Nothing to say, yet
Transcription
Today we're in the 12th chapter of the Book of Romans. We are, actually, the Book of Romans has 16 chapters. So we're five chapters away from the end of the Book of Romans. And the way Dr. Draper and I have it figured out, I'm going to teach 12 and 13. He's going to teach 14 and 15. And then that'll be on the 3rd and the 10th. And then on the 17th, we're going to do the roundtable discussion of what's happening in the world today. And finishing up the 16th chapter on that day as well. So the 17th of December, we'll finish up the Book of Romans. And we'll also have the discussion on, is this, what's happening in Israel, any prelude to the rapture? It appears that there are a lot of people who think so. Dr. Jeffress is preaching a new series on the coming of Christ. David Jeremiah has just written a new book entitled The Great Disappearance, talking about the rapture. David Jeremiah, new book out. Great book. I haven't been reading. He says in the beginning of that book that there are 31 chapters. And he says that each chapter can be read in 6 minutes. And I tried and you can't. There are 31 short chapters. And it's a wonderful book on the second coming. And he does a good job, as David Jeremiah would always. And Dr. Jeffress is going to have a new book on the return of Christ. So there are just a lot of preachers now that are preaching on what appears to be happening in Israel. And that is, it appears that the hordes of the East are beginning to gather. And for a long time we thought the hordes of the East were going to be the Chinese. But now it appears that the hordes of the East are going to be the Muslims that are all around Israel. They actually surround the entire nation of Israel. But let me tell you something. Worry not. That's God's people. The Israelites, God chose them. And when God chooses the people, He's not going to leave them. He chose you also, remember? And He's not leaving you either. And so since God chose them and He chose you, He's not leaving any of us. Now let me tell you something about the 12th chapter of the book of Romans. When I was teaching New Testament at Hardin Simmons University for the years that I taught there, every time we came to the 12th chapter of the book of Romans, I always gave myself two full periods to teach it. Now our periods were 50 minutes each. And they were Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And I would give myself two full periods. Otherwise I'd give myself 100 minutes to teach the 12th chapter of the book of Romans because I would spend 75 of those 100 on verses 1 and 2. And then I'd spend 25 on verses 3 through 21. And so that's how very important this chapter is in the book of Romans. And so that's where we are today. And we're going to take it apart and look at it and see exactly what it says. In fact, the first and second verses of the chapter 12 in Romans actually is a complete understanding of who you and I are in Christ. The two verses. That's why it takes so much time to deal with them. They explain explicitly beyond a shadow of a doubt who you and I are in Jesus Christ and what God has given us in Jesus Christ and what He has done for us in Jesus Christ. And it's all in verses 1 and 2. That's why it takes a great deal of time to deal with them because you almost have to deal with every word because every word is just outstandingly necessary to understand our relationship with Jesus Christ. And it is a wonderful relationship. I used to take 75 minutes just to teach verses 1 and 2 because I wanted my students at Hardin-Simmons to understand what God had done for them. Now, one thing you've got to remember. We are in chapter 12. There are 11 sections that we've already come through. And those 11 sections in the 10th century in the city of Bethlehem were put down by a young monk whose name was Jerome. And he had a copy of the Greek Septuagint. The Septuagint was a Greek copy of the Old and New Testament. And Jerome was an outstanding scholar of Greek and Latin and Hebrew and Aramaic. And so he was chosen by the Catholic Church to translate the Greek Septuagint, the Old and New Testament, from Greek into Latin so that the Latin version of the Septuagint would then become the Bible of the Catholic Church, which it did. And when he was translating it, he named it the Latin Vulgate. And for many, many years, the Latin Vulgate was the Bible of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. And so Jerome is the one who put the chapters in. And he did a good job in dividing the sections. But I can say we have come from the beginning of this book, eleven sections to here. And those eleven sections were totally full of theology. In fact, the Apostle Paul did a wonderful, thorough, knowledgeable debate on what we call Soteriology. That is, the plan of salvation. How does salvation happen? And I've told you all that Soteriology, salvation happens in four parts. Sin, justification, sanctification, and glorification. And those are the four parts of salvation. And so this is what Paul has worked on over eleven chapters to get us to