Understanding Righteousness

Episode 2

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Father, we thank you for your presence again tonight. We we all almost always say this that you're the reason we're here and we mean it. We gather here because you're here and you called us to be here. You made this, you sent out this call, you made this appointment. And God, we're thankful that you included us. And so tonight we come with an excitement to hear your voice and to gain not just knowledge but understanding and wisdom. And we thank you, God, that we'll leave here tonight at a stronger place spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically, than what we came in. And we thank you, God, that you are always at work on our behalf. We thank you for your kindness, and we receive what you have for us tonight, what you prepared for us tonight. In Jesus' name. Amen. Before you sit down, take a minute and say hello to someone, greet someone. Once again, tonight we have a handout for you. If you didn't get it on your way in, you can raise your hand and someone from our host team will get you a copy. We do this just to help you and help you remember some things, some important key points that we'll cover tonight, and to really be helped by it. You know, it's something you want to keep with you with you during the week. You know, somewhere maybe in your Bible, if you carry your Bible around with you, or you know, car seat next to you, somewhere where you can access it, not while you're driving, but access it during the day, maybe on your desktop, or and just look over some of the things we taught and the points that we've uh uh prepared for you. Uh I think it'll really help you. And that's one of the ways we grow. Not the only way, but it's one of the key ways we grow is to take what we hear and then find a way to meditate on it. And when we meditate, just like God told Joshua when Joshua was transitioning into Moses' role, Joshua was wise in that he knew he couldn't replace Moses. But he knew God had something for him and that God would be a help to him. And he heard God say to him, He said, He said, Meditate the word Joshua day and night, and you'll make yourself successful. And the same is true of us when we meditate what God is teaching us or speaking to us about, um, things really do begin to change. I don't know why we do this if we're not expecting to grow. We could be doing a bunch of other things, right? We we do this, and not everybody does this. Not everybody will take an extra time during the week, apart from their Sunday church services, to attend another Bible study or a small group to plug in and to take in more. Those are the ones who are anticipating something, uh, a number of things, but certainly growth. And this is where growth really comes. It comes line upon line, precept upon precept. Sounds slow, doesn't it? Even when I say it, it sounds slow. Line upon line, precept upon precept. Scripture says hear a little and there a little. You know, all of us have certain things in our life that we want to accelerate, and we'd like, we pray for things that we need right now. But when it comes to growth, it really is a process. And if you don't learn how to value process, and again, many people don't, they they they value the um the sudden, uh, the miraculous, uh, etc. They love the microwave, you know, but you can't microwave growth. You have to value process, and you have to just walk it out. Work it out. Scripture even uses that language when it says work out your own salvation, it's not teaching us to work for our salvation because we're not saved by good works, are we? We're saved how? By grace through faith. The only way you can access the grace of God is by faith. It's the only, grace is the only offer on the table. We have a zillion, it seems like, religions in the world that teach different ways to eternal life. But Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And the only offer that he's made is one of grace through faith. Paul writes about it in Romans the fourth chapter a little bit further. He helps us understand why God did it that way a little bit better when he just says God wanted it for everyone. And since no one could earn uh righteousness, the right to stand before God, no one could uh qualify for it based on their own good works. God made it by promise. You can read it for yourself in Romans the fourth chapter. There's a pretty long conversation about Abraham, who's called the father of faith. And he talks about how Abraham uh received right standing with God, not by works, not through circumcision, but before circumcision by faith. And God saw his faith and he counted his faith as right standing. And so so uh just a great reminder as we get started tonight again is everybody who wants eternal life has one way to get there. And it is by Jesus, his death on the cross, his resurrection to life, and faith in him and the provision that God made by him and through him. Something we don't we can't hear enough of. We're constantly needing reminding of it because this legalistic mindset is so predominant and prominent in the world that we live in. This I another way to look at it is just, you know, men are usually performance-rated. Their value is based on what they can do. Certainly true at work, right? That's the way we feel. If we work harder, we'll get more value, and more value will equal a better salary or better benefits or a promotion with both. But it doesn't, it's not just in the workplace, it's in the church. We're taught to live a certain way, and if we live a certain way, we'll have God's greater, not just his pleasure, but we'll have greater salvation. Uh we work for it, we're taught to work for it, we're taught to behave for salvation. And you can't behave for salvation. Salvation, again, can't be achieved. Say achieved. And get this it can't be achieved, it has to be received. And again, we're just talking about, and you've got to be careful too, because we can even let our faith or believing God or trusting God just become another good work. We tend to look at our faith as small or large or something in between, and we base our ability to receive something