Book of Romans, 8:23 - We Wait for the Redemption of Our Body, Pt. 3 (04/05/2020)

Supporting the School and Opening in Prayer

Thanks for serving that, Dave. It was great. All right, I'm going to share my screen here. Let's see, let me get rid of that. Uh-oh, there we go. All right, now I think we've got it working. Let me get this over here.

I got to always have a little housekeeping to do with this software, no doubt about that. OK, I wanted to just mention this little school here. Look at them. And I want to thank Dave, and Katie, and Colin, and Jenny.

They were the real hearts behind this. And so because of their inspiration, we started looking for the right man to run this place. And the Lord brought us Brother Paul Davis. And he is so wonderful. But this is what he's built.

And I think we started, I think, like Dave said, we were down to maybe six students, six or eight students when Paul came. And this is what we had pretty much the next year or two after he was here. So look at these little ones and think about it.

If you hit that Give button on our website, this is where 90 of that money is going to go. The rest will keep the lights on because they use our building, our church building for the school. And we really need your support.

And I don't hesitate to ask you to give. And it's God's way. We're not going to go have a bake sale. I'm not against you guys if you do it at your churches. We just don't. We might do one inside the church, but we don't go out on the street and do that.

We use God's people and their heart to give. And I think that's good Bible methodology, all right? So all right, well, let's get started here. I've really enjoyed the service so far. It's my privilege to be able to be with you today.

And I've prayed about this, and I want to be the prepared man that you guys deserve. And so hopefully, the Lord will bless. Let's have a short word of prayer, and we'll get started. Lord, we just ask you to bless the preaching time today now.

May your Holy Spirit be our teacher. May you guide me to stay strictly in the truth of the word of God. And we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Well, we've been teaching verse by verse through the book of Romans.

Romans 8 and the Redemption of the Body

We made our way to Romans chapter 8 in this little passage. And what I discovered, actually, this year, for the first time, never crossed my mind that this little passage in the middle of Romans chapter 8 is about the rapture and the end times.

And I hadn't, I mean, just hadn't thought about it. And that's what's so wonderful about the Bible, is it's a living book. So you can be in the ministry 40 years like me and be a pastor for over 35 years and preach 4 ,000, 5 ,000, 6 ,000 sermons and still go back into a very familiar passage and even be teaching it.

And while you're teaching it, God teach you something new. And I'll just get a pen out right here, write it down right on my sermon notes. So the next time I preach it, I'll put that in it because God just taught it to me.

I mean, that's how the Word of God is. It is God speaking to us. And that is far more important than us speaking to Him. I love prayer. Prayer is important. But that's us talking to Him. It's way more important to see what He has to say to us.

And I think in the modern church, we don't put enough emphasis on the Word of God. I think the Word of God should come before the praise service. If you look at the revival meetings that happened in the Bible, in the Old Testament in particular, people would stand up and just read the Bible.

I mean, they didn't have fancy theatrics. They just read the Bible. Just read the Bible all day. And then revival would break out at the end of the day. And people would bring instruments and start playing instruments and praising God and dancing with their hands in the air.

Now, the way the Jews do it, the men dance with the men, right? And the women dance with the women. Real interesting if you've ever been to Israel and seen that, seen them do it. It's amazing. They're very cheerful, happy people when they're praising God.

So that's how it works. It's God's Word. When He speaks to us, speaks to our heart, that's when revival happens. When His Word speaks to our heart and the Holy Spirit speaks to our heart through His Word, that's when true revival happens.

And so we've been so privileged to be able to speak to so many of you guys that are visiting us from Tradeway. We love it. Even when you come to our physical church, all of our people love having you guys there.

And we always look forward to having you there when you can come physically to our physical church. But this is great, too, because so many of you are here with us and we recognize that. We love it. We see Park Meadows as sort of the foundation for all the ministry that I'm able to do around the country, even with you guys.

So we welcome you today. I want to welcome our church family. We're a little country church. I mean, if we're lucky, we run 60 on Easter. So we're a little country church in a town that doesn't grow much, unfortunately.

But we have a great group of people, and everyone is in the Word in our church. There's no exception to it. We don't fight over the color of the carpet, stuff like that. We're just in the Word together.

