So we're picking up tonight in verse 16
of chapter three, and that's the verse that
we're going to concentrate on this evening.
Let me read it to you.
Paul says, and without controversy, great is the
mystery of godliness.
God was manifested in the flesh, justified in
the spirit, seen by angels, preached among the
Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up
in glory.
I'd like to quote to you from C
.S. Lewis as we begin our study.
He said this.
He said, I'm trying here to prevent anyone
saying the foolish thing that people often say
about Jesus.
I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great
moral teacher, they say, but I don't accept
his claim to be God.
That is the one thing we must not
say.
A man who is merely a man and
said the sort of things Jesus said would
not be a great moral teacher.
He would either be a lunatic or he
would be the devil of hell.
You must make your choice.
Either this man was and is the son
of God or else a madman or something
worse.
You can shut him up for a fool.
You can spit at him and kill him
as a demon or you can fall at
his feet and call him Lord and God.
But let us not come up with any
patronizing nonsense about his being a great human
teacher.
He has not left that open to us.
He did not intend to.
Our text tonight.
Is one of many that declare plainly that
Jesus Christ is none other than God himself
in a human body.
Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness.
God was manifested in the flesh.
This statement that Paul makes without controversy, great
is the mystery of godliness.
What does that mean exactly?
Let me give you a couple of other
translations.
The translation reads this profound is the divine
truth of our religion.
And then the New English Bible reads great
beyond all question is the mystery of our
religion.
And that's what Paul is really saying here.
That undoubtedly.
No question about it.
These things are marvelous beyond comprehension, but they
are the reality.
He speaks of the mystery of godliness.
Paul uses the term mystery many times.
It's used in a variety of places in
the New Testament, not exclusively by the apostle
Paul, but he does use it quite often.
He speaks of the mystery of the faith,
the mystery of the gospel.
Jesus spoke of the mystery of the kingdom.
Paul spoke of the mystery of Christ, the
mystery of God, and here he speaks of
the mystery of godliness.
Now, the word mystery doesn't mean what we
normally think when we hear the word mystery.
When we hear the word mystery, we think
of something mysterious, something that is unknown, something
that you can't quite figure out.
My wife is really into mystery movies, Agatha
Christie and all of the different Agatha Christie
series of mysteries.
She loves those things.
And you just sit there and watch and
wonder what's going to happen.
And you're baffled.
You're confused.
It's unclear.
And when we use the word mystery, that's
generally what we think.
But when we read the word mystery in
the New Testament, that is not what it
means.
So it's important for us to understand what
the word does mean, because we ourselves can
sort of walk around thinking, well, hey, you
know, I don't really know how to explain
it to you.
You know, the faith is all just a
big mystery.
The implication being nobody really knows exactly what
it's all about.
But that's not what it means.
It means really just the opposite.
The word mystery in the New Testament means
something that was previously hidden, but has now
been made known something that God alone knew
that no man could find out apart from
God revealing it.
And so.
The great mystery that Paul is speaking of.
Is God appearing as a human being?
This is the truth that for so long
was concealed from human view, but now revealed
and constituting the fundamental doctrine of the gospel.
This is the fundamental doctrine of the gospel,
that Christ is not merely a man, but
he is God who became man.
And so.
Paul says God was manifested in the flesh.
Now, if you happen to have a Bible
tonight other than the King James or the
New King James Version, your text does not
read God was manifested in the flesh.
There is a debate regarding whether or not
the word God is in the original text.
If you happen to be using the NIV
or the New American Standard, your text, you
know, reads he who was manifested in the
flesh.
Now, the dispute is whether the text should
read God was manifested or one possibility is
which was manifested.
The other possibility is who was manifested.
And so the NIV and the NASB, they
simply state he who was manifested.
This is all based upon a manuscript known
as the Codex Alexandrius.
And there was a point, and there are
still many who hold to this, where certain
scholars believe that this was the irrefutable text.
