Happy to add my word of welcome to
that which has already been extended to you.
Now we're going to turn away from our
hymn books and to our Bible and continue
to explore the real spiritual content of our
faith, the Lord Jesus himself.
We'll go to the third chapter, the Epistles
to the Galatians, Galatians chapter 3, and
remember as we were continuing to explore the
three principles, the form of scripture is the
word of God, the character of the word
of God is gospel, and the content of
that gospel is the Lord Jesus himself.
And gospel, both redemptive and regenerative.
God's provision, not only that we might become
Christians, but God's provision that we might be
the Christians that we have become.
And remember crooked wolves hate plumb line, because
where there's a plumb line around, the crooked
wolf knows that somebody's going to start meddling
and try to put crooked wolves straight.
And this we saw to be the role
of the law, for whatsoever the law saith,
it saith to them who are under the
law, to what end?
That we might be congratulated by God on
our performance in satisfying the demands of that
law?
No.
Whatsoever the law saith, it saith to them
that are under the law, that every mouth
may be stopped, all the world become guilty
before God, for by the law is the
knowledge of sin.
For a plumb line can never make a
crooked wolf straight, all that a plumb line
can do is make, is prove a crooked
wolf crooked.
And that's why we saw the better hope
was brought in.
God's redemptive and regenerative plan fashioned in his
heart in the eternal ages of the past.
And the law was added because of transgression.
430 years after, God pledged his name, his
honor, and his glory, that salvation should come
to you and to me exclusively through his
son, the Lord Jesus, born of Mary, of
the house of David, of the tribe of
Judah, and of the seed of Abraham.
Any doubt about that in the record?
For what God said in mercy to Abraham,
last verse of the seventh chapter of the
book of Mike, has become the truth to
a silent generation.
There is none other name given among men
under heaven whereby we may be saved.
Jesus said, I am the way, I am
the truth, I am the life, no man
cometh unto the Father but by me.
So we see that the law is not
the means whereby you and I may be
justified before God, the law is our schoolmaster.
You remember Galatians chapter 3 verse 24, the
law is our schoolmaster to bring us to
Christ.
To expose our need that we may be
convicted of our sin, recognize ourselves to be
the sinners that we are, and embrace the
Lord Jesus for the Savior that he is,
and came to be.
Who came?
We believe it not because the Bible said
he did, but we believe it because the
Bible said he would.
I remember as a poet school in northwest
of London, I attended for several years a
school that was called the William Ellis School
after it was founded.
It was at a place called Gospel Oaks,
just a little district to that part of
northwest London.
And my class teacher was a man called
Clark.
Now I don't know what your custom is
in this country, but in England anybody called
Clark automatically earns the nickname of Nobby.
It's always Nobby Clark, you see.
So of course we called him Nobby.
And I remember one morning while he was
looking over my shoulder as I was working,
he noticed that the pencil that I was
using was about five-eighths of an inch
long and very chewed, because I had chewed
it.
And for some strange reason he didn't consider
that that was adequate.
I was perfectly happy, but he said, Thomas
you need a new pencil.
Something which I was completely unconvinced, and point
of fact I had a very deep sentimental
attachment to that pencil.
You don't chew a pencil for that long
without developing a deperfection for the object of
your endeavor.
So he said, you need a new pencil.
You come to me in the morning break,
quarter of an hour, 20 minutes, when we
normally would be out in the playground, I'll
give you a new pencil.
And that was the promise that he made
to me, my need, that he recognized and
I didn't.
Well when the morning break came, I didn't
give a thought to that pencil, because I
wasn't adequately convicted or convinced of the need.
So when I got out, of course I
played some football, probably had a fight with
one of my chums, went down to the
tuck shop, bought an ice cream, and before
I knew the bell was ringing and I
was back in school.
No new pencil.
So I went to work again with my
old stud.
But at four o'clock, when it was
time to go home, in order to get
to the exit, we had to go down
what we called the library, into which various
classrooms, including mine, opened.
And as I went down through the library,
I passed the door of my particular classroom,
where I hadn't been during the course of
the afternoon, and standing in the doorway, there
was Nobby.
And the moment I saw Nobby, I remembered
the pencil.
And of course the moment I remembered the
pencil, I pretended I hadn't seen Nobby.
But the trouble was, he had seen me.
He said, Comer, oh yes sir, with that
innocent look that you only find on the
face of a guilty boy.
What about that pencil?
Oh sir, I forgot.
Oh you forgot, I see.
Then you'd better just come in here.
So I went in there and he shut
the door.
Then he opened the lid of his desk,
and out of the desk he produced, not
the promise, something a little longer, just about
three feet.
Not the promise, but the law.
The law, which he very successfully added, after
he'd given the promise.
Why did he add the promise after making,
why did he add the law after making
the promise?
Well, because of transgression.
You see, the law, three feet of it,
was administered to remind me of the need
of which I wasn't previously convinced.
And after he had added the law to
remind me of my need, that he could
only satisfy by giving me the promise, he
gave me a new pencil.
Now I had both, the reminder and the
pencil, and I went home with both.
The one didn't last forever, in fact neither
did, but one kept me standing.
Now you see, this was God's plan.
The promise was given to us in the
very chapter in which there is recorded the
fall of man into sin, of which we'd
reminded ourselves yesterday, Genesis 3 15, when God
addressing himself to Satan, that old serpent, the
devil, said I'm going to put enmity between
you and the woman, between your seat and
her seat.
