Faith Lesson 16 Week 3

OK, before we start, I've got something new for you to study. This is called the idolatry of the smartphone. Without a smartphone, I can do nothing. I can do all things with my smartphone that accompanies me. Blessed be my smartphone and all comfort that comforts me in all my tribulations that I may be able to test them and text them which are in any trouble. My smartphone is sufficient for me. My smartphone which has done a good work in me will perform it until the next one comes out. I count all things but loss for the excellency of the possession of my smartphone. My smartphone shall supply all my need according to the power of the grid.

Texting without ceasing. Looking for that blessed hope in the glorious appearing of the new Apple device. Let us hold fast our smartphone and when I am weak, my signal is strong. Too bad you didn't read that off your phone. A guy named George Zeller sent that to me. He's a really neat Christian writer. Okay, well I listened to the tape last week. I thought the class was terrific.

What was the word that you studied last week? Were you here? What was the word? Reckon. Yeah. Reckon. Reckon. Reckon. Really important word, as J.D. pointed out. And it is a good word because describe what reckoning is. You know, there was going to be a test today. I wasn't here. I have immunity. Considering to understand more fully. Understand more fully. OK. Is reckoning in here somewhere? All of it? What do you think? Yeah. Look at me. Is reckoning in here somewhere? I don't know. I can't see what's written.

It's the four aspects of biblical faith. It's essence. The faith, personal faith, or as a principle? Yeah, I would say it's more aligned with personal faith, but it's more than faith. Understand what I'm saying? Reckoning is not just taking God at His word. That's what personal faith is.

But when you reckon something, you have tested it. You know it works. You're settled down with it and you're reckoning it so because it's been, not only do you know the information, but God in his spirit has persuaded you beyond any doubt that it's true. As an example, are you absolutely persuaded that you're saved? Yes. So you can reckon that you're saved because you're persuaded. But I can't reckon that any of you are saved, I just know about me. God hasn't persuaded me about you. I suspect you all are.

But reckoning is one of those things that as you walk by faith, the Spirit of God cements you in those truths, and so therefore you reckon. And that's why J.D. spent so much time Talking about the issue of sin and confess, sin and confess, sin and confess, sin and confess, how do you get out of that vicious merry-go-round? You reckon. And what do you reckon?

That you're dead to sin. Now the Spirit of God not only has to inform you about that, but He's got to persuade you it's true. That you really are dead to sin. That's what reckoning is. That's something that you can't When you see it, you can't make a law out of it and say, well, that's what I'm going to do, because then you've made it legal. Reckoning is a work that the Spirit does in you, and as we learn the things of God, the Spirit not only shows them to us, and we rest in Him by faith, but He's always working to persuade us or to cement us into the truth that we know. That's what reckoning does. You alright with that? Reckoning is really a cool thing. So I would say that he got through what? Question 6 maybe? Or 7? Let's start with 7. How about implement the walk of faith here. How is it done?

We walk in the spirit by the principle of faith in Christ Jesus. So there's a principle involved which we've talked about a lot. Christ has died unto sin. J.D. made a statement last week. This is our sin. This is the sin nature. That's right. He has died to the sin nature and the entire sin principle itself. And if he has, so have you. And I know, as soon as we start talking about this subject, in the back of your mind, your mind is saying, well, that's easy for you to say, it's not true for me. Yeah, it is. It's true for you.

Because if it wasn't, why would he say it? And no fair going to God and saying, well, okay, Wanda understands this, but I don't. And the Spirit of God says, wait a minute, I just showed it to you. What are you supposed to do with the information? Just rest in it. And then as the spirit works you will begin to reckon yourself dead unto sin.

So who died on the cross? We did, the old man. We did, now the old man didn't die. So what's death mean? Separation. So on the cross there was a separation taking place. Who got separated from what? I got separated from the sin nature. So the sin nature didn't die, I did. I got separated.

You see that? The Lord Jesus was made sin for us, he was identified with the thing sin and he died unto it. So the sin nature didn't die, he separated himself from it and in doing so he took all of us with him. So the sin nature is still active and rocking and rolling inside every one of us but we are positionally dead to it. We're the ones that died.

