Have you ever been embarrassed by the generosity
of your friends?
You know, you get a little package through
the mail, and you and your wife, you
know, if you've got one, can begin un
-excitedly to unwrap it, the little package.
And it's a little wooden dish from Switzerland,
with a beautiful picture on it, you know,
of the house.
But it isn't big enough to put fruit
on.
It's just big enough for an ashtray, but
you don't smoke.
And so you look at each other and
say, what are we going to do with
this?
I mean, we don't really want it, because
we don't really need it.
But it's too good to throw away.
So after a little discussion, you decide to
hang it on the wall.
Another occasion, you get another little package, and
this time it's a tea cloth from Thailand.
Very pretty.
Far too pretty to, you know, wipe dishes.
It's too small for a tablecloth.
So what are you going to do with
it?
So you have another discussion with your wife,
and say, we don't really want it, because
we don't really need it.
But it's too good to throw away.
So you decide to hang it on the
wall.
I'd love to visit your home and see
what's hanging on your wall.
Somebody who had a higher estimate of his
skills than his painting ability, but who had
enjoyed my book, sent me an ugly little
picture purported to be the bush in the
wilderness.
It wasn't exactly beautiful, but it was kind.
I didn't really want it, because I didn't
really need it.
But it was too good to throw away.
So what do you think I did with
it?
Hung it on the wall.
Somebody gave me a brass dinner gong.
It made a hideous noise.
I mean, it sent cold shivers down your
back anytime you rang it.
Didn't really want it, because I didn't really
need it.
But it was too good to throw away.
Where do you think it hangs?
A couple of weeks ago I was back
in England in the study, which used to
be mine.
It's now my son's, who directs that center
of our international headquarters.
And when I went into the study again,
there was that hideous little picture and that
brass gong still hanging on the wall.
I'd love to visit your home and see
what's hanging on your wall.
You didn't really need it.
That's why you didn't want it.
But it was too good to throw away.
So you hung it on the wall.
You know, that's what the world has done
with Jesus Christ.
He's been depersonalized.
He's been reduced to a church calendar.
And although 2,000 years ago men hung
him on a cross, today we hang him
on the wall.
When's Christmas?
Well, have a look.
It's hanging on the wall.
And you consult the church calendar.
It isn't that men want that little baby
boy that was born at Bethlehem.
But Christmas is fun.
You buy a Christmas tree and you decorate
the house with tinsel and colored lights.
And you get a few days off work
and then you go and get drunk.
So when's Easter?
Well, it's hanging on the wall.
Have a look at the church calendar.
It isn't that people live in the power
of his resurrection or recognize that having given
himself for us, he's now giving himself to
us, the one who conquered death and sin
and hell and the devil himself.
But it's fun for the kids, hunting for
their colored eggs and a few bunny rabbits.
And of course you get another few days
off work.
You see, we don't really need that little
baby boy that was born in Bethlehem.
We don't really want the one who rose
again from the dead.
So we hang him on the wall.
When's Pentecost?
Well, even if you consulted the church calendar,
you probably wouldn't find out.
Because the day when our risen Savior and
the person of the Holy Ghost came for
the first time to reinvade the redeemed humanity
of forgiven sinners, the day the church was
born, Pentecost, is largely ignored by the church
and totally irrelevant to the world in which
we live.
So we hang him on the wall.
But of course, Christmas, when that little baby
boy was born, apart from the cross, would
be meaningless.
And the cross, where that little baby boy
grown up into the perfection of true humanity
died, that you and I might be forgiven,
would be futile, apart from the resurrection.
And the resurrection, of course, would be an
exercise in futility, if it weren't for the
fact that that risen Savior on the day
of Pentecost came to take up residence within
your humanity and mine, as those who have
been reconciled to God and restored to life.
As I mentioned to some folk on Sunday
night, you see all down the centuries man
has substituted religion for God, for Christianity for
Christ, and you end up with a dead
religion.