Genesis 3 15, referring of course to the
birth of the Lord Jesus, the seat of
the woman, born at Bethlehem, miraculously conceived, fashioned
in the borrowed womb of a virgin girl.
And the seat of Satan, the Lord Jesus
in the age of John, turning to the
scribes and the Pharisees, those who engineered his
death, the religious leaders of his day and
generation, in all their pride and self-righteousness,
said the Lord Jesus to them, you are
of your father, the devil, and the lusts
of your father you will do.
He was a murderer from the beginning, that's
why you, his children, want to kill me,
because your humanity is available to him so
that he by character can be incarnate in
what you do.
He is a liar and the father of
lies, that's why you reject me as the
truth.
And the seat of the serpent, the scribes
and the Pharisees, engineered the death of the
seat of the woman.
They bruised his heels, but he through death
destroyed him that had the power of death,
even the devil, and delivered them who through
all their lifetime had been subject to fear
because of the fear of death, and set
them free.
And this pledge by God recorded for us
in Genesis 3.15 was confirmed by God
in Abraham.
When choosing this Chaldean, whose name was Abraham,
he said I'm going to change your name
to Abraham, because I'm going to make you
the father of many nations.
He begat by divine intervention Isaac, who begat
Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel, who
begat the twelve tribes, one of which was
Judah, and of the house of David, of
the tribe of Judah, nearly 1900 years ago,
that seat of the woman was born, in
fulfillment of the promise.
But in spite of all that, in spite
of the fact, as we're told in the
book of the Revelation, chapter 13, that the
Lord Jesus was the Lamb slain from the
foundation of the world, God had to add
the law, because of transgression.
That it might be our schoolmaster, and leaders
to Christ, and talk us into an awareness
of our deed, our guilt, our bankruptcy, that
we're born dead in trespasses and sins, that
that law might lead us to Christ.
That we might then be justified, not by
the law, or our performance in satisfying it,
but through faith, through faith.
Christ has redeemed from the curse of the
law's condemnation.
You glance at that third chapter, the Epistles
of the Romans again.
Romans chapter 3, verse 19, we know that
what things, whoever the law saith, saith to
them that are under the law, that every
mouth may be stopped, without exception, all the
world, without exception, may become guilty before God,
exposed, that is to say, and subject to
his judgment.
Therefore, verse 20, by the deeds of the
law, by your or my performance in seeking
to satisfy its demand, there shall no flesh
be justified in God's sight, for by the
law is the knowledge of sin.
The righteousness of God, God's righteousness, without the
law is manifested, being witnessed by the law
and the prophet.
Even the righteousness of God, which is made
available to you and to me, through faith
in Jesus Christ.
This righteousness, God's gift through faith in Christ,
is unto all and upon all them that
believe.
For there is no difference.
All have sinned and come short of the
glory of God, being justified freely, not on
the basis of merit, not as a reward,
not because of our performance, but freely, God's
unmerited gift, grace, g-r-a-c-e,
God's riches at Christ's expense.
All have sinned, come short of the glory
of God, being justified freely by his grace,
through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
on the basis of that redemptive transaction where
he was made a curse for us.
For cursed is everyone that hangeth on a
tree.
Verse 25, whom Christ, God, hath set forth
to be a propitiation through faith in his
blood, to declare his righteousness, for the remission
of sins that are past, through the forbearance
of God.
To declare, verse 26, I say at this
time, his righteousness, not your righteousness, not my
righteousness.
Declare his righteousness, that he, God, might be
just in that he has condemned sin in
the person of another, and the justifier of
those for whom he died in their place.
The justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
So God is both just and justifier.
He is just in that in the person
of Jesus Christ, in whom our sin was
sentenced, executed, his righteousness has been satisfied.
Just.
He doesn't just blink his eyes and pretend
we haven't sinned.
God isn't just a sentimental old daddy sitting
on a damp cloud looking through thick glasses
for his naughty children.
Let's forget it.
God is righteous.
He's just.
And the wages of sin is death.
And it was executed in the person of
the Lord Jesus, vicariously on your part and
mine, exactly what happened to Adam when he
fell into sin.
It wasn't just a sentimental gesture, it wasn't
the tragic end of a noble life, he
wasn't a great idealist who drifted a disaster,
it wasn't simply God showing how far he
would condescend to try and woo us and
win us back, nothing like that.
Stern business was accomplished in the day that
God executed in the person of his own
beloved son in the sinlessness of his humanity,
all his rightful wrath and judgment upon man's
wickedness.
He died that we might be forgiven.
And now he lives to make us good.
God is just.
God can only remember our sins no more
for his namesake, because his name is Jesus,
who saves his people from their sins in
the person of the one who incarnates, incurred
deliberately and voluntarily his own person, that death
that had already occurred, as we shall discover
tonight in Adam.
And now he's the justifier, the justifier of
any boy, any girl, any man, any woman
who believes, who will come and say, Lord
Jesus, I recognize now what happened to you
when you died on the cross.
There happened to you when you died on
the cross everything that should have happened to
me.
Thank you.
And the moment you do that, the Lord
Jesus introduces you to the Father and says,
Father, please accept this person.
For my sake, I have paid their debt.
Please reckon that they are totally and finally
and eternally acquitted.
They don't deserve it, Father.
I know that.
We agreed on this before ever I went
into the world.
But thank you that you're prepared, not for
their sake, but for my sake, to accept.
