Unfathomable Riches in Christ - What does (made in Gods image) mean? - Part III
Vern Peterman · Sep 2, 2018
Unfathomable Riches of Christ, No. 32
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261911473531

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

So, we had, because of the campout, no elective last Sunday, and I hope you didn't just forget everything we've been teaching here for the times of war. This is now the third week covering the topic of the image of God. And so that's the quick summary.

The image and likeness of God is the larger term from Genesis 126, and It is, throughout Scripture, a hugely substantial and significant thing to come to understand. One of the things we had talked about initially was that the image of God, having been created in the image of God, is not something that goes away, but rather continues to have effect throughout time and on into eternity. We saw last time that just as we have physical senses, the five classical senses in the physical realm, we have the equivalent of those scripturally in the spiritual realm.

Example, the Apostle Paul prays for the Ephesian believers that the eyes of their hearts, having been opened, that they might see. And we're talking about, you know, he who has an ear, let him hear. That's not talking about this physical thing, right? But spiritually speaking. Now we see that, and we still see that continue in the diagram that we have, but we're moving on to the third area that is an important part of this, and that is continue to build on the biblical foundation, presenting the ways in which the soul of man, consisting of mind, emotions, and will, have expressions in the physical realm, and those components of the soul are also expressed as having an analog in God himself, as we'll see. So what are we talking about here? We're saying that the mind, emotions, and will... What are the ways, for example, that there is mind, emotions, and will in the physical realm? Do people experience emotions physically? Do people express emotions physically? Yes. We talk about everything from tone of voice to body language. You know, what's that growling grimace that you're giving me, right? Or you're really smiling a lot today. What's going on, right? So people express that physically. It also talks to the interpersonal relationship that God intends us to have. And we're actually made in ways to have that interpersonal relationship that other creatures are not. We also see here it says mind, emotions, and will.

Does our mind have a physical aspect? Yeah, so essentially what you have is the brain, that is the physical aspect of it. It's not the whole thing though, is it? And I think this is actually a very powerful understanding when Doug was with us.

I would tell him, I said, you know, your wife may be challenged in the physical realm of the mind. Spiritually, it's all there. And so she would have a tough time remembering things that were just fairly normal, everyday, external things. But Doug would put on the hymns, and she'd have it all.

Right? And so a part of what that saying is, and she would be not just have it all, but she would also be into it and present and be able to repeat those things. Why? It's because the mind has a physical aspect, and while that was certainly challenged in Francis, the mind has a spiritual aspect, and even if a person's got something going on in the physical realm in which they're limited, The spiritual realm is all there. Isn't that something? It's all still there. And then you have, so you have mind, you have emotions coming out of the spiritual realm. In what ways do we have emotions coming out of the spiritual realm as believers?

Grace? Yeah, okay, so grace and an understanding of that, okay. Can you think of other things coming out of the spiritual realm emotionally? How about what we see as the fruit of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control. Those are things that often have an emotional aspect to them, sometimes strongly so, but they come out of the spiritual realm. as a believer walks in the Spirit, right? You also have the will that comes out of the spiritual realm, and we're going to talk about that.

So, let's look at it. Here's Genesis 1, 26 and 27, and God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them." Does being made in the image of God continue to matter even now, many centuries after the fall?

Yes, most certainly. And it will always matter on into eternity. This dominion, this dominion, does that go away because Adam fell? No, it does not. It gets corrupted by sin, but it is not something that disappears because Adam sinned. How about male and female? Does that no longer matter because Adam fell? It does matter, continues to matter, right? And it's one of the issues up to the present day where the world doesn't understand that yes, it continues to matter, and even many Christians don't understand how much it continues to matter.

So, what we have at the bottom of the page, page one there, is looking at the diagram as the brain is a part of the human body. Notice, here's the body and there's the brain entirely separate, but the brain is a part of the body, right? We also have the soul is a part of the spirit of man. Sometimes you will see them used interchangeably, and the reason you can see that in scripture The reason you can see that in scripture is that the soul is a part of the spirit. It's not, you've got the soul and then the spirit and two separate things.

