Faith Lesson 12
Mike Doyle · Jun 21, 2015
Faith, No. 24
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49265737889

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

OK, we're on less than 12 today and you'll see that quite a bit of it is is review, but that's OK. And 13 is back there. But I haven't emailed it out yet yet. I wonder if it's Nick. Come on. He's walking in. I checked it and I think he's on the list, the electronic list.

So anyway. So the first question today, which you should be able to answer without any problems is, What's personal faith? Boy, we've really been effective for five months. Your own personal belief. OK. Belief is personal. What makes it personal? Trust. But I need more than a one word answer.

How about ownership? What's that? Ownership. Ownership of what? Of who you walk in. Ownership of what Christ did for us on the cross. Okay. How about this? Faith is the human response that God slash Christ expects from his person, his word, and his promises. No. That's not very good. No. Why not? It's good. Explain your answer.

I got five others. Faith is the human response that God expects from his person and his word and his promises. That God expects from what? I'm writing this down. How far are you? That God accepts... From his person? From his person, thank you. His word and his promises. I would add one more in there, his facts. You know, and maybe that's all from God's side. You know, I think there might be another part that's from our side.

Is this Unitarian or something? Well, if you're going to make fun of my responses, I won't have any. That would never happen with you. Right, that's true. You know, it seems like there's a little bit of personal responsibility, though, on it, too. I mean, it's what God expects, yes, but it's kind of like our end of what's our responsibility. Yeah, there is responsibility. Do you all agree with that? Part of personal faith is a responsibility? Okay, how about this one? Confidence or trust in a reliable object. God's character, his ability, his promises, his word and his acts. It's a confidence or a trust in him. Okay? You alright with that? I got another one.

The only act of appropriation that is excluded from a works classification. Understand what I mean by that? You guys are awake, it is Father's Day, most of you aren't fathers. It's the only act of appropriation, you know what appropriation means? To apply to myself. That is excluded from a works classification. Faith is not a works. We have a responsibility to believe God, but if we do, we can't go to God and say, look, I believe you owe me. I did my part. It results in works, faith.

Results in works? Yeah. Whose works? Help me. Whose work? Well, it would be in the works of God. So you've been gone for two weeks, so you've missed this whole thing. You know what, though? Isn't there something in the Bible that says our work is to believe? Like, isn't work, isn't belief a work? No. No. A work in the sense that that I create a debt to God by believing and then because of that he owes me.

So it's under the heading of grace. What about the people who use that to claim the promises? Claim the promises? Okay. Let's talk about claiming promises. Do you find in your study of especially Paul's epistles that there's this mechanism in place or method in place that God says, OK, I promise this if you'll do this. No. It's not that way, is it? No. Is there one? I promise eternal life if you believe. OK. Is eternal life already there? Yeah. So it's not a promise, it's a fact. OK. I promise you can have it if you believe me.

But where's the value? Is it in the fact that I believed or is it in what he has stated? If I believe in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ and God saves me and does all those 200 other things, I have not created an environment where he owes me. What's happened is I've entered into the grace realm in which all the blessings are mine because he's already supplied and put them in place. So the value is in his blessing, it's not in the fact that I believe.

Do you see that? It's he who had begun a good work in you will perform it. It's him performing it. Sure. And like we were going through Colossians 2, 6 and 7 rooted, built up, established. Who does all these three things? You do? Do you do? No. Who doesn't? The Spirit of God doesn't. Who does the abounding with thanksgiving? We do. Why? Because the first three were done by God. You see that?

So there's never a sense in which we have put God in an obligatory situation where he's going to owe us. Never happened. He's always doing the work so that we respond. We do not appreciate the value of the motivation of grace. We always try to motivate either through legalism or pressure or guilt or something, but to be motivated by what God has already done is the most powerful motivator there is, I think.

