MBT Introduction
Hal Molloy · Jul 7, 2002
Major Bible Themes (2002-03), No. 01
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262244338138

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

Your job each week is to ask me if I have this recorder turned on. So back to looking at God's eternal purpose. So Adam fell. The image was fallen. But did God's purpose change? After Adam And after Adam fell, did God the Father and Holy Spirit say, uh-oh, and they started biting their nails saying, what are we going to do now? Because we can't have fellowship with them anymore because they've sinned. And there's a separation between us and them. And how can we get them in this circle of fellowship of love, which that was our intended purpose, and now they're outside of this circle of love. purpose, was it thwarted? Did it change as a result of that?

Now, God's purpose never changed. Man changed, but God's purpose never changed. So then, God said, purpose is still the same. And he's going to bring man into that circle and that fellowship with him. And he does it now through the Lord Jesus Christ. So he promised then a Savior in Genesis chapter 3 verse 15. He promised a Savior that would come and reconcile man to God, bring man into this intimacy with God.

Somebody turn to John chapter 17 verse 22, and I would like Just somebody raise their hand and say, I'll volunteer to turn to it and read it. Okay, Marilyn. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one, and we are one. Okay, here's the Lord Jesus Christ speaking. We're kind of out of context here, but the Lord Jesus Christ is speaking to the Father. This is his prayer. If you want to talk about the Lord's prayer. Don't go to Matthew, go to John chapter 17. This is truly the Lord's Prayer. He is praying to the Father, and he just got through praying for the apostles.

He just got through saying that for those who believe the word that they will be teaching, he's praying for them. Who is that? Us! That's us. And he's praying for us. And he says this, Father, the glory that you have given me as a man, I have given them.

And it's a perfect tense, which says it's an accomplished fact in time past, and it has abiding results up into the present and forever. So at a point in time, God or the Lord Jesus Christ has given us His glory. What is that point in time? Perfect tense says there is a point in time, in time past, that He has given us His glory and it has abiding results up until the present time and into the future. What is the time? What is that point in time when the Lord Jesus Christ has given us is very boring.

Was it when we were born? People are shaking their heads no. The answer is, I think you could say yes, it's when we were born. But which birth? Was it our physical birth? Physical birth No. Was it when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ? His death, burial, and resurrection? And we were born again?

Yeah. That's the point in time. From that very point in time that we trusted Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ has given us His very glory. We have His very glory, the very glory that He had as man. We have. Now, do you feel like you have it? No, but it's a fact. We have His very glory. And the thing is this, we don't have a clue when we're saved, when we're born again, as to what that is.

So here we are, and the reason why we're here is, one of the reasons is to understand what that glory is, what he's given us, who we are in Christ. So it's phenomenal in terms of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done for us. The third aspect of God's eternal purpose is for him to reveal his glory. He reveals his glory from Genesis 1 all the way through Revelation chapter 22. So here's the revelation of His glory. His glory is His essential essence, who He is, and so we have this entire revelation to reveal to us the glory of God, of the Lord Jesus Christ. The fourth aspect of His eternal purpose is to be glorified.

And the thing is, think about this. There is no other response that we could possibly have other than when we know what God has done for us through the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no other response than to glorify Him. No other response. And so He desires then to be glorified.

Somebody tell me, when we talk about glorifying God, what does that mean? How do we glorify God? I'm going to be using terms here, and we always talk about glorifying God, but often times we don't understand what that means. To glorify, the word glorify, doxa, It really means esteem.

So to glorify God is nothing more than to magnify who he is, his essential essence. It's to magnify his essential essence. That's glorifying God, in very simple terms. So when we understand his whole eternal purpose and how we're involved with that, and what He has done to us, with us, and what He is doing for us. There is no other response to magnify His glory than to glorify Him.

Next on this building block, as you see, is major Bible themes. So the major Bible themes is probably There are 52 doctrines, and if you take a look at your index, if you have your book in front of you, if you open it up to your index you will see 52 major Bible doctrines. When I started out in this book there were 49, and Dr. Walbert came along and revised this book and made it 52. These are some of the most vital and practical practical doctrinal themes in Scripture. So there are 52 of them, and we're going to be going through each one of them.

And I might say this, when we come to some of these themes, like for example, maybe the covenants, and when we come to distensations, we might be teaching that a little bit different than what's in the book, but we'll show you both views. So we might be modifying some of these as we go through for good reasons.

The next building block in terms of what we need to know about God's revelation is our identification with Christ. That back when we were born again, the moment we were saved, something else happened, and we were identified with the Lord Jesus Christ.