Okay, so we have the soul typically translated from the Greek word tsuke. Sometimes that's, I have it PSU, sometimes it's spelled PSY. And it's where we get our modern terminology. And then grief for spirit is pneuma. So we have the mind of man after the image and likeness of God. So this is the next part.

One of the words that is used for the mind of a person in scripture, this nous, so 1 Corinthians 2.16 would be an example of that.

And one of the things it says there, for who has known the mind of the Lord? So does the Lord have a mind? No. And that He will instruct him, but we have the mind, same word, of Christ. Who's we? Yeah, we have the mind of Christ. Here's the same word, and it's the same word for the mind of the Lord. So this is a very important insight here.

And how could that possibly be? Does any other creature on the planet have the mind of Christ? No. And does the unbeliever have the mind of Christ? No. But it is possible here, even if it is stated as fact, because we've been made in the image of God.

Here we see next another one, and this is a word that comes out powerfully in the book of Philippians. Every single chapter of Philippians is phoneo. And this is a verb, and the reason it's a verb, not a noun, is it's the mind in action and in motion. Isn't that interesting? It is connected to the emotions and the will, so it's not just the mind just floating by itself, but it's connected to the emotions and will. So let's take a look at some examples of that. It's in the top of page 2.

Here is Philippians 1-7, and you'll notice in the chart that's on the second page, every single chapter, and especially chapter 2, but every single chapter has this word Phryneo in the book of Philippians all four chapters so it says Philippians 1 7 which is the first occurrence for it is only right for me to feel and this is that word Phryneo the King James and the new King James have think think this way about you all right because I have you in mind here's another important word for the kind of the spiritual anatomy. I have you in my heart. Kardia. Who do you go to see for heart issues? What kind of doctor? Cardiologist. Same Greek word.

And so that's the word that Paul uses. I have you in my heart. Kardia. Since both in my imprisonment and the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you are all partakers of grace with me. Philippians 2, 1-8, Therefore, if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind maintaining the same love, united in spirit. That word united in spirit, that's sum sukos, so that word sukos that we saw before, But with the word, the prefix, sum is together. So a together tsuke, together soul, together mind. Intent on one purpose, and here is Froneo again. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind. Here's something interesting.

Was humility something a part of the Greek and Roman culture? No, quite the opposite. Humility was looked upon as a defect in the Greek and Roman culture, which is one reason why you will find an urging toward humility in many of Paul's letters to the Gentile churches. Humility was looked at as a defect of character And so he had to teach them, one, that no, it's not a defective character, and two, to urge them towards it.

And so he does so here in this passage, particularly in Philippians. Here's Philippi, which is a Roman colony, so lots of Roman culture. And so he's writing to them, and he uses a word that is unique. This is tapenofrusone. which isn't just some kind of strange tongue twister, but it means lowliness or humility of mind. So it's the word phroneo with a little prefix there.

Humility or lowness of mind regarding one another more important than yourself. In the Greek and Roman culture, did you go about regarding somebody else as more important than you? No. No, you would not consider someone else as more important than you. You'd say, I'm most important, and you'd try to get everybody else built around the idea that I'm most important. That's the Greek and Roman mindset.

So he has to not only teach them this, but urge them to replace that worldly teaching that they've had with the truth. But with humility of mind, regard one another as more important than yourselves. Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others." This was opposite to the Gentile mindset.

Have this attitude, freneo, have this mindset, the mind in action, in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus. who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." So he has this urging that they have the mindset of Christ and humility, was Christ humbled. He humbled himself, letting go of the privileges of his deity and place among the Trinity, to become a man, made in the image of God, with a body, soul, and spirit, with a mind, emotions, and will. So let's talk about this. The world and the Greek and Roman culture did not underscore or support humility, right? Does our own culture have a problem with that?