You see that? Yes? Maybe a little bit of a money trail, but when I was thinking about that, personal faith, we're talking here about as a believer, but doesn't every person have personal faith? believer or not. They put their faith and trust in something. That's exactly right. And so I was thinking that only when your personal faith starts to line up with the definition of faith. Biblical faith. Yeah. That the spirit is able to start working. That's the appropriating thing about personal faith. It's like The blessings are all there. The question is how do I get the door open? How do I get the blessings to accrue to me? That's how you do it.

It's by faith. And like what Donna said, that kind of sounds like a definition of being conformed to the image of Christ, like at the same time. That's a result. That's a result. Okay, how about this one? Resting in the facts presented by the Holy Spirit. It's believing in the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's personal faith. You like that one? Sure.

I particularly like the resting in the facts part. Resting in the facts, presented by the Holy Spirit, it's believing in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a personal trust It's rest in what is revealed to us in terms of the essence of faith. Now, you remember we talked about what the essence of faith is? Everybody with me? Somebody explain to me about this essence of faith thing. What is it? See if I got it up here. Well, I got it here. Right here. I think Jim did this. The essence of faith. That's what faith is all by itself. without any input from you.

So what we're looking for in the essence of faith are what exactly are the things that I'm to believe from a personal standpoint? Or, put it another way, what are the things? Hebrews 11 says, Faith is the substance of the things hoped for, and it's the evidence of the things not seen. What are the things? Things of God. What's that? Things of God. Things of God. How would you describe the things of God? What would they be? Rest. Rest in Him. Is God resting in Himself? Well, no. I'm talking about from my angle. Let's stop there for a minute. We're not going to talk about your angle yet. We're talking about the things of God.

What are they? His characteristics. What's that? His characteristics. His characteristics, his glory, his personal characteristics. Well, that he was the creator. He's the creator, he's the sustainer, he's omniscient, he's all powerful, he knows everything. Eternal. He's eternal, he's loving, he's omnipresent, he's all those kinds of things. The most important thing is that he loves. That's who he is. Those are what the things are.

You cannot see from a personal standpoint, you cannot see nor enter into nor apprehend the things of God unless you do it by faith. Faith opens the understanding, opens up the door, so to speak. Are you with me on that? If I stand up here and tell you that you were crucified with Christ and you just take that information and you don't believe it, you never see the value of it or what it is, that it's so important to me as a believer. But if I don't believe it, it never becomes important.

Or if I say to God, you know, I don't, that sounds too pious for me, or whatever reason, you've made a decision about it. And that's the other thing. When the things of God come towards you, and they're made clear to you, you have to make a decision about them right then. You understand that? Whether to believe them, or not believe them. And by saying, I can't worry about that today, you've made a decision not to believe it. Right?

You just don't walk away from the things of God. When they're presented to you, you have to decide right then whether you're going to believe them or not. And if you don't, the floor doesn't open up and you don't fall through. But you don't arrive at the benefits of personally appropriating the things of God.

I can see why faith is such a big deal, because it's like the only way to do it, because Christ only died on the cross one time. It's not like you can die every day so that we can be there to see it every single day. It's the only way is faith. So how do you find out that information? Through the Bible. There you go. Christ died once for sin for all time. It's done. It's over with. You're not going to come back Thursday just because you've been bad and do it again. Or see miracles every day so we know. Or something we can see.

The great thing is that When Christ was on the cross and paid the penalty for your sins, who was He there satisfying? You? The Father. He and the Father are the ones who had the sin issue to resolve. Did they do it to their satisfaction? Yes. So why aren't you satisfied about it? See that? How do I get satisfied about it?

I believe Him. You can't get away from, especially of really familiarity with Paul's epistles because the stuff that he tells you in so few verses is just amazing in terms of what God has already done and wants us to live in. By just resting in the facts. Is it important to know the facts? Absolutely. Absolutely it is.

You know you were talking about being built up and rooted and established and it's all God does it all. And I was thinking about, you know, how does that work? And I just finished the 120th lesson on Romance with Chester McCulloch. And I was looking forward every time to the next one. And I think that's what that is. It's not that I was pulling up my bootstraps. I think it's God doing that. It's always Him. We're to walk by faith. He does everything else.

