Identification Truths
Mike Doyle · May 7, 2006
Identification (2005-06), No. 31
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262350515737

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

we're working on today, having access to God. And I think I put all the verses in the questions. What does it mean to have access to somebody? You can go see them and talk to them anytime. Yeah, or it's not like trying to get an appointment like with the president, or somebody who has a lot of levels of bureaucracy between you and them. The whole focus of this is the kind of access that believers have to the God of the universe, which is very interesting. You don't get any higher than that. And you would think from the way we live our environment here, that the levels of bureaucracy between you and him would be insurmountable. As a matter of fact, most religions purposely do that. I don't know if you've noticed that, but they do. I know in Catholicism that all of these saints and sacraments and rituals, all those were smoke screens to keep you away from God. One of the most amazing things came to my mind when I was led to the Lord right away was I had access. I didn't need a surrogate. I didn't need a priest. I didn't need to pray to a saint. I certainly didn't need to pray to Mary about anything. But that's the mentality. Who better has the ear of her son than his mom? That's the mentality.

And especially if you grease it a little bit with some So, what the Word of God teaches us is that we have, Ephesians 2.18, for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit unto the Father. You have it now.

Romans 5.2, through whom also we have had our access by faith into this grace wherein we permanently stand and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. and we'll wait on reading the rest of them. So, on what basis do we have access to the Father?

I think there's two questions that believers need to answer really quickly in their Christian life. The first one is, does God fully accept me? Does He or doesn't He? Is there something else I've got to do before God will accept me? Do I need to take a shower? Do I need to pray more? Do I need to study my Bible more? Does he accept me? And if he does, second question, upon what basis does he do so? So the answer to the first question is yes, he does. The answer to the second question is the basis is what? What's that? Yeah, it's our union, actually, back to the issue of identification. We have exactly the same access to the Father as the Lord Jesus does. We are accepted in the Beloved. Now, the Father accepts...

Go ahead. Okay. Anybody want to tackle that? What's the word hope mean? Confidence. But future, right? Hope is something that if you hope for something it means you don't have it right now. Or something you don't see. Well, okay. Maybe something you don't see.

So the way that I look at hope from a Christian standpoint is the one thing I don't have yet is this really cool looking body I'm going to have. I have a hope about that. Is there any doubt that I'm going to have it? No. So hope is an absolute certainty of a future possession or something that's true of me. In this case, it's the glory of God. What does that mean? What's the glory of God? If I have a hope about the glory of God, does that mean I hope that I'm going to see it?

Because 2 Corinthians 3.18 says I can behold Him now, behold His glory now. So what's the hope of the glory of God about?

What is glory? Anybody? Come on, that's an easy one. What is it? How would you define what glory is? God's fulfillment in something. He has completely accepted His Son as His glory. He's satisfied with Him. That's good. I don't know if that fits here or not. No, it fits.

God, like every other being, has attributes. And God has these intrinsic attributes. He's omniscient, He's all-powerful, He's loving, He's all of these things. And He's every one of these things to the max. And those things shine out of Him. The Mount of Transfiguration is the glimpse of the glory of the Son of God. It says it is close-shined with light and that kind of thing.

So in 2 Corinthians 3.18 it says, we behold as in a mirror the word of God, the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. It doesn't say that we behold Him. It's the glory of God that we behold. And it says in Colossians that in the face of Jesus Christ is the glory of God.

So we have the capacity to behold the attributes of God face-to-face. Moses couldn't do that, right? He couldn't peek around the backside. But you and I, through the Word, have the capacity and the ability and the privilege to behold the glory of the Lord.

Now, I think the hope part is the fact that God has determined that through all eternity He's going to manifest His glory for His whole creation through the sun, right? And who else? His body. Who's his body? You and me. So you think about it. Through all eternity in the future, the manifestation of the glory of God will be through the head who's Christ and the body who's us. No other creatures. Angels don't get that. Millennial kingdom saints, earthly saints Nobody gets that except us. And I think that's the hope. That the glory of God is to be manifested through every single member of the body of Christ. All the time. All the time. The fact that we have access. And through us. Yeah.