And remember that every boy, girl, man, or
woman who is accepted in the Beloved by
the Father is redeemed, not out of God's
faithfulness to them, but out of God's faithfulness
to his Son.
For if you and I come to the
Father in the name of the Lord Jesus,
and he refuses to accept you as a
forgiven sinner because he died in my place,
he would be betraying his own Son, who
lay down his life a ransom to men.
That's why, of course, if the Father God
in heaven sent his Son to die for
you and for me, that our sins might
be forgiven.
There isn't a chance in all eternity that
you will ever get into his presence any
other way.
If God considered that your lot and mine
were such that it demanded the atoning sacrifice
of his Son upon the cross, what chance
is there in eternity that God will accept
you and me on any other basis?
There is none.
Absolutely not.
The cross and Christ's death there 2,000
years ago was God's final and timeless verdict
upon your and my fitness for heaven in
ourselves.
Acts 13, Acts 13, verse
38.
Be it known unto you therefore, men and
brethren, that through this man, through this man
is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins.
What man?
Well, that man, verse 28, in which the
religious leaders of his then generation found no
cause of death, yet desired Pilate that he
should be slain.
That man.
And when they had fulfilled all that was
written of him in the Old Testament, the
volume of the book where his atoning death
was foreshadowed, they took him down from the
tree and laid him in a sepulchre.
That's their part, the seed of the serpent.
But, verse 30, God raised him from the
dead.
That man.
We declare, he continues, Paul on this occasion,
verse 32, we declare unto you glad tidings
how that the promise which was made unto
the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto
us, their children, in that he hath raised
up Jesus again, as it is also written
in the second psalm.
And this isn't a Christian message, this isn't
a Christian verse, this isn't a Christmas text,
this isn't a Christmas verse, this is a
resurrection verse, this is an Easter verse.
Thou art my son, this day have I
begotten thee.
Begotten where from?
Not begotten this time in the womb of
Mary, begotten from the dead.
God hath fulfilled the same unto us, their
children, in that he hath raised up Jesus
again, as it is also written in the
second psalm.
Thou art my son, this day have I
begotten thee.
And as concerning that he raised him up
from the dead, now no more to return
to corruption, he said on this life, I
will give you the sure mercies of David,
wherefore he said also in another psalm, thou
shalt not suffer thine holy one to see
corruption.
David, after he had served his own generation
by the will of God, fell on sleep
and was laid unto his fathers and saw
corruption, but he whom God raised again saw
no corruption.
It is this man, and be it known
unto you therefore men and brethren, that through
this man, who was crucified, whom God raised
from the dead, who ascended to be with
his father, who now shares that glory that
had always been his, in the eternal ages
of the past and will be his, for
the eternal ages of the future, the word
who was in the beginning with God, was
God, and by whom all things were made,
this word that was made flesh and dwelt
among us, in whom John says we beheld
the glory, as of the only begotten of
the father, full of grace and full of
truth.
Be it known unto you that through this
man, is preached unto you the forgiveness of
sin.
So Jesus Christ came to sin.
That's why you'll never be a Christian if
you're not a sinner.
You can't be.
But of course a Christian is a forgiven
sinner, and if you're not a sinner you
don't need forgiveness, and therefore Christ didn't come
for you.
So don't call yourself a Christian.
By him, verse 39, by him all that
believe are what?
Justified.
Just as if I never sinned.
By him all that believe are justified from
all things from which you could not be
justified by the law of Moses, for the
law made nothing perfect.
What the law could not do through the
weakness of the flesh, because there's a principle
in you and me that when the Lord
says, the law says thou shalt, says I
won't.
When the law says thou shalt not, says
I will.
But the Lord Jesus, when he died upon
the cross, there was able to justify you
and me from all that the law could
not justify.
That's the role of the law.
Christ, our Redeemer, whom we neglect and whose
salvation we spurn, until the Holy Spirit graciously
takes the law, the plumb line, and convicts
us of our need, and shows us that
we're the sinners that we are, and we
need him for the saviour who came to
be.
Are you redeemed?
Have you allowed God through his dear Son
to justify you?
Or are you still claiming to be under
the law, demanding by your Creator to be
judged on the basis of your performance and
satisfying its demands?
Then you're lost, because the issue has already
been settled.
God himself has settled it.
By the deeds of the law, there shall
no flesh be justified in his sight.
For by the law is the knowledge of
sin.
It can only prove you guilty.
Now, it's at this stage in particular we
leave our hymn books and go to our
Bibles.
I'm always very sorry for a brother like
this who has to choose hymns from your
hymn books.
They're pathetic.
They're sweet, they have lovely melodies, they're sentimental,
but they're tragically and diametrically opposed all too
often in their content from the revelation that
God has given us in his Word.
Now, if we could stop here, that would
be fine.
Lots of our hymn book songs would be
okay.
But the gospel doesn't stop here.
Turn back to Galatians chapter 3.
Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of
the law, being made a curse for us.
For it is written, Cursed is everyone that
hangeth on a tree, that, that we might
get to heaven.
Is that what it says?
No.
That we might not go to hell.
No.
That our sins might be forgiven.
No.
It is absolutely true that our sins can
only be forgiven because he has redeemed us
from the curse of the law, but that
isn't why he died.
It was that the blessing of Abraham might
come upon the Gentiles, all unbelievers, through Jesus
Christ, on the grounds of the redemptive act
that he accomplished.
That, further to explain, we might receive the
promise of the Holy Spirit through faith.
