You In Christ and Christ in You
Mike Doyle · Nov 8, 2009
You in Christ & Christ in You, No. 45
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492614758117

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

OK, we are we are in lesson. By the way, first thing you have to do is take out your number two lead pencils. The ones with the erase. No, give me the eraser. But on the top of lesson, which on your page, it says less than twenty nine. Cross that out. Put twenty eight. And then the next lesson that we'll do, if we get to it, cross 30 out and put twenty nine on that one.

OK, in lesson 28, we're going through this little paper on a few words about grace that is printed in those of you who have a copy of Newell's Commentary on Romans at the end of chapter six is where you'll find this for yourself. And anybody not have a copy of this? Awesome. Yeah. Hold it up again. What's that? Hold it up again.

It says a few words about grace. And it's got four categories. And the four categories are the nature of grace, the place of a man under grace, the proper attitude of a man under grace, and things which gracious souls discover. I think of all the things I've read and seen on grace. This little paper puts in a capsule form more information about what grace is and how it works than anything else I've read. So we had started in to what I have done is gone through the paper and just created some questions and some things so that hopefully they'll cause you to think about think about the answers. So what question did we get to last week? Three.

Okay, so we talked about why is grace uncaused in the recipient. We talked about why grace can't act where there's either somebody deserving or somebody who's capable. Why grace operates and acts only on the weakest of people and why it's hated. Maybe to repeat a little bit here, I think it's important for us to understand clearly that there is not a single thing that's hated more than grace. And I think as believers you have to be aware of that because we experience grace, we know about grace and so we rush to non-believers and we give them this thing about grace and we can't understand why they just don't take it all in. Why don't they take it in? Why is grace so hated? What's that? Fear? Fear? Fear because they are screwed up and they're thinking.

Okay. I'll buy that. No. Because they're screwed up and they're thinking. I don't have a made self. Yeah, see, when you're a non-believer, your whole identity is self. Your self. Right? And everything, every frame of reference, everything about you is self.

So if someone comes to you with the message of grace and says, there is absolutely nothing for yourself to do in order to be accepted before God. Yeah, fear. What do you mean? I'm totally out of the equation? Yeah, you are. God won't accept anything from yourself. You have to, in order to be saved, what you do is you exercise faith, which is a non-meritorious act, and your faith as an object, as a person of the Lord Jesus Christ and His work, He did everything, you didn't do anything, and God will save you for all eternity if you exercise faith in Him and what He did. And you get no credit for that. That's a scary proposition. Because what is there left for me to do? Nothing.

Well, that's okay with us as we learn grace and as we grow. It's okay with us. I mean, it's a slow process as we learn the not-I-but-Christ life. But you have to understand when you're approaching a non-believer with the gospel message, or you're approaching believers that you know are stuck in a lost system, when you start talking to them about grace, it is not readily acceptable. You know, unless they got hit by the spiritual bus and they're on their back, maybe. But if not, they're not acceptable to it because it leaves them out of the framework.

See that? We all want to get to heaven at some point and thank God that he gave us something to do. It's like the football players that cross the finish line or the goal line, they go like this. And when they ask them after the game, I'm so thankful God gave me the ability to score touchdowns. The man under grace is not on probation. How come? We talked about that. Why doesn't failure of devotion cause the withdrawal of grace? How come? Why doesn't?

I mean, when you and I are saved, and when we start to read the Bible, we discover... I was a believer about one week and a guy gave me a book and says, now that you're saved, here's what you're supposed to do. You know, here's how Christians act. So I was looking, you know, in the book for, and I'm looking around the Christians I knew and I'm observing them, I'm watching them real careful. What do Christians do? How do they act?

You know, and so we, I went to church on Sunday and there was worship and all these really new things to me. And I observed them and then when I started to read this book, I thought, you know, I don't really understand how I can be saved by grace and now given a list of stuff to do. It didn't make sense to me, not that I understood grace, but I knew from my own religious upbringing that my efforts weren't going to please God.

I had to be more devoted to Him. When I was saved, the big deal was yielding. That was the big thing in Christianity. You had to yield. had to yield your life. It was only later, well I'd rather tell you I'll ask you, when, do you understand what that term yield means? Yield your life, whatever, to God. Yield your life to God.

