SPEAKER_01: Where we were last Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: Luke chapter 9, starting with verse 22.
SPEAKER_01: And he said, The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed, and on the third day be raised to life.
SPEAKER_01: Then he said to them all, Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, and take up their cross daily and follow me.
SPEAKER_01: For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.
SPEAKER_01: And now over in Romans chapter six.
SPEAKER_01: Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him, for we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again.
SPEAKER_01: Death no longer has mastery over him.
SPEAKER_01: The death that he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God.
SPEAKER_01: In the same way.
SPEAKER_01: Count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And a couple pages beyond the first two verses of Romans chapter 8.
SPEAKER_01: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Jesus Christ, the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.
SPEAKER_01: I mentioned last week that Pastor Jason has allowed me a couple of Sundays in a row to share some things with you, and that I have been led to share some things about what the Lord has been teaching me as of late about the day-to-day Christian life.
SPEAKER_01: I want to hasten to say that you should in no way take me to be saying that I have arrived myself, because I have not.
SPEAKER_01: I am on this journey of learning how to live in Christ myself.
SPEAKER_01: But I will say that the Lord is giving me a bit of a better understanding of what this means, this day-to-day life in Christ, and a better understanding of what we should be aspiring to.
SPEAKER_01: But as I said last week, I have I have really struggled with putting these two sermons together more than I have before when I've been privileged to stand here.
SPEAKER_01: Part of it's been because I tried, I had too many issues in mind, and that's a recipe for disaster when you put a sermon together.
SPEAKER_01: But it's also because a couple of the issues I'm dealing with seem so unrelated at first blush, but they are quite related, in fact.
SPEAKER_01: And I'll be honest, I was naive enough to try to put a lot of things together and thought that I could do it in just a couple sermons.
SPEAKER_01: But when I listened back to my sermon from last week, um I will tell you that I was tremendously unimpressed with my flow of that sermon.
SPEAKER_01: But that was not the Lord's fault, that was my fault, and I feel that he wants me to press on in the same area.
SPEAKER_01: So we're going to do that, but I want to review last week very quickly.
SPEAKER_01: Frankly, this whole thing that I'm trying to share with you began some months ago with conversations with three other dear, dear brothers in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Guys who are much younger Christians than I am, but guys that when I am with them, I feel like the apprentice.
SPEAKER_01: I really do.
SPEAKER_01: These guys have gone far and they've gone deep.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm learning things from the Lord through them.
SPEAKER_01: We talk a lot about a lot of things, and we talk regularly, and one of the things we've talked about is the state of the church in America.
SPEAKER_01: And when I talk about church today now, I'm not going to be talking necessarily about this local body.
SPEAKER_01: We're not perfect here, don't get me wrong.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm very thankful for this church because this is a church where the name of Jesus Christ is still lifted up.
SPEAKER_01: And we are still encouraged to walk day by day in the power of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: But that's not the way it is all over, is it?
SPEAKER_01: And we have noticed these guys and I who have talked, occasionally we talk about this and we say, man, the church is getting so secularized today.
SPEAKER_01: It has become so terribly, terribly influenced by both the opinions and the behavior of the society around us.
SPEAKER_01: Let me give you an example.
SPEAKER_01: Two years ago, 2017, study is done amongst self-professing evangelicals.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Twenty-four percent of them believe that there is spiritual energy in physical objects.
SPEAKER_01: Seriously?
SPEAKER_01: Thirty-three percent believe in psychics.
SPEAKER_01: 19% believe in reincarnation, and 18% believe in astrology.
SPEAKER_01: I think that's astonishing.
SPEAKER_01: And the church itself seems to have responded by just over-emphasizing and becoming at least as focused on entertaining people and setting attendance records rather than saving souls and building them up in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Gospel seems to often be preached as a loose philosophy that offers a happier, more abundant life, neither of which are defined biblically.
SPEAKER_01: That instead of offering the historic death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, as the solution to our personal sin problem.
