Abiding in the Gospel

We continued unpacking what it means to "abide in Christ". The life of God flowing through man is what the world is starved for, the enemy fears and the delight of God. If we want live from the life and grace of God, it requires that we keep the Gospel ever in our view. This "fuel" source for our lives is what the engineer of creation has designed our lives to run off of. It's not about arriving spiritually, it is about an ongoing relationship and connection with Jesus that produces the poem of our life God always intended us to live. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Well, great to see everybody, as I said earlier. We have been talking about like the abiding life of God and the eternal life of God and what is that? And how do we live like that? And is that possible? And so I want to direct us to the verse in John 17, verse 3. This is Jesus praying. And he says, And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I've said this many times before, but salvation is not a destination, it's a life. It's a life lived out. It's a life that starts now and continues into eternity. It's just that our setting changes. But the life of God, this eternal life and source, is available now. And it's exciting. And it's good news, which is why the gospel means good news. And so I always tend to go back to the beginning because really in Genesis, it's the whole gospel message preached, and then it just is keeps being taught to us over and over all through the Bible. When you start to kind of look at it in that frame. And so we go back to the beginning, and this is a little bit of a review of what we've talked about over the past couple weeks, but God created man and breathed into man his own life and spirit. It says that man became a living soul or a living being. And he walked and he talked and he shared with Adam and Eve. It says he walked with them daily in the cool of the day in the garden. And so we see that there was like very little separation between God and man. This was the, and then he placed man in the Garden of Eden. And so there's this concept of this place, this perfect place, of full communion with God, unencumbered, and that it's just beautiful. And after the fall, we understand that man fell, that man rebelled against God, ate of the fruit, and became spiritually disconnected, spiritually died. And now we are living in a place, man is living in a place that's disconnected from God. Man has lost his sense of peace, sense of direction, purpose, and identity. And so it's really interesting to think of before man fell, he was just like God in almost every way. And so after the fall, he becomes other than God. It's kind of interesting when I start to think about that. Man became other than love, joy, peace, goodness, kindness, patience, faithfulness, self-control. Like man became something other than that. Before that point, that's all he was. That's all he knew. Like there was no other, there's no other thought process in man other than the nature of God. And like how, wow, how free that must have been. Like how unaware of themselves Adam and Eve must have been. And their different struggles or strains, you know. Maybe it was hard sometimes in the garden because they had to attend it, but maybe it wasn't. Like, we don't even know. Like that life was so separated from what we're used to in the physical realm, it's almost hard to imagine. It would kind of be like heaven, right? Okay, so suddenly man has the ability to live outside of the nature of God. So, what do we call this when that happens cellularly in our bodies? All of a sudden a cell goes, I'm not a heart cell anymore, I'm not a liver cell, I'm not a fat cell. I'm gonna go rogue. It's called cancer. And so the cancer of the human existence is the sinful nature that is now in our flesh that reeks have it, right? Like it is the other thought process other than God's. It is the one that's counter to the nature and the goodness of God. And so we see this all of a sudden come onto the scene, and man's plunged into darkness, like we talked about at Easter, and here begins this struggle of man versus cancer. Cancer of the soul, cancer of the mind. And so, how did we used to treat cancer like a hundred years ago? Just cut it out. That's all we kind of need to do. And really, I think in the future, when we look at chemo and all of that radiation now, we'll probably look at it as like bloodletting, you know, back in the 17th century. It's pretty barbaric. But it's still like this idea that, well, you have this tumor, we're just gonna cut it and whatever is attached to it, right? And so that is what the law essentially was. God gave man this way in which to help preserve himself, kind of, from this effect of sin and cancer. And so we see that, you know, certain rules you break them, you die. You just die, we just cut you off. Like you just, we're not even going down that road a little bit. Like this, this is all we have. It's like here's a butcher knife and an axe. Take care of this, right? And that's really what the law was like. It showed man that this doesn't work. Like this is not fixing the problem, it's just trying to mitigate the effects. And so Jesus comes, right? This was never God's purpose for man. Man chose this. And that's also really interesting is to start thinking about the power of our decisions. The power that God's given us to reject his very will or to release his very will. So, what we're thinking, what we're believing, is actually very powerful because it either stops or allows the love, the goodness, and nature of God to flow or to be stopped. You know? That's a very interesting thing to think about. So man is stuck in this wheel of trying to fix this and it doesn't work, and then Jesus shows up, right? And so I want to go to Ephesians chapter 2. I love it in scripture when it talks about God's butt. But God. Right? Everybody has their own butts. But I live here, but I'm in this situation, but you know I have this going on, but I, and then God's like, but God. And it like changes. It can change your butts, right? And get them into a line, alignment with what is God saying, but He has He has done something. And in response to that, our lives are forever changed. So here we are in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 4. Um I'll just go back one verse