So I'm supposed to give it to him. Do you think he's interested That's exactly right. See, the appeal was to the old man to yield his life up to God. You think God's interested in that? Does he want that? Why wouldn't he want it? What did he do with your old life? Crucified it, right? So what? So what are you doing? What is the life that you yielded?

That's right. Romans 6, if I get this right, about 13, it says, yield your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. So you read that phrase and you think, alright, I've got something to do. And then there's this little phrase at the end of it, as those that are alive from the dead. If you don't get that part, the alive from the dead part, what do you try to yield up? Your old man. Everything you know yourself to be. You see that?

So, I find it interesting that God would even ask us to do that. When we get down to this question, I say to myself, well why doesn't my failure of devotion cause God to withdraw his grace? I'm not going to go to church anymore. I'm certainly not going to sing. And I'm not going to be devoted because I'm angry because God is making things pretty tough for me. He's not doing things the way I would want them done.

So does that cause him to respond differently than he responded when I said, oh I just love how you're doing things. Does it? Why not? Because it's free. He's giving you the grace. You're happy to accept it. It's there. It's a free gift. More than that.

God doesn't change. God doesn't change. He's always going to be the same. He's not going to treat us any differently than he did yesterday, today, tomorrow. It is. Peggy says he's the same and he's not going to treat us any differently than he did yesterday, today, or tomorrow.

Again, I say, how come? And it's more than just because he's the same. Is it because you're a new creation? Yeah. He gives you the grace even if you're not a new creation, I thought. Say that again? I thought he gives you the grace even if you're not a new creation. When you study Paul's epistles, What you discover in there is that there isn't anything left for God to do.

Am I right about that? Hasn't he done everything? So who's the one that needs to change? It's me. I'm the one that's the ignorant one. I'm the one that is uninformed. I'm the one that doesn't understand. I'm always trying to get... I mean, you think about this. As a believer sometimes, I really wish God would be more angry at me when I'm sinning. I need to be punished. Guess what?

He doesn't listen. Why doesn't he? Because he's already dealt with the sin issue. It's already over with. Do you see that? He deals with me in a gracious manner all the time. So whether I'm devoted to him or not does not change the way he's devoted to me. Do you see that? His whole focus on me and attitude towards me is based on what he's already accomplished about me, not whether I get it or not. But if we sin, we're separated from him. Conditionally separated, that's right. So what does he do? What does he do? Punish us? What does he do? Where is, what's his name when we need him?

Where's Courtney? Not Courtney, Bud. Bud Tracy. We need him today, right now. Where is he? What does God do? First of all, he has the Holy Spirit convict you and then he provides for a first job online. Sure. To restore you to fellowship. The Spirit of God convicts us which is an incredibly gracious act on his part.

And the conviction is not based on, oh, you've been a really bad guy. The conviction is based on, hey, wait a minute, you know who you are? You're my son? You've been functioning as though you weren't? So confess your sins and you're restored. To what? To your position? No, I already have the position. I'm restored to fellowship.

So God acts towards us based on the finished work of Christ That's why we say, well, why aren't we on probation? Well, because God's work is done. A guy said to me one day, he said, well, God has finished with your sins, how come you're not? Good point. Is he done?

With my sins, am I going to commit one this afternoon or on Tuesday that wasn't taken care of on the cross? No. No. There's no, and I have to tell you, occasionally people will call me and they're really, sort of upset about something that's going on in their life or some sin, because I just have sort of a twisted sense of humor, I will say to them, oh, that's right. When the Lord Jesus died on the cross, he skipped over that sin, didn't he? That one wasn't included. We better call him up and see if he'll come back and fix it.

So then is there no correlation between grace and fellowship? Oh, great question. Did everybody hear the question? Is there no correlation between grace and fellowship? Yes or no? How many think yeah, there is? Come on, hands up in the air. How many think no, there really is? Oh, you cowards. You are so chicken. Say that again. Explain your question. regardless of who or how you act, right, based on you.

So you may not have any fellowship with the Lord out of ignorance, out of... Legalism. Yeah, any number of things, you may not have any fellowship, but yet the grace is, you're in grace. You're in grace. Because you're in Christ, right? But you don't experience any of it. But there's no benefit to you personally, right? So in a sense there really isn't any correlation between grace and fellowship. Yes there is. Do you understand the question?

So it's fellowship with God. Fellowship, yeah. Intimacy with Christ, which is the greatest result of grace. I think you have to look at grace as an operating system. It's like Windows 7. It is a system that we live in and it functions and operates all the time. We've been taken out of the realm of law and placed into the realm of grace.

