What Has God Done to Secure Your Growth in Christ?

[0:00] I know I called an audible on you, didn't I? The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

[0:14] ! I want you to see this last verse because I want you to be reminded that when we sing this stuff, we're singing the truth to God and it's supposed to be an expression of our heart to Him as His child.

[0:45] Is that the last verse of that song before the chorus? The two choruses? Okay. Please think about how personal that is. There are going to be millions and millions and millions of names written in the wounds of Christ.

[1:03] But your name is there. Your name is there. He knows your name. He knows how many hairs are on your head right now.

[1:14] He knows every thought of your heart. He knows every intention of your heart. He knows everything that will take place in your life before you draw your last breath.

[1:26] Through your suffering, Lord, I'm free. Death is crushed to death. How profound.

[1:37] Life is mine to live. All because Jesus won that life through His selfless love for you. That's personal.

[1:49] And I don't want that to run by you. So that when we sing that to God, we're saying to the Lord, Thank you for making this personal. Thank you for having my name written in the wounds so that I can know the freedom that you provide.

[2:05] Isn't that marvelous? Don't you just almost want to stand up and sing it again? I do. That lit my fire and I needed that. When we were in Poland, it was very interesting that they are singers.

[2:21] And the songs they do, many of them are very similar to ours. So I'm standing up on the front row with my back to everybody, you know, right so I can get right up in the pulpit, as it were.

[2:35] And so I'm getting the full effect, similar to what you guys do. And there was one occasion, they sang a song that was very, very traditional.

[2:45] It sounded. Everything about it was traditional Polish. And the people that were standing off to the side leading, they weren't up front. They were just standing off to the side, about four of them.

[2:56] And they would do this echo part at one point. And guys, I wasn't ready for that. And it destroyed me. And they finished that song, and I was a mess.

[3:09] And then I had to get up, and I'm up there trying to gather myself. And I apologized, and I said, y'all destroyed me. That is one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard God's people utter in my 30-something years of ministry.

[3:24] That was a moment of, just go ahead and take me, Lord. I'm ready, kind of thing. Now, it's not that I don't experience that with you. I think part of it was just being around people that I didn't speak their language.

[3:36] I didn't understand a word of that song. Never heard it before in my life. But as I listened to them sing it to God, it was one of the most glorious things I've ever heard. And it was very humbling.

[3:47] And I was very thankful to be there. So I'm trying to tell you thank you. I'm trying to tell you thank you. Thank you for praying for your pastor. Thank you for allowing us to be involved in ministry there.

[4:00] Again, I'll have lots more to say perhaps next Sunday about all of this and fill you in on some of it as we brag on Jesus. And I want to bring you their greetings. They sent me with many, many greetings and thanks that I needed to convey to you on their behalf.

[4:18] They were so kind to us, especially as Suzanne lay up in the hotel room birthing that beast of a stone that finally came out at the end of the week, right as everything ended.

[4:29] Where's Suzanne? What day did you pass it? Was it Saturday? So the camp ended on Saturday morning. So in the wee hours of Saturday morning, she finally birthed it.

[4:43] And then the next adventure commenced. And we'll deal with that later. Well, for now, as we brag on the Lord, I have the opportunity then to bring you at least a good bit of a message that I brought to them.

[4:58] It's funny. These were nine lessons that I did in Poland, nine lessons on the topic of spiritual growth in Christ. That's what they assigned to me, the elders of their church.

[5:10] And so the first three lessons of the nine that I taught dealt with the foundation of our growth in Jesus Christ. What does it mean for Christians to grow spiritually?

[5:22] What is spiritual growth all about? How can we better understand that? So this was lesson number three of nine. And the final one that I was doing on laying the foundation for what we call spiritual growth.

[5:39] Quite challenging as we tried to do this with a translator. And as I tried to stay away from American idioms that wouldn't translate very well.

[5:49] And I know, I know better. I know better than to use American idioms because we've done this before. And when I was preaching on Sunday in the church, I was using an illustration and I was doing it offhand, trying very hard to help them understand.

[6:05] And the translator and I are going, and I used this idiom. I said, so what are you, are you guys going to plead the fifth at this point? And they just sat, he translated it and he looked at me and they all sat there going.