This text was absolutely accurate and any text
that disagreed with it was to be disregarded.
But in this text, there was a problem
when it came to this passage, they couldn't
quite make out based upon the manuscript whether
or not this was the Greek word for
God or the Greek word for.
Who or the Greek word for which, because
you see, in the early Greek manuscripts, what
they would do is all of the letters
would be capitalized and all of the words
would run together.
There was no accentuation, there was no punctuation,
it was just a string of letters.
And of course, those who wrote that understood
how to decipher it.
But what they would also do is oftentimes
they would rather than write out the whole
word, they would abbreviate the word and they
would inform the reader of an abbreviation by
putting a line over the word that would
indicate that this word was an abbreviation.
So when it comes to this particular word
in that particular manuscript that we mentioned.
It's unclear as to whether it is the
abbreviation of God, the us and the Greek,
or if it is the words who or
which.
Now, they went to the point of looking
at the manuscript with a microscope to try
to see if it was an abbreviation, if
there was a line above it and they
ascertained that, yes, there was a line above
it, but somebody suggested that it was something
that was inserted later.
And so there's this controversy that exists over
this, and as is usually the case, unfortunately.
And especially at the time of these translations,
many of the scholars sort of had somewhat
of a liberal bent.
And so when it came to anything disputable,
they taking the liberal position would throw it
out and replace it with something that was
more in line with liberal thinking.
So, of course, the liberal minded person.
In the theological realm does not believe that
God was manifest in the flesh.
So they don't want something as clear as
this statement.
In the text, because that goes against their.
Aberrant view.
But there's every reason to believe that as
many of the other manuscripts clearly state that
it is God and that probably even in
that particular manuscript itself, the word is actually
God.
There's no reason to doubt it because the
the immediate context, I think, supports the word
God much more easily than either of the
other words.
And then, of course, the larger context of
scripture teaches us that very fact that Christ
is God who is manifest in the flesh.
And so we hold to this translation
of the King James Version or the New
King James Version, believing that that is the
accurate translation, and as I said, it's consistent
with what scripture teaches many, many, many places
affirm what we call the deity of Christ
or the fact that Christ was God.
God in human flesh.
I want to give you just a few
examples from the New Testament.
This is not going to be exhaustive.
We could spend the whole evening looking at
this particular topic, but I've chosen not to
do that.
Instead, I want to give you just four
examples for other examples from the New Testament
where it is clearly demonstrated that Jesus Christ
is God in human flesh.
First of all, coming from the lips of
Jesus himself in John 8, 58.
Now, this is interesting because people still to
this day, skeptics, liberals and even cultists, they
will assert that Jesus never claimed to be
God, they say.
They will say it might be true that
his followers attributed that to him, but they
will assure us that Jesus never made that
claim at all.
Well, they they're wrong.
He did.
He clearly made it recorded in John 8,
58.
You remember the story there.
Jesus is speaking with the Pharisees, is disputing
with them.
And Abraham comes up in the discussion and
Jesus says to them, he says, your father,
Abraham, rejoiced to see my day.
He saw it and was glad.
And they said to him, they said, you're
not yet 50 years old.
And are you trying to tell us that
you've seen Abraham?
And Jesus said this, I tell you the
truth before Abraham was I am.
Now, Jesus did not say before Abraham was
I was he said before Abraham was I
am.
And in making that claim, he took to
himself the very name of God, because if
you go back to Exodus chapter three, verse
14.
The story of God meeting Moses at the
burning bush, and you remember Moses said after
God commissioned him, Moses said, well, who do
I tell the children of Israel?
Who do I tell them sent me?
And the Lord spoke and said, tell them
that I am has sent you.
So here Jesus takes the name of God
to himself.
He says before Abraham was I am he
claimed to be the one who spoke to
Moses in the burning bush.
And no Jew would have had any doubt
of what he was talking about.
As a matter of fact, because of that
statement, they sought to kill him because they
considered it blasphemous.