Most certainly, right? And, you know, I won't ask for names, but you can probably think of people that you've encountered or even that you see out in the public who are really all about themselves. It's kind of a two-year-old attitude that doesn't go away. Ah, yes. I can remember when our daughter Becky was young, Nancy would tell her various things and she would say, in my world, and then she'd say how it was in her head, right? And, of course, that was something to learn about. Now she's got six kids and she's learned that. Or at least she's learning it really well. Okay.

So you have this, and this word phaneo continues throughout the book of Philippians as a teaching about this mind in action. And as we see in here, this mind in action, even underscoring, using the same word to underscore humility here, is something that Christ demonstrated.

So now we move on to the emotions of man are after the image and likeness of God. The emotions in man are corrupted in fallen man, but they continue, they don't go away. So having been made in the image of God, we obviously have emotions, and if we talk about emotions, no one's going to dispute that. That's something we have, and we have emotions both in the physical realm and in the spiritual realm. We also can see from scripture that not only does man have emotions in the physical realm, and they get expressed in the physical realm, are the things that happen in the physical realm that impact your emotions? Yeah.

Can you give some examples? I get sick and usually I don't, I'm not real joyful about that, am I? Right? Yeah, you kind of feel sad. Boy, I can remember Nancy and I years ago, we got the flu so bad that we could barely function as parents and our kids knew that, you know. But yeah, you can get to a point of no energy. How about if you say, well, you know, I didn't have lunch today or something like that. How are you going to feel?

There's usually kind of a, pull down in our emotional expression and emotional feeling in the physical realm. In the spiritual realm, is it possible that people can be up or down or in a bad way or a good way spiritually? Most certainly. And those are some of the issues that we deal with as Christians. Boy, I feel like I'm spiritually deflated or spiritually depressed even. So it is possible and does happen that we have spiritual expressions of emotion.

And a part of what can happen Here's the Apostle Paul, he goes through all kinds of difficult circumstances, and he writes, he's been under Roman imprisonment for years, he writes to the Philippians, and what does he say? Rejoice in the Lord when it works out pretty good. Rejoice in the Lord when the circumstances are favorable. He'll write to them, chained to a praetorian guard, Rejoice in the Lord always. So here you have an emotional expression coming from the spiritual realm that's not explainable by things in the physical realm. A Christian by God's intent can be inexplicable to others.

I remember coming back on a flight from Palm Springs to San Francisco, and it was one of those smaller prop planes, and it was on a very, very stormy night. I was coming back from a conference, I happened to sit next to a fellow attendee to the conference, it was a gal, and so we were talking about the conference and different things. We got into this storm and the plane was bouncing all over the place and most of the people on the plane were screaming. And hands up in the air, I mean they thought that was going to be their last day. And so people were in a panic and I just sat there and so the gal turned to me and she said, And I was able to share with her.

It's because I trust the Lord in this. No screaming is going to change anything about how the pilot's doing, or the plane's doing, or the weather, or anything. Putting my hands up in the air, like a lot of people were doing, is also not going to change anything about the pilot, or the weather, or the screaming. That's not going to impact anything. I trust the Lord in this.

If this is my last day, and I don't think it is, But if this is my last day, then that's fine. If that's how he takes me home, that's okay. But I can trust him. And so she was just amazed. And that can be one of these circumstances where the Lord gives us a peace because of the spiritual understanding, because of our walk with the Lord, that impacts not only our spiritual emotional state, but how that gets expressed to others. So, then we have here, we can appreciate and enjoy what God has done to make us an image and likeness, at the same time we recognize the ways in which God's character and magnitude are massively and infinitely beyond us.

So when we talk about emotions from the spiritual realm, there is something that the world has no explanation for. One of the ways it's been expressed somewhat, you know, elbow in the rib kind of thing, is the poor atheist who feels so awestruck and so thankful but has nobody to talk to about it. They look up at the sky with the stars and are astounded and amazed and have wonder at all that. But all their feelings have no significance to them. It's just feelings. That's different for us as believers, isn't it?

