A Wonderful Day in the Lord

We want to conclude the study of salvation by looking at the three tenses of salvation. When we come to the New Testament, sometimes salvation is put out there in the text as if it was something that has already taken place, sometimes it is something happening presently, and sometimes it is in the future. I think it confuses people sometimes if they don't realize that all three tenses are true. Let's look at those and assign a word to each of those for our edification. First, justification. Let's begin that salvation is past in the sense that there is a moment in time when we have come to Jesus Christ. Romans 5:1 says, “Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Our past salvation, the moment of conversion, we can call justification. There is a point in time when we have been justified, we have been made right before a holy God, we have been declared righteous before Him and given the righteousness of God. That takes place at a moment in time. So, if you are a Christian, there was a moment in time when you were not saved and you were lost, then there was a moment in time when you were saved or justified. It is not important that you know that moment necessarily. I know a lot of people make a big deal about that moment and write it in the front of their Bibles. For some, if they don't know the moment they were saved, they get pretty anxious about it. There is no necessity to do that. You might know the moment you came to Jesus Christ. That it is very crystal clear in your memory. Others, maybe not so much. It might have been over a period of time that these things became clear to you and somewhere in that process you committed your life to Jesus. It is not important that you know that moment. It is important that you know you have been saved and are justified. That is the past tense, you were saved in a moment of time. Second, sanctification. We come to the present tense of salvation which we call sanctification. We are looking at 1 Corinthians 1:18 which says, “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Notice the present tense there, “to us who are being saved.” Justification tells us we are already saved in a moment of time. That is done. Romans 5, if you read the context, is all about the fact that we cannot lose that salvation. Once we are saved, we are saved, and the Lord will not let us go. Here it says we are being saved, what does that mean? It means we are in a process of sanctification, progressively becoming more and more what we were saved to be. In that sense we are being saved. The Lord is working in our lives, He is moving through our lives and our hearts. He is changing us, and He is making us increasingly, ever so slowly, more and more like that Lord Jesus Christ. We call that sanctification, or progressive sanctification. This is the present tense of salvation. Finally, we return to Romans 8:1, it says, “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” That is past tense of salvation. Once we are in Christ Jesus, there is no longer any judgment or condemnation for those who are in Christ. That is past tense, so the book of Romans 8 begins with what took place in the past, but it ends with what will take place in the future. Romans 8:30 says, “and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.” . . .

How is it that God is able to take sinful people and make them right before Him? How is it that we who are lost and dead in sin can become the very friends of God and part of the family of God and spend eternity with Him? That is a miraculous thing, isn't it? What a wonderful gift the Lord has given us! The majority of humanity spurns and ignores and mocks salvation, yet it is the precious consideration of the child of God. We are looking at the word redemption today. I am certain I have dealt with this word before in the “Word from the Lord” broadcast, but I am going to review it again because we are talking about salvation and this issue of redemption and what that means to us is so pivotal to our lives. I trust this will be a blessing to you even if we have gone through this fairly recently already. 1 Peter 1:18 says, “knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.” We find here that our redemption is accomplished only through the “precious blood” of the lamb. “Unblemished and spotless the blood of Christ.” There is only one remedy for our sinful situation. That is the blood of Jesus Christ. This verse calls it the “precious blood of the lamb.” Christ is often called the Lamb in the Scriptures, but primarily in the book of Revelation. So, when we see it here in the book of 1 Peter, we know that Peter has something specific in mind. The lamb of God was slain for our sins that we might be redeemed. What does it mean to be redeemed? We have looked at other words throughout this process such as justification and regeneration. What does redemption mean? We saw before in our studies of this that there were three different Greek words that were translated as “redeemed or redemption” and they all speak of different aspects of the slave market at that time. Most of these writings were written to Greek people who understood the slavery system of their day. Slaves at that time were purchased out of a slave market, but the word purchased was “redeemed.” . . .