You can't focus on that very long and your mind goes tilt. You can't focus on that and your sins at the same time because if you focus on your sins, the glory is gone. We'll talk about that sin issue more next week. No, actually that was a good place to go because it demonstrates that God is doing what he's doing in spite of who we are in Adam.

And so we've already been brought to the Father in Christ. We're already there. The problem we have is believing it, I think, because we're so focused on our circumstances. The word access, doesn't that make us feel like we're coming to Him? Yeah. Well, let's answer a question here. Do you think these verses that we're studying today are positional or conditional? Positional. You think they're positional? How many think they're positional? How many think they're conditional? Lots of chickens in this room. They're actually, Courtney, Yeah, it's both. It's really both.

The point is that he's saying in Romans 5 that we have this access, and then he explains why. Positionally, we have it. Conditionally, I mean, if you have a position and there's nothing to be done about it, we have conditions that's based on our positions that we're to enter into and do. Yeah, the issue is that you do have access and your access is based on your position already being in place. The problem we have as believers is conditionally entering into the fullness of our position.

Do you think in your mind that you have access to God at any time? Do you think you have to kind of clean up your act before you go? No, you're already there. Now the problem with believers is that they don't enjoy their position because of either lack of faith or because of sin or some other issue in their life.

That's the only place you do see it, is from your position. this hope, glory, and that whole idea. How can we even imagine that we can change our... that we ourselves can work ourselves into that or change our condition? Isn't it interesting? It's impossible. It is impossible. It's so unattainable. It's totally unattainable.

We work, you know, contemporary Christianity. What I find interesting is that Not only is it important for us to know the positional truths, and know who Christ is, who we are in Him, what we have, and where we are. The other thing to learn is the principles by which God works things. How does He do things? And He doesn't spell them out, I don't think, in the Word. They're kind of discovered as you go.

As an example, 2 Corinthians 3.18 says, here's a principle. Beholding is in a mirror the glory of the Lord. The mirror is the Word, okay? I'm beholding, by the power of the Spirit, the person of the Lord Jesus in the Word of God. What happens? Principle. I am transformed or transfigured into His very image from glory to glory. That's the principle. What am I doing? What am I contributing? I'm doing the beholding. How am I able to behold? Let's do this one question at a time. How am I able to behold? Whose power is that? It's the Spirit himself, right?

So here you are in the Word of God and you have finally gotten past the point where you're in the Word of God to be smart or to memorize or whatever. You're in there to do what? Behold the glory of the Lord. That's what you're there for. And the Holy Spirit begins to reveal to you the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, it's imperceptible to you that this transformation is going on, but it is, and He's doing it all. Now, what are you seeing? What do you see when you behold the glory of the Lord? What I think you see is the awesomeness of the characteristics of God Himself, that He loves me, that He has made He has removed everything between Him and me, and I can behold Him.

That I come away from that beholding overwhelmed by who He is. We're going to study a verse next week that kind of leads up. The verse goes, Who is man that God should even be mindful of him? I mean, that's a thousand miles away from beholding His glory. It's all of God and none of me. Why would God even do such a thing?

It's totally informal. For us, it's the intimacy of crying, you know, daddy, father, papa, whatever. That's the access we have beyond just a formal meeting. And I think you're right, Courtney. I think that believers need to get that point straight, that there's no formality.

My son doesn't need to go through formalities to enter my house, nor to come in the room that I'm in. nor to sit down next to me in the couch or to sit in my lap if he wants to. Do you see that? The issue is you can run down the hall and jump in the father's lap and stay there. You don't have to move and he's not busy.

Yeah. And we're making this rigid, you know, if I went in and still like to go in and talk in the way I pray, you know, or, you know, in a stilted, you know, very normal prayer, it's the same way. I mean, it's talking, it's an intimacy, and he's given us that intimacy, which is, I mean, talking about going tilt.

And that's why I think that, and Hal does a really nice thing on this word beholding. the beholding is what changes your view about your access. Do you understand what I mean? If you look in the face of Christ, in the Word of God, you find out that He totally accepts you. Totally.

And it begins to change your viewpoint towards Him. It changes your attitude towards Him, you discover in the Word of God that He loves you infinitely. And it's not based on anything that you are, He just does. And He's removed every barrier so He can demonstrate His love to you, and He wants you to know it.