We can say, isn't it amazing what God has made? Isn't that phenomenal what God has made? And we can have a sense of awe and we can have a sense of appreciation for the marvelous things that God has made. One of the things that, whether you're here in Colorado or traveling somewhere, you'll come across scenery. that just brings about a sense of wow and awe. We just have amazement at that. We have people who aren't here from time to time and it's because they travel and they're off seeing things. They say, oh that is beautiful, that is awesome. Look at that gorgeous sunset.

God is an artist beyond anything that we can fathom. And so even that is something that God put in us. Not only do we have a sense of aesthetics, this is beautiful, this is amazing, but also we have a sense of enjoyment, but also there's a sense in which I realize that, yeah, human beings create, but God creates in a magnitude and in a way that we can't even close to match.

Do atheists believe that human beings create? Pardon? Do atheists think, they don't believe that God creates, so do they believe that people create things? Well, yeah, they would say people create things in a sense, and really what we do, it has one sense in which it is like God, in that we create, but do any of us create anything out of nothing?

None of us create anything out of nothing. The other thing is, with the exception of a few things perhaps on the moon and on Mars where we've had some impact, for the most part everything we do is here. God's not limited that way at all. God creates things that are far, far, far, far beyond any magnitude or distance that we will ever even impact or take in.

We sent a space vehicle to take a fly-by set of photos of Pluto, and that happened in summer of 2015. And it took months for those photographs and the other information collected to arrive on Earth. And so this was this first ever space mission to Pluto, which is, in our thinking, I mean, this is fantastic. I mean, it really is. We just sent one off within weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago. called the Parker mission to the Sun. We're going to have a space vehicle that's going to be getting closer to the Sun than it has ever happened before.

Some of the things about the Sun, even though we understand quite a bit about it, some of the things about the Sun is the area around the Sun outside of its surface is hotter than the surface. Why? We don't know. So figuring out things like that and actually getting more data and whatnot, those are interesting explorations. But that's just one sun in the entire galaxy, in the entire universe. So what we do is amazing and fantastic, but it's far, far short of anything God does.

So we see in Genesis 1.31, first part, God saw all that he made and behold, it was very good. And by the way, did God see things that he made that we can't see?

Yeah. God has awareness of fine details of some planetoid on some far-flung galaxy that we don't even know exists. and he knows every fine detail of it. Things that we have yet to discover, he knows all about before we even get there. Even though we have species disappearing, there is still yet discovery of new species taking place every year. Was God surprised? Did God discover things? No, the word discover doesn't fit. He knows all those details even though we're just discovering them.

99% of all species that have ever existed are now extinct. He made all those species that we're discovering by fossils. And we're still discovering new ones. I guess you could say He knows all those that have not been born yet, too. That's right. Is God ignorant of somebody who hasn't been born yet? No. There's nothing about which God has ignorance.

Here's Psalm 19.1. The heavens are telling of the glory of God and their expanse is declaring the work of their hands. Of His hands, that is. So the heavens are telling the glory of God? What is that? The heavens are made to communicate. What? Gloria will say, we will send a space mission out and collect all sorts of photographs and technical information and reading of different frequencies that we don't see and take readings on what you find.

Here's Mercury that has a magnetic field. The magnetic field is declining. The decline of Mercury's magnetic field is not consistent with an evolutionary age for Mercury. decline of the magnetic field of the Earth is not consistent with an evolutionary age for the Earth. And you can find that throughout the planets and moons, so far as we have every information. Yes?

Along with what you're saying, being God's deep, the heavens bearing, God made all that to be for us to see. Even though the distance is so great that the light that we're seeing, we say, took hundreds of years to get here. But he made it now. Yeah, so as we look at things, there are phenomenon that we will probably always have just in theory. And we will never have the capacity to fully comprehend and explore all the things. Why is this there?

It's an appearance of age without it being that old. How old do you think the creation is? I believe it's something on the order of about 6,000 years old, possibly, at very, very, very most, a little bit older than that. Certainly not even as much as 10,000 years old. I know some people who are very smart and intelligent, maybe it doesn't mean they're smart spiritually, but they think it's billions of years old.