The purpose for which Christ has redeemed us
is that reconciled to God our sin forgiven,
there might actually be restored to us what
was forfeited in Adam, the Holy Spirit, the
light of God.
Now of course in the beautiful picture language
of the Old Testament, this is exactly what
the children of Israel meet when God redeemed
them out of Egypt.
How did he redeem them out of Egypt?
By his strong hand through Moses.
Beneath the shadow of the shed blood of
an unblemished lamb, a bone of whose body
was not under any circumstances to be broken.
Exodus chapter 12.
Because that unblemished lamb whose blood was shed
and painted upon the doorpost and the lintel
was the Passover lamb, and Christ, our Passover,
1 Corinthians 5-7, has been sacrificed for
us.
And when the soldiers came out because of
a Sabbath day that was to follow, the
Passover Sabbath, they smashed the legs of one
thief and they smashed the legs of the
other, but when they came to the Lord
Jesus they found he was already dead.
Why?
Because he gave up the death.
He laid down his life.
So not a bone in his body was
broken.
That's why that Old Testament picture that foreshadowed
the one whom John the Baptist described as
the Lamb of God, that taketh away the
sin of the world.
Not one bone of the body of that
little lamb was to be broken.
And beneath the shadow of the shed blood
of that little lamb, under the hand of
Moses, they were led through the Red Sea,
out of Egypt, a picture in the Old
Testament always of the unregenerate, unconverted, unsaved, what
in the New Testament sometimes called the Gentiles,
out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, beautiful
picture of our identity with Christ in death
and resurrection, to be poised upon the threshold
of a new life, an onward march that
would take them through and in to heaven,
to heaven?
Uh uh, to Cain, which nowhere, anywhere, at
any time, ever in the Bible, speaks of
heaven.
So you see we don't tread into Jordan's,
you know, murky waves, suddenly to wake up
the other side in heaven.
Nor does he feed our hungry souls with
manna, manna for the wilderness.
Did they eat any manna in Canaan?
No.
That was the land flowing with milk and
honey.
There were the grapes and the pomegranates.
He was the golden corn swaying in the
breeze.
Christ in all the fullness and power of
his resurrection, that is the birthright of every
redeemed sinner.
Not just in heaven, but here on earth,
on the way to heaven.
That's Cain, the fullness of the Holy Ghost,
the life of victory in Jesus Christ.
I said, what did these people do for
40 years in the wilderness?
Did they please God?
No, he says, for 40 years you grieved
me.
You rebelled and rumbled and fought and disobeyed
and were idolatrous.
You worshipped Goldie Codd.
You ridiculed my servant Moses.
You ridiculed my servant Aaron.
That's what they did in the wilderness.
So you see Jordan is the way when
we get off earth and into heaven, then
the normality of the Christian life must be
the kind of life, the quality of life,
say in Jordan the wilderness.
It means that we for 40 years can
grieve God.
That's what he expects on the way to
heaven.
But one day we'll go through Jordan.
Would that be valid?
Listen to this.
In the book of Deuteronomy and chapter 1
and verse 1, these be the words which
Moses spake unto all Israel on this side
Jordan in the wilderness and the plain over
against the Red Sea.
And verse 2, there are 11 days journey
from Horeb where the journey began by the
way of Mount Seir and the Kadesh Barnea
on the frontiers of Canaan.
How long?
11 days.
How long did it take them?
40 years.
That's worse than British Railway.
It took them 40 years to do an
11 day journey.
Would God please?
No.
They simply had to relearn at Jordan what
they forgot at the Red Sea.
That's all.
God command to Moses was this, bring them
out that you might bring them in but
he dumped them in the desert and died
there with them for 40 years.
Look at chapter 8 in the book of
Deuteronomy.
Chapter 8 and the third verse, God says
through Moses, he humbled thee and he suffered
thee to hunger.
Where did he suffer them to hunger?
In the wilderness.
What was God doing in the wilderness when
he suffered them to hunger?
He fed them with manna.
So while God was feeding them with manna
in the wilderness, he was suffering them to
hunger.
Why?
For the simple reason that God refuses to
satisfy a people in the wilderness when he's
laid the table in Canaan.
Canaan is not heaven.
We are to be partakers of Christ now.
Hebrews chapter 3, we are to be partakers
of Christ now as they should have been
partakers of Canaan then.
And says God, keep the place there in
Deuteronomy but let me quote it to you
from the third chapter of the epistles of
the Hebrews.
Exhort one another today, daily, verse 13 of
Hebrews 3, while it is cold today, lest
any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness
of sin, for we are no partakers of
Christ.
If we hold the beginning of our confidence
steadfast unto the end, take heed brethren, verse
12, lest there be in you an evil
heart of unbelief in departing from the living
God.
Harden not your hearts, verse 8, as in
the provocation in the day of temptation in
the wilderness.
When your fathers tempted me, proved me, saw
my work, forty years, I was grieved with
that generation.
They said, thee do always err in thy
heart.
They have not known my way, so I
swear in my wrath, they shall not enter
into my wrath.
Canaan.
They'll never know the joy of that to
which I brought them out of Egypt.
They're a redeemed people, yes, they're saved out
of Egypt, but they'll never taste the good
things that I intended should be theirs in
the day that by the hand of Moses
I brought them through the Red Sea and
poised them upon the threshold of that new
journey that was to take them on and
into the land of promise.