It's one thing if I lived in Peoria, Illinois, and I called you up every Sunday morning and said, Hey, class, I love you. You're thinking, Yeah, right. But it's another thing if you're sitting in the presence of the one who loves you and they're demonstrating aggressively and over the top their grace towards you.

You don't find that any place else other than in the Word of God. You won't find it. And you won't find it very much in the Old Testament. You will find it in Paul and John and places like that. And you won't find it by your own will? Nope. Your reasoning? Well, what do you discover?

If you are convinced today that you have access, that you really do, and you can forget all the formalities and all the traditions and you can just go to your father and sit with him, it'll change your viewpoint of how you live your Christian life. That there's an awesomeness about it that you don't have to worry about whether you're respectful enough or not. but the fact that the God of the universe is uniquely interested in you.

Miles Stanford had a great saying one time. He didn't have the saying one time. I heard it one time. He said, once you understand and discover how intensely interested Christ is in you, it frees you up to be interested in Him. Do you understand what he said there? Once you know that, once you know your access, and once you know you belong there, and that He is intensely more interested in you than you are in yourself, which is tough to come to, then you're free to be interested in Him, because there's nothing left for you to do to be acceptable to Him.

Nothing. And that's spiritually discerning, right? Absolutely. But see, the Spirit of God is... God put it in place. Position, right? He's got it all in place. What's the Spirit's job? to show you and persuade you that that's what the facts are. And all the time we're going, I don't know, God, I'm a pretty bad guy. No, no, come to me. That's what you get from Him. But our access, is it by ourselves or do we have to go through somebody else? That's right.

So he's removed everything to his own satisfaction, and you learn in the first 11 verses of Romans 5 the terms on which you're accepted. If you study those first 11 verses, you'll find out that. So it means a lot to the heart of the believer to know that he is received on the ground of another man who perfectly glorified God. So what's interesting about that, if your acceptance is in Christ Jesus, The quality of the acceptance is based on how he's accepted.

Okay? So God does a very interesting thing. He takes you, puts you in Christ, and now your acceptance is Him and not you anymore. That's very cool. Now that doesn't give you a license to be an idiot, because the glory of the Lord will so captivate you that you won't have to worry about being an idiot. You see that? It doesn't give you the freedom to sin.

We are accepted in Him, the Beloved. God has changed His man. Remember when we talked about God changing His man? Remember when we talked about the fact that before Christ's resurrection, God dealt with man through Adam? Adam was sinful. God couldn't get very close to man, although He loved him. The closest He could get was the Shekinah glory with that curtain separating Him and man. But now that God has changed His man from Adam to Christ, He's totally fine with it, and He deals with mankind now from the man who has totally glorified Him in heavenly places. Do you see that? We don't understand the rhetoric, but I think we go to God sometimes in Adam, and try to get God to accept Adam. He didn't do that. He changed His man. We're now in Christ.

So having a different man, or knowing that God has changed his man, maybe you'll change yours. The note that I wrote, and you'll never be happy until you believe that God has changed his man and able to say, I have too. If you don't see that God has changed his man, you'll never change yours. Do you understand what I just said? that God deals with me now and every man on the earth through Christ, not through Adam.

He's done with Adam. Think how ridiculous it is for you to go to God with all your Adamic baggage and want to negotiate with God from your Adamic viewpoint. He's not going to talk to you. Do you see that? Do you see why He won't? Because now He deals with humanity through the one man Christ, and that man totally satisfied. You see that? Is that the boldness? It's part of the boldness. That's right. But it's contrary to nature. It's contrary to Adam. Yeah. Sure. We think that everything's going to go the way we expect it to.

So what are the terms that you're accepted and you have access to the Father? The terms are Christ's work, but much more than just the atonement part of it. Your acceptance is based solely on the fact of, back to the name of the class, identification with Christ, or in Christ. Do you see that? I think most Christians look like they have added Christ onto them and that they're the ones going to God. No, no, no. You have been crucified. You've been baptized by the Spirit into the death of Christ. You've been crucified, buried, resurrected, and ascended in Him. You're now in Him. And He's in you. And that's the acceptance. That's the ground. It's not you cleaning up your act or becoming a Christian. or a Presbyterian, or anything like that. Do you see that? Now, what's it boil down to from your perspective? Do you believe God about what He did or not? That's what it boils down to.

