Good morning.
John spoiled it, my name is Brad.
Today's scripture reading is from Philippians
chapter two, verses one through 18.
And if you're using the pew Bibles, that's page 1009.
If then there is any encouragement in Christ,
if any consolation of love, if any fellowship
with the spirit, if any affection and mercy,
make my joy complete by thinking the same way,
having the same love, united in the spirit,
intent on one purpose.
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit.
But in humility, consider others as more important
than yourselves.
Everyone should look to his own, not to his own interests,
but rather to the interests of others.
Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus,
who existing in the form of God did not consider equality
with God as something to be exploited.
Instead, he emptied himself by assuming the form
of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity.
And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
For this reason, God highly exalted him and gave him
the name that is above every name, so that at the name
of Jesus, every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth
and under the earth, and every tongue will confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
Therefore, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed,
so now, not only in my presence, but even more in my absence,
work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
For it is God who is working in you, both to will
and to work, according to his good purpose.
Do everything without grumbling and arguing,
so that you may be blameless and pure, children of God
who are faultless in a crooked and perverted generation,
among whom you shine like stars in the world,
by holding firm to the word of life.
Then I can boast in the day of Christ, that I didn't run
or labor for nothing, but even if I am poured out
as a drink offering on the sacrificial service of your faith,
I am glad and rejoice with all of you.
In the same way, you should also be glad and rejoice with me.
This is God's word.
Well, I have a confession to make.
This week, we had an awesome opportunity
to head on up to Diamond Arrow, and just spend
just a couple of days, a couple hours, really,
I mean, it was really two days concentrated,
with men, both from the village, as well as from around
the district, and we just had an amazing time together.
This morning was awesome, but there's something about
being in a small room with a lot of men who are singing
at the top of their lungs, it just shakes the roof,
and you feel like, wow, the power in there,
and the Lord did a lot of great things in the lives
of those people who were there.
We had an opportunity to also have quite a few guys
come out from Joshua House, which is a transition house
from guys who are coming out of prison,
and are looking to get integrated into the world,
and so they go to Joshua House, and they get ministered to
and loved, we had maybe 16, 18 guys come up from there,
and it was such a privilege and honor to be with them,
and to be a part of that ministry.
So what's my confession?
Well, my confession is, I was asked to speak there,
and so I had an opportunity to prepare a message,
and I put my time into it, and if you know me,
you know that I'm a manuscript guy,
and I love to have every word laid out and crafted.
Well, this morning, I have tabs in my Bible,
and I have a pad, and it's just got a few bullet points,
and so the story behind that is that at the beginning
of this year, when I was reflecting on what I,
and praying what I hope the Lord might do in me,
and work in me, I had prayed that he would work in me
the skill, the ability to preach,
not tied to word-for-word notes, but an outline,
and so when I got back, and I was preparing,
and I did not have the mental strength or energy
to put into making it word-for-word,
that's when I said, oh Lord, not now, not today.
When I prayed that, I meant later, at some point,
by the end of the year, that would be awesome,
and so grace upon grace, yes?
Now, this may not land for us here today,
but if we were to suddenly lose our cell phones,
because we're fairly reliant upon our cell phones
in our directions, at least I am,
even if I'm going to places I know I already know,
and I've already been there, I'll still put them
into the navigation, because I want to know
how long it's going to take, I want to see the traffic,
and all that stuff.
Well, there was a time before
where we didn't have that technology, right?
And you used to have to buy maps,
and you would fold them out across your car,
pull over, and you'd, right?
And so I want you to imagine that I have a map,
and on that map, I want to go to Yellowstone National Park.
National Park, it's beautiful, Yellowstone.
I want to go see Old Faithful.
And so I've taken a red Sharpie,
and I found Yellowstone on this map of the United States,
and I put a red mark on it.
So I have a map, and I have the mark,
but I'm still missing one bit of information, aren't I?
And that bit of information will help me get
from where I'm at to where I want to go,
and that information is obviously where I'm at.
Where am I at on the map?
Because until I determine that,
I don't know how to get to Yellowstone.
I don't know the best route to take.
Well, salvation, and that's gonna be our topic
this morning, is salvation.
It's similar in the sense that salvation
has some waypoints along the way.
And the Bible doesn't use salvation in a single way,
but it actually uses it in a few different ways.
And today's scripture actually had one of those.