the place where in chapter eleven and in chapter ten, he was talking about how God is in the process now of glorifying us. He's at the last part of this Soteriology and he's talked about how God is going to glorify us in chapter nine, we studied about the mercy of God and how the mercies of God are just filling us with himself. And now we get to chapter twelve, and from chapter twelve through chapter sixteen, the Apostle Paul becomes very, very practical. And here, he's getting ready to tell you how to put into practice, as a Christian, what he has told you for eleven chapters. If you can believe that. He's going to tell you how to practice it. And that's why this book, the first two verses, are a wrap-up of the theological consequences of Soteriology. It is a wrap-up of the program of salvation. And he wraps it up in two verses. And then, after he wraps it up in two verses, verse three through verse twenty-one, are then the practical application of your theological position. In other words, since you have now a theological position of salvation, you know that you were a sinner, you know that you were justified, you know that you are being sanctified, you know you are going to be glorified. Since you know that, then, as a Christian, how do you put that into practice? How do you practice it every day? And that's what verses three through twenty-one, chapter thirteen, chapter fourteen, chapter fifteen, chapter sixteen, are going to tell you. How do you practice what God has taught us theologically? Okay? Alright, so that's where we're going. Now, it's kind of interesting. This chapter has so many little innuendos and necessary understandings. I'm going to try to help you understand it as best I can. And I'm going to try to deliver this for all of us to walk away from here and say, I understand what this book is saying. So, I'm going to read verse one and two completely. And then I'm going to go back and I'm going to tear it apart, almost word for word, because it has to be torn apart that way, to look at it. Let's read it first. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may be able to prove that which is good and acceptable and the perfect will of God. Now, in those two verses, all of Paul's theology is right there. Everything that's happened to you and to me is right there. And I'm going to show it to you. So, let's go back and let's look at these two verses for about the next 25 minutes or so. If I can do it in 25 minutes, you'll have a blessing. Here we go. The word, therefore. Now, this word could have started this verse. Paul could have said, therefore, I beseech. But he didn't choose to do it that way. But he still used that word. And we all come to know when you come to the word, therefore, you stop and see what it is there for. And it's there for a reason. And it's in this verse for a reason to say to you, what's getting ready to happen now, right now, in this verse, has 11 chapters behind it. Everything in the 11 chapters is getting ready to find its total fulfillment right here. Therefore. What happened in the 11 chapters is getting ready to be demonstrated to you and to me in these two verses. And so, the therefore is there. He says, I therefore. He could have said, therefore. He said, I beseech. Now, that's an interesting word. Beseech. In fact, how many of you really know what the word beseech means? I'd like to hear some of you give me a definition. What does the word beseech mean? I'm sorry. You have to speak loudly. Plead with. I'm sorry. Plead with. Urge. Plead with. To plead with. Okay. To plead with. Urge. To urge. Okay. To plead with. Plead and urge, about the same thing. That's good. That's great. Anybody else? Implore. I'm sorry. Implore. Implore. Okay. So, the word plead, urge, implore, all kind of have the same intensity, don't they? So, I'm going to urge you, I'm going to implore you, I'm going to encourage you. Actually, that's not what that word means. I'm sorry. For many, many years, I thought it meant the same thing you did. Actually, this word beseech is the same word in the Greek that John used in the 14th chapter and 15th chapters of the book of John, where he introduced to us the Holy Spirit. And this word is a word that is relational to the activity of the Holy Spirit. Not urging, encouraging, helping, insisting. It is part of what the Holy Spirit does. In fact, the word in Greek for Holy Spirit is paraklete. This word is parakala. It's built on the same base. And this word, beseech, is the word, let me give you an illustration which better demonstrates this word. You have a brother in Christ and that brother is having a seriously difficult time. And you come up to that brother and you put your arm around him and you kind of give him a hug. And by putting your arm around him, he understands that you are being compassionate and feeling in with him or her. And you're getting ready now to share with them. And so we would say, well, what are you doing? Well, basically what you're doing is this word. You are comforting them. You are giving them a feeling of being thought about. You are giving