Which Side of the Cross - Lesson 22

So we're on lesson 22, but I didn't put the number on the bottom of the page. So I think we got to question 4, is that right? Question 4, and we're talking about faith. The idea is to see how faith plays overall. We were looking at Colossians 2, 6, and 7, and we did a pretty good job of exhausting what all of that meant. What does in Colossians 2, 6, and 7, as you have begun in the Lord Jesus, so walk in him? rooted down and established, rejoicing with thanksgiving.

So the question is, what does rooted in him mean? What does built up in him mean? And whose responsibility is it to build us up? What do you think? What's the word rooted mean? Paul uses a really interesting metaphor of plants. Rooting. Those of you who are urban farmers, what's rooting mean? It's where your anchor is and where you're getting your source of power from. Yeah. Get the roots down deep, down deep into Christ. It means firmness. We still have this garden, I guess you'd call it. Still got some carrots in it, right? Pulling those suckers out is hard this time of year because they're down there.

It means to be established in Christ and so it speaks of our position. which we found out about the Lord Jesus a few weeks ago that he is unchangeable he's the same always and so our rooting in him is for us to check into his unchangeableness that he is the same and from that we find out that we can never be uprooted from him.

Never. Never ever. On Wednesday night we were studying, we were getting towards the end of Hebrews and we hit that verse that says I will never ever leave you or forsake you. Well that I'll never ever is what Roger pointed out is a triple negative. It's a really cool thing. What he's really saying is, I'm never in no way can I ever leave you or forsake you. That word triple is really neat. So, can't be uprooted from Christ, ever. And it's in the perfect tense. What's the perfect tense mean?

Happened in the past with abiding results in the future. Built up means to be edified spiritually, were built up in Christ. And those two things, these three things are designed for what? What are they designed to accomplish in a believer's life? Rooted, grounded, and established.

Why do you think he's doing this? Would you say to increasingly conform us to his image? That's right. But even something more simple than that, to teach us how to walk. Just to teach us how to walk as rooted, grounded, and established in Christ. And conforming us to His image. But there's a walk there involved. There's a way in which we live, and we live being rooted and grounded and established. And we talked about last week The rooted grounding and established is all in the passive voice. What does that mean? It means all the action is being done to us.

You don't root yourself. You're not even a participant in the rooting. You're a receiver of it. You're a receiver of the grounding. You're a receiver of the establishing. It's really cool to know that, you know, because a lot of times Believers think, well, God has forgotten about me.

No, he hasn't. Not for a second. This rooting, grounding, and establishing. But if you have the idea that the Lord Jesus is a big screwdriver in the sky to fix all your problems, then when you start this rooting, grounding, and establishing process gets going, you can't find the screwdriver anywhere you think God has left you. He hasn't. He's establishing you. And he does it for the purpose to edify us, to edify us, to approve us, to build us up in the Lord Jesus. Now, I have these discussions mostly with Randy. He's all into worshiping, right?

What's the word worship mean? Does it mean to strike up the band? What does the word worship mean? It's got to be bass guitar, right? Yeah. What does the word worship mean? What do you think? To love and glorify God. Okay. How do you do that? Just want to be with Him. Want to know Him. And how did that come about? With God's Word. How about rooted grounding and establishing? The Lord Jesus told the woman at the well, what did He say to her? That the Father seeks those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth. That means He's looking for them. He's looking for people to worship Him in spirit and in truth.

So fast forward now to Colossians 2 and we find out that this rooting, grounding and establishing produces something in the believer. What does it produce according to the verse? A rejoicing and thanksgiving. Would you say that that's worship? I think it is. So I don't get to decide on my own what worshiping God is. He's got to teach me. He's got to show me what it is. That the Lord Jesus is so awesome I can't help but worship Him because of the rooting and the grounding and the establishing. I respond Because of what he's done, and that's what worship is.

It isn't what contemporary Christianity tries to make out of it, which is music. The louder the music, the better. It's like God is deaf. The louder it is, the more worshipful it is. And worshiping God in spirit and in truth is not a warm fuzzy jar. It's way, way more than feelings. Rejoicing, joyfully responding to the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer's heart.

Establishing him in Christ. If you could sit in front of the glory of the Lord Jesus right now, would it have an effect on you? What do you think? Yeah. But that's the whole purpose of the Spirit of God through the Word is to establish us, to behold and to expand us to behold the glory of the Lord Jesus. As that happens, you can't help but worship Him. See that?

