On Eagles' Wings Pt 27 — Don Courville

The Everlasting God Renews the Strength of His People

Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There is no searching of His understanding. He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might He increases strength.

Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint.

We welcome you to an eagle's wings. We trust that on this Easter morning the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ will meet you in a special way. We trust that this program will be an encouragement to you for revival in your personal life, in your church life, and for our nation.

We're praying for God to do a work in our land. Well, He arose from the grave. The scripture says that He arose the third day. I like the passage in Matthew 28 where the angels met Mary and told Him that He's not here, He's risen from the grave.

Go tell the disciples He's not here, for He's risen. He said, Go quickly. They said, Go quickly and tell His disciples that He is risen from the dead. Behold, He goeth before you into Galilee. There shall you see Him, lo, I have told you.

And they departed quickly from the supplication with fear and great joy and did run to bring His disciples' word. And you know what happened on the way? It says, As they went to tell His disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail!

And they came and held Him by the feet and worshiped Him. And then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid. Go tell My brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see Me. Well, we have a risen Lord.

He's alive. How do I know He's alive? Well, His word says so, but He lives in my heart, and I trust He lives in yours too. Oh, we pray that today God will do a wonderful thing in your life. If you haven't trusted Christ as your Savior, today would be a good day to do it.

Today would be a good day to come to the end of your life and to let the Lord Jesus Christ become your life, for the Scripture says, He that has the Son has life. Well, let God minister to you today on this program on Eagle's Wings.

Resurrection, the Cross, and a New Direction

Well, I was going through some Scriptures last night on the subject of the resurrection of Christ and many great passages in the Scriptures. You know, there are some great types, too, in the Scriptures.

To my reckoning, one of the greatest was Abraham. When Abraham offered up his son Isaac, and God had told him that through Isaac he was going to bring the seed, and Abraham had it figured out in his mind that the only thing that could possibly happen if Isaac died was that God would raise him from the dead, and the book of Hebrews teaches us that.

Well, resurrection means life. We have a resurrected Lord, a living Lord, and when we come to the cross and receive Christ as our Savior, someone said that a man on a cross is facing only one direction.

There's no turning back, and he has no further plans of his own. When we come to Jesus Christ, then we are facing a new direction. We're facing Godward, and there's no turning back. If you do turn back as a child of God, there's nothing but trouble for you.

You bring it upon yourself. The Bible says in Jeremiah that our backsliding and our own wicked ways will reprove us and will correct us. Well, a man on a cross, then, has no further plans of his own. I was looking through the scripture on the resurrection and some of the things that are listed there, and I really didn't have any plans of coming up with an outline or anything, but I came up with seven things, and they sort of seemed to slide into place with starting with L's in regards to the resurrection and what it means, and the first thing I was in Romans chapter 6 and verse 4, that the resurrection means a new life, a new life.

New Life Through Union With Christ

And I know that there are some of you listening out there that need a new life. Life is hard. I was in Brahms in Neosho the other day, just eating dinner there with some of my family and watching some people over across from me, how one fellow just kept looking out the window, and I could see such emptiness in his eyes, and another girl was sitting there just looking at the others.

These two never said anything but just emptiness. They need life. The Apostle Paul in Romans 6 verse 4 said, Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

It means a new life, a new life. When you receive Christ, you have a new life. If you haven't received him, let me encourage you to repent today of your sins and receive Jesus and get this new life. The Bible says, He that has the Son has life, and he that has not the Son of God does not have life.

Do you have life? This is the record that God has given to us, eternal life, and this life is in his Son. So he that has the Son has life, and he that doesn't have the Son does not have life. And why did God write these things?

He said, These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that you might know that you have eternal life, and that you might believe on the name of the Son of God. My friend, it's a great thing to have life.

I remember what it was like before I received Christ, had Christ as my life. I was thinking about suicide. I was in college, had come to the end of myself, I saw the futility of materialism. What was the use of going to school and getting a degree, and at that time I was majoring in psychology.

What was the reason for all of this? And it just brought me to the point of despair, plus reading all those books I was into about buried me. But I found Christ, and he became my life. Oh, what a wonderful, wonderful day that was.

You know, often I read from the little booklet, My Outmost Force, Highest, by Oswald Chambers. I like sharing little things out of there, and I'd just like to encourage you to get to your local bookstore and get you one of these little booklets.