Here's what happens with age, and I can only address this briefly. As a fellow who switched from majoring in geology to civil engineering, it's something I've been looking at for decades. The reality is that the age of things, nothing comes to us with a time stamp. A meteor falls out of the sky, does it have a time stamp? No, they pick up a fossil. Does it have a little thing printed on the end or etched in that says this is X many years old? It does not.

The only way you can tell the age of anything back in time, it doesn't have something that gives us a time indicator, archaeologically I'm speaking, the only way you can tell is to examine the evidence you have now and make unverifiable extensions and assumptions back into the past. Nobody has been able to come up with a reliable method of going back and checking, oh yeah, I went back there and I saw this dinosaur and it said on my time travel device that that was 63 million years ago.

That has not happened. So all human beings are stuck in a mode of we look at the present universe, and what do we look at? We look at the present. That's it. We look at the present and we extend back in time with assumptions. that cannot ultimately be fully verified. So even though you'd be asking me how old is the earth, a lot of that I take from biblical chronologies, not necessarily because you've got assumptions you can verify. So there's no copyright stamp on any of this? Yeah, God doesn't copyright it, right? You can't duplicate this yet. Stan? Well, I don't want to get in on a rabbit trail here. Why not? Since you're talking about this.

But there is the example of like, for example, the dinosaurs. I mean, they had to live for a period of time. Yes. And if you go by Genesis, it happened in day five, right? Right. It would have been day five because man and dinosaurs didn't live together necessarily. So how could all that happen in one day, one 24-hour day? Well, God can create in one 24-hour day. He certainly has the capacity to do that.

The evidence that we have, even that dinosaurs existed, there is some evidence in the language, particularly the Old Testament, for that. But the evidence that we have significantly is the fossils that remain. The idea that those dinosaurs lived X number of million years ago, that it's something that is only available by assumptions and extension back in time. The evidence that we have, even making the assumptions that are used, is inconsistent. Let me give you a quick example.

So it turns out that most dinosaur fossils have a remaining carbon-14, sometimes called radiocarbon, material in them. And when those are tested and the assumptions, the modern assumptions are used, the age of those dinosaur fossils rather consistently comes somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 years ago. That's radically inconsistent with the millions of years, of course, the typical evolutionary time frame. Now, it was different when I was a kid, but the typical evolutionary time frame now is 63 million years old or older for the dinosaurs. 63 million is a minimum for the age of dinosaurs and yet we have most of the dinosaurs coming back with radiocarbon. Carbon 14 ages are generally in the range of 20 to 40,000 years ago. That is radically inconsistent with a long age for the Earth.

So, anyway, yeah, that's something we could certainly get off on. One of the things, this is looking at the top of page 3, John 3, 16 and 17, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Why do we quote that? Okay, so one, it expresses what aspect of God, this is an emotional aspect, is it precisely like human emotion? How is it different from human emotion, because do human beings love one another? Do Christians love one another, right? I don't think they love unconditionally.

Yeah, so this is a similar expression. It is certainly, and what we see here is it's not an identical expression. And then, first of all, we have to look at it and say, do human beings experience and express emotions? Yes. Are those emotions often corrupted because of sin?

Yes, right? So, but here we have an uncorrupted love from an uncorrupted God. God so loved the world. And of course we were all just lovable and nice, right? Yeah. God so loved the world of people who did horrible things to one another. God so loved the world of people who shook their hands at God. God so loved the world, including people who don't believe in Him. jokingly said, God doesn't believe in atheists. So what you have here, here is an expression of God's love, but it is uncorrupted and it is unlimited. And it is not dependent upon the circumstance.

We were never lovable. What does perish mean? So believing in him should not perish. This word for perish means to perish on into the eternity. And it is not a perish as in cease to exist. It's not annihilation, termination and cessation. But rather it is perish on into eternity as gets further described as the lake of fire. For God so loved the world, and by the world He didn't mean the world system. He didn't mean, boy that's the nicest globe I've ever seen floating around in space. No, for that He meant all of us fallen human beings.