just to give a little context. Um He's talking about you used to be separated from God, you used to be stuck in this sin cycle, this cancer of the soul, and you just kept chopping that stuff off. And he says in verse 3, among whom you also once conducted yourselves in the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and we're by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But God. So, right in the middle of this cancerous, self-destructive, self-mutilating situation, God comes. But God, who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead and trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved and raised us up and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ. And this is where I felt last week God wanted me to start going through scripture and looking at where it talks about in Christ. And if you do like a search on your Bible app or whatever, you find it's like all over in the New Testament, like in him and in Christ, we have this. This has been done on our behalf, in him. And so here we look and we see this in him, this kindness towards us in Christ. Um so we've been talking about abiding, right? And our scripture was John 15 of Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches, and Tara did a great job of picking songs in that in that vein, right? And so we get this picture of Jesus Christ is the vine, and we talked about how you never see fruit growing on a trunk of a tree, right? It grows on the branches. So even that, we're considering again what I said earlier about the power of the way we believe and think, limits the fruit that God wants to have in the earth because he chooses to only allow his fruit to come through us. This is very sobering in that we want to see our nation turned back to God. We want to see our community changed and better, right? We want to see families restored, we want all these things. And yet God is looking to us. Like he's placed himself in us for a reason, right? He's not walking around raising the dead, healing the sick, and poking the eyes of all the religious leaders, right? He doesn't do that anymore. He lives in each one of us, but it's for a reason. And the production of fruit and the size of that branch is directly proportional to how it is attached to the trunk of the tree. And that's what we're like zooming in on. This in Christ, where we connect with him. That point, that connection right there, is the limiting factor of how much fruit, how much, however you want to quantify the goodness of God flowing into your life. And the enemy's goal is to try to keep you from getting connected. But if you get connected, now all he's trying to do is keep that thing as small and as cut down as possible through disappointments, pains, hurts, attacks of the enemy, misconceptions about God, right? Like all of a sudden we view him as kind of the antagonist, and we're even almost fighting God along with fighting the devil, because we think he wants all this bad stuff to happen in and around us. And so all of a sudden, we go from being in Christ and living from this life to like just pinching it off and trying to close it off is his goal. And so coming back to this love, like it's talking about here in Ephesians again, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ by grace. And in our men's group, we're talking about grace the other day, and I simply, my mind kind of likes pictures, and so I just said, you know, grace is like power in a wall, like electricity. That it's the power of God to save us, to heal us, to bring us closer to God. It's the energy, the power of God that comes from his love that changes our life. But a receptacle on a wall is not anything useful until we plug something in. And when we plug it in, that's our faith, believing. So, like Frank did, that was awesome. Like, I'm thankful for the rain that's coming. Wow, all of a sudden we went plugged in to the wall. There's power in the Lord, there's power in the Spirit. But if we don't have faith and kind of see out ahead of what we're believing for, we never access that. So it's kind of like imagine people uh coming around an outlet and being like, oh man, I wish I wish we could get some light in here. It's so dark, I know. And it's cold. Yeah, I know. I got a heater. Oh, that's a bummer. Too bad there wasn't any power. Lord, bring us power. Bring us heat, Lord. It's like you sing there's a heater and a working outlet. We need to start connecting, right? We need to start thinking, hey, maybe there's more to this God thing than just like saving us from hell. Maybe there is something in this abiding in Him and His life flowing through us and blessing those around us. Not that we just get enough for us. See, that's the other, that's the other trick. There's a whole lot of people who believe God for things just for themselves. It's very, it's very egocentric, it's very selfish. You should be looking at, I want to be blessed to be a blessing. I want my life to produce enough fruit so I got plenty, and there's more to give away. Right? To stop living like an isolated mentality. Because, like Christ, he was here, he said, to serve. That was his heart and nature. Okay, I better get back to my points. But abiding in Christ, and this is the gospel. What we're reading right here, part of the abiding is keeping our minds coming back to this over and over. Like the gospel, so oftentimes we think of this idea of Jesus coming and dying and raising again is a really amazing story, and it's really good, and everybody who's not saved really needs to hear it. And then once you hear it, you kind of got it, and you move on like to like deeper things with God. But the gospel is where this connection is. If we do not keep our minds coming back to the gospel, we will start having other narratives coming in to disprove the love and the goodness of God. What Jesus did is the final say, the final representation of how much God loves us, of what how far he would go for us, and the depth of what he's done for us. Abiding in Christ means to keep your mind in that place with him, remembering what he's done for you. Right? Okay, so the next verse is for by grace, this is verse 8, by grace you've been saved through faith, through that plug-in, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which he prepared beforehand, that we should walk in him. That