The Remedy for Sin

last week we covered or actually two weeks ago now we covered four new testament definitions of sin and at the beginning of the sermon i asked all of you to give me a definition of sin and in unison well it's you know the breaking of god's law i did the same thing in murfreesboro and i got the same response and then i said but that's just the beginning we understand that that is a definition of sin i went through the four different definitions of sin breaking of god's law all unrighteousness and then we have to explore what unrighteousness is i mean the law defines righteousness but there's a lot of definitions of righteousness basically it's the will of god so anytime we do something that's not the will of god we've sinned to know to do good and not to do it is a sin and as i said as i got to these last two of these definitions i've struggled with these over the last 15 or 20 years because i started to realize what they really mean there's lots of times when i know i should do something good it's not like i did anything wrong i didn't break one of the laws of god but i didn't do the good that god expected me to do because well i got involved in something else that was more interesting or more fun and actually i sinned because it wasn't what i was supposed to do and then the last one it gets a little complicated is when making judgments that are not biblically explicit then whatever is not of faith is sin and show how paul dealt with that we went through and showed that paul said sometimes we can't judge another person over something that's not specifically uh spelled out now obviously there's lots of things the bible says that we're supposed to do or not to do but that's not what he was talking about it's why we can't make judgments on each other about medical decisions medical decisions are personal decisions and whatever is not of faith is sin so we have to we can't do that with each other we have to make our own decisions before god well you know finishing up that sermon as i as i said at the end i said now that we have all the definitions of sin wow it's hopeless i mean we understand what sin is okay i've got this down i don't steal so good now let's move on from kindergarten i mean the basis has to be the law of god that's where we start any definition of sin but where do we go from there and in the sermon i showed how paul struggled with this and how difficult that was for him who was a man who grew up in judaism was the pinnacle of what a practicing jew could be and kept the letter of the law at a remarkable perfection and yet he struggled with what sin really really was and what it really meant to him what he began to understand jesus christ well in about a month we're going to be keeping the passover in the days of unleavened bread and the passover the days of the 11th bread are all about sin so we talked about sin two weeks ago but now we're going to talk about god's remedy for that what is god's remedy for sin now i know that all of us could could start filling in the you know answers to that well god's remaining to sin is this and it's this and it's this but i want to take sort of this big overview that shows us what the passover and days of them bread are really all about really what god is teaching us is we keep those days now we can only understand this subject and the concept of slavery to sin now because when we look at israel coming out of egypt and that they were slaves we always tie that in every year to we are slaves to sin and god is bringing us out of sin to understand that slavery to sin we've already looked at definitions of sin but we're going to understand our we have to understand our relationship to sin and what god must do to change that relationship so a relationship with sin i mean i know what sin is you know keep the sabbath day what's our relationship to sin when we go back to genesis and we see that god created adam and eve he looked at them and said this is very good i want you to understand when adam and eve were first created and they meet each other and they're living in the garden of eden and all they know is god there was nothing wrong with them mentally emotionally physically there was no sin they had not committed sin and sin wasn't part of them at this point they had only known goodness and that's all they experienced there's nothing wrong god didn't look at adam and eve and say ah wow this is sort of good but boy you people are messed up i can tell you when god looks at every one of us in this room he says are you messed up he didn't say that to adam and eve they worked they were made though in the image of god now about five years ago i gave a sermon on this image of god and i want to cover just a few things i covered in that sermon five years ago just as sort of an introduction as we lead into what we're going to talk about here in that sermon i said that there were five major ways of which we are in the image of god i mean we're physical he's spirit right so that's we're not in god's image that way uh we have to eat food he does not so we're not in his image that way we have to sleep he does not so there's all these things that have to do with us being physical us being flesh you know if we're flesh and blood he is not and because of those differences there's huge differences between us and god we can die he can he does not he cannot but what are some fundamental ways that we're like god well first of all we have the ability to reason in other words we have the ability for self-conscious thought that's an amazing thing and in that sermon i gave a lot of examples of how we have this remarkable thought process and self-consciousness this not no other mammal has anything like that i mean i know where i'm going to go today i know i'm supposed to be tonight i have the next week planned out i can tell you what i did yesterday i