SPEAKER_01: And in addition, when people are saved, it seems they are often just dropped off and say, Well, have a good time.
SPEAKER_01: And little or no instruction is given as to how to live the Christian life day by day, in and of the power of the Holy Spirit and led by Him.
SPEAKER_01: And all of this leads me to wonder, how in the world did we get so off track?
SPEAKER_01: What is wrong or what is missing?
SPEAKER_01: I don't know which question is the proper one.
SPEAKER_01: But when we compare this to the New Testament church, what we read about in Acts or what we read about the church in church history, where is the power?
SPEAKER_01: Where is the attitude that we are just aliens passing through this place?
SPEAKER_01: What's happened?
SPEAKER_01: What's happened to the notion of a daily walk with the Lord and the pursuit of inner holiness?
SPEAKER_01: Where is it that we're going off the rails?
SPEAKER_01: Or what is it that's wrong?
SPEAKER_01: And these are some of the things that have fostered what I'm trying to communicate today and last Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: And there are several things that are worthy of discussion, I think, and they've been hard for me to put together and make them flow at all.
SPEAKER_01: But I've tried to get it down to two things this morning, okay?
SPEAKER_01: And the first is this whether it is the church overall or us as individuals, whether or not we use fancy terms like worldview or framework or things like that, we need to go to the scriptures and find the truth about what is.
SPEAKER_01: What is?
SPEAKER_01: What are we?
SPEAKER_01: Who are we?
SPEAKER_01: Because unless we get those things straight, we're bound to go off the rails, both the Christian church and the individual Christian, because the Bible's instructions, its admonitions, even its promises will not make as much sense as they should or could if we had it right.
SPEAKER_01: And the second thing, and I think it's closely related, is that we need to see what the Bible says about how we ought to live as Christians.
SPEAKER_01: What is the life that Jesus Christ calls us to?
SPEAKER_01: What does it look like?
SPEAKER_01: How do you do it?
SPEAKER_01: What does true spirituality look like?
SPEAKER_01: And again, this is no place for speculation or opinion.
SPEAKER_01: We need to go to the Word of God and see what it says.
SPEAKER_01: So last Sunday we took a quick look at a passage from Luke that described the sermon or the uh the Mount of Transfiguration episode.
SPEAKER_01: And the reason we did that was because it's full of a lot of stuff.
SPEAKER_01: It's not exhaustive, but it does give us some observations we can make, and we can say it, well, this must be true and that must be true, and we can set those things up, and then we can compare those things to what society is trying to tell us.
SPEAKER_01: Some of the things that we that we found are they bear on what I think and what I believe, and they certainly bear on what the man on the street may or may not think or believe, also.
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about what some of these guys call true truth.
SPEAKER_01: Here's some things we observed from last week.
SPEAKER_01: First of all, it's the Mount of Transfiguration, right?
SPEAKER_01: Peter, James, and John get to go with Jesus up on a mountain.
SPEAKER_01: They get to witness him praying, they see his face radiate, his clothes radiate.
SPEAKER_01: And then two guys just show up out of nowhere, Moses and Elijah, and they talk with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Then a cloud comes, and the Father, God the Father, speaks through the cloud and he says, This is my beloved son, listen to him.
SPEAKER_01: And then it disappears, and they're alone with Jesus again.
SPEAKER_01: The guys are gone.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's like I said last week, that's kind of spooky.
SPEAKER_01: There's stuff going on there, right?
SPEAKER_01: So one of the first things we can observe is, look, there is more out there than just what we can see and touch.
SPEAKER_01: We live in a world that is both seen and unseen simultaneously.
SPEAKER_01: It is material and immaterial simultaneously.
SPEAKER_01: And there is a spiritual element to it.
SPEAKER_01: That's pretty apparent.
SPEAKER_01: And furthermore, this unseen side of reality, tell you what, it's it's it flows right along through time and space, right with the rest of what we can see and feel and touch.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I also am convinced, as I bet you are, that the Bible is true.
SPEAKER_01: This is truth, okay?