So, established in faith. I'm going to jump down to seven because I think we've exhausted Colossians 2, 6 and 7. Maybe one note about how does a believer abound with Thanksgiving? What do we do? We start out by walking by faith, active voice. Does God require more of us than that? What do you think? I have one person who shook his head no, he doesn't require us. Do you think he requires more than that? Well, this one talks about being thankful, right? Acknowledging God and being thankful. And who is he talking about there?

Believers or non-believers? Non-believers. Non-believers, okay. So there is a requirement. for non-believers that they be thankful and they worship Him as God. Believers already do that because of Christ. So what does He require of us? Just to believe Him? To walk by faith? Not a trick question. Well, let me put it another way. What is it to walk by faith? What is that like? It has a lot to do with trusting. That's right.

It's to walk in rest and trust in what he's revealed to us. It's really interesting to think that the God of the universe is very busy revealing himself to us through the Lord Jesus. So we would know God because we know Christ Jesus. And the Spirit of God, that's His job.

Now, sometimes that sounds like it's really passive in the sense that I don't do anything. His grace motivates me to find out more about Him. To read, to understand. And that is the part of the process that He is rooting and grounding and establishing me. And then this response, which is active voice, we begin to participate in this whole process. And our participation is rejoicing with thanksgiving.

And you can't do that without faith, without believing. You can sit around and study and go to seminary and come home with a degree and have all this information about Christ did not have ever been established or rooted or grounded in him. It all is an academic exercise. What is rooting and grounding is an establishing between two persons.

Those of us who are married can always talk about the characteristics of our spouse. But I've said this a thousand times, if you'd never met Donna, and I'm up here every week telling you about the attributes of Donna, you know, you'd all eventually walk out here and say, boy, we really know that Donna, don't we? No, you don't. You never met her. When you meet her, it's a whole different thing. My explaining who she is may have been accurate to the T. but there's no substitute for standing right in front of her and talking to her and interacting with her.

That's what God wants with us in the Lord Jesus. That we know Him personally. That's what causes... He does the rooting, grounding and establishing in Christ. Our response is, wow, rejoicing with Thanksgiving. And that's what the walk is really all about. We had to go to two parties last night. I'm done. But I'm talking to this guy at one of the parties who's a guy I've known a long time, a believer.

And he starts mousing about the fact that he doesn't like the world and it's corrupt and he wants to get out of here. And he wishes the Lord would take him home. And I said, well have you ever thought about maybe the Lord has something for you to do? And he said, well, no, my thought process is pretty much, I want to get out of here. And I said, well, if you recognize that every believer would rather not be here, they'd rather be home with the Lord, but why are you here?

Why are we here? We're here to serve Him. And if you understand that, then you recognize that I'm here for however much time, and however many things he has determined that we should serve him with, and then when that's over, you know, he doesn't, Terry, we're gone, bang. And so yeah, the circumstances are never going to change, but we're not being established in the world, he's not trying to improve the world, he's trying to establish us in Christ. I've often wondered that a lot of believers, when they left and went home to be with the Lord, that they wouldn't recognize him.

Walk down the road and say, excuse me, and walk right around them. So Mike, could you say that that rooted and grounded establishment are positional troops? I mean, I know it's being done to us conditionally here, but it's from a positional person. It is from a positional person, there's no question it is.

And that's why faith is such an important factor. You start out with a position, a wonderful position that we have in Christ and who he is. That's not enough from God's perspective. He wants that position worked into us from a conditional standpoint. Because you can't just read the position and then go into euphoria of rejoicing with Thanksgiving because it's just knowledge and knowledge isn't enough. There has to be an establishment and a grounding in him for there to be that kind of response. I was thinking that religion tends to root you and ground you in the religion, where this kind of rooting is inherently. In a person.

That's right. One of Miles Stanford's great quotes was that the word of God goes from objective fact to love and affection with a person. That's what it's designed to do. And as the Spirit roots us and grounds us and establishes in Christ, over here there's a love and affection for a person who's Christ in the heavenlies. That's the cool part. When you think about it, God has designed it so that we, as his creatures, and one friend of mine described us as viruses on the planet, That we should have fellowship and communion and knowing Him is just mind-boggling.