You're first. I was reading something and it said the reason why Christ did that partially for us so we can be reconciled to God and partially because it gives glory to God. It does. It's a complete dealing with the sin issue itself. It's not just enough for him to pay the penalty for your sins or the sins of the world. He had to deal with it in such a way that he was separated from it forever. And so it actually opens the door for God to recreate the new heavens and the earth without sin in the future. Because the new creation, we're all members of the first fruits of the new creation. In the new creation there's no sin. No sin.

And so we are really forced, whether we like it or not, to live by faith, aren't we? If we're going to function Spiritually, it has to be by faith. It cannot be by experience. It cannot be by empirical testing evidence. We have to trust God and what he tells us. And that's hard because everything in the world around us cooperates together to try to persuade us that what God has told us isn't true, including your own sin nature. Your sin nature will say, I'll show you how dead you are to me.

It's kind of like we go back to pre, like before Adam and Eve sinned, they didn't know good and evil. And now it's like we know good and evil, but yet we're not concerned with it. Well, and here's the thing. Did Adam know what evil was? Before he sinned? No. Did he know what good was? No. He just lived, huh? He just lived. He was innocent. He just lived.

So in Christ Jesus, is there this contrast between good and evil? The contrast is between what's of him and what is not of him. That's why Paul could say anything that's not of faith is sin. You don't have to be a bank robber. All you have to do is not buy it. And you're sinning. You're falling short of the mark. See that? Yeah. Now you answer the other question.

I heard on TV that Prince, what's his name, Joseph Prince, he said that, now I hope I can get this right, he said that Adam and Eve that the tree that God didn't want them to eat anything from that tree was... The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The law. Was the law. I don't think so. Well, let's talk about that for a second. When Adam and Eve were in the garden before they sinned, God gave them a law. What was the law?

Don't eat the fruit. And there was a consequence. If you do, you're going to die. You surely will die. That's a law. But there was only one. So after they did that, were there other laws right away? As an example, when Cain killed Abel, did he break a law? No, he didn't. There was no law against murder.

But I'm not sure that he meant that right then there was the law but that the tree actually was saying that you are going to be living under the law. But isn't that just Jewish people? Do the Jedi live under the law? Yeah but you know you think about the knowledge of good and evil really does set up a contrast where I've got to do this and I've got to avoid that. In that sense it's legal.

But there weren't any written codes. There wasn't anything that said, well here's the 45 things you've got to do and here's the 4,000 you have to avoid. Okay, another question. Now we have the 10 commandments. You only got two left. We have the 10 commandments. But did God give him all that 600 and something? The Jews? No, no, God gave it to them. He did? Yep, sure did.

Look at Deuteronomy and you'll see them in there. There are three groupings. There's a ceremonial law, which is how they were supposed to function in regards to temple and their religion. There was the moral law, which is how they were supposed to function with each other. And the third part was what? Ceremonial. What's that? Ceremonial. Health and hygiene.

What they could eat and not eat and how they were supposed to prepare food. and that kind of thing. So yeah, it totally controlled their life. He gave those to Moses? Moses. So Moses is like, he wrote down ten and the other is like, I'll just remember them? He was up on a hill for a while. But Mike, if there was no law and he killed his brother, wouldn't he have realized that this was a bad thing? You don't do this? What do you think? Do you think he knew? I think he knew.

Yeah, I mean, to take another person's life, you know. He had conscience. But God came and said to him, hey, you know, the blood of Abel cries out to me, you know. So there were consequences. He banned him to some other place, you know. Yeah. I was wondering, when you say that on the cross we died, But what I've been thinking is that really you didn't die, you died to sin of a certain nature. You cannot look at death as a cessation from existence. It only means separation. I'll read something to you. Have you guys ever read this little thing called the material to all?

Once upon eternity there was but infinite non-existence, no atom, nothing but God, no universe, no world, nothing. The eternal trinity of love, the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. For thus saith the high and lofty, who has inhabited eternity and whose name is holy, Isaiah 57. Let your heart, dear friend, be drawn back there and contemplate the beloved Son eternally in the bosom of the loving Father, receiving and reciprocating that divine love in all of its unutterable purity and ardor in the spirit of love. Picture that in your mind.