He gave His only begotten Son, which is who? Jesus. And was Jesus the Son when he was born? Or was he the Son before? He was the Son before. Let us make man in our image, that's the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit talking with one another, to express it succinctly, that whoever believes in him the only begotten son that he gave, should not perish on into the eternity and suffer the consequences of that, but have eternal life.

And do you wait for eternal life or do you have it? Have it. So eternal life is now for the person that believes, from the time they believe, it is not, oh I sure am looking forward to having eternal life. I am, but it starts in the present, not waiting until we're done here.

So, in the next one, our response to that, because we've been made in the image of God, is 1 John 4.19, we love because He first loved us. We love in like kind to God because of God's expression of love towards us.

So let's put it this way. Well this is important for us and you ask a very good question. Can we as human beings love unconditionally? Yes. And the reason is, it's the same word that God so loved, right? The reason is because those who believe are then responding to His love, that's part one, equipped, enabled, and energized to express that love back to God and to others. Yes.

I have read that the first phrase of John 3.16 can be better translated, God loved the world in this way. He's not talking about a quantity of love, he's talking about a quality of love. Yeah, so it's one of the things to look at and for us to carefully ponder what kind of love is this, right? And, you know, one of the verses, I remember going in seminary and translating it, you know, and as soon as I got it translated from the Greek, I just broke into tears.

For God so, you know, this is 1 John 3 verse 1, Behold what quality of permanent love the Father has grace given to us, that we would be called the sons of God. And by the way, that was in a culture where a father could kill his sons and daughters at will at any age. Imagine with that, John writing, behold what quality of permanent love the Father has grace given to us. He has declared us to be his.

Yes. I don't know how to say this, but in John 3, is it 18? It says that men loved darkness rather than light. Yes. Same kind of word. Yes. And if you think about that, it is a production of the Holy Spirit, isn't it? is the expression of love we can enter into. That's true.

That's one reason why we need to look at context in every case and say, what does this mean? Not just using a cookie cutter oversimplified definition as we go along. And that's why I talk about empowering and enabling and energizing. It is a work of God. through His Holy Spirit and because of the life of Christ that we are given the capacity and it is God's intent that we love one another in a way that to the world is inexplicable. Yes?

But we as humans cannot love with the quality that God loves. I mean, we have times that frustrated or angry or whatever, but that's a temporary, but we still can't love with a quality. I would say this, that loving with the quality of love that God has for us is not, that is actually God's intent, but there is a magnitude of it. that can't be duplicated, because God is infinite and we're finite beings. Nonetheless, it is God expressing that love through us, is what he intends and designs, but very often, even as Christians, we can fall way short of that, can't we? Yes. Yes, yeah, this is, the sin nature, you know, will try to love, but is conflicted, seriously. Seriously conflicted. It is only the new man.

It is only Galatians 2.20. It's no longer I who do the living on my own. I'm not going to get there. It is not my job. It is not God's intent that I be delegated with this task of loving unconditionally. Do your best. Give it your best shot. Let's check in with you and see how you did. Not God's idea.

Let's look at the last part, the will of man after the image and likeness of God. We stated briefly the imperatives of the New Testament letter from Romans on generally appeal to the will of the believer. The imperatives like present yourselves a living sacrifice or things are presented as urging. So many imperatives or urgings in the New Testament, those are an appeal to the will of the believer, just as we saw in the diagram at first there. So, that's for the believer to have faith in the facts as God has revealed them, so that so that as we look at scripture and we understand, oh, that's my position, God is not asking us or telling us through imperatives to do anything in our condition that he has not already accomplished and completed in our position.

Accomplished or completed in our position. We have this diagram that you'd likely recall from us covering before. Here's the big picture on God's will. There's outside God's sovereign will. It's fixed and irreversible and includes your position in Him. Okay, you've been seated with Christ in the heavenlies.

There's Ephesians 2.6, right? So is that God's will or not? That's God's sovereign will. He doesn't say, you know, hey, I'm going to do my best. and see to it that you get seated. Sometimes they have to adjust the knobs or change the diode here or pull out the processor. God's not stuck with that. He has a sovereign will that is fixed and doesn't get messed up. Yes?