Isn't that grace? It's total grace. Yeah, and that grace is so important to understand. It's total grace. If you and I were God, we would have a barrier set up between us and those peons over there, right? But not our God. He says, come on, I want you to know me. That's really cool. So what is God's purpose, question 7, in our walk? What is our involvement in carrying out the purpose?

And I put 2 Corinthians 3.18.

So what's the purpose in our very existence here on the planet, according to 2 Corinthians 3.18? What do you think? Joanne said that God's purpose is to conform us to the image of Christ. Sometimes people think, well that's what the trials are for, and I disagree. The trials are not for that. They get you ready for that. But the conformity, the actual conformity process, subjectively, how does that happen?

Somebody read 2 Corinthians 3.18.

And all of us, as with unveiled face, because we continue to behold the Lord God, as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are constantly being transfigured into His own image in ever increasing splendor, and from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. What translation is that? That's a really good one. So, if you recognize that God's purpose is to conform us to the image of Christ, because God finds all of his pleasure in Christ, so he's going to conform us to the image, how does he do it?

And what's your role? It's right there in the verse. You behold Him. How do you behold Him? In the Word. Beholding is in the Word with unveiled face. Why unveiled face? No barrier. No barrier. And what do you behold? The glory of the Lord. So here you have, you take Colossians 2, 6 and 7 and marry it up to 2 Corinthians 3.18. Can you see the connection in those two? You see the process? That there is this, when I'm reading the word of God, what I'm really doing is beholding Him.

His glory. And that's because he has gone through this process of rooting ground and establishing me. And so as that progresses, as I read the word, I begin to see this person, the Lord Jesus, and his glory. And it has a residual effect on me. And the reason it's so important is that it gets rid of any sort of legalism to be obedient. The conformity process is by beholding the glory of the Lord Jesus. That's how it happens. So as I behold the Lord Jesus, a couple of things are happening.

One, I'm getting to know him better all the time, and my focus becomes more and more on him, and less and less on me. But what's happening to me, without my even being aware of it, is that there's this conformity process going on into the very image of Christ.

Right? Conditionally. So I'm walking and rejoicing with Thanksgiving. I'm blown away by what God is doing, just out of two verses, three verses. You see that? That's the process. Now, where does trial and suffering come in, into this equation? Where does it come in? Because it does come in. What does it do?

One thing, it can draw us closer to Him. Because we have nowhere else to go. Absolutely. Yeah. It teaches us to... Roy? It also gives us an empathy for those who, in a light way, are suffering. That's right. teaches us, we learn how to walk beside someone, we recognize it.

Is there any trial in a Christian's life that God just sort of forgot that that was going to show up? No. We're ordained to Him. And we're ordained to Him because ultimately this is where He's headed. So here comes a trial in my life, and I initially don't understand it.

It can be anything. You mean the train wreck? Yeah, I had a train wreck, or as my daughter puts it, a meltdown. What's the meltdown there for? It's to teach me not to trust me and focus on me. It's to teach me to focus on Him. That I will abandon my capacity in Adam and seek to rest in Christ. That's what the trial is for. Every single trial is designed to approve us. Isn't that putting you on the cross? No, it's getting us off the cross. Well, it's seeing that you were on the cross. Yeah, I have been separated. I did die.

I don't have to I was talking to somebody this week, and we're going through Romans 6, and we're in Romans 6.3, it says, don't you realize that when you were baptized into Christ, you were baptized into His death? So I said, did you really die? And they wouldn't answer. It seems like I did. The Word says I did. But I don't feel like I'm dead.

What's true? How you feel about it? Or what the word says? What the word says. So at some point, here comes the Holy Spirit. He's going to get working on this person. Rooting, grounding and establishing. And one day he will say, or she will say, I really did die. Hallelujah. Rejoicing. I died. I was buried. I was resurrected in Christ. I'm now in Him.

And I don't have to respond to Adam anymore. I don't have to do that. He's still there wagging his flag and screaming at me. I don't have to deal with him. Because the Word tells me something else. I've been grounded and established to the point where I don't have to go there. I can behold the Lord Jesus.

Isn't that cool? Yeah. When you were talking about Donna, where you could be careful now about her attributes over and over and over all about her. But until we really met her. then we really would know. And so, like for me, I know the Word of God is real. So I believe everything it says. When I read how amazing our God is, I take it in and I'm just overwhelmed by how wonderful our God is.