Back there in eternity, before anything had been brought into being, environed in the pure essence of divine life, light, and love, in the mind of the Father, the heart of the Son, and the hands of the Spirit, and by and for His love, God conceived you, thought of in eternity past, brought forth in time, for eternity future, forever loved. in the secret place of the Most High, in the bosom of the Father. Before anything was created, the Father fashioned you in His heart of love. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unformed. And in my book all my members were written, which is in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there were none of them."

That's pretty cool, isn't it? Now, how do you do that? Courtney and I have had this talk a lot, and this is really kind of cool. So here, everybody in this room says, OK, this is me he's talking about. I was back there, formed in God's mind, in Christ, then. So how did he do it in time-space? Because here I come into the earth in Adam, separated from him. Here's how I think he did it.

When you come into the earth, when you're conceived and you're born in the earth, you're born into time-space. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end. When, at some point in your life, you're presented the gospel and you, by personal faith, just rest in the facts and you're born again. Well, where are you born into? You're born into the Lord Jesus Christ. He's an eternal being. There is no time anymore, so the father can say, oh, I've known you in Christ since back then. That's who he's talking about. So, here's the deal.

This separation from sin is absolutely necessary to carry this out. Because God cannot look at you as a saved sinner. There is no such animal in Christ as a saved sinner. you're a brand new creature in Christ. Now, walking around in this earthly body, which is part of the old creation, and within that body is this sin nature that used to be part of your identity. It's there, but it's not who you are anymore.

See, it sounds, gee, that's really complicated, because my sin nature is banging on me all the time. Yeah, it's banging on you, but you don't have to respond anymore, and the reason is that you're no longer a slave to it. My buddy that lives right here in the White House, who's not a believer. Your buddy in the White House? Right here. Across the street.

He is absolutely a slave to sin. Absolutely and totally a slave to sin. He has no choice. And the sin doesn't, well let's do some good stuff today which is sinful and we'll do some evil stuff tomorrow which is sinful. God has paid the penalty for all of his sins, for the sins of everybody, for the whole world. But the problem is, unless he comes to Christ, he's never going to be separated from sin. We are separated from sin.

So when it comes to walking day by day in your life, and sin shows its ugly head, and you take the bait, and you go for it, the sin and confess, sin and confess, sin and confess thing gets to be a real tedious legal process until you begin to realize, wait a minute, I don't have to go there. I can reckon that I'm dead to sin and alive unto God.

Why? Because it's true. I am who this little book said I am and when I was created in Christ was before God ever made the first molecule. Before then. And then it seems like it's the Holy Spirit who's going to get you out of that cycle. The only one that can do it. And he does it how? By revealing to you the things of God, persuading you they're true, you enter into them by personal faith, and as time goes on he persuades you and you reckon them to be true.

And then sometimes it seems like You look back and it's like, I'm not doing that anymore. I don't have to. Right. I'm just not. You almost feel guilty when that thought first hits your mind. You think, I don't have to do that anymore. It's almost like, well, it's not human if I don't have to sin. Well, I'm not human in that sense. I'm this new creature and I don't have to do this. I can reckon and I can rest and stay in the position that I'm in.

Now, it doesn't mean you're not going to get tempted. That's going to happen all the time. What's that? You have to confess. Oh, sure. But let's say... And confess means agree with God, right? Yeah. Isn't that cool? And what are you agreeing with God about?

That he's right. That I'm a dirty, rotten sinner? No, he doesn't look at you that way. He looks at you as this new creature in Christ and you've been acting inconsistent with who you really are. You say, okay, I've been doing it. But that's not who I am. I agree with you. Because God can't look at sin. That's right. That's the reason. And He can't look at you united to sin.

You can't be a son and all the other wonderful things that we are and still have sin as part of what you are. Okay? So, question eight then would be, how is personal faith supposed to work when tempted? I think we just talked about it, covered that, right? How's it supposed to work?

Here you are abiding in Christ and, I don't know, pick your poison. Here comes the temptation, especially the one that you have fallen to so many times you don't even want to talk about it. And there it is. And every single time you get hooked and there you go. But the Spirit of God says to you at that point, wait a minute.