SPEAKER_01: So if there is a reality out there that is both seen and unseen, wouldn't it make sense that once in a while we read about some stuff that's out of the ordinary?
SPEAKER_01: Shouldn't it?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: And so, since the Bible is true, we should expect to see some stuff like that.
SPEAKER_01: And frankly, there was a river and a sea that did part.
SPEAKER_01: Jonah did spend three days in the belly of a whale or a big fish.
SPEAKER_01: There was a worldwide flood.
SPEAKER_01: A virgin did conceive.
SPEAKER_01: God did become incarnate.
SPEAKER_01: And he died and rose again.
SPEAKER_01: Those things really happened.
SPEAKER_01: They are not just ideas.
SPEAKER_01: And the last thing we we looked at in that passage was the great care that Luke took to record what Jesus and Moses and Elijah talked about.
SPEAKER_01: They talked about the coming death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because they had skin in that game.
SPEAKER_01: And it's the focal point of human history.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just an idea.
SPEAKER_01: It really happened, and our salvation depends on it.
SPEAKER_01: So from that short passage, there were things that we could observe that we could stand them up and say, how does this square with what society tries to teach us?
SPEAKER_01: Society, on one hand, tries to teach us that we are nothing more, as I said last week, than the latest evolutionary iteration of matter plus time plus chance, and there is nothing else out there.
SPEAKER_01: Yet at the same time, society over here says, whoa, I love this spiritual stuff.
SPEAKER_01: Dalai Lama and Anne Margaret and New Age philosophies and spiritism of every sort.
SPEAKER_01: These don't mix.
SPEAKER_01: Those are ideas that cannot possibly exist together, but society tries to tell us that they can.
SPEAKER_01: And so we as Christians and the man on the street stand in the middle of this.
SPEAKER_01: And the man on the street who does not know Christ and doesn't follow this book has no idea what the truth can be.
SPEAKER_01: Because not only is he getting cross-mixed messages, they're wrong on both sides.
SPEAKER_01: We've got to get back to the truth.
SPEAKER_01: We've got to know what is, because unless we do, the questions we have, and the promises of Scripture and the instructions and so on and so forth will not make as much sense as they could or should.
SPEAKER_01: But sad to say, we are influenced by society, aren't we?
SPEAKER_01: Even the churches.
SPEAKER_01: Bits and pieces of the world's philosophy seep in under the door like a fog.
SPEAKER_01: Else, why the results from the survey that I just read if that wasn't true?
SPEAKER_01: And we as believers ought to be people that know better because we've got this book.
SPEAKER_01: And that's why last week's sermon was partially titled, What Are We?
SPEAKER_01: Who Are We?
SPEAKER_01: We need to know these things so we can be square.
SPEAKER_01: My grandpa used to say in Norwegian, we've got to be bent upene.
SPEAKER_01: We went straight up and down.
SPEAKER_01: I think that's what it meant.
SPEAKER_01: But here we are as Christians, saved by grace through faith in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: We are secure in our destiny.
SPEAKER_01: We know what the truth is.
SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
SPEAKER_01: We still have a life that we need to live between now and the time when I die or the Lord returns.
SPEAKER_01: Whichever comes first.
SPEAKER_01: Living in a society that just has these things so wrong.
SPEAKER_01: And so the next question that I was asking in last week's title was now what?
SPEAKER_01: Despite how clumsy my transition was, I wanted to get to, okay, now what do we do?
SPEAKER_01: How do we go about this?
SPEAKER_01: How do you live this life in Christ?
SPEAKER_01: Well, the answer is that depends.
SPEAKER_01: You see, we can coast along in our own strength and through our own efforts.
SPEAKER_01: But maybe we should heed the scriptures and pursue true discipleship in Christ, like he has called us to.
SPEAKER_01: Because frankly, the the former is possible, but it sure isn't the life that Christ has called us to.
SPEAKER_01: So what kind of life has he called us to?
SPEAKER_01: Let's go back to Luke chapter 9.