You see, we need desperately to rediscover the
Lord Jesus in the power and fullness of
his resurrection, get him off the wall and
get him back to where he belongs, enthroned
in the hearts of men, as the King
back in his kingdom, the Creator back within
the creature, whose presence as God within the
man is indispensable to his humanity.
We need to replace religion with God.
We need to replace Christianity with Christ.
We need to replace ritual with reality.
We need to replace religious philosophy with facts,
man-made theological concepts with the Christ of
the Bible.
Discard our man-made theological tomes and rediscover
Jesus.
Not man-made theology, but a Christ-centered
theocracy.
Not a dead creed, but a living Christ.
Not mere dogma, but deity, enthroned within the
hearts of forgiven sinners, God in the man,
Christ in action.
I wonder where Christ is in your life.
Could well be that he's still hanging on
a cross.
It could well be that you've hung him
on the wall.
The only place he deserves to be is
enthroned within your heart.
So I'd like to ask you a very
simple question.
Isn't there a place for God's feet in
your heart?
You might think that's a rather strange question.
Found in the 60th chapter of the book
of Isaiah, Isaiah, if you need interpretation.
In the 60th chapter and the 13th verse,
fascinating verse, in the latter part of that
verse God says, and
in the sentence before, to beautify the place
of my sanctuary.
I'll make the place of my feet glorious,
to beautify the place of my sanctuary.
The New Testament tells us that God doesn't
dwell in temples made with hands.
He said, don't you know that your body
is the temple of the living God?
Then when first God created him was intended
to be God's divine habitation.
The presence of the creator within the creature
whose presence is indispensable to his function.
God says, I'll make the place of my
sanctuary beautiful, glorious, to beautify the place of
my habitation.
I wonder what it means, you know, to
have your feet in God, God's feet in
your heart.
Never read the Bible in a hurry.
Always the divine significance about everything that God
has to say.
So long as you allow the Holy Spirit,
who authored the book, to enlighten your understanding,
and through the book explain what he meant
by what he said.
So in order to discover what it means
to have a place in your heart for
God's feet, we need to do a little
research.
And we'll begin this morning.
We won't have time, of course, to complete
our investigation.
But at least we can lay some further
foundations.
For your faith and mine in the Lord
Jesus that finally began to lay last night.
So turn to the book of Deuteronomy in
chapter 11.
Deuteronomy in chapter 11, and it's very vital
that you bring your Bibles with you, and
most of you have.
I can hear the rustle of the pages,
and that's always encouraging.
And in the 10th verse of the 11th
chapter of the book of Deuteronomy, and
very fascinating, Moses is talking to that people
whom by God's command he had led out
of Egypt to bring them into the land
of Canaan.
God's command to Moses was bring them out
and bring them in.
Well most of us recognize that he only
did half a job.
He brought them out, but he never got
them in.
He did half a job because he only
preached half a message.
And so God had to get somebody else
to do the rest.
Joshua.
It isn't that Moses was not aware of
a place called Canaan, the land of promise,
the marvelous provision that God had long since
made for his redeemed people.
It isn't that he didn't know about it.
He preached for 40 years about it.
But there's nothing quite so pathetic as a
man preaching about an experience that he himself
has never had.
And this is one of those occasions when
what he said was absolutely true, but it
was sterile, because it left him and his
people dumped in the desert, where finally after
40 years God had to bury them, because
that's where they chose to live.
Including Moses.
Sad, isn't it?
One of the saddest stories in the Bible,
because Moses was a giant of a man.
But this is what he had to say
to them here in the 11th chapter of
the book of Deuteronomy.
Verse 10.
The land where thou goest to possess it
is not as the land of Egypt from
whence you came out.
And then he describes the quality of life
they lived in the land they'd left behind.
Egypt.
It is not as the land of Egypt
from whence you came out where thou sowed
thy seed and watered it with your foot.