could tell you what i did three months ago especially if i go get out my day planner and i look it up and i can tell you what i did cows don't do that you know it's just an urge to eat and they go eat this ability to think to reason to contemplate to decide try to decide what's good what's evil they also in the way that they were like god they had emotions real core emotions and as long as they were in the garden with god they experienced love and joy empathy they would eventually know how god feels when he deals with his own sorrow god experiences sorrow especially in his relationship with us we cause sorrow to god you can see that in the scripture so they have this ability or we have this ability for emotions which they were given imagination and creativity every human being is creative in one way or another it's absolutely amazing to me how creative we can be in different ways i am amazed at people who can write music i'm just amazed at that ability i don't have it but you know i used to work with my dad when i was a teenager we had sand floors and he had an amazing creativity and being able to take floors wooden floors and make them look like what people wanted them to look like you ever watch a brick layer there's creativity to that we all have these different abilities and we have different imagination you know it's one thing to to read a blueprint it's another thing to create a blueprint because it doesn't exist imagination also a way where like god is we have volition or will in other words we have the ability to make decisions we have the ability to make decisions and then the fifth way we're like god is we are created as relationship beings you and i were created to have a relationship with god with each other we're created to relate to each other we're created to love each other we're created to want to spend time and share with each other that's the way we're created and remember when adam and eve woke up when god created them they were totally dependent upon god he had to tell them what to eat he had to tell them what to do and they weren't having any troubles at all he told them what their marriage was they had no problems everything was fine they experienced nothing but love and peace and joy they didn't suffer this is what life was like for the first humans in the garden and then sin entered into their lives simple sin don't eat that they did it's simple sin compared to a lot of sins right don't eat that because when you do you're taking upon yourself something that only god has and that is the ability to tell you what's right and wrong and they they did it they ate this forbidden fruit which means they disobeyed god and centered and sin entered into their lives now remember they were made in the image of god and we talked about all the ways they were made in the image of god the moment they disobeyed something happened to them the image of god was corrupted it became distorted it became twisted i mean you read about it you realize the first thing they did is they went hid from god because the first thing that happens when we sin is we're separated from god sin literally separates us from god they had never been separated from god they went and hid because they were afraid they were ashamed of themselves they got kicked out of the garden and they were separated and when you start reading human history from that point what you see is that people have human beings have a distorted reasoning power you know when god says in isaiah my thoughts are above your thoughts they're not even close and what we do is we try to imprint onto god our thoughts your people all the time saying well god's unfair god that's not right god wouldn't do that why would god let this child die why did god allow slavery in the old testament i mean i hear this all the time he's not really god our god would not have killed the people of sodom and gomorrah and we imprint onto him our thoughts instead of understanding his because ours are all distorted our emotions let's face it you and i are a mess of distorted emotions distorted negative emotions hatred anger envy greed arrogance jealousy you start listing all these negative emotions we have and they fill us and we struggle with them all the time and we're pulled back and forth between emotions and which sometimes we're not even thinking we're just being driven by emotions imagination and creativity think of all this imagination that god has given to us all this creativity now what do we do now we create the atomic bomb we take this amazing mind and we create destructive things he gave us volition or free will we're going to look in a minute how much that's been distorted the free will the ability to choose between right and wrong does the average person even have the ability to choose between right and wrong when it comes to salvation well look at that in a minute how distorted has our will become and then of course the last thing is relationships we live in a world of messed up relationships everybody's trying to find somebody to love somebody to love them friends family co-workers everybody's trying to create god in their own image so they can love god and feel loved by god and none of it works none of it works because inside we're just all distorted think of it this way think of adam and eve as the perfect image of god physical image of god made out of clay and someone brings along a hammer and pounds that clay statue and distorts it so much that you look at it and think i don't know it's an image of something i can't even tell what that is welcome to the human race we were made in the image of god and we have been beat and hammered and slammed between satan and ourselves and everybody else affecting our lives and our own decisions until we don't even look like the image of god but we were made in the image of god that's god's purpose for us and here