SPEAKER_01: In the Mount of Transfiguration passage that we talked about last week, remember that God the Father spoke through a cloud and he said, This is my beloved Son, listen to him.
SPEAKER_01: Well, in the verses we read this morning, we read something of what Jesus did say, something that we should listen to.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, when referring to his own death and resurrection, said, The Son of Man must be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed, and on the third day be raised to life.
SPEAKER_01: And then he said, Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.
SPEAKER_01: In Luke 14, he says the same thing.
SPEAKER_01: Now please note that Jesus is not talking about salvation.
SPEAKER_01: He is talking about discipleship.
SPEAKER_01: He's basically saying, hey guys, do you want to get serious about this?
SPEAKER_01: Do you want more than just a certificate that says you are also on the team?
SPEAKER_01: You want to be on the field to play?
SPEAKER_01: Do you want to get in the battle?
SPEAKER_01: Do you really want to be my disciple?
SPEAKER_01: A true disciple of Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: And he advises us that we ought to count the cost.
SPEAKER_01: Because a disciple is going to have to take up a cross, his own cross daily.
SPEAKER_01: It means to follow Jesus all the way through rejection, death, and resurrection.
SPEAKER_01: There is, according to Jesus, no other way to be his disciple.
SPEAKER_01: And there's an order here.
SPEAKER_01: Rejected, slain, raised.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus wasn't raised until after he was.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus wasn't raised until after he was slain.
SPEAKER_01: He wasn't slain until after he was rejected.
SPEAKER_01: And if we are to follow Jesus, first order of business is that we must be willing to be rejected, and we must be willing to die to ourselves and to sin in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: We're not going to get to be perfect.
SPEAKER_01: This is not a suggestion of sinless perfection.
SPEAKER_01: Far from it.
SPEAKER_01: But we must be willing to be rejected, willing to die to sin and to self.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I'm as guilty as anybody about using this biblical language, right?
SPEAKER_01: What does it mean to die to sin?
SPEAKER_01: What does it mean to die to self?
SPEAKER_01: We don't talk like that anymore, do we?
SPEAKER_01: It's it's I find it hard to understand those things until you know someone explains them to me or I read something or whatever.
SPEAKER_01: What is this death that is being talked about in the scripture?
SPEAKER_01: Well, it is that in comparison to our love for and our obedience to Christ, all these other things we should be disinterested in, unaffected by, no longer obligated to, no longer subservient to any of this.
SPEAKER_01: We need to put these things to death.
SPEAKER_01: Both sin and self.
SPEAKER_01: Now understand, there is absolutely nothing redemptive about this death to sin and to self.
SPEAKER_01: But as a disciple, we are to set ourselves apart.
SPEAKER_01: We should be people who are set apart in terms of what we believe and how we behave, what we cherish, who we serve.
SPEAKER_01: And note there has to be a willingness on our part.
SPEAKER_01: A willingness to be rejected, a willingness to die to sin and to self, a willingness to take a stand.
SPEAKER_01: I don't get rejected unless I took a stand.
SPEAKER_01: If I don't take a stand, there's nothing to reject me for.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have to look for fights.
SPEAKER_01: The Apostle Paul says that we're supposed to live at peace with all men if at all possible.
SPEAKER_01: But we are not to acquiesce to society's views or standards.
SPEAKER_01: We're to stand for truth, stand for our God, and stand for our Savior.
SPEAKER_01: You know, think about how many times a day do we encounter situations where we could take a stand for our Savior and our Lord?
SPEAKER_01: How many times can you and I think, even just recently, when we could have demurred, or we could have ignored something, or we could have not laughed, or we could have said something in defense of our Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe broke into a conversation and say, Yeah, I don't know, I don't see it that way.
SPEAKER_01: Think about this.
SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
SPEAKER_01: Actually, a lot of us get pretty good at that, don't we?
SPEAKER_01: You know, as I've as I've gotten older, I'm I'm not as afraid to do that as I used to.