Jesus, in the fullness and power of his
indwelling Holy Spirit, who died for us, the
unblemished land, that whether we wake or sleep,
whether on earth or in heaven, whether in
the body or out of it, we should
live together with him in all the overwhelming
unspeakable plenitude of his divine presence.
That is Canaan.
Are you still in Deuteronomy?
Look at the 12th chapter.
This is by way of parenthesis.
These are the statutes, verse 1 of Deuteronomy
12, and judgments which you shall observe to
do in the land which the Lord God
of thy fathers giveth thee to possess it
all the days that you live where?
On the earth.
The land is for now, not for then.
But the tragedy you see is this, that
the vast majority of truly converted men and
women, boys and girls, who claim redemption through
the death of Jesus Christ, are living between
the Jesus that was and the Jesus that
will be in heaven.
But they don't know the Jesus that is.
In all the fullness and power of his
indwelling Holy Spirit, through whose presence alone we
delive that medal of competence once more on
earth, in the body, to discharge that office
through which, having been created, we now have
been redeemed.
So living between the Jesus that was, the
historical act of a redeemer who gets us
out of hell and into heaven, and the
Jesus who will be one day coming back
in eschatological glory to take us to the
place that he's gone to prepare for us,
the average Christian looms in the meantime in
a spiritual vacuum.
Stop your recorder at this time and turn
the cassette over for the remainder of this
message.
Sweating it out for God down here, doing
your best for Jesus, trying to live for
Jesus, until at last you crawl into heaven
on your hands and knees covered with dust
and blisters and wait for him to thump
you on the back and say, well done
my good and faithful servant, you made it.
Now isn't that pathetic?
Isn't that pathetic?
Why did Christ redeem us?
Why did God lead his people by the
hand of Moses out of Egypt so that
they could enjoy Canaan?
When?
On earth.
Every step of the way.
If Canaan is heaven, I'll tell you where
Moses is.
Where?
In hell.
Did he ever go through Jordan?
No.
He died with those whom he dumped.
Christ redeemed us that we might receive the
Holy Spirit.
Christ redeemed us that the Lord Jesus and
the power of his resurrection might come and
reinvade our humanity.
Christ redeemed us so that you and I
might step out into every new day knowing
that somebody lives within us who as God
in us, Christ living in our heart, is
never ever less than big enough for any
situation that can ever arise at any time.
So that we can reign in life through
one Christ Jesus.
So that we can be more than conquered.
So that we can know a peace that
passes understanding, staggers the neighbours.
So that we can have a joy that
passes knowledge.
So that that joy can be unthinkable.
No, unknown to man, adequate to describe it.
A love that passes knowledge.
Well not just to get by somehow, but
triumphant.
Every day is to be the sheer adventure
of enjoying that quality of life that the
Lord Jesus described as more abundant.
It's life in a new dimension, it's superlative.
So is it?
The form of scriptures, the word of God,
the character of the word of God is
gospel and the content of that gospel is
what?
Christianity?
No.
The Beatitudes?
No.
The Sermon on the Mount?
No.
The beautiful example that he left behind 2
,000 years ago?
No.
The content of the gospel is Jesus Christ
himself.
The one who gave himself for us, redemption,
and the one who gives himself to us,
regeneration.
It may be that some of you will
pick up the book called The Mystery of
Godliness, which is the second of the books
that I've written, and I think you'd find
it quite helpful.
But I use a diagram there, and sometimes
folk at first glance think it's a little
complicated and put it down and say, uh.
Now, it isn't complicated to do.
It does look like the nervous system or
the blood system of a frog, I realize
that, but it isn't.
And I thought maybe it would be helpful
in the context of what we have been
saying morning and evening, if I just built
that diagram, which in itself, in itself like
all diagrams, is a little cold and impersonal,
but could be helpful.
That line there represents this planet, this earth
that you and I live in, temperate.
And God, our Creator, in the triunity of
the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
May be difficult for you to see that
from way back.
But some of us last night were discussing
how God created us.
And you remember, He gave us, in common
with all forms of created life, a body.
But not only a body that is characteristic
of vegetable, animal, and man.
He gave to man also a soul.
Mind, emotion, and will.
That's the human soul.
Man, body, and soul.
And soul, mind, emotion,
and will.
Our behavior mechanism.
So that we exercise our wills under the
influence of mind and emotion.
Whoever controls your mind, whoever controls your emotions,
controls your will, whoever controls your will, governs
your behavior.
So what you do, you arrive from whatever
it may be that governs mind and emotion.
Precipitate it into action through will, in terms
of this body.
Okay?
But we saw that God made all animals
that way.
But He protected the animal kingdom in a
very unique fashion that some of us explored
last evening.
With a mind, a calculator, just like yours
and mine, a memory that can retain your
shape, and sound, and size, and smell, so
that the dog recognizes you when you come
home, as you explained last night.
When the door in the front is shut,
the dog's got enough savvy to go around
and see if the door in the back
is open.
And having been told not to sleep on
the best furniture, it waits till you go
out, before it dies.
Haven't you got a dog like that?
Mind, emotion, a dog can be angry, or
friendly, it can be jealous, it can be
amused, have you ever seen a dog grin?
And it has a will.
You take a dog for a walk, and
let it off the leash, maybe if you're
living somewhere in the country, and it strays,
and you say, come here!
It stops, but it's seen a cat.
And so it, you know, sort of wobbles
a bit.
One ear up, one ear down, a mischievous
look on its face, what am I going
to do, obey, or chase the cat?
Much more fun.
Come here!