here we are in this mess in this mess so what happens god comes into our lives and remember last time we went through parts of romans 6 7 and 8. this time of year there's always a sermon where we go through parts of romans 5 6 7 and 8. this year we're actually going through some different parts than we did last year but we always end up there before the spring holy days in one form or another remember last time what we talked about was the apostle paul struggling years around two decades after his baptism and he's struggling with sin and a definition of sin paul was a man who understood that sin is the breaking of the law of god as much as anybody ever has he was a man who grew up his entire life dedicated to keeping the law of god and as he said i would not have known not to covet except the law of god told me not to covet and now after decades of having god's spirit after being confronted by jesus christ he's struggling with something else and this is where i want to go because this has to do with why you and i keep the passover in the days of lemon bread this is why we take leavening out this is why we eat unleavened bread because if we only do those because they're physical rituals we're wasting our time we have to understand what god is doing so let's go to revelation i'm sorry romans chapter seven let's not go to revelation let's go to romans romans chapter 7 and we're picking up sort of where we left off two weeks ago and verse 14. because remember paul is struggling with the law now he asked is the law sinner should we not keep the law he says well certainly that's wrong we have to keep the law but then there's other places here especially in chapter five where he seems to be saying no you don't have to keep the law and then he says we're not under the law and then he he says but we're you know it seems all confusing till you get here and you realize what he's actually saying and paul moves from this point where he makes it very personal this is really sort of unusual for ancient writings for people to be as personal as he is paul argues like a rabbi paul argues at times like a greek philosopher it's amazing i am absolutely floored by his logic at times and then i've flown to times where he's arguing like a rabbi which i have to go read some jewish commentary to figure out what he's saying and then sometimes paul being paul just says how he feels he's such a complex man and he says here in verse 14 for we know that the law is spiritual but i am carnal sold under sin in chapter 6 he explains how we are slaves to sin he says i am bought and sold under sin 20 years after baptism i am bought and sold under sin he says because the sin the law is spiritual the law of god is an expression of the great mind of god but he says i'm not god i'm stuff i'm flesh and because i'm flesh i don't get the great mind of god so look what he says next for what i am doing i do not understand for what i will to do that i do not practice but what i hate that i do now we begin to explain an inner conflict now remember this is a man who could never committed adultery right this is a man who kept the law of god in the letter and he started to understand once confronted by jesus christ it's more than that now he didn't say it's okay to commit adultery in fact he's going to go on through here we'll see and actually support the keeping of the law that's not the issue here the issue is there's something inside of me that doesn't work and this is what the passover days unleavened bread and pentecost all fit together to teach us this there's something inside of him it did not work verse 16 if then i do what i will not to do i agree with the law that it's good he says when i when i when i do something i know it's wrong in my mind i'm saying no the law is good and the law tells me not to do that the law tells me i shouldn't be so greedy you know he didn't steal but he was greedy he wasn't generous when he should have been generous oh remember what we read about the four definitions of sin when you know to do something and don't so okay i wasn't generous when i should have been generous oh that's a sin too he says i i there's something inside of me saying no you should have done that or you shouldn't have done that he says i know that's the law of god that's the teachings of god and i love that that's good but why didn't i do it but now it is no longer i who do it but sin that dwells in me for i know that in me that is in my flesh nothing good dwells for to will is present with me but how to perform what is good i do not find he says i want to but i fail now he wasn't he's not saying he's just living in a continual state of sin that's what he's saying he's saying i struggle all the time there's something inside of me this internal struggle going on remember converted christian apostle of god and he's saying inside of me is a war that i fight and he says my will is to do but i can't even get my will to do it i want to and i fail verse 19 for the good that i will to do i do not do but the evil i will not i will not to do that i practice now if i do what i will not to do it is no longer i who do it but sin that dwells in me i find that a law that evil is present with me the one who dwells who wills to do good i will to do good and evil is with me he looked deep inside himself and found out i am a terribly flawed image of god he saw it in himself and the rest of his he talks about it in fact towards the end of this chapter he says oh what a wretched man i am wow this man was taught personally by jesus christ this man knew peter and james this man god had done great miracles through this man followed god in a remarkable way and here he writes huh i'm a wretched guy now he said wow that's terrible well wait a minute you've got to see how he gets out of this okay paul sees the sin inside of him it's not just the law outside