But it's important you know what to believe. And here's another thing, it's important to be able to rightly divide the word of truth. You know what I mean by that? Who knows what I mean by that? If I say, well, what if I said, well, you read the Mosaic Law and that's what you need to believe. Is that appropriate for you as a believer?

No, because it's law-based. We now live in a grace-based system. Why? Because God changed it. He's the one that did the change. He went from law to grace based on what Christ did on the cross. You get these Bibles that have the New Testament and Psalms. Why would Psalms be in there? They have nothing to do with who you are in Christ. Nothing. Oh yeah, but they feel good. Oh, that matters. How you feel really matters.

Okay, they shouldn't be in the Bible? No. There shouldn't be an acquaintance with the Psalms and the New Testament in the same publication so that somehow the Psalms equate to what the New Testament and Paul's epistles say, because they don't. Okay. This is what so many teachers are guilty of. just certain verses or certain chapters or certain books instead of looking at the whole Bible as one unit.

It's one unit, but it's divided. It's divided, but if you go and say the Mosaic Law, you can see in Galatians where it's been set aside or in Romans it's been set aside. That's what I mean. You've got to look at the overall picture. You can't just look at a specific verse. Name it and claim it.

People get by with that. Yeah, they do. And a lot of times we're anxious to look at what has been set aside without paying attention to, well, set aside for what? What replaces it? And that's the grace. You know, we've had a class, how many times have we talked about grace? Two or three times. Grace is a learned thing. If you've listened to Chester McCauley, he says that grace is You have to be taught grace because there is nothing in your environment in the world system that would associate you with what grace is at all. So you have to learn it. You have to be taught. And the only place grace is talked about is starting in Romans 1. It's referred to, but as an environment we live in, it's in Paul's epistles. So what is the key element of personal faith? Key element of personal faith, what is it? The object. Yeah, I could have said it that way. What is the key object of personal faith? Christ. Christ himself. Christ himself.

Is it okay for you to just go to seminary and get your head crammed full of biblical facts and that settles it? No. What's got to happen there? What do you think needs to happen? There has to be a growing personal acquaintance and intimacy with Christ himself. And that's what the essence or the things of God reveal.

Yeah, there's a lot of facts, but what's God up to? Does he want you to be a fact person? We've got too many of those now, like we have too many lawyers and we have too many theologians. But we don't have very many people that actually have an intimate, personal fellowship with the glorified Christ. And that's what he's really up to. It's nice to know what he's up to, don't you think? Where are we going from here? What are we going to do? What's the reason for all of this going on?

It's so that I can know him. Paul said in Philippians, that I may know him. in the power of his resurrection, in the fellowship of his sufferings. You cannot forget that part. I forgot the rest. What's the next part? Being made conformable unto his death. Oh man, that's so critical.

I think the intimacy is an important part. Because that develops the trust for everything he says. That's right. In equating to somebody, if you know somebody, the more intimate you are with them, knowing that you know everything about them, you begin to trust them. Or not. Or not. Yeah. Yeah. But I think the intimacy with Christ is important because then faith comes the personal faith, because you trust him.

You know him. And as you know him, you can trust him. And the things he says, you then rest in. But I think it develops from that intimacy. Because if you don't know him, you can know the facts, but do you really trust him? And I think it really stems from that intimacy, and he keeps crying out for intimacy.

You know, the union, sharing his glory, all that, the person, growing the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Personal, personal, personal. I was doing a workout this week and I had my headphones on. I'm listening to this Southern Baptist preacher, Adrian Rogers. Anybody know him? Boy, what a great voice this guy has.

You talk about being envious. Anyway, he was talking about salvation. And he was saying that salvation, you don't need to be worried about the Savior. You just need to be worried about the facts. And I'm all screaming doing the workout. The Savior is everything. The facts about Him are important, but He's everything. Yeah, I was saved by the gospel, but who saved me? The Savior did. It's a person who did this. And God has determined that we are to grow have a growing intimacy with him through his word, resting in him by faith. And Courtney's right. If you have a growing intimacy with him and then here comes a new biblical fact.