from God on that basis. How big is your faith? How small is your faith? What's the size of your faith? And again, so here we are measuring our faith, thinking that small gets small from God, big gets big from God. And so you've got to have big faith to be saved because salvation is a big deal, right? Setting aside, leaving, abandoning eternal death for eternal life is a big deal. You know, an impossible deal. So God had to do something, right? I mean, again, we let's back up and just talk about again what righteousness is. It's the ability to stand right, upright before God, to be considered accepted by God, acceptable to God, not on the basis, again, of our works, but by grace and through faith. It's living without a sense of guilt and condemnation. We'll talk a little bit more about that tonight because we're going to get into the practical benefits of understanding righteousness and walking it out in our own life. Remember, we said last week, if you were here, you'll remember this, I pray. But righteousness is not a feeling, it's a fact. We often get righteousness confused with holiness, okay, which is a condition. Righteousness is something permanent that is ours in Christ Jesus. Even if you're a Christian tonight, even if you don't feel righteous, you are. Say it out loud with me. I am who God says I am. Now, do you believe that? You are who God says you are, right? Well, who does God say you are? Well, in one place, 2 Corinthians 5.21, he says that you have been made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. It is your new nature. It's not again just something you're blessed with. Another blessing from God, it certainly is a blessing, but it's not just that. It's actually your new nature. We were all dead in sins and trespass, the Bible says. We were in Adam, and so we were dead because death was pronounced upon Adam and Eve for their sin. And that death, that separation from the life of God, was passed to all mankind. So that every person who's born into this earth ends up with this understanding at some point that they are without relationship to God, and they can't have relationship with God until something changes on their part. And again, we're doing our children wrong by teaching them that they have to be good enough to get it. We kind of teach that pattern anyway with our children when we're disciplining them. Good gets good, bad gets nothing. Right? Sometimes there's some mercy from a parent, and shows and they show mercy to their children, which is a wonderful story of the gospel. Because we couldn't do good enough. We just couldn't. And scripture makes it clear that all men needed righteousness. That's our next question. Who needs righteousness? And if you're worried about babies, let's not get into that tonight about what happens to a baby if it dies. God only can hold, He only holds us accountable for what we know. So there's special mercy and grace for the unborn. There's special mercy and grace for those that are born, children that are, you know, young children, they don't understand. Every one of us had an age, we call it, in the religious world, it's called the age of accountability. It's just where we come to an understanding that we are sinners and we need salvation. And the gospel teaches that that salvation comes through Jesus Christ, who said, I am the way, not a way. There aren't many ways to eternal life. There's only one. You say, isn't that arrogant? No, it's just the truth. Sometimes the truth is hard, but it's the truth nonetheless. And Jesus just said, I'm the way, if you want to know how to have life with the Heavenly Father, how to enjoy eternal life, how to go to heaven when you die, if you will. And here it is. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except by me. And so it's simple, but it's also hard for people to just accept that there's one way to eternal life. But the gospel teaches that. And if you want to believe the gospel, you have to believe this part of it is an essential part of it, that Jesus is the only way to God. His is the only sacrifice that's been made throughout the ages that has been accepted fully, completely, and forevermore by the Father God. Again, so we're not trying to do what Jesus did in order to earn our salvation. We do what Jesus did because we're followers. We love him. We love the way he lives. We love the way he worshiped. We love the way he prayed. We love the way he cared for people. We love the way he laid hands on the sick. We love the way he went to the temple every week. We love all of that. And so we follow him. If you don't do what you're doing for God because you love him, then there's a huge gap there. There's a missing piece. And that big piece is just loving God with all your heart, your mind, your soul, everything that's within you, and living because you love God. Our faith is energized by God, his love. It's activated by a revelation of God's love. You'll trust God more and more as you know he loves you more and more. As you know he loves you more and more, your faith will grow and grow and grow. Amen. So everybody needs righteousness. Romans 3.23 says, for all have sinned, say everybody. Say all. Say me. I have. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God or the righteous demands of God. All right. Romans 5.12 says, Therefore, just as through one man, sin entered into the world, and he's talking about Adam there, and death through sin, again, talking about Adam, and thus death spread to all men because all have sinned. So again, without exception, all of us are born into the world. Of course, Jesus is the only exception to this, but all of us who are born into the world then need to be made righteous. Amen. Amen. Say amen. Romans 3 10 says, as it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. Let me read that same verse to you from the amplified Bible. It says, as it is written, none is righteous, just, and truthful, and upright and conscientious, no, not one. The prophet Isaiah, under the old covenant, said, all of us are like sheep who have gone astray. We don't follow after psalmists at one point would say, There's none none of us who follow God. None of us. We're full of