Oh, I see, well I better forget the
cat, and so it comes back with its
tail between its legs.
Now all that's going on in the dog,
you see, mind, emotion, and will.
But God has protected the animal kingdom, we
don't have time now to pause upon this
for long, because we've explored this thoroughly last
evening, by an instinctive trust, with a rigid
interlock between that instinctive trust and the animal
soul, that protects it.
Mating seasons, feeding habits, migratory paths, building skills,
none of them have to be learned by
the animal, or insect, or fish, or birds.
They're built in a computerized program, repetitive, year
after year, generation after generation, century after century.
So there is a rigid interlock, a rigid
interlock between the instinctive trust and the animal
soul, so that the law that operates in
the animal kingdom is a law of compulsion.
A law of compulsion.
It can't behave any other way than that
which has been computerized by the Creator, and
built into it in the person of an
instinctive, impersonal trust.
We call it instinct.
And we saw that by virtue of this
fact, the animal, when it behaves, is functionally
satisfying to God, but not morally satisfying to
God.
Because by what it does, it's not saying
anything to God, any more than your television
is saying anything to you, when you switch
it on, and it gives you the football
match, or presents you with the news.
You don't go up to it afterwards and
say, well thank you very much, that was
a beautifully clear picture today, I'd like to
congratulate you, and I think it was very
kind, in view of the fact it's so
late.
Is that the way you talk to your
television?
If you did, your family would get worried.
You know perfectly well, that that's just a
piece of transistorized machinery.
It can't help behave the way it's behaving,
it was made that way.
That's the animal thing.
So, functionally satisfying, yes.
Morally satisfying, no.
So God made man different.
He gave to man a human spirit.
That unique capacity, possessed only by man, exclusively,
that allows God as creator to take up
residence within man as creature.
Beautiful illustration given of the human spirit, in
the book of the Proverbs 20, verse 27,
says this, the spirit of man, the human
spirit, not to be confused with the Holy
Spirit, the human spirit, the spirit of man
is the candle or the lamp of the
Lord, God's lamp.
That's why throughout the Bible, Old Testament and
New Testament, with relentless consistency, oil is a
picture of the person, work and office of
the Holy Spirit.
The human spirit is God's lamp, but what
does a lamp take to produce light?
Of course in Bible times, oil.
And what oil is to a lamp, what
the electricity is to these, the Holy Spirit
was to be to the human spirit.
For in him was light and this light,
it was in him was the what?
The light of man.
If man was to be alight with God's
likeness, if man was to be alight with
God's glory, if man was to glow with
God's righteousness, what does it take to be
a man alight?
A man alive with the life of God.
So when God first made man, he gave
him a body, he gave him a soul,
he gave him a human spirit, and God
in the person of the Holy Spirit came
to indwell the human spirit, so that man
was not only physically alive like the animal
kingdom, man was spiritually alive in that by
the very presence of God himself through the
Holy Spirit within the human spirit, who shared
the life of the word's creator, Jesus.
That the Holy Spirit might play the role
in the human soul, that instinct plays in
the animal soul.
So man was created, mind, emotion, will, and
the Holy Spirit to operate within the human
soul as instinct operates within the animal soul.
But not by virtue of a rigid interlock,
but by virtue of a moral interlock.
Threefold in character.
Love for God, dependence on God, obedience to
God.
Love for, dependence on, obedience to.
My obedience to the only valid way in
which I can demonstrate my dependence on, and
my dependence on the only valid way in
which I can express my love for.
Love for, dependence on, obedience to.
I say, God, I want to be the
kind of man you created me to be.
Alive, and alive with your glory.
I know, God, I don't have in myself
what it takes to be like you.
You're God and I'm just your creature.
But thank you that as my creator, you're
prepared to come and live in me, your
creature, and by your Holy Spirit, teach my
mind, control my emotions, direct my will, govern
my behavior, so that everybody looking at me
sees you, God in me, behaving.
That's God-likeness.
That's righteousness.
Not by imitation, but by derivation.
God in you, not only the object of
the image, but the origin in you of
the image of which he's the object.
So that your humanity, fulfilling, discharging the office
for which you were made, God-likeness, for
that to function, God's presence is imperative.
Take God out of the man, and he
ceases to function as a lamp ceases to
function when you take oil out of the
bulb.
So the Holy Spirit within the human spirit,
teaching mind, emotion, and will, was to produce
in human behavior, God-character.
That's how we were made.
The moral interlock, and not the law of
compulsion, but the law of love.
If you love me, keep my command.
If you love me, out of your dependence
on me, yield your obedience.
Not just a rule of regulation, not just
a list of things you do and don't
do, no.
Maintain that sensitivity within your human spirit to
my Holy Spirit, that with unchallenged right, he
might himself motivate your thinking, motivate your reactions,
and motivate your decision.
Satan came along and introduced a new principle.
The principle within the Bible is called sin,
singular, deriving from an Adamic attitude that was
introduced when man fell into sin that is
called the flair.
For Satan said you can be a man
without God, God said that if you lose
him you'll die, suffer and suffer nonsense, said
Satan.
Forget it.
You've got all that it takes to be
a man in your own right.
Just vindicate your own adequacy.
Be a man, said the devil.
What he really meant was be an animal,
without even the capacity to behave like one.
And Adam believed the devil's lies, traded his
attitude of dependence on God for one of
arrogant, conceited, self-sufficient, independent of God.