And as we've discovered and talked about the principles of grace, grace is functioning whether we're benefiting from it or not. How do we benefit from grace? Oh, this is a question we could spend months on. How do you benefit from the grace that's there?

Let's say you're not. Let's say this side of the room isn't, this side of the room is. What are we going to tell them? Well, we benefit if you're in the Word, then you benefit because you learn more and more. Okay. What do you learn in the Word? About Christ. Sure. You learn about what God's doing and has done. Okay. What's your response to it? Believe. Huh? Believe. You believe or not believe? Isn't that what the deal is? Isn't it that simple?

As you have begun in the Lord Jesus, how do you start? By faith. So walk ye in him. So you walk by faith. Now here's what's cool. When the church began at Pentecost, one of the coolest things that happened is that the Spirit of God came to indwell every believer. Permanently. So let's say you're not benefiting personally from the grace that you live in. Spirit of God is still there. So what's he doing? You run out of gas in your case? You're just a stubborn person and he can't get you to wake up? This is God of the universe we're talking about, who's living inside of every one of us. He's about his business of wooing you to Christ via the word fellowship with other believers via circumstances, you know?

God the Spirit is certainly capable of putting you in a corner where you can't wiggle, where you absolutely have nothing, you know, like Miles Stanford used to say, you have to trust the Lord has come to that, and it has to come to that for spiritual growth. I'm convinced that it has to come to that. Every one of us is going to find in our lives that occasionally the Spirit of God will get us in a position where we have nothing else that we can do but believe Him. Nothing but believe Him.

Okay? And I think that's a really important issue. Believers need to understand that. Not to pick on you, but... He told me when I came in, he said, well people have come up to me and thanked me for being in the class because he's taken all the arrows. I said, well I'll find somebody else to pick on. No. When you as a believer sit before the Lord and you dare Him, and I mean that, you dare Him to get you off of whatever this this little pity party you're having is, you think he'll take up the challenge? He took it up before you dared him.

He's been on the job since the minute you were saved, right? And he has a specific agenda he's working on. And believe it or not, we're trying to divert him off of his agenda most of the time. But he doesn't waver. He stays on task. If he has to bring us around 20 times, to this point he'll do it, every time, until we get it. He's always conforming us. Always. Or preparing us to be conformed. He never stops.

Don't you think it's the height of self-arrogance to think that I can stop the Spirit of God from doing what he's determined to do? I mean, if you think about the arrogance of that thought alone, that I can stop him. Well, but back to your question. But I'm not enjoying the fellowship.

How come? Is it because you're not devoted and doing something right? Is that why? What is it usually? Always. It's the issue of faith. It's the issue of believing Him. We had a kind of a cool thing on Wednesday night in our Bible study. We were studying Romans 4, what verse was it?

18. That against hope and for hope Abraham believed God and was accounted righteous because of that. Is that the verse? I thought this was really kind of cool news to me.

Read it. Who against hope believed in hope that he might become the father of many nations according to that which was spoken so shall thy seed be. Two things there, against hope and for hope. Are they two different things? Absolutely right. Here's the difference. Against hope meant that the focus was totally on the circumstances. Totally on the circumstances.

So he rejected. And for hope is that he looked away from the circumstances into what God promised, Abraham being 100 years old and Sarah in her 90s. and couldn't have any children, he said, you're going to be the father of many nations. So what did Abraham do? He turned away from the circumstances, his emotions, his feelings, everything around him. He looked at his own body, considered that it was dead, and same with Sarah's womb, it was dead. There was no way, circumstantially, that Abraham would ever become a father. Right? So he turned away from that, and he looked to God, and he believed him. You ever found yourself in that position? I have. Your circumstances were totally against what God has said to me. You know? Mike? Yeah?

How do you put volition and grace together? I haven't quite figured out. How do you put what? Volition, human will. Because I listened to Nepali on volition, and he's talking about human will, that you have choices to do things, and I'm trying to figure out how do you put those There's an old, old brother and guy named Charles Trumbull. He wrote a little thing about that, just once, two sentences, maybe one sentence. And this cleared it up for me. He said this, he said, we use our wills to believe. We do not use them to implement. It's God's job to implement. So what's my job? My job isn't to will my Christian life, my job is to believe. Abraham believed God, right?