word work, for we are his workmanship. Another translation is masterpiece, but the Greek word there is poema, which is where we get the word poem or poetry. We are God's poetic work made to be expressed in the earth. And just as every poem is different, there's many different styles of poetry and poems, so each one, each one of us individually are a different poem written by God, of things that He wants to have us accomplish and do and express in the earth. But that only comes by a connection of a life of abiding, remaining in Christ, remaining in what he just spoke about right here. It is a gift of God, it is the love of God, it is the goodness of God, it is his mercy, it is his peace and hope that he's extended towards us through Jesus Christ. And now, when we have that in view, uh other situations, other issues we may run into if we're filtering them through this lens of the gospel, the goodness of Jesus Christ, then these other things start to take on a different size, right? Now all of a sudden things become manageable in ways, right? But it's not it's not just so that your life can be really fun and good all the time. It's so that the nature of God can be expressed through us, whether it's good or bad, whether it's high or low. And he is the one who keeps pouring out of us. There's a guy, he he talks about, you know, it's really weird. If you were to take an orange and you cut it and you just take a bite of it and it tastes like an apple, you'd be really freaked out. Right? But it's like, do our lives then. If you were to cross-section our lives and somebody comes and takes that, does it taste like Jesus or does it taste like everybody else? Right? Does it, does it, is it flowing from Christ, or are we just really trying the best we can all the time? And that's kind of like our story. The testimony is I believe in Jesus Christ, and then I just tried really hard and failed a good amount, but I'm just, it's just what it is, right? Or can we say, I believed in Jesus Christ, and I just stayed there. And my life began to take on the form of Christ. And my life produced fruit. I never could have before, and I never would have. And yet it's so filling not only to my life, but to those around me, that I can't take any credit for it. I think that's I think that's where the abiding life takes us. So again, I come back to that verse, John 17, 3. This is eternal life, to know the only true God and Jesus Christ who makes sense. Yeah, we'll talk about this. Okay, so let's imagine that you have a diesel truck, probably most of you do, and you go to the gas station, and you get really ticked off because gas is cheaper than diesel. So, like any smart person who wants to save money, you put the gas, you put gas in it. Because you want to save money, right? And then you start up your truck and you destroy your engine. I've never heard anyone get really offended at how poorly their vehicle runs not filling up the right fuel. I mean, can you imagine, like, okay, these engineers, how arrogant are they to tell me that this pickup can only run on diesel? How arrogant? How narrow-minded? I can get offended at this. And then, and then it's more expensive. I know it has more power, I know it pulls better, but doggone it. What if I can just put 10% gas in my diesel? I could save money. Over time, it's a lot of savings, right? Can you imagine getting upset, going to the pump, and like, I can't believe I have to fill my diesel packet with diesel. And yet the world treats the gospel like that all the time. Um the engineer who creates this engine builds it in a certain way so that it can handle a certain fuel, a certain power source, right? And he makes it so that it runs optimally with this fuel. And that engineer gets to say what you need to run it off of. You know, there are cars that run off of ethanol, biodiesel, diesel, all these different fuels, right? Peanut oil, whatever you want. Somebody can engineer that engine and run off of that. And they get to tell you what you. Should fill it up with. But how often does the world get offended when you say the only way that your life will really work and that you'll have this connection with God and produce any fruit is to be connected with Jesus Christ. You mean only one God? Yeah, like the one that made everything, engineered it, gave us the blueprints of this is how it runs optimally, and then you go fill it with gas. And you keep blowing up your engines, but you're ticked off at God because he told you how to how it runs optimally. That's funny, right? You can kind of take a chuckle at that, but that's kind of like the mindset of a lot of these arguments. Always lead to God. It can't be possible because there's only one fuel source for which this thing runs. So let's say a Christian, we we accept that though. We say, it is Jesus Christ. He's our connection, he's our source. Okay? So what does the enemy come in and do? He wants you to mix it. It's cheaper if I put a little gas in there. How much gas can I get by with? So now all of a sudden, we're not talking about wanting to live from the optimal point of life in Christ because it gets uncomfortable at times. We want to mix it a little bit. Let's just chop it up a little bit. And you know, you fill it up and you put a full tank and then you put a gallon of gas in and it runs, right? Yes. The next time you try two gallons and you're like, yes, and three gallons, and it's smokes a little bit and does a few little weird things, but nothing blows up and nothing lets loose. So like let's keep running this on the line, right? And now all of a sudden you're like figuring out the stakings in a year and in two years, and oh my word, and then your engine blows up six months later. This is the other, this is the other way that the enemy gets in there and tries to distract us from living from the life of Christ. How I don't think I really need that. I haven't really needed it so far. You know, I I can mix it a little bit. I don't my life doesn't need to be so different from the road, because that would get awkward, right? There's a payment, there's a price to that that I'm just not willing to pay. And so you can see a lot of Christians that they'll do that, they'll just kind of mix a little world and then do a little Jesus, and it seems to work, right? But then you look 20, 30 years down the road, and you're