So we're happy to invite you to be with us today. Romans 8 23, and not only they, but we ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves grown within ourselves, waiting for the adoption to wit, the redemption of the body.

The Fall, Human Depravity, and God’s Sovereign Plan

And the cool thing about that, when you really take a look at that verse, it's actually talking of the redemption of the body. That hasn't happened yet. We have been adopted. We have been redeemed. We have been bought by a price, set free from the slave market of the world, the flesh, and the devil by the blood of Jesus.

We know that. That's past tense if we're born again, right? But there is a future tense of salvation, and this is talking about the redemption of our physical body, which we know, if we're honest, it pulls against us, and it pulls against what God wants, and even what we want to do with God.

It totally pulls the wrong way. The old man is not saved, couldn't be saved. That's why God crucified your old man in Christ. When Jesus, when he died on the cross and was buried, we were placed in him by the Father because he's not bound by time.

It's a mysterious thing, but we were placed in the body of Christ when he was on the tree. Our old man was in him, and our sins were totally paid for by him as he died and gave his life and his blood.

And that old man was buried with him in the grave for three days. And then when he rose again, our new man rose again. The old man is still in the grave. Now, that's how we should count the old man that we live in.

This physical body, count it as if it's crucified because it is in God's mind, and live a resurrected life, right? That's what it's all about. But that's a moment-by-moment thing because you have to choose to be spirit-filled.

And so you have to make that choice. So you just, how do you do it? Reach up and grab Jesus' hand and say, where are we going to do today? Where are we going today? And just keep doing that all day. Bible says in 1 John, as long as you're doing that, you cannot and will not sin because your spirit and Christ's spirit become one spirit.

Your spirit and the Holy Spirit become one spirit, and you walk where your spirit controls your mind, which controls your body, and your body now is a living sacrifice. And this is the order God built us to be in the Garden of Eden before the fall.

Then the fall changed everything, which this talks about. You see in the middle of that verse where it says we ourselves groan? And when you look at the rest of the passage here in this little section in Romans 8, it says the whole creation of God is groaning because there was a curse placed on man and on the earth itself when Adam and Eve fell.

And we, we the humans, chose that we wanted good and evil. We only had good, and Satan tempted Eve, I understand that. She said, oh, I want good and evil, and Satan made her believe it was God's will for her to get it.

Adam knew the whole time that was not right, and he sinned willfully. And when he took the fruit and ate, that's when the whole universe changed. Everything in God's cosmos, which implies in the Greek orderly creation, was put a little bit out of order.

Now, none of this surprised God. He had planned it that way. And you say, what? Of course he did, because the Bible says Jesus was slain before the foundation of the world. God only has one plan. He doesn't need 15 plans.

He's perfect. He has one plan, and we're in it. And the difference between us and him, many differences, of course, but he sees the whole plan and has all the information, and we don't. So sometimes we complain about things.

Say, how could a loving God do this to good people? Well, you know what? We don't see the whole picture. I guarantee you one thing. It doesn't change one bit of fact that he is a loving God. When we question, it doesn't change the fact that he is God, he is loving, he knows everything, and he's in complete control of everything, and he's pleased with his plan.

Now, I know we can do things that displease him. We can sin, displease the Lord, but he will never be displeased with his whole plan, because he's sovereign and this is his plan. You got to learn that.

I mean, that's not taught readily anymore. 150 years ago, when the great Charles Spurgeon preached and other great preachers, D .L. Moody, Whitefield, you just go down the road, they knew these things, and it's in all their sermons if you'll go read them.

This is not new stuff. The new stuff is the bad stuff, stuff where man becomes more of a part of his own salvation, which is impossible, by the way, but that's the theology of today, that you have to do something.

Sure, you have to help a little bit, and we're not on that today, so I don't want to get on the rabbit trail there. All right, so let's keep looking here. As we go into this passage, and a little bit of review here, look right in the middle.

Jesus, I mean, the Apostle Paul, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit says, I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

Now, in the context of this, when is this going to be revealed? At the rapture. You see, so right here in the middle of Romans chapter eight is a section on the second coming and the rapture. I have to admit, I just had not thought about that before, but there it is.