[6:17] And one of the brothers said, idiom. And I went, oh, yes, I know. I'm so sorry kind of thing. But that's part of what it means to stand up there and try to do this in the Lord and bring it over.

[6:31] But God blessed in all of it. So this is lesson three. And it's the foundation of growth in Christ. And this is what I dealt with in the way of the subject. What has God done to secure your growth in Christ?

[6:46] What has God done to secure your growth in Christ? In other words, if it wasn't for what God has fixed in reality about you as a Christian, there'd be no spiritual growth in your life.

[6:59] You couldn't grow. So what has God laid as the foundation and done for you in a fixed way that now makes it not only possible for you to grow, but makes it impossible for you not to grow in the Lord Jesus Christ in spite of our weakness and in spite of our sin.

[7:20] So let's go to the text that I used with them. It's in Colossians chapter 1. And we will look at verses 13 and 14.

[7:32] Now, I'm already going to tell you as I read these two verses for us, what follows are a series of truth upon truth upon truth that I just kind of...

[7:44] Now remember, this is lesson three. I've already given them two by now. And I am just hammering and laying on top of one another these truths about what God has done to secure their growth in the Lord Jesus and what that means.

[8:01] We come to the text this morning in chapter 1, verse 13. For He rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

[8:18] Two little verses. Power packed with truth about what God has done to secure not only our salvation, but our sanctification. Sanctification is a fancy word that we throw around.

[8:30] It simply means how we become more like Jesus throughout our lives because that's the goal of Christian living. This is what we want to deal with in what I'm sharing with you today.

[8:43] And so we're going to jump right into it. In terms of my first slide then, what has God done to secure your growth in Christ? He says, He rescued us.

[8:57] Now the He here is God the Father. So it reads simply this way, for God the Father rescued us. Now I don't want to run by that because most of us don't even know we need rescuing.

[9:11] I didn't. I didn't know I needed to be rescued before God saved me from my sin. I didn't not. If you'd have come to me and said, do you understand, Jeff Jackson, that you need God to rescue you?

[9:23] I'd have said, no. What are you talking about? I'm doing pretty good. I'm doing stuff and I'm not getting caught. That's pretty good. Which was my goal, right?

[9:35] Do sin and don't let your mama find out. That was my life. No, no, no. For God the Father, notice the past tense, rescued us.

[9:47] So we're talking here about the work of God in someone's life who's become a believer, a Christian. For He rescued us. What did God do for you?

[10:01] Again, it's personal. God rescued you. Your soul needed rescuing, but you lived for a time denying or at least ignoring and suppressing that reality about you.

[10:19] Perhaps like me, you were just completely ignorant of it. But that doesn't mean that you and I did not suppress that truth about ourselves. You say, Jeff, how did we do that? How did we suppress the truth that we needed God to rescue us from ourselves?

[10:33] From our selfishness and our pride and our greed and our sin. How did we suppress? We suppressed that by living a life of self and sin.

[10:44] That's how we did it. And all of us are guilty of this according to Scripture. Now, I want to show you, rescue here has the idea of being delivered from or being freed from someone or something, which is why God's work in our deliverance is often referred to as freeing spiritual prisoners.

[11:05] One of our songs had that in it. Freeing spiritual prisoners. You were at one time a spiritual prisoner and God needed to do a work to free you from that spiritual prison.

[11:16] If you notice in our text now, get the answer that I'm about to ask the question for. Get the answer from the verse. Look at verse 13 and answer this question.

[11:27] What did God rescue your soul from? The text tells you. What does it say? The domain of darkness. You may have a slightly altered translation.

[11:39] God the Father rescued each of us as believers, as Christians, from the domain of darkness. That's the issue that we're dealing with.

[11:51] We needed rescuing. This refers, this domain of darkness, that's your next step as you study this out. If you were doing this on your own, you'd have to ask yourself, well, what does the Bible mean by me being spiritually imprisoned in this domain of darkness?

[12:09] That sounds kind of weird and nefarious and ominous. Yes, it is. What is that? It's important for you to define that because that's what you used to be imprisoned in.

[12:21] If you better understand what God brought you out of, it makes what God put you into all the more glorious. Right? And that's exactly what we need to do.

