Heavenly Reckoning II

You know, when you stand up here to talk and you get prepared, you're not really quite sure sometimes what the purpose is. But in singing those hymns, I've come up with a purpose. And the purpose is that we will never, ever again sing the hymn, when we all get to heaven. Because I'm hoping to convince you today that we're already there. No laughing.

You know, I've been accused, and justifiably so, of packing too much information into the teachings that I do when I sub for Vern. I took, in my profession, I have to take continuing education classes. And I took one a couple of months ago, which is a mandatory annual class. And the teacher said that she was there to cram 45 minutes into three and a half hours. And I usually cram three and a half hours in 45 minutes.

So today I'm going to try to simplify and concentrate on a few things that actually we talked about the last time I was here. Is that for me? So, the verses that Courtney read, I suppose I don't need this. The verses that Courtney read, John 17, 22 through 24, is what we're going to concentrate on.

And we're going to talk about certain aspects of it. One of them is that He has given us His glory already. for the purpose that we would be one with Him. And He's going to perfect us in that unity. And here's the most important part. He says, Father, that they may be with me where I am, that they may see my glory that you've given me. So that's basically what we're going to focus on.

In order to do this right, though, I think we have to look at a couple of principles. And it's a principles we talk about a lot. And we have to talk about principles because a lot of what Paul's epistles teach us are principles. A principle is a very interesting concept in that a principle is a way of thing functions or operates the same way every time.

And the best example of that is gravity. Gravity. If I hold this out and let go of it, it's going to go to the floor. Even, I was watching this thing on TV a couple of weeks ago where a woman was taking the viewer through the space station and she was floating through this thing and explaining and everything, you know. But eventually, that thing's coming to earth. It's going to get here one of these years. Gravity is a principle that never changes. Well, in the spiritual realm of things, there are principles that don't ever change.

And two of those are the principle of position, and the principle of condition. We have a position in the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the source of our Christian life. It's already been eternally established, and it's in the Father's presence. When we receive the Lord Jesus as our Savior, the Holy Spirit caused us to be born in Christ. That's our position. He created this new position in Christ, and He established us in it, and He put us there, and it never can change. And whether you're aware of it or not, you have it.

A positional verse would be like Ephesians 2.6. He raised us up with Him. He seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

Romans 6.6 says, knowing this, that our old man was crucified.

Was he? Yes. It's a positional truth. For what purpose? That the body of sin might be put out of business, that we should no longer serve sin. So as you study in your time alone, when you're reading the Word, if you come up on a verse, especially in Paul's epistles, and you kind of get confused, one of the first questions you should ask yourself, is this a positional verse or is this a conditional verse?

A condition is my everyday walking around existence as a believer where I mature from babyhood to adulthood. And it's variable. It moves all over the place. It sometimes matches or lines up with the position I have, but a lot of times it doesn't. Through the exercise of faith, my eternal position, which is the source of my Christian life, will begin to affect My daily walking around condition. Your condition can never, never affect your position. Do I need to say that again? Your condition can never affect your position. So what's it important to learn about as believers? It's important to learn what your position is.

So, a couple of conditional verses. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 5, It's actually been reported that there is immorality among you. An immorality of such a kind that doesn't even exist amongst the Gentiles. That someone has his father's wife. Is he talking to people who are positioned in Christ? Yes, he is. But their condition wasn't very good. You see that? Or Ephesians 4, Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling. What's the calling? Your position.

1 Corinthians 5.11. But actually I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he should be immoral, a person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, etc. We're talking about condition as opposed to position.

In most of Paul's epistles, well in all of them, The first part of them, the first two or three or whatever chapters, will state position. This is who you are, this is what you have, and this is where you are. Then starting in the second half, Paul will begin to say, here's the behavior pattern or how a believer functions based on this position. So I need to get those principles laid down first.