them a feeling of being helped. Jesus said, when the Holy Spirit is come, he will be your comforter. Isn't that interesting? And this word literally comes from the root word for Holy Spirit, for comforter. And so what Paul is getting ready to say here is, I'm going to comfort you with something that I just told you for eleven chapters. That's what he's saying. And what I'm going to tell you is going to be such a warm, fuzzy comfort to you that you are going to feel like that I have just, Paul is saying, I just wrapped my arms around you and pulled you to myself and said to you, Father, is God good? Now watch. He said, I'm going to comfort you. I'm going to comfort you because you are my brethren. What? Now, this is not family relational in the physical sense. This word is a word that identifies familiar, it identifies family, but it does not identify the physical family. We have a city up north that is built on two Greek words. And that city is Philadelphia. It is built on the two Greek words for love, family love, phileo, and on its brother, Adelphoi. And so we say Philadelphia and we put it in English and it comes out Philadelphia. And we say that that means that is the city of brotherly love. Isn't that interesting? That's the city of brotherly love. The city of brotherly love. The city of brotherly love. Now, this word brethren here is the word Adelphoi. And it is not familiar physical kin. It is spiritual blood kin. Let me tell you what he's saying here. And I'll put it in your paper. You can read myself. I'll put it in your paper. What he's saying here is you and I, we who belong to the Lord Jesus Christ in redemption, each of us are blood kin spiritually. We are not all of the same kind of blood. We are not physical family relation. We are spiritually related and we are brethren because we all have been washed in the blood. Therefore, having been washed in the blood, we all become brethren with one another and we are kin to one another spiritually. We are kin to one another as a blood brother washed in the blood of Jesus Christ. That's why we can call each other brother and sister in the Christ church. We can call each other brethren because all of us have been washed in the blood of Jesus Christ. And Paul is saying here, because of that, all of you who are hearing me talk to you, you are my blood-bought brothers. Now look at those words. I'm going to comfort you with a great comfort. And I'm going to do it because we're blood brothers. And I'm going to do it because the same blood of Jesus Christ runs in your veins that run in my veins. And it is a relationship of a spiritual family and each of us in that spiritual family needs to comfort one another. And so the apostle says, get ready, I'm going to comfort you. Now what could give these people more comfort than to understand what he says next in this verse. I'm going to, my brothers, comfort you by the mercies of God. Now, it's kind of interesting. He didn't put those mercies down here. I did. They're in your paper. He didn't put these mercies down. But he is referring to eleven sections that he's already taught and wrote. And he's saying, you go back to all those eleven sections and you look at each one of them and in each one of those eleven sections God showed his mercy to you in a particular way. Although the word mercy does not appear in the book of Romans until chapter 9 where he starts talking about and the mercy of God. That's the first time mercy appears in the book of Romans. And yet, all of what was happening before was the mercy of God. Well, what was happening before? Well, look in my paper with me, if you will. Look at the second paragraph where it says, called to brethren, mercies of God. Here they are. Number one, the revelation of sin. How could you know you were a sinner unless sin was revealed? The mercy of God reveals sin to you. Hey folks, that's comforting. If somebody who loved you didn't tell you how to get out of trouble he's not your brother. Jesus Christ is our brother and he's going to tell us how to get out of trouble. And so he starts off by saying the revelation of sin. God reveals sin to us through the Old Testament, through the law. The law did not save. The law simply drove us to Jesus Christ as a pedagogue, as a teacher. The law taught us sin. And because the law taught us sin then it drove us to Christ as the pedagogue did the Greek child getting him to school. And so the first thing it is God gave us the revelation of sin. But he also gave us the mercy of atonement. You remember we said that this thing is going to start with sin and then it's going to go to justification. Justification is atonement. How wonderfully comfortable can you be when you realize that you are in the atonement of Jesus Christ. That's comforting. Or, he said, how about justification? The atonement is his death on the cross. Justification is his process of getting you there. And so justification becomes the mercy of God. And then from justification he moves to sonship. And he makes you a child of God. Remember what he said? We are heirs of God and joint heirs with