and say, Lord, I want this to be the most meaningful week I've ever had in my life. I want to hear your voice. I want to see a vision of your glory and your power.

Let me finish with Paul's words here again in Colossians 3. The past, he says, we're risen with Christ. The present, we're dead. But look to the future.

When Christ who is our life, there you've got it. There you've got it. What does John say in his epistle? He that hath the Son hath life, and he that does not have the Son has not life.

You can reform your life. You can give up your rotten sex life. You can give up your drugs without the help of God.

Good night. I've seen some men come out of the gutter and transform.