If you as a believer or I as a believer don't know what my position is, let's say I'm just ignorant, I don't know, no one ever told me, how is that going to affect my Christian condition or my walk? Well, there's only one result that's going to happen from that, I'm going to struggle. I'm going to function in pretty much an un-Christlike condition and there isn't going to be a lot of rest for me as a believer. In most cases, we, or believers, are way more aware of their fluctuating condition than they are of their position.

Okay? So, my talk today, Verne titled it, no, you can't blame him, blame me, Heavenly Reckoning. So, when the Lord Jesus says, I want you to be with me where I am, He didn't mean one of these days I'm going to get to heaven. He meant now. John 17, be with me where I am.

Ephesians 1.20 says, which he brought about in Christ Jesus when he raised him from the dead and he seated him in the heavenly places at the right hand of the Father. Where's the Lord Jesus right this very second? He's in the heavenly, seated at the right hand of the Father.

Philippians 3.10 says our citizenship is in heaven. from which we eagerly await for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. So the question comes down, if you're a serious, objective thinker, without necessarily having an answer, but is heaven really my place now? Is that where I am? So I'm not going to answer it. We're going to wait and see. And then you're going to tell me I'm going to have a quiz at the end of this and see if see if I was right about that tune or not.

So has Christ done everything to accomplish his will? And his will was that they may be with me where I am. And I had this kind of a weird thought. If the Lord Jesus is praying to the Father, and John is sort of eavesdropping and hearing this and writing it down, and he says to the Father, Father, my desire is, or my will is, did the Father say, well, let me think it over, Jesus, and I'll get back to you? No. When the Lord Jesus said, it's my will, it's done. We're doing it that way. It's His will that we be with Him where I am.

Galatians 2.20 says, I've been crucified with Christ. Position. And it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. Position. But here comes the condition. The life I now live in the flesh, in my body, I live how? By the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

Ephesians 1.3 says that, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us, already done, blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Just as he chose us before him, before the foundation of the world, that we may be holy and blameless before him in love, position. Ephesians 2, 5 and 6, even when we were dead in our transgressions, he made us alive together with him, with Christ, By grace you are saved.

Now listen to this part. He raised us up with him and seated us in him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Position. That's what's true of everybody in this room, whether you know it or not, right this minute. So I would say, based on just those scriptures, that probably Christ has accomplished what he willed to the Father. That I am raised up and seated with Christ in the heavenlies.

So, what are the mechanics? How did he get me there? We talk a lot in this church about the identification truths, that we were baptized into Christ's death, we were placed into him at the point at which he died, we were buried with him, we were raised in him, we are now ascended and seated with him in the heavenlies. Those truths are really important to us because they are the mechanics, I would say, of how he did it.

He put us into Christ, the Holy Spirit gathered us up and he placed us into Christ at the point in which Christ died. And that's a critical point because the Lord Jesus at that point has been made sin for us. Your sin nature and my sin nature, all that we were in Adam is now identified with him.

We go in. When he dies, what does death mean? It means separation. He's separated from all of that death and all of that sin. You're in Him. Where did you go? You separated too. You were buried, resurrected to newness of life. Your position, your position is because of Him and who He is.

And so I still have the sin nature floating around inside of me and trying to express itself, but I'm no longer identified with it. I am no longer united to it. I'm now united to the Lord Jesus Christ and I'm in Him where He is now. He says in verse 23, I in them and you in me, so he's in us and the Father's in him, that they may be perfected in unity or perfected in one. And here's the reason. So the world may know that you sent me and that you love them even as you've loved me.

So what does it mean to be perfected in one? The word perfection means, simply put, I think to fulfill or to complete or to become mature or maybe to be made perfect by reaching the intended goal or design. We've got a lot of engineers in this church and they design stuff and what they design is the way it was designed to be, they say it's perfect. It came into the design it was to be. How were you and I designed? We were designed by God to be in Christ. We were designed to be perfected in that unity that exists between the Father and the Son. So, as the conformity to the glorified image of Christ is increasingly worked into us from our condition, Out of us, the world will see and know that the Father sent the Son and that God loves us.