And so I want us to walk through and understand salvation
a little bit better by the end of today.
And so the first point that I'll have you write down
if you're taking notes is salvation began
in the mind of God.
Salvation began in the mind of God.
So let's talk a little bit about God.
God is love, we're told in 1 John 4, 8.
And in John 17, Jesus is praying,
and he's praying to the Father.
And in the middle of his prayer,
he says something like this.
He says, you loved me before the foundations of the world.
Father, you loved me before time.
So God is love, and God incarnate in Jesus
is praying to the Father and saying,
you loved me before time,
before the foundations of the world.
Well, that's because the very nature of God,
what we call the Trinity,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
we sang about it earlier.
The Trinity is this relational community.
In and of itself, it's a relational community
of self-giving love.
Three persons in one essence, what we call God.
And God gives out of who he is.
And even within the Godhead,
he has existed in a community of love for all time.
As far back as you could go in before,
he has existed in love.
God gives out of who he is,
and therefore, when it came to the moment of creation,
God gave out of his love.
It was the overflowing fountain of the triune God of love
who poured out in self-giving love,
and all things came to be.
Everything was made.
If you have your Bibles,
turn with me to the book of Ephesians, chapter one.
Because not only did it begin in the mind of God,
because God is a God of love,
and out of that self-giving love,
he has created everything, God giving out of who he is.
But Ephesians, chapter one, verse three, reads this.
Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing
in the heavens in Christ.
For he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.
He chose us in him before the foundation of the world
to be holy and blameless in love before him.
There's those same words, the foundation of the world.
Jesus said, Father, you loved me
before the foundation of the world.
And Paul in the book of Ephesians says,
we who are in Christ were chosen
before the foundation of the world in love.
That's interesting.
Before the foundation, before creation, before time,
God in his love looked forward and chose those in Christ
to be loved and saved.
It began in the mind of Christ.
God chose those who would believe in Christ
to be his own, his children.
In fact, it goes on.
He predestined us to be adopted as sons
through Jesus Christ for himself,
according to the good pleasure of his will,
to the praise of his glorious grace
that he lavished on us in the beloved one.
Salvation first began in the mind of God.
And number two, if you're taking notes,
we also see that salvation worked its way out
in perfection in the work of Christ,
the work of Christ.
I'm gonna read out of 1 Peter chapter one.
You don't have to turn there, but just listen.
1 Peter chapter one, beginning in verse 18.
For you know that you were redeemed from your impotence
and your sin, and you were redeemed
from your empty way of life,
inherited from your ancestors,
not with perishable things like silver or gold,
but with the precious blood of Christ,
like that of an unblemished and spotless lamb.
He was foreknown before the foundations of the world,
but was revealed in these last days.
Through him you believe in God,
who raised him from the dead and gave him glory,
said that your faith and hope are in God.
We know of salvation through the work of Christ
that God became flesh and dwelt among us
in the person of Christ,
that the second person of the Trinity,
the Son of God, took on the body of a man of flesh
and walked on this earth.
He came here with a purpose and a plan.
And the question always is,
was that the plan B?
Because why did the work of God through Christ
have to even happen?
Well, there was a fall of man.
God's good creation that he created
out of this overflowing fountain of love
that was founded for all eternity in the triune God,
well, that creation rebelled.
And through not an act of recapitulating
or reflecting God's self-giving love,
instead they chose self-centeredness
and self-glorification,
and they took the fruits for themselves,
and they were wise in their own eyes,
and they saw what they wanted,
and they took it in that act of rebellion.
God's good creation fell into destruction and decay.
You saw humanity,
which was made in the image of God,
turn on one another.
That began with that act of rebellion,
but the next act was murder.
And then it spiraled out of control,
down throughout time and the ages,
and God's good creation was lost to sin.
The fall of man made it necessary for the incarnate,
the second person of the Trinity,
to come and rescue man from the fall of man.
And rescue mankind.
But was it a surprise, that's the question,
was it plan B, was plan A,
that everything would go as it was in the garden,
and be good?
This says in First Peter,
before the foundations of the world, Jesus was chosen.
That's interesting.
Jesus was chosen before the foundations of the world.
In fact, Pastor John MacArthur says
that God's plan of salvation for sinful mankind
was determined and decreed before man was even created.
The promise was made,
the promise that in the second person of the Trinity,
stepping down into earth on this rescue mission of humanity,
the promise was made that God would save eternal,
and grant eternal life to all those
who put their faith in Christ.
