Heavenly Reckoning
Mike Doyle · Oct 27, 2013
Specials, No. 14
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492645353396

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

I'm the one that picked those verses and I hope you saw a theme in them that has to do with the heavenly places or positioning in Christ in the heavenlies and kind of that's the focus of what we're going to talk about today. So what struck me to start with is when I read verses like that, which the Word gives us incredible information, that is beyond, I think, our normal experience, what do we do with the information?

When the Bible says that we're in heavenly places or that we're raised up with Him and seated with Him in heavenly places, what do we do with that information? I think as believers we only have really one function and that is to believe God when He tells us something. But it does seem like a stretch of your imagination to believe that where the Lord Jesus is now, that's where I am. And so I thought, well, am I really raised up? Am I really seated with Him in the heavenlies?

So I have to initially, when I look at these, just look at them and say, well, He said it in His Word, so I'll take them at His Word. I'll believe Him. But the next thing is that I'd like to be assured I would really like to know for sure somehow confirmation within my heart that what I'm believing and seeing is really real. And when I ask that question, then the next question that comes to my mind is how long is it going to take him to assure me?

Well, it took him some time to persuade me without a doubt that I was saved. I believed him. I was saved, but always there comes the conflict. Well, if I really am saved, how come I still am thinking this way or I'm still doing this? But over time, he persuaded me that I absolutely was saved no matter what. Now, I wouldn't bet the fireman whether you're saved, but I'll bet the fireman that I'm saved.

Then he introduced the identification truths, the fact that I was crucified with Christ. that I was buried with Him and resurrected with Him. So I took Him at His word. But then it took even longer for Him to persuade me about those truths. I really did die. I really am seated. I really am resurrected and seated with Him. And now, here comes these truths which I want to call heavenly or fellowship truths. Okay, I believe them. It's going to take them a long time to persuade me that I really am seated in the heavenlies.

But I know this, that the progression of my assurance is because of the work of the Holy Spirit in the middle of my daily life, in the middle of all of the activities and responsibilities that I have and that you have. The verse that grabs me about this is to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

But it does seem slow. And so I ask the question, how come? Why is it so slow? In answering that question, there are several elements to it. One is, I have to come to an understanding or we have to come to an understanding of position and condition. We talk a lot about position and condition here.

My position and your position in the Father is complete and it's perfect. In His Son, I am seated in the heavenlies. I'm there no matter what happens, no matter what I do, no matter where I go and what my turn might be. That position cannot be changed, no matter what.

But at the same time, I live walking around on the earth in my everyday existence, which is turned my condition. And it can vary. It may line up with my position a little bit. It may not. But what's interesting about my condition is that I become established in my position because the Holy Spirit has sealed me for the position that I enjoy. And even though it fluctuates, it isn't going to change. And so spiritual growth, I could say, is progressing towards my condition progressing towards what my position already is. My condition may look like it, it may not, but the Spirit of God is always at work, day and night, moving me towards, moving you towards, what your position is. So it helps to know what your position is, and that's kind of why we're looking at it today. Okay, so I have a position.

I know that the Spirit of God is working Do you think that the Father really desires to have fellowship with each one of us? Or does He want us to dress up nice and go to church on Sunday, do a couple of good deeds, you know, eliminate some of the bad habits that we've had and act like Christians? Or does He really desire to have fellowship with me and you? The Father in His mercy has been teaching us that there isn't any solid growth without this fellowship.

There isn't any. It's not only His intimate love for me, but it's my own heart love for Him that He longs for. He wants me to know Him and to love Him. Think of it. The Creator is yearning for the love and companionship of those that He recreated. He wants it more than we do.

If you look at a verse in which the Lord Jesus said to his disciples when they all walked away from him, you remember that in the Gospels? And he looked at the twelve and he said, will you go away also? And it sort of breaks your heart when you think, gee, the Lord Jesus has to look at all of these people that have been following him around, crowds, And as he gets close to death, they walk away. And so he looks at the twelve and he says, are you going to leave? And Peter, to his credit, says, Lord, to whom are we going to go?

You have the words of eternal life. That must have cheered his heart to know that Peter and the guys aren't leaving. They're going to stay. So there is a fellowship with the father and with the son. And it does produce something in our hearts as we grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus. It has an interpenetrating union of life within our souls and within our spirits. Everyone's familiar with John chapter 15, where John says, talking about the Lord Jesus, that he was the vine. and you are the branches, he that abides in me and I in him, the same brings forth much fruit, for without me you can do nothing."