If you read Romans 8.28 and 29, it says that, whom he foreknew, he proposed a specific purpose for every believer. And it's the same for you and me. And that's in our condition that we would be conformed to the image of Christ. As we are conformed to the image of Christ, because of the position we have, What happens to the way we function? The Lord Jesus begins to live His life out through me. What do they see? They see Him. What does it say to them? Oh, gee, the Father must have sent the Son. And yeah, He loves the Son. And He loves you just as He loves the Son. That's what they see.

But in reality, from a conditional standpoint, what hinders believers from understanding the mystery of their position? What are the hindrances? I think the big thing is that most believers are not consciously aware of the heavenly ground that they're on and the position that they enjoy. And I don't think you can get free from the infringements of the flesh until you really do know and settle down on your position in Christ on the heavenly ground. But it's tough.

Because your flesh and your sin nature, which is my sin nature, I'm so used to it because I was born with it and I've lived with it all these years. it's going to rebel against something like that because there isn't any place for it in the heavenlies. When I begin to see and understand my position, it means that something's got to go, because my flesh is not pleasing to God. It can't be, and it's not going to be included. When you read in the Bible, your flesh profits nothing, or they that are in the flesh cannot please God, I think it shocks us.

I think we're kind of astounded, probably because we don't know the complete story, really, is what the answer to that is. I have really been taken out of this, from a positional standpoint, out of this world. The Greeks use the word cosmos for world, which means not only the environment, but the way the world thinks and does things. When I've gone from that and positioned in Christ, I'm supported, even though I'm walking around down here, I'm supported by the supplies that come from me where the Lord Jesus is, in the heavenlies. And so by the Spirit of God, I walk in a path down here where He was, but I'm walking, as Hebrews talks about, a marathon, I'm running, Where am I going? I'm headed to glory. That's where I'm headed, conditionally.

So, I've quoted Romans 6.6 and Galatians 2.20. Does that mean in those verses, I've been crucified with Christ, my old man was crucified, does that mean that the man in the flesh needs to be removed before God? Yeah, he does. Because the flesh can't be where he is. We as believers ought to be able to say, every time the flesh offers us something, I don't want your learning. I don't want your self-righteousness. I don't want your rituals. I don't want your legalism, because I've been separated from you. I want nothing but Christ himself. I'm complete in him, and he's everything. to me, and I'm looking down from my position in Him.

And I think a lot of us have probably had moments where we have tasted our heavenly position. And I'd ask you, if you think back when that happened, when you tasted of your heavenly position, were your earthly valuables and your property in heaven there with you? No. You only had the Lord Jesus. Were you happy without them? Was he enough? Yeah, he was, perfectly so. So our acceptance of the new position necessitates that we drop off everything that's connected with the old place. That's our condition.

Now, the thought hit me about that from an earthly example, and guys that have been in the military will understand this. You sign up, you raise your right hand, and then you go to this place called Recruit Training. In my case, it was this nice little vacation spot called Parris Island. What happens when you get there? When you walk through the door, what they're going to do at least in my case, the first half of recruit training was to get us to drop off everything that we knew to be civilian.

And the second half was designed to teach us and conform us to everything that was military, no matter what the branch of the service is. So when the apostles were caught up into the third heaven, he didn't even know if he had a body or not when he was up there. Why? Because the focus was on the Lord Jesus. you need a body down here, he wasn't even aware that he had one up there, because his focus was so centered in Christ. So, now, once you have information like that, once you have positional information, what do you do with it?

Like once you know in Galatians 2.20 that you have been crucified with Christ and you no longer live, Paul says in Galatians that you live by faith in the Son of God.

We live by faith and reckoning. And I'd like to probably, it might be helpful for us to understand the difference between just faith and reckoning, the word reckoning. The word faith, just the synonym for faith is believing. As a Christian, we're constantly presented, if you're studying the Word, especially in Paul's epistles, with biblical facts, positional facts. What do you do with them?