Some deep things there that Chambers shares with us, and one thing I was just reading on in January 15th, he said that death means you stop being. Do you agree with God that you stop being the striving, earnest kind of Christian you have been?

He said, we skirt the cemetery and all the time refuse to go to death. It is not striving to go to death, it is dying, baptized into his death. When you come to the cross, you're to come to the end of yourself.

First of all, it's self-effort to save ourself, but many of us continue on after we receive Christ as our Savior in trying to live the Christian life. The new life is not so much your life, it's Jesus, he's the life, he's the new life, and you receive him as your Savior, and he is the one that's the excitement.

It's him. You know, there's still the old flesh inside of us, and we have to deal with that old man every day and reckon him dead, but the new life is his life. He rose to a life that had never been before.

When Jesus rose, his resurrection is different from ours. His resurrection means something for us, though. It means for us that we are raised to his risen life, not to our old life. When you receive Christ, you rise to a new life, not to your old life, and that's why the Bible says, therefore, if any man be in Christ, he's a new creature.

The old things have passed away, and new things have come. And that life that God plants in us develops into the character of Jesus. The character of Jesus comes out into our life. Now, you just watch how God will take you, and he will smash your own confidence.

He'll smash our ways, and he will break us down. You just watch how God works to destroy our confidence in our natural virtues. And once we come to the point where we realize that we can't do anything without him, as John 15, verse 5 says, I am the vine, you are the branches, he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit, for without me you can do nothing.

Until we come to that point, we will struggle and strive in the Christian life. So thank God if you're going through a drying up experience where he's taking and crushing you. You know, one of the signs that God is at work in us is that he will destroy our confidence in ourselves, where we will come and have just confidence in him.

New Light and Walking in Truth

Well, there's another thing, there is a new light. Not only a new life, but a new light. A new light, 1 John 1, verse 6, says, If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth, verse 7.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin. A new life, and then a new light, to walk in the light of his word, to walk in the light of his ways.

David said, The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? So the Lord is your light, he lights the way. And he says, remember, if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another.

And he said, If we say we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we are liars. We are liars and we do not know the truth. We may not be saved, we may think we are saved, but how you walk. Someone said, If you can't walk the walk, then don't talk the talk.

We got a lot of talkers today, but not many walkers. And that's why we need revival in our churches, because we have so many talkers and so few walkers, those that will walk the Christ life. Well, there is a new life, a new light, but also a new liberty.

Liberty in Christ Without License to Sin

One of my favorite passages is in Isaiah 61, 1 and 2a, where the Lord Jesus, who has spoken of him, how he said, The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek.

He hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. A new life, a new light, but a new liberty is given to the believers also.

Paul said in Romans 8, 21, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. He gives us liberty. 2 Corinthians 3, 17,.

Now the Lord is that Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But Paul went on to say in 1 Corinthians 8, 9,. But take heed, lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to them that are weak.

Galatians 5, 13, He said, For brethren, you have been called unto liberty, only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. And Peter said in 1 Peter 2, 16, Is free in not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God.

We are free, but we don't have liberty to sin. It's not a license to sin, and many believers bring upon themselves many hurtful and destructive things because of a misuse of their liberty. Well, we had a new life, a new light, a new liberty, but also a new law is ours in the Lord Jesus Christ.

A New Law of the Spirit

Romans 8, 2 says, For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. There's the law of the Spirit. We find that we can walk in Christ. We can walk in freedom.

New Likeness Through Death and Resurrection

And then also there's a new likeness, a new likeness. Romans 6, 5 talks about our new likeness. Romans 6, 5,. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.

One of the things that makes baptism so important is the first step of obedience for the new believer. When you go into the water, and you go under the water, and you come back up, it's a picture of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.

Satan always wants to muffle and blot out the picture. But when you follow the Lord in baptism, you're saying that you have died to your old life, you have risen to a new life, and this new life will bring about a new likeness.

For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. Many want the resurrection power, but they don't want to go to the cross. Many people want to go to heaven, but they don't want to do it God's ways.

And I know that there are probably hundreds of you, maybe listening this morning, maybe thousands, that think you're saved because you've gone to church all your life. If you have the idea that you're a Christian because you were born a Christian, that's not right.

