reading Ephesians 3:14-18 Things

So today, you know, it's interesting. Every week, Roger and I talk and you say, well, you have you got a title for your talk? And sometimes it's hard to come up with a title. The title today is things. Hopefully you can see it as we get into it and get going through it. So.

Actually, the verses we're studying is Galatians 2.19-21, but I thought, let's talk a little bit about application of especially 2.20 and 2.21.

When you read verses like, I have been crucified with Christ and nevertheless I live, but Christ lives in me and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. You read that, how can that possibly be true? There's no empirical evidence that that ever happened. I don't remember being crucified with Christ.

But we find out that there are these things that God tells us. And the thing about the things of God is that they are real. whether I apprehend them or not, and they are truth, and they have to do with the certainty, and they have to do with the Lord Jesus Christ as a source of my faith, because the Lord Jesus told me I'm the way, the truth, and the life.

So these truths are certain. They're secure, and they're not wished for. A lot of times I think we as believers wish they were true from an experiential standpoint. They are absolutely certain. Why are they certain? Because they're the things of God. That's why they're certain.

So, you have to ask yourself a question. Well, are things certain with me? Am I certain about what God tells me? Well, I have to admit, not a lot. I can tell you that what's true of me is that I have doubts. And I have doubts about the things I read sometimes. Because I can't put them in a box. I can't test them.

God desires that I simply believe Him and rest in His certainty. That's what He wants. And He wants me to rest in His reality. He wants me to rest and get the benefit of His joy and His peace because of the things He's told me. He desires that I believe. That's what He desires. And really believing is just simply resting. That's really what it is.

I trust God and I rest in what He says. And I rest in the fact that He's revealed some things to me. Do I initially, when I see them and trust them, get the benefits of it? Probably not in the beginning, but as time goes on and the Spirit works those truths into me, I begin to experience joy and peace.

And it's His peace. And it's His joy. And His peace does this really wonderful thing. It surpasses all human understanding. So, it's not my peace, it's His. And one of the fruits of the Spirit is peace and joy. So, God's purpose in our lives is to abundantly furnish us with absolute certainty. That's what He wants to do. He wants each one of us to be absolutely certain about the things that he says.

So if you, and you don't have to go over here, but 1 Corinthians chapter 2 verse 9, a really interesting verse, and we'll do 9 and 10. He says, but as it is written, eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it either entered in the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love him. God has prepared these things for those who love Him. And notice it's, you wouldn't notice this unless either I or some Greek geek told you this, it's in the Aorist tense, it's a fact.

These things are facts. He prepared these things a long time ago and put them in place. And I can't change them by not believing them or not believing that they are facts. And there's nothing more that he has to do to make them certain. They are certain. He's done it all. And he's ready right now in my life and in your life to persuade us about these things. So what can we say about these things?

Well, we can say that man's eye has not seen these things of God. In other words, man's ears haven't heard these things of God. which were made for us. God prepared these and can't be known by man's experience of sight and sound. Do you know that these things... Do you know what this is saying in our language, in our lingo?

It's saying that you can't know the things of God by experience. How hard we try to know the things of God by experience. You can't even know the things of God by observing. the things that He reveals to us. You can't know them by an empirical method. You can't stick them in a test tube and heat it up, or you can't do a logical presentation. You end up being a theologian, but you don't know the things. The empirical method of seeing and observing and hearing, you can't know the things of God that way. You can't know them in a scientific way, although science will reveal. Because God says, who I am is revealed in my creation. But we're not talking about those things.

We're talking about things like Galatians 2.20. So God prepared these things that we cannot know by my own personal logic and by my reasoning.

I can't get to them. I can't use rationalism to come to them. I can't rationalize my way into them. I can't rely on any kind of reason within myself to apprehend the things of God and understand them. Because the Word of God tells us, neither has it entered into the heart of man these things which God has prepared. It's not entered into man's heart. It's talking about his heart and his mind. It's God's heart and his mind. and his reasoning.

So you can't reason these things of God in terms of what they are. The only way you get them is God has to reveal them to you. So if I can't reason to these things of God by my observation and by my experience and by reasoning, how do I know them? How am I to grasp them which have been prepared for me in eternity past?

Well, we are one of those ones that are loving Him, and they're prepared for us because we love Him. I can know these things already prepared for me because in verse 10 it says, But God has revealed them unto us by His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God.