So John eight fifty eight is a declaration
of the deity of Christ in the Acts
of the Apostles, chapter 20, verse 28.
We read there about the Church of God,
which he has purchased with his own blood.
The Church of God, which he has purchased
with his own blood, how could God have
purchased anything with his own blood unless Christ?
Who shed his blood on the cross were
God.
And so the only way to understand that
statement is that Christ was indeed God in
Romans, chapter nine, verse five.
Paul is speaking of.
His people, the Jewish people, he's speaking of
the privileges of the Israelites, he's speaking of
their long history and the patriarchs.
And then he says who, according to the
flesh, Christ came, Christ came as a Jew,
he came as an Israelite.
But then he says this return referring to
Christ, he says that he is overall the
eternally blessed God.
Christ is overall the eternally blessed God, you
can't get a clearer statement than that.
In Titus two, 13, Paul referred to the
glorious appearing of our great God and savior,
Jesus Christ.
So here are just a few examples of
what the scriptures clearly teach that, as Paul
says here.
In verse 16, God was manifested in the
flesh.
Christ is the ultimate manifestation of God.
Now, prior to the coming of Jesus, God
had manifested himself in.
A variety of ways, God was manifested to
some extent through nature.
And the psalmist, for example, recognized that he
said the heavens declared the glory of God
and the firmament shows his handiwork.
Day and today utter speech and night and
tonight shows forth knowledge, there's no speech or
language in which their voice is not heard.
So through creation, God had manifested himself to
a certain extent.
And Paul reminds us of that in Romans
chapter one, where he says that which may
be known of God is manifest in them,
for God has shown it to them for
the invisible things, for the invisible things.
Since the creation of the world.
They are.
Clearly seen being understood by the things that
are made.
So, in other words, he's saying that creation
is.
A manifestation of the reality of God, what
does nature teach us about God, what does
nature tell us about God, nature tells us
primarily that God is great, that he's glorious
beyond description, that he's all powerful, that he's
all wise, that he is the ultimate in
creative power and creativity.
In the vast variety within the creation, so
nature was a manifestation of God, but then
there was also the manifestation of God within
the heart and the mind of each man
in the sense that man was given a
conscience and the ability to discern between right
and wrong.
And so, as Paul said there in Romans
one, 19.
For that which may be known of God
is manifest in them, it's inside of every
man, every man has inside of himself.
A sense of right and wrong, as we
talked about last week, ironically, even the people
who deny that there are certain things that
are right or wrong.
The relativist, even they have a strong sense
of things being right or wrong.
They say that's wrong, that that shouldn't happen
that way, but then in the next breath,
they say, well, you know, people can do
whatever they want because there is nothing that's
right or wrong.
But there are certain things they're very passionate
about as being wrong, things in society that
should not be allowed, should not be tolerated.
And it just goes to show that every
man has innately within him that sense of
right and wrong, which is indicative of the
fact that there's a God who's put that
there.
So God revealed himself in nature, God revealed
himself in man himself through his conscience, but
the ultimate manifestation of God has come through
Christ.
God was manifested in this one member of
the human family like no other.
And Paul tells us in Colossians 2, 9,
in Christ, all the fullness of the Godhead
dwells.
So all of the fullness of who God
is dwells in.
The man, Christ Jesus, as Paul said here,
God was manifested in the flesh.
But now Paul goes on, he doesn't stop
with God being manifested in the flesh.
He goes on and he says that he
was justified in the spirit, seen by angels,
preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the
world and received up into glory.
What does it mean justified in the spirit?
Now, perhaps.
It's the Holy Spirit that's referred to here.
Jesus, of course, was anointed by the Holy
Spirit.
You remember at his baptism how the spirit
came upon him.
We're told by Paul in Romans that.
It's the spirit of holiness that raised Christ
from the dead.
So when it says justified in the spirit,
it could be a reference to the the
word justified could be vindicate the vindication of
the spirit, the spirit coming upon him, vindicating
him as a son of God, the spirit
resurrecting him, demonstrating to all that he is
indeed God, the son.