We were baptized into the very person of Christ, into his death, into his burial, into his resurrection, into his ascension, into his seeding. The word baptized means to immerse. We were immersed, and that particular word for baptism, baptizo, is to immerse in and never take out. We were immersed in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, into his person, into his death, his burial, his resurrection, his ascension, his seeding. We were immersed into all of that, never taken out, never will be taken out, so we have this union with the Lord Jesus Christ. this union that will never, ever be broken, because it's impossible for this union to be broken. The only way this union can be broken is if Christ dies, and he can't die anymore. So the next building block there is our identification with Christ. That's a summary in terms of identification truths. Next, position condition.

We need to understand when we read scripture Oftentimes, the wording is such that it looks like something is an accomplished fact in one place, and then we read scripture in another place, and it looks like, boy, it ain't happened yet, it's not an accomplished fact. So, we read in scripture that we're saved. And it looks final, we're justified, we're declared righteous, and it's erroneous because it's a fact. If you trusted the Lord Jesus Christ, this is true about you, you are saved.

But then you go over to Philippians and it says, you know what you need to do? You need to work out your salvation with fear and tremor. So it gets confusing. In one place it looks like I'm saved, in another place it doesn't look like I'm saved. I've got to work out my salvation with fear and trembling.

But the difference between the truths, those two truths, is position, positional truths, or is it a conditional truth? So positional truth is something that is true about you that is immutable, that will never, never ever change, and it's eternal. That's positional truth. So you're saved once and once for all. You'll never be unsaved. It's a positional truth. It's immutable, it'll never change, and it's eternal. It's forever.

Now, in your condition, in our condition, we have both a sin nature and we have a new nature as believers. And there's a battle that goes on between those two natures, 24-7. Can you identify with that? 24-7. So, as a believer, we get tempted, and boy, the temptation from that old man, from the flesh, looks mighty good, because we don't know anything other, and we're attracted to it, And we abide there, and we start abiding in the old man or in the flesh.

And as we do, we're not walking in the Spirit. So either, as a believer, we're either walking in the Spirit, in fellowship with the Lord, or we're walking in the flesh, in fellowship with the old man, our sin nature, the Adamic nature. We're either one place or the other. We can't be in both places at the same time.

It's either one or the other. So conditional truths has to do with that. Maybe a better way of saying it, conditional truths, is what are we practicing right at the moment, at any moment of time? Conditional truths have to do with our walk. moment by moment. We can either be walking in the flesh or we can be walking in the Spirit.

And if you have any questions as I go through this, please feel free to ask. So going back to the example of being saved, fact, and working out your salvation, can somebody Tell me what's the difference between the two? How they harmonize? When we understand position, condition, or position in practice? Okay. That's true. Position is who we are. Who we are. Condition is what we're doing.

But when we get down to the specific one that says, work out your salvation, what does that mean to you? Here's the command in Scripture. You're to work out your salvation. How do you do that? What salvation is it talking about? See, the first question you have to ask is, what salvation is it talking about? And the word salvation simply means deliverance. What deliverance is it talking about? So that when it talks about us being saved, once for all, that deliverance, that salvation, is from what? No. Penalty. Right? The penalty of sin. We're saved once for all from the penalty of sin. Right?

So we get to Romans 8.1, there's now therefore what? No condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. None. So we're saved from condemnation. We're saved from the penalty of sin.

Now it says, work out your salvation. Now, Marilyn, what salvation? From the power of sin. So work out your salvation in terms of the power of sin. And so we've got this struggle, this battle going on between us. between the sin nature and the spirit, and in Galatians chapter 5 it talks about the spirit lusting against the flesh and the flesh lusting against the spirit, right? There's this 24-7 going on within us, and so it's talking about that, working out your salvation or your deliverance from the power of sin, the power of the sin nature.

So that's just an example of positional conditional truths. Then there's growth truths. I like to think of growth truths as all the truths in scripture that talk to us and tell us about who Jesus Christ is. Growth truths have to tell us about who Christ is.

He's given us His glory. His very glory that He had, He's given us. So we need to understand who He is. And then when we find out who He is, we find out who we are. Because we're in this union with Him. The glory that He has, He's given us. So growth truths has to do with growing in the understanding as to who we already are. So when we become a believer, we don't have a clue. We don't have a clue as to who we are. But in time, as we read scripture, the Spirit of God reveals that to us. Of course, we're going to be looking at major Bible themes. I don't know if you can see that.