Today we continue our discussion on the biblical worldview of salvation. A biblical worldview of salvation is pivotal. Every other worldview, every other religion, every other philosophy, if it is looking for any form of salvation from this world and our own bondage to self and sin, it looks for it in other places. It might look for it in mythological gods, our own self, or our own merits. Every other religion in the world is a merit religion. Meaning that we must merit or do something to appease the gods in animism. It also means we do something to make ourselves right even before the true God. That is what every false religion of the world is about. Christianity teaches something very different. Christianity teaches that we are hopelessly lost in our sins and because of that, the only way we can be right before a holy God is for the Lord to step up and do something. He did that in Jesus Christ. Sending His Son to die for us in our place and offer us eternal life and forgiveness of sin and righteousness of Himself. We are going to look at the word substitution today. This is a word, I think in past generations, was very prominent in the church. The conservative church talked a lot about substitution and Jesus Christ dying for us and in our place. Somehow, I think sometimes that gets lost in our conversation. We forget, or we just brush over this issue that the Lord couldn't simply forgive our sins and be a holy and righteous God, but that something or someone or some process had to redeem us from sin, and it had to deal with our sin and had to take our sins. That became the task of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself when He died in our place. When He died in our place, what did He do? He died as our substitute. Our sin and the wrath of God was on us, so what replaces that? Who is going to take that burden off of us? Christ did! He died in our place, and He died as our substitute. That was necessary for our salvation. There are many, many places in the Scriptures that talk about His substitution, but I think the clearest and best is actually in the Old Testament. Isaiah 53 speaks about what Christ did for us in dying in our place. We are going to look specifically at Isaiah 53:4-6, it says, “Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him Stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.” How clear is that? This is a wonderful passage that points to what He has done for us. He died for our transgression it says in Isaiah 53:5, and He was crushed for our iniquity. The Lord did nothing wrong. He deserved no punishment or death and no execution. Sin never touched Him, but He took our sins upon Himself. It all fell on Him, and He is our substitute . . .

There is nothing more important than how we can be right with God. Sometimes that is called reconciliation. We are estranged from God as we saw in the last broadcast. We are even the enemies of God. As a result of that, we are not right with God. We are separated from Him. We are not His friends. We are His enemies. How can the enemies of God be made right with Him? How can the enemies of God become friends of Him? How can we be reconciled? It involves what the Bible calls justification. Romans 5:1 says, “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Justified. That word means to declare righteous. It is very important that we understand the meaning of the word. If we get the meaning of the word wrong, we will misunderstand the whole concept. Justification is not a way whereby we work for our salvation or make ourselves right with God. It is a declaration. It is a legal term. We have been declared by God as justified, set free from our sins, and made right with Him. That is the meaning of justification in this passage of Scripture. Romans 3:24 says, “being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.” There is so much in that little verse, but justification is a gift by the grace of God. So, we are given something, we are given this justification. Someone has said it this way. “It was not God's aim simply to release slaves, but to make sons.” I think that is a beautiful statement. I'm not sure who said it, but it is a beautiful statement. God doesn't simply want to release us from our bondage to sin, in that we are no longer slaves to sin, He wants to do more than that. He wants to make us His very children and His sons. So, justification involves not only the forgiveness of sin, but the very righteousness of God so that we are now righteous before Him, and He looks at us through the lens of the Christ Himself and sees us as righteous in Him. Several places in Scripture talk about this, and we want to talk about something that takes place at the moment of this justification. When He saves us from our sin, He not only saves us, but He changes us. He not only forgives us, but He makes us His sons. By making us His sons, He does not simply say that we are in His family, He makes a radical change in our lives that is a spiritual change by nature. Jesus talked about this to Nicodemus. Nicodemus was one of the great teachers of Israel and he should have known at least something about the salvation and regeneration process. The Old Testament is not nearly as clear as the New Testament, but things were there and this man was an expert in the Old Testament, but he had missed the big picture. John 3:7 says, “Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.'” Most of us are familiar with the phrase “born again.” It means to be born from above. It is the idea that something is radically changed. There is a second birth. Our first birth is our physical birth where we are physically born, but this is a spiritual birth. It is a birth in which we are radically changed and now we are the children of God . . .

We are now talking about salvation. We speak about salvation, or redemption, all the time. If you are around the people of God, or if you read Scripture, or if you come to church, you know this is central to everything we believe and everything we hope in. It is very important that we see salvation from the lens of Scripture as God has revealed. It is the only possible lens because nobody could understand salvation except through what God reveals to us in the Word and what He has done for us through His Son. Today I am looking at a beautiful passage of Scripture that talks about the fact that the Lord has done much for us to save us. What I want to look at in this passage is four words that I think are very important to understanding what the Lord has done. These four words I have circled in my Bible. If you have been following our broadcast, you know that I like to mark my Bible and circle things to remind me of what is there. This passage is very interesting because it gives a description of our condition before Christ, and before salvation. It gives four different descriptions, and these really map out our problem, and the fact that we are hopelessly lost. Let's look at those four words together. Romans 5:6-10, says, “For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” We begin with the word helpless. As long as we think there is something we can do to earn salvation (or even that we can do something to help the Lord save us and we can come alongside Him and help Him in that process) we will continue in our sins because the biblical teaching of salvation is that the Lord is going to save us while we are helpless. That is hard for us to handle. We are independent people. We believe we are self-sufficient and can take care of ourselves. That is the American way, right? Yet if we look in the Scriptures, we must recognize first and foremost that we are helpless. Secondly, we are told we are ungodly. This simply means we are not like God. We do not want to do things God's way. We want to do everything except be godly. By nature, we are ungodly. Yet at that right time, Christ died for the ungodly, which is you and me. There again, before we can actually be saved, we have to recognize our ungodliness. Not only are we helpless, but we are not like Him, and we desperately need His help . . .