And not only that, God says to him, I'm going to be back here next year at this time, and you'll have a son. He gave him a new name. Don't you love that? He said, not only are you going to be a father, but by this time next year, you'll be that father. All those pregnant ladies would have loved to have known that. When is the baby going to be born? He told them.

Right? What did Abraham do? He believed God. You see that? He didn't use his will to implement what God promised him. He used his will to believe God. I think that's our only job, is to believe God, not to try to work it out. We trust him. Oh, here's another interesting fact. I learn all these cool facts. In the Old Testament, when God made a promise, to somebody, he did it in the perfect tense. Now here's what's cool about that. If I make you a promise, it's a future. I promise I'm going to give you 14 bucks. I promise it's in the future. In the Old Testament, if God said, I promise I'm going to give you 14 bucks, it would be in the perfect tense.

The perfect tense is a completed action in the past with abiding results in the future. It is so certain that when God makes a promise that is going to come to fruition, He does it in the perfect tense. There's never a doubt that it will be fulfilled.

Never. Do you see that? So, again, based on what Laura is asking, can you do a correlation between Ishmael and Isaac? And Moses is in Abraham's attitude between us. A correlation. Yeah. In terms of will. Oh, well, OK. Everybody knows the story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar. Right. Hagar is Sarah's maid.

And so the promises are made to Abraham and Sarah, by God, that he's going to be the father of many nations. And we go some years. You know, Abraham's getting a little old. Sarah's thinking, boy, we've got to do something about this. And back in those days, if you were the father of a family, you know, you could, without sinning, have children by your wife's handmaiden. I mean, and Abraham, trust me, he's trying to pawn his wife off to Pharaoh, you know, to save his life.

Shows you how smart he is. And so Sarah and him work out this deal, and Sarah says, well maybe what God meant was that, you know, sure it's the same family, but maybe Hagar's the mother. Right? Was that God's plan? Nope. Now is that an instance of using your will to implement? Yes, that's exactly right. I'll give you another instance of that.

Remember the day in which the Lord was ascended into heaven? He told the disciples, you go in there and hang out at this place and not many days from now you're going to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, right? About ten days, right? About two-thirds of the way through this time, our friend Peter can't sit still. So he decides, well, we're down to 11 apostles, we need 12. So we're going to draw straws and pick a guy. So they pick a guy, Matthias. Did the Lord tell him to do that? No, he didn't tell him to do that. He told him to go wait until he showed up, the spirit showed up. So Matthias is the guy that's picked. Did you ever hear of him again after that? Never. Never. Is he an apostle?

Yeah, I suppose he is. But it's an example of somebody not trusting the Lord to carry out what he said he's going to do. And they pick this guy, and that's fine, and they drew lots. Don't you love that? It's like, give me the dice, okay? If I get aces, it's Courtney. If I get boxcars, it's Bob. That's what they did.

So you said something a few seconds ago about, you said, was that God's plan? But I think you have to say, It's all God's plan, I mean it was God's plan for it all to turn out like that, but God wasn't going to use that person or that was part of the plan to not use that person or for Abraham to mess it up beforehand.

I think there's a lot of, when you look at the Old Testament guys like Abraham and you look at Sarah and Hagar. Hagar, and when you get to Hebrews, there's a whole chapter about this, Hagar represents the flesh, Sarah represents the spirit. Hagar represents what you do on your own volition, what you think how you're going to carry it out. Sarah is what the Lord does through you. And so, was Hagar in the equation in terms of God's sovereignty?

Absolutely she was. And so was her offspring. As a matter of fact, God told him when he got kicked out of the camp. He went to him and said, I'm going to make a great nation out of you too. I'm going to bless you beyond anything you can think of. So who are his descendants today?

Arabs. Yeah. There's quite a few of them around, right? They've got this stuff called oil, too. So God gave them a nation of horrible people. They are not believing in him. They aren't horrible because God made them horrible. But they don't believe in him. Well, sure, they believe in a false god. Right, so... Wait a minute, there are Christian Arabs. A lot of them. A lot of them. Sure. And there's, you know, there's people who aren't Arabs that are Muslims or Islamic or whatever you want to call us. I don't think we can lump all of them in there and say we're all Arabs.