whom? And what do heirs receive? Everything the heir receives. And we have been adopted, he said back in chapter 9. We have been adopted into the family of God which makes us heirs and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. And I shared with you back then that you cannot get rid of an heir unless you get rid of all of them if they're adopted. And so he has given us sonship. To that sonship he wants us all to be sanctified. So another mercy of God is sanctification. You cannot sanctify yourself. You have to be sanctified. You cannot save yourself. You cannot become a son of God unless God makes you a son. You can't do any of the things without the mercy of God here. Hey, is that comforting? That's what he said. That's what he said. I'm getting ready to give you a series of comfort. It's getting ready to happen right here in front of you. And he said not only sanctification but he has made you in union with Christ vis-a-vis a blood brother, a joint heir. We are in union with Christ. Now, Brother Jimmy has said on many, many occasions and I repeat him, if we are in union with Christ we are also in union with who else? God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. You see, there's the union. And so he says not only has he sanctified you but he's also joined you in a union as a child you are a joint heir with Jesus Christ. And we are in union with him. Not only that, but he gives us the Spirit in order with which we can live. So he gives us the life of the Spirit. Where does the Spirit of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit dwell? In your heart. He has given us the Spirit. He's given it to us in our heart. He has invaded your life. He gave it to you because back there in the eternity of eternities in the ages of ages in the past he chose you. He called your name. He said somewhere in the future ages Jack Terry is going to have an opportunity to choose me. I've already chosen him. Now I'm going to give him an opportunity to choose me. And he is omniscient which means he knows everything. And so he knew what I would do. And he knew what you would do. And he also knew what all others would not do. And he chose you. And he told you there would be a time when you would come with the Holy Spirit. That life in the Spirit which was coming into us would invade us. It would invade us in such a way that it would bring us to him. And coming to him he would redeem us by his atoning death on the cross. And he would put in us himself God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. That's why somebody said I'm going to go hide from God. Would you like to tell me how you can hide from God when he's inside of you? I don't think you can hide when he's inside. And so you can't. And so what he does here he fills us with the Spirit. Then he gives us the hope of Israel. What is the hope of Israel? Would you like to go through the 21st chapter of the book of Revelation? And would you like to hear Jesus say and would you like to hear John say and I saw a new heaven and a new earth New Jerusalem. That's Israel folks. New Jerusalem. We're all going to live in New Jerusalem. We're all going to be Israelites in New Jerusalem. We're all going to be with Israel. We're all going to be with God. We're all going to be with our fathers. And those who by faith are there. And so he helped us to become New Israel. And the last thing he did in this wonderful comforting thought is he's going to glorify you. Now, may I share something with you that's kind of a mystery? And as Brother Jimmy and I love to say Dr. Criswell used to always love to say it is a musterion. It's a mystery. I want to share a mystery with you. Would you like to tell me how long it took when you did say Lord Jesus Christ I'm a sinner I'm confessing my sins I want you to come into my heart Would you like to tell me how long it took for you to be saved? Okay. You were saved in the blinking of an eye. If you were saved in a blinking of an eye don't you think he can change your body as Paul says in the 15th chapter of the book of 1 Corinthians in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet the dead in Christ shall rise and we shall remain and we shall be changed. How quick. It's kind of interesting. Because in the next verse he's going to talk about a process that happened to us that happens a lot here on earth in the physical sense and it happened to us in a spiritual sense. And so he says you're going to be a these are the mercies of God and surely these nine mercies should give us beseechness it should comfort us it should make us feel so closely related to our father and our brother the Holy Ghost of God. And then he takes another word and then he says but because of what I've done for you I want you to present your bodies. I want you because of what I've done for you I want you to give yourself back to me. I want you to present your bodies. Now this word "present" and we've talked about this many many times in here so you will understand this word "present" in the Greek language is an aorist word. It means it can only happen one time. And