He's talking about abiding in him where he is. We have the tendency to think, oh, if I'm to abide in the Lord Jesus, that means that he has come down into my circumstances and he's going to hang out with me where I am. And that's not what he's saying. We abide with Him where He is. And as He progressively manifests in us where we are with Him, there's a bond of life and communion with us there. And as Paul said in Philippians, he could make a statement like, for me to live is Christ.

Or in 2 Corinthians 2.14 Paul says, Now thanks be to God who always causes us to triumph in Christ and make manifest the sweet aroma of his knowledge by us in every place. So we have been identified with the Lord Jesus Christ in his death, understanding, and resurrection into new creation life. He's identified with us so that the truth of our position may become increasingly the experience of our condition.

As a result of that, there comes in a believer's heart, I think, the Philippians 3.10 prayer. Lots of believers ask me, I'm not quite sure what I should be praying for. I've been a Christian a long time and some of my prayers seem sort of, well, they go to the ceiling and bounce back.

I'm enamored with Philippians 3.10 because Paul prays this prayer after having walked with the Lord over 30 years.

And he says, well, I asked that I might know him and the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his suffering being conformed unto his death. Does that mean he didn't know him? No, he did know him, but he wanted to know him more and more and more all the time.

And as we grow in Christ and in an intimacy and fellowship with him, it produces a life in us and through us. And my next question is, is what does that life look like? Our spiritual growth is apparent when we begin to understand that it's cross-centered, it's Christ-centered, and therefore it's sacrificial. So then death works in you so that there might be life in others. That's the bad news.

Philippians 3.10 says that I may know Him. Hallelujah. The power of His resurrection. Got a lot of power. And the fellowship of His sufferings. Being conformed unto His death. Couldn't we skip over that part? The first two are exciting to me, the second isn't so exciting. But death does work in us for the exact purpose that there might be life in you.

So in the process of growth for His glory, there's going to be sacrifice for His saints because you're going to have a heart for the lost, you're going to have a heart for the growth of your fellow believers. And there's going to be a preparation for you to be of service in that area. And the primary preparation is going to be personal fellowship with Him and His cross. You just can't get away from it, which is cool when you examine it because our growth is founded upon a common mind and a common heart with the Lord Jesus. He gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify us unto Himself a people for His own.

So this conformity process is really to be like him. And I don't think that being like him is possible without the way of the cross maybe is the way to say it. Because he tells us, you know, let this mindset, let this view, this attitude be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. And here's the mindset.

He made himself of no reputation. and he took upon himself the form of a servant and he humbled himself even to the cross. So consider this, our father has come in and he's ended our history in the flesh by the cross and now by the spirit we're brought into association with this son at his own right hand. The Lord Jesus wins our heart in His humiliation. He satisfies our heart in His glory.

I found a great quote from a guy that I read a lot, a guy named J.B. Stoney. And I know this goes against conventional wisdom, but I'll read it to you anyway. He says, a one heart, W-O-N, is not necessarily a satisfied heart. But if a heart is truly won by the Lord Jesus, it will never be satisfied without him. No heart that is won is ever satisfied but in the company of the one who has won it. Absence does not make the heart grow fonder. You only discover in absence what you've gained in His presence. That just knocks me over. And that's really right. Those of you who are loved and love, you want to be with the person you love. You don't want to be away from them.

Our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son. And He is able to keep us from falling and to present us faultless before Him in glory. He's able to do that with exceeding joy. To the only wise God and Savior be glory and majesty and dimension and power both now and forever. Our union is with Him in oneness of death just as in oneness of life.

So the verses we read this morning, the ones that got me, that I like the most, is Colossians 3, chapter 3, verses 1 through 3. Since you be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. There you go again. I am risen? Yeah, I am. And if I am risen, then I'm free.

Seek those things which are above, for Christ sits at the right hand of God. Set your mind, your affection, your heart on things above and not on things of the earth, and then it gives you the reason why. And the reason why is, is because you died, and your life is now hid with Christ and God.

So we as believers, when we see those verses, and we believe them, and the Spirit of God begins to work those truths into our hearts, it causes us, I think, to yield to Him. to yield to the influence and the leading of the Spirit, who will bring us to see not only that our Lord Jesus died unto sin, but that we died with Him. It's not only a matter of doctrine, but we are brought into the Spirit's leading and enlightening as He begins to show us exactly what He means by those verses.

So there's a freedom that has to be gained there because if you're like me, have you ever tried to, oh gee, I read those verses, I think I'll put my mind on things above. Have you ever tried that? How long does it last until some other thought comes into your mind about something else that you treasure? We wouldn't be free to seek those things above or to set our mind on those things If we hadn't taken our position of having died with the Lord Jesus, that's why dying with him is so important to understand and to let the Spirit of God work that into your heart.