That's how I know them. This revealed means to uncover. It means to unveil them. So as a lover of God, which every one of us are, God has the privilege of revealing these things to us that he put together before the foundations of the world, but now he can uncover them. And by the way, these are in what the Greeks call the indicative mood. They're reality. They're true. So my question to you is this. If these things are uncovered and unveiled, and they're prepared for us, and prepared for me, why don't we know these things?

Do we know all about these things? Yeah, the deep things of God, the things that are humanly unsearchable things of God, Do you and me, do we know about all the things in terms of what they are? Some of these things are so profound that in and of ourselves and in and of myself, we can't search them out.

God has to reveal them to us. We may know some of them, but we don't know them all. I think that's one reason that God has kept us dependent on each other, because you may have one of these things in your heart that is not in my heart, and as we communicate back and forth, we both learn. Those things are revealed to us through one another. The question is, why does God then say He's uncovered them for us if we're having a tough time getting our arms around them? He's prepared these things only to be known by the Holy Spirit. You know, like it or not, we have to trust Him. And He says, but God has revealed them. He's already done it unto us. It's a done deal, you might say.

So it's only through the Holy Spirit that we can know these things. He's uncovered and unveiled everything He has for us. His desire is for us to know them. And the Holy Spirit searches out all of the deep things of God for one purpose. He's prepared them for us and He wants us to know Him. So, time to do this. I want to start with faith. Notice the word now, faith is the substance or the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.

So if I take this Galatians 2.20 verse and I apply this principle of things to it, I picked out six or seven things that are there. I have been crucified with Christ. That's a thing from God. It's no longer I that live. That's another thing from God. Christ lives in me. That's the third thing. Fourth, the life which I now live in the flesh. I'm living in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God.

That's a thing from God. Who loved me, that's another thing. And the last one is, He gave Himself for me. Those are the things of God. So how can I know them? How can I understand them objectively? Or maybe put it this way, how can I take them from this objective fact and make them personal in how I live my life? This passage is designed specifically to free us from sin and legalism. Our freedom from the domination of our sinful nature and legalism, which we can resonate in the Adamic life, was completed positionally.

Now we've talked a lot in the past here about position. There are positional truths, the things of God that are true of us and can never be changed because they are God's things. But over on this side, we have our condition. And our condition is our everyday walking around circumstances that vary, and they're not certain. God's things are certain and positional. My things are uncertain and conditional.

So, when we start thinking about, we shared Christ's death on the cross, unto sin and unto law, and we entered into His life, from this eternal position in Christ, our experiential freedom over here and growth are carried out. We start here, and God's whole purpose is to get this position that we have to filter in and line up, or our condition to line up with what He says is my position already.

So how do I do that? Well, first of all, I've got to know what they are, and that's why we study the Word of God. We spend so much time in this church primarily in the New Testament and Paul's epistles, Peter, James, and John. Why? Because that's where the things are. That's why we go there. Now, it doesn't discount us from looking in the Old Testament, but the things that God has in store for us are there.

Once we know Him, what do you do with them? We're to believe Him. And you can't look at God and say, well, you know, I need to have an experience before I believe. I just trust him because he said it. That's enough. And then once I recognize that and believe that, then I can do this wonderful thing. I can abide and I can rest in the liberator who is Christ himself. And then from there, I become dependent. I become dependent and I can walk on what the Spirit of God has revealed to me. And I am dependent on him totally. I'm not dependent on My taking from Him, I get it and I depend on Me to do it. No, I depend on Him totally. So, knowledge of Scripture is really, really important. And if you've been in this church more than a week, you realize that that's really important to us.

The truth has to precede all of our spiritual growth. We've got to find out what these things are. For example, In all of Paul's epistles, they're set up the same way. I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but the first half of them are positional truth, things. The second half of them are based on these truths. Here's how they work in your life. Start with the truth, end with how this truth works in your life, so that you may rest and enjoy the Lord Jesus Christ.

So you have to know first. And that's why I had Ephesians read, because think about it, Paul in Ephesians, he really wants them to know. When he says that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, oops, better get up, catch up here. I've got to go fast. I'm way ahead of myself. I don't know if I put it on there. I might not even put it on there. I don't think I did. We're going backwards now.

That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and knowledge in what? The revelation and the knowledge of Him. Those are those things. For it is God who works in you and works in us to do what? Both to will and to do His good pleasure. He's doing it.

I think one of the problems we have as believers, especially today, is that we really get our arms around head knowledge. We want to emphasize the doctrine itself, which there's nothing wrong with that. But the emphasis is being put on head knowledge is really important. But then here comes a group that says, well, I don't think head knowledge is as important as heart knowledge. I got to experience it and know it and feel it. Otherwise, what good is it? The problem is that it discounts the whole concept of positional truth.