The promise was made to God the Son.
The book of Titus, chapter one,
reads this way.
That's the one I didn't mark, there we go.
Titus chapter one, verse one and two.
Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ,
who was chosen before the faith of God's elect,
and their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness,
in the hope of eternal life,
that God who cannot lie, promised before time began.
Eternal life that God promised before anything was made.
Eternal life that God promised
before any one of us was created,
or our ancestors or forefathers,
or the original parents, Adam and Eve,
God had promised eternal life.
And that's what John MacArthur is referring to,
that promise was made to God the Son.
That we will create humanity, we will create mankind,
but there will be a fall, and they'll need a rescue,
and if you go, then all those who put their hope and faith
and are found in you will be granted eternal life.
That's the promise that was made before time began.
And so we see in the work of Christ,
that he said, I'm going, I'm gonna save them,
I'm gonna win them back, I'm going on that rescue mission.
Another pastor, Presbyterian pastor named J. Vernon McGee,
I don't know if you guys ever listened to J. Vernon McGee,
when I was a kid, man, back seat of the car,
my parents would crank J. Vernon McGee all the time,
I remember that voice and that kind of AM radio sound.
He says, when we begin to deal with words like
foreordination, election, predestination, foreknowledge,
I feel like we, with our infinite minds or finite minds,
treat God as if he was some great big computer.
He isn't that at all.
He has a heart bigger than the whole universe.
When I was in seminary studying theology,
it seemed pretty important to know whether or not
foreknowledge comes before foreordation,
but frankly, since that time, I have not been concerned
with which comes first.
I realize now that the important thing is that Christ
was foreknown before the foundations of the world,
but was made manifest in these last times for you.
To put it very simply, the cross of Christ was not
an ambulance sent to a wreck.
Christ was the lamb who was slain before the foundations
of the world because God knew all the time that Vernon McGee
would need a savior and he loved me enough to provide
that savior before I was even born.
I don't need a computer to go over this.
I only need a God with a great big heart of love
who provided redemption by his grace alone.
And so we see from the mind of God and the work of Christ,
salvation, the perfect obedient son suffered at the hands
of sinners and in Philippians chapter two,
which is our scripture that we read this morning,
we are told to adopt the same attitude as Christ
in his incarnation and his suffering,
that Christ who existed in the form of God did not consider
equality with God as something to be exploited.
Instead, he emptied himself by assuming the form
of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity.
And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to the Lord.
Obedient to the point of death, even to death on a cross
while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
And for this reason, God highly exalted him
and gave him the name that is above every name.
The perfect obedient son suffered at the hands of sinners
so that we might be saved.
You read a lot in Paul's writings.
One of his favorite phrases is the phrase of in Christ.
He even said in that Ephesians one
that we are chosen in Christ.
What's this in Christ that he talks about?
Well, most of you guys have probably heard
or read the story or if you were in Sunday school,
you probably heard it over and over again,
but the story of Noah in the ark, right?
So Noah lives in a time where there's great wickedness
in the land and God has determined because he is just
and holy that wickedness must be punished.
And it's not that later in I think his first
or second Peter, it talks about how Noah was a great
preacher of righteousness.
And so it's not as if the wickedness did not have
an opportunity to repent, it just refused to repent,
it refused to come to God.
And so Noah was commanded, hey, get ready
because judgment is coming by water.
Water will come upon the earth and it will be my judgment
against all the wickedness and you can get ready,
you can build an ark, basically a floating city of refuge.
And you and your family along with some of God's good
creation can go into the ark when judgment comes
and the waters of judgment come and you can be saved.
Now that sounds crazy, right?
That sounds crazy.
Standing in the middle of dry land,
in the middle of a country, water's gonna come,
it's gonna reach that high that I need a massive boat
and then there's the whole animal thing and they're all
gonna come to me and I'm supposed to take care of them.
That's just craziness.
I don't know that you would do that,
I don't know that I would do that.
What does Noah do?
He does it.
Not only does he do it, he does it for anywhere between
50 and 100 years making preparations.
Could you imagine the perseverance?
How much you must trust that word to do it for 50
to 100 years of your life just to prepare?
While everyone around you mocks you.
Build that boat, Noah, yeah!
Come on, build that boat.
We haven't seen rain in forever.
Noah by faith built the boat.