Because if you don't know you're free, you're not going to understand when he tells us, seek those things which are above. We're not going to understand how you do that because we're still burdened and thinking about all of the things that we actually have been separated from positionally, as he works in us the condition of our freedom. Actually, as living in the world, how do you account of yourself spiritually? Do you look at yourself as free or still struggling to be free?

If you have died with Christ, The improvements of the man and the flesh in the world are valueless to you. You see that? If we understand that we really did die, then working to improve yourself is a total valueless occupation. There are a vast number of things which believers are occupied with that will be set aside as you understand, I died. I'm resurrected in Christ.

Some of these things are just not as important as they used to be. I think that the move in that direction is based on affection for Christ. What will move your affections? What will make them become of such value to you that you really do desire to understand what it's like to be free? I think you must consider the Lord Jesus who has already been in the place of death. He already went there.

I remember when I had an older brother and we were 13 months apart in age. We grew up together. He was my best buddy. The Lord took him home at age 42 and I was really upset about that. Not the least of which was that I was a Christian longer and I figured I should go first. But I remember a guy sent me a note and said, look, you have to understand that the Lord Jesus desires to have all of us with him right away. And his job was finished and so he took him home right away.

And yours isn't. You've got to hang around longer. And Christ is the only human being that has been to death and back and he's the one you go to about death because he understands it. He's been there and oh he came back. So you can talk to him about death like you can talk to nobody else. The wonderful person who has been magnified before your eyes has been in death for you. The understanding, that understanding moves your affections to profoundly consider the glorious man as having been in that place of death. It is He, it is as He is established in your affections that you take up the position of having died and risen with Him. It's not a strain, it's because of His affection for you and you know it.

So, as I read down farther back up in Colossians to chapter 1 and read about the Lord Jesus Christ, listen to how the Apostle Paul attempts through the Spirit to gain your affection for him. He says about the Lord Jesus that, for he rescued us from the dominion of darkness. He transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption. the forgiveness of sins. And then he begins to describe the Lord Jesus.

He is the image of the invisible God. He's the firstborn of all creation. For by him were all things created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things have been created through him and for him. And not only that, he's before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is also the head of the body, the church, and he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he himself will come to have the first place in everything.

For it was the Father's good pleasure for all fullness to dwell in him and through him to reconcile all things to himself having made peace through the blood of this cross through him i say whether things on earth or things in heaven kind of long for me to read all those verses but i did it because i want you to understand that this lord jesus desires for you to have fellowship with him he wants you to know the degree to which he loves you and who he is So if I take up my position as having died with him, how would that change my attitude? How would it change the way I view things?

Well, for one thing, I wouldn't want to be morally in the place where he died. I wouldn't want to be in the world, because that's where he died. If we love him and know his love for us, we don't want to live where he has died. It is the Christian's privilege and responsibility to take up in mind and spirit his position of having died and risen with Christ, and now seated with him in the heavenlies. It's the true and only sphere of life for you and I. So, not only are we drawn by his affections, but to understand, wait a minute, he died here. This isn't where I belong. I'm not from around here. I'm really a heavenly person now. So is our place with Him wherever He is? Absolutely it is.

Because if His place was on the earth, let's say it was, then that would be the place for us. But if He is sitting at the right hand of the Father in glory, that's where the center of our interest should be. Therefore, having been raised up with Christ, seek those things which are above. It makes more sense, I think, to understand that, well, if I was raised up with Him, and he's died from the earth and this is not his place, that really is my place. And so the encouragement is to seek those things which are above. It is a question of where the source of your life is. Have we come to regard ourselves as having died, risen, and ascended? If we have, my outlook is going to be on things above. What's involved having your mind set on things above? Am I free? Can I do that? Can I really respond? The Spirit has made it known to us all too well about this world. Everybody here, I think, to some degree is aware of the fact that this world isn't really a comfortable place for us believers. We try, but it really isn't where we're from.

We sought certain things and we had our minds on them and they really did constitute our life. Everybody in the world has something which is life to him. which he sets his mind on. It might be a place, it might be wealth, it might be glory, it might be recognition, self-gratification or some form or another. The problem with that is that's inconsistent with who we are as believers. In contrast to that, the believer seeks the things which are above and he sets his mind on them because he knows he can. We have come into the line with what our father has cherished in his heart and his mind for us.

And our mind really controls what our objects are. Like we were talking about in Sunday school, you can't control the thoughts that come into your mind, but you can control what you do with them. So here comes the worldly stuff, and you recognize, wait a minute, that's of the world.

