God's Work in Us — Michael L. Brown

We honor you and glorify you. We pray, Father, that the truth of your word would be communicated in such a way that it would make a lasting impact on us. Father, we're not just here for more information.

Some of us have heard thousands of messages or preached thousands of messages. We want your truth and the anointed power and life of your spirit and hearts that are ready to receive. Speak to us, O God.

Our ears and hearts are open. Help us to be doers of your word and not hearers only. In Jesus' name, Amen. Turn with me in your Bibles to Colossians, the first chapter. I think I'm going to switch to the other mic, okay?

Also, I just looked back thinking that I would drink some water and realized that the only water up here looks more like anointing oil. So, if there's any water in the house, that would be great. Colossians, the first chapter.

You know, sometimes God brings things up in your heart and mind that you're totally familiar with, that you can quote the Scriptures on in your sleep practically, and yet He brings them to you with a certain force and reality because He wants you to take hold of these things because He's ready to breathe life into a certain truth in His Word.

I was praying before the meeting and I was thinking about how according to the Word, we're to love the Word of God. And according to the Word, we're to love God with all of our heart and soul. And according to the Word, we're to love our neighbors and ourself.

And according to the Word, we're to love the lost and on and on. How do you actually do this? And how do you actually love what's good and hate what's evil? How do you actually walk in the reality of these things?

How can you be everything that God is calling you to be and do everything that God is calling you to do? Most of us, the answer is to try even harder, to work at it even more. And certainly, we are called to work together with God.

But there's a certain truth I believe the Holy Spirit wants us to take hold of tonight. So we're gonna be looking at a good amount of Scripture. But starting in Colossians, the first chapter, Paul's writing in verse 24, it's an extraordinary chapter.

If you're not well familiar with it, read it through later tonight through the whole chapter. But he says in verse 24, now I rejoice in what was suffered for you and fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Messiah's afflictions for the sake of His body, which is the church.

I become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the Word of God in its fullness, the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints.

Before we read further, I want you to realize these are big words. This is a big thing. Something that has been hidden from all the previous generations. Something new, something distinct. A new insight, a new opening up of the Word, a new revelation, and it's big.

And now he's reiterating it. He's making it known. He speaks of the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. To them, God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

We proclaim Him admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ to this end I labor, struggling with all His energy, which so powerfully works in me.

Thanks, man. Thanks. Appreciate that. Give me one second, please. For those of you who are desperately thirsty, this is a picture of American waste. This is a picture of America and the rest of the world.

Then I have two bottles up here and you have none. All right, we're gonna try again, see if we got the sound working a little better here. Colossians 1, there's no question that Paul is a hard worker for Jesus.

There's no question that he sacrificed. There's no question that he pushed himself to the limit. And here in this very chapter, he plainly speaks about it. And he speaks about here in the end of this chapter, struggling, but he speaks of struggling with all of the energy of Jesus, which so powerfully works in him.

So he's speaking of laboring and working, but then he speaks of God's energy, God's power working within him. And then it says the great mystery, the great revelation, the incredible thing is this revelation of Jesus the Messiah in us.

What's he talking about? What does it actually mean? What makes us different from every different religious group in the entire world? What makes us different? Is it just that we have the true message, that we have the truth and no one else has the truth?

Or is there something different in our experience of God? Is it just abstract theory? One believes this, one believes this. We believe the right things. Or is there something more? I want you to understand the something more tonight.

If you can take hold of this, this is a key, a foundational key to living a victorious, overcoming, fruit-bearing, effective, joy-filled life that brings blessing and light wherever it goes. It's a key to really living a transformed life that transforms the lives of others.

And it's simple and it's foundational, but it's one of the key revelations in the New Covenant. I want to show you something going back into the Old Testament. Look with me in Jeremiah, the 31st chapter.

I know this is familiar ground for some, but I want to look at the Scriptures. Jeremiah chapter 31, beginning in verse 31. The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them, declares the Lord.

There was nothing wrong with the covenant. There was something wrong with the people. There was nothing faulty in the laws of God. The laws of God are perfect. His statutes are pure. Everything in the law was good.

Everything reflected divine nature. There was nothing faulty in the law itself. There's nothing faulty in the 10 commandments and the rest of the covenant that God gave. The problem is the weakness of human nature.

The problem is God gives a command. We affirm this is a good command. We agree with it. We want to do it. We want to live by it. And we fall short time and time and time again. The problem is the people, not the covenant.

So God says, I'm going to make a new covenant. Verse 33, this is the covenant I'll make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my law in their hearts and their minds and write it on their hearts.

I will be their God and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, a man his brother saying, know the Lord because they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.

For I'll forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. And this is the age that we're in, the age of the new covenant, seeing the realization of this whole passage. What does God say?