For a few weeks we have been discussing what a biblical worldview looks like. that might sound intimidating to some people but really all that means is how we process life. Do we see life through the lens of Scripture as God has revealed that to us, or do we see life through the lens of the world around us, our own ideas, educational system, the philosophies of the world? Everybody has a worldview. Everybody sees the world through some lens and those who have a biblical worldview have chosen to see the world through the only true lens which is God's Word. As we think about that and review a bit, biblical worldview begins with God and the truth that He does exist. “In the beginning was God.” He created all things, and He created humanity. So, as we think about that wonderful creation of ourselves, we know that Scripture tells us that we are made in the very image of God and that means that we were put on earth to represent God. We are made very special and unique among all of God's creation. We were created originally without sin. There was no sinfulness in the original human beings Adam and Eve. Of course, we know all that changed when Adam and Eve chose to sin. Then sin entered into the world and thus began the pollution and corrupting process that all of us deal with every day in our own lives and in our world system. With that in mind, we have a great problem because those who were created to reflect the image of God and to represent God on earth to give Him glory can no longer do so because of their sinful condition. We probably have looked at Ephesians 2:1-3 before. It says, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” The Scriptures paint a very dismal picture of our spiritual condition. We are hopelessly lost and dead in sin and the question might arise: What can we do about that? The answer in Scripture according to a biblical worldview is that we can do absolutely nothing! There is not a thing we can do to change our spiritual condition and bring ourselves into a position where we are right with God. That would be determined by God Himself. God had to do something otherwise we would remain in our sinfulness. So, Ephesians 2:4-6 simply says, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” So, we find that God did something and that something was to send His beloved Son to earth to die for us and all because of His grace and His mercy. Ephesians 2:7 goes on to say this, “so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” Often, we kind of skip this verse. One of the reasons the Lord reaches out to save us is that in the ages to come, that is throughout all of eternity, His grace might be put on display. That display of grace is found primarily in what He has done for us through Jesus Christ by reaching out in His kindness and mercy toward us . . .

We are spending one more day looking at the biblical worldview of Jesus Christ. We will look at what He is doing right now today. We have already looked at what He has done eternally. He has always been God. We saw the incarnation. He came to the earth at a moment in time and took on human flesh and nature and lived among us a perfect life, nevertheless He lived among us. We saw that He went to the cross and died on our behalf dying for our sins. We have seen that He also resurrected from the dead and death could not hold Him. What is He doing right now? First, He is ascended. Acts 1:9, “And after He had said these things, He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And as they were gazing intently into the sky while He was going, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them. They also said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.'” The first thing we find out is that Jesus is no longer on earth. As a matter of fact, He has never been back to earth since that time in a physical form. He was seen in visions: Paul saw Him in a vision, John saw Him in a vision, but He doesn't come back and live on earth. He is coming again sometime, we will look at that in the future, but right now He is ascended, and He has gone to be with the Father. He has left this earth and He is gone at this time. We find that as He has ascended, He has gone to the right hand of the Father. Acts 2:33 says, “Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirt, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear.” When He ascended, He ascended to the Father, and He is at the right hand of the Father. He is on the throne of God and when He went there, He then turned around shortly thereafter, and He and the Father sent the Holy Spirit to earth to indwell His people in the church. We find that happening in Acts 2. At the right hand of God (the position of power and the position of the Throne Room) He ascended, and He sits there today until He comes again. What is He doing there? In Hebrews 7:25 it says, “Therefore He is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.” The fact that Jesus Christ is alive. The fact that He has ascended and is at the right hand of the Father does wonderful things for us. He lives now so that those who draw near to God draw near to God through Him. It is not possible for sinful human beings to come directly into the presence of a holy God. They must come through a mediator and that mediator is Jesus Christ. It says that He always lives to make intercession for them. So, Christ is alive. He is alive forever and eternally and He “makes intercession for them”, or us, so that we are able to come into the presence of God because of the ministry of Jesus Christ right now at the right hand of the Father . . .