But I haven't really made it my goal to start talking about God. I would say this, that you and all of us, should, when you sit down to read your Bible, you should expectantly get ready to behold Him. That's what you're there to do. You're not there to cram your head full of facts. The whole purpose of being there is to behold Him and to trust the Spirit of God to reveal Him to you through those words. I'm convinced of that. Does every human being walk by faith? Question 8. Do we all operate by faith? So, even those stinky non-believers? Question 9.

What does scripture call a non-biblical faith? What does scripture call non-biblical faith? Materialism. Non-biblical faith, what I wrote down, is a subjective trust in the ways and wisdom of man, which is assumed to be reality and is uncertainty resulting in man's unrest. The object of this faith is self. What is non-biblical faith? Unbiblical faith has as its object self. Do you get that? Unbiblical faith has as its object self.

Self is the object of faith that has nothing to do with the word. So if a believer is walking by unbiblical faith, What are you walking by? Self. Self-sufficiency, self-worth, self-wisdom, and the real king of them all, self-esteem. All of the selves. Self, self, self.

So, what does scripture call non-Biblical faith? What does scripture call it? Unbelief. That's what scripture calls it. Walking by human faith is actually unbelief. It is actually unbelief. It's just amazing. Non-biblical faith is actually unreality. It's not what reality is. You think about that? Oh, I'm a man of faith. What do I need to know beyond that? What's the object of your faith? Is it self? Or is it the word of God?

Again, at a party last night, talking to these people about, they have this big enterprise that they've entered into, and they have faith that God's going to bless the enterprise. You need to come to Sunday school tomorrow. Because the object really does matter.

So does that fit, you think, understanding that non-Biblical faith is really unreality? It defines the things of man which are uncertainty, total uncertainty? or it's focused on self, or it's in unreality. When God takes us and roots us and establishes us and builds us up, our confidence is in Him doing that.

And I think in some circles that would mean that I'm worthless, I'm no good. If carried to the extreme, God can't use me. I guess what I'm saying is that the faith in unreality is we have a picture of what is real, but it's incomplete. We don't include God in what is real. So when we look at the world, we establish our, this is reality and that's all there is, versus there's more than what we can see.

I'm wrestling with the fact that we could negate the work of God by looking at self as being totally corrupt and unusable. Which it is. Here's the solution I think to what you're talking about. The fact that God, what we call around here positional truth, part of this rooting, grounding and establishing is finding out who we are in Christ. And that's where our value is.

Isn't that what old man, new man, self is? But if you don't include that, then you might look at yourself and you don't see the new nature. I don't think the Lord does it that way. I think if you've gone that way You haven't learned anything about your position. Because the Apostle Paul says, in me, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. So Christendom, by and large, has an incomplete faith. They have a faith in unreality.

They have a faith... Yeah, they do. But the biblical faith we're talking about includes that we have a sin nature, but we have an inner nature as well. And it's interesting, right? If I'm sitting here and I'm doing, I've got a sin nature and I've got a new nature in Christ, I haven't been moved over to Christ yet.

Where He is, you know, it isn't about me anymore. It's about Him. And the more that I am beholding Him, the less there is of the encroachment of self. Because self does one thing. It wants to be recognized. It wants you to pay attention to it. And it will grab you in the middle of your spiritual growth and convince you that you ought to be thinking about your own spiritual growth. No. The Lord Jesus wants you focused on Him, not your growth. You see that?

And there's no condemnation by God? None. And so when you begin to realize from a positional standpoint and from a practical standpoint the work of the Spirit, what He's doing, establishing us in Christ, the great freedom there is I get to walk away from me. I don't have to take me into the equation anymore.

I've got Him. And He's way more than I could ever hope for. That's the process. I can remember Myles saying to us years ago that if your focus is on your spiritual growth, you haven't figured it out yet. It's really profound, but that's really right. He becomes important to us. He becomes the object of our affections. He becomes the pearl of inestimable value. And I find out from a physician, I'm in him. And I have, because of his work, the capacity to know him on his level. That's incredible, in my mind. And that's the only pathway to freedom, I think. There is no other way. No other way. Good, Roy, that was really good.

How important would you say knowing the things of God and grace is to the believer? Remember we've talked a lot about this right here. How important is that? Isn't it the most important thing? Phil sets everything. I think it's everything. The whole idea is him and all of his things. Didn't Paul say that I may know him? That's right. Set your affections on things above. It's all about him.