He said, I'm going to put my laws on the inside of you. I'm going to write it in your hearts so that these things will become automatic to you. In other words, your very nature itself will be transformed and changed.

To say that the law is written in your heart does not mean that you break it freely because it's not on the outside anymore. It means it's natural to keep it. If the law's in your heart and you're driving down the street, talk about natural law, earthly law for a minute.

If you're in a zone that's a 40 mile an hour zone and you go driving at 90 miles an hour and the policeman pulls you over and says, didn't you see the signs? You say, I don't need to look at the signs.

The law's written in my heart. Now, if the law's written in your heart, then you keep the speed limit. It's an automatic thing. Instead of being on the outside of you, it's on the inside. Look at Ezekiel chapter 36, Ezekiel 36.

Look at what God promises there in terms of new covenant reality. And this ultimately will be fulfilled in front of our eyes as God brings the Jewish people back from around the world, not holy, still in their sin according to this, and then in the land, as we see now, sprinkles clean water on them.

That's when the change will come. Verse 24, for I'll take you out of the nations, I'll gather you from all the countries and will bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you and you'll be clean.

I'll cleanse you from all your impurities, from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

Verse 29, I will save you from all your uncleanness. God himself says he is going to do it. What we have experienced is gonna be experienced by Jewish people in a massive way at the end of the age. And a lot of you can relate to this.

When you got saved, something supernatural happened. How many of you had some kind of bondage, some kind of addiction, some kind of habit, some kind of lifestyle that enslaved you before you were saved?

Raise your hand. How many of you tried to get free from that and were never successful at breaking free in a lasting way before you were saved? For those listening on tape, a good half or more of the hands went up to the first question and over half of those went up for the second question.

How many of you, when you got saved, found a supernatural power to break free from that? Wonderfully so. In fact, how many of you found that your desires had changed? Hands going up all over the place.

That you no longer wanted to do the thing. It used to be your life. This used to be what you lived for, what you dreamed about. Everything was caught up in this. You were addicted to it. You lived for it.

You were enslaved by it. It was everything to you. And then you come to meet Jesus and something happens and you're changed. And the things that you used to love to do, for some, I know there was a battle, but for so many, you just got free.

The thing broke off of you. You didn't desire it anymore. You didn't want it anymore. You wanted God. You wanted to read the word. People that knew you thought, what in the world happened to you? Instead of using profanity and living a wicked life and doing all these lewd and lustful things, you're sitting there at lunch reading the Bible.

They're like, what? Did something happen to you, man? Are you sick in the head? I mean, it seems too far. They praised the Lord. I was born again. It's like, this is trouble, man. Call the doctor. Because it seems so out there.

But something actually happened. I remember hearing one of the simplest of stories when I was first saved, but there was a guy that had been a real foul sinner with a foul mouth that got wonderfully saved, but his coworkers didn't believe it until one day he was at work and doing construction work, and he hit his thumb with a hammer, smashed his thumb and yelled, hallelujah.

And they thought, this is real. This is real. This is God. Something happened to this man. When they just saw the thing, they'd shot out of his heart. It was not profanity or anger, but hallelujah. Crying out to God and praising God.

Something actually happened. I wonder, though, does it stop? I wonder, is that just the euphoria of the moment, the amazing honeymoon time when, wow, Jesus is everything to me, and He's all I care about, and all I want to do is live for Him, and then real life sets in, and it's a battle.

It's hard to pray. Who wants to fast in the Bible? Sometimes seems boring, and I don't have a burden for the loss. I want to have a burden for the loss, but I don't, and I want to be holy, but I like my sin.

Is that the way it is? And you just have to try and strive and fight and battle? Maybe it's somewhere in between. I mean, how does this thing actually work? And what's so big about this revelation of Christ in you, the hope of glory?

I mean, what's Paul actually talking about? I don't pretend to open up all of it tonight, all of what Paul was seeing and speaking of, but there's some fundamental things I believe God wants us to take hold of.

I had read the story of John Lake, John G. Lake, used as an apostle to South Africa about 100 years ago, somewhere around 1907 to 1912, five extraordinary years there, fruit that remains to this day. Extraordinary ministry of healing and miracles, and he was one that would sit with religious leaders from other religions and talk openly and find out what powers there were in different religious expressions and even visited seances to expose them and even saw the power of witch doctors and exposed the power.

I mean, he was really out there in spiritual things and totally lifting up Jesus. And it so happened that where he was in South Africa, that workers had come in from different nations and because of that, there were Hindus, there were people of other religious backgrounds, there was a Jewish community.

And he thought, why don't we gather all of these leaders together? In fact, the Jewish leader, the rabbi, one day became the chief rabbi of one of the churches.