[12:32] This domain of darkness then refers to the spiritual authority you were ruled by as you lived in spiritual bondage to the ruler of this darkness, Satan, whose domain is dominated by evil, self, and sinfulness.

[12:53] That is who and what God rescued you from in kind of a summary form. That's the work that God did. Now, the pertinent question at this point is this.

[13:04] How did God do this? How did God do this in your life? How does He do it in any life? So that we can stand before the Lord and say, I'm a Christian.

[13:16] I'm a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and I am a changed person. My spiritual imprisonment isn't an imprisonment in the domain of darkness any longer.

[13:28] It's something very, very different. As I thought about this, bringing this to you this morning, I thought about all the people who are being baptized today. And I knew that family members would come and one of the things that I wanted to put across to you this morning is the reality of why these people are being baptized.

[13:46] Why is this happening? What is the reality? What is the new reality about these people that would bring them to the point where they're going to do this symbolic act of obedience to Christ, of being put under the water to symbolize death.

[14:03] To go under the water is the grave. You are being buried. And so we are symbolizing you being put under death. And then you are being raised up out of that grave into a new life.

[14:17] And coming up out of the water as the water comes off of you is symbolic of a spiritual inner cleansing that has washed over you. And what is that?

[14:27] That is washed over you so that as you come up now, you're a new person. Your eyes open and you're a new creature in Christ. It is the blood of the Lord Jesus washing over your sins, your soul, to bring you into spiritual captivity to a new master.

[14:45] You are now a slave of Jesus. So if you've got to be a slave, who do you want to be a slave to? Yourself, Satan, or your Savior? That's why we call Him a Savior.

[14:58] Because we needed to get rescued. We needed to get saved. I'm not tired anymore. This is wonderful stuff. And can you imagine me doing this with a translator and stopping like this?

[15:14] He refers to God the Father. There was none of this. Keep it going.

[15:24] Keep it going. So it's very... Did you... Were you able to show me... Okay. So you saw. And each translator is different. So I had... Sometimes the translators wanted me to really shrink it down and others let me kind of run a little bit more.

[15:41] So you had to learn. And I think I had, what, five or six translators while I was there trying to get used to them. All right. How did God do this is where we are. How did God do this transferring?

[15:51] Well, notice again in the text. Answer these questions from the text. What does the second half of verse 13 tell you about how God did this? God rescued you from the domain of spiritual darkness, bondage, and death by transferring you.

[16:10] Do you see that in the text? He did this by transferring you. All right. Look now. God transferred. He repositioned or moved your soul from imprisonment in the spiritual realm under the domain of Satan and into the spiritual realm under the dominion of Jesus Christ.

[16:28] God transferred your soul. That is a fixed reality in heaven that no power in the universe can alter. Nobody can untransfer you.

[16:40] Your soul status now is fixed. Now listen to this quote, if you would, from Dr. MacArthur about this. Believers. We're talking about believers.

[16:51] Believers do not need deliverance from the dominion of sin and Satan. No, they don't. They need to act as those who have been delivered.

[17:02] You with me? So the charismatic movement is so wrong about this. Going around casting demons out of everything and dealing with demons about everything. Look, if you're a believer, Jesus Christ has secured your deliverance from sin and death forever.

[17:21] That's a done deal for you. Fixed reality. And so now, your work is to live as though, because it has, that deliverance has taken place in your life.

[17:31] You have been, past tense, delivered. Now you are to walk and live. In Poland, as I taught, I would do these things with them and because, well, I'm going to say that.

[17:43] So anyway, as I did this with them, I would tell them, this is about walk. So you take the next step, walking with Jesus. Here's something very interesting that I found out at, on Sunday afternoon, so I just preached at the church, packed, packed with people.

[18:02] And about 70% of them spoke English, so they got the sermon twice, I was told. You know, I preach it and then they translate it. But that was okay. I'm sitting at the table with one of the elders from the church, the man who planted the church all those years ago, a Polish national pastor who attended the Master's Seminary.

[18:23] And we're talking and we're going through and it's after dinner and we're just sitting there chatting and, you know, we have a big table full of people who came. And he ends up saying this to me because I, he knew that my main theme that they gave me was, I turned it into how to walk with Jesus.