You're reading along your Bible one day and you're like, oh, I never saw that before. Are you more apt to believe it because the one you know said it? Or do you have to figure it out before you're going to believe it? Because if you have to figure it out, you've really said, I don't believe it.

That's what you've really done. So the object of personal faith is the person, it's the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And the Spirit of God, part of his role that the triune God has taken upon themselves to do what they're going to do, is his job is to reveal Christ to the believer. That's what he does. He's not interested in making you smart. He's interested in making you acquainted. It's like the Holy Spirit is the one that works. We don't work. He works. He works in us. You'll run out of gas when he is, but he does.

Okay, define the principle of faith. What is the principle of faith? So let's define the principle first. What's the principle? I would think this side of the room would jump all over that. They're all engineers. You want to let that side have a chance. What's a principle? The way something operates or functions. It's the way something operates or functions. Give me an example of a principle.

Gravity is a good one. Give me another one. Guys are geniuses. You say gravity because I've said it. There you go. A principle doesn't fail. A principle doesn't fail. It depends how old it is. For every action, there's an opposite reaction. What's that one? Is that a principle? I think so. What is another one? You've got to answer. So here's another question. Has God set up a system as to how we should function with Him? Or give me an example of a spiritual principle. Grace. Grace is a spiritual principle. It operates the same way every time. Which means if you're not operating that way every time, you're not operating under grace. Is that okay? I just made it legal for you. Now you can understand. No, I'm serious.

If you have any sort of attitude towards God that He is expecting you to do something so that you could be more pleasing to Him, you're totally out of the principle of grace. Totally out of it. Because it doesn't work that way. If I keep throwing rocks out the window and they keep hitting the ground and then one of them starts doing this, I mean, they're going to hit the ground every time. If I am approaching God on any sort of a merit basis, or He didn't give me enough basis, I'm not operating in the principle of grace. I'm not.

Because it works the same way every single time. So does faith. It works the same way. That's why Romans 4 says that faith that salvation is by faith, that it might be of grace. Because faith fits into the grace principle. It works the same way every time.

I think the tough part then is when part of our walk is that we are going to be serving Christ somehow, and then it's to second guess your motives, so you think, oh, well, I'm doing this, maybe I'm doing this because I want something from God, so I don't do it.

So then it's like, how do you know you're doing something? And it almost seems like you sort of find yourself there. Would that be like a good description? Like you find yourself doing something, serving, or whatever it might be, rather than planning out how you're going to do it? Because I don't want to be sitting around like a lump. Why not? Because I don't believe that's God's purpose for us. Is that something you came up with?

No, it says that if you're going to walk in the Spirit and you walk. You have the Hungry Heart with you? Yeah. Look at the one, did you guys read the one this morning? It was really kind of cool along those lines. See, here's the thing. If the Lord Jesus Christ is functioning and operating through you, then there's no question about what's going on. You don't have any doubt. Right, it's like you find yourself. What you're doing, you're serving. Now listen to me. You find Him, not yourself. You're with me on that? That's really important. I think it's about the second paragraph down.

To share what we have may minister temporarily to the physical, but to minister to the spiritual, in an eternal way, we must share what we are. And that calls for growth in the Lord Jesus Christ. We can only comfort others with the comfort wherewith we ourselves have been comforted of God. Others can only really be helped by what has been the power of life in the would-be helper. Information by itself, however correct and orthodox, however strongly held in conviction and passed on in passion, will lack an essential and indispensable quality or value of spiritual constitution."

That's good. You get that? Yeah, but I did hear Cher. Did you hear the part about being prepared? about being prepared for... You can have all the knowledge, you can have all the techniques down, you can have all of everything down, but the Spirit of God is preparing you to minister, so that you are what you say, so that Christ actually is living His life through you. It isn't yourself doing a good job. And part of that is the suffering part that we all want to avoid. And if we have suffering and we haven't been prepared like that, we're going to either walk around under a cloud or we're going to take credit that we overcame. See that?