It's not who you are. What do you do? You agree with them. You say, no, you're right. It's not who I am. I don't have to go there. I can just stay where I am and your job, the Holy Spirit, is to focus me on the Lord Jesus. I'm going to stay right there. And guess what? You don't go. You don't go and you don't get proud about it because it isn't you who rescued you. You see that?

It's kind of cool. Yeah. You know, I've been doing a lot of work in Genesis, and that, in my mind, that's exactly what Adam and Eve did not do. God told them, this is where I put you. This is all good because everything's working the way it's supposed to work. The sun and the moon, the stars. And you, Adam and Eve, if you stay here, where I put you.

And what they did was, they said, we don't want to stay here. We want something else. And basically, that's like the root I want to say nature, whether we're doing something that we call being tempted, like, I don't know, lust, whatever you want to hear about, spending too much money, I don't know.

Or you're trying to do something that's good that isn't even considered a sin, but you're just not doing it because God... It's not of Christ, yeah. Sure, sure, that's exactly right. And the more, the closer intimacy you have with Christ, the more aware you are of what's not of Him. Then it can be something really good, but it's not of him, so you're not going to go there.

It might be, it could be, I don't know, I want to go do this. There's nothing wrong with going to the Bronco game. And there isn't anything wrong with the Bronco game, but if the Lord doesn't want you there, he will show you, hey, it's not of the Lord Jesus, you don't need to go there. It doesn't mean you don't have to be a Bronco fan, you can.

But that isn't the priority or the interest in your life. You see that? And it can be... It's like, well, I want to get into Christian service. I have to serve the Lord. If He doesn't call you, why would you go? Because you're not sure what you're doing is of Him. Then you're just another worker bee. Well, just like you said, it depends on what controls you.

That's exactly right. And we already have a master, who is Christ himself. You know, it could even be like going to church. Same thing. I'm going to go every week because that's what a good Christian does. God's going to be really pleased with me. Skip a few times and see if you miss it. You know what I mean. Well, it's not only that. I think what you discover over time is that a body of believers isn't going to church. It's a family, and everybody serves several roles in it, and we're an organism on the earth, not only individually but corporately, to manifest the person of Christ. That's what we're here to do, to glorify Him. That's what we do. And you're showing up to go to church, you may or may not do that, because if your motivation is self-centered, then it's sin. Who said that going to church could be sin? I just said it. You better repent.

So let's go to James 1.12. And this is question nine.

So James 1.12.

Blessed is the man that endures temptation. For when he has tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to them that love him." Now watch this, I'm going to add some words here that are Greek words and maybe they'll help us understand. Blessed or mature is the man that endures or abides under temptation. And this is the word temptation to fail. For when he has tried, having become approved, he shall receive the crown of life. Now, having been approved, that is by test, he becomes approved. So every believer, God is going to put them through a test, or tests, plural.

For what purpose? What are you going to be tested for? So that you can prove to God what a Rudy Kazootie Christian you are? No, that he can prove to you that what he's told you is so. He will put you through this temptation and testing process to get us to the point where we do reckon. You know?

I said to a young couple about a couple of months ago who we were talking to and they're, one's a Christian, the other wasn't so sure of, but they're living together and they think they want to get married. So, you know, Mr. Counselor, the first thing I say to them, well, you're going to have to get out of bed. One of you is going to have to move. And they looked at me like, well, we don't do that today. That's their attitude. I said, no, if you're believers and you want to be married in an environment where you're living in the principles of the Lord Jesus Christ, then fornication isn't one of his principles. You're going to have to move.

And I said, here's why it's really important to you. And I said this to the guy. He said, I don't have the strength to do that. He's telling me the truth, right? I mean, the guy's under 30 years old, he's got hormones going like, hello. And I said, God will prove to you, if you do this, that he can keep you celibate. Think about what that means if you do get married. What has God proven to you? That he's more powerful than your sexual desire.

That's a heck of a thing to know as a young man. And you will trust him with a whole lot of other things that are coming down the road that you think, well, God can't do that, because I can't do it. I fall every time. So in every stage of life for a believer, no matter what it is, the Lord is about this process of persuading us that he has already overcome sin. And if we would just trust him, He'll make it practical in your life. I mean, a young man to say to a woman he loves, we're not going to live together anymore, is a really hard thing, maybe. But if he trusts the Lord, it's not a hard thing. Because it's up to God to keep him that way, not him and his own personal strength. You see the difference? And he's not the first guy I've said this to in today's culture, man. We all live like that. No we don't.