We have been working through the issue of the biblical worldview of Jesus Christ for the last several days and understanding who Christ is. It is absolutely pivotal to everything that we know and believe and live as Christians in this world. He is the watershed issue. Those who receive Him and trust in Him will have eternal life. Those that reject Him will have eternal judgment, so there is nothing more important than who Jesus Christ is and what He has done and what He is going to do. We have seen that He is God in John 1 and other places. We have seen that He has become man in the incarnation. We have seen that He has died for us on the cross of Calvary and took upon Himself our sins dying on our behalf so that we can have the righteousness of God. Without the cross, it is impossible to be right with God. Now we will look at the resurrection. We do not, in our biblical worldview of Jesus, leave Him on the cross. He did go to the cross, He died on the cross at a point in time, but He is not on the cross today. So, when they took Him down from the cross and buried Him, three days later, He was resurrected from the dead. All four gospel accounts talk about the resurrection in one degree or another. Then when the apostles received the power of the Holy Spirit to go out and be witnesses for Christ, their message did not center just on the cross but also the resurrection. Everywhere they went they spoke about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That was both a pivotal and important message, and a message that caused many other people who wanted to reject Christ to get very angry. In Acts 2, we see an interesting verse that puts together the plan of God and the guilt of man. Acts 2:23 says, “this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.” “This Man,” is speaking of Christ. God had planned all along, as we also see in the Old Testament, we have many records and prophecy that Christ would die in our place. Isaiah 53 is the central passage to this. Act 2:23 said that “this Man was delivered over by God through a predetermined plan and foreknowledge.” This was not an accident. God had planned this. Acts 2:24 continues, “But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power.” These Jewish leaders and the Jews that follow Him did in fact crucify Christ. They are held accountable for that. They are guilty of doing that, but the Lord resurrected Christ from the dead. Because it is impossible for death to hold Him in its power. This is one of the central pieces of the resurrection. The resurrection is the authenticity of who Jesus Christ is. That He is God, and He is Savior. He is the great Godman, perfect Savior for us. Death could not hold Him because He was God. The resurrection proved that. It is God's stamp of approval that all that He did met His approval. There is also the verification that He is all He claimed to be. We find that final proof of His deity . . .

We are continuing to examine biblical worldview. Biblical worldview encapsulates many things that are extremely important and it's important that we understand those things. The most important of all those things in many ways is Jesus Christ Himself. You cannot have a biblical worldview if you do not have a worldview concerning Christ that is accurate to the teachings of the Word of God. We have looked at Christ who is God and we have looked at Christ who came as man, the Godman. Now we are going to look at Christ crucified. When we think of Jesus Christ we often think of the cross because they are so connected with one another. What did Christ do for us concerning the cross? There is so much in the New Testament and even the Old Testament about this. I want to look at 2 Corinthians 5:21 with you, it says, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” The reason Jesus Christ came was to be our Savior. He came and He knew no sin. First, all of those years living on earth from the day of His incarnation to the day of His death, there was no sin in Him. He lived the perfect life. The life that no one else has ever lived. He was the second Adam in a sense. Adam was created in such a way that he had no sin in him, but he fell. When he fell, he became a sinner. Jesus Christ never fell, and He never sinned. So, He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf. He became sin for us. He took upon Himself our sin and became sin on our behalf, for us, not for Himself, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Salvation is not possible apart from the work on the cross of what Jesus Christ has done for us. I really enjoy looking at Romans 5 in its entirety when I think about this, but let's look at Romans 5:7-8, “For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” What a beautiful picture. While we were sinners, while we deserved absolutely nothing from Him and have done nothing to merit anything from Him, He died for us. Romans 5:9 continues, “Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.” Now that we have been saved by Jesus Christ, we have been made justified and righteous by His blood. We are also saved from the wrath of God. This is the case that God's judgment and righteous wrath is poured out on those who reject Him, but because of Jesus Christ and His blood, we are saved, if we are Christians, from the wrath of God . . .

We are looking at Jesus Christ as we continue looking at biblical worldview because He is central to anything about a biblical worldview. We saw last time that Jesus Christ is God. He has always been, He is eternal, He is holy, He is a member of the Godhead – we often call Him the second person of the Godhead. He is truly God. We now move to the incarnation where Jesus Christ becomes man and comes to this earth. It is November and we are getting fairly close to Christmas, probably everyone's favorite season and holiday. However, it is more than a holiday. It is a remembrance of what happened at a time when God became man. When Jesus Christ came among us. That is what we celebrate at Christmas. At least that is what we are supposed to celebrate if we don't get lost in all the trimmings. We are looking at John 1:9, “There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.” We saw that last time. He is the Light of the world, and He comes to bring that light. John 1:10 says, “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him.” This is referring to His own people, probably speaking of the Jewish people. The gospel record is that most people did not receive Jesus Christ. Most Jews rejected Him. He came to His own though they did not receive Him. In John 1:12 it says, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name,” this is a great verse that I turn to often when I am talking to people about their need for Christ. What do we need to know and believe in order to become followers of Christ in order to be saved? This verse says it pretty well. “As many as have received Him” – those who have accepted Him and not simply believed about Him or had some theological themes they understood, but they actually received Him into themselves, “He gave the right,” it says, “to become the children of God.” Now we are the children of God. We are no longer the children of the devil. We are no longer of the world. We are children of God. Then it qualifies it by saying, “even those who believe in His name.” The word belief or believe is found frequently in the gospel of John. It's an evangelistic gospel and it is telling people that if they want to know God, they have to believe in the name of Jesus Christ. Christ came as the incarnation that we might believe in Him. We go to John 1:14 where it says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” The word that was mentioned in John 1:1 has now become flesh. This is the incarnation. The God of the universe, the Creator of all things has now taken on a physical form and the nature of humans, although a sinless nature. We beheld the glory of God through Jesus Christ. So, the world most perfectly sees God through what they see in Jesus Christ which is found in the Scriptures as we study them.