So, when I ask the question about living under the principle of faith, The principle operates the same way every time. And one of the parts of that principle is the preparation process that the Spirit of God puts every one of us through so that it would be not I, but Christ.

I've just gone from position to condition. You understand what I just did? I'm not talking about position here. I'm talking about the Spirit of God getting you ready to be of service. So don't be in a hurry. Let him do his job and you learn. I guess what I'm thinking of is that whole South Carolina thing.

Those people went through suffering. Their response showed... What? What did it show? How God prepared them. That's right. Yeah. That's what it showed. And it's not like they went out like, oh, you know, I'm gonna... go out and share or do this, it's like this incident came upon them and it was their response, their preparation through God that they were able to be liked. It's very interesting because when you listen to those ones that testified at that bail hearing, every one of them talked about how much they were hurting, how much their emotions were just, I mean they could hardly talk. But they all forgave him. And it wasn't contrived or forced, it just did. Where does that come from? It comes from the Spirit of God working in you. I may have to move to Charleston and join that church. What kind of way do you see what God can do in the lives of people?

We're not burning the town down. We're forgiving people. Yeah. Senses, purpose, grand senses. We'll make it through this whole thing. Yeah. The one lady said, every fiber of my body hurts, but I forgive you. That's something. I mean, realistically, when we're talking about functioning and operating by the principle of faith, This walk, this personal walk we have, the Spirit of God has to do these things.

Most people didn't have a meeting the morning before and say, when we all get up there, everybody forgiven. Nah, they were hurting too bad for that. But they knew forgiveness was part of who they are. And that hate wasn't to be the dominating feature of how this whole scenario went down. And like Molloy used to say, is that a tragedy?

No. What I find interesting is that you talk about the press mumbling in their beer. They listen to this kind of thing. They don't know what to say. Because they're whipping it up. And all the stations went to listen to these. They thought for sure, boy, they're going to say, fry the guy. And they all forgive him. Nobody knew. I mean, they switched back to the commentator. They don't get it. And they're not supposed to get it because they don't live by faith. They don't understand grace. These people do. You know, kind of cool to see that we would be that gracious. Anybody packing today?

The principle of faith includes that we walk by personal faith. personal trust and rest in what is revealed to us in terms of the essence of faith. The reality which God reveals to us and that reality is in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. This principle of faith functions and operates the same way every time. I'll tell you how it does it. It includes a walk by personal faith, personal trust, rest in what is revealed to us in terms of the essence of faith. part of the principles, the reality which God reveals to us. What I find interesting with us as believers is that we are struggling with learning and things of God, yet God is more anxious and more energized in revealing himself to you than you are learning it. because you've got all these distractions or you want him to do something that he never intends to do. And that reality is in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The principle of faith always includes the reality of who Christ is, always part of the principle. It operates and functions the same way every time. So let's talk, we've probably already done this but we're going to do it again. Define the essence of faith.

It's the facts about God. It's what? The facts about God. Okay, that's pretty good. Anybody else? I wrote down the essence of biblical faith is the totality of God's revelation to man. The whole thing. It's objective is truth, it's the facts, it's reality. It's the very reality of who and what God is and what he has done. And it's independent of us.

That's one of the things that I noticed and you probably noticed it too when we first started this class and we started talking about what is the essence of faith. Everybody raised their hand and gave a definition of personal faith. Because that's all we know. But now we know what the essence of faith is. That's different than personal faith.

I get little pieces of Bible verses, sorry. What is it? Faith, hope and love, and the most important is love because faith and hope are going to go away. Yeah, why is faith going to go away? Because we'll see God face to face, we won't need faith. That's right. But there still will be faith there because faith is separate from us. No, there won't be faith there because it will all be reality at that point. You'll see it. You'll be in it. And it's the same thing with hope. It will all be right now. There isn't room for hope in eternity because it's all now. But love never stops. Let's see.