death. So it was again an impossible situation that God had to handle, and thank God He did, through Jesus Christ. And again, all we can do is receive what has already been done. You'd think this would be good news for the Christian, but they continue to struggle under that legalistic system, religious system, that says, okay, that's fine. Yeah, I can I have to receive Jesus to be born again and to receive eternal life, but I can only receive from God other things that I need by working for them or by trying to earn them or earning them, being good enough. And I'm here to encourage you to not give it up. Let it go. You've been freed from the law. Even though we weren't, but most of us weren't Jewish. I'm sorry I wouldn't offend anybody on purpose, but most of us in the room were Gentiles and from Gentile background. Okay, we were never under the law, but the Bible makes it clear in the book of Romans that the law still spoke to us about what was good, right, and what was wrong. All right. So even though we weren't under the law, technically, historically, the law still spoke to us. And the purpose of the law, excuse me, was to just reveal sin in us. Again, we don't even we don't even use the law properly. We're trying to keep it again for righteousness' sake. And the law, the reason the law was given, the very purpose of the law was to show you that you were a sinner and to drive you, so to speak, to salvation. And so when Jesus came, the law took the back seat. Jesus came into the spotlight on the platform, so to speak. And now all the attention is on Jesus and what he did. Amen. As it should be. So there's none righteous. All of us need salvation. Here's the third question: if that's true, how do we get it? Are you ready for this? How do we get it? You already heard me say we have to believe, but listen to this: it has to be gifted to us or transferred to us by God Himself. Again, if you're going to be made righteous, be accepted by God, be adopted by Him, become a family member, again, receive eternal life. You're going to move from being in Adam to being in Christ. You're going to put yourself in a position to go to heaven when you die instead of being separated from God for all eternity in a place called hell. Hell has a physical address. It's just not an idea meant to torment people. Heaven has a real address. And those who don't make Jesus Lord of their life, when they take their last breath here, they will either go to live with God eternally, where God is in the heavens, the third heaven, or they will go to a place called hell. And hell, you think hell's bad enough, but hell is just a holding place for a place called the lake of fire. And we won't get into that tonight. Some are saying, thank God, I want to go to bed and sleep, be able to sleep tonight. But there's something worse than hell, and it's called the lake of fire. And you escape both of those destinations that are on God's prophetic calendar that he's working right now. The only way to escape both hell and the lake of fire is again to have righteousness transferred to us or gifted to us by God Himself. Again, 2 Corinthians 5.21. For he made him, Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. So the declaration that we are righteous is not based on the individual's own merit or works, but is granted through faith in Jesus Christ. There's so many ways to say this. But you don't need to be looking at somebody comparing yourself to their life and saying, well, they deserve to go to heaven. I don't. So I mean, they're such a good person. I know that when they die, they're going to go to heaven. If I were to die tonight, and really we are just one heartbeat away from death, always, and one breath away from death, always, physical death. It can come so quickly and so suddenly. But stop looking at other people and saying, well, you know, they're good. They're godly. They seem nice. If anyone's going to go to heaven, they are. You're wrong. They're not going to go. If they're going, they're not going to go on the basis of being nice, or the basis of being sweet or kind, or spending their money to help somebody else pay their rent. That's not why they're going to go to heaven. They're not going to go to heaven because they prayed so much. See how we measure these things? They prayed so much, or they gave so much of their time, their energy, their money to the church. They're going to go to heaven because of that. No, they're not. No one. No one has ever gone into eternity on the basis of their own goodness. You know? If they go, if you go, it's going to be because you came to a point in your life, and the Holy Spirit will bring you to this place. So very again, a real point in your life. He will bring you to this point in your life. For me, it was after I graduated my senior year, the summer of 1972. It was so real, I remember it, you've heard this said, as if it were just yesterday. It's that real. But the Holy Spirit, no man can come to the Father, the scripture says, except the Spirit draws him. So the Spirit will draw you to a place of repentance, which is a turning, a real changing of the heart and changing of the mind. It's not remorse. Remorse can happen again and again and again and again and again and again and again. You're not really sorry for what you did. You're sorry you got caught. That's remorse. Tears can flow. You'll make promises to yourself and everybody else that you love. I am so sorry. But you'll go right back and do the same thing. That's remorse and not repentance. The Holy Spirit is greatly involved in repentance. He brings you there. He supplies you with the grace to actually repent and then to change your mind about the direction you were going and then to help you turn and go the opposite direction and give you the grace to do that too. He's heavily involved in repentance. But you'll he'll put this in your heart. The Holy Spirit will. He'll help you recognize in that moment that you're a sinner, that you cannot save yourself, that you need the help of God, he will bring your heart to a place of repentance and a place of surrender, a place of bowing your heart to the lordship of Christ. Scripture says, if any man, no