Noah by faith got in the boat.
Door shut and Noah by faith was saved through the waters.
And this is a picture of what it means to be in Christ.
Christ endured the waters of judgment on the cross.
Yeah, the boat was made of wood,
the cross was his wooden structure
that he endured judgment on.
Christ went to the cross and endured judgment.
He went through the waters and anyone who is in Christ
is safe, saved through the waters of judgment.
And so to be in Christ is by faith to be hidden
from the judgment that we all deserve,
rescued from the waters in Christ.
But that means Christ actually endured the waters.
Because while Noah and his family were on the inside
of the boat, the outside of the boat was getting hit
and rocked and thrown all about, right?
And Christ, whipped, beaten, scourged, taken to the cross,
hung for you and I, endured the waters of judgment
so that we might be safe inside.
And so we see salvation beginning in the mind of God
and working itself out in the perfect way
through Christ and his work on this earth.
But that brings us to the last little bit,
which is our journey.
What's our journey with salvation?
And the first point in our journey that I wanna talk about
is justification.
Justification.
In Ephesians chapter two,
beginning in verse eight.
For you are saved by grace through faith
and this is not from yourselves.
It is God's gift, not from works,
so that no one can boast.
You are saved by grace through faith
and this is not from yourself, it is God's gift,
so that no one may boast.
Justification is when we, by faith,
because of the grace of God in Christ Jesus
and the message of the gospel,
hearing the message of the gospel,
we respond in faith to God
and he declares over us the righteousness of Christ.
All that is Christ's merit,
for all that he did in enduring the waters of judgment
is pronounced on us, righteous, clean, blameless,
pure and in justification we are made right with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ.
And that means the sin stain that we carried
for all of our life is erased.
We're no longer under the law.
The law exposed our sin because every time we broke the law,
we were guilty, we were lawbreakers
and so we walked under shame and guilt.
Condemned to die for our sins, anyone who sinned must die.
And then Christ comes and through his grace
and the message of the gospel and we believing in faith,
we receive his righteousness
and the law no longer has power over us.
No longer has power over us to say guilty or shame
or you must die, no longer.
In Christ we have his right to be forgiven
no longer, in Christ we have his righteousness,
his claim is ours, his merit that he has earned,
has been given to us in Christ
and therefore we are justified before God.
Romans chapter five, verse one says,
therefore since we have been justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
We couldn't have peace before.
We couldn't have peace when we were condemned.
We couldn't have peace when we were under the law
and condemned to die for our sins.
But now that through Jesus and through faith in Christ
and his work we have peace with God
and we have also obtained access through him
by faith into the grace in which we now stand
and we boast in the hope of the glory of God.
That's Romans five, one and two.
This is the work of God by grace.
In justification we do nothing.
Justification, that's what grace means.
It is given to us a free gift,
a pardon that is offered.
We did not before the foundations of the time
dream up a plan of salvation for ourselves
and put it into work.
We didn't do that.
And without that there's no offer of pardon.
God did all of that.
And God sent his son, Jesus, the second person in the trinity
to step down in flesh, lived a perfect obedient life
to the father, went to the cross,
died for our sins, took on himself our guilt.
We didn't do that.
We deserve to die.
We deserve to be abandoned to the grave.
He did that.
By grace, justification, our justification.
If you have come to Christ by faith
in the gospel of Jesus Christ, the work that he has done,
you are justified before God.
You are declared righteous.
You have peace with God through your Lord Jesus Christ.
It is done.
There's a song we sing, it's really one of my favorites
and me and my wife last night were watching
the behind the scenes, how it was written.
And it's this song, All Sufficient Merit.
And the chorus, I love it, man.
I probably shouldn't even try to say it
because I'll just break down.
But it's a combination of both what Jesus said on the cross
as well as what Revelation says
when the final consummation of all things is.
And it is done.
It is finished.
It is done.
It is finished.
It is done.
It is finished.
No more debt.
I owe.
Because it was paid in full by the work of Christ.
That is what justification is.
And so if you by faith said, I,
you receive that gift, that grace
that God has provided through all of his work
and his foreknowledge and his foreplanning,
you receive it and you're in Christ
and you are like Noah in that ark,
saved from the waters of judgment.
But then there's more to the journey
because we're told in Ephesians chapter one,
verse 13, that something else happens
when we step into that grace by faith.