SPEAKER_01: I don't care anymore, people think, right?
SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
SPEAKER_01: That's just the easy part because that's just external stuff.
SPEAKER_01: That's easy.
SPEAKER_01: And I can't even get that right.
SPEAKER_01: But if we are to follow Jesus, if we intend to pursue his level of righteousness, we've got to get to the inner things.
SPEAKER_01: You know what?
SPEAKER_01: When we get to the inner things, here's what we run into.
SPEAKER_01: We run into a battle with our old man, with the inner man, with our flesh.
SPEAKER_01: And while the Bible clearly teaches that our spirits are made alive when we come to faith in Christ, it teaches just as clearly that even then we are still very much alive in the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: The Apostle Paul in Romans 7 says, Nothing good dwells in my flesh, but in fact, sin and evil is still present within me.
SPEAKER_01: This is Paul when he's writing scripture saying this.
SPEAKER_01: This is inside stuff.
SPEAKER_01: And we can be fooled.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, prior to his conversion, Paul himself was fooled.
SPEAKER_01: Read Philippians 3, where Paul is so he's so honest and so transparent.
SPEAKER_01: He says that if anyone ought to have had confidence in the flesh, it was me.
SPEAKER_01: He says, as to the righteousness found in the law, I was blameless.
SPEAKER_01: Are you serious, Paul?
SPEAKER_01: How can you say that?
SPEAKER_01: You're the guy that wrote Romans 7.
SPEAKER_01: Where was that, where'd that struggle come from?
SPEAKER_01: If you say you're blameless.
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's because Paul, even though he was the Pharisee of the Pharisees, he had misunderstood the law too.
SPEAKER_01: And he writes about when the Lord finally showed him his sinfulness by showing him what the commandment that says, do not covet, really was all about.
SPEAKER_01: It's about an inner righteousness, and it's the commandment that is first broken before all others.
SPEAKER_01: And suddenly Paul saw how sinful he was.
SPEAKER_01: And in fact, when he writes to Timothy, he then calls himself the chief of sinners.
SPEAKER_01: Speaking of inner righteousness, think of our Lord himself in Matthew when he preached the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_01: He says, look, you commit murder when you are angry with your brother in your heart.
SPEAKER_01: You commit adultery when you look on a woman to lust after her.
SPEAKER_01: He says, You're supposed to love your enemies.
SPEAKER_01: No big deal if you love those who love you back.
SPEAKER_01: Even sinners do that, he said.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is talking about our willingness to lose our fleshly desires, to put them underfoot.
SPEAKER_01: Back in Luke in chapter 9, he says, whoever wishes to save his own life shall lose it.
SPEAKER_01: Whoever loses his life for my sake is the one that will save it.
SPEAKER_01: And he's talking about, he's talking about our soul.
SPEAKER_01: He's talking about being willing to lose that for the sake of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Those things of our fleshly soul and self that are, son of a gun, they're still hanging around.
SPEAKER_01: Even after I become a Christian, even after the Spirit has given me life, it still are still hanging around.
SPEAKER_01: These are the things that we are in a battle with in our flesh.
SPEAKER_01: This is inside stuff.
SPEAKER_01: Let's be honest.
SPEAKER_01: External righteousness is difficult enough in itself.
SPEAKER_01: And through our own efforts, you know, I would never, never even think that I could be perfect in that regard.
SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
SPEAKER_01: We can get pretty good at it.
SPEAKER_01: I can get pretty good at fooling people.
SPEAKER_01: I can even fool myself with my little lists of do's and don'ts, right?
SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
SPEAKER_01: I can keep a list of do's and don'ts all day long, and I don't ever have to bow my heart.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Jesus wants.
SPEAKER_01: We can look good to the world around us, but you know what?
SPEAKER_01: We can be just like the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_01: What did Jesus say about them?
SPEAKER_01: He said they're full of dead men's bones.
SPEAKER_01: And the Lord in the Old Testament called that kind of righteousness filthy rags.