But perhaps it's a reference to Christ's own
spirit as a man, and that's what there's
sort of a division probably between the commentators
as to which is actually the case.
It might actually be that both are the
case.
Justified in the spirit, if it is a
reference to Christ's own spirit as a man.
And what this would be saying is that
Christ was the one and only man whose
spirit was.
Consistently, perfectly in harmony with God, and that
would be true.
Jesus himself did say, I do always those
things that please the father.
You see, Jesus was the only man who
in his conscience, in his inner being, in
his spirit, did not have any inconsistency.
In regard to the will of God, he
never had any guilt feelings, he never had
a sense of failure, he never had to
confess that he wasn't quite as passionate or
diligent or any of those things in regard
to his relationship with God.
None of those things existed in him because
in his spirit there was a perfect harmony
between him and God.
One author from quite a while ago, he
said this regarding this aspect of Christ experience,
he said, no one has yet discovered the
word Jesus ought not to have said.
None suggested the better word he might have
said no action of his has shocked our
moral sense.
None has fallen short of the ideal.
He is full of surprises, but they are
all the surprises of perfection.
You are never amazed one day by his
greatness, the next day by his littleness, you
are ever amazed that he is incomparably better
than you could have expected.
He is tender without being weak, strong without
being coarse, lowly without groveling.
He has conviction without intolerance, enthusiasm, without fanaticism,
holiness, without Pharisee ism, passion, without prejudice.
This man alone never made a false step,
never struck a jarring note.
His life alone moved on those high levels
where local limitations are transcended and the absolute
law of moral beauty prevails.
His was life at its highest.
Just reading through that, thinking over those things,
oh, how true it is, you know, for
any of us.
Even on our best day, none of these
things could really be said, could they tender,
but not weak, strong, but not coarse conviction
without intolerance, all of those kinds of things,
you just the picture is that of a
perfect man.
And that is what we have in Jesus
Christ, and so whether it be in the
sense that it was in his own spirit
that this vindication was going on or whether
it was in the sense of the Holy
Spirit vindicating him, either way, the fact of
the matter is, he is the ideal person,
he is the standard.
And think about this, Jesus said when the
Holy Spirit comes, he will convict the world
of sin.
And of righteousness and of judgment of sin,
because they do not believe in me of
righteousness, because I go to my father, what
does that mean?
The Holy Spirit will convict the world of
righteousness because I go to my father.
In other words, what he's saying is the
Holy Spirit is going to show people that
the standard that one must attain.
To enter heaven is the standard set by
Christ.
He's the only perfect one.
And so vindicated in the spirit, justified in
the spirit, the spirit, the one bearing witness
to his perfection.
And then Paul goes on and he says
that he was seen of angels.
This could be translated that he showed himself
to angels.
Now, just what exactly this means, we don't
really know, but we do know this.
We do know that angels have a keen
interest in this thing called the church and
human redemption and salvation.
This is all very, very intriguing to the
angels.
And Paul tells us in Ephesians that the
manifold wisdom of God is being made known
by the church to the principalities and powers
in the heavenly places.
In other words, the church is somehow demonstrating
to the angels the manifold wisdom of God.
Now, the angels, of course, they're the ones
who live in the presence of God.
And they obviously have a relationship with God
and they obviously have an understanding of God,
but evidently there are things about God that
they don't know that they're learning through the
church.
And Peter tells us regarding salvation.
That these are things that the angels desire
to look into.
Think about that, you know, sometimes I think
as people, we sort of can at times
be envious of angels.
Oh, I wish I was an angel instead
of a human.
Oh, how much more glorious that might be,
and oh, I would know God so much
better and I would see him so clearly
and I would be powerful and I could
do all kinds of, you know, great feats
and all of that sort of thing.
And, you know, we sort of look at
ourselves as inferior to angels.
The scripture says angels are looking on at
us saying, oh, wow, I wish I was
a person.