It's really not complicated. You just take God at His word. You believe Him. And He illuminates these truths to you as time goes on. And you just believe Him. And it gets to be not so much a scrutinizing of the fact to see if you'll believe it or not. It becomes believable because of the One who gave it to you. In other words, when the Spirit of God convicted you about the cross of Christ and salvation, your faith really was in the fact that God was telling you the truth. The facts are important, but you believed the person who gave you the facts.

And so as you grow as a believer, I think we begin to find out that The Word is from God Himself, and my faith is in Him, that He always, in His Word, tells me the truth. So, I end up, or we end up, as time goes on, believing more in the One who gives us the Word, because it's His Word. So, our job, our responsibility as believers or Christians, is to believe what has been told to us. So here comes the questions. Am I really where the Lord Jesus is now? Am I really raised up and seated with him in the heavenly places now? Am I truly hidden with Christ in God? So, positional truth.

I just take them and believe them. You don't tell God you're from Missouri and you need an explanation. You just take him at his word. Now, the word reckoning, which goes along with it, is a different word in Greek. And it means to regard as being true or to count as being true.

It calls upon us to, like if Romans 6.11 calls upon us to reckon ourselves indeed dead unto sin and alive unto God. Why? Because he's given us the first 10 verses of chapter 6 information. It means to estimate or to conclude by examination or we count upon a truth because it's made known to us.

Reckoning versus like Romans 328, we reckon, therefore, that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. That's Romans 328. Well, he has demonstrated through two and a half chapters why a man can't be justified any other way. And he says, you've examined this, you've looked at it, you can tell.

Romans 8.18, For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed towards us.

Could you say reckoning is application of spiritual intelligence? Again, I think reckoning goes along the line of spiritual development. Whether we realize it or not, I think when we first became Christians, we reckoned at the very beginning of our Christian life. And as we grew, we began to reckon on truths as they were expanded to us.

Patterns and principles come into play here again, and there's a definite and essential principle underlying all of this. The first thing is you see the truth. The second thing is, is that you believe it. that it is the truth. The third, you reckon upon it, you count it for yourself. Then you experience the good of it, and then comes the proving of it.

Now, I think the Spirit of God, as He moves us into a higher plateau of understanding our position, we see it, we believe it, we reckon upon it, we appropriate what we understand, but it's important to remember that this is just the beginning, just the beginning. Tasting isn't necessarily eating. The initial experience is but a token of all that lies ahead for the growth process.

I was out walking with Donna a couple of weeks ago, and I was talking about this, and I said, well, let me give you an example and see if it fits. I say to you, I got $126 or whatever. in my pocket. I just tell her I have it. She says, Oh, I believe you. I take it out and I say, let's count. So we count it. And she says, I reckon that's what you have. More than just believing what I said, there's a reckoning that takes place.

Then we come into a situation where I need the money. to either keep moving down the road or to purchase something that we need. And guess what it costs? $126. Pull out the $126 and I use it. I appropriate what I already have to keep me moving down the line. Now, let's substitute the word grace for $126.

So God says, I have grace for you. unlimited and unmerited blessings. And you say, okay, I believe you. And he says, well, let me take it out of my pocket and show you. And so he does. And you learn about grace. And then comes the day that you need it. So you go to the throne of grace when you need it. And what do you discover there? You discover that the grace available to you was a lot more than you needed. A lot more. So you appropriate it.

And as that scenario plays out in your life as you go along, you begin to realize, now wait a minute, grace is not a commodity like paper money. What grace is, it's an environment that I live in. I no longer live in an environment of law or condemnation, I live in an environment of grace because I'm in Christ. Unlimited and merited blessing all the time. Never stops. That's what I exist in. It's like the air I breathe. Grace is the place that I function.

Now, as we contemplate the different facets of the Lord Jesus Christ in glory, The Spirit of Christ in conjunction with all that, He takes us through day by day. He causes His very characteristics to be developed in our life from glory to glory. We'll come to understand that fellowship of growth is a highly personal thing. It's a one-on-one thing. It's a oneness of nature. As you behold He bestows.