Positional truth is critical to us. Truth believed, known and believed, and reckoned upon, fosters a healthy and abiding spiritual experience. You've got to know it. And that's what we do. Most of our classes are designed specifically to know the things of God. for faith to function we must have spirit given knowledge of the word. It's really important that we do that.

So in Galatians 2.20, let's see if I can get on track with this thing now.

In Galatians 2.20 it says, I have been crucified with Christ. So I can ask the question, did my old man die at the cross? I have been crucified with Christ.

What does that mean? Nowhere in the Word of God does it say that myself, my sin nature, my old man died. It never says that. If the old man did die at the cross, it would mean that he's been annihilated. He's not around anymore. I could reckon myself dead or reckon it dead. The problem is that if I reckon eradication of the old man, I have to one day wake up as an honest Christian and say, boy, if he's dead, what am I doing? You know, Roger mentioned it a few weeks ago. If he's dead, then when the music starts, why do my feet start to move? Why do I react to that sin nature if he's dead? He's not dead. I'm dead to it. There's a difference. So learning that truth is really, really important.

Was the old man crucified? Yes, in Romans 6 it says that our old man was crucified. So what's the difference between annihilation and crucifixion? My old man and your old man was nailed to the cross, right? Up there he's helpless. He's not slain, but he's been rendered to the cross, which makes him, the Greek word carries the meaning of held inoperative. annulled, made of no effect, the power is broken, how Malloy used to say, taken offline, an electrical engineer would say that.

So what's our job? As we believe and reckon upon this one thing, that my old man was crucified, God has done that crucifixion, the Holy Spirit will apply that crucifixion and the effect of it to my life and to your life. He will hold it inoperative in my life. He will free us conditionally from the power of the sin nature, which is true of us positionally.

If, as we believe and reckon upon this one thing, that my old man was crucified, that God has done it, and the Holy Spirit is going to apply it, the cross itself, if I believe that, it will become, over time, my experience. That I can reckon that to be so about me. And not only do I know it and believe it, but I'm reckoning on it all the time. If I fail to reckon and believe it, what happens?

The old man is released from this inoperative position in the cross, and he resumes his sinful reign in me. We had a long discussion this morning in Sunday school about it. It was great. So, if the self were dead, then the resumption of self would not ever happen. But he can. You all know and I all know that the old man can be revived real easily.

So who is this I have been crucified? Who's the I here? Roger talked about it a couple of weeks ago. Our old man was crucified with him. The Adamic source of life was crucified in Christ on Calvary. The identify this I is disclosed, my old man, my old man was crucified with him.

Do I say that before or after I'm saved? I think after, you can't say it before. And then we say, the next part of this is, it's no longer I who live. Who is this I who lives? The I as the old creation, my history in Adam has totally ended at the cross, right? Can I look back now and say, well, I was, you know, I really am identified with this Adam, and I really did become, you know, I'm a time-space man, and my history goes all the way back to the garden. No, once you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you're crucified, yet you still live. What's the life now? Who's your life now? It isn't Adam, it's Christ. How far back does He go?

Eternity. Eternity. So now you're an eternal being. For me, as a new creation in Christ, the death of the cross constitutes full and complete separation from the reign of the old life. Total. Positionally. But Christ lives in me. Me is the newly created man in the risen Christ.

Remember the Lord Jesus and John tried to explain some things to the disciples before they were in essence saved, when he talked to them about, I'm the vine and you're the branches, he that abides in me and I in him. Remember that? Can you abide in Christ before this happens? No, you can't.

But as you learn them, as you learn that the Father identified each one of us with the Lord Jesus on that cross, and all the life that came from the fallen Adam was crucified, we as individuals were taken down into death and raised in a creation if we become united to him in the likeness of his death. That's true, a thing. We shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection.

The Lord Jesus Christ is now resident within your spirit and you are an entirely new creation. Entirely new. Think for a moment in 2nd Corinthians 517. If any man be in Christ, and I have to assume we're talking everybody here, here's some things that are true about you. He is a new creation. You guys all look the same to me, but the Word of God says you're a brand new creation, not made up, rehabbed, or reconstituted. You're a brand new creation.