I wish I was a human.
I wish I was a descendant of Adam.
I could be redeemed.
I could be, you know, it's amazing, but
that's what's happening with the angels.
And so he was seen of angels or
he showed himself to angels, maybe meaning that
he showed them something through his incarnation that
they could not have otherwise ever known.
You know, what do we see in the
incarnation?
We see just the utter graciousness and the
humility and the love of God.
It's amazing to think of God, all powerful.
Holy, righteous, just can do anything.
There's there's no one that can resist him.
There's no one that can oppose him.
There's no one who can challenge him or
question him or say, why are you doing
what you're doing?
And all of his creatures, speaking of the
human family, have all rebelled against him and
turned their backs upon him and disregarded him.
And instead of doing what any of us
would do in similar circumstances.
Basically wiping out such a race of ingrates,
God does the unthinkable.
He comes down to earth as one of
us.
And he lives among us and he endures
patiently with the pride.
The opposition.
You know, have you ever been in a
situation where you're talking to somebody who they
just don't know what they're talking about?
They're they're totally ignorant, but they are so
full of pride.
They think that what they're saying is right.
And and, you know, for a fact that.
This is just nonsense, it's foolishness.
And we as people, as human beings, we
have a hard time enduring that sort of
a thing, don't we?
It's not easy when that kind of a
thing happens, but here's God.
God comes among men and he's trying to
tell them the truth.
He's trying to get them to believe in
him and they're arguing with him.
They're basically disputing with him on every subject
and they're in essence, they're telling him, you
don't know what you're talking about.
Hey, we know what we're talking about.
We're Moses disciple.
You don't know anything.
And what does he do instead of doing
what any of us would do?
Basically, like, you know what, I am fed
up with this.
These guys are history.
It's over.
Instead, he endures, he suffers long with them
and he loves them to the uttermost.
He goes and he dies in their place.
And when they're nailing him to the cross
and mocking him and scoffing at him, he
says, Father, forgive them, they don't know what
they're doing.
These are the things the angels wouldn't know
apart from the incarnation, and these are the
things that I'm sure they're marveling at.
He was preached among the Gentiles, preached among
the nations.
Of course, up until.
When Jesus came, there was confusion, to say
the least, about God, the true knowledge of
God had been lost among the nations for
the most part, and the true knowledge of
God was to be kept by the Jewish
nation.
But they had they had confused the issue.
But now Christ comes and the gospel goes
out to all the nations because that's God's
heart.
God wants to save all people.
From all nations, he's not a respecter of
persons, as we're told over and over again,
and so he's preached among the Gentiles.
It's a message for all people.
But notice this.
The message is Christ.
You see, you guys, this is something that
I think we have got to get a
grip on this once again.
The message is Christ.
That's what we're to preach.
We're not to preach the many other things
that the church gets distracted in preaching.
We have to be so careful.
The message is a person.
The message is Jesus.
And there are tons and tons of people
that are turned off by a message of
morality, a message of ethics, a message of
conservatism or whatever the case might be.
And and this is where the church, I
think, is making a huge mistake in that
we are sort of being seen by many
as just another aspect of conservatism.
And that's not the message.
The message is not conservatism.
The message is Christ.
We're preaching a person.
We're not preaching a list of rules.
And it's whenever the church loses sight of
that.
That's when the church becomes ineffective.
Because there are lots of people that just
simply aren't interested in your opinion of morality.
You know, that that is the reality I
oftentimes I try to put myself back, I
put myself in other people's shoes by, you
know, taking myself back to where I was
before I was a Christian.
And, you know, for the person who would
approach me and insinuate that my lifestyle was
wrong and tell me I shouldn't be living
this way or whatever else, you know, I
didn't I didn't really pay attention to that.
I just dismissed it.
It's like, shut up.
Who are you to tell me what I
should do or shouldn't do?
And I think I was typical of the
average person.
And so when the church has a message
that's.