And then right here, see all these places where it says creature, and you say, well, why do you use the King James, Brother David, that old language? Well, because it is the most accurate, as far as I'm concerned, the only accurate English version of the Bible on the planet.

I spent two years studying manuscript evidence. I can't in five minutes convince you of what I found. You'd have to do your own study, but I'm telling you the modern versions have so many multiple errors.

And I'm not talking about just word differences. I'm talking about where the Greek is wrong behind the New Testament, so forth. I don't want to go into that. It's another rabbit trail. But the King James does have old English, and we have to look to the Greek that was behind that manuscript.

And I know there's more than one manuscript behind it, of course. I don't want to go into all that. But if you look at this word, it's really quite simple sometimes. You don't have to have a PhD to figure it out.

But if you just go down and look at verse 22, where it says the word creation, notice this says creature, but this word is titsis. It's the same exact word here, here, and here. So what I like to do is just do that.

I just, in my Bible, I just put them all creation, because that's what the word is. All right, same word in the Greek, same word in the English would be better. So this, when you see that, this is talking about the entire creation of God is groaning because of the fall of man, and it wants to be put back in order.

For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now, until the time Paul wrote this, and it's still true today. So the whole creation is just waiting for the Lord to come back.

And I believe the rapture happens at that time, not seven years prior to it. I don't break fellowship with anybody that believes anything they want to believe about the end times, but I have been challenged to study this on my own, rather than just taking mentors' word for it and books like the Pentecost book on things to come, Dwight Pentecost, that's the Bible.

But that thing was written so many years ago, he didn't have enough insight. I'll say, I'll put it nicely. He didn't have enough insight yet. You and I can easily see more things about the end times now than we could even 50 years ago.

I'll show you why in a minute. But it's exciting. You know, you got to have an open mind about this because I'm going to launch into it. And why? The reason is because Romans 8 launches into it here, and that's what we're studying.

I'm not, I didn't plan this just to be a topical study on the end times because of the coronavirus or anything like that. This happened to be right where our church was when this happened. We were right here.

I was already preaching about this for a Sunday or two, and then we just continue. So it's a wonderful thing how the Lord brought this topic at this time though. All right, now in John chapter three, verse 16 is the most popular verse in the Bible, but it's also the most misunderstood verse in the whole Bible.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. What a beautiful, beautiful verse. And it speaks so much of the gospel right there in one verse.

John 3:16, Total Depravity, and Regeneration

But you have to remember, God didn't write that verse first. He wrote the whole book of Genesis first. And that includes the fall of man and the depravity of man. And until you understand that man is totally depraved, and I know theologians today say, oh, no, it doesn't mean totally.

Yeah, it means totally. The Bible's clear on it. There's none that seeketh God, not one, the Bible says. We've all gone after our own way, the Bible says. And we shake our little fists at God. Now this is before we're saved, right?

This is the natural man. None seeks God, the Bible says. The Bible says our eyes were blind to God. Our ears were deaf to God. Our soul and spirit were dead. And the Holy Spirit had to come and quicken us while we were yet in our sins.

Hath he quickened us? That's regeneration. By the way, you hadn't done a thing at that point. It's all of God. Check it out. You know what the great prince of preachers, Charles Spurgeon, said one time?

He said, you know what? An effect can never be the cause of the cause. And the cause of your regeneration was the Holy Spirit breathing life into you just like he did Adam. Same way, only spiritually.

And that's what caused your salvation and everything else after it was an effect. And none of those effects can cause it. That'll give you something to study for the next two weeks. Take a look at that.

Study it. Because all the churches have four or five, one or two, Baptists have, I grew up Baptist. We took that off the sign and I'm not against Baptists. I just, I don't know. Modern is not the same as when Spurgeon lived.

I'm more like a Spurgeon Baptist. But if we put that on the sign, no one would come to church. Spurgeon Baptist Church, nah, it doesn't work. So we just took it off so we don't confuse anybody. But even the Baptists have at least two things that man is required to do to save himself.

Believe and repent, right? Well, that's not how it works. Those are effects. The only reason that you believe and repent is because the Holy Spirit turned your lights on. Now go, you don't have to agree with me.

I'm not here to teach you. I'm here to get you to study. So please do. And we can, you know, we've been throughout the idea not too long ago, maybe we have a question and answer session sometime. We don't do that at church.