Is my acceptance in Christ only, or is there something I've got to do to contribute? Is it by grace alone, or is there something I've got to add? I've got to feel right. I've got to obey. I've got to do all this other stuff. No, it's solely based on what Christ has done and your position in Him. And that's what reality is, no matter how much you think it might be something else. We have a real... Absolutely. Absolutely.

You said we've got to feel right when life is sin. We have to think that things are going well in our perspective, but I've known people I think things have to go wrong. They have to give up, they have to sacrifice, give up everything and be more... In order to be acceptable. Right. Right? Right.

Yeah, they got the cart before the horse. Like that one thing Vernie's got the donkey turned around. That they got the butt leading. It's an imitation of Christ. Oh, that's right. That's right. Knowing that He is our life. Can you imitate the life of Christ? Is it possible to do? Imitate? It's impossible to do.

Why does a duck quack? Because it's a duck. Why does Adam sin? Because he's Adam. Why are you and I pleasing to God and live a life that's pleasing to Him? Because we're in Christ. That's why. His life doesn't need props, helps, push-ups. His life functions. When the Lord Jesus got up this morning, Did he have to sit down and think, now how am I going to glorify the Father today? Did he have to go through that routine? No, because his life spontaneously always is like that. So if you're in Christ, what is your life like? It's always the same as his. See that? And whatever access he has to the Father, you have, which is permanent, going on all the time, to the maximum.

Isn't that cool? We laugh on Tuesday. I love to say, you know, gee, Richard Locke isn't coming back to the Tuesday Bible meeting. He's satisfied where he is. You know what? We ought to be satisfied where we are now. Comprende? Because where are you now? That's right. That's right. So, it takes a lot of faith to go there.

Who looked up Jeremiah 2911? Anybody? where I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord the plans for welfare and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope. Yeah, it's interesting. My version says, for I know the thoughts that I think towards you. Isn't that interesting? Yours says plans. Thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you an expected end. Well, that's probably true. You're the Greek geek, so I shouldn't... Sounds like a father... to a child, it's no, because I know what I know and you don't, and I have these thoughts, and they're good thoughts. And so, Old Testament, Jeremiah, right?

Now, New Testament, or in the church era, Christianity now, one of the great privileges of a believer is to discover as he beholds Christ in the Word, exactly how God feels about him. And if you're convinced that even beyond he has only thoughts of blessing for you, it'll change your viewpoint.

Do you see that? How many Christians go into Paul's epistles with an Old Testament legal mind? And what are they looking for? They're looking for what they should be doing. If you ever hear a sermon in a Reformed church that comes out of Paul's epistles, trust me, it's going to be after the first half. Because Paul's epistles are all designed the same way.

The first part is position. Here's who you are. Here's what you have. Here's your access. Rest here. Second half. Based on all of this, here's how the life looks. Now it's very easy for a legal person to go in and say, here's how the life looks, you need to get busy and never tell you about the position. See? You need to demonstrate that you can duplicate this life. Good luck.

And oh, by the way, we've got a helper. It's called the Mosaic Law. I think it has a lot to do with whether we really want him, you know, because a lot of times When he really starts to mean business, we kind of hesitate. It boils down to, really, do we want him?

Want to behold his glory? That's interesting. As a young believer, do you want to behold his glory? Has that thought ever entered your mind? Not particularly. You're thankful you're saved and you're pretty excited about that. You think it's your job to create more converts? It's so contrary to nature that when he starts to say, well, I have my will for you and you better just follow me. Or rather than follow, you know what I like? Why don't you just hang with me? Yeah. I like that better. Yeah, that's better. Just hang with me. You know? We're going to Emmaus. You want to go walk with me? Okay. Yeah, right. You know?

So is it possible To not know your position in Christ and to rest in the access you have? Did you understand the question? Is it possible to not know your position in Christ and at the same time rest in your access? It's impossible, isn't it? So it puts the emphasis on knowing.

How important it is to know who you are, who Christ is, where you are, what you have, You see how important that is? Now, if you're a believer who's always working under a law principle, you never get to the point of who you are. You never get to the point of studying your position because you don't think you have one. So if you're unaware of the fact that you have been identified with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection and His acceptance before the Father, and all you see is that the penalty for your sins have been then you assume you've got a place in glory when you die.