So, I think to answer your question, I think that God, Romans 8.28 says that God works all things together for good. to those who love him, to those who are called according to his purpose. Now would God use a non-believer where the non-believer doesn't really realize what they're doing to carry out God's purpose for your spiritual growth? Absolutely. You can all think of incidences.

As a matter of fact, the guy that directed me to Christ was a college roommate who said to me, go see so-and-so, he's got the answer for you. And so-and-so did have The gospel. That guy to this day has never come to Christ. That's pointing me in the right direction. I say to him all the time when I see him, do you know that God used you to point me to Christ? And he goes, nah, I don't want to hear that crap. Isn't that something? So, yeah, and I said, well, you know, like it or not, you've been used of God. And he doesn't like to hear that.

He would come back so excited about this new thing he'd learned in Greek from a teacher he'd go to every week. The teacher was an atheist who taught him every jot and tittle about the Greek. Yeah, yeah. I'm not a Greek scholar, but I look it up on occasion in specific words, and like Donna has a Zodiatis Greek And Zodiatis is a believer, but Zodiatis knows nothing about identification. He knows very little about grace, but he knows a lot about Greek. What does that tell you about the Spirit of God and how he works? That, yeah, he'll use a tool like Greek or English or whatever, but your spiritual understanding is based on revelation from the Spirit through the Word, and no other method. No other method. Dr. Zodiatis knows it now because he's gone to be with the Lord. So maybe put it this way, it's imperative for us to look at things the way God looks at them. And the only way you find that out is in the Word.

So when you talk about failure of devotion doesn't cause God to withhold or the withdrawal of grace, you have to understand that your life in terms of the past, it doesn't exist before God anymore. You have to absolutely believe God about that, that He does not see you in Adam anymore.

The fact that Christ died on the cross, and I died with him, and I'm now resurrected in him, and he's now my life, that's what he sees. Now I can say to him, okay, I see what you see, but don't you see what I'm saying? And he says, no. Do you see what I see? And you say yes or no, depending on your faith, or circumstances.

God knew all your exigencies before the cross. His action was independent of them, and they're not dependent upon them at all. And that premise still holds today. God acts independent of what you think. Our job is to be in harmony with him by faith, not trying to get him to think like we think.

1 Corinthians 5, 1-5 and 11.30-32, why don't these people lose the grace they had? 1 Corinthians 5, 1-5, it is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality such as a kind that does not exist even among the Gentiles. that someone has his father's wife, and you have become arrogant, and have not mourned instead, so that one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst. For I on my part, though absent in the body, but present in the spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this, and as though I were present. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of the Lord Jesus, I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan, for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

What is really interesting about this verse, did this man fall from grace? This guy who decided that his dad's wife was worth having, did he fall from grace because he did what he did? But Paul says, now wait a minute, you've got to kick him out of the assembly. Is that falling from grace? No. So how did God act graciously towards this guy? What did the grace look like in this incident?

I think the last sentence there, so that his spirit may be saved. For the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit might be saved. So God says to this, or Paul says to these people, you kick him out. For what purpose? For the destruction of his flesh. Right? So does that destruction mean the death of his flesh? Yeah, so it can be put out of business. That's that kategero word. So it can be put out of business.

So this guy gets ushered out of the assembly. He's out of fellowship. Now we don't know what the circumstances are, but it obviously worked. Because when you get to 2 Corinthians, this guy has come back to the assembly and solicited for reinstatement and to fellowship with him, and they're not going to let him in. So Paul writes him and says, hey, the job is done, let him back in. Because they didn't know what to do. So here's the deal.

If I have been crucified, buried and resurrected with Christ, my old man has been crucified, positional truth, right? Conditionally it may or may not be true. I may be living with my father's wife. Here comes the judgment of God about what I'm doing and what is he going to do. He's not going to condemn me for my behavior because the cross took care of that. What he's going to do is he's going to allow me to live in the destruction of the flesh long enough for me to abandon it.

You see that? So that I can be saved. Conditional, on a conditional basis. Is that gracious? Amen, that's gracious. So he always lets you come to your senses. Right? He doesn't do anything. It's up to you. No. He puts you in circumstances where you do come to your senses. Right. Is that okay? No, I mean, it's a really good question. Does he always put you in a place where you do come to your senses? I think the answer to that is yes. You may not respond.

I mean, I may wake up one morning and realize, boy, this is not what I should be doing, and I'm convicted about it. Boy, I've made a mess of things. But instead of going God's way, I've got another plan. I'm going to go do this. Or I'm going to try to make the best of a bad situation. I live under grace. Well, I think it's your conscience, isn't it? Sometimes it's that. Well, maybe a better question is this.