like, but are you producing fruit? And that's not my that's not my place to judge that, right? Each person has to distinguish that with the Lord. Am I producing the fruit that you have for me? Am I living the poem that you have written for me? So religion tries to limit it, it tries to cut it down. It says, well, it's not just about diesel. You need to have this additive and this additive and this over here. You need to work harder, you need to do this better. You need to add all this other stuff to it. So now all of a sudden you go to the to the tank and you you get out and you have to you get this big filter that you have to run it through into your pickup, and then you you run 3.7 gallons, and now you have to add this additive, and now all of a sudden you're more you're more consumed with the process of filling up this tank than it is like driving your pickup. It takes you an hour and a half to get the right mixture in this pickup to drive it because religion tries to complicate and add and confuse and make it about what you're doing instead of who you're living from. So living in close relationship with God has always been the heart of Christianity. This is our source of life, peace, hope, love, joy, goodness. And the whole battle over your heart and your mind is trying to limit, distort, and distract this connection with God. And I know for myself, I can grow deeper into this connection. I will never arrive, but I am also not condemning myself that I'm not 30 years down, further down the road. This is a journey with God. He is not frustrated with us, he is not put out by how little it is, or how slow it is, or maybe how much religion's been mixed in there through the years. It's just he is always welcoming us to more of him, more of that life source, more of the pure fuel that God has made our lives to run on. Not just for our benefit, but for our families, our community. But ultimately it's the worship, it's our worship to God, the deepest worship of God, to allow him to live through us. And he gets great pleasure from it. So we're gonna take comedian if I can have some guys help here. So, like I said earlier, I really do not uh care to just do church. Like I want to experience Christ because that's what this is about. It's about a life with God. It's not about our concept of knowing about God, but to know him not cerebrally, but as we know a friend or a spouse, like through relationship, through understanding who he is. And so communion is something we do on a regular basis. And this again, that's how God chose to reveal what he was about to do, Jesus Christ, on the cross, but also for our point, our reference point of remembering him. So I'm going to read Matthew 26. 26. Now, as they were eating, Jesus took the bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, Take, eat, this is my body. Then he took the cup and gave thanks and gave it to them, saying, Drink from it all of you, for this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. But I say to you, I will not drink it of this fruit, of the vine, from now until the day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom. So Jesus says, do this in remembrance of me. This is part of what we're doing while we take communion. But if you look at the end of this, at verse 29, he says, I will not drink of this fruit of a vine from now on until the day when I drink it new with you in my father's kingdom. So not only is he referring, not only is he saying what he is doing, what he is about to do on the cross for them, to remember that. But he's also saying he wants them to remember that they're going to drink this with him again. There is not only remembering of the past of what the Lord has done in each one of our lives, but in taking this, we also have the expectation of actually drinking this with Jesus Christ Himself someday. In Revelation 19, verse 6, it says, And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, as the sound of many waters, and as the sound of mighty thundering, saying, Hallelujah, for the Lord God, omnipotent reigns. Let us be glad and rejoice and give him glory. For the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his wife has been made ready. And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. And so this bride represents the church. The church is finally together, it's cleaned up, it's perfect, and is ready to be united with God forever. And in that, we get to eat of a feast, of the marriage supper of the Lamb. And then I believe we will all partake of this in heaven. Where the host, the meal, and the guest of honor are all Jesus Christ himself. And so we not only remember what Christ has done for us in the life that he's given to us, but we look forward with this to we will one day be with him where there is no separation in heaven, partaking of this as well. So it's exciting. It's like a completely in the past and completely in the future that we are taking this in faith that he is with us and that he will be even more with us in the future. So, Jesus, we thank you for what you've done and for the expectation of life with you here and now, that it will only get better and better as we understand who you are in us. But also in faith that we will eat of this someday with you, with no separation, no veil, that we will see you fully as you are. And Lord, we look forward to that day. And so we can all just take as the bread, which represents the body of Christ. And now we can take as a cup, which represents his blood, that washes away our sin and removes everything that would keep us from him. Jesus, we just thank you so much that you love us this much, and that you've gone to the very depths of hell to save us, to redeem us, to bring us back. And Lord, we desire to live from this life that you have placed inside of us. And guess what? I don't even know what that looks like. So, Lord, I want you to teach me. I want you to teach each person here what that looks like. How we can walk and know and live in you, and how our connection with you can just grow and grow. So, Lord, I thank you that you're going to teach us. I thank you that you're going to bring about in us this fulfillment of the poem that you have written for our lives, the good things that you have in store for us, Lord, that we would fully and completely fulfill and live those out. In Jesus' name, amen.