[18:42] What does it mean to have a walk with Christ, to walk with Jesus, to have a relationship with Him day in and day out? And this is what he said to me, Mark. He said, you know, we don't have a translation in Polish for walk with Jesus.

[19:01] Wow is nothing, brother. My jaw hit the, I said, I said, Janik, that's my theme. And you just told me there's no Polish translation for the theme.

[19:13] And he went, this is a problem. And another man came over and joined the conversation and we sat there for 30 minutes with me getting my notes out of my bag and reading them blurbs of what I say and then looking at them and saying, brothers, how would that translate?

[19:34] Because this is the core. And they sat there looking at each other and they went back and forth in Polish and I just said, this is one of those shoot up a prayer thing. I just shout out, God, please, please help the boy.

[19:44] Please help the boy here. And he did. It all turned out fine, but I was so amazed. The New Testament talks so much about walking with Jesus.

[19:55] And here I go to a foreign country where they don't have an equivalent translation to bring that over. Isn't that interesting? So I told them, go to your Polish Bible and read this verse to me where it says, walk in him.

[20:09] We went to 1 John 2 and we read through it and they looked at the word and they went, mmm. So we worked and worked and worked until we finally got something that I thought we all could live with.

[20:22] Alright. The power to accomplish this change in your soul's position could only come from God the Father, which is why it's saying that in the text. For God the Father rescued you.

[20:34] He's doing this work. His power to save has set you in this new realm of life. All of you who are going to be baptized, God has set you in a new realm of life.

[20:47] A new sphere of life. He has transferred you from one spiritual reality into the opposite, the antithesis of that other reality. Put you in a brand new sphere, a brand new kingdom.

[21:00] This is the work that He's done for you. Now, what is that new realm? The kingdom of His beloved Son. Isn't that what it says? In whom you have redemption, the forgiveness of your sins.

[21:12] Now, the word for redemption carries the ideas of deliverance. Now, listen to this one. Redemption also carries the idea of ransom or release.

[21:23] And here, it means a releasing by payment of a ransom. That's the theological concept behind what's being said here. You understand what we're dealing with?

[21:36] Jesus Christ paid your ransom to free you from spiritual bondage in Satan's kingdom. Wow. Did He really? Yes, He did.

[21:47] That's what the Bible teaches. Jesus paid your ransom. Now, here's the $6 million question. Who did Jesus pay that ransom to on my behalf?

[21:58] Now, folks, there's some teaching out there that gets this really wrong. And it is bad, bad theology because of where it takes you. Who did Jesus have to pay?

[22:12] His death was a payment for, a ransoming, on your behalf. The question is, who did He pay? Who did He pay? Now, I want you to think about it.

[22:23] You don't have to answer out loud. But what would you say if someone were to walk up to you and ask you that just off the street, you know, out of, hey, when Jesus paid that ransom, who did He pay?

[22:35] Because we talk about that so much, Derek, right? So who did He pay? Jesus paid your sin debt to God. To God, not to the devil.

[22:48] Jesus Christ owes the devil nothing. Jesus Christ conquered the devil. He didn't pay him anything. He conquered him. That's the difference in the theology.

[23:00] He paid your sin debt to God, a debt of death. You owed God your death for your sins. And Jesus paid that debt for you.

[23:13] He became death for you. That's the debt He paid. Isn't that sobering? Jesus then made full spiritual payment for your sins to God so that Jesus fully satisfied all the demands of God's law concerning your sins.

[23:33] To break just one law in the smallest way gets you the death penalty before the Lord. That's the way it is. And Jesus went to the cross to pay that debt for you.

[23:47] He accomplished this satisfaction for you in two ways as it concerns your need to be holy before the Lord. The only people who can stand before Almighty God are people who've been made holy.

[24:01] And so Jesus did this for you in two ways. Alright? The first way. Jesus took your sins on Himself. What does that mean?

[24:11] So that God counted the debt of your sins against Jesus as if Jesus had committed your sins instead of you. Jesus took on the shame.

[24:24] He took on the guilt of your sinful life as if He had lived those sins against God Himself instead of you. He gave His life to ransom us from our sin debt to Almighty God.