We're told in verse 13 of chapter one,
in him you were also sealed with the promised Holy Spirit
when you heard the word of truth,
the gospel of your salvation,
and when you believe the Holy Spirit
is the down payment of our inheritance
until the redemption of the possession
to the praise of his glory.
In him you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit
when you heard the word of truth,
the gospel of your salvation.
You're born again, brought into a family,
declared righteous, made a son, full inheritance,
and you receive the down payment on those promises
in the Holy Spirit.
And that leads to the next waypoint in your journey,
which is sanctification.
Sanctification.
If justification, if you have put your hope
and faith in Christ, then in justification
you can say, I am saved.
But in sanctification we also say, we're being saved.
We're being saved.
Our scripture in Philippians chapter two
has two verses I wanna focus on for a few minutes,
and that's verse 12 through 14.
Chapter two of Philippians, verse 12 through 14.
Therefore, my dear brothers, therefore,
is pointing backward, and he just came out
of that beautiful song poem about Jesus
and how we are to imitate Christ's attitude.
And he says, therefore, in light of that, my dear friends,
just as you have always obeyed, so now,
not only in my presence, but even more in my absence,
work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
We're gonna stop right there in verse 12.
Work out your own salvation in fear and trembling.
Now, you and I, we like extremes, don't we?
We're all in, we're all out.
We're hot, we're cold.
We like extremes.
And in this life, there are a couple extremes
we need to talk about.
There's an extreme over here and an extreme over here,
and we tend to vacillate between the two of them.
And in fact, you can see them right here in 12 and 13.
He says, work out your own salvation.
And if you take that out of isolation, you go,
all right, I know what I'm supposed to do.
Get working, get working.
I got lots to do, and man, my list keeps filling up,
and I'm starting to get burdened,
and I'm feeling a little tired, and I can't do it,
and I keep failing, and I keep coming up short.
But instead, get working.
I gotta work out my own salvation.
I gotta figure out how this works.
That's one extreme.
That's a legalistic extreme.
I have to keep all these things.
I have to keep up on all of the commands
and make sure I'm doing everything,
and did I talk to so-and-so, and did I love them,
and did I do this, and did I do that,
and oh my gosh, God won't accept me or love me,
or he might be frowning at me right now,
or I might lose my justification.
And this is why it's important to know
where you're at on the map.
If you have passed through the waters in Christ,
you are justified.
Don't worry about it.
Move on to sanctification.
And when you fail, and when you come up short,
and in your legalism, you're like,
man, I can't keep up with all of this.
Just remember where you're at on the map.
Remember where you're at on the map.
Don't always think you're hopping back to the first step.
You're at the second step, justification.
Your part, verse 12.
I have to work out my own salvation.
It does say that.
So you can't ignore it.
It says work out your own salvation.
But what does the next verse say?
For it is God who is working in you,
both to will and to work according to his good purpose.
I'm working out my salvation, and God's working in me,
but not, and God's working at the same time.
He was already working, right?
Because the command is work out your own salvation,
because God's already working.
He's already at work within you.
He's working to will.
He's working to change your desires,
so that the things that you used to desire,
the things that you used to go to,
the sins that you used to run to,
the things that you used to do,
the things that you used to go to, the sins that you used to run to
and find solace in or comfort in,
you no longer want.
You hate them now.
And you're beginning to move away from them
because he's putting new desires in your heart by the Holy Spirit.
He's renewing you.
He's making you new.
He's making you new through the Holy Spirit.
And yet, there is a part you play.
There is a part.
Two nights ago, when I had the opportunity to speak at the men's retreat,
one of the things I kind of camped out in
is the idea in Galatians chapter five
where it talks about the acts of the sinful person,
but it also contrasts that with the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
And in the fruit of the Holy Spirit,
it talks about walk in the Holy Spirit
or walk and step with the Holy Spirit
or keep step with the Holy Spirit.
So it's interesting.
We both have the Spirit,
and yet we have to keep in step with the Spirit.
And I use the illustration of a traditional dance, right?
In a traditional dance, you might have two partners.
You might have one who would lead
and one who follows or responds.
And in this dance with the Holy Spirit,
the Holy Spirit leads.
He begins to change our desires, and he begins to speak,
and he shows us in the Word things that we are to obey.
And as we listen to his calling,
as we move with him, that dance begins to take on beauty
and shape, and we begin to move around.