Luther when he translated that passage called it
a cabbage patch.
He said the land you're going to isn't
like the land you came from.
There he said you planted your seed and
you watered it with your foot.
In other words you pumped it up.
In that arid desert where you could look
as far as I could see and see
nothing.
If there was anything colorful it was only
because having planted your seed you pumped it
up by the sweat of your brow.
Now the land you're going to isn't like
that.
You don't sweat it out there, you don't
pump it up.
The land he says in verse 11 whether
you go to possess it is a land
of hills and valleys.
It's a land that drinketh water of the
rain of heaven.
It's a land where you don't pump it
up, God sends it down.
And not only that it's a land which
the Lord thy God careth for.
He's the husband man.
He takes care of the harvest.
It's a land which the Lord thy God
careth for and the eyes of the Lord
thy God are always upon it from the
beginning of the year to the end of
the year.
Not in fits and starts, not up and
down, but 24 hours a day, 365 days
in the year.
From the beginning of the year to the
end of the year God's eyes are upon
it.
So it's a land of infinite variety, hills
and valleys, restful productivity, because you don't pump
it up God sends the rain down, and
divine consistency from the beginning of the year
to the end of the year.
You don't have to keep hopping from one
convention to another, read this book or that
book, listen to this man or somebody else.
It has its origin in God himself.
A land of hills and valleys, infinite variety.
Not the boring treasury of being religious, but
living daily in the power that flows from
his divine indwelling, a fruitfulness that bears and
remains to reproduce.
Marvellous.
Hills and valleys.
See some people always like to live in
the valley because the hills to them are
threatening, demands greater effort when you're already tired.
But if there weren't any hills there wouldn't
be any valleys, and unconquered hills only cast
a shadow.
They limit your horizon, they obscure the future,
because they obscure the view, and they leave
you guessing about tomorrow.
And so you live in the fear of
the unknown.
But if you get to the top, and
climb your hills, then you get an entirely
new perspective on life.
You can look back and see where you
came from, and why it was necessary that
that should have happened.
And you can look ahead and know where
you're going.
That's the normal Christian life.
Infinite variety.
Restful productivity.
Refreshed constantly by the rain that God sends
down.
And a divine consistency, as consistent as God
himself, who's the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Well this is what Moses talked about in
the wilderness.
It wouldn't have been too bad if he
had taken them there, but he just preached
about it.
Got them out, but never got them in.
Beautiful picture, and it was all accurate.
Everything he said was true.
And there were those who later were to
enjoy the good of all that he described.
But it took two men with another heart,
a different disposition toward God.
The Bible calls it a perfect heart, not
a perfect man.
For God would look in vain for a
perfect man, save him to the face of
his own dear son, of whom alone, of
all mankind, since Adam fell, he could say
this, this is my beloved son, in whom
I'm well pleased.
Good, very good.
Jesus.
So God isn't looking for a perfect man,
otherwise none of us would qualify.
He's simply looking for a perfect heart, which
is a disposition, it's an attitude that recognizes
in true repentance that you cannot, and only
God can.
And because you can't and he can, you
let him do it.
If you can't and he can, there's only
one smart thing to do, let him.
That's a perfect heart.
And we're told, you see, that Joshua and
Caleb were men of another heart.
Different disposition, they had a different attitude towards
God.
They acted on the proposition that the God
who got them out was the same mighty
God who could get them in, and they
let him do it, and did.
But everything that Moses had to say about
all that was theirs in prospect was absolutely
true.
But you can believe the truth and it
won't make one iota of difference to the
way you live, because a belief doesn't do
any good, a belief doesn't do any harm.
It's faith, which is quite different from belief.
When the Bible uses the word believe or
believing, it means faith, which is what you
believe in action, acting on the assumption that
it's true and letting God prove it.
See, belief doesn't do any good, belief doesn't
do any harm.
I have a very sincere belief that if
I drank a glass of cyanide, it would
kill me.