And you know, like it or not, we're not a very trusting group of folks. We really aren't. We're polite and we smile and we hug each other, but I'm watching the line here. And we go with the Lord that way, initially, because we don't know Him well enough to realize, my goodness, look what He's doing.

He's coming at me. And you know, He knows that. And he takes it upon himself to teach us to trust him. He does that. That's really cool. But if I go to him with a, well, if you don't do this, I'm not sure I'll trust you. What have you done? You put self in the middle of it.

So when we're wrapped up with self or self-interest and all of this self stuff, self-pity and the trials and circumstances in life and all those things in the context of Hebrews chapter 12 that say that weigh us down, we're not resting and trusting the Lord Jesus. We're like a country and western song, you don't know the troubles I've seen. So, is it possible in 11, do we walk either by being controlled by the sin nature or by the Spirit? Is that the way it goes with us? We're either going to walk by being controlled by the sin nature or being controlled by the Holy Spirit.

Is that a true statement? Yeah, it is a true statement. So, you know, I know you guys are all constitutionalists But the Constitution has nothing to do with the Word of God in terms of who controls you. And that's another revelation of this rooting, grounding, and establishing in Christ.

You begin to realize that one of these two entities will control me. And you initially look at it like, well, that's not a lot of freedom. You find out as you get established that it is the ultimate freedom. freedom from self, freedom from sin. I don't have to be under that tutelage. I can be under Christ and it's wonderful. That's where absolute freedom is.

Galatians 5.16.17.18, but I say, walk in the Spirit and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh.

For the flesh sets its desires against the Spirit. and the Spirit against the flesh. For these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. And if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. But I say, walk in the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh." Do you realize that if I'm walking in the Spirit, I'm beholding the Lord Jesus, And I'm walking like that, that it is absolutely impossible to fulfill the desires of the flesh.

And notice that the flesh never stops desiring. It never stops doing that. We've been hoping that at some point that my sin nature was going to turn the volume off. It never does that. It's always coming at me. To do what? to get me to respond somehow, good, bad, or somewhere in the middle. Just as I'll respond.

And so Paul says in Romans chapter 7, I would not have known desiring unless the law said you can't desire. Well, my sin nature right here desires. That's the sole part of my sin nature is that it desires. And here comes the law and says, hey, self, you know that thing you do, that desire thing? You can't do that anymore. It's against the law. What does my self say? I'll show you. Bingo. Here comes more desiring.

That's why you can only function in Christ under grace. You can't do it under law, because if you try it under law, what are you doing? What's the word I'm looking for? You're inflaming the sin nature. You're making it desire even more. The best thing to do is just to ignore it and focus on the Lord Jesus. I tried to stay out of Romans 7 there. Good luck with that. So how does one get deliverance then?

Question 12. The Father has given us his revealed word, hasn't he? I'm going to quote from a guy named Bellet. This is really a cool quote. He says, Why has our Father given us his revealed word? Why did he give it to us? That we may think the same thoughts, have the same feelings in our measure as himself. There is not a thought or a feeling that arises from the old man that is not false. But we have a new life capable of receiving and delighting in the very thoughts of our Father. Pretty cool. And one more from Darby.

How am I to know what is the Father's mind towards me? Answer, it is by judging of it Is it by judging from what I find in myself? Surely not. Supposing that I even found good in myself, if I expected the Father to look at me on that account, would it be grace? Wouldn't it?

There may be a measure of truth in this kind of reasoning, for if there be life in my soul, fruit will be apparent. But this is not to give me peace any more than evil. The evil that is in me is to hinder my having peace." Isn't that interesting? Hopefully that's clear. So next week, I don't know if it will be Courtney or JD. If you do have questions, send them to me and I'll get them to them. Otherwise, I think what I'm going to set up is The three aspects of what the class was about, which is identification, grace and faith and how they go together with this.

How do I get over there and live over there permanently? So you can answer the question honestly, what side of the cross do I live on? Which side do I live on? And have I learned enough? that I belong over there and I can live over there. Answer, yeah, hopefully you have. Let's close. Father, how we thank you for your grace. How we thank you for all that you do to grow us up in the Lord Jesus and to cause us to abide and rest in him permanently. We thank you. We pray in his precious name.