When the man of God's preaching, he preaches, he sits down and then we pray and then we go eat, okay? And, but we could have a different time during the week when we could have question and answer. So do your study first though.

I don't want to talk to you about it until you've done your study. That wouldn't be a fair argument. All right, so here we go. Look at this. In this verse, God so loved the word world. The word world is the word cosmos, which means orderly arrangement.

When God put the order into the whole universe and the earth in Genesis chapter one. And so this is not just saying Jesus died to save us. He did, and that's a big, big benefit to us. He died to save the whole universe and put it back in order.

You've got to know that to understand it. What's interesting, if you go ahead and you read the context of John 3, 16, which means verse 17, verse 18, verse 19, verse 20, verse 21, you will see the depravity of man right there.

Because it says, you know, when Jesus came, no one wanted him. No one wanted him. The world loved its darkness and it rejected the light. Check it out, you'll see I'm right. The depravity of man has to be understood first before you can ever understand what the death of Jesus and his blood and his resurrection and his Holy Spirit coming to call you and tap you on the shoulder and wake you up where, oh, there's my shepherd.

I'm a sheep, I'm hungry, and he's got all the food. Oh, my eyes are open. I see him for the first time. My ears are open. I hear him. I hear his invitation. He's irresistible and I get saved. You see, it was all him doing it, not us.

All we did was receive a wonderful free gift. That's the old fashioned gospel right there. Check it out, go read books. I don't like to read modern books. On theology, read the old ones, 150 years old.

That's the best. All right, so here's what happened. You had the world without form and void. The Holy Spirit hovered over it and he brought order, right? And then you had man in the garden and it was perfect, it was beautiful.

Man, Adam and Eve had everything they needed. All they had was good. And Satan came and offered them bad. And they said, well, we want that too. So now we have that with it. This is what our cities look like now.

All right, now, except the streets would be empty now, wouldn't they? God knows how to empty the streets too. And you say, oh, the devil did it. Listen, God is sovereign, right? Satan just serves him.

And he's one of the ministers of God. And I know that sounds weird to you, but Satan, all the creation of God serves God. So the problem is some of them serve him unwillingly like Satan and his imps. And then like the goats and the tares on the earth, they don't realize it.

Everything they're doing is to put stuff on the shelf for God's people. So they're serving God too. I learned that from Brother Otis. But here's the state we're in now, see? And because now, now when you think about this, when people start saying, well, how can a good God do this to good, you know, to good bad things to good people?

Here's the thing, it's because we ask for it. So we got what we asked for. We said, we don't want just good. You know, let's back up a little bit. We don't want just that. We want to know evil too. So now with all of the beautiful waterfalls and the streams and the green grass and the trees and our spouses and our babies that are born and our grandbabies that are born and all the beautiful things like the ocean on the Caribbean, that blue water, blue sky, all of that beautiful, good stuff we get to enjoy, but we also get the bad with it, like the coronavirus.

It just comes right with it. So you got to get used to that. And when the bad hits, the Lord calls that the evil day, you need to already have the whole armor of God on. And then you may not be real happy during the evil day, but you can be joyful.

And there's a difference. God wants us to be happy too, but that's seasonal. There are seasons of happiness and peace. And then there are seasons of spiritual warfare that we all go through. I don't know about you, but our family has gone through some of that just during the stress of this time.

And we're all in different households. And I was fortunate enough to have two sons that lived in Austin and they want to get out of there fast. For one thing, it's a liberal city. And so they're going to shut it down real heavy, we thought.

And so they came, so Paul and Matthew came to stay here and Paul's fiance came and Matthew's girlfriend came and they're here with us. Took us about four days to get used to that many people in the house.

And then after that, it's been awesome because we have each other to play games with, we can eat together, we can talk about everything going on. But listen, it brings stress. And we've had different ones of us in our family, myself included, it got really uptight.

It got a little bit biting at each other, nipping at each other. We've all gone through that. You have too. And yet, you know what? We've had a closeness to the Lord and to each other like we've never had before.

And you'll have that too. So you get the good and the evil, right? That's what we asked for. That's what we got. But guess what? According to John 3, 16, when Jesus comes back, it's the second coming, he sets up his kingdom.