[24:41] Notice what the Scripture says so clearly about this. When you were dead in your transgressions, your sins, and the uncircumcision of your flesh being separated from God, God the Father made you alive together with Jesus.

[24:59] There's that transferring. Having forgiven us all our transgressions. Do you hear that? Having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us because we were criminals guilty before the Lord which was hostile to us and God the Father has taken all of that out of the way having nailed that decree to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.

[25:29] So that list of decrees against you that amounted to all your sins against God, that got nailed to the cross as Jesus hung on that cross.

[25:39] And as He died, He paid the debt for all that that was against you. Every bit of it. Past, present, and future. Hallelujah. This is why people like me get excited to tell you these things.

[25:54] Because this is the heartbeat of what we are as Christian people. This is what we're celebrating as we put these people down into the water and bring them back up out of the water to symbolize all of this happening in Jesus Christ.

[26:08] I am a new creature in Him. This is the beauty of baptism. The cross then was God's instrument of punishment and death against sin.

[26:20] Not Jesus' sins. He didn't have any. Your sins laid on Him. Credited to Him as if He had committed them Himself. God did that for you.

[26:31] He willingly received the full weight of God's holy anger against your sins. Not His. God punished Jesus in your place for your sins.

[26:42] Jesus' death is one side of the coin of God saving your soul. But I told you there were two things that God did to secure your holiness before God the Father. And here's the second way that Jesus acted as your substitute.

[26:58] Standing in your place concerning His life of perfect holiness. In other words, Jesus never sinned. He lived in perfect righteousness before the Lord.

[27:09] Righteousness simply means that Jesus was always in perfect right standing with God the Father in everything He thought, said, and did. Alright? That means Jesus always thought, said, and did what was right and pleasing in God's sight.

[27:27] Jesus was God and man in a perfect way. So, His perfect life operating in you is what you are growing into as a Christian.

[27:39] Jesus is life. And it is the life of Jesus Christ which God the Father credits to you and the life which is alive in you by the power of the Holy Spirit.

[27:54] We can't put our minds around all of these wonderful concepts. All we can do is read them in the Scriptures and by faith trust that this operation is true for us. And then we seek to live it out in everyday life.

[28:08] this life of Jesus is fixed in you. So, when God saves your soul from sin and death, He counts Jesus' perfect, sinless, law-fulfilling life as if you lived it.

[28:24] So, you see what happens? Jesus gets your sin credited to Him and He gets punished to death to pay the debt that you owe to God for those sins.

[28:36] And what God credits to you is the perfect sinless life that Jesus lived on your behalf because He knew you could never do that. I could never do that.

[28:48] So, God credits your sin to Jesus and then God credits Jesus' sinlessness to you as if you had lived that sinless life. That's what you get.

[28:59] that's why you can stand before a holy God. That's why you need to be baptized. That's why you stand up in front of all these people in a couple hours and read your testimony so that you can brag on this God who has done this for you.

[29:14] You tell all these people, I want to tell you what this Jesus has done for me. I want to tell you what He's rescued me from. I want to tell you what He's blessed me with and what He's given me a new lease on life with.

[29:29] I owe Him everything. I owe Him everything. The least I can do is stand forward and brag on Him a bit. You get to do that. It's a privilege. It's a privilege in the Lord.

[29:42] I say again, this is the life of Jesus fixed in you. God applies Jesus' righteousness to you and sees you as He sees His own Son.

[29:55] Did you hear that? When you get the blessing of Jesus' righteousness, His sinless life, credited to you by God the Father forever and eternity, God now looks at you and sees you as He sees Jesus.

[30:13] Now, you know what makes it so hard for us to believe that? You and I sin every day. Do we not? Every day. Every day we have to look in the mirror at the sinner who said this, thought that, did that.

[30:28] That does not change the reality of what God has fixed you to be in Christ. Nothing you do or don't do changes the reality of what Jesus has done to fix you in Himself.

[30:42] Is that not right, Brother Randy? Randy's an elder at his church. You teach this at your church, don't you, brother? Because this is the gospel. You can't undo your salvation.

[30:53] You can't take away the righteousness of Jesus Christ in your life no matter how much you sin. You can't do that. What this righteousness does in your life is it makes you sad to sin.