see there was a there was a solution to this in judaism so that you remember the the law of god you were tassels on your clothes to remember the law of god you would take the ten commandments and you would wrap them up and you would put them in a a little hole there ins over your doorpost so that you would remember the law of god and what paul says here is he's looking at it and he's saying you know what that doesn't do it that might make me remember oh amen i should go see my parents because i should honor my father and mother but that doesn't change something that's inside of me we talked about that some last time when we went through some of these writings in this section where paul deals with no no i understand these things but there's something inside of me and here he even says i will to do what's right and i can't even get my will to do it oh what wretched man i am what's god's solution to this what's the remedy to this well first of all first of all we have to understand that the law gives us definition of sin but we have to understand sin is more than that because envy and lust and selfishness and self-righteousness is internal it's internal okay and i can post the ten commandments all over my house and try with all my heart to keep them and never deal with the internal part the sin as as as he said the sin that is in me this is tough this is tough the sin that is in me the more he kept the law the more he became aware of his weakness now sometimes we think well the more i keep the law boy look at me the more i keep the law the better i am the better i am and what paul said the more i keep the law the more weak i seem because i realize the enormity of what who god is first step in that remedy is back in romans five so let's go back paige verse six for when we were still without strength in due time christ died for the ungodly understand that's all of us if you've grown up in the church god has given you a special privilege is let you have a relationship with him he's opened that door and because of that you probably haven't committed certain sins as others have committed oh you've had your share but you haven't committed certain things because why well you lived in this protection but what you have to come to grips with is deep inside you're ungodly that sounds harsh deep inside sin lives it's not just the external commandments deep inside every one of us none of us are reconciled to god until we get that now you're already reconciled to god in a very special way we'll talk about that in a minute but you can't complete the process until you come to grips with what's wrong with you and it's the same thing that's wrong with every one of us it's not like you're unique every one of us have the same problem he says for scarcely verse 7 for scarcely for a righteous man will one die yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die but god demonstrates his own love toward us and that while we were still sinners christ died for us god's law requires your death and my death that's how righteous god is you say well yeah but i haven't killed anybody i even sold drugs to little kids i mean you think of all the bad things i never raped anybody why would god require my death because deep inside we're capable of just about anything deep in here put in the right circumstances without god we're capable of just about anything a little different from person to person sin is in us he says in verse 9 much more than having now been justified by his blood we shall be saved from wrath through him what does that mean saved from wrath whose wrath god's wrath god hates sin that much because it is destructive it destroys you know what sin has done every human being except jesus christ who came from heaven every human being was designed to create it by god to be his in his image and every human being is a gnarled up distorted grotesque sculpture that doesn't look like the father who created that's why well not that grotesque or if we could just see it from god's viewpoint we say well this is hopeless ah he saved us from wrath to his death understand how much more does god have to do to show us his love christ came and died for us to show this is what you deserve but it's not what's going to be required if you just do something and so this is the remedy this is the first step in the remedy he says verse 10 for if when we were enemies that's right enemies of god every human being is an enemy of god i don't know when it starts somewhere and that little brain evil begins it gets once the seeds there it just sort of spreads maybe it's the first time you don't get your diaper changed on time and you throw a temper tantrum and it's like oh that was pretty cool i did that and people ran in here and took care of me i think i'll do it again i mean that's not what they think they don't think you know what i mean there's some little grain that gets in there and once it's in there guess what happens the image of god begins to be distorted it begins to be changed until we're not in that image anymore for when we were enemies we were reconciled to god through the death of his son much more okay you are reconciled you're already reconciled understand when you take that passover well right now if you've been baptized right now you're already reconciled to god that relationship already exists if you're not baptized the door is open which means god you have a relationship with god it's not complete yet it's not complete yet but you already have it you already have it judge is going to take you to the next step there's a remedy to this sin you know what the remedy is to breaking the law of god we have to repent okay now you have to well you really owe my mind now i have to go repent for who i am not just what i've done yep well how do i change that okay god reconciles that means you're no longer an enemy of god and every