If you as a believer commit a sin, is God going to protect you from the consequences of that sin? No, he's not. What's he going to do? Well, there's only two responses to sin. One is condemnation, which Satan will try to implement in your life just to condemn you and put you down so bad that you won't ever come out. The other is what?

Is that the Spirit of God intervenes and he uses that to present you before himself, or as Hal used to say, to approve you. Would God take your sinfulness and grind it so that he can use it to approve you? Absolutely he will. Again, that's grace. To bring you back. To bring you back, sure. Mike, yes. The subtle question is if it said so he'd be saved. His spirit would be saved. His spirit would be saved.

But since he's already saved and he's in Christ, wouldn't he be saved anyway? It's a position slash condition question. Yes he is saved. you know, secure in Christ. But his behavior is conditional and there are steps being taken because of the conditional behavior of this guy to get him on a conditional basis not to trust in his flesh anymore, not to yield to it. So that he would live in a position or in a condition where his spirit is Demonstrating the salvation that he has. It isn't that he's lost his salvation because the position can't be touched.

It's a conditional issue. Does that make sense? Yes. This is what it says. So he could can be saved. It seemed like he was saved already. Yeah. But you understand what I mean by position and condition. Yes. Because actually we're going to talk more about that next week. I have a note here from a long ago study about this. let the flesh run its course in the world's lifestyle until he becomes completely empty. The prodigal son is an example.

It's Paul's desire that he be I think this verse is confusing the last bit there where it says that his spirit saved on the day of the Lord. Why does it say on the day of the Lord? Because it sounds like that as well as his sinful nature being destroyed. It sounds like both of them are not going to happen until then. No, how do I say this?

There is a day when we will all be presented the day of the Lord, holy and blameless and glorified. And what he's saying there is that because of what this guy's done, you turn him over to the Spirit of God and his flesh, so that when we get to that day, he'll be there with everybody else. The job will have been done. He will have been, I don't want to use the word purified, but it's like the, you know, burning off the dross. so that you end up, at the end of the day, you have the pure stuff.

And I think that's the viewpoint. Right, but it seems like it's not going to happen until then, where in reality, this guy may not actually be alive, clear, until that day. I mean, he's dead already, right? So he came back into fellowship. It doesn't seem to imply a restoration during physical life.

It sounds like the verse is saying, on that day out there, that's when it's going to be all fixed up. That's when it will be manifested. It may not be all fixed up now, but it will be manifested. No, but it can be. It can be. He'll come back and everything will be the way God wants it to be and he'll continue to grow and so forth while he's still alive. Sure. It doesn't have to wait until that day. No, it doesn't. Manifestation, I think, is a good word.

And God may take him off the planet. You know, it's interesting. If the Lord says, you know, if you don't clean up your act, I'm going to take you home, is that a blessing? I've said to him, hey, maybe I could screw up and you can get me out of here sooner. Joanne, did you have a question? Well, I'm looking at the chance of that may be saved. Does that indicate that he may or he may not believe and trust again and be restored? And the day of the Lord is that day when he does return to fellowship. Not some distant day of the Lord. Yeah. Oh, I see. That's catalogically. Okay. Okay. That's all right. Although the second verses that he gives are kind of interesting.

1 Corinthians 11, 30-32. For this reason, Many of you are weak and sick, and a number of you sleep. But if we judge ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world. OK? For this reason, that this reason was that these fellows were not judging themselves in terms of their behavior. in terms of were they walking in the spirit or not. This comes right after the first Corinthians at the Lord's table. So for this reason, and here's the consequence for not judging yourself. You're weak and sick. Oh, and a number of you have slept. What does that mean? You died.

Do you really think that if you screw up and you are determined to continue to screw up, and you're set on a path and you're a bad witness that the Lord won't take you out of here? He will! But you know what's cool about that? Have we lost any grace there? Why not?

If the Lord takes us out, where are we? No stopping purgatory, sorry. You're home with the Lord. What are we here to do? Since God saved you the day that He saved you, what are you here to do? Glorify Him. You're an ambassador of the reconciliation. Is that the first vow? You're an ambassador of the reconciliation. You're a representative of the work that God did on the cross to a lost world. If you're a crummy ambassador, you get called home. That's okay with me. It's still grace. We look at physical death as just a terrible tragedy. No, it's not. It's the day we get to go home. But if you judge yourselves rightly, you would not be judged. This is so gracious.