Just that sort of a message.
It falls on deaf ears.
People aren't moved by that, people are.
Moved by life, though.
They a life can impact a person radically.
And that's why God is, you know, he's
always.
Made it so that this gospel is going
to be connected to lives.
God was manifested in the flesh.
The word became flesh.
The word could have just remained words.
Here's a book.
Read it.
Figure it out.
But God doesn't do it that way.
That word becomes flesh, God becomes a man.
And likewise, as we preach the gospel, a
large part of our preaching is what you
might call incarnational preaching.
We're to be preaching a life, the life
of Jesus Christ, a living person.
Someone said this, and I wholeheartedly agree.
Evangelicalism has sometimes been ethically unimpressive and uninfluential
because it substituted belief in a plan of
salvation for union with the living Christ as
Savior.
And because when it conceived the living Christ,
it was a theological abstraction and not as
the concrete personality of the Jesus of history.
You know, I know God in his graciousness
uses a lot of different things.
But I think we need to be careful
that we don't reduce the gospel to a
formula.
You know, I know God has used the
four spiritual laws, but, you know, to just
walk up to somebody and to shove the
four spiritual laws in their face and say,
read this, brother, or you're going to go
to hell.
That's not the ideal way to go about
preaching the gospel.
See, God wants to connect a life with
another life.
And he wants to communicate his word through
a life.
And he did that by sending the living
Christ, we have a living savior, we have
Jesus, we're not introducing people to a theological
system.
We're not bringing people into this institution that's
just established upon these historical creeds.
We are introducing people to the living God,
Jesus, the living savior.
He's alive today.
And, you know, back in what we call
now the Jesus people era.
You know, that's really what was going on.
People were meeting Jesus and then they were
just going around introducing others to him.
Christ is the message.
We preach Christ.
And him crucified.
Not morality, morality comes, it follows, you know,
it's such a burden to lay on somebody,
you've got to do this and you've got
to do that and you've got to do
this and that and then you get saved.
That's backward.
You need to know Christ.
And once you know Christ, guess what happens?
He does all that stuff in you.
That's what he does.
He comes into our life and he changes
our lives.
So even when it comes to some of
the real, you know, hot issues of the
day, if we spend all of our time
preaching against those ills in society, those evils
that are infiltrating and destroying our culture and
all of that, I think we're going about
it the wrong way.
And I think in the end we won't
have much success.
But if we just preach Jesus and trust
him to take care of those other things
in people's lives.
When they come to know him, that's the
right way of going about it.
That's what he does.
And so he was preached among the nations
and then Paul says, believed on in the
world, believed on in the world.
Oh, amazing.
This Jesus of Nazareth, how could he be
believed on in the world unless he were
God manifested in the flesh?
It just doesn't equate.
It doesn't make any sense.
Unless he were truly God in the flesh
and unless he truly did the things the
New Testament attributes to him, there is no
explanation for the fact that he's believed on
in the world.
Over one billion people in the world today
claim to believe in Jesus Christ, closer actually
to two billion.
But had he not been who the New
Testament says he was, that, of course, could
never have occurred.
But he has indeed been believed on in
the world.
What it is considered, think about this, when
it is considered that the Christian message was
a stumbling block to the Jew.
Foolishness to the Greek, that instead of pandering
to the lust and passions of men, it
waged eternal war against them.
And that at its introduction, it was opposed
to the religious views and customs of the
whole civilized and barbarous world.
Well, may we wonder that it should have
been received by any considerable number of men
among the nations of the world.
If the gospel had not been from God,
it must have perished from the earth long
ago.
You know, it's funny because when you think
about that.
Statement there, it seems to me like we're
sort of back in that same place again,
in many ways, the many of the religions
of the world are reasserting their.
Their claims.
You know, 20 years ago, 15 years ago,
for that matter, did any of us know
much of anything about Islam?
Unless you were a student of theology or
religious movements and things like that, you know,
the average person didn't know a whole lot
about Islam, hadn't really heard much about it.