Do you believe that?
Then we're all believers.
The funny thing is that although we're all
believers, we're still alive.
Why?
Because a belief doesn't do any harm.
I believe that if I jumped off the
top of the Empire State Building in the
city of New York, it would kill me.
Jumping wouldn't kill me, it's when you land
that's what does the jamming.
You know there was a firm that invented
a parachute that opened on impact.
Never failed, but nobody survived, so it went
bankrupt.
You see, you can believe and never act
upon what you believe and never translate belief
into faith.
Two quite different entities.
Faith lets God do it, and when you
do, he does.
That's the difference between man-made dedication and
that disposition toward God that puts God into
business.
You see, man-made committal, man-made dedication
says, I can and I will, and you
can't and you don't.
When you've discovered the power of his resurrection,
you say, I can't, but he can and
he does and he will.
Moses said this in the 18th verse of
that 11th chapter, therefore shall you lay up
these my words in your heart and in
your soul.
Trouble is they laid them up and so
did he, never acted upon what they stored,
so it was never fleshed out, they never
arrived.
Thou shall write them upon the doorposts of
thine house and upon thy gates, verse 20,
and that's all they did.
They hung it on the wall, that your
days may be multiplied in the days of
your children, verse 21, in the land which
the Lord swear unto your fathers to give
them.
Can't earn it, you can't deserve it, you
can only receive what God's prepared to give.
Not pumping it up, but God's sending it
down.
That your days may be multiplied the days
of your children in the land which the
Lord swear unto your fathers to give them.
Everything he says is true, exactly what God
said.
He pledged his name, his honor and his
glory that he had give them this land,
and Moses never got them there.
Because he'd reduced the truth to a formula,
upon which none of them were prepared to
act as though God meant what he said.
He goes on to say, verse 21, in
that land that God alone can give is
as the days of heaven upon the earth.
That's the normal Christian life.
I'm not waiting to get to heaven, I'm
enjoying heaven, on the way to heaven.
That's the normal Christian life.
Heaven, you see, is a destination, it's a
place.
But that doesn't excite me too much, it's
going to be beautiful.
I hath not seen nor ear heard, neither
hath it entered into the heart of man
the things which God has prepared for them
that love him.
Gloriously true, and I'm quite excited about looking
around when I get there, but I'm going
to wait till I get there before I
enjoy the good of what God had in
mind when he sent his son into this
world.
Heaven, on the way to heaven.
A quality of life to be enjoyed right
now, in the here and now, not in
the then and there.
In the fifth chapter of his first epistle
of the Thessalonians, the apostle Paul says, God
hasn't appointed us to judgment, he's appointed us
to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.
But just in case we have an emaciated,
inadequate concept of what it means to be
saved, he goes on to explain what salvation
involves.
Most of us think it's getting out of
hell and getting into heaven, which is purely
irrelevant, really.
Glorious, but it's just an added bonus, going
to heaven.
Because the Lord Jesus came not to get
us out of hell and into heaven, he
came to this earth to get him and
the Father and the Holy Spirit and the
Godhead out of heaven into you and me,
who are his sanctuary, the place of his
habitation, so that he can make the place
of his feet glorious and restore man to
function, whom he created in his own perfect
image and likeness, so that when God looked
at man whom he'd made in his absolute
image, he could say, good, very good.
And if God made man his own perfect
image and his absolute unblemished likeness, and God
looked at him and said, good, who do
you think God saw when he looked at
man himself?
Himself.
If God created man his own perfect image
and his absolute likeness and God looked at
him totally satisfied with the end product and
said, good, very good, he looked at himself.
That's the end product of true evangelism, not
a change of destination, a change of character,
so that in the day when we're finally
evangelized, 1 John chapter 3, not knowing what
we will be when finally we leave this
body and we're present with the Lord, one
thing says, John, we do know that when
we see him as he is, we will
be like him.
