Romans 8:9-11

Coram Deo Reformed Baptist Church iconCoram Deo Reformed Baptist Church

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So just three verses today, Romans 8, verses 9 -11.
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I'm going to start back in verse 1 reading, so we'll have a little bit more context about what we're covering.
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Verse 1 says, There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the
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Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
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For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do, by sending His own
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Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the
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Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the
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Spirit set their minds on the things of the
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Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the
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Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot.
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Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the
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Spirit. In fact, the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the
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Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the
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Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the
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Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised
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Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.
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So over the end of chapter 7, the beginning of chapter 9, we see where Paul is making this contrast between the flesh and the
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Spirit. The mind that is set on the flesh and on the Spirit.
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And at the end of what we read last week in 7 and 8, we see where he is saying that those who have their minds set on the flesh are condemned.
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They cannot please God. They lack the capacity, the ability to be able to please
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God. And in verse 9, we see, however, you, however, are not in the flesh, but in the
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Spirit. In fact, the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the
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Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him. Paul has pointed out a very important prerequisite to be a member of the church.
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Those that are indwelt with the Holy Spirit. You have to have the
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Holy Spirit. You have to be born again. No natural man ever born had that save one, two.
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I forgot about John the Baptist. But in our natural state, just as Paul said, we lack the capacity.
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The Holy Spirit is the one who gives us the capacity to please God. He is the one that causes us to do so.
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He is the one who brings us under the conviction of sin, causes true repentance, and works out our sanctification.
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He causes us to understand God's Word. Not know it, but understand it. Conforms us to the image of Christ.
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He is God's seal upon His elect.
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Every saint that ever was, or is, or will be, had, has, or will have that seal.
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The Holy Spirit making His dwelling place in the believer. Every person that has the
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Holy Spirit can rest knowing with absolute certainty that they are safe from the wrath to come.
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And they are truly justified. If you weren't, you wouldn't have the
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Holy Spirit. We see in other places where Scripture affirms this.
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One being in Ezekiel, chapter 11, verse 19.
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And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you, and I will take a stony heart out of their flesh, and I will give them a new heart of flesh made new.
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This is hundreds of years before Christ says this in John 14, verses 15 to 31.
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If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. And I will ask the
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Father, and He will give you another Helper to be with you forever, even the
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Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees
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Him nor knows Him. You know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.
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What a privilege it is for the saints that God has made
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His temple in us. In all of us.
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But how do we tell? How do we tell that one is indwelt with the Holy Spirit?
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We can't see the Holy Spirit. There's not a scientific test that you can perform on someone.
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Well, Paul gives us an idea in Galatians. In chapter 5, verse 22, he says,
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But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control.
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Against such things there is no law. The person that is indwelt with the Holy Spirit will begin to show these traits.
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They don't happen overnight. They don't happen automatically. But that lack of self -control, of impulse control, will over time show itself and become self -control.
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That lack of love and patience with the people around you, you begin to show love and patience.
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You become a different person. We should always look at these things in ourselves.
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We should look for them in each other. And when we see them, fortunately one thing that humans aren't good at is encouragement.
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But when you see change in a person, in a member of the church, point it out.
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Encourage them. Speaking of sanctification, in the very early stages of my sanctification,
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I came across a Bible verse that really stuck out. The second or third time
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I read it. Matthew 7, verse 21 -23.
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Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.
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But the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
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First of all, the only people that can do the will of God are those who are compelled to do so by the
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Holy Spirit. You cannot be obedient. We've already covered that in Romans. It says,
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On that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?
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And then I will declare to them, I never knew you.
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Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. Admittedly, that scared the daylights out of me.
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And it stuck with me for months. I was very young.
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I didn't fully understand the meaning of the passage.
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And it was the scariest three verses I had read. And it stayed that way for a while.
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Because I did not want to be one of those people who on the day of judgment stood before Christ and heard depart from me.
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But if you notice something, notice that the people in this passage, what is their boast?
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What are they laying claim to? Did we not prophesy in your name?
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Did we not cast out demons in your name and do mighty works in your name? They're resting on their own works.
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Well, we did this and we did this and we did this. And Christ says,
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I have no idea who you are. You're not mine. Finally coming to the understanding of that passage lets you understand that the only answer that can be given when you're standing in that position, the only answer that can be given is because you.
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Because you did that work on the cross. Because you chose me before the foundations of the earth.
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Because you continually gave intercession for me before the Father. Every time that I fell short, one thing that every true believer that has the
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Holy Spirit comes to understand is ultimately that is the only thing that matters.