exceptions, if any man will confess from his heart, this belief that Jesus is Lord and that God has raised him from the dead, he confesses that the scripture says he will be saved. And no one wants your salvation more than God. And God hasn't made it hard. It's hard because of the opposition in the world. It's hard because of the junk and garbage that's going on in our own minds, our emotions, our weak will at times, our flesh. There's opposition inward and outward. That's why it's hard. God hasn't made it hard, He's made it again simple. And He's made the way for salvation. And so if you from your heart believe that Jesus is Lord, you give yourself to that Lordship. You don't know what all that is yet. You know, that's the Christian life, is finding out those kinds of things after you're born again, right? And we'll find those out until we're made perfect, and that won't happen until we see Jesus face to face. Amen. So don't be discouraged. It's just, again, it's a process and you make progress. Here a little, there a little. Amen. When the the T's are crossed and the I's are dotted, that little dot's called the tittle, jot tittle, that little I over a lowercase J, and the lowercase I is called a tittle. You know, you'll learn how to live those things out. They'll become your own reality. You'll learn what it really means to follow Jesus, and I think you'll start hungering and thirsting more for it when you really begin to experience it. You know, and that's the way you look at climbing a mountain, right? You've heard this. How do you eat an elephant? Who wants to? But how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do you climb the tallest mountain one step at a time? How do you become a strong, mature ambassador, representative of the Lord Jesus Christ? How do you live a life that really is pleasing to God? How do you live a life where it's not just you trusting God, but God starts trusting you? That's called friendship. How does that happen? Well, it happens just one step at a time and celebrate every step. And be in a church where they'll celebrate it with you and help pick you up when you fall. They'll be there to pick you up. They'll celebrate those steps, they'll encourage you, they'll pray with you, they'll walk this thing out. They'll get if you're in a ditch, they'll get in the ditch with you to get you out real quick. Get you back on solid ground. All of us need community. We need Christian community to help us keep moving forward. Amen. So again, righteousness is something that we can't achieve. We receive it, it has to be transferred to us, it has to be gifted to us. Romans 3 20 through 23 says this, therefore, by the deeds of the law, no flesh. Say no flesh will be justified in his sight. For by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God, say now, but now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all those who believe. For there's no difference. Again, for all have sinned and come short or fall short of the glory of God. And then verses 27 and 28 of Romans 3 says, Where is boasting then? It's excluded. In other words, I can I can't go before God. I shouldn't go before anyone and say, Look how good I am. Look what I've done. And look how pleased God is with me because. You know, you don't do that. There's no boasting. Again, why? Because Jesus did the work. So what do we do instead of boasting? We praise. We say thank you. We honor him. We glorify. We live in such a way where, again, people notice him, not us. Right? So, whereas boasting then, it's excluded by what law? Of works, no, but by the law of faith. Verse 28 says, Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. Watch this. Not faith plus the deeds of the law. Not faith plus anything. Get the math right. When it comes to salvation, get the math right. It's what Jesus did plus nothing. Again, why am I saying it? Because if you haven't already encountered it within yourself or from somebody else, you likely will as a Christian. You'll have another Christian say to you, again, that's all fine and good. I agree with you. We're saved or receive eternal life by grace through faith. But we are made perfect by our works. And they'll press you again to consider this foul mix, devilish, demonic mix. Why is it demonic, Pastor Marshall? Aren't you overstating it just a little bit? No. Because to say that salvation comes by what Jesus did plus what anybody else can do, the glory is taken from him. Glory is stripped from him. Basically, you're saying that Jesus didn't really have to come to save us or save mankind. We could have done it, or he could have done it, or she could have done it without Jesus. You can say that's a devil message. It's the spirit of Antichrist already at work in the world. Follow? So again, when we we say Jesus did it and Jesus did it alone, and any progress you see in me, I give praise and honor to Jesus, who is at work in me. The Holy Spirit is at work in me. If you think I'm different and better, I'm living closer to God, I should say, than what I was last week. I just want you to know right away, it's just not me. It's Jesus at work in me. And I'm just learning how to follow him in a greater way by faith. I give all honor to him. Amen. And if you want to infuriate the devil, if you really want to give him a bad day, then when you're having a tough day, lift your hands to God and begin to praise him and thank him for the life that he's given you and the answers to prayer and just start laughing. And that's joy unspeakable. The Bible describes that kind of laughter not as stupidity, not as craziness. It describes that kind of laughter as joy unspeakable and full of glory. You should be sad because of the circumstances that you're walking through. Instead, you're looking to God and walking by faith, and you're looking at the answer, and you're considering what considering what Jesus already has done and what he's doing right now to help you. And so, right in the midst of circumstances that everybody else might be saddened by, or the majority be saddened by, not everybody. That's an overstatement. But a great number of people would be saddened by. Instead, you're maintaining your joy, maintaining your laughter, because you're seeing what Jesus did, and you're trusting your future to him. Does that make sense to you? I hope it does. Romans 4, 4 through 8. Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace, but as debt. But to him who does not work but believes on him, who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness. Just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works. Verse 7, very important, says, Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin. Now notice it doesn't say should not have imputed sin, because that's what we deserved, right? Good friend of mine from years ago, I heard him say this once, and it just went off in me. I guess I was just in a place where I really needed to hear it. And he said it in such a way it connected with me. But he said, if we're living in what we deserve, we're living in a world of hurt. If we're going to get what we deserve, we're living in a world of hurt. You know? Here, God has given us, at Believer Center has given us, and the revelation continues to grow, of his grace. That's why in our creed that we do normally on Sunday mornings, we say that we are we're believing to live the life we could never deserve. Because that's what God has provided and holds out to us, is a life we could never earn, merit, or deserve. Praise God. We can fully receive it by faith, but we can't deserve it or merit it. Again, that verse says from the Psalms says that blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin. Something's happened for God to be able to say, I'm not going to impute sin, I'm going to forgive instead. They deserve to have it imputed. But I'm not going to impute it to them, hold it to their account. Something's happened and a sacrifice has been made. In fact, I'll point this out real quick to you. Also, it says there that sins are covered. That was under the old covenant. Sins could be temporarily covered by animal sacrifice. Did you know under the new covenant our sins are not covered? They've been removed. As far as the east is from the west, try to measure that, somebody. All right. God has removed our sin from us. Pastor, I don't understand that. I don't either. But I fully accept it. I don't understand righteousness, but I fully accept it. Right? Why? Because the scripture says it, and the Bible tells us about our Bibles. This is interesting. Scripture says this about Scripture that all scripture is given by inspiration of God. In other words, breathed by God and is profitable for a number of different things. Right? And so it's like the Bible, I don't want to get weird here, but the Bible is God's voice to us. It has God's voice print on it. Did you know if you'll just read the Bible, you can be blessed by reading it. Just by reading it. How is that possible? Again, that's God breathed it. It's Him speaking. It's primarily the way that He's going to speak to you and speaks to you as a Christian. The Holy Spirit will work to take the scripture, these black and black words on white pages or red words on white pages, as you read them with an open heart, the Holy Spirit's going to make those words alive to you. And it's if God said to you on Wednesday, tomorrow morning, you go love so and so. Love your neighbor. You're reading that. It's like the Holy Spirit said, go love so and so. You'll just hear that. So you'll stop and text so and so, and you'll just say, I just I was thinking about you today. I want you to know I love you and God loves you. Right? You'll email them, you'll pick up the phone, or you'll actually go to them and put your arms around them and love them in Jesus' name or comfort them in Jesus' name. Listen, Christian, that's God at work in you, both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Amen. All right. All right. We're uh we're quite a uh a ways into the evening, uh, but we still have a few minutes. Let's just start this. I gave you this knowing that I wouldn't finish tonight. So I'm not in trouble with God or with me, even though I might be in trouble with you. Because I have four more for next week. Okay, so don't miss the completion of this short three-week series on the righteousness of God. But uh, I wanted to, going into the brief series, I really wanted to, like I did when I talked about the anointing, which is still very strange to many Christians. They don't know how to how they practically benefit from the anointing, even though we talked about it, still we're not comfortable with it. Again, that's just part of growing. You'll get more comfortable with it. If you'll pursue pursue it and continue to study the things we talked about, especially the practical applications of it, you you'll get more comfortable with it. And you'll live a more powerful life, a more a life more sensitive to the Holy Spirit and arm in arm with Jesus. Amen. Same is true with these things that we're about to go over and mention here tonight. It's probably just get to two of them. So bring us back with you next week. But I wanted to talk in this series also about, okay, so what? I'm the righteousness of God in Christ. Awesome. Praise God. I mean, right, I don't I don't have to, I can come into the presence of God, you know, without feeling all guilty and condemned every time I do, and and I can go knowing I'm accepted and He loves me and wants friendship with me. That's awesome, Pastor. But really, what's it like? What what how does it affect me on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday? It's great when we're all together, you know, but but how about the rest of the week? So I've written down these things with the hope that they will again get something started in you, they will, or build something stronger in you, open up some paths to live the Christian life that you haven't considered, etc. So let's get to number one. Again, how does the understanding of righteousness show up practically in my life? Look at your worksheet there. It says it impacts your relationship with God, your interactions with others, and your engagement with the world. Understanding and embracing this truth is essential for living a life that honors God and reflects his righteousness to the world. So, number