And we will be restored from created likeness
to recreated likeness on the basis of a
redemptive act, a regenerative purpose and a marvelous
consummation.
And when we see him as he is
and we are like him and he looks
at us, who do you think he'll see?
What God first saw when he made man
his own image, himself.
That's when the Lord Jesus will see the
travail of his soul and be satisfied.
Whom he did foreknow in the foreknowledge of
a God who knows the end from the
beginning, who lives in the timeless present tense,
whom he did foreknow, then he did predestinate
to be conformed to the image of his
dear son, so that when the Lord Jesus
could look at us, then he'd see himself
as God looking at man in Adam, saw
himself then.
That's salvation, restoration to image, function, fulfilling the
function for which God made you and me,
to advertise deity, bring God out into the
open where God could be seen.
So Paul says, God hasn't appointed us to
judgment, he's appointed us to obtain salvation through
our Lord Jesus Christ, and lest we have
an inadequate understanding of what it means to
be saved, who died for us?
Next verse, verse 10.
1 Thessalonians 5, 10.
Who died for us.
That's the redemptive act.
But that isn't the gospel.
That's the threshold of the gospel, that's where
it begins, that's the door through which you
go.
For there's a way back to God from
the dark paths of sin, there's a door
that is open, and you may go in
at Calvary's cross is where you begin when
you come as a sinner to Jesus.
That's true.
He died for us.
But that isn't salvation.
That verse 10 of the fifth chapter, first
epistle of Thessalonians goes on to say, who
died for us?
That.
To this end, for this purpose, this is
what God had in mind.
That.
We might live together with him.
God has not appointed us to judgment, he's
appointed us to obtain salvation through our Lord
Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether
we wake or sleep in the body or
out of it, here on earth or there
in heaven, now or then, here or there,
totally irrelevant.
That we might live together with him.
24 hours a day on earth, heaven on
the way to heaven, sharing his life, in
whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead
bodily, and in whom we are complete, and
in whom a person, not in an experience
but some body, God has given to us
every single spiritual blessing.
You can't have more.
In the true Christian life, there's no such
thing as Jesus and, and Jesus plus.
That's the blasphemy of his glorious adequacy.
He is the one in whom alone we
are complete, in whom we are blessed with
every spiritual blessing in heavenly things.
To enjoy a life superlatively more abundant, to
reign in life more than conquest, and enjoy
a peace that passes understanding, joy unspeakable and
full of glory.
But all that's found not in a creed,
but in Christ.
Not in dogma, but in deity.
Not in theology, but in theocracy.
With the king enthroned in your heart and
mine, with his feet in your heart.
Heaven on the way to heaven.
Just turn over the page to the next
chapter there in the twelfth of Deuteronomy.
These are the statutes and judgments which you
should observe to do in the land.
Moses is still talking about that purpose that
God had in mind when he redeemed them.
Out of Egypt, always a picture of the
unregenerate, the lost, the unsaved, the unforgiven.
Where they were sold into slavery as by
a man by nature, as a fallen heir
of a fallen Adam is sold unto sin.
What God had in mind, you see, in
bringing them out was to bring them in
to enjoy that plenitude of God's provision.
And they missed it.
These are the statutes, said Moses, and everything
he said was true.
These are the judgments which you shall observe
to do in the land.
Which the Lord God of thy fathers giveth
thee to possess it.
When?
Well, if you think Canaan is heaven, it's
one day when you're dead and buried.
Uh-uh.
The land which the Lord God of thy
fathers giveth thee to possess it all the
days that you live upon the earth.
That's where Canaan is to be enjoyed.
In most of your hymns you see Jordan
represents physical death until one day you get
up on the other shore, you see, and
you've arrived.
That's a travesty of the truth.
Jordan isn't dead.
Jordan was the pathway to life.
On earth, all the days that you live
upon the earth, verse 7 there, you shall
eat to the Lord your God, you should
eat before the Lord your God.