I'm dead to that. I really am of the Lord. I can, vis-a-vis the Holy Spirit, seek the things of Christ. How do you do it though? Is there a process? Is there something I can do to effectuate the seeking things, the knowing things? I thought about that question a long time and I thought, you know, really the answer to that is believing and maybe reckoning.

Reckoning is an interesting concept because Paul says in Romans 6 that I'm to reckon myself dead unto sin and alive unto God. It's based on a principle. And principles are interesting within the body of Christ because if you look up what a principle is, a principle is the law of nature or method by which a thing operates. The best example I know of a principle is gravity.

If I hold something up and drop it, it's going to hit the floor every time. It does the same thing every time. As a matter of fact, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and never getting a different result. Principles operate the same way every time.

A spiritual principle is that the Holy Spirit will bring us into the reality of our identification based on the principle of knowledge. We find out, the Word of God teaches us, that I have been identified with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. The second principle would be the principle of faith. I believe Him. only because he said so. I reckon the truths to be true. And then here's the other one that we have difficulty accepting, and that is the principle of time.

It takes time for the Spirit of God to process us into the growth truths so that we just rest in them. So the truths of our identification are those facts in the Word which reveal our union with Christ where He is, our death unto sin, and our subsequent recreation in His resurrection. Our Father judicially placed us in His Son on the cross so that we died with Him to stand the world's self and we're now alive unto Him. So what does this Word reckon mean?

In Romans 6.11 it says, Reckon yourself dead unto sin, reckon yourself alive unto God. If you translate the word, it means to count as true. Maybe the best way to explain that is if I said, How many people are in this building today? And I counted you all. Now, I could say, Well, at the beginning, I reckon you're all here. But if I did a head count, at the end, I would say, Well, there are, I don't know,

67. I reckon they're 67. Why do I reckon? Because I counted them.

I know it's true. I am dead with Christ. I'm buried and I'm resurrected. How come? Because I know it's true. I've been persuaded. It took the Spirit a while to persuade me, but He did. And so I reckon those truths to be true of me. You count upon the truth that is made known to us And you exercise faith in them, guess how? By resting in the facts. You don't strain, you don't struggle, you just rest.

So, there's a pattern here. The pattern is that you reckoned at the very beginning of your spiritual life, didn't you? Didn't you reckon that the gospel was true? That Jesus did die for your sins? You counted on that. You reckoned that to be true. It's the same thing that you did on your initial steps from babyhood as you began to grow.

There's seeing the truth. There's a reckoning upon it. There's an experiencing of it for a time. And then there's the growth time, where the Lord seems to have taken a break. And even though you experience the good of it, you think, oh gee, it's not working out too well. The Lord Jesus, or the Holy Spirit I should say, brings us ever so slowly into new and higher plateaus of truth in the process of growth. We see, we reckon, we appropriate that which we understand, But we must remember that it's only the beginning of the spiritual plane that we live on, because tasting isn't eating. The growth process is why it seems so slow. The Spirit of God just doesn't seem to be working very hard. And why would he do that? The freedom and power to be free from sin and self seems not to be as readily available to me as it possibly could.

I think that the reason that that is true is because the Spirit of God has to teach us that we must know ourselves. We must know what we were saved from. that we were delivered and had to be delivered, that we had to come to a point where we would really abandon, probably the right word, abandon who we were in Adam and reckon ourselves to be in Christ. I think we as human beings don't really do what we don't want to do. I've always done everything that I wanted to do. People say, somebody sort of pushed me into sinning. They never pushed me into it. Every time I sinned, I wanted to. I wasn't fooling anybody. I did it.

Well, as the Spirit of God works in a believer's heart, you want to know Him. You want to be in fellowship with him. You want to be free from Adam and your sin nature. Why? Because you know, not only do you know that that's not really who you are, but you want to be pleasing to the Lord Jesus who has won your affections.

A lot of failure sometimes in spiritual growth is the fact that the Spirit of God takes a while to win our affections over so that we don't want to and we do want to do the things of God. The other thing that makes it a little slow is sometimes we have erroneous expectations about what this reckoning is going to do for us.

We're not delivered only by the liberation truths. Certainly we must have believed and appropriated those truths. And liberation does come from our intimate personal fellowship with the Lord Jesus. But I would say if you were going to put it as simply as possible, liberation is in the liberator.

If you spend time studying especially Paul's epistles, you're going to find that the focus narrows down every time in the personal fellowship with Christ. It's personal. Every time. It's not just doctrine, as important as doctrine is. It's not just the principle of liberation. It always comes down to the person. Always. So, now I'm going to give you the how-to's. You guys need rules, don't you?