But what happens when we feel the conviction
of the Holy Spirit or we read the truth in the Bible
and we say no?
Well, that dance starts to fall apart a little bit.
It gets a little bit messy,
and it gets a little bit harder to keep in step.
But the Bible then says, get back in step.
Repent, come back, get in step with the Holy Spirit,
and allow him to make those changes in your heart.
I'm gonna guess that most of us in this room are at step two.
We're in the process of sanctification,
and the Lord is, by his Spirit, in each one of you,
speaking to you about areas and places
that you need to move through, be it sin,
be it insecurities or places where you have fear
and you keep shrinking back into fear
instead of going with the Lord where he's leading you.
The Bible says keep in step with the Spirit.
Keep in step with the Spirit.
Walk in the Spirit.
Don't walk in the ways of the flesh.
Don't walk in the sins of the flesh.
That's what's happening right now if you are at that place.
But there's another danger, though.
If we then go to the other extreme and we say,
oh, we only read verse 13, God's working and willing.
And so, you know that besetting sin
that I keep struggling with?
I guess he's not working on that right now.
He's not gonna deal with that right now.
So now you go over to this license or this fatalism
of well, God will do what God's gonna do
when God wants to do it,
and I guess I don't have a part in that.
You have to take 12 and 13 together.
And you know what?
The Bible does not go to great lengths to clarify
the relationship between man's free will and God's sovereignty.
It just does not go to great lengths to clarify it.
It says both back to back.
Do your part.
God's doing his part.
Do your part.
God's doing his part.
This isn't a salvation issue.
This is a sanctification.
It's not a salvation, it's not a justification issue.
This is a sanctification issue.
What God is doing in you and trying to make in you
because you have believed in faith.
He says for us, on our part,
to work it out with fear and trembling.
Fear and trembling.
Why fear and trembling?
Why is our part to be done with that attitude?
I probably told this story before,
but when I was young, I pretty much went wherever my brother went
and did whatever my brother did.
And my brother wanted probably to get rid of me.
And he tried multiple times.
There was a time where we were playing in the bedroom
and my mom had like an eight drawer, Chester drawers.
Do people still own those things anymore?
Yeah, Chester drawers.
And he pulled out all of the drawers all the way,
so all the weight was on the front.
And he told me to lay down in front of it
while he climbed on top of it.
And that whole thing came right down on top of me
and I scream and mom comes in and,
oh, oops, oops, I'm sorry.
And I would believe that that was an accident.
I would totally believe that was an accident.
Except the next time we're in the backyard
and my brother, well, he loved to do anything active
and so he saw a tree in our backyard
and he's like, I'm gonna climb that tree.
Well, I need a rope because he had just seen some guys
trimming trees down the road
and they had climbed up the tree and they had ropes
and he's like, I need a rope.
So he went into the garage and he couldn't find a rope.
But what he had found was some old telephone wire,
a spool of it my dad had probably for speakers
or something like that, telephone wire.
And so he stretches it out and he finds a metal hook
and he ties it to the end and he thinks,
those guys were throwing it up over the branch
and it would go around and it would wrap on
and I could, oh, I'm gonna do that.
Well, behind the tree in our backyard
between our house and the house behind us
were super high power lines, electrical lines.
And my brother Mike, if you're listening online,
he got that thing going and he threw it up to that tree
and it went right over the tree
and wrapped around the top line on this high powered line.
And instantly you could hear the zzzzzzz
and this thing's dancing around.
So he runs over and grabs it.
Yeah, and then he's like, oh, that thing's moving.
And this thing's not very insulated.
It's just sitting there.
And then he runs and he's like, you know what?
I'm gonna get it down.
He's like six or seven or maybe eight, eight years old.
I'm gonna get it down.
So he runs to the garage and gets my dad's metal ladder
and runs out and props it up.
And then he's like, I forgot something.
And he says, John, come here.
Because that line is dancing around.
He grabs the line and he hands it to me and he says, hold it.
And I'm like four years old and it's like zzzzzzz.
And at one point I'm like, I can't do this anymore.
I'm terrified.
So I throw the line and it spins out, comes back,
hits the ladder and the ladder goes bam.
It flings it into the fence.
Mom comes running out.
Everyone's screaming, get to your room.
They call PG&E out and they're like, your sons are so lucky.
They should have died today.
There's no way that insulation could hold it.
But my brother, you know, hold on.