God is saying I want you along your way in your Christian walk I want you to present your bodies to me. And it's going to happen like that. And you're going to give him your body and when you give him your body he's going to give you instructions of what to do with it. And it's only going to happen one time. It can't happen many times. And this particular present is an aorist tense. Which means it's going to happen one time and the majority of us did that not on the day we were saved. The majority of us did that in the days that followed our salvation when we came to know Jesus Christ more and more and we wanted to give him more and more of us and as we gave him more and more of us he gave us more and more of him and we were presenting ourselves to him and he was filling up that presentation. And so he filled it up. And having filled up that presentation now he can say to you your living sacrifice. Now this is kind of interesting. And if I don't get through I have next week. I have next week too. Don't worry about it. I'm going to get through those chapters. A living sacrifice. The Jewish people did not understand living sacrifices. The only sacrifices the Jewish people understood were dead sacrifices. In fact if you go to the book of Leviticus in the first five chapters the book of Leviticus is going to present ten dead sacrifices. He's going to present the burnt offering which caused the animal to have to die. He's going to present the grain offering which causes the flower to be burned up. He's going to present the peace offering which is a thank offering. He's also going to present the sin offering which was necessary for something to die and finally he's going to present to us the guilt offering. And if you go through and read those five offerings you can tell about how the Jewish person is supposed to operate in giving those offerings and every one of those offerings is dead. The Jewish people to whom the Apostle Paul is writing this letter in Rome who had become Christian probably on the day of Pentecost and now having brought many many more Jewish people into faith he's writing to a Jewish church in the city of Rome. And so he's saying to them Jewish things Do you understand dead sacrifices? You did that a lot. But also do you understand living sacrifices? Well the interesting thing is in the writings of Judaism there is a living sacrifice. And this is what Paul is talking about. And many many of the Jewish people did not know of this little idiom that's in the Jewish writings about a living sacrifice. Let me give you an illustration about how that living sacrifice happened. If a Jewish person wanted to come to the temple and make a sacrificial offering he had two choices with bringing or with getting the animal and or whenever he needed grain to make the offering. He could come to the temple and he could buy the animal. In fact you recall that this is one of Jesus two times when he had to cleanse the temple because of what they were doing. They were selling the animals and cheating the people. And Jesus said how shall we call the house of prayer? You've made it a den of thieves. He did that twice. So they could come to the temple they could buy an animal or if they were too poor to buy an animal at the temple they could take one from their herd or their flock a bull or a calf or a sheep or a goat and they could take it from their flock and they could drive that animal to the city of Jerusalem. They could bring that animal to the priest and that animal would become a living sacrifice given by the Jewish man. Because he brought him to the temple alive. And so what the apostle Paul is talking about here is he said you are going to become living sacrifices and the living sacrifice has to be perfect. Pause. Go back to the book of Exodus. Go back to the book of Exodus and look at the mountain around Sinai. And look at the law that was given. And look what God told the people of Israel in Egypt before all that happened. He said now there is going to come a day when you are going to go out into your flock and you are going to pick out a lamb. That lamb has to be perfect to the human eye. A lamb can not have any broken bones. It can't have any sores. It can't be deaf. It can't have one eye out. It can't have any kinds of impurities in his body as far as you can see. As far as you can see possibly this lamb has to be perfect. And this is the perfect lamb that you are going to present. Because as you can see this lamb is going to be perfect. You are going to present him in order that your house with the blood painted on the lintel in the door post when the death angel comes over and you are in the house the death angel will pass over you and we have the thing called Passover. Now all that is fitting right here. All of what I just told you is right here in this word living sacrifice. Because if you are going to be a living sacrifice first of all you have to be holy. And then secondly you have to be acceptable. Now you see the little lamb that they brought on the day of Passover had to be perfect. As far as they could tell it had to be