[31:05] It grieves your soul. The change that's happened in you is I don't want to sin, Jeff, this is me, I don't want to sin not because I'm at the point now where I don't want to get caught.

[31:17] I don't want to sin because I don't want to hurt Christ. I don't want to grieve the Lord who did all this for me. And yet, what do I do, Derek?

[31:28] What do I do? I sin. And I run to God. I remind myself that He loves me and He gave His Son for me and He wants the best for me.

[31:38] So He brings these trials into my life to show me my need to continue to grow and depend on Him. It's all a good work. It's all a gracious work from the Lord.

[31:51] Now, as He's given you this life, you need to change from your old ways of thinking and speaking and living to show that Jesus lives in you. That in Jesus you are made into a new creature for God's glory.

[32:05] We're not playing games here. God now sees you in right standing with Himself, pleasing to Him and His Son, Jesus. Jesus purchased the pleasure of God on your life for you.

[32:18] He purchased that with His death and His sinless life. Why do we need to live this? Because God's credits to you the sinless, holy life of His Son and His life becomes your new life.

[32:33] This is what Christians talk about all the time. Now you need to grow into that life more fully. You need to learn to live it out more faithfully. You're spiritually positioned in Jesus because Jesus has accomplished your spiritual liberation from the penalty of death and the power of sin over you.

[32:53] You don't have to pay sin's penalty anymore. Jesus paid it for you. You don't have to live under the power and deception of sin anymore. Jesus has freed you from that.

[33:05] And this is why Peter and Paul both say don't use your spiritual freedom in Jesus to do your own thing. Use it to serve the Lord. That's your offering back to God for doing this for you.

[33:18] I get to serve Jesus as a matter of gratitude, Rowan. How old are you, brother? Ten years old. Are you getting baptized today? Are you excited? Well, I'm excited to baptize you, brother.

[33:31] I have a ten-year-old brother on the front row. What did he say? You come to me as a child. You come to me as a child.

[33:45] This is childlike faith. Not childish, childlike. We receive this truth by the Lord's grace and favor. Whether we're ten or a hundred.

[33:58] This is the beauty of the gospel. He has done this for you. He has done this for you. See the bottom of the screen there.

[34:11] By acting as your substitute and living a perfect life for you. Dying all sufficient death for you. Being raised in glorious resurrection for you.

[34:24] By Christ's work on your behalf, you receive forgiveness of sins. Do you see that? Look at the end of verse 14. In whom, this Jesus, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

[34:40] Forgiveness here is a combination of two Greek words. One of those Greek words means from. The other Greek word means to send.

[34:53] So it means to send from. And how we translate that is in terms of your forgiveness, forgiveness. It means to send away. So, Jesus Christ has done this work for you so that God the Father can send away your sins.

[35:12] What does the Bible say as far as the east is from the west? Jesus sent away your sins. And hear me, they can't come back. Forgiveness means that.

[35:25] They're gone. He considers them paid and done. You're not going to, believer, you're not going to stand before God the Father and have to stand there and be judged and condemned in sin.

[35:38] Jesus already took that judgment and condemnation for you. So what will you stand before God as a believer and give an account for? The deeds of your life. Those deeds will either be measured as deeds done for the glory of Jesus, which receives a reward, or they will be judged as deeds done for you and they will be considered wood, hay, and stubble and they'll burn up.

[36:03] That's it. No condemnation. It's either you get reward for what you've done in the name of the Lord and for the Lord or you don't. You forfeit some of that reward.

[36:14] Do you see that? This is what Christ has done for you. This is why Greg and I baptize people. Some of you all have to keep under a little longer than others but we understand that.

[36:25] No. So the transferring of your soul from death, from the dominion of Satan to life in the kingdom of God's Son happened at the moment of your salvation.

[36:39] It happened in the blink of an eye. So listen, watch up here on the screen. You don't need more transferring, you need more transforming. There is a big theological difference between these two concepts in Scripture.

[36:53] Let me remind you again of what Dr. MacArthur said earlier. Believers, believers do not need deliverance from the dominion of sin and Satan.