Islam was some thing that was over there
on the other side of the world.
And we rarely heard much of anything about
it.
Did you know that Los Angeles County has
the largest Islamic population in the United States?
The second largest Islamic population in the United
States is Orange County.
The third largest is San Diego County.
Tied with Dearborn, Michigan.
California has the largest population of Muslims.
Of any state in this country.
And we see this resurgence and of course,
with the immigration and all that we've had,
of course, Buddhism has become a prominent to
some extent in the culture because of the
Asian immigrants that have come in Hinduism and
these things.
And so in a sense, my point is
this, in a sense, we're sort of back
at that same place where there's all of
these religions and not to mention atheistic humanism,
which is very dominant in the culture.
Which will align itself, ironically, with Islam, Hinduism,
Buddhism or any other ism just to try
to destroy Christianity.
But, you know, we're just sort of back
in the same place where.
It just seems that.
If you look at it merely from a
human standpoint, it's an impossibility.
I've been reading in some of the different
news reports about the Islamization of Europe.
They're referring to Europe now as Eurabia, and
they're talking about the different countries where they
are being overwhelmed by Islam.
And so we look and we see that
here we are again.
With a message that is opposed to the
religious views and customs of both the civilized
and the barbarous world for Christianity and Islam
are diametrically opposed, and so it is with
Christianity and Buddhism, so it is with Christianity
and Hinduism, so it is obviously with Christianity
and humanistic atheism, were it not for the
fact that this is God's gospel, we could
have no hope of anything ever advancing.
But here's the great news.
It is God's gospel, and just as for
the past 2000 years, people have been believing
on him in the world from every nation,
from every culture, from every religious background, we
can expect that same thing to continue to
happen.
You know, I'm not really bothered at all
by the influx of Muslims or Hindus or
Buddhists.
I think it's just a blessing that God
is sending the mission field right to us.
The question is, are we going to see
it for what it is?
Now, they've certainly come here on a mission,
many of them, but.
I believe that God has orchestrated these things
so that we would have an opportunity to
bring the gospel to them and they in
turn can perhaps impact their own countries with
that.
And so believed on in the world.
And still this day.
Thousands and thousands of people today put their
faith and trust in Jesus Christ all over
the world, people coming to Christ.
And then finally, he says, received up in
glory.
Jesus was raised up.
From the dead, received up at the ascension
and is presently sitting at the right hand
of the father, making intercession for us and
waiting until his enemies are made his footstool.
He's been received up in the glory, Paul
says.
Without a doubt, without controversy.
Great, glorious, profound, awesome.
Is the mystery of our faith.
He's really just sort of concluding this segment.
With a praise to God.
And it's so good for us, you know,
to.
Often.
To get our get our eyes on God,
get our eyes on the Lord, his greatness,
his glory, his grandeur, all those things.
And just to, you know, just to think
on that, just to praise him.
For who he is, it seems like we
spend so much time down on that other
level of, well, I need to do this
and I should do that.
And and how come you're not do it?
You know, it's kind of just a lot
of times we spend concentrating on ourselves and
our pitiful state and how we're not what
we should be and all of those things.
And, you know, the solution to that is
get our eyes on him.
And just.
Meditate on his greatness and his glory, because
when you see Christ for who he is,
that he's God manifested in the flesh, that
he's justified in the spirit.
That the angels are intrigued by all of
this, that he's been.
Preached to the nations, believed on in the
world, received up in a glory, you know,
when you're caught up with all of that.
That just consumes you, it just overtakes you
and everything else just.
Falls into place, you see, it's still the
same thing I got saved, you got saved
by looking to Jesus, not by looking at
yourself.
You got saved by looking to him and
guess what, you grow and you progress and
you mature the same way, not by looking
at yourself and being introverted and introspective and
always, well, what about this with me and
that, but just by looking at him and
understanding who he is because.