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What he did. And for the folks in the latter part of verse 9, sadly, though justly, they will be condemned right along with the people that Christ mentions in Matthew.
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I'm going to take this opportunity to point out, just for a moment, I don't want to side rail too hard, this is why the church should not baptize people en masse with no regard for what they're actually doing.
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Come up, pray a prayer, have a dunk, send you on your way. All you have done is given them false assurance and made it that much harder for someone to witness to them.
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Because they're going to walk right out the door and continue to live the same life that they lived before they ever walked through them.
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That's it. And that's what the Baptist church has done for the past 50 years.
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Not all of them, but the vast majority. And if you don't think that they have, take another look at the church.
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Look at the state that it's in. It's certainly not healthy.
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Whether you disagree on this doctrine, or this doctrine here, or on Calvinism, or on your eschatology, the church is not healthy.
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Never mind the Methodist church. It's because just baptizing people because they say something, well, of course they said it.
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Their friends said it. Their mom and dad said it. We have to look for these things.
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You have to see the change. We can't always be absolutely sure.
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This is why we have church discipline. But that is one of the largest reasons why we have so many issues in the church is because of letting people in who don't belong there.
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If you're an unbeliever, you're more than welcome to come to church, to sing with us, to pray with us.
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You are not welcome to be a member. You're not.
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Because the church is for the saints. Period. It's prescribed.
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Back to Romans. Verse 10 says, But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the
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Spirit is life because of righteousness. This verse can be a little confusing.
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You want to say the Spirit is alive because of righteousness. We'll get there in a second.
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Paul then gives us a wonderful contrast again against what he just previously said.
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Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the
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Spirit is life because of righteousness. I rather enjoy how
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Paul goes back and forth the way he does through 7 and 8.
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But in contrast to those who are condemned, says Paul, but or however, if Christ is in you.
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I looked at the Greek. If Christ is in you is what it says. So how does that work exactly?
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Christ is in us and we are in him.
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We're in dwelt with the Holy Spirit. We have our own spirits. How does that exactly?
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How does that work? Paul tells us in Colossians chapter 1 verse 27.
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It says this. To them, God chose to make known how great among the
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Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is
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Christ in you, the hope of glory. It's a mystery.
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We go back to John 14. This is Jesus replied.
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If anyone loves me, he will keep my word.
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My father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him.
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Now it's the Holy Spirit, the father and the son. Let's go to Matthew 25 real quick.
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Verses 31 to 39. When the son of man...
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These are red words, by the way. When the son of man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne.
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Before him will be gathered all the nations and he will separate people one from the other as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
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If you wonder why we use the term sheep and goat, here you go. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left.
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Then the king will say to those on his right, Come, you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
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For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink.
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I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me.
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I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me. Then the righteous will answer him saying,
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Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you drink?
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And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you? Or naked and clothe you?
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And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you? And the king will answer them,
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Truly I say to you, as you did to one of the least of my brothers, you did it to me.
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Christ is very obviously referring to the saints as the sheep, to his people as the sheep, everyone else as the goats.
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When one saint does something for another saint, when you visit one in prison, when you welcome one into your home, not only are you doing it for one of the people of God, therefore you're doing it for God.
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Also, in a very real sense, you're doing it for God.
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You're doing it for Christ, because He is with them.
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He is with us. Is He sitting at the right hand of the
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Father, constantly making intercession for us? Absolutely. Is He with us throughout our daily lives?
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Absolutely. How? I have no idea. I don't know how that works.
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And Paul says, it's a mystery. You want another one?
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Describe the Trinity in another way other than the Athanasian Creed.
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That's correct. I promise you can't.
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And not just a description of it, but how it works. How does the
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Trinity work? I have no idea.
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Neither does Paul, or Peter, or James, or John. There are three persons that know how the
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Trinity works, and they have yet to reveal it to us. And as saints, we can absolutely be appreciative of the fact that He knows.
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He knows how it works. And it's okay that He hasn't told us. Most of the things that He has told us, we have trouble with.
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Paul continues, although the body is dead because of sin, meaning our corruptible flesh, these physical bodies that we have right now, one day, either abruptly or slowly, they will stop working.
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They will come to an end. They will break down. They will pass away, as everything of this world must.
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This is the iron, and the copper, clay, gold, and silver.
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Everything must pass away, including our mortal bodies. Hebrews 9, the author says in verse 27,
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And just as it is appointed for man once to die, and after that comes judgment.
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This deals with several things right off the bat that I'm not even going to get into right now, but a majority of what the world believes about the afterlife, taken care of right there, boom, done.