We continue looking at various issues that are integral to thinking biblically. There is nothing more central to the way we think as Christians than how we think about Jesus Christ. Christ is part of everything we do, a part of every aspect of our faith, and it is even in our name “Christian,” meaning Christ-like. We are followers of Jesus Christ. He permeates the Word of God. He permeates our lives. We must think biblically about Jesus Christ. The only thing we really know about Christ is what is found in Scriptures. These traditions and all these kinds of things you might see on the history channel are largely legends, myths, and fabrications. What we know about Jesus Christ is found on the pages of holy Scripture. We turn to the Word of God to look at some aspects of His life. I want to look over five different central features concerning Jesus Christ. First, foundationally, is that Jesus Christ is God. John 1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” This is kind of a poetic way of speaking, I suppose. Yet, as we look at it, it is profoundly edifying and truthful. We see here that the “Word” here is the Greek word logos. As we go throughout the context of the passage, it is identifying Jesus Christ. There is no question about that. It says that He was with God, and He was God. That tells us two things. First, our understanding of the Godhead is that there is one God but in Trinitarian form. We have talked about that before and that is also central to our biblical worldview. Jesus Christ is a member of the Trinity. Usually, we call Him the second person of the Trinity, but He also was God. So, He is fully deity, and He has always been with God. Eternal. Then it says in John 1:3, “All things came into being through Him, and apart from him nothing came into being that has come into being.” When we go back to Genesis 1, we learn that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and now we are informed in John that Jesus Christ was the instrumentality of that creation. So, God did create the heavens and the earth and Jesus Christ was the means by which that creation came about. In John 1:4 it says, “In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.” We find here that Christ, as He came to be among us, was not only God, and not only Creator, and not only a member of the Trinity, but He also has come to give life. He is “the way, the truth, and the life” He tells us in John 14. He is the One who is the essence of life. He is the One who is the giver of life and apart from Jesus Christ, there is no true life. We are speaking here primarily of the spiritual aspect of life. We are told in Ephesians 2 that we are born dead in our trespasses and sins. Spiritually speaking, we are dead when it comes to our spiritual life. We are separated from God. We are dead. Yet, Jesus Christ is the One who gives life. He is the life, and He has come to give life.

We are taking one more day looking at the biblical worldview concerning humanity. This is going to be a good one! The last several times we have looked at the fallenness of humanity and the consequences of sin. Now let's look at the remedy of our sin. That is the good news of the Scriptures of what we call: the gospel. In Ephesians 1:7 it says, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace.” Him refers to Jesus Christ. Here in a nutshell is the gospel message. We who are lost in sin, polluted, tainted, and corrupted by sin, all of us, have the privilege of being able to be saved by the blood of Jesus Christ. What is the great need of humanity when we think about human nature? The greatest need is forgiveness and redemption. We need to be set free from our own sinfulness, and corruption in human nature. That can only be brought about because of what Jesus Christ has done to bring about redemption in our lives. In 2 Corinthians 5:21 it says, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” Not only do we have the forgiveness of sin, but we have been given the righteousness of God because of Jesus Christ. He is talking about Christians, believers, here. All who do not know Christ as their Savior are in great trouble when it comes to sin. They are still in bondage, corruption, pollution and are still lost in sin. In Romans 6:23 it says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We deserve what our wages are for sin which is death. We have seen that all along, all the way back to Genesis 3 where we saw that Adam and Eve would die and return to dust. The wages of sin, what we deserve for being sinful, rebellious people is physical death, spiritual death, and eternal death. Yet it says here, the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. That is a wonderful picture, isn't it? We have an eternal life given to us as a gift from the Lord Jesus Himself! . . .