This whole idea of godliness, it's interesting, this
is the only place where Paul uses the
word in a different sort of a way
he uses the word here, I think, as
I've been teaching tonight, he uses it as
a mean, as a descriptive for the faith.
But every other time Paul uses the word,
he uses it in the context of us
living lives that are like the life of
God.
So how do I live a life that
is like the life of God?
Well, there's only one way that I can
do it.
I can only do it because God was
manifested in the flesh.
You see, Jesus is the answer to my
quest for godliness.
You want to be godly.
You want to be a man of God,
you want to be a woman of God,
you want to be more spiritual.
Here's what you do.
Get out your pencil.
I've got a list of 15 things.
I'm just kidding.
No, that's the opposite of what we're talking
about tonight.
You want to be godly.
You want to be spiritual.
You want to be.
me.
Like Christ, look to him, just fix your
gaze upon him, meditate on him, Jesus said.
In regard to service, you're speaking to the
apostles about them serving him as evangelist, he
said, follow me, I will make you fishers
of men.
You know what he says?
The same thing about everything.
He says, you want to be godly.
The mystery of godliness is me, it's Christ.
It's Christ in you, that's what Paul said,
Christ in you is the hope of glory.
How am I ever going to be glorified?
How am I ever going to be godly?
Christ in me is the hope of glory.
Christ in you is the hope of glory.
So just fix your eyes on Christ, steady
him, meditate on his life.
Just contemplate who he is.
You know.
My wife, I love her so much, that's
why I just keep mentioning her all the
time.
I'm trying to impress her, too, so she'll
be nicer to me.
I'm just kidding.
She's real nice, but she she's you know,
she has her Bible reading and we talk
about what she's reading and to tell her
what I'm reading and so forth.
But and I and I'm kind of, you
know, I always know where she's at.
And so she's telling me, yeah, well, in
Mark, you know, I was reading this and
that the other thing I said, well, I
thought you were in John.
She said, I am.
You see, in my regular reading, I'm in
Mark, but in my new reading, I'm in
John, because what she was telling me is
that she made a decision a while back
that she's going to always read through the
Gospels, no matter what else she's doing.
She's going to always just keep reading through
the Gospels just to keep at the forefront
of her mind who Jesus is and what
he's done.
And, you know, my wife, she inspires me
a lot.
I never give her the credit that's due
to her, but I got inspired by that.
And I've been doing the same thing.
I haven't really told her that, but I've
been doing the same thing because I realized
that, you know, that's true.
We so easily lose sight of Jesus.
We've got to keep him right at the
forefront of our minds, because the more we
know him, the more we'll be like him.
And that's what godliness is all about being
like Christ.
We can be godly because he God became
like us so we can become like him.
Let's pray.
Lord, thank you that you, God, were manifested
in the flesh.
Lord, that you came so that we could
be godly men and women.
That we could bear the likeness of God
once again that had been marred through sin,
that you've restored that to us.
And that we are new men and women
in Christ.
Oh, how we thank you for that.
And Lord, may we find ourselves just knowing
you better, loving you more.
Lord, just seeing who you are more clearly.
And Lord, as we see you, as we
get to know you, that we would be
more and more like you.
Lord, we know that's your desire.
That's your will to conform us into your
image.
And Lord, you said that all of us,
as we look at you, it's like beholding
your glory.
And we're being transformed from glory to glory
as we look at your face.
So Lord, help us to gaze upon you
and through that, change us and use us,
Lord, to bring life and hope and salvation
and truth to others.
Lord, may we have opportunities to let people
know about the living Christ.
To introduce people to you, Jesus.
Use us, Lord.
As we look at our world, we see
a lot of confused people, a lot of
angry people.
A lot of people that are so confused.
And they've got a chip on their shoulder
about religion.
Oh, Lord, may they see that you're not
religion.
You're a person.
You're a person who wants to come into
their life and fulfill their every dream and
need.
Use us, Lord, to impart that to others,
we pray in your name.
Amen.
Let's stand together.