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You die, and you're judged. That's it.
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But the key part here that we're talking about, it is appointed for man to die once.
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You will die. I will die.
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Everyone who is alive right now will die one day. And it is a very reassuring thing, and I'll tell you why.
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Number one, no one escapes it. We are all condemned to death.
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For saints, it should not be a sad thing. It should be another point of fact of this world.
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That is how you ought to look at it. Why? You might say.
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Here's why. Because Paul continues, and he says, This spirit is life because of righteousness. Your mortal body will absolutely break down, stop working, pass away.
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In other parts of Scripture, it's described as, for the saints, it's going to sleep. Temporary.
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The word in the Greek is temporary. It's a temporary word.
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Now, is Paul talking about the Holy Spirit here? Is he talking about our human spirits?
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Well, taking into context what Paul has been talking about in his contrast between the flesh and the spirit, the mind that is set on the flesh, the mind that is set on the spirit, these two different types of people, and what he just said in reference to our physical bodies, it's quite well safe to say that he's talking about our spirits, our soul, the human soul, that though our bodies will wither and die, our souls are alive.
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They are life. Or zoe in the
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Greek gives reference to the word life in a future tense.
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Eternal life. Our lives, our spirits, have eternal life because of righteousness.
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Think on that for just a moment. Your body, just like everyone else in the world, is condemned to death because it is corrupt.
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But unlike everyone else, your spirit, your soul, has been granted the gift of eternal life.
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This is why Paul refers to it as sleep, as a temporary thing.
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Death is not permanent for the saints. Why? Because of righteousness.
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Whose righteousness? Definitely not your righteousness. I can promise you that much.
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Not because of my righteousness. It is because of the righteousness that is imputed to us by Christ Jesus.
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It is his righteousness, imputed to us by faith.
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Paul continues this encouragement in verse 11. He says, If the spirit of him who raised
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Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you.
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Rest assured that if you are indwelt with the Holy Spirit, if you are a saint, then the
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Father who raised Jesus from the dead is the affirmation of the acceptance of Christ's sacrifice on the cross for his people.
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Understand that the Father who raised Christ from the dead will also raise your body from death through the
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Holy Spirit who dwells in you. If we look at John 5, verse 21, it says,
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Just as the Father raised the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he wishes.
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He's not referencing our mortal lives. He's talking about eternal life for his people.
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And if we look all the way back at the very beginning, go all the way back to Genesis, back to creation.
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I don't have any references in this section, so your fingers can have a rest. We're human beings.
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God made us to be physical and spiritual beings, not one or the other.
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We're different from everything else on earth. God made man, and then
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He made woman, and then He said that it was very good. That has to be in there.
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You can't say that He made Adam and said it was very good. He didn't. He said it was not good. So He made the woman, they were together, and He said it was very good.
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You can't have one without the other. Also, that's how it ought to be.
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But because this is how it ought to be, God said it was good, meaning perfect, and we understand
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His meaning of perfection, what He calls perfect.
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Because this is how it ought to be, it is how it will be again.
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There will come a time when the earth is made new. It might be shocking, but one of the most common misunderstandings of our current
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Christian culture is that you will die, and you will go to heaven, and that's it.
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Forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. Some people even throw wings and stuff in there, flutes and whatnot.
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But just as I said, that is not at all correct. Our souls rest in heaven.
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They rest there. It is a temporary state. It is not how humans are supposed to be.
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Just as Abraham's bosom, as paradise, was a temporary state, so is heaven.
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So is the place that saints go now when they die. The world will be made new.
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We will be made new. And there will most definitely be a day when we are fully glorified in body and soul.
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And though there are tertiary disagreements on the events leading up to the consummation, the consummation between Christ and His bride will absolutely take place.
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As you go through this week, please, in your prayers, praise God for the work that He is doing in you.
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Praise God for the work that He has finished for you. And if you are not one of those people, if you are not a saint, if you don't pray and you don't reach out to God and you are not indwelt with the
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Holy Spirit, then please, I beg, please cry out to Him.
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Cry out to Him and beg Him to save you, and He will. He promised, and God can't lie, that anyone who comes to Him, He will grant to them eternal life.
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And it's not something that you have to do or that will have to be done in the future. It is something that is done already.
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I'll end with Revelation. Chapter 21, verses 1 through 4.
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It says, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
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And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, adorned for her husband.
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And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.
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He will dwell with them, and they will be His people. And God Himself will be with them as their
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God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more.
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Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more, for those former things have passed away.