it had to be acceptable. And we as living sacrifices not only have to be like that lamb acceptable but we also because of our relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ and the infilling of the Holy Spirit we also have to be Hagios we have to be holy. Without being holy and acceptable you are not acceptable with God. And without being holy and acceptable you are not a redeemed person. Because only people who by faith, and you remember what the book of Hebrews says, without faith it is what? Impossible to be acceptable to God. That's what he's talking about here. He's talking here about your faith. He's talking here about my faith. He's talking here about what we did with Jesus Christ. And because we came to him and he did that to us and he made us in his eyes acceptable to his Father he made us holy. You are holy. Believe me you are holy. Not because you want to be but because God made you that way. He made you that way through Jesus Christ the Lord. And you are holy. And since you are now holy by faith you are also now acceptable. And so a living sacrifice is a person who is filled with the Holy Spirit and he is complete. He's perfect. See the word perfect means complete. We are complete in Jesus Christ. And because of that we will then give to him our reasonable service. We will give to him what's reasonable. In fact some scripture passage is called logical. Our logical service. Because of all of this Paul says now you're in position to be a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. But that's not all. Let's go to verse 2. You see why it took me 75 minutes to teach this? I'm just at verse 2 and I've already gone 40 minutes. I'm sorry. That's just the way it's got to go. Verse 2. And do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may be able to prove oh look what we're going to get to prove that which is good and acceptable and complete. If we are good and acceptable and complete, which verse 1 says that we are as living sacrifices then we should be able to determine what is good and acceptable and what is perfect. Right? Okay let me show you something here. And I'll have to quit with this because I'm going to run out of time. This verse is just full of wonderful, wonderful information about your redemption. Let me show you what I'm talking about. The word conformed means to be pressed into something. And the apostle Paul says, and the word world here is badly translated. When we think about the world we think about the sphere. We think about our earth. That's not what he's talking about here. Actually this word world here is a little word Ionian which means ages. Ages or an age. In fact, it's in John 3.16. I'll show it to you. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him shall never perish but shall have life into the ages of the ages of the ages. Ionian. Same word. And so he uses that word here. That word transformed. And so he's saying to us the world is not the physical world you think, it's the age. He's saying don't look like the sinful people who live around you. Don't be conformed to this age. The age that surrounds us. Don't look like them. Don't dress like them. Don't smell like them. Don't think like them. Don't act like them. Don't be like them. All the above. That's what it means to be conformed to this age. It means to be moved away from and totally extracted from the people of this age. Folks have you figured out we're different? Have you figured that out yet? We're very different people. I mean in my neighborhood my car is the only one that goes to church on Sunday morning except my church is across the neighborhood next door. We have 18 houses in our neighborhood. Two of us go to church. Two out of 18. That ain't bad. Not a very good percentage but it's not bad. I mean you know this age around us you don't want to look like this age. You don't want to act like this age. You don't want to be like this age. You want to be like the ages of the ages to come. You want to be like the ages of eternity. You want to live in eternity here while you're prodding this dirty earth. So he said don't let this earth press you into this age. Don't let that happen. But be ye transformed. Now this one I'm going to spend most of the rest of my time on talking about it because it is so very important. The butterfly is an interesting little creature. The butterfly is a caterpillar. He first comes into this earth as a creature called a caterpillar. And there are several kinds of caterpillars. In fact there are two that do a certain thing and only one of them is really acceptable. The caterpillars when it's time weaves around them a cocoon. And they get into that cocoon and while they're in that cocoon God does to them something that is called metamorphosis. It totally changes the nature the looks and the body of the caterpillar. In fact someone has said if you take a caterpillar's cocoon and you cut it while that caterpillar is in the process of metamorphosis all you will find inside is kind of a jelly gel kind of stuff that's moving. That's growing. It's being metamorphosed. It's being changed. And