For when he's tried, so is this young man being tried? Absolutely he is. For what purpose is he being tried? Having become approved he shall receive the crown of life. God is going to approve this man or any of us in this process so that we not only positionally but conditionally qualify under this crown of life. Now everybody has a crown of life positionally. Do you understand that? But James is talking conditionally here. Do many of you read The Hungry Heart? Did you read the one this morning?

It has this very same thing. Let's see if I can do this quickly. I can't do it quickly. So what he talks about is, maybe put it this way, for young believers, young believers will pray and say, Lord, I need you to fix this. And he does. He responds just like that. Because he wants to encourage us to grow up. But then there comes a day when we say, Lord, I need you to fix this, and he doesn't. And you begin to think, what did I do wrong? He didn't do anything wrong. What's he doing? He's beginning to change you and me in the middle of the circumstances so that we are not circumstantially oriented.

That no matter what God does in terms of what looks like trials and suffering, we won't succumb. That we will hold fast by faith in the middle of whatever's going on around us. He doesn't have to fix the circumstances. Because I can sit in the middle of them and let them do what they want to do. They're not going to affect me.

See that? That's growing spiritually. Not to say we're not circumstantially oriented, because we really are. So is that reckoning? Yeah, I think so. And so you are put through this test in order to be approved. And when you are approved, it dawns on you, wait a minute, Not only was God telling me the truth, but he has the power to keep me resting. I reckon he's right.

See that? So you're not by yourself. You never have to prove to God that you're this really terrific Christian. He already knows. He's proving to you what he says about you in Christ is true. That's what he does. And the way this is written in my Bible is, for once he has been approved to receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised.

And I guess I'm looking at, when we go through trials, it isn't always so victorious. You know what I'm saying? But I think in that... See, here's where, if you look at this chart, this is all taking place right here. And when you get to this point, If you don't move, if you don't budge, that's the crown of life. You endured through the temptation by reckoning.

Now, that's not going to happen the first time, I don't think. But the crown of life, as God can say, when we go to the beam of judgment, He's going to say, look, you see this circumstance? You got hooked 4,721 times. On the 4,722nd time, you didn't. You rested in me. You have qualified for the crown of life. He did it. You get the crown.

You know, Abraham is kind of a picture that people always look at Abraham's life and they say, Oh, Abraham, the man of faith. Oh, he was a slug. When I read Abraham, I see God training Yeah, he is. He took that knife and went like this. Oh, absolutely. I'm going to sell my wife to Farrell. What I'm saying is he came from an idolatrous. Oh, he's everything. He came from an idolatrous culture.

God took him out and didn't say, oh nice, now I want you to look my face. Forty years. He took him and he trained him. Forty years. Then he came to the point. Well that's our life. So when did Abraham earn the crown of life, so to speak? At the end, not at the beginning. Right.

Doesn't it say in Hebrews that They're going through that list of people that were faithful, isn't it? Yeah, he's in the Hall of Fame of Faith. Yeah, read Hebrews 11 and all those people. You see, every one of them has a history. And none of them just, God came to them and said, here's what I want you to do, and they said, no problem, and they did it. No, they all had a history. Every single one of them.

He is a great example of the Christian life. We're committed to God. We still have a lot of things to learn. We learned him through our experience of failing. He went and then he came back to the altar. He went and then he came back to the altar. And there's the testing for approval. By the time you get into that, you know what he's doing. And so if you're aware of, and the Spirit makes you aware of, This is a test that's going on right now in my life, and I know God brought it. That's the first important thing to know. I know the Spirit of God is working in me to do what?

So that I'll fail? And he can say, no, he's going to prove to us through this process that we are approved. So the testing was so that when we got to the end, you got the pure gold and all the dross was burnt off. So in this, in our position, we already have received a problem. Yes, right. So in this, it would be...

I guess what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to separate this, break it apart and say, how do I read this to somebody and say that this isn't works? Do you know what I'm saying? Because if you do this, you won't get that. Yeah, and you're not going to wake up tomorrow and say, guys, I've still got a lot of work to do to get this crowd to life, I better get busy.