I say all that because from that day on,
electricity terrifies me, like terrifies me.
I'll go to jump my car, you know, if the battery runs down.
And I know it by now, but every time I check the order,
like what's the order you put these things on?
Because I don't want to see a spark and I don't want to feel anything.
Like I have fear and trembling because of the work of electricity that's going on.
Other people don't.
There's a guy I watch on YouTube, his name is the handyman.
And he says, you know, he's an electrician, trained electrician.
He's like, the way we test whether it's active or not, you know,
in the house if he's changing on a switch is we just touch it a little bit.
And he's doing this on camera.
I'm like, no, please, no.
I have fear and trembling.
It's not because electricity is bad or evil or, you know, it can't be in some way good.
It's just I have experienced the terror of what the power of electricity can do.
And I have a healthy fear of it, maybe an unhealthy fear.
But he says for us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling for God's working in you.
Know the power that's at work within you.
Don't take this lightly, the sanctification process.
Don't think that that power is ineffective.
But understand that that power is at work in you and therefore you must respond.
Paul talks about this in Romans where he's saying, you know, grace, there's so much grace in Christ.
Oh, my gosh, there's so much grace.
Does that mean we should go on sinning?
No, right?
Everyone say no.
No, we don't go on sinning.
Are you kidding me?
That would be a mockery of the power of the grace that is at work within you.
That would be to belittle it as if it's nothing.
Oh, it's so great and powerful and it's working to will and work within you.
And so when you do your work, when you do your part, do it with fear and trembling.
Do it with a purpose and an understanding that God is at work within you right now if you're in Christ.
And he's working to sanctify you, to purify you, to present you blameless before him.
Yes, we have the righteousness of Christ and now he wants to clean us up.
And he's going to spend your life doing it.
The cleaning up is not the prerequisite for the righteousness of Christ.
You already have it.
But it's the process, each and every one of you, and I don't care how old you are.
I know how old some of you guys are.
I don't care how old you are.
It's happening right now and you still need it.
You still need it.
Waypoint one, justification.
Waypoint two, sanctification.
And we're on our way to our Yellowstone, which is glorification.
You are saved.
You are being saved.
And one day you will be saved.
In our glorification, it will be the final removal of sin.
In our glorification, both the power of sin was broken in Christ, but the presence of sin will be removed.
I mean, don't you guys feel that sometimes where you're like, I know the power is broken, but why are you still here?
Who let you in the house?
Glorification is out of the house, gone forever.
The presence of sin, gone.
And in that verse I read out of Romans chapter five, the first part said, since we've been justified by faith, we have peace with God.
But then the second part says, we have also obtained access through him by faith into the grace in which we now stand.
Sanctification.
And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.
Glorification.
We hope that one day God will be glorified in us to such a degree that he will remake our very frame, our very body to shine like stars.
Our big brother, Jesus went there already.
We're sons of the king.
And he says, one day I will do away with sin altogether and I will make you complete and whole.
It will be the final recreation to restore us back both to the presence of God as well as to our original vocation with God, to walk with God and to co-air and co-rule with God all of creation.
And it's coming.
It's what our forefathers, it's what the fathers of the faith, it's what many generations before have put their hope in.
It's what some of our dear saints here at Village are now experiencing in Christ is his nearness as they wait for their ultimate glorification, a resurrected body.
Most of us are probably in that process of sanctification.
Some of us may need to hear the gospel afresh, to understand the good news of Jesus Christ and for the first time put our faith and hope and trust in it so that we might be justified, declared righteous.
And if you do that, just know that you're on your way now in sanctification with a hope of glorification.
God will make good on his promise because his promise wasn't to us.
His promise was to his son.
His promise was within himself and within his self-giving love.
I will do this.
I will grant eternal life to all who have found themselves in Christ, who all have gotten into the Ark of Christ and pass through the waters of judgment.
I will give it and God makes good on his promises every time.
Amen.
So I challenge you as we close.
Where are you on this journey?
If you are in the sanctification process, I want to challenge you.
I want to implore you and exhort you.
Keep in step with the spirit.
But know that the hope is not in our absolute perfection here from sin.
Here now, the struggle you're in right now.
The hope is not in perfection now in the sense of no presence of sin.
The hope is in the glorification when Christ returns of our bodies, the eradication of the presence of sin and the new life as coheirs and co-rulers in God's new creation.
Will you pray with me?