We looked yesterday at the fallenness of humanity and how mankind fell. We looked at some of the judgments that came because of that, but there is more to it than that. There is more than simply that women will have increased pain during childbirth, conflict in marriage, and hard labor that will be necessary to provide for just our sustenance in life. There is also a really important spiritual consequence to the fallenness of humanity. That is part of our biblical worldview. Ephesians 2 talks about this a great deal and lays it out in Ephesians 2:1-3. Perhaps this is one of the clearest passages in all of Scripture on this subject. It says in Ephesians 2:1, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.” First of all, we are dead in our sins. This is the nature of every human being before salvation. We are dead. Not sick, weak, or anemic. We are dead! That is a horrible place to be. We are spiritually dead before Christ. That is true of every child born into this world because of our fallen human nature. Ephesians continues, “in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world,” before Christ those who are dead in their sins live, in a spiritual sense, in such a way that they are following the course of this world. In other words, with our theme of biblical worldview, they are following a worldview that is not in line with Scripture. It is a worldview that is in line with the world and the culture. Ephesians goes on to say more about that, “according to the prince of the power of the air.” Who is it that controls the worldview and sets the agenda for how people think and act in our culture? If not Christ, then it's Satan. If Christ is not leading you in that regard, if you are not living in such a way that you are following His precepts or living according to His ways because He saved you and redeemed you, then you are following Satan and Satan is your God in a real sense and you are following his worldview that he has put into this system. The verse continues, “of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.” All of humanity that do not know Christ have this worldview built in them by the devil himself. Ephesians 2:3 says, “Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” That is a mouthful, isn't it? Let's break it down. All of us live life, not only according to this worldview and the world system that is led by Satan, but also by our own fallen nature which is called here, “the flesh.” The desires or the “lust of our flesh,” determine how you and I live our lives. We indulge in those lusts and desires of the flesh and of the mind. The physical outward sins. The inward sins of the mind. We are by nature children of wrath; therefore, we are under the wrath of God. We are under the judgement of God because we are dead in our sins, and we live in rebellion against Him. We really want nothing to do with Him. That is the spiritual picture that we have here.

In order to understand a biblical worldview in relation to people, we have to go back to Genesis 3. Everything goes back to Genesis. In Chapters 1 & 2 we found the special creation of humanity. Made in the image of God and specially made by the Lord Himself and given all sorts of privileges including a relationship with God Himself that was wonderful. It was a sweet and perfect fellowship with the Lord. All of that comes unglued in Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve decide to sin. When we come to the New Testament, we find in the Scriptures that Adam is given the blame for the fall. Eve, as we see in the text, was the first to rebel and eat of the fruit that God had forbidden, and she gives it to her husband, and he partakes. When we come to Romans 5, we find that it is Adam who was given the responsibility for sin. He is the one who had brought about the sin and corruption on the human race because he chose at that point to rebel. It is very likely that Eve was deceived. She certainly was. She chose, but she was deceived. Adam doesn't seem to be deceived. Adam chose, at that moment, to eat willingly of this fruit over the obedience to God and thus sinfulness entered the human race with all the ramifications that come with it. Today we are looking again at the curse and judgment God had brought upon the human race because of this sin. We looked at the curse on Satan, but we are going to pick up now with what happens to men and women. The judgment for humanity begins with the woman in Genesis 3:16, it says, ‘To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.'” We start with one of the consequences being the intensity of physical pain in childbirth. We also find that her desire will be for her husband. Most believe that is a statement regarding that there will exist, built within her now fallen human nature, a desire to rule over her husband. Yet, in the last line it says that “And he will rule over you.” In the heart and mind of the fallen nature of mankind, of males, they will desire to be a tyrant over their wives. So, we are already set up for the battles within marriage. The perfect marriage of Genesis 2 has now become this marriage where two people want to be the ruler. Not just leadership but ruling over one another. So, the battle is on, and therefore that is part of the consequence of the human nature. Two fallen sinners coming together in marriage. The Bible talks a lot about how to get around those things and fix those issues and live biblically and godly in marriage and have a happy marriage, but the battle lines are set by our sinfulness here.