Or because you were raised in church all your life, that's not scriptural. You become a Christian when you go to the death, to the cross, and where you die, where you die to your effort, where you die to your sin, where you realize that Jesus Christ paid the price for your sins, and you receive him as your Savior, then you come and you experience the resurrection life.

So, if we've been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. You remember what John said, 1 John 3, 1 and 2, Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God, therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. We have a new likeness. Romans 8, 29 says that God wants us to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, for whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

In 2 Peter 1, verse 4, Peter shared with us also in the area of being like Jesus, the scripture says, Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

So the resurrection means not only a new life, and a new light, and a new liberty, and a new law, but a new likeness. Are you becoming like Jesus more and more? I think one of the things in a deepening relationship with the Lord Jesus that will affect you is that the closer you will get to God, the more aware you will be of the utter sinfulness of your own nature.

And I believe it will keep you humble, and I believe that it will crush you to the point of not trusting self. Paul said, I know that there dwells no good thing in me, and he wanted the likeness of Jesus to be seen.

One of the things that will be evident in churches that are wanting to walk in the likeness of Jesus will be a great revealing of those that want to walk in their own energy and in their flesh. They will stick out like sore thumbs, and they will become, so to say, obnoxious to the Holy Spirit in the church.

And those that are walking in the Spirit and that are sensitive to the Spirit's leading will sense very clearly those that are not. Now this isn't right. This isn't the thing that God wants in the church.

He wants one Spirit, so that that one Spirit will produce in the church one likeness of Jesus. And then not only do we have a new life, a new light, and a new liberty, and a new law, and a new likeness, but we have a new love.

New Love Expressed in Sacrifice

We have a new love. You remember in Mark 14, verse 6, when the disciples were picking on Mary of Bethany, she came and anointed him, and Jesus said, Let her alone. Why trouble ye her? She hath wrought a good work on me.

Why are you picking on her? She has a new love for me, is what he was saying. A new love. Do I love him enough to let go of my things, my alabaster boxes, my dreams, my desires? Chambers said, If human love does not carry a man beyond himself, it is not love.

If love is always discreet, always wise, always sensible and calculating, never carried beyond itself, it is not love at all. It may be affection, it may be warmth of feeling, but it has not the true nature of love in it.

Have I ever been carried away to do something for God, not because it was my duty, nor because it was useful, nor because there was anything in it at all beyond the fact that I love him? Have I ever realized that I can bring to God things which are of value to him?

How about it? Do you love him? A new love. You know, when Peter denied the Lord, Jesus came back to him and he says, Do you love me? John 21, 17, he said unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?

Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love him? How about it? So many of the things that we do display self-love. In our churches, if you would watch carefully those that move about and those that do things, you can discern if there's self-love there or if there's true love for the Lord.

You watch. Chambers said, Unless we get hurt right out of every deception about ourselves, the word of God is not having its way with us. The word of God hurts as no sin can ever hurt because sin blunts feeling.

The question of the Lord intensifies feeling until to be hurt by Jesus is the most exquisite hurt conceivable. Now think about this. Are we willing to let God work in our life and hurt us and take out of our lives those things that are weakening our love, destroying our love for him?

Unless we get hurt right out of every deception about ourselves, the word of God is not going to have its way in our life. And the word of God should cut. It should pound away on us. And this is why if you're backslidden and you're a believer, you won't read your Bible.

It will convict you too much if you have the Holy Spirit there. And if you're not a Christian, you won't have a desire to read the word of God. You may not even have a Bible and think that you're a Christian.

Revival, Spiritual Hunger, and the Need for Reality

In this land where we have so many Bibles, and I understand now that over in the countries where the communists are open up, that they are fighting for Bibles. If they get some Bibles in there, they'll just clamber around to get those Bibles.

I've heard that over in, where was it? I've got a report here that in Russia, that an average of 60 ,000 people a week now are accepting Christ. That's right now because of what's going on over there.

And I believe that we're moving into the setup for the anti-Christ, the New Age movement. I believe the communists have some kind of plan underway because the scripture says that someday Russia is going to come down on Israel.

They're not through. They're making a move to try to get us, I think, to lay down our weapons. They're willing to make a little sacrifice here. We think it's a great thing, but they're moving. But the believers, oh, they're responding.