year at the during this time period during the days of unleavened bread and before that people come to me every year or i get phone calls or or emails from all over the world saying i don't think i sinned this last year and i don't think god wants me anymore i think god wants to throw me away i have failed well you've already been reconciled yeah but i messed up i understand but you've already been reconciled have you turned your back on god do you hate god have you well no but i because of my weaknesses okay so what i will to do i don't do so sounds like the apostle paul sounds like you need the passover you need it you know every year i am profoundly as i get older i more and more i mean i remember when i was younger but it seems more and more profound wow i need this i need this as we are taken back to the point where god does what he does in this process god loves us so much that christ died for us so that you are already reconciled and then notice the rest of the sentence having been reconciled we shall be saved by his life i'm already reconciled to god when it's saved by his life what in the world does that mean saved by his life we have to figure that one out okay we're reconciled to god we keep the passover and we're reconciled we celebrate the death of jesus christ i've had people that keep the easter they say we don't understand why you do that we celebrate his resurrection why do you celebrate his death because we're celebrating what he said to celebrate because he was reconciling us to god if he wasn't resurrected then we are as paul said of all people most miserable we're the most miserable people on the earth if he wasn't resurrected because we have no hope we have no faith he was resurrected and it's by his life something is happening verse 11 and not only that but we also rejoice in god through our lord jesus christ through whom we now have received the reconciliation so we're supposed to rejoice in the fact god has accepted me that's what justification means it doesn't mean he's happy with everything you do it means he's accepted you into his a relationship with him through jesus christ okay so we're already reconciled to god you need to go into the passover remembering that you're already reconciled to god if you haven't been baptized you need to be thinking about in terms of wow god's opened this door to me and let me have a relationship with him i really like what they've taken a step further but that step is always when you're ready but there's always a next step in this reconciliation process because i wish to be totally free of my sins but if god frees us of past sins he forgives us of past sins he takes the penalty of the law off of us where are we now oh good i have no past sins okay if you came out of the water after being baptized and that's all that happened how long was it would it be before you sinned again maybe on the drive home when you drive some guy off the road because he made you man right when would when would the next sin take place so okay he forgives us but where are we now what does it mean saved by his life well now we're going back to romans eight so we're gonna flip ahead back i think last year i covered the last verses in chapter eight and we're going to be covering the first verses in chapter 8. i don't know if we'll ever get through a passover season where at least some part of romans 5 6 7 and 8 are covered paul says there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in jesus christ no condemnation he just talked about it in chapter seven how condemned he felt i'm struggling i'm struggling i'm struggling but there's no condemnation to those who walk in jesus christ who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit wait wait a minute what did he just say what we read in chapter 7 was he talked about how how he was of the flesh but the law was spirit and he was carnal and inside of him even his will couldn't do it of itself because of what was inside of him he says sin is inside of me and then he says but i'm not condemned remember what he wrote in chapter five i've been reconciled he hadn't left that reconciliation he hadn't turned his back on god he had run away and said i'm not going to follow god anymore he didn't just go out and become a pagan but he fought this fight that's why he calls it a walk he uses the word walk here it's a verb he doesn't say and we are standing still he says you walk according to the flesh but according to this not according to the flesh but according to the spirit okay we're moving forward towards something we're walking towards something we're moving god is doing something and it's not according to this flesh because his flesh is weak and always fails well not always as time goes on god's helps us not to fail that's the point but it's because we're walking in the spirit we're walking in a certain way he says for the law of the spirit of life in christ jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death he says i'm free from sin even though i still fight it even though i still break it or the laws of god but god keeps bringing me back now some people say well that means you don't have to keep the laws as we read through this that is the exact opposite of what paul is saying what's paul's saying is how can i keep the law when sin is already inside of me well verse 3 for what the law could not do and that it was weak through the flesh god did by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh on account of sin and he condemned sin in the flesh he says god gave us a remedy from this jesus became flesh of blood like us lived a perfect life and died to take upon us his sins but something else must have happened has to happen because we now are saved by his life well look at the rest of the sentence verse 4 that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit the righteous requirement