He'd become a humanist, carving his own destiny,
king in his own kingdom, master of his
own future, probing into space, riding in Jeeps
around the moon.
I've got what it takes.
What happened?
Exactly what God said.
In the day that you eat, none of
you will die.
Not physically, spiritually.
The animal part of you will survive.
You'll still have a body and you'll still
have a soul.
And the mind that you've got will be
as clever as the mind I gave you
to be governed by God.
So clever that you can produce hydrogen bombs.
And while you're building with one hand, with
the other you can build all the means
for destroying overnight, what you've created.
That's why your country alone at this very
moment has top powered enough energies to destroy
the world 50 times over.
That's how smart man is without God.
That's why we're trying to put space platforms
up in the sky.
Everybody knows why.
If you can bring an astronaut down with
absolute precision, precisely where you want him, exactly
when you want it, what else can you
bring down?
All you need is a little team of
three or four or five men on a
space platform with 100 hydrogen bombs and you
govern the world.
Everybody does exactly what you say or else,
right?
That's how smart man is without God.
Clever, yes.
He's still got the mind that God gave
to a man to be governed by God.
But you see in the day that he
believed the devil's land became a man without
God, he still had a body, he still
had a soul, he still had a will,
but he was neither protected by instinct nor
governed by God.
So he couldn't behave like an animal and
he didn't know how to behave like a
man.
He could only behave like a maniac, living
for himself, ego, ego senses, every man for
himself.
And I'm on your side only so long
as you're on my side.
And it's everybody's fault but mine.
That's fallen man, physically alive, soulishly active, but
spiritually dead.
And the wages of sin is death.
Physically alive, still on the earth, soulishly active,
but ego, self, the flesh, dominating, prostituting, abusing,
misusing, dishumanity, spiritually destitute, bankrupt, dead in such
business and sin.
Now only two things can happen as I've
reminded you and we'll talk about this a
bit more tonight.
Only two things can happen to a person
who's dead.
What are they?
Stay dead or come alive.
You either stay dead or you're raised from
the dead.
And let us, let us not be deceived
in this area.
The Bible tells us emphatically again and again
and again, verified again and again and again
by the Lord Jesus Christ himself that you
and I as the fallen seed of a
fallen Adam, heirs of his fallen condition, are
born spiritually dead.
And we either stay that way or come
alive, come alive.
And why the Lord Jesus Christ came to
this world and died upon the cross was
that guilty, sinful men, dead in sins might
come alive.
The Lord Jesus, I'm come that you might
have life.
What kind of people need life?
Those who don't have it.
What kind of people are they who don't
have life?
Dead people.
That's why in writing in his second epistle
to Timothy, the first chapter, Paul says when
the Lord Jesus was manifest, he was manifest
to abolish what?
Death.
Not just physical death, spiritual death.
He came to abolish death and bring life
and immortality to life.
He came to raise the dead.
But if sin coming in drove the life
of God out, under what circumstances do you
think it will be possible for God to
put life in?
The restoration of the Holy Spirit, the coming
back of the Holy Spirit of the living
God, God the Holy Spirit, in equality with
God the Father and God the Son, under
what conditions do you think God by the
Holy Spirit will come back into the human
spirit which the Holy Spirit vacated when Adam
fell into sin, leaving man dead?
Under what conditions?
If sin came in drove him out, under
what conditions will he come back?
Only when sin has been forgiven.
So when the Lord Jesus Christ came to
this world, he deliberately chose of his own
pre-volition to accept from the Father a
body just like yours and mine, a soul
just like yours and mine, a spirit just
like yours and mine.
And having received this, our humanity in totality,
exactly and precisely as he as God created
you and me, he presented that body to
the Father through what?
The eternal spirit.
Hebrews 9 verse 14.
He allowed the Father by the Holy Spirit
to indwell his human spirit, invade his soul,
capture his mind, his will, his emotions, so
that by everything the Lord Jesus ever did
or ever said or ever was, he could
say, he that has seen me has seen
him that sent me.
I'm sent.
I've come as God incarnate to assume your
humanity as one sent, and I'm utterly dependent
out of my love for and therefore obedient
to the one who sent me.
So everything I do, my Father does.
Everything I say, my Father says.
Everything I am, my Father is.
He that has seen me in action 24
hours a day has seen him in action
24 hours a day.
And Jesus Christ wasn't being Superman.
He wasn't being superstar.
Do you know what he was being?
Man.
Period.
Just man.
Man as you and I were created to
be.
Man as you and I are not because
of sin.
And this is God's controversy.
There is no difference.
All have sin and come short of what?
Heaven?
No.
His glory.
Man created in God's image is no longer
giving a valid representation of God's character.
And by what we do and say in
our 24 hours a day, we're telling lies
about God.
And that's what God calls, there was only
one person who ever walked this earth, to
the Father's holy and complete and total satisfaction,
in whom there was no sin.
And who was that?
The incarnate worst.
And then he said, Father, you know why
I've come?
In the perfection of my humanity, demonstrating man
as we, Father, intended man to be, that
you might take their sin and laid on
me.
The coming are cursed for them.
For cursed is everyone that hangeth on a
tree.
He laid down his life, a ransom for
men.
He suffered the just for the unjust.
He was wounded for our transgressions and bruised
for our iniquities, and the cost of our
peace with God was laid upon him.
Man of sorrows, what a name for the
Son of God who came.
Ruined sinners to reclaim.
That's why if you're not prepared to admit
yourself to be one of the ruined sinners,
you'll never know Jesus as your Savior, and
you'll never see God.