Old things have passed away. All we were from Adam has passed away, and behold, things are become new. New in kind and quality. Sitting there, and if you all took out a mirror and looked at your face, your face would be the same. But you, from God's perspective, are an entirely new creation. And you will be that for all eternity. That's what your position is. It's not our condition, it's our position. All of these things of God are positional. All of them. Our condition will develop based on the completed position by means of our faith reckoning. That's how we do it.

We trust God with what He has to tell us. When we arose from the dead in Christ, we were created anew. We were cut off from that old source by the cross of Christ. We are joined to a new source, and that new source is called the power of an endless life.

Old things passed away. The old man hasn't passed away in the sense that he has ceased to function. He's still living and alive within me. But I'm a new man in Christ, all new. And as long as I walk and reckon on that fact, the old man is held in the position of inactivity. What's interesting about the old man is that he never changes. He's a sinner. from the beginning and always will be. But he's been crucified. He's hanging up on that cross, and as long as the Spirit of God holds him there, we get to live in Christ, resurrected.

Now, the life which I now live in the flesh. So this life that I live in the flesh, as a born-again believer, how does this happen? I'm walking around with this entirely new creation inside of me. You're walking around today with this entirely new creation inside of you. Where you go and what you do is this life goes with you. That's who you are from God's perspective. How do you live it?

I live it by faith. I live it by faith in the Son of God. Every one of us needs an object. Every human being needs an object. And every human being can live by this principle of faith. If my faith is in myself, I'm in trouble. But if my faith is in the Lord Jesus Christ, this new life begins to be manifested through me. But my faith is specific. It's specific about what God has done.

Just try these things. Just these few things. Is this true? Yes. I trust God about this. These are the wonderful things that have been revealed to us according to 2nd Corinthians. And then he tells us, who love me. God did all of this because he loved me.

And as we talked about on Good Friday, it was really important, I think, for us to understand. We love to talk about the crucifixion from my perspective, but we very seldom ever look at it from, well, what did God get out of that deal? What benefit did he derive? The biggest benefit he derived is he gets to have you and me. He eliminated all of the barriers that have to do with who I was and Adam and now he gets me and he wants me. That's the desire he has for me. He loves me and he gave himself for me.

What's interesting is The Lord Jesus doesn't love the old man, as hard as you try to make him look like, gee, God ought to love me, I'm terrific. The Lord Jesus didn't love the old man, he took him to the cross. And I'm not to love that old man either, because that's not who I am. I'm to count that I have been crucified and that that old man has been held in the place of death by the Holy Spirit.

I'm to count on that being the fact of my life. The Lord Jesus loved me, the branch in the vine, and he gave himself for me. So, let's talk about a couple of more things here. The subject of my reckoning may be clarified by separating Let's separate it into some parts. I'm identified with Christ.

I've become united with him in the likeness of his death, according to Romans 6.5. When you and I were spiritually baptized, and by the way, we're going to have a baptism here in a few weeks when I get together with a guy who called me and wants to be baptized. And so I said, great, you know, but we're going to sit down, we've got to talk about it because he's got to, I think he understands this, but this is understanding that we need to have about what is baptism really all about. We were already at the point in which we believe spiritually baptized by the Holy Spirit. When did we go in? Baptism means to be placed into and never to be taken out of. When were we placed into Christ? In terms of Christ's timeline? Was it the Sermon on the Mount? Was it when he was born?

It was at the very point, Romans 6 tells us, when he died. And why is that point so important? Because that's when we die. That's when we get separated from all that is unpleasing to God. We were spiritually baptized into his death. we were identified him.

Romans 6.3 says, know you not that so many of you who were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death. That's how God did it. That's how he separated us. He identified us with Christ's death. So it's a reference to spiritual baptism and water baptisms should portray that image. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, the Lord Jesus." Knowing ourselves to have been identified with Christ, we're able to reckon ourselves to have died.

And died to what? This verse says we died to law. Romans 6 says we died to sin. We're going to see another verse that says we died to the world. Oh really? Yeah, another one of those things of God. So reckoning that we died on the cross is not reckoning ourselves now, but we reckon ourselves alive now, because that's what's true of each one of us. We pass through death. We forever are alive now as new creations in Christ. Ephesians 2, 5, and 6 says that He has quickened us, or He's enlifed us.

He's recreated us together with Christ and has raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Is that a future thing? No, it's a thing that's true of us right now. Right now. One of those wonderful things that what do we do with it? We believe Him. We trust Him when He tells us these things. So we were brought out of death into His resurrection.