Yeah, and that's, you know, because I had some conversations with my nephew, I was in Texas, and he's a believer, you know, I'm pretty actively involved in ministry and stuff. And I was talking to him about grace, and he said, well, there is the works. He's Baptist. But there's some real truth that he's really grasped.

But where I sometimes have a hard time is with scriptures like this, how do you explain this to somebody and say, that it's not works. And I can see that it's not because we're saved by grace and not by works. And we're to live by grace. And anything that happens with me, and anything good that comes from me, isn't for me, but it's to glorify God. And I kind of get that, but I have a hard time explaining something like this. With James, you have to be careful in this sense. James is the one that says, Faith without will is dead or separated from God. Well, what is James talking about?

Is he talking about my position before God or my position before men? Men. So, my position before God doesn't require me to do anything but believe Him. But when I'm living my life, I live my life in the tribe. before all the men in the tribe and the women in the tribe. And they're the ones that are looking at me. And how do they know? Can they see my faith? Can they see just the fact that I have faith? No, they can't see that. How do they know?

By your behavior. There you go. Well, sometimes, because if we're caught in this cycle, it doesn't look so good. No, it doesn't. We all admire a person who seems to be a high-profile, high-energy, type-A worker for the Lord. The problem is that you have to look at the source. Is the source of that work the energy of the man or the woman, or is it the Spirit of God? And if it's the Spirit of God, trust me, as we grow and are conformed, you don't have to worry about the works.

They'll be there as He approves you for them and gets you ready for them. Because what He's doing in our life today is not only for the person who's coming in our sphere of influence next month, but things we're going to be doing in the millennial kingdom in eternity. We're being suited out for that now. And it seems like to go by our behavior isn't necessarily the way.

I think sometimes the Holy Spirit works through something you say to somebody or on them. And so it's again I think to even like look at other people's behavior to wonder whether they have faith or not. It's kind of like I don't know. I think the Holy Spirit again is going to use it and don't be concerned about what other people are doing.

That's exactly right because a lot of times you don't realize that this testing that's going on in you, somebody else is watching. People are paying attention. They know you're in a difficult circumstance. They know you're under a lot of pressure and how you go through that pressure will speak volumes to them and you never have said a single word. You know that old saying that, you know, how I'm living speaks a lot louder than what I'm saying.

Somebody explained to me, I read it somewhere, that James is the faith that works. Works meaning the kind of works he's talking about. The faith that works. But I finally learned after I've been reading the Bible for so many years, and I'm like, how is this great? Look at all these works that are talking about him. When I finally saw Paul's letters, that always in the first part of his letters, I don't know if that's Romans, I have to look at Romans, but Colossians, Ephesians, that he first lays out in Ephesians the riches that we have in Christ. The position in all those letters, a little different, and then after that, he talks about what we should be doing. How that, well that would be the thing that works. How that translates into a life to be lived. So it goes through Galatians and what does he say after he gives you the position?

Stand fast in the liberty with which Christ has set you free. He didn't say go out and run a race. He said stand there. Don't move. Stay where I put you. It's always a good idea to spend a lot of time in the first part. Absolutely. And nail it down. Why? Because then you end up doing worse. Right here. That's why.

What do you find out in those first parts? You find out the things of God. And you find out not only who He is, but what He's done, not only for you, but to you. And you begin to realize through the work of the Spirit, oh, I see how this works. So you don't get caught up in the 2-3-4 of the denominational performance.

You want to see where it's just the most ridiculous thing you ever saw in your life? You guys watched the Pope this week and all the falterall that went on with that? There was not a thing, not one thing spiritual about what that man did. Not one. Well, I like him. Well, I like him too. It's not a matter of whether you like him or not. The problem is he's not spiritual. His whole focus is on the earth. Nothing about the Lord in heaven. Nothing.

I think Teresa was the same, right? That's right. Well, Mother Teresa, she wrote some cool stuff. Who did? I think Mother Teresa. Yeah, she did. She did some cool stuff. This is what I'm called to do. Yeah, and she did. And I remember one thing I read about her was she was going to give a talk and somebody said, well, what are you going to say? And she said, I don't know. I'll pray and the Spirit of God will say what he's going to say. But the problem with Mother Teresa, towards the end of her life, she began to doubt her faith.