So does that sovereign will include believers and unbelievers? God's sovereign will is fixed and irreversible includes your position in Him. This picture is intended for, and what I put in here is for, believers. Those he knew before the foundation of the earth. Right. But it's intended to include believers in this diagram. That's what the picture is for. But what if his will actually included the unbelievers too?

Well, think about, is it God's will? Does God go about saying, now that guy, I most certainly want to go to hell. No. No, that's not God's will. So, as you look at what is God's will for people, God's will is not to sit there and say, I don't want that guy to fry. In fact, I can look back on it and say, well, God has saved some people that didn't deserve it. Most certainly didn't deserve it. And so it's really rather astounding to see. So then, conversely, his will would be that they would be saved, right? Yeah.

So you look at that, it is difficult for us to look at things with respect to the unbeliever in many cases, because so much of Revelation is really talking about and focused on primarily what is God's will regarding the believer. So that's where the focus is.

For the unbeliever, All the details about what God's will is are likely not revealed to us because the unbeliever is in a place where their first and primary issue is what for the unbeliever? Not to believe. But their issue is not to believe, but what is the issue they need to believe?

That's the primary issue. So all the details for them of God willed this and God willed that We don't have much revelation on it because their primary issue is, you know, to believe. One of the issues that comes up, for example, is, say, gay and lesbian and transsexual issues and things of that sort. And there are Christians who will get really down on, you know, those people are evil and they're doing the wrong thing, that kind of thing.

I look at it, what's their primary issue? They need to come to believe, right? So, you know, because I say, what you're doing there is sin, yeah, but the guy who isn't gay and isn't lesbian, the guy who isn't a transsexual, what's their issue? If they're an unbeliever.

The first thing they do is believe, so they really have the same problem. Christ died for the sins of the whole world, every single one. And that includes terrible, awful, horrible people, like you and me, before we believe and we're saved. And so it is important that we make believing as the issue before the unbeliever, and not point out, well, it's this issue and that one, and you've got to stop doing this. You know, if they clean their life up, guess what? They're going to spend eternity where? In hell. Were it not for them believing, that's where they're headed. It doesn't matter how nice they try to be.

Romans 12.2. And do not be conformed. By the way, that's an imperative, right?

So this is an act of will he is calling for. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is. live it out and demonstrate it, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. Does God have a will? Yeah, this passage says so, but he appeals to the believer who is given a will, he appeals to the believer who is given a will in the direction of and towards the will of God.

Does he appeal to unbelievers to clean it up? No. No. The unbelievers' challenge is not to clean it up, and Christians make a huge mistake when they go, oh, that's sin, and this is wrong, and all this is wrong. Heavens, for the unbeliever, everything is sin, right? Lots of sin, even if it looks good. Yes?

So proof to who? Does this go back to the angels watching? Okay, so you may prove out, in other words, you prove out and express where it is, and ultimately it's to whom? It's first to whom? To yourself. Well, to God himself, right? And then are angels watching us? Yes. You are angel college. Ephesians chapter 3 verse 10. You are angel college.

Ephesians 3.10.

So angels are learning. There are some things that God wants to teach the angels. See these Christian believers? Look at them. That gives you what you need to know. Imagine that. See, a lot of times we'll get this picture, God's got angels watching over me. Because they're learning about God's wisdom by looking at how God deals with us. So you've got that, and you also have, how will other people know that we are His disciples? That's what we looked at last Sunday morning.

John 13. How other people know that we're His disciples? Love. That's it. Just spell that out as plain as day in John 13. Now, whether they know it or not, it can be true, but that's what Jesus says. This is how they will know. And how I know it's time for us to pray is I've got people standing at the door looking in. And it's time to say, that's it. So let's pray.

Thank you, Lord, for what you've revealed. Thank you for this immense and marvelous and rich truth. We've been creating your image and you have time and eternal purpose in that. We thank you as we proceed ahead here for greater and deeper understanding into the unfathomable riches that we have in Christ. We bring these things before you, we give you thanks for them all, and I ask that you would teach our hearts. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.