They're so excited. They love being in church. We worry if our services run over an hour. And there, where people work two or three jobs, they ask for time off without pay just to go to church. And where they may have to take turns sitting down and where the services may last for three or four hours, they love God.

We need revival in America. We really need revival. Well, it might be good to say something about this type of love, the resurrection love from the resurrected Lord. You can't produce it. He has to love through you.

You know, the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 13, 4 -8, it says, Love suffereth long. Just to take that one. Love suffereth long and is kind. Love it, envieth not. Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, does not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

I don't know about you, but this kind of love doesn't ooze out of my life. It comes out of my life if Jesus is living there, if the Holy Spirit is in control. This love is not premeditated. It is spontaneous.

It bursts up in extraordinary ways. There's nothing of mathematical certainty in Paul's category of love. We cannot say, now I'm going to think no evil, I'm going to believe all things. The characteristic of love is spontaneity, as Chambers shares.

We do not see the statements of Jesus in front of us as a standard, but when his Spirit is having his way with us, we live according to his standard, without knowing it. On looking back, we are amazed at what God has done in our life, and others look at us and say, wow, but it's not us, it's Jesus.

He produces this type of love. Well, there was one other. Not only do we have a new life, and a new light, and a new liberty from this resurrection, but we have a new law, a new likeness, a new love, and one more, a new loyalty.

New Loyalty to Christ and the Cross

A new loyalty. Jesus said, greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth.

But I have called you friends for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. The resurrection life of Jesus will put into your heart a loyalty to the Lord Jesus. Now, we're living in a day of traitors.

We are in the Laodicean lukewarm age, where we dress what we think like a Christian. We talk like a Christian, but our loyalty is to the flesh. The flesh was the enemy. The world is the enemy, and we are loyal to the world.

Some of us are more loyal to our employer than we are to the Lord Jesus Christ. We spend extra time for the boss, or we spend extra time for our civic affairs, or extra time for our hobbies, but we are not half as loyal or faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And the Spirit of God has all of the right that he wants to move in to our lives and stop at any time this blasphemy of a pseudo-loyalty that is oozing out of pseudo-spiritual lives. Our churches are in desperate need of reality.

Well, how's God working in your heart right now? Is there loyalty? Is there? Let me say this. Jesus hasn't asked us to die for him. Not yet. There may be a day, if we don't see an awakening in our land, we may have to die for him.

But you know what's harder to do than die for Jesus? And that is to live for him, to lay down my life for him. Peter said, I'll lay down my life for your sake. And he really meant it. He was sincere. And it was a great statement, but he ran.

And unless God really has a hold of your life and that resurrection power, you and I will run too. He said, Wolf, I'll lay down my life for my sake. It's a lot easier to die than to lay down the life in a day-by-day manner.

You know, God has not designed us to live on the mountain peaks. Chambers said we are not made for brilliant moments, but we have to walk in the light of them in ordinary ways. There's only one brilliant moment in the life of Jesus, Chambers said, and that was on the Mount of Transfiguration.

And he went on to say that he emptied himself the second time of his glory when he came down from there. And he came down into that demon-possessed valley, and then he lived. But when he went to the cross, that was not brilliance in the eyes of the world.

And if God takes you to the cross, it will take you, it will take the resurrection power for you to endure the cross that he has for you. It's not ordinary to go to the cross and to die there, but that's where the power of the resurrection is, at the cross, at the cross.

And if I'm a friend of Jesus, and if I'm loyal to Jesus, I will stay at the cross. We sing that song at the cross. Well, our time's about gone today. I trust that these little seven points on what the resurrection means have been an encouragement to you.

I trust that God is free in your life to work as he wants to work. And I trust that he can lift you up, that you'll let him lift you out of that situation that you're going through, that you're struggling with, that you would learn to let him be the strength of your life.

And if you haven't trusted him as your Savior, that you would receive him as your Savior, and that you would walk in the power of his love. Well, I'm Don Corville. It's been good to be with you today.

And if you'd like to, you can write to me here at Box 1100, Web City, Missouri, 64870. That's Box 1100, Web City, Missouri, 64870, on Eagle's Wings. Until next time, may God richly bless you, my friend.