Second Corinthians 3.18 says, Beholding as in a mirror, the mirror is the word, the glory of the Lord. I am transformed, conformed to His image. As you behold, He bestows. Faith which works by love, and the Lord Jesus develops His life within us by the Spirit of God. So you grow. You don't grow to become something you grow into what you already are conditionally.

So let's talk a little bit about reckoning and how because it's important I think for us in our Christian life to understand that reckoning is really an important principle for us because everything that has to do with our Christian life is, again, it's based on the long for freedom from the power of sin and the long for beholding the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our life is hid with Christ and God. Christ is our very life. But you must ask, if you function like I do, I ask the Lord a lot in my life. It sure does seem like it's going slow. I'd sure like to have it fast enough." And then the question came, well, maybe the failure is in the truth that I reckoned upon. No, failure is not there because the truth can't be changed. Remember our discussion about position.

And without the Scriptures, the Word of God, we wouldn't have anything. What would we know? We wouldn't know anything. The written Word is designed specifically by God to bring us not only to know the truth, but to know the living word, the Lord Jesus Christ himself. We study, we meditate, we count upon him, and through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, in order that we may know the Lord Jesus and that he becomes our all and in all.

So if you're disappointed about reckoning, it probably is because we've had or we do have erroneous expectations. And those expectations is that we're always trying to bring the Lord Jesus into our circumstances to fix them. When in fact what the Spirit of God is always trying to do is to bring us into our heavenly position so that we may enjoy there. And so we're looking for liberation. And liberation, liberation, liberation. We keep praying for freedom from sin, freedom from this, freedom from that. And it takes the Spirit of God a while to teach us that liberty is in the liberator.

It's not just the doctrine, it's the person. So, let's talk about reckoning and how the principles go together. The first thing is to know. You have to know and reckon. You realize, like, your identification with Christ, or your positional truth, or something that you're reading. You know it first.

Because you've got to have an object for your faith. And often, sometimes, when identification or positional truth comes into your life, there's a need for it. There's a crisis, maybe. Or there's some emancipation that you're crying for, or something that you would really like, spiritually. And it creates a need.

I think God always works. Another principle, he works by creating need in your life. And when he does that, you have to go to him. My friend Miles Stanford used to say, you have to trust the Lord has come to that. And oh, by the way, it has to come to that. And I think that's a really profound statement.

So our Lord removes fluctuating experiences in our Christian life. so that the eternal truth that He has steadily and clearly given us becomes our foundation and not our experience. We're not to rely on our experiences for growth and maturity, no matter how wonderful or stimulating they may seem to be. But we have to be child-trained.

What's the purpose of God in justifying us in Christ and identifying us with Him? Romans 8 29 and first Peter says were to be conformed to the image of his son and that God and all things might be glorified. You see, do you get the connection between conformity to the image of Christ and God being glorified? Does that connection make sense? The more you're like Christ, the more you glorify God, the more you demonstrate and play out in your life the characteristics of God himself, because it's Christ's life.

Peter said, For by these he has granted to us precious and magnificent promises, that by them we might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that's in the world. So if you remember back to John again, his desire was The Lord Jesus' desire was that, I desire that those that you have given me would be with me where I am, and they may be able to see my glory that you have given me, for you love them before the foundation of the world. So I think as we learn more of the truth upon which we are reckoning, and our knowledge becomes a set heart attitude, that I've died to sin, that I'm alive in Christ, that I'm seated with Him in the heavenlies.

And although our initial reckoning may bring blessing, its primary purpose is to accomplish a two-fold principle in your life. The first one is, and this is the one that everybody sort of chokes on, I'm always delivered unto death. What's death mean? Separation. The Spirit of God is always in the process of separating me from everything that's not of Christ, which includes this world, through the cross, so that the life of the Lord Jesus might be made manifest in my mortal flesh.