SPEAKER_01: It gets tough when we realize that Jesus is talking about the rejection of ourselves and our sinful self inside.
SPEAKER_01: This is inside stuff.
SPEAKER_01: So we find ourselves as believers who would like to walk with Christ, we find ourselves in a dilemma.
SPEAKER_01: It sounds pretty dire.
SPEAKER_01: It's clear that we as Christians just are absolutely unable to live a righteous life, as righteous a life as Christ desires.
SPEAKER_01: So what's the answer?
SPEAKER_01: Well, the answer is we've got to put to death both sin and self.
SPEAKER_01: The good news is that when the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified, our sin and our guilt were crucified with him.
SPEAKER_01: We thought about that?
SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, our dilemma is already solved.
SPEAKER_01: Think about Colossians 2.
SPEAKER_01: If you can think about that in your mind, or if you can't go there.
SPEAKER_01: Colossians 2, it says that our transgressions are already forgiven.
SPEAKER_01: It says that the certificate of debt that consisted of hostile decrees against us were taken out of the way by Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: It says he nailed it to the cross.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, in the eyes of God, we hung on that cross right along with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And these sins were paid for.
SPEAKER_01: And someday we will be completely free from all this sin and all these selfish desires.
SPEAKER_01: But there's the rub.
SPEAKER_01: It isn't someday yet, is it?
SPEAKER_01: What about this present dilemma then?
SPEAKER_01: We're still at that, we're still in this place where we're living it out, and the rubber is still meeting the road.
SPEAKER_01: This is where the good news comes in.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible answers that dilemma with two words and one person.
SPEAKER_01: The two words are consider and present, depending on your translation, I get that, but consider and present, and the one person is the Holy Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible makes no bones about it.
SPEAKER_01: Even those of us who are saved can still be very much influenced by the flesh, and the sinful desires of the flesh are powerful.
SPEAKER_01: In our own strength, we aren't any match for them.
SPEAKER_01: But while we're alive, we have a choice.
SPEAKER_01: We can stumble and bumble along in apathy or indifference.
SPEAKER_01: We can try to do our best.
SPEAKER_01: But how much better would it be if we took the Word of God seriously and aspired to live the kind of life we ought to live?
SPEAKER_01: How about we just put that flesh to death?
SPEAKER_01: And live a life that is being sanctified more and more every day.
SPEAKER_01: This is the kind of life that we are called to.
SPEAKER_01: But how?
SPEAKER_01: Back to one of our other texts.
SPEAKER_01: Go to Romans 6.11, which I believe we read.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible tells us that we should consider.
SPEAKER_01: Other translations say count.
SPEAKER_01: I like consider because that's what's in the old New American standard, right?
SPEAKER_01: Consider yourselves being dead to sin.
SPEAKER_01: And then two verses later, we are told that we are to present ourselves to God as alive from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: And six chapters later, in chapter 12, Paul urges us to present our bodies as living sacrifices acceptable to God.
SPEAKER_01: Now, doesn't that sound a lot like what Jesus said?
SPEAKER_01: Wasn't he the one that was talking about being willing to be rejected and die?
SPEAKER_01: And now we're being told to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
SPEAKER_01: I'm convinced that we need help even in this regard because I need help wanting to.
SPEAKER_01: I need help to be willing.
SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
SPEAKER_01: We've got help.
SPEAKER_01: Guess what?
SPEAKER_01: We have a helper.
SPEAKER_01: Before Jesus Christ left, before he ascended, he told his disciples that after he went and after he was glorified, he was going to send a helper, the Holy Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_01: He called him the helper.
SPEAKER_01: He lives inside us, like we talked about last week.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says that the Lord knows our frame.
SPEAKER_01: He knows we need help, and the Spirit is willing and able.
SPEAKER_01: He would love nothing more than to help me put to death sin and self.
SPEAKER_01: He'd actually love nothing more than to help me be willing to put to death sin and self.
SPEAKER_01: We need to ask for this daily because you know what?