It's the very reality of who and what God is and what he's done. When you open up your Bible, to spend time in the word. Why do you do it? Why would you even bother? To get more understanding? To get more understanding? Or because I've got a difficult situation and I'm shoved back to, oh gee, I've got to crack the spine of the Bible again. What else? For me, it's like I get wrapped up in my own thoughts. That must be fun. Yeah. Tell me about it. At least in the Bible when I go there, I know I'm going on facts instead of all that crap in my own head. Actually, you brought up a great point.

Because you have the Word of God, and yet you're entwilled by the Holy Spirit, but you also have a sin nature, and what is it trying to do? It's trying to express itself through you and so it's got your head filled full of garbage to keep you from this. But you open it up anyway and why are you there?

Isn't it fellowship with God? With who? God. No. Christ? Close. It's with Christ. It's important to distinguish that because Christ is the Lagos, he's the word of God, he's the one person of the Trinity that has been given to us to reveal who God is.

The Lord Jesus said, real simple, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. Oh really? You look the same? No, but the principles are the same. We should pray to the Father. Absolutely. Sure. Sure it is. And when you pray to the Father, what do you pray to him? What do you say to him? I address him, ha, through the Son. So you're saying prayer to the Father is a form of fellowship with the Father? Studying the Word is fellowship with Christ? Well, yeah. The Father is Spirit, right?

Can we as human beings who are material and spiritual know God any other way other than Christ? As an example, if Christ had never come to the earth, never become a man, what would you have missed about the characteristics of God? Not very well. You wouldn't know His love. Well, through the Holy Spirit, because that Old Testament is full of it, right? But think about this. If the Lord Jesus doesn't come, and the cross doesn't happen, there's no spiritual life. But what God wanted to reveal to us. But I wouldn't have the capacity to know it. The natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God. They're foolishness to him. He can't know them. So without Christ I'm not going to have the capacity.

See that? How do I know that God is love? That he's long-suffering? Through Christ. That's how I know. And for Christ to become a human being is just mind-boggling. And he just didn't become another Adam. He's an entirely new kind of human being. And because he is, we talked about a couple of weeks ago, I was talking about how do I know how Ralph thinks and how does Ralph know how I think, because we both have the spirit of a man and we kind of know how that goes.

But we now have the spirit of Christ and the Holy Spirit indwelling us, so how do we know how that goes? Because we have him. And He is who He is, and we're united. And the Spirit of God's job is to reveal all of that to us. And the Father couldn't do it any other way. People say to me, I wish I lived in the Palestinian times when Christ walked on the earth. Would you rather be an apostle before the cross and resurrection and Pentecost, or would you rather be who you are right now?

Which one? Now. Why? Holy Spirit. That's right. You have new life. These guys had new life too, but I mean, they walked around scratching their heads. They couldn't figure out what Jesus was going to do next. But we know, we know, because he operates on the same principle of grace every time. We know. I knew a brilliant engineer who I used to try to share Jesus with, and he said he'd read the Bible five times and it was just a book. So what you're saying, unless Jesus came and died, we couldn't have the Spirit and we couldn't do all of this. To understand. So we could understand. That's right. Brilliant guy.

It shows you how much human brilliance helps you. God wants us to believe in Him. He wants us to enter into what He has revealed. I think a lot of times we look at Hebrews 11.1 and we don't realize that this verse belongs to God. And it tells us what He's doing and what He's up to and that He has instituted this principle of faith for one thing only and that's so that we might know. Him and the things that He's done and is going to do. That's why He did it. So that's part of these three things. God always is the act first. We're always the responder. Always.

Hebrews 11.1.

We've already talked about what are the things. I had in here, if you knew this much about any person, would you say you personally knew them? If I knew as much about any person in this room as God has revealed about himself in Paul's epistles, could I say I knew you pretty well? Yeah. I mean, God is not the guy that's hiding behind anything. He wants you to know him. And he spent the energy and put in the resources for you to know him. He's got nothing to hide. And it isn't the satanic garbage that he laid on Eve in the garden.