of the law isn't done for us it's done in us it's interesting requirement here in the greek too is a singular word you know you think about requirements you think would be requirements of the law right there's lots of law no he says the requirement of the law the unity of what god wants righteousness obedience lifestyle all this together this requirement is being fulfilled in us and that's when you begin to understand the second remedy for sin the first remedy is he forgave us in a legalistic sense according to the law you no longer have the eternal death penalty over you you're reconciled to god so in this legalistic sense okay boom we've dealt with that part of the law the legal part but now we have to deal with the other part the part that is inside you and me that we must face and it's through his life that we're saved from that what he's doing now and the re the righteous requirement of the law then is being developed in us this doesn't happen overnight it can't if it happened overnight chapter 7 makes no sense why would a man 20 years into this process among the greatest men of god in the entire bible be saying oh what a wretched man i am because he wasn't there yet that's why he wasn't there yet and he understood it and he was so self-aware he wrote it down so we could say oh yeah i understand it now that's where i am that's where i am he says verse 5 for those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh but those who live according to the spirit the things of the spirit in other words we're walking in a certain way we're learning in a certain way we're living in a certain way and sometimes we fail and fail miserably because we still have weak flesh and what does god do he makes us get up and walk look how many times we're walking here he doesn't let us stop he doesn't let us give up he picks us up and he makes us keep walking for to be carnally minded as death but to be spiritually minded as life and peace because the carnal mind is enmity against god for it is not subject to the law of god nor indeed can be so then those who are in the flesh cannot please god now you can't read that and say he did away with the law it's impossible what he's saying is you can't keep the law in a carnal state you may be able to keep part of it you may be able to keep the letter of it but you can't deal with the internal part so you may not be dragged before courts and legally okay well let's see you were stealing i put you in jail but it doesn't change the fact that inside of you well you could steal you might be tempted to steal inside of you something still messed up that can't be dealt with through the law so he says you have to understand yes we keep the law but there's a point inside of us to actually have all righteousness to always do what is good even though it's not a law we do what is good to fulfill all those definitions of sin it takes something from god inside to do it you and i can't this is the thing about will until god reveals to you who he is you don't have the will to have salvation because your will is corrupted remember we talked about that your will's corrupted so if god doesn't reveal himself to us we're doomed that's what's so great about the understanding that there's this isn't the only day of salvation because god has to open someone's will for them to actually make a decision if he doesn't open their eyes they can't make a decision we know that so that means their will is incapable until god opens their eyes god's opened your eyes your will is being healed like the rest of us with our reason or creativity or emotion this is all in the process of being healed paul goes on but you are not in the flesh but in the spirit if indeed the spirit of god dwells in you now if anyone does not have the spirit of christ he is not his now you say well i'm not i'm not baptized i don't have god's spirit god's spirit's with you it's already with you that's part of the agreement here when you when you become participate in the church god's spirit is with you so he's already drawing you in this process now notice verse 10 and if christ is in you we're talking about the holy spirit you know what christ is in is too you know the the holy spirit is the mind of god the father is in us and christ is in us and this is real important because you know what we're about to do at the passover we sit down and we become partakers of the new covenant and we are given what bread and wine and what did jesus say why do we take it take this eat it this is my body this is my blood literally christ says i must internally come into you for you to be a participant in the new covenant you know jesus had a whole lot more disciples he lost most of them you know when reid and john when he said you must eat my flesh and drink my blood for salvation and they said this man's crazy he wants us to be a cannibal and it said most of his disciples left and now he sits down with the twelve and he says you must do this here he says christ in you this is real important in understanding what we're doing here christ in us is very important in understanding returning to being the image of god god is recreating every one of us we may be a distorted marred beat up image of god but the great sculpture has chosen you and now he's saying we have a lot of work and we say but i sin today and he says yep we got a lot of work but god i wasn't good yesterday i know we have a lot of work because god has put christ in us when the holy spirit comes into us the mind of christ comes into us too he says and if christ is in you the body is dead because of sin but the spirit is life because of righteousness now when does this process get finished when does it all get finished that we are finally the children of god that were finally done we could say oh good the battle's gone i don't have to fight this battle of romans 7 anymore oh he