He's going to put it back almost like it was in the Garden of Eden. Look at that, you got the lion laying down with the lamb and children will be able to play with them. Isn't that amazing? So this is coming in our future.

Jesus talked about this. They asked him, tell us, when will these things happen? What is the sign of your second coming and of the end of the age? The Greek word there for world is age. When's the end of the church age?

When are you coming is what they're asking him. And he told them, and I had a friend once that challenged me and said, David, would you consider letting Jesus Christ's chronology, the end times, be more important to you than the books you've read?

And from that point, I studied for a solid year on the end times. I never had an interest in it before. And I learned my teaching, the things I had been taught were wrong. And the things I had been teaching were wrong.

So I had to apologize for them and take them back and teach it according to scripture after that. But anyway, we'll talk about that a little bit more. But notice here that he talks about pestilences. They're in verse seven.

Well, that's what the coronavirus is. It's one of those. And earthquakes and all these things in diverse places, wars, rumors of wars, we've always had those. But here's the key. Jesus gave the key right there.

All these things are the beginning of sorrows. That's an idiomatic expression in the Eastern world. It means birth pangs. So it's like a woman about to have a baby. The birth pangs get closer together, harder, closer together, harder, closer together, harder, and then the baby's born.

And that's the key to understanding these things. And Jesus gave us that key. So he also said in this beautiful passage, you know, he said, see that you be not troubled. Now there's a message for us today, don't you think?

Because this is troubling times. But be not troubled as a Christian for all these things must come to pass. Listen, God is right on his timeline. He is sovereign. He is exactly right on his plan. Jesus may have his feet on the threshold of the door of coming back again right this minute.

We don't know the day and the hour, but you know what? We can sure see when the trees are budding that summer is near. I grew up on a ranch. I mean, I know how to do that stuff, right? I know how to know when summer's close.

Well, we can do that by reading these passages. All right, so it goes on through. You know, it tells us, here's the key now. Verse 15, when you see a temple built, on the temple mount, which hasn't happened yet, that's when you start thinking about, okay, I might need to have a safe place to be for a while.

That hasn't happened. But when you see them start to build that temple, I don't know if President Trump will have something to do with getting rid of the mosques that are in the way or not. I don't know who will do it.

Someone will do it. And there'll be a Jewish temple built on the mountain where the old temple was. And when you see a man come and offer a pig on that and blaspheme God, you have three and a half years before Jesus is coming back at that point.

And you got three and a half years of the worst tribulation you'll ever see on this earth. So you need to have a safe place to be, and it ain't in the city. So please listen to me, all my friends out there, in all the great cities we've been to, Boston, New York, you know, Seattle, you can just name, you go through Dallas, Houston, name them, all over the country where Tradeway's been.

Our friends all around there, DC, all of these places, you need to get out of the city when that happens. Now, you haven't seen the temple built. So like Jesus said, let's go back to this. Be not troubled, these things must come to pass, the end is not yet.

So you have time, is my point. We have time to continue working right now. And this could be a wake-up call, and maybe it is. Maybe we need to start thinking about preparing, but we still have work to do.

My friend that challenged me about, you know, would you let Jesus' chronology be more important, he also asked me one other interesting question. He said, how many last trumps can there be? Because he said, David, that's when the rapture happens.

And I didn't want to debate him. I walked away and said, I'll think about it, friend. And for a year, I studied it, and my view did change. I used to believe the rapture happened at the front end of the seven years.

And then the second coming happened seven years after that. I no longer believe that. So this is what we're looking for, is the building of the new temple. And that's when we need to start getting really, like, there's not much time left at that point.

But we're not there yet. We're at a time now where the Lord is still preparing us and helping us to know to get ready. All right, so now, in my study on the chronology of the end times, I did that study that year, and have continued to do that study from time to time as the Lord leads me to do it.

And I want you to notice, we talked about last time about the manner, in other words, how Jesus comes, and the chronology, because both are clues that will destroy a theory that's not the truth. Because theories, what is a theory?

A theory is put there to be shot down, the same in science as it is in theology. It's okay to ask questions and put a thought out there and say, could it be this way? Could it be that Jesus comes in a secret way where no one sees him, and the church goes up, seven years go by, and then he and the church come back?