As far as the Adamic, the law of sin, which is in my members, which Romans 8 talks about, we reckon upon the fact that it has been crucified, not destroyed, but crucified. Its power over us as new creations is broken and it's rendered void. It's not true of us anymore. If we become careless or we choose to walk in the flesh and draw from the resources of self, what happens? The old man at once is allowed to be free again, and he brings forth works unto the flesh. But as we increase in the knowledge of the finished work and allow the cross to separate us from the old Adamic life, what happens? We begin to operate in this really cool life.

It's called the not I, but Christ life. The not I, but Christ life. It's hard for us, I think, early on to get our arms around the fact that the whole reason God did this was so that I would live unto Him and not unto me anymore. Yeah, but I've got to feed my family. It's like if I live unto Christ, He isn't going to take care of all that. Sure He is. He loves us. The last Adam, the very life, the last Adam who is Christ, which is the very life of Christ, can't sin and is manifested in the fruit of the Spirit.

1 John 3.9 says that whoever is born of God does not commit sin. He can't sin because he's born of God. Your position can't sin.

But you get careless and walk in the flesh, what are you doing? You're sinning. What's great about all of that is that when Christ was on the cross and you were there with him, do you realize that all of your sins were future at that time? all of them, which means the ones you're going to carelessly commit tomorrow were future then, and they have been paid for. If you trust him about that, the likelihood of sinning more will be less. Or maybe put it another way, one of the great things that identification truths teaches us, and nowhere else can I find that it's important, is that, is it possible to sin less? Is it really possible to sin less?

Well, if you're like me, you've tried really hard in your own efforts all your life to do it, and guess what? You failed. Not a single one of us has ever passed that test. But if I trust God about these things, it's absolutely possible and probable that I will sin less. Because as long as I'm not paying attention to me and paying attention to Christ, I'm not sinning.

That's a really cool thing. Another one of those things that's hard to believe. But that's what he tells us. The source of our Christian life, as revealed in Romans 8-9, but you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit. Because the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of life, the Holy Spirit, he's none of it. Those that don't believe in Christ don't belong to him.

We who do, we're his property. We now have arrived at the point where God has done all of this so he could have us and have us with him for all eternity. That's what he gets out of it. Sometimes you look at ourselves and say, well, you didn't get much when you got me. But he recreated us in Christ. And he wants us and desires that we be holy and blameless before him in love. That's where we're going. And that's where our position already is.

The source of our new life, the Lord Jesus, and dwells us by the Holy Spirit. So the problem is, although all of us are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, the self-life is still there. And if we fail to believe and reckon upon the work of the cross and abide in Christ, guess what happens? Here comes good old self again.

If we walk in dependence upon the Spirit, he'll cause the dwelling life of Christ to flow through us as he described it as rivers of living water. Now, I'm going to finish up with something you probably all have read. out of Watchman Nee's normal Christian life and it's the allegory of the sea captain in mid-ocean is charged with a capital offense. He's put in chains and replaced by another captain and as the ship sails on the chain one seeks to assert its old authority over the crew. Some of them might be foolish enough to respond but there's no need for it for he has been judicially disposed It is now simply a matter of acknowledging the new captain and refusing the threats and orders of the condemned one. The death sentence is not yet carried out beyond his being held in the place of death, but his power is broken and he will be executed when the ship reaches port. In the meantime, he can cause a lot of problems.

Is that a good description of your sin nature and mine? I think it's great. It's a picture of the Adamic source, held in the place of death, but always screaming at us. I had a friend of mine tell me, you know, I'm talking to him on the phone, he said, you know what the sin nature is like? He said, it's like having headphones on and you're forced to listen to CNN all day. It's a great analogy.

Now just to sum this up, Galatians 2.21 says that Paul is not nullifying the grace of God because he's done all this by grace. For if righteousness came through the law, then all that Christ did, he died needlessly. He didn't have to die. If we could earn all of this wonderful, all these wonderful things, by any of our own effort, then Christ didn't have to die. But he did.

So our attitude towards the old man, I think, should be this. I can reckon upon the crucifixion of the cross, as Mr. Old Man, as your undoing. And therefore, I can refuse to have you reign over me. I count on the Lord Jesus now as the captain of my life.

And when the Lord finally takes us home and the conflict is over, but in the meantime, we're to rest in the things that God has shown us in Him. So let's pray. Father, how we thank you. We thank you that you are so careful to show us your work and all that you've done, really to our benefit. And as we grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus and we trust Him and believe Him, your Spirit will implement these things, these truths in our life. And we're so thankful for that. And we pray in your Son's precious name. Amen.