No, God doesn't want you. He didn't tell you the whole truth. He held some stuff back and he knew that if you ate of the apple you would be illuminated and you'd know some things that he doesn't want you to know. Nonsense. There's nothing about God that he doesn't want us to know. Nothing. He wants us to enter into the fullness of who he is. Pretty cool. My dog doesn't know me that well. So, the Lord Jesus Christ desires that we know him at least as clearly as we know any creature anywhere. At least that much.

We get amazed at people who forgive people who shoot their friends. Or somebody like Al, who the Lord is going to take home and he can't wait to get there. How come? Because somebody taught him in the church that when you get close to dying, here's how you're supposed to act.

No. He knows who he... Paul said, I know who I have believed in. And I am persuaded that he's able to keep that which I've committed unto him until that day. I know. It's not a guessing game with him. It's not, oh, gee, I hope it works out. I'm not really sure what's going to happen after Tuesday. It's not like that. Every believer who grows in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ begins to look forward to the day they get to go home. It's a glorious day. for them, you know. I'm not happy because I've got to stay here.

Okay, first buzzer? Okay. So the essence, Hebrews 11, one of these things are God's essence, His ways, His thoughts, His wisdom, His knowledge and His mind. Don't you find that interesting that he's willing to share all of that with us? With no hiccups? Okay, we'll start into this.

Look up Colossians 2, 6 and 7, which is what we talked about last week. And then look up Romans 6, 3 through 5. And then question 6 is compare Colossians 2, 6 and 7 with Romans 6, 3 through 5. So somebody from over here read Colossians 2, 6 and 7 and somebody from over here read Romans 6, 3 through 5 and we're going to compare them.

Okay, ready go. Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. Okay. Romans 6 over here, 3 through 5. None of you read English? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? We were buried before. We are buried therefore with Him by baptism into death. Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life. For if we have been united with Him in a death like this, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like this.

Alright, compare. What does Colossians say that line up perfectly with what Romans 6 says? We're to walk in Christ? We're to walk in Christ. The first thing in Colossians is that we are rooted. What did Romans 6 tell us about being rooted? Baptized what? Into Christ's death. So what does baptized mean? It means to be placed into and never to be taken out.

So the rooting part, who does that? Who did that rooting thing? The Spirit of God did. And how did he do it? He took you and he put you into Christ. He rooted you in him when he died. And we've talked about why that in his timeline, why that's so important. But there's the rooting. Now, grounding. Rooting built up. Let's talk about being built up. compare what Colossians says with what Romans says in terms of being built up. You don't see it?

So when Romans 6.3 says, that we were baptized into his death, baptized into Christ. We were buried with him through baptism into death. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in the newness of life.

So when you look at the Colossians and it talks about being built up, what can you equate with Romans 6.4 and the building up issue? Resurrected life. When we're raised with Christ, we're in the new life. And so we're being built up in that life. That life. God is not remaking your old man so it operates like a good Christian. New life. Built up in what? Built up in Him.

We better stop there because it's going to get a little bit more complicated. Yeah, please. A lot of people are talking about the Old Testament. And this is a lot more important. But it helps me. to take home the message of grace. It's really interesting that he picks Paul and John and Peter to write the epistles.

And most of the stuff that's in there were just barely referred to by Christ because Christ came to the Jews. He came to that nation with a purpose for them, not knowing anything or not revealing anything until after his ascension about what he really intended to do. That's why the difference is so important because the Old Testament, or especially the Gospels, are really informative about what this resurrected life of Christ kind of looks like, how it functions. But there's no substitute for Paul's epistles in terms of how we get there, because that's not talked about in the Gospels at all. How did we get there?

I'm sure that when John overheard the Lord Jesus praying to his father in 17, he was scratching his head. What is he talking about? That they may be one with me, with us. That they may be one with us. What does that mean? Father, how we thank you for your word and how we thank you that your spirit is always working to develop and increase this intimacy with your dear son, the Lord Jesus, in glory. And we thank you, we pray in his precious name. Amen.