[37:04] They need to act as those who have been delivered. You don't need more transferring. You need transforming. Your growth in Christ is about the Holy Spirit working to continually transform your mind, renewing it in the truth of the Lord.

[37:22] You learn to live out the truth that God is working into your now spiritually alive heart. It used to be spiritually dead, residing in the domain of darkness. God transferred you and made your soul, your heart, alive.

[37:37] He breathed the new life of Jesus into you. And so now you have that life and live by that life. It's activated by the power of God. All these blessings of grace come to you in the person of Christ.

[37:49] God. So being spiritually united to Jesus is your soul's new position in your relationship to God the Father. And that answers the critical question of what we grow from and what we grow to show.

[38:04] So I want to put this up there because I want it to ring in your mind. This new spiritual position of your soul transferred into the kingdom of God's Son and being rightly related to God by grace through faith in Christ is what you grow from and what you grow to show.

[38:22] See we all grow as believers to show. We're growing to show. Show what? No no not a what? Who? We're growing to show Christ to the world.

[38:34] We are becoming more like Jesus in our character. In all that we think say and do we are trying to think say and do as it reflects on and pleases Jesus.

[38:46] This is what I taught Poland. They got three lessons of this before I ever started talking to them about how to apply this. I wanted to make sure they understood what they're growing from and what they're growing into.

[39:02] So listen to the way I say this friends. The goal of all spiritual growth is to become more like Jesus who lives in you. If you're not becoming more like Jesus you're missing the point of the Christian life.

[39:13] Notice this. But speaking the truth in love we are to grow up in all aspects into him.

[39:24] Jesus who is the head even Christ. Pretty clear. Remember your spiritual position of being united to Jesus is not what is growing in you.

[39:37] That position is fixed in heaven. It's a reality about you. Without this fixed foundation of the righteousness of Jesus credited to your life you couldn't grow in the Lord.

[39:49] Right? So that's not that the position isn't growing. Now what that means is you don't have to get up every day and try to convince God to love you. To think you're okay.

[40:02] I'm doing decent. Please Lord. You live out of the position that he's already made you like his son in the sense that he sees you in his son. When he looks at you he sees you in Jesus.

[40:15] Wow. I don't have to earn. No you can't earn God's pleasure. Well then what does it mean for me to live to please God? It means that you now commit your heart to obey.

[40:28] To learn to obey the Lord in the life that he's now purchased for you in his son. And you want to obey out of joy. Out of gratitude. As your heart grows in love for Jesus you want to follow him more faithfully.

[40:42] Obey him more faithfully. You want to. Because your heart's being overwhelmed with who he is. When I deal with Christians who tell me they've been walking with the Lord for a long time and they don't have any joy or gratitude in their life I'm suspect.

[40:58] You know? you are rooted in Christ as a new person by God's mercies and miracles. You are spiritually union to Jesus.

[41:13] You are fixed as God's child and now God commands you and provides for you to grow as his child. You grow to show that Jesus' life is your new life.

[41:26] You are living in him. That was the third lesson in Poland. When I finished those nine lessons one of the leaders told me we don't hear this in Poland.

[41:48] And I once again shocked. It's not that they don't teach the truth. They don't hear this taught like this. We need to be thankful for the truth and we need to be thankful for the work of God in our midst folks.

[42:05] And I'll tell you one of the things that going on these mission trips does for you is it humbles you and it helps you realize just how blessed we truly are. more on that God willing next week.

[42:19] I thank you for your kind attention and ask you to join me in prayer before Ben and Suzanne come up and lead us in our final song. Greg will pray. Give us any final instruction and I'll go ahead and let you know before we pray.

[42:32] Please please heed our need to leave here in a timely way and get over to the Hogue home so that we can then set up everything and move through the afternoon.

[42:44] Let's pray. Father thank you for your goodness and thank you for the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a joy and privilege of my heart to come and remind your people of what it means for us to be believers to be Christians in Christ.

[42:59] So now we pray that you would help us to follow you and concern ourselves with holiness out of a heart of gratitude a deep thankfulness as we rehearse the gospel to ourselves every single day.

[43:11] May Jesus Christ be precious to us beyond any treasure we could possibly know and may we serve you in that same heart of the treasure of Jesus.

[43:23] It is in his name we pray. Amen.