one, righteousness means we have a new identity in Christ. We have a new identity in Christ. We're no longer defined by our past sins. I hear people say this, and it's just me, I've been a little picky with it, but I in this case I don't think it's a bad thing to be a little picky about it. I hear people say I'm just an old sinner saved by grace. You might have heard that too. And we we celebrate that, we shake, nod our heads sometimes, yes, it's that. I get it, because we know even though we've been made the righteousness of God, we still do miss the mark, which is the definition of the sin of sin in the New Testament. The actual word translated sin from the Greek language means a missing of the mark. It's a picture of an archer pulling his bow back, uh sending his arrow toward a target and missing the bullseye, which is his target. It's that simple. All right, sin is missing God, the mark that God set for your life. And he's setting marks for you to live an abundant life. And when we miss that, we sin, we fall short. Again, we're missing the mark. Okay. Um, but uh even with that, we shouldn't fall back on thinking that we are just still sinners by nature. We are not spiritual schizophrenics, we don't have two natures. Hear me out. You had like we talked about last week. I didn't bring your spirit, soul, and body graph for you. You know, I thought I was talking to the Holy Spirit praying about tonight from last week, and God just made it clear. He said, I don't want you to compound this study with that study. I don't want you to overlay the two. And so we'll wait till we actually do something on spirit, soul, and body before we break out that graph again, okay? Because I that's another teaching I'd like to go and revisit this year at some point for you. But instead of compound things, we'll just keep it simple and talk about what we're talking about right now right now. You only have one spirit. The Greek word is pneuma, it means breath or wind. When God breathed into Adam, breathed into Adam, he became what? A living soul. So there we have in the New Testament, Old Testament, the first few chapters of Genesis, both spirit and soul. Man became a living soul because God breathed in him his own breath, and man became a spirit being. Follow? So we have a spirit, uh, we have a soul, and of course we live in a body. All right, spirit, soul, and body. Say them out loud with me spirit, soul, and body. And again, very quickly, the soul is where the will resides, where the mind resides. Resides and where our emotions, our passions are sourced from, come from. Okay. And as we submit our soul now to our born-again spirit, our new nature, then our soul takes on more and more of the life that is already in our spirit and complete in our spirit. To complicate it or not to complicate it, but to bring a little more understanding, the spirit and the soul operating together is referred to as the heart in the Bible. All right, so we have a spirit, have a soul, live in a body, and the spirit and soul are the immortal parts of our makeup. Immortal, which means again, they'll go, they're unseen, they leave the body right away when we die, experience physical death right away. All right, spirit and soul are immortal parts, invisible parts. The spirit is primary, the soul is secondary. Sometimes we refer to the soul as the personality of a person. Okay, it's what we get to kind of interact with. But you can't leave out spirit in that either. Amen. Again, got to stop with that, or I'll just compound it more and more. The reason I go that far, again, is to get you to a point where, again, you're I'm encouraging you, you're not referring to yourself as that old sinner or that old creature in any way. And I have a good example for that. We won't take a lot of time to do it tonight, but Romans the seventh chapter, the great apostle Paul talks about the struggle that he's fighting still as a born-again believer. And he talks about the new him. He talks about the new Passion Translation. If you have that, he actually talks about the new identity, the terminology we we use tonight. He talks about the new identity and how that's opposed to some things that are happening in his mind and in his flesh. And it is time at times he just goes, What in the world is going on? Why am I thinking this way? Why do I want to do these things? Why do I want to still make these old choices? And so he talks about the struggle that's still going on on the inside of him. Pastor, I thought you said we don't have two natures. You don't. You have one nature. If you're born again, you have the nature of God living on the inside of you. You're not God. You're a son of God. You're a child of God. You're a daughter of God. You're not God. But you're you're a child, you're born of the Spirit. You're born of God. You have that nature. So what's going on? Where is it going on? It's going on in your soul still, and it's going on in your body or in your flesh still. Old habits. I just call it the residue, say residue. I just call it the residue of the old man. And it just tries to rise up. It's again, it's how we learn to live. We learned how to live apart from God until the time we made Jesus Lord of our life, right? And so there's some of that old thinking. That's why the Bible says we need to be renewed in our minds. There's some of those old feelings. We don't want to do some of the old stuff, the old sin that Jesus freed us from, you know, that just rises up every now and then. You'll be sitting in church singing a worship song, and it stuff can cross through your soul and cross through your mind and work to distract you from the moment that you should be having with God. It's just very real. The struggle is real, right? But the only way you're going to gain on that and gain freedom and victory over that is to emphasize what God has done for you in your spirit. And that's one of the reasons there's so much said in the New Testament, especially the epistles, which are the writings of the apostles, not the wives of the apostles. My pastor, Charles Neiman, said he was so Bible illiterate when he came to know Jesus. He thought the epistles were the wives of the