SPEAKER_01: The flesh is always anxious to reclaim territory that it might have lost.
SPEAKER_01: This is the order that is prescribed by Jesus, and it's further explained by Paul.
SPEAKER_01: Death to sin and to self, to say daily, to say daily, no, you don't control me anymore.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Whatever it is.
SPEAKER_01: You're no longer my master.
SPEAKER_01: And then turn to Jesus Christ and his agent, the Holy Spirit, to give us the power to defeat that, whatever it is.
SPEAKER_01: Now we didn't read through it, but we read the first two verses.
SPEAKER_01: But Romans chapter 8, it's just full of this stuff.
SPEAKER_01: We read the second verse, it says that through Jesus Christ, the law of the Spirit of life has set us free from the law of sin and death.
SPEAKER_01: But in the middle of that chapter, if you take the time to read it, it says that it's the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, it's the Holy Spirit who gives us life, it's the Holy Spirit by which we have the deeds of the body put to death.
SPEAKER_01: He says we're led by the Spirit, and in fact, it's the Spirit that bears witness to our Spirit that we're children of God.
SPEAKER_01: My goodness, it seems like the Holy Spirit is pretty busy in the life of a disciple.
SPEAKER_01: You know what?
SPEAKER_01: This is true spirituality.
SPEAKER_01: This is you, this is me, as a physical and spiritual being wrapped up into one that has God Himself living within us, the Holy Spirit of God in its one of its many temples, in his, excuse me, one of his many temples.
SPEAKER_01: That's spirituality.
SPEAKER_01: I don't need this stuff from the Far East and the mystics and all that.
SPEAKER_01: I, boy, this is this is the real deal.
SPEAKER_01: This is spirituality.
SPEAKER_01: It's seen and it's unseen.
SPEAKER_01: It's got Spielberg beat hands down.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is exciting, but it is not easy.
SPEAKER_01: There will be splinters in each of our crosses.
SPEAKER_01: Count on it.
SPEAKER_01: But when we are willing to allow the Holy Spirit to lead us, to empower us, to comfort us, to show us more of Jesus and glorify him through us, man, that sounds exciting.
SPEAKER_01: And I said this the first hour.
SPEAKER_01: You look around, you've got, and I don't know all of you, but I know some of you, and we've all got, we're all different.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord leads us in different ways.
SPEAKER_01: I said this morning that it was about a month ago, I was uh standing around visiting after one of Pastor Jason, Jason's discipleship or uh leadership meetings.
SPEAKER_01: Visiting with the guy, and he was just just excited about what he was reading in, I think it was first or second Kings.
SPEAKER_01: Oh man, I can't remember the last time I read anything in Kings.
SPEAKER_01: I've been in the Colossians and Romans.
SPEAKER_01: Come on, what do you what's wrong with you?
SPEAKER_01: You should be over here.
SPEAKER_01: No, he's over there.
SPEAKER_01: But the Spirit had led him in that direction.
SPEAKER_01: The Spirit had led me over here.
SPEAKER_01: Think about where we we might be led to give.
SPEAKER_01: You know, a ministry where I might have a heart for it, you might have a heart for something different.
SPEAKER_01: The Spirit is leading us.
SPEAKER_01: To me, that makes sense that he does that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_01: Then I thought of music.
SPEAKER_01: Some of us like the old hymns, others like the more contemporary stuff.
SPEAKER_01: And I thought, man, it's neat the way the Lord can even lead us in music.
SPEAKER_01: And then I thought, no, that's not possible because there's no explanation for Country Western.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot, you cannot tell me the Spirit can lead anybody in that direction.
SPEAKER_01: My point is, the Spirit is able to take care of us, to lead us, to empower us, any and all of us.
SPEAKER_01: And he's going to get the most out of us when we are willing to let him fill us rather than keeping him back in some deep dark corner down by my kidney.
SPEAKER_01: Never letting him come out to see the light of day.
SPEAKER_01: 2 Corinthians chapter 4.
SPEAKER_01: Let me read you something there.