Ruined sinners to reclaim.
Hallelujah.
What a Savior.
Rock of ages.
Cleft for me.
Let me hide myself in thee.
Let the water and the blood from thy
ribbons side which flowed, be of sin the
double cure.
Cleanse me from its guilt and power.
That's gospel.
As it redeems a guilty sinner and reconciles
that guilty sinner to a holy God.
To what end?
That as we turn to Christ and say,
thank you, I'm one of the sinners you
died to save, we might be redeemed.
And that decision to turn to Christ and
receive them as redeemed is called in the
Bible, conversion.
That's why Jesus said, accept a man that
comes humbly like a little child and be
converted to honor, to freedom, into the kingdom
of heaven.
But the moment you convert and turn to
God and plead the name of Jesus, God
for Jesus' sake receives you, redeems that redemption.
But the moment you're redeemed, what happens?
How alone can God demonstrate to you and
to me that sin that drove the Holy
Spirit out has been blotted out like a
thick cloud, remembered no more for his dear
name's sake, cast away as far as the
east is from there west, and buried in
the depths of the sea.
How can God demonstrate that that sin has
been forgiven that forfeited the Holy Spirit?
Only by reusing, restoring the Holy Spirit.
So here's the redemptive act, but this is
the regenerated pattern, that the Holy Spirit might
be restored to the human spirit, that Jesus
Christ might come back into your heart and
mine, Christ in the Christian, who by his
Holy Spirit put God back into the man.
Oil in the lamp, gas in the car,
God in the man, Christ in your heart,
your only hope.
As you allow him now from the human
spirit once more to reinvade your human souls,
capture your wills, govern your behavior, and reproduce
the likeness of your Creator.
And that salvation, consummated in the day that
Jesus comes and we see him, and seeing
him we are likened.
Back in Genesis 1, perfect man again, cleansed
in his blood, indwelt by his Spirit, sharing
his life.
Christ has redeemed us from the curse of
the law, being made a cursed forest, not
that we might grieve God for the 40
years we have left on earth, eating manna,
never, never, ever satisfied, always hungry.
No, that as we got out by his
death, so we might get in to all
the fullness of God in the power of
his resurrection.
Sharing day by day the glorious fact that
the Lord Jesus is alive, not just there
in heaven, but here in me, so that
he ceases to be the object of my
activity, he becomes the origin of his activity.
I had a letter from a medical doctor
when I was in California, just after I'd
spoken at a series of meetings in Phoenix,
Arizona.
He said, thank you for the three addresses
that I was able to attend.
He said, I have been a redeemed sinner,
active in my church for 20 years, but
you're the first man that ever told me
that Jesus Christ actually has a role to
play in the Christian life.
Do you get that?
Redeemed, converted, born again, yes.
His name in the Lamb's book of life,
yes.
Serving, teaching a Bible class, yes.
Serving on this committee and that within his
evangelical constituency, yes.
But Jesus Christ, so far as he was
concerned then for 20 years, had done his
thing 2,000 years ago, when he died
upon the cross, went to heaven, and was
now dismissed.
Until he finally got to heaven, then Jesus
Christ comes into action again.
But in the meantime, for 20 years, Christ
up there had simply been the object of
his activity down here, on his up there
behalf.
And he never realized that the only purpose
which the Lord Jesus actually died for him,
was to come and give himself to him,
live his life in him, share that life
with him, and communicate that life to him.
Not the object up there of his activity
down here, but the origin down here of
his activity down here, or up there.
For whether we wait, or whether we sleep,
in the body or out of it, we're
to live together with him.
That's payment.
So I hope you're not going to settle
for the with manna for breakfast, and manna
for lunch, and manna for dinner, and manna
for supper, seven days a week, all the
days of your life, going round and round
in the wilderness, sitting on every cactus bush
that you can find, until finally at last,
you plunge into the murky waters of Jordan,
and hope to wake up in heaven.
No, having got out on the basis of
his redemptive death, let go in, in all
the fullness and power of his indwelling resurrection
life.
For to me, to live, to be alive,
not one day when I'm dead, but right
here and now on earth in this body,
to me, to be alive, is crying, crying,
himself.
He doesn't give me strength, he is my
strength.
He doesn't give me victory, he is my
victory.
He doesn't give me wisdom, he is my
wisdom.
He doesn't give me joy, I share his
joy.
And the sky is the limit, every horizon
beckons me, heavy with blessings, golden with prosper.
All I've got to do in every attitude
that I adopt, in every situation which every
new ship takes me, is to admit, I
can!
God never said I could, but he can,
and he will, if I let him.
And that, something, from that moment on, there
is no possible explanation for your life as
a Christian, but Jesus Christ himself, and you
have discovered the secret of living, Naraka.
Now let's pray.
Thank you dear Lord again, for such a
wonderful, so great salvation.
Thank you we are not just doing a
patched up repair job, but that's cleansing us
from our sin, allowing us, though we never
deserved it, to taste the sweetness of forgiveness.
You've come to take up residence within this
common clay of our humanity, only that you
might take over, and be in us, that
moral competence that we never ever had, in
your actions.
Thank you for the Holy Spirit, through whom
we gladly now offer our humanity to you,
as once through that same Holy Spirit, once
then, you offered your humanity to the Father,
that as he sent you, so now you
may send us, in all the power, power,
dynamity, what a life, God's
life, your life, to time and to place.
Amen.