We're going to be looking at these 52 major Bible doctrines, and this is there. You can see it, right? And as you look at it, the first four chapters have to do with the Bible, then God the Trinity, God the Father, many chapters on God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. It talks about dispensations of covenants and angels, etc. 52 chapters, and we're going to be covering one of those each week. So this is going to be somewhat intense, but hopefully we will hit the kernel, the truth of each one of these chapters. Here's another question for you.

We just looked at some of the major aspects of God's revelation in scripture. With Jesus Christ being the foundation and his eternal purpose, major bible themes or bible doctrines are identification with the word Jesus Christ, position, condition, and growth truths. These are all revealed. This is God's revelation.

Question is this. Oh, I gave you the answer. All right, I blew it. Yeah, so my question was, what should be our response? And there's only one response. There's really only one thing that God wants us to do, and that's believe. trust in him. Somebody please turn to Colossians chapter 2 verse 6 and verse 7. Somebody just volunteer. Will they volunteer to read that? Will they volunteer? Colossians 2.

Okay, Dave? A wonderful verse of scripture. As ye have therefore received Jesus Christ the Lord, command, so walk ye in him. How did we receive him? By faith. How should we walk? By faith. That's all the Lord expects of us, is to walk by faith. Trust the penance upon Him. That's it. That's all He has.

Now, He does have all of these commands in Scripture, and bless His heart, I used to talk about all these commands in Scripture in the New Testament, and Harry went through the entire New Testament and documented every single command in Scripture. He came up with, I don't know how many pages, Harry, 16 pages. There were approximately 600 commands in the New Testament, and most of those are to believers, to us.

How do we keep those? How do we keep all those commands? Anybody want to try? How do we keep them? Let me ask you another question. Can we, in and of ourselves, keep them? How many say yes? I got no response, no shaking of heads. How many say yes, in and of ourselves, yeah, we can try?

In fact, we can take these 600 commands and I'll give you copies of Harry's 16 sheets and you can put them in your refrigerator and each day you can attempt to keep these commands. Think of what you have to do to remember what they are in the first place. What I'm trying to show you. And what these 16 pages show you is that it's impossible for you to keep them. It's impossible for me to keep them. There's no way. But it's a command, and God expects every one of those commands to be fulfilled in our life. Or else he wouldn't command us. It's an imperative mode.

So how does it get accomplished? So, what we need to ask is, what does obedience mean? What does it mean? So when you think of obedience, you think of, you know, your kids and you want them to obey, right? And so is obedience then looking at these 600 commands and obeying every one of them? Is that what obedience is?

The bell rang. about two minutes. The word obedience, as you look at the scripture, the Greek word for obedience is Hupa Akuo. Hupa means under, it's a preposition, under. Akuo means to listen, so obedience means to listen under. That's what obedience means in the New Testament, to listen under. to listen under what the Word of God has to say now. But how do we accomplish it? So obedience is listening under, now it needs to be accomplished.

The only way it can be accomplished is that as we're walking in the Spirit, that the life of the Lord Jesus Christ then is being lived through us, and He is the One that's living the life. That's the key. We can't do it. The Christian life is an impossible life which you cannot in and of yourself live, and which I cannot in and of myself live. Only the Lord Jesus Christ, living through me, can live the life that's described here. Let me just go through this briefly.

We're to walk by faith. not by sight, because if we walk by sight, if we walk by reason or sight, we've missed the mark. We have to walk by faith. Faith and trust in what the Word of God has to say. We're to abide in Him. He that abides in me shall bring forth much fruit, for without me you can do what? Nothing. We can do nothing.

So it's that abiding in Him. the word abide, hupomeno, to remain under, I like to use the term to hang out with. In New York City we used to hang out on the street corners, and that was our hangout. But the Lord Jesus Christ wants us to hang out, hang out with Him. have that intimacy with him.

As we do that, we're going to be living this life that Paul described in Galatians 2.20 where he says, I am crucified with Christ. He recognized his position. I am co-crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. In the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, or in the Son of God, that loved me and gave himself for me.

That's the life that we're to live. Okay, we'll see you next week, and we'll close. Let's bow in a word of prayer. Our Father and our God, how we do again thank you for your word, knowing that it is the And Father, we thank you for the Spirit of God that you have given to us, that indwells us.

And one of his ministries is to lead us and guide us in the truth. And the things that he guides us in, as you described in John chapter 16, is he reveals the things of Christ to us. And Father, oh how our heart yearns to know him. to know Him in terms of who He is, because as we come to know Him, we come to know who we are in Him.