Here I am deciding to become a Democrat. I'm going to be a Republican. Whatever I'm going to do, I'm going to act in a non-biblical way. And not only that, I'm involved in a sinful environment when I'm doing that. And so the Lord says to me, you need to judge yourself about what you're doing. Because you're behaving in an ungodly manner. Doesn't matter if you're Republican, Democrat, whatever. You're not behaving godly. And I recognize that, nah, I'm not going to judge myself about that. I kind of like this, behaving in a non-ungodly manner.

Where's the grace now? The grace is about to enter. Where's it coming from? If I don't judge myself, who's going to judge me? God is. He's going to step in. And what's he going to do? He's going to child train me. For what reason? So that I'm not condemned with the world. Is that a loving father acting in grace? Absolutely it is. Absolutely it is.

So there are times in your Christian life where you You may not even be fully aware of why God is doing what he's doing. He can implement a judgment because of the way you're walking today, or he's implementing a child training session today because he knows way over here that if he doesn't do it there, you're going to do something here. And he's getting you ready so that when you get here, you act in faith. Would he do such a thing? Sure he would.

We have to remember that we are in the hand that has the hole in it. The Lord Jesus gave his life for you. You are so precious to him. You belong to him. He will never ever let you jump out and go think that you're moving in your own direction. You may think you are, but from God's perspective you're not. That's how grace functions.

How can one consent to be loved by God I mean, doesn't that sound like an oxymoron? A better question might be, can one consent to be loved by God and deny to be loved by God? In other words, here I am, being chastened of the Lord, and I'm not happy about it. I mean, give me a break, you know? I've got, I don't know, something going on. And so I'm reading my Bible diligently, and I'm reading verses like, God so loved the world that he gave his son, and I'm thinking, so what?

Can I refuse God's love? Can I exercise my volition and refuse God's love? Can I? Sure I can. Sure I can. Does that mean he's going to stop loving me because I decided? No. A believer can refuse God's love by not believing the testimony given in His Word.

Now all of you, because you're so smart, I mean you spend hours every week in the Word, don't you? Memorizing Scripture. Don't ever memorize Scripture. The thing is that when you read especially Paul's epistles, you get line after line after line after line of these incredible testimonies. about what God has already done. Right?

Over and over and over, and we'll talk about one in Ephesians next week, you only have one thing to do to react to that. Believe Him or not. When you believe Him, you consent to be loved. When you don't believe Him, you don't consent to be loved. Because every one of those things is done in love.

Every one. See that? So, do you have a choice? Volition? Yeah, you have a choice to be loved, which means you have a choice to believe, not to implement. You have a choice not to believe, because you can say to God, well I can see what you're saying, but boy, I'm looking at the circumstances in my life and this is crazy.

The first time you run into Romans 6, and it says my old man was crucified with him. What does that say? that I was at the cross 2,000 years ago when I died. You know what my response to that was the first time? No way! I'm standing here. What do you mean 2,000 years ago I was at the cross? What are you talking about? Can't be right.

That's what was so cool about that Romans 4.18 is that constantly we're assaulted with our circumstances to believe them because they do in fact make sense to the old man. And God's answer is always out of faith. That's right. Totally. And you've got one of those widescreen TVs, those LCD TVs. I got one of those things and if you walk right up to it and stand in it, like it's surrounding you, it's like the circumstances of life. But reality is over here, outside of there.

We didn't get very far, but we'll pick up next week and then we'll launch into Lesson 30 also. Oh, and one other thing I want you to be kind of thinking about as we go forward. Courtney and I met and talked about how we were going to finish this up. We're going to do a review over the last couple of weeks, but part of that review is that we want you to ask us questions about things you don't understand. So be thinking about it over the next month or so and write them down in some place. And then we'll have a session or two where we're reviewing and also where you can ask questions. And give us a heads up maybe a week or so ahead of time, because if we don't know the answer, we'd like to have them.

OK, because there's a lot about grace that's new to us. OK, let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you for your grace. We thank you for your spirit that abides in us, that we are temples, and that you are always, without fail, with supernatural energy, conforming us to the image of your Son, Father. We thank you, we pray in His name. Amen.