We have been looking at the biblical worldview of humanity. Everything so far has been pretty positive. We are made in the image of God, we are specially created beings by the hand of God, we were created uniquely with a material nature of our physical body as well as an immaterial nature of wonderful components internally. It's pretty good stuff. Now we are going to get very negative today. What is wrong with us? We are made in the image of God. We are special creations by the hand of God, but we are not doing well, are we? Humanity is a mess! It's a mess inside our own hearts and lives as well. What is wrong with us? Scriptures take us right back to Genesis 3 to what we usually simply call the “fall of humanity.” We get a picture of what happened that took two people, Adam and Eve, who were walking with God, in righteousness, perfect fellowship, and walking in a sense in that they were sinless. Now they are going to fall, and with them falls all of humanity. That must be understood to understand the biblical understanding of humanity and the situations that we are in today. We are looking at the rebellion that took place in the book of Genesis. We start with Genesis 3:1, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?” The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.'” The serpent said to the women, “You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.” We see the fall here. This is a very straightforward thing. There is nothing special about what happened except that they disobeyed God. In defiance of God, they did exactly what God told them not to do and that brought the element of sin into their lives and the corruption. We see in Genesis 3:7 that right away they understand guilt. Their eyes were opened, and they understand the difference now between good and evil, but they also now recognize guilt. They are now under the judgment of God because of what they have done. In Genesis 3:8 it continues, “They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.” Adam had never been afraid before and Eve had never been afraid before. They had sweet and glorious fellowship with the God of the universe until now. Now they are afraid, and they are afraid because now they are tainted with evil, and they have disobeyed God, and sin is in their life, and judgment is going to be meaded out upon them. There is good reason for them to be afraid.

We have looked at the creation, the fact that human beings are in the image of God. Today we are going to look at the immaterial nature of humans. We have already talked about the body and that God created us with bodies. We are physical beings. I encourage you to do a study sometime on the body in Scripture. The body is talked about a lot, especially in the New Testament, and how important it is that we honor the Lord with our body, and our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. So, the physical nature, material nature, of human beings is very important. There is also what we might call the immaterial aspect of human beings. That is, the part that you cannot see which is interior. What is that all about? Let's talk about that for just a moment. What is going on inside? In 1 Thessalonians 5:23, it says this, “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Here it seems to indicate that there are three divisions of a human being: the spirit, the soul, and the body. Some divide up the human being into those three categories. We have a physical body, which is obvious, but interiorly, our immaterial nature, is made up of two components: spirt and body. Others say no, that is not necessarily the case. They say we have an immaterial nature and within that immaterial nature are several components identified in the Bible. Spirit and soul are both identified in the Bible, but is there something else? Are we just body, soul, and spirit or is there more to it than that? I think there is more to it than that. We see the spirit here, but how is that different biblically from the soul, if at all? It is part of the immaterial nature but is there a real difference? It is very hard to find a consistency of that in Scripture. I want to go back to the Scriptures to show that there is more to the immaterial man. I want to look at Matthew 15:19 that speaks about what is going on in the body as well as the mind and soul. It says, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.” Jesus is warning there about the heart. That at the very core of our being, as far as our immaterial nature is concerned, He calls it the heart. We saw in the writings of Paul, the soul, and the spirit and now we have the heart. What is the difference between the heart, soul, and spirit or is there any difference at all or is there overlap? Let's look at Matthew 22:37, which says, “And He said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.'” This is what we often call the “great commandment.” We have in the immaterial nature of humanity: the heart – this core of our being, the soul – the inner nature of our being, and now it brings up the mind. You cannot see the mind. You can see the brain if you do the right kind of medical imaging, but you cannot see the mind. It is different than the brain, yet the Lord speaks of loving Him with all those things as well . . .

We talked about a biblical worldview of humanity in the last broadcast. Who are people? What does the Bible say about us as people? So, we are looking at several different facets over the next several days where Scriptures tell us what a person is like. The first one is that we as people are unique in the creative order of God. We are not like angels. We are not like the beast of the field. We are unique. In many ways, I suppose we could say we are chief of God's creation of all that He has ever created. So, we are very special in that way. We see that. We see we are special in the eyes of God because God Himself has chosen to create us in a certain way. He chose to create us out of the dust of the earth and later when we die, as a result of sin, we return to the dust of the earth. The body is very important in the creation of people. Angels don't have bodies. Angels are spirits. Human beings, we have bodies, and we will have bodies for all of eternity according to the Scriptures. We will be given a new, glorified body to live with the Lord forever in His kingdom and we will always have physical bodies. So, we are unique. I want to talk about one other aspect today before we begin to look at the body itself as well as the immaterial nature of humanity. That is the fact that we are made in the image of God, and we couldn't put more emphasis on that if we had to. So many things that are going wrong in our world today when it comes to people goes back to the fact that most people do not understand that we as people are made in the very image of God. No other being is ever said to be made in the image of God. Not angels, not the beast of the field, and therefore we are unique. I'm for animal rights to a certain degree. I love animals and want to protect animals, but animals are not people. People are unique. People are superior to animals. Angels are a fascinating study and eventually we will get to that understanding of the biblical worldview, but angels are not people and do not have bodies and do not live on the earth like we do, so there is a uniqueness. They are also not made as far, as we are ever told in Scripture, in the image of God. In Genesis 1:26-28 it says, “Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.'” We are made in the image of God. We are told that here and in other places in Scripture.