says it right here but if the spirit of him who raised jesus from the dead dwells in you he who raised christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies to his spirit who dwells in you in other words in the resurrection god says he looks at the angels and says boy do i do good work in the resurrection we will take no sin with us understand that how will we not sin when we're changed you will not be capable of sin there will be no sin left the last message of sin is removed from us at the resurrection and god is in all things god is all in all right so the spirit of god is in us forever we will have adapted to the spirit of god and therefore in doing so we will be incapable of sin wow every time you take a piece of unleavened bread think of that christ is coming into me okay on that passover christ is coming into me that's the point i can teach you the ten commandments i can't teach you how to not be selfish i have to get in there and clean that out myself that's what god says i can't teach you not to be selfish but i can do that oh that bread and that wine's remarkable what's the standard then our last scripture what's the standard okay well i okay i christ comes into me you know it's the holy spirit comes in christ comes into it there's work being done here what does that mean how encompassing is this transformation i mean we have to be transformed right let's go to saint corinthians three second corinthians three is is my favorite explanation of the difference between the old and new covenants it's just a remarkable chapter we're going to read one verse what paul's doing here he's telling the corinthians i want you to think of your christianity as a spiritual mirror okay and you look into the spiritual mirror and what do you see he says verse 18 but we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the lord so you look into the spiritual mirror what do you see the shining image of jesus christ okay there he is he's in the mirror wow now he's talking to them so this next sentence only makes sense if you say and we okay because he's talking to them looking into a mirror so he says are but really should it you know it's he's talking to the people who are looking in the mirror not the christ and we are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory just as by the spirit of the lord when you look into that mirror and you see the perfect image of jesus christ and you look at his life and you realize he came here to show us how this works he was sacrificed for our sins and through his life we are saved he's living now to teach us what it's like to be a child of god when you look in that mirror you see the perfect image of jesus christ and what else do you see in a mirror by yourself what are you i'm this distorted sort of i don't know weird sort of what am i and he said you see from glory to glory every once in a while in this christian um journey that we're on you look and you say wow for a second here i sort of looked like jesus christ that's what happens every once in a while there's part of oh wow sort of that part of me sort of looked like jesus christ because we're being changed we're being transformed i wouldn't know what it is to be the image of god i'm too corrupted but i know what jesus christ is who he is and what he lived as a human being who is he is in heaven and you know what that image i can get and he says look at that image and realize that's what you're being transformed into you're being transformed into the image of jesus christ the image of god but we can see what it looks like in a human sense and this is what god has called us to in other words literal literal children literal children and we know what the family looks like because we've seen the big brother and we're being transformed into an image of the big brother so if sin at this time of year seems a little overwhelming ah remember what this means christ died for you when you're throwing out leavening this year don't get too caught up well i gotta go clean out and spend six hours cleaning out the attic which nobody has eaten anything in for six years that's not what this is all about it's throwing out the leavening so that you can think about i gotta get sin out of my life and i can't completely it's in me i don't have the power that passover should make us acutely aware of the price paid to reconcile us to god that's part of the remedy to be reconciled to god you now have a relationship and direct directly before the throne of god god is actually with you all the time god is in you right his spirit is in you all the time christ is in you all the time that's why pentecost is so impo it's part of the spring holy days pentecost takes us to what the next step is but we must take christ inside of us and whatever you eat unleavened bread think of that oh yeah it's not just a matter being forgiven it's a matter of something has to come in something has to go out and something has to come in and i can't do that i can only walk right what do we read in romans 8 you walk that's all you can do you fall down you get scraped up you get picked up now sometimes you're walking because christ has you by the back of the shirt dragging you along that's how we walk sometimes but that's how we get there if you and i think we could do this ourselves we're in real trouble because it's in here but god has given us that remedy this feast this passover and days of 11 bread think about what it means think about what this really means and realize that you are no longer a slave to sin but you are being recreated into the image of god to become what you and were intended to be and that is to be a very child of almighty god

Channel: UCG Nashville - TN

Views: 1,213

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: 9jntuKtCEfU

Length: 55min 4sec (3304 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 05 2021