To reckon properly, I think there's some principles involved. One is to know and to reckon. We must know what is true of us. And that's why we study the Word of God. That's why we go to Sunday school. That's why we read the right things. That's why we do what we do.

We want to find out what the truth of the Word of God is. And so, it seems slow, But one of the other reasons why it seems slow is because the Lord has to remove fluctuating experiences from us. He's got to settle us down on the eternal truths so that they're clear and they're steady and they are our foundation. We're not to rely on experiences for growth and maturity no matter how wonderful and stimulating they may be. The Word of God is designed specifically to lead us from objective truth to love and affection with a person.

If we didn't have to be child-trained to be Christ-centered, then it would be easy. But we must be child-trained. We must enter into the Father's purpose of justifying us in Christ and identifying us because He's about the business of conforming each one of us to the very image of Christ. The very image of Christ. We learn more and more of the truths upon which we are directing. Our knowledge becomes a set heart attitude.

I'm alive in Christ unto God. I know that I am. So, I come to the understanding that I'll always be delivered unto death. For what reason? That the life of Christ might be made manifest in my mortal flesh. When I get that down, I'm comfortable. I'm okay with the delivering unto death or the separating us from all that we were in Adam.

So the first principle is to know the truth and to reckon or believe on it. The second thing is to just abide and to rest in what you know. When you're aware of your union with the Lord Jesus Christ, that we're a branch of the true vine, We become aware and we learn just to rest where we've been placed.

That's called abiding. You just rest in what is true of you. We simply rest where we have been recreated. And when in John 15 when he said, abide in me and I in you, that's what he meant. Just stay where you are and rest. Faith should cause you to rest.

The third step is to depend on what you know and then just to walk. The liberating principle is fully embraced in walking in dependence on the Holy Spirit. What you're going to find through this process is that greater and greater and greater dependency is growing in you to depend on the Spirit of God to implement everything that you've learned. Because you cannot do it yourself. You can't even do it with his help. you will be brought to a place where you and I have absolute dependence on the Spirit of God to work out and manifest in our lives what he's taught us, what he says is true of us. As we reckon upon these truths, he applies the crucifixion of the cross to the old man and he ministers the life of the Lord Jesus.

So when you see that verse in Galatians 5.16, walk in or depend upon the Holy Spirit You can't fulfill the desires of the flesh. You can't do it. It doesn't mean that you read that and it says walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the desires of the flesh. If you're walking in the spirit, it's impossible to fulfill the desires of the flesh because your desires are for him, not the flesh. So what's the practical effect? It comes to this, just as the world is everything to the worldling, a new word I came up with, the worldling, so the Lord Jesus is everything to the believer. We are independent of the world and all of it is because the Lord Jesus is our life.

The Father has in mind blessing for his own. What's the source of that blessing? Everything in the mind of the father for his own is in the source who is the risen Christ The man who's been glorified at his right hand This is the reason why we cannot, well put it this way, the last part of this is in Colossians is that why can't I show this life to anybody? Why can't I say meet me later and I'm going to show you this life?

Well the verse says that I have died and the life is hidden with Christ in God. We eat, we drink, we mind our business, we walk like people, like believers. But a risen and glorified man in heaven is our life. It cannot be seen, it's hidden in the Father above. Oh, that's bad news.

Aren't I supposed to demonstrate the life of the Lord Jesus? Then how is this life made visible? It's made visible because I have put on Christ. who is being renewed into true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him. If we know what it is to have the Lord Jesus as our life, we're able to put on his beautiful qualities and they come into evidence down here, but the source of your life is hidden. If you want to know what your Christian life is, it's hidden with the Father, which is kind of a cool thing, because it can't be touched there. Where do you learn this life? How do you learn about this life? One last quote from Charles Coates. There is only one place where you can learn it.

In his heart and mind. We have to leave behind everything connected with ourselves and the world in order to travel to the heart of the Father. And there we find his thoughts. There we find his thought. is that His beloved Son is our very life. So in closing I would say, I know I've given you a lot of spiritual information this morning, but I would encourage you to take the Lord at His word, to trust Him and to believe Him and let him work it out because what he's going to work out is not health, wealth and wisdom. He's going to work out in your life an affection for the Lord Jesus Christ that will absolutely transform us and our tastes will be different. We will have a taste for the things above. We will want to know him. where He is, and we will be able to walk away from everything that's not of Him. Let's close in prayer.

Father, how we thank You for Your Son, and how we thank You for Your Word that teaches us who He is and who we are in Him. And we look forward to, on a moment-by-moment basis, growing in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus. And we pray in His precious name, Amen.