Could it be that way? It was okay to explore that. There's an interesting book out there written by a journalist whose dad and granddad were pastors, and he went and found the history of this theory and the house it started in.

You might want to check that out. But anyway, I've read a couple of books by this gentleman. They're fascinating, but it's just a theory. So listen, if there's several points of scripture that shoot it down, then shoot it down.

Truth is more important than getting emotional about a belief we've had. You got to get over that. And the minute you get over that, God sets you free. You got to realize some of the stuff your denomination taught you is wrong, and you got to let it go and quit being denominational in that sense, and take the good stuff that fits the Bible and keep it.

It's like eating fish, I've heard. You know, like you eat the meat, you spit out the bones. You just can't keep the false stuff when you see it's false. That's cheating. We don't want to cheat. And I know we made it available to you.

We have something you can get hold of called the Ten Commandments of Proper Bible Interpretation, and Dave Huber will make that available. Ben Russell will make that available if you ask for it. All right, so let's look at the manner.

The Coming of Christ Will Not Be Secret

Jesus said how he's not coming, and this is interesting. He said there's going to be many false teachers. They're going to say, hey, he's already come, and he's in a secret place. So there was a secret coming where you didn't see him come.

No one saw him come, and he's already come, and he's out in the desert, or he's in a room somewhere, and he came early. Well, what happened was when they taught this, Paul said, I have to correct this because there are many people who are believing it, and it is hurting their faith, all right?

So Jesus said when they teach this, don't believe it, all right, do not believe it. He said, I'm not going to come in a secret way. Now, that doesn't fit the theory that says seven years before he comes, he comes in a secret way.

It just doesn't fit it, if you think that through and be honest about it. All right, so there's not a secret coming. There's only one coming mentioned in the Bible of Jesus, the second coming. I know he came first, but there's only one type of second coming ever mentioned anywhere in the scripture, and it's like this.

Jesus himself described it right here in this passage. It's going to be like the lightning from the east to the west when I come, all right? That's what it's going to be like. That is not secret. And then he gives this interesting bit of information that always bothered me when I used to teach the old theory because I knew there was scripture it didn't fit, and I would just usually skip verses like verse 28 because if you look at this, it's an allegorical teaching.

I don't know why the Lord uses this to teach about this, but he says, it's like when I come, it's like I'm a carcass, and you, the church, are like buzzards, that's what we call them in Texas, that flock to that carcass.

He said, so when I come in the air, the church is just going to flock to me like buzzards do a carcass. Why he used that, I don't know, but he did. And I want you to notice it happens after the second coming, not before it.

You see it right there? This is Jesus's chronology. I'm going to come like lightning from the east to the west first, then it'll be like the eagles gathering to the carcass. That's the rapture. It happens after the second coming.

It's actually with it, but it's a few nanoseconds after it, not seven years before it. Revelation chapter one, verse seven says the same thing. When he does come, every eye will see him. So it's not a secret coming and there's not one.

That'll make you study. I'm not here to teach you. I just want, I want to challenge you. Look, if you disagree with me, that's okay, because the man that challenged me with those two questions, how many last trumps can there be?

And would you consider letting Jesus's chronology be more important than your books? He caused me to study for a year or two. He didn't even know it, unless he's listening to this. All right, but praise God for him.

God used him in my life and I hope he used me in yours. This is important stuff because listen, the greatest lie Satan ever told, if you were him and you wanted to massacre millions of Christians and Jewish people, what would be the smartest lie you could tell?

Well, tell him, hey, you're not even going to be here, so don't prepare. You don't need to worry about it. Well, I think that's what he did. And he used some good people to propagate that lie, unfortunately.

So the chronology, according to Jesus, he says immediately after the tribulation of those days, and then he comes in and says in verse 30, that his angels will go around and gather, you know, all of the people, all of his people, and that's the rapture.

So you have the tribulation first, then you see the second coming, and then you see whatever this is talking about. There's a great sound of a trumpet. How many last trumps can there be? And the angels will gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other, and from the earth, the four winds are on the earth.

So you got all the saints from heaven and earth are gathered together. What does that sound like? Sounds to me like the rapture, and you'll notice it happens after the tribulation, and it happens after the second coming.