You will rejoice in all that you put
your hand unto.
Life will become an adventure.
It won't be a drudgery.
You don't slug it out.
In that land you'll eat before the Lord
your God and the plenitude that he's provided.
A land flowing with the milk and honey,
the gold, ripening corn, pomegranates, and the grapes
of Eshcol.
So that you can sit around in groups
and eat the grapes and pits of each
other, and live it up in the land.
You shall rejoice in all that you put
your hand unto, not only you, but you
and your households.
Wherein the Lord thy God has blessed you.
Your children will be as excited about living
there as you are.
You moms and dads, have you reared a
bunch of kids that are excited about the
Lord Jesus as you are?
Or do you have to drag them to
church instead of sharing his life?
Every moment of every day knowing that no
situation can ever arise at any time under
any circumstance to which he is their creator,
redeemer, living within them could ever be less
than big enough.
So that every day is the adventurers sharing
his life on earth on the way to
heaven.
Heaven on earth.
Every day as big as God.
Well that was the prospect and everything that
Moses said was true.
But he never got them there.
He could have bought a guitar and sung
and you know said it to music and
sung it and conducted the choir.
That's where we put so much of our
truth.
We've turned it into entertainment.
Christ has become a rock band instead of
the king in his kingdom.
What went wrong?
Well said Moses in verse 8, you shall
not do after all the things that we
do here.
What were they doing and where?
Well in the wilderness.
Backside of the desert.
And they were busy doing.
That's what a carnal Christian does.
He lives in the backside of the desert
and he's filling his life with doing.
But says Moses we're not going to do
there what we do here.
What were they doing where they then where?
Every man whatsoever is right.
And you say what's wrong with doing right?
Shouldn't every man do what's right?
Of course.
In whose eyes?
In the eyes of the church?
In the eyes of some individual with a
charisma so that he can capture the imagination
of human beings or some bull?
Every man whatsoever is right in his own
eyes.
That's what they were doing in the wilderness.
That's what Christians do.
Born again, redeemed sinners on the way to
heaven, living in the wilderness, do what is
right in their own eyes.
And they don't do it insincerely.
Many of them do it with great dedication.
Thinking themselves to be the servants of God
as Saul of Tarsus once did when he
persecuted the early church.
He said I thought I was serving God.
He was doing what was right.
In his own eyes against the back right
of a sterile dead religion.
Created by men who claim the right to
revise the Bible, reinterpret Moses.
Jesus said if you'd believe Moses whom you
constantly cite and quote, in whose name you
do this, that and the other.
If you'd believed him, you'd have believed me.
He wrote of me.
But the moment theologians claim the right to
reinterpret the Bible and make it say what
they think it ought to have said, in
that moment of time you can be sure
that one day they'll do what they then
did.
They'll crucify the Son of God.
Every man whatsoever is right in his own
eyes.
Of these then who crucified the Lord Jesus
said he said you're filled with evangelistic fervor.
You compass heaven and earth to make one
proselyte of your religion and having done so
you make them twofold more the child of
hell than you are themselves.
That's Jesus.
It wasn't altogether polite, but it was true.
You shall not do after all the things
that we do here this day, every man
whatsoever is right in his own eyes.
For you are not as yet come to
the rest and to the inheritance which the
Lord your God gives you.
You're still doing in the wilderness because you
won't take what God has done.
So you haven't come into rest.
That's not inactivity, but that's where you continue
to sow good seed.
But that it might germinate and grow you
don't pump it up, God sends it down.
A land of infinite variety, restful productivity, divine
consistency.
Because when in the land you sow that
seed, Christ himself, God takes care of the
harvest.
And you and I have very little to
do with it.
When in one of the early signs of
carnality in the early church, the cult of
personality, I'm of Paul, I'm of Apollos, I'm
of Peter.
The cult of personality that is riddling the
church of Jesus Christ today on earth.