SPEAKER_01: Paul is talking or writing in verse 10, he says, I always carry about in the body, that's his body, the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.
SPEAKER_01: For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Are you kidding me?
SPEAKER_01: The life of Jesus can be manifest in me, in my body?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus can be seen in and through me seriously?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: It's one of the reasons we were created was to reflect the image of God.
SPEAKER_01: But isn't that awesome?
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that just too much to comprehend?
SPEAKER_01: But there's more.
SPEAKER_01: Take some time, sometime, to read through the middle of Colossians chapter 2.
SPEAKER_01: See there that in the mind of God, we have in fact already been made complete.
SPEAKER_01: Not only does God consider us to have died with Christ already, he's cut away our sinful flesh.
SPEAKER_01: And he has already considered us as resurrected, as raised up.
SPEAKER_01: So when Paul gets to the first verse in chapter 3, he says, Since you have been raised up, set your mind on things above where Christ is.
SPEAKER_01: It's as if we had been raised and gone to heaven and come back.
SPEAKER_01: If that really happened, how much appeal would the world have?
SPEAKER_01: If I'd seen heaven?
SPEAKER_01: What a change of perspective that would be.
SPEAKER_01: How much easier would it be to say no to sin, no to self?
SPEAKER_01: How much easier to die daily, to see ourselves as aliens, to really not care what society thought about me, right?
SPEAKER_01: If I had that perspective.
SPEAKER_01: And I really should.
SPEAKER_01: Right here in time and space, physical spiritual being, you and me, indwelt by the God of the universe.
SPEAKER_01: That's true spirituality.
SPEAKER_01: Led by Him and empowered by Him.
SPEAKER_01: So I end up back at my beginning questions.
SPEAKER_01: What is it that might be askew in the church?
SPEAKER_01: Where is the power?
SPEAKER_01: Where's the attitude of an alien passing through?
SPEAKER_01: Where's the pursuit of a daily walk?
SPEAKER_01: The pursuit of inner holiness?
SPEAKER_01: Well, with as with most things in life, it's never just one, and it's the same thing here.
SPEAKER_01: But let me just ask, when you think back on what we visited about this morning, could it be, could it be that the church is so influenced by society's behavior and opinions that we've forgotten the truth about what we are and who we are?
SPEAKER_01: Because if we have, we're susceptible to error of all kind.
SPEAKER_01: Or on the other hand, has something of society's goofy views about spiritism seeped in and affected what we think?
SPEAKER_01: Could this be problem, part of the problem in the church today?
SPEAKER_01: In in these things, it's very important that we know the truth about what's out there, and we know the truth about spirits.
SPEAKER_01: Our whole the Holy Spirit who's in us and the spiritual side of ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: We need to know the truth.
SPEAKER_01: And what else could it be that's that's hindering the church, or why is it off its moorings?
SPEAKER_01: Well, could it be that because even in evangelical circles, too many of us have forgotten how we ought to live, and we're coasting, just keeping little lists if we do anything at all.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe there's not enough of us that are dying daily and asking the Holy Spirit of God to lead us and empower us.
SPEAKER_01: Could those be a couple of the reasons why you know the body of Christians in this country is is up against a pretty stiff challenge, and to move to its biblical calling is not going to be easy.
SPEAKER_01: But getting straight on our view of what is and who we are would be a good start.
SPEAKER_01: And if we could learn that we need to die daily to sin and to self and be led by and live in the power of the Holy Spirit, the agent of the Lord Jesus Christ who will glorify himself through us, that would be a great way to finish.
SPEAKER_01: Society is really convincing, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: And our enemy is clever.
SPEAKER_01: And our flesh, boy, it does not give up without a fight.
SPEAKER_01: It will not be easy.
SPEAKER_01: But could it be that simple?
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Father, again, I pray that what's been said here has been faithful to your word.
SPEAKER_01: That is all I want, all I can ask.
SPEAKER_01: And please, if it has been, Holy Spirit, take it, use it as you will.