apostles. Still funny. Still funny. But the epistles are the letters of the apostles to the church. And so much of the epistles is talking about who you are now in Christ Jesus and how to gain ground in living the abundant life. And some of it's really practical. Some of it you have to pray for understanding about, I mean, for days, for weeks, for months before you gain some understanding. The language is just so different. Heaven has a different language than what we have. The kingdom of God has a different way of thinking, a different way of doing things than what we were used to. So don't, again, try not to get frustrated, but by all means, don't start saying something like, even if you say it different, don't say this. I'm an old sinner saved by grace. You're either an old sinner still, and you need to be saved by grace through faith, or you are now a brand new creation in Christ Jesus, and God has taken your sin away. He made a decision not to impute it in Christ Jesus. It's not just covered over with the blood of Christ, it has been done away with. Amen. So nothing separates you from the love of God now or into the future. Read Romans 8 when you get ready to go to bed tonight. Paul just goes on about the love of God. He said, God loves you so much. Know this that you'll never be separated from the love of God. He starts listing out all these things in our world that work to separate us from enjoying the love of God. He says, Don't give any place to that. It's all a lie. God loves you. He loves you now, he's always loved you, even before you were a child of his. He loved us all while we were sinners. But now he loves you as a child, and he will forever be your best friend. He will forever, ever love you. Romans 7 20 says this. So if my behavior contradicts my desires to do good, this is Paul writing about that conflict in Romans 7, verse 20. He says, So if my behavior contradicts my desires to do good, I must conclude that it's not my true identity doing it, but the unwelcome intruder of sin hindering me from being who I really am. Say it out loud with me, I am the righteousness of God in Christ. If you're born again, say I am in Christ. Amen. Can you stand one more? We won't have any time for questions. Is that okay? Let's go into one more. The next one. Number two, we are enabled to become. This is so beautiful. I'm glad we can stop on this one. We are enabled to become the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. We become partakers of his powerful ministry to us, the Holy Spirit's and through us for ministry. It's to us and through us. The Holy Spirit could not have come to indwell us until we were born again and placed in right standing with God. It's one of the points that Jesus made to his disciples before he died on the cross. He was preparing them for his leaving, for his death. And of course, some objected to it, some didn't understand it, some just didn't say anything about it. But he said to them, the Holy Spirit is coming. He's going to be another comforter. He's different in number than I am. In other words, one of us, there'll be two comforters. I've comforted you, but now another comforter is coming. He's different in number, but the same in essence, which speaks of the deity of the Holy Spirit as well as the deity of Jesus. So the Holy Spirit is also a part of the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Again, it's unexplainable. It's just what the scripture teaches, and we accept that. They are all one, and they are all God in essence or in nature, not three different gods. One God, three different uh personalities, three different persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Christians, again, that's basic. Amen. So that's really, really basic. Take that home with you. But take this home with you as well. That what Jesus was saying to his disciples then applies to us now. He said, the Holy Spirit, who you know, because he's been with you. Say with you. He said, the Holy Spirit, who you know, he's been with you, shall be pointing to the future, specifically the resurrection of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Advent at Pentecost. He said, the Holy Spirit, you know, because he's been with you. You've interacted with him, you've seen his works, but he's coming after I leave, he's coming to be on the inside of you.

unknown 54:20

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 54:21

Now, come on, somebody, we just take that for granted just a little bit. That the Holy Spirit Himself has come at new birth, and he lives, abides on the inside of us. A lot of days we don't feel it, but it doesn't change it. Listen, have you learned by now if you live by your feelings, you're just gonna be on a roller coaster nonstop. Up and down, mostly down, climbing up. You know, it's gonna be tough, tougher than it has to be. But God has sent the Holy Spirit, and now he comes to abide on the inside of us. That could not have happened apart from you being made the righteousness of God. And I'll close with this verse of scripture, John 14, or scriptures, verses 16, 17, and 18. Jesus again said this: I will pray the Father, he will give you another helper, that meet he may abide with you forever. Say that out loud, forever. The spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you. I love the amplifier. There's a verse in the book of Hebrews where just God is quoted as saying, I will never know, never ever leave you or forsake you. It's important to God for you to know that promise and to live in its reality. To always know again, even when you feel like heaven is brass, when you pray, God's not hearing you pray, your prayers are not doing a thing, or when you just don't feel like walking with God, you know, on a certain day, or you've fallen hard in your walk with Christ, and you don't you begin to think, can I be forgiven for that, for what I just did. It's important for God uh for you to know, to God, it's important to God for you to know that regardless of what happens to you circumstantially as a child of his, that he doesn't walk away. You'll never face trouble alone unless you decide to do it. And even if you decide to do it, he's still