Men building their own empire around their own
prowess and performance.
Paul said, who's Apollos?
Who's Peter?
Who's Paul?
One waters, another has sown.
But it's God who gives the increase.
So neither is he that planteth anything, nor
he that watereth anything.
And if a man isn't anything, how much
is he?
Nothing.
Because it's God who gives the increase.
That's the secret you see of divine consistency.
When you recognize that all you can do
is plant.
Somebody else may come and water, but God
causes the good seed that has found good
soil to germinate, grow, flourish, blossom, and reproduce.
And there's only one to be congratulated.
And it's neither you nor me.
Jesus, who is our life.
You are not as yet come to the
rest and to the inheritance which the Lord
your God gives you.
You haven't entered into the good of that
for which I have redeemed you out of
Egypt.
You're dumped in the desert.
And all that you believe is terror.
Just flip back the page in this last
moment, 11th chapter.
Everything, tragically enough, everything that Moses said was
true.
Absolutely right.
Except that he never got them there.
The Lord will drive out all those nations
from before you, he said in verse 23
of the 11th chapter.
And you will possess greater nations and mightier
than yourselves.
The nature of your victory over them will
defy any human explanation.
It will demand a divine intervention.
And verse 24, every place where on the
soles of your feet shall tread shall be
yours.
In other words, when the day comes, when
you're prepared to put your feet where your
faith is, you'll inherit the land.
And that's what it means, you see, for
God to have a place in your heart
for his feet.
What it meant for them to have their
feet in the land, occupied territory, entering into
their possessions, inheriting what God had made available.
And when you and I give to God
a place in our hearts for his feet,
it means that he at last enters into
his inheritance.
And your humanity and mine created to be
flooded with the life of God himself becomes
occupied territory.
And that's why the Lord Jesus came.
He was sent by the Father to find
a place in your heart and mind for
God's feet.
In the 10th chapter of the second epistle
to the Hebrews, this is spelled out, and
this is where we're going to quit, and
this is where we're going to pick up
the story tonight.
Hebrews chapter 2 and verse 10.
It became him, in other words, it was
incumbent upon the Father God, for whom are
all things, and by whom are all things,
in bringing many sons to glory, to make
the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering.
Why did the Lord Jesus send his son
to be made perfect through suffering?
And you might wonder how he who was
perfect could be made perfect.
We won't discuss that now, but it's important.
But when the Father God in heaven sent
his son into this world, made perfect through
suffering, it was to bring many sons to
glory, to restore man to his true humanity,
to make boys, girls, and men and women
redeemed in the blood he shed upon the
cross, indwelt in all the fullness and power
of his resurrection life, by the gift to
them of God the Holy Spirit, to find
in their hearts a place for God's feet,
occupied territory, where he once more can enter
into his full inheritance.
His inheritance in us.
Don't hear too much about that today.
All we hear about is our inheritance in
health, wealth, prosperity.
Name it and claim it.
Just shout at God loud enough, he'll give
you everything you want.
Well, that's true that he did that in
the wilderness.
He gave them flesh to eat, and it
rotted in their teeth, and gave them leanness
of soul.
That's all you hear about today.
Our inheritance in him.
Get out of God what you can.
God didn't create us to get out of
him what we could.
God created us that he might in us
have what is his.
His inheritance in the saints, to make his
people glorious, with those whose hearts offered to
him a place for God's feet.
Has God got a place in your heart
for his feet?
As you sit right now, claiming to be
a Christian, are you his inheritance?
Yes.
Are you occupied territory?
That you can say to me to be
alive, to me to live, is Christ.
I'm crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless, I live.
Please don't get me wrong.
Not I.
Christ lives in me.
I've given him his inheritance in the saints.
Conquered him, and occupied territory.
That's the beginning of being the Christian you
say you've become.
That isn't a crisis.
It isn't just an act of faith.
It's that attitude of faith that God calls.