What is that? She's kind of doing the sort of works that none of us would even... Oh, I can't do that. And she's in them. And yet at the end of her life, she's thinking, gee, I hope this is real. You know, if you're hoping it's real, Works aren't going to change anything. The Pope was so political. He is now. I think it's great to be family oriented. He's always been political. But it's really sad.

So how does God share his glory in all of this stuff? Especially like in James. How does God share his glory? Because you notice that he He declares his glory, he reveals his glory, and he's going to share it with us. How does he do it? It's always got to be the same. It's got to be through Christ, because Christ died for us for God's glory, and when we're being in Christ with faith, that's only for the glory of God, period.

So how does he show it through James 1.12? I don't know. Now listen to this.

He shall or she shall receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to them that love him. God uses all of these things, all of them, all of the testing, all of the temptation, all the trying, all the endurance for what? to demonstrate His glory and you and I get to share in it. Because when the Spirit of God enables you to function spiritually in a trial or a temptation situation, who gets the glory? God does because He did the work and you get to share in it. That's kind of cool, isn't it? You get to share in it because the work is being done through you. You're the one that's being tried to approval. You're the one. So you're sharing in the manifestation of his glory.

It's kind of cool, isn't it? How he does those sort of things. But if something happens in your life and you feel like, you know, well, God, you were so good to me. I mean, some tiny little thing that happened. Yeah. And you're feeling good. Is that wrong? Are you trying to take glory for something that God did? Yeah. And if you do, you spoil it. Let's do this. In all this discussion on faith, where did we talk about feelings? Yeah, it's not important. No, it's not. But that doesn't mean because we're human beings we have feelings. So when you have a feeling about something, What should you do about it? Wait for it to pass. Well, let's say you have what I would call a spurious experience. Something, oh, that must have been in the Lord, just as the lights went on.

You need to go to the Word and check out and see if your feeling is right or not. Right. Because the only reliable source is the Word. That doesn't mean... See, the feelings follow the faith. They don't precede them. And feelings don't verify whether the Word of God is true or not. The Word of God is true because it's of God. It's His Word. And the Spirit of God persuading you about it...

Yeah, maybe there's a feeling involved, but sometimes maybe not. All of a sudden I know it's... I'm just persuaded. Doesn't matter how I feel about it. I'm just persuaded. Is persuasion a feeling? It can be, but it doesn't have to be. In our society, the Spirit of God moving growing Christians away from verifying everything that happens in their life based on feeling is a really tough job. Because everything that happens, here comes a guy with a microphone and sticks it in your face and says, how do you feel about that?

And if you say back to him, I don't feel about it, I'm an objective thinker, you're done. They go to the next guy. No, we have them, but they follow the faith. They don't precede it. Well, I was thinking in Romans you talked about that they didn't recognize God as God and they were not thankful. The opposite of that. As you start to realize who God is, you are thankful.

I don't know if that's necessarily a feeling per se, but a lot of times it is, right? Sure. As the Spirit persuades you about the things of God, as you learn them and know them, you're going to have feelings about them. But you're going to recognize, wait a minute, I learned all of this because the Spirit showed it to me and persuaded me about it, and it's okay to have feelings about it, but my feelings did not make it true for me. And not having feelings doesn't make it false. That's right. Or if I have a feeling against it, you know, well, that might be true for you, but I feel like it isn't true for me.

Oh, that's right, you're God and the word isn't, you know. Alright, we've got a couple of minutes. Let's jump into the setup for next week. Lesson 17, everybody got 17? Okay, the first question is really easy. Does God ever tempt us to sin? No. Anybody not sure about that? Could I say, no, no, never, never, never, ever, no, no, never, okay. So question two, does God test us?

Yes. Does he? No. Yes he does. He does. Absolutely he does. A document, right? Documents. And so we'll start with this question next week and the second part is, why does he do it? Because he just loves watching you grovel. Falling on your face, missing the mark. Alright, let's close. Father, how we thank you for your word. We thank you for your son, and we thank you for the completeness of what you've done, and that you have placed us in your son, never ever to be moved out of him. And we pray in his precious name. Amen.