he gets in that cocoon and metamorphosis begins and his body begins to change and when finally that cocoon opens up that creature that went in a caterpillar comes out an entirely different creature. He doesn't come out a caterpillar. He comes out a butterfly. A beautiful wonderful butterfly. Now this word transformed is metamorphosing. When Jesus in the book of Luke Matthew Mark and Luke went up to the mouth of Transfiguration and he was there with Peter James and John and the scripture tells us that he was transfigured transformed. He was metamorphosed. Same word. Same word. Jesus had a metamorphosis on the mount of Transfiguration. Without the disciples even knowing it all of a sudden the human form of Jesus Christ was metamorphosed into a spiritual form of the living God. Jesus Christ. And he was there in front of them and he was talking with Moses and who else? He was taken up in a fiery chariot. Elijah. He was transformed. Now folks it happened like that. The disciples were talking with him on the mount of Transfiguration. All of a sudden they looked up and the one they were talking with is now a spiritual being in his spiritual body talking to two other spiritual beings in their spiritual bodies. And it happened in an instant. And he was transformed. We call it Transfiguration. What happened was he had a spiritual metamorphosis instantly. So that he came from his physical self which he needed to be here on the earth in order to teach us how God was into his spiritual self and later on when Big Mouth Peter decided he wanted to build three tabernacles instead of listening to what Jesus said when he started his three tabernacle building program all of a sudden Jesus was transfigured again back into what? It happened in a moment in the twinkling of an eye. Now the metamorphosis of a caterpillar takes a while. It takes a while for him to get in that cocoon. And it takes a while for him to become jelly. And it takes a while for him to grow six legs and beautiful wings. It takes a while for him to get the color in those wings. And all of a sudden when he gets everything where it's supposed to be, God gets everything where it's supposed to be he kind of cuts a hole in the cocoon and that little butterfly comes jumping out and all of a sudden that butterfly spreads. Who taught him to fly? Who taught him to come out? Who taught him it was time to have a new birth? It's what happened to you on the day you were saved. You and I were transformed. All of a sudden it didn't take a long period of time. You said save me. Transformed. Now why do you think the Apostle Paul can say in 1 Corinthians 15 that in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trump we shall be changed. I love Dr. David Jeremiah's commercials on his new book The Great Disappearance. One of the scenes he shows a postman who's a Christian having delivered something to the front of a mailbox of a house and he's walking back toward his truck. He has his little thing that he's punching in to tell him that he's made the delivery and all of a sudden he's gone and his little truck's on the sidewalk. It shows another lady laying in a bed getting ready to have surgery and she's already prepared to have surgery and all of a sudden she's gone. In a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet the dead in Christ shall rise first we who are alive and remain shall be metamorphosed. We shall be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet and we'll go to be with him. Did you realize that you have been metamorphosed? And so he says since you have been changed and remember I have told you before actually redemption is a change process. You see when we get next week over here to the other side we start talking about the activities. We start talking about hating sin. You see the world hates God and loves sin. The Christian is supposed to hate sin and love God. It's just the opposite. And we'll get over there and we'll talk about that. It'll be the first thing. I can do that in about ten minutes next week. If you believe that I've got a 57 Chevrolet I'll sell you also. Now because you have been changed into a spiritual being and by the way you're having to put up with this old fleshly thing that hangs on you. But you're still a spiritual being inside. You've been changed. Your insides have been changed. You're not what you used to be. Billy Sunday said who was a stevedore on the docks of Chicago and could cuss. In fact every other word was a cuss word. Billy Sunday said after he was saved he said on that day I was saved I lost 75% of my vocabulary. Changed. Billy Sunday was changed. In a moment. He was changed. One day you said yes Lord changed. That day you were changed. You were metamorphosed that day. Right there. You were changed. And so he says since you have been changed you now have a renewed mind. Watch. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. Do you remember what 1st 2nd Corinthians 5:17 says? If any person be in Christ he is a new creation. Just like the caterpillar to a butterfly. The first creation became a new creation by the process of metamorphosis. In your and my life our first sinful creature became a righteous creature by the spiritual metamorphosis of the blood of Jesus Christ. That's how it happened. And you and I are recipients of that. And so he says since you have been changed. Since you have renewed your mind. Since your mind is no longer the mind of this age in which we are living. It is in the ages to come. vis a vi John 3 16. And we, for God so loved the world that whosoever liveth and ever perisheth shall have life in the ages. Since your mind is now in those ages and not in this age. Then he said in that state you have the ability by the power of the Holy Spirit who dwells in each one of us to do the following. Three things. You are able to determine what is good. You are able to determine what is acceptable. Because you're acceptable. But the last one is the perfect one. You are able to understand completeness. You see folks when a Jewish person is saved they are not saved in the sense that we talk about saving. A Jewish person will say to you who is a Messianic Jew. I have been completed. You see the only thing missing in a Jewish person's life right now is one thing. And he is incomplete because of that one thing. And the only thing that is missing in a Jewish person's life is Jesus Christ the Messiah. And when the Messiah comes into the heart of a Jewish person that Jewish man or woman will say to you I am complete. I am now perfect. So that you are able to identify the good. You will know what is good. You will know what is acceptable. And you will understand the complete will of God. And in understanding the complete will of God we are able to operate. At this point it says therefore now since you know this let me tell you what you need to do. And now in verse 3 to 21 comes the practical side of this thing. And he is going to give us gifts and he is going to give us characteristics. And the gifts will be given to us by God. And all of us have a gift. Some kind of gift. Somebody said I don't have any gifts. I can't sing. That's not what a gift might be. Only people who can sing have that gift. If you can't sing you have other gifts. God has given everybody gifts. In fact if you read the fourth chapter of the book of Ephesians. He talks about the gifts God has given to us. And in this next Sunday we pick up here for about 15-20 minutes talking about the gifts and the characteristics. It's in these characteristics that he says hate sin. A abhor sin. And he tells us several other characteristics that ought to be part of that life which is complete. Since your life is complete then these 12 characteristics ought to be very prominent in your life. Now in next week's lesson there are two lists. Remember I told you Paul is the great list maker? There are two lists. One list has 7 things in it. The other list has 12. Two of the most holy numbers in the entire word of God is 7 and 12. There were 7 days in creation. There were 12 tribes. There were 12 apostles. And multiples of 12 are throughout the Bible. So he's going to give us 7 gifts. And he's going to give us 12 characteristics. And those 7 gifts are very holy. And each of us has at least one of the 7. Many of you have more than one of the 7. And next week we'll be able to look at them. How many gifts God has given you. But he has given everyone a gift because ladies and gentlemen Ephesians 4 says for unto everyone was given the gift of grace. Ephesians says that. Everybody can be graceful. You don't have to be hateful. If everybody was given the gift of grace then every one of us ought to be graceful. And that's why we can live in a world that's given us all kinds of consternation out there. Because we are full of grace. Charis. Grace. And that's what he's going to say next week. Are you with me? Do you get what God has done to you? Do you understand what he did to you? Do you understand how quickly he did it? Do you understand why he did it? And now do you know what you are supposed to do because of it? But if you don't, we'll learn next week what we're supposed to do. In the rest of 12 and 13 it's all kinds of suggestions. Not commandments. Suggestions. We have commandments. But Paul's going to give us suggestions. And so next week we're going to look at the gifts and we're going to look at the characteristics of what a Christian is supposed to be like. Amen? Let's pray. Sovereign God, how wonderful it is to think that one day in the twinkling of an eye you transformed us into spiritual beings. You forgave us of our sin. You cleansed us of our lives. You filled us with your Holy Spirit. You gave us your love and now you're giving us your kingdom and life in it. And then you're going to glorify us to boot. What else can we ask for? And so Father we're grateful that in the ages of the ages in the past you chose us. Just like you chose that caterpillar to become a butterfly. You chose us to be transformed into the likeness of your dear son. And that's what we're supposed to live like. And that's our charge. And it is in Jesus' name that we thank you forever and ever. Amen. See you next week.