right there with you. God doesn't come at you like this, he comes at you like this. Just look at the garden. Adam and Eve committed the sin of high treason against God. They knew that what they were about to do was wrong. There was no second guessing. It wasn't an accident. They didn't stumble into sin, they chose it. They chose to rebel against God. And so their fall was great. But the one hurting most in the garden, believe it or not, I want you to believe this, was not Adam and Eve. Things immediately began to change for them. They experienced spiritual death. They didn't know what that was, but it overtook their spirit. All they knew was life, and now suddenly this thing called death, and God told them they would die in a plural form, literally from the Hebrew, in dying, you will die. Which meant that they would die spiritually and then begin to die in their soul, begin to die in their body, begin the earth around them would begin to die. What had been fruitful became barren. What cooperated with them from the earth and from the ground when they planted a seed now became hard, became laborous, and only came by the sweat of their brow. They didn't know any of that. But listen to me, as we close tonight, as hard as that was for Adam and Eve to experience, and how it is terrible. It was worse for God. Because what God had planned all along was this lifelong, eternity-long friendship, relationship with them. They were going to work together as partners and take his glory throughout the known world and the unknown world. It broke God's heart, but notice what God did, and I'm done. God didn't turn his back and run from them. They ran from him. He immediately, scripture points it out, it's real clear, he was right there to ask questions. And you say, well, why does God have to ask questions? Doesn't he know everything? Yeah. You got to pretty much know this. Carry it with you into the rest of your Christian life when God asks you a question. He's not looking for information. He wants to be involved with you. Whether you succeed or whether you fall flat on your face, he wants to talk to you. He wants to help you. He wants to clothe you. He wants to supply whatever it is you need. And God has done that successfully. Praise God in Christ Jesus. He's taken care of it. He took care of the mess once and for all. And what we're just learning to do in moments like this, times like this, church, other times, when you do it, is we're learning that. We want to learn more of that. We want to know more of that. We want to be filled. That's why Paul prayed that, be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual revelation, wisdom, and understanding so that we can be, he said, fruitful in every good work and walk worthy, he said, of the Lord unto all pleasing. Amen. Should get anything out of this tonight? I'm sorry I didn't leave you any time for questions, but I'll leave you sometime next week. Okay? Let's stand our feet. Let's be careful to pray over the word now before we leave. Before we go to lay down, get ready for good night's rest and then work tomorrow. Again, the Bible teaches this. I believe it's literal. I do. That when the word of God is sown, Satan comes immediately, say it immediately. He comes immediately to wipe our memories, uh, wipe it from our memories, to take it away from us, to steal it before it has any chance to get on the inside of the heart and begin to grow underground at first and at some point spring up, and then at another point begin to bear fruit some 30, some 60, some 100fold. Satan's not smarter than we are, but it seems in this case he might be. He knows it's easier to pluck up a tree when it's a seed than it is to let it grow.

unknown 1:01:57

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:58

And then try to take it down. Well, let's be smarter than Satan is tonight. And let's value what we've been taught. Let's value it enough to go back to it, meditate on it, think on it. You know, a lot of information tonight, but God spoke probably one thing or two, maybe three things really, boy, really impacted you. Be sure and write that down. That's the Holy Spirit starting something on the inside of you that he wants to take to a deeper place. And it may be an answer to something you're facing now or you're about to face. I mean, you know, God most times, I would say all times, he actually, because it's his nature, he goes before us, before we ever have a need. And then when we have it, the provision is already there for us. A good shepherd, it's in my book, by the way, the good shepherd does that. The good shepherd always went out ahead of his flock where he would be taking the flock. He went out days before, weeks before, months before, and he prepared a table before them in the presence of their enemies. He made the provision before they ever walked there together. So let's pray. Father, thank you for the seed of your word tonight. We are careful. Satan comes immediately. Well, we act immediately. We act right now, in this very moment, to value and place value on what we heard tonight. We may not have understood some of it, but we still value it. We still place value on it. We believe that in the moments, the days, the weeks ahead of us, the Holy Spirit will continue to unfold these truths to us about being the righteousness of God in Christ, having a new identity, having new life, having power over sin, etc. He'll continue to unfold those things to us and to make them livable for us. They will be practical to us. In Jesus' name, we thank you for it tonight. God, we thank you for your protection from any evil that is planned against us or that might try to move in on us as we travel home tonight or as we get ready for bed or as we sleep tonight or start a new day tomorrow. We give the enemy no place, and instead we give the angels of God place to do their ministry, which is to keep us from even dashing a foot against a stone. So we thank you for it. We receive what we heard tonight, we value it, we choose to do that, and we thank you. It will grow up on the inside of us and eventually bear fruit. In Jesus' name, we all agree together and pray. Everybody said, Amen. Thank you.