The believer, you and I, will not manifest the life of the Lord Jesus through us if the Spirit doesn't apply the cross to the old man. He's got the cross as the element or the instrument by which God puts your sin nature out of business. You function based on faith and reckoning in expecting him to do what he says he's going to do. I'm going to apply the cross to your old man for what purpose? That the life of the Lord Jesus might be made manifest in your mortal flesh.

That's the first step. The second step is to abide and rest. Each of us became aware of and reckoned on our union of life in the risen Lord Jesus. We found out that we were our branch in the vine. By means of this awareness, we do this great thing that John 15 talks about. It's called abide. You just stay where you are. We simply rest where we have been newly created in Christ. How do you do that? By faith and by reckoning.

When the Lord Jesus says to his disciples, abide in me, and I in you, as the branch can't bear fruit of itself, who's the branch? You and me. Except it abide in the vine, no more can you except you abide in me. I'm the vine. I'm the one with the life. You're the branches. If you abide in me, you will bring forth much fruit, for without me you can do nothing. But I love this example. The vine's over here, I'm the branch, and the fruit's over here.

Abiding means that my focus is on the Lord Jesus Christ all the time. The life flows through me and out here is the fruit. You know what I do most of the time? I peek instead of keeping my focus here. That's what abiding is. Staying where you are, focusing where you are. And the last one is that I depend and I walk.

The principle is fully embraced. The final step is to walk in dependence on the Holy Spirit. Within our spirit, He abides forever, and He's way down in there. He teaches us the truth of our position. And when we reckon upon what He has taught us, He begins to apply the crucifixion of the cross to the old man, and He begins to minister the life of the Lord Jesus of the new man.

Galatians 5.16, everybody here knows that verse.

Walk in dependence upon the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the desires of the flesh. Walk in dependence upon the Spirit. It's impossible to fulfill the desires of the flesh. As long as you're looking and walking and abiding, you can't fulfill, because you can't live two lives at the same time. So if you walk, you function, you walk around in dependence on the Spirit of God, it's impossible. to fulfill the desires of the flesh.

And the reason is this, the principle of the spirit of life, the principle of the new life in Christ Jesus has already made me free from the principle of sin and death. I'm already free from it. So our reckoning becomes effective as we count upon the word. as we abide in the Lord Jesus and as we walk in the Spirit.

So, this fellowship is highly personal, like I said. It's a oneness of nature. As you behold, He bestows. We look upon Him, faith that works by love. So, the glory, verse 22, the glory which you have given me, I've given them. Not going to give them, I've already done it. that they may be one, even as we are one." This is the second person of the Trinity talking to the first person of the Trinity, who is one with the Father, and he's saying to Him, here's my will, I want them to be one with us. One with Him.

Ephesians 4.13 says, Paul's praying for them, he says, to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto the perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." It's interesting he didn't say, to the measure of the stature of 25% of Christ, and we'll all call it even. No, it's the fullness of Christ. It's all of Him. So, why does Jesus will that we may be with him where he is. Because the head and his members must be together. We're told of this wonderful union with him, and it's got to be where he is. It can't be where we are. It's got to be where he is.

The full expression of the glory of Christ is now in the heavenlies. And he's asking that believers should be able to see him there as a glorified man. So there's a communion of love between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit that has always existed, always existed. And Jesus is asking that we be included in that love and in that experience and that communion of love. That's what He's asking the Father. He would have us to begin to enter into that experience right now, this very minute.

That's why 2 Corinthians 3.18 is such an important verse for us. We all, with open face, unveiled face, beholding as in a glass, reflectively now, the glory of the Lord. We can do that right now in the Word. And what kind of an effect does it have upon us? It changes us into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

So in closing, I would pray for you, and you would hopefully pray for me, the Ephesians 3, 18, 19 prayer. So let's pray. That we may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and the depth and the heighth, and to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that we might all be filled with the fullness of God. Amen.