And that's the best it gets, right? So, what happens? Then you start thinking, well, I better get to work. I better get to work for Him quickly. You know, I am motivated by the gratitude that I have been saved. You know, most places, now that you're saved, get busy and show the Lord that you really appreciate what He did for you. And so what happens? You're going downhill. See? You're going downhill. And eventually you'll run out of gas. And you end up being what, I love this term, a pew parasite someplace. Where you just sit there. Because you're done.

You know that you haven't, you know, moved one inch in 20 years and, you know, and no one's ever said to you, hey, here's, here's what's really going on. getting busy, usually there's tons of work to do. So you have to start now, continue working, and there's so much that you could just do it forever.

And what it is, is to convert people into pewsitters, or just getting them saved to believe that when they die, What's interesting about what you say, it's a dead giveaway. If a church or a body of believers focuses their entire ministry on evangelism, it's a dead giveaway as to where they really are. Do you understand what I'm saying? Because the real work of the church is to do what? Build up the body. There's enough recruits around. There are plenty of recruiters. But how many churches build up the body of the people that are in that? That's the real mission of the church.

And for what reason? So that those that are built up can go out and get involved with building up other believers, because it works from within. Isn't that what Ephesians says? It grows from within. It's just a few people that want to do this, the converting. I don't think there are all that many. It all is. That's exactly right. People get saved today in spite of all of everybody's work. Yeah, yeah. And they might be a tool, but... So, Wayne, back to your question.

What would cause us to be bold enough to draw near to the throne of grace? And that's Hebrews 10, 19. And knowing who we are in Christ. And knowing that what's true of Christ is true of us. What makes you bold? Knowledge isn't enough. What makes you believe? See, when you know the truth and you believe that you've already been positioned in Christ, you're bold. What's that? Absolutely.

I'm going to read something to you from one of the Hungry Hearts that I pulled out about this. using the Hebrews 10.19 verse.

It says, The Lord Jesus' work on the cross gave us present entrance into the holiest of all. What removed our sins rent the veil, and those who believe are positioned in that innermost sanctuary even now. Boldness to enter there on any pretense of our love, our holiness, of nature, or even divine ordinance would be shameless presumption. In Hebrews 10 it is calmly claimed for believers who are exhorted in the strongest terms to approach by faith the Father's presence without a doubt or a cloud now. Boldness to enter the Father's presence is due to the shed blood of the Savior. Only unbelief hinders.

It is a new and living way which He dedicated for us through the veil that is His flesh. We honor Him by abiding there in the fullest confidence that pleases the Father." Isn't that an interesting phrase? Being born of the Father, we are abidingly His children. As such, we have the right to take our place before Him. It is our privilege to think of ourselves according to what we are as being one spirit with the Lord Jesus, and this is ever maintained by Him. what we are by grace as in Him before the Father is unchangeable and our interests are in His hands. Beloved, do our failures, our sins in any wise alter what He is there before the face of our Father? What He is there is what we are, not of course in ourselves, but as our being in the Lord Jesus who is our very life."

Isn't that interesting? That was too much too fast, wasn't it? It got real quiet. Isn't that cool? But you think about it. I go back to a family. When you come over to my house, do you ring the doorbell? No, you opened it. But when my son comes home from school, he doesn't ring the doorbell, does he?

He knows he's got a right there. He can walk right in, drops his stuff, got anything to eat. He knows his rights as my son, as our son. He knows he has access to the refrigerator. He has access to his room, to a computer. He can come and just sit in our presence and interact with us.

But if you came over to my house, even though we're brothers in the Lord, you'd probably ring the doorbell. You wouldn't come in and drop your stuff and go to the refrigerator, would you? The point is that every one of us... I don't know, it's getting pretty close. You've been there too much, Mike.

But you think about that, you have exactly the same rights in God's house as the Lord Jesus does. Exactly the same. You can come in without ringing the bell, drop your stuff, sit in the Lord's lap and read the refrigerator. It's all yours. All of it. I guess that's why I like John 8 42 so much. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Free to do what? Not ring the doorbell, come in, drop your stuff, and go hang out with the Father.

It goes so far beyond what the priests in the Old Testament, you know, they looked before the throne, but they certainly didn't do it of boldness. I imagine there was a humbleness that was brought before that. Oh, you think? It's fear. Yeah, hope for reward, fear of punishment. That's the whole deal. So many times it's taught to believers, you know, you have excess budgets. Yeah. God lives in a corner somewhere. I doubt most of those priests went in there and sat in front of it. No. Well, and they had to take the blood with them. If they didn't have the blood, they didn't go in. And they rang the doorbell. Let's see here. I wanted to, yeah we've got time to do these last couple.

Why does the Lord Jesus Christ know and understand our infirmities? He's a man and he was here. Now, the best place to learn about that I think is in Hebrews. But he understands and he cares and his sympathy for us in our trials is personal and it's complete because he understands. became a man and came here, he set aside all his prerogatives and glory as God and he suffered.

When it was cold outside, he was cold. He was hungry. He had all of the perplexities and difficulties and sorrows. And not only that, here's the one man on the earth that knows he has access to God and every man that he runs into hates God. It'd be like if everybody I ran into hated my son John, how would I feel about that? I wouldn't be happy. Also, he didn't satisfy sin.

Never. That's right. That's part of that identification, too. Absolutely. You're identified with him as well as he's identified with us. So, can you see why you'd have trials and situations in your life as a heavenly man who has access to the Father that God wants you to... How do I say this? I think He brings circumstances in our life to get us to go to Him even more. Not that we get complacent, but to understand that we have a home and we have access. Now, one last thing.

The term in Hebrews 10.20 says a new and living way. What is this new and living way about?

His flesh. It's his flesh. The best way I think to describe it is this. Probably the biggest barrier to our actually by faith entering in are our sins, would you not say? So what this new and living way, the new way means, freshly slain. And from a Jewish standpoint, here's what it means. That the sacrifice of Christ is continuously new. It just happened, it just happened, it just happened. You know, in the Jewish system, if you went and got your goat and took it down to the priest and he slayed it and went through all of that, well then your sins were covered for that time span. It's like the Catholics, you know, you go to confession on Saturday night and you're covered until Sunday, if you could get that far.

The thing about Hebrews 10.20 is that the Lord Jesus is freshly slain now, and now, and now. So there's no barrier for you to go in. Your sinfulness should not keep you out, because your sinfulness is handled now. and now, and now, and now. Do you see that? There's nothing to keep you out.

Did the second bell go? So, my last question was kind of an open-ended question. How much do we know of this drawing near of entering within the veil? How much do you know about that? We believers should be very familiar with that. because that's home to us.

What's interesting about the way God has set this up, we are heavenly people and our home is in heaven with the Father where He is and the Lord Jesus. Physically though, we live, maybe a better way to describe it, we live in enemy territory and outside of our house we are not accepted We're the enemy. There are trials and suffering and we have an old nature within us that would love that to be home. I mean, it's just chaos and suffering and pain out there. But God has given us the privilege and the right to go home once a day or twice a day or a thousand times a day. When you go home, what do you do? You kick your shoes off and you rest. When you go home to be with the Lord today, and I don't mean dying, enter into the Holy of Holies, what do you do? You rest.

There's no other place for the believer to rest. Not here. Only there. Questions? I'm done. Yeah? Oh, I'm just thinking that it's not a matter of going there. You're already there. It's not that I go up to heaven. That's your position. That's right. Cool. That's right.

As he is, so are we in this world. My buddy Bob Strong likes to do this. He'll say, go to Colossians, and wherever you see the name Jesus in there, the Lord Jesus, put your name in there and read through it. Mike this, Mike that, Mike this, Mike that, Mike this. Same thing in Hebrews. Put your name in there, because that's really who you are. Isn't that interesting? Then why does he say you have to think outside the box? Well, you have to think inside the box. You're outside the box, you've got to think inside the box.

Let's close. To Father, how we thank you. It's a bit overwhelming, but also very, very joyful for us to recognize that we are in your son and we can approach you and find rest at any time. And we thank you that you've made the access and that it's your desire even greater than ours that we would be home and behold your glory. And we thank you. We pray in your son's precious name. Amen.