For several weeks now we have been discussing biblical worldview and what that looks like. We are going through the theology of Scripture to see what a biblical worldview is. First, we looked at the biblical worldview related to the Scriptures answering the question: What would a biblical worldview be related to what we believe about the Bible. Secondly, we took a few days to talk about God Himself and what Scripture says about God and who He is and what we should believe if we are biblical Christians. Today we are going to move to another topic. We are moving on to mankind, or humanity. What does the Scripture say about humanity? What should be our biblical worldview when it comes to people? To find that out, we go right back to the beginning of Scripture in Genesis. Human beings were the final created act of God on the sixth day of creation. Human beings are absolutely unique. Genesis 2:7 says, “Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” We begin with this particular and specific act of God in which He created human beings. Creation is something that God did, according to Scripture, at a moment in time. Therefore, all forms of evolutionary theory are ruled out. It rules out atheistic evolution that doesn't think it needs God. No Christian would believe that theory. It also rules out theistic evolution - in which people believe God used evolution over a period of billions of years to bring about the planets and millions of years to bring about people and creatures and so forth. Genesis 2:7 unequivocally rules both of these worldviews false. Human beings are a special and unique act of God at one moment in time. We also find Scriptures that detail the creation of woman. As we read further in Genesis 2:18- 22, it says, “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.' Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him. So, the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.'” What a beautiful picture we have here of what God has done. This leads right into marriage. Genesis 2:24 says, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” We have this beautiful picture, before the fall of man in the next chapter, in which God has created Adam and Eve uniquely at a special point in time. He has brought them together as the first marriage and created marriage at this time and tells us what marriage is going to be about as a man and woman come together as one flesh. That is the picture we have here of the beginning of humanity.

As we consider a biblical worldview, and we are looking at this time at the worldview of God as found in Scripture. We are going to spend one more day on that, although as I said yesterday, we could spend weeks and months exploring all the things Scripture says about it. That would be a profitable study and I hope you have done that. I would point you to books such as A.W. Tozer – The Knowledge of the Holy and J.I. Packer – Knowing God, and many other good books on who God is. Those are two that are very accessible and readable. If you haven't read those two books, I would really encourage you to do so. Let me talk about a couple other things about the biblical worldview. God exists in a Trinity. That is the thing that distinguishes us from Judaism, for example. In ancient Judaism, in the Old Testament, an essential key part in their doctrine. For example, Deuteronomy 6:4 says, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” That was known as the “Shema,” and that was the key basic doctrine of the Jewish faith. The Lord is our God. There is just one Lord. Monotheism. When we come to the New Testament, actually there are touches of this all the way through the Old Testament. When we come to New Testament, we find that God exists in a Trinitarian form. For example, in what we call the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19, it says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” You notice in that verse that name is singular. Baptize them in the name of. The one name of, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. So, we have all members of the Trinity aligned together and we are to baptize them in the name of that Holy Trinity. Here is a quick definition, a bit more complicated, that God exists in three eternal, equal persons, same in substance, but distinct in subsistence – that is that all members of the Trinity, all three persons within the Trinity are completely, fully, and equally God. Their essence is the same, but they have different roles within the Trinity in ways that we do not understand. People have said, for example, that if you try to understand the Trinity you might lose your mind. If you deny the Trinity, you might lose your soul. So, the point is that the Trinity is a very complicated doctrine found, only in the revelation of Scripture. Nobody would have invented it or made it up. It is from the revelation of the Word of God, yet it is something that is beyond the comprehension of us in our finite minds. There is no comparison. There is no metaphor that fits. No analogy that fits, yet it is a revelation of Scripture.

Several days ago, in our broadcast we began talking about a biblical worldview and what that looks like. There are various surveys and so forth that have asked people a few questions to see if they have a biblical worldview. That is usually a very truncated idea of what a biblical worldview is. We are looking at it in more detail. I believe that to have a worldview that is in line with Scripture there are certain cardinal, non-negotiable teachings and understandings that must be ours. We began by looking at Scripture and our view of God's Word as being inspired, inherent, infallible, and the sufficient Word of God. Then we began to talk about God Himself. You cannot have a biblical worldview and have a wrong view of God. Scripture tells us what God is like. That is what we are looking at. Of course, we are only focusing on a few things in particular. We could go on for weeks upon weeks talking about God and all that Scripture says about Him, but we are picking out some essentials. These are things that certainly cannot be negotiated beyond. One of those things is holiness. God is holy. I don't think it is a good idea to say that one attribute of God is more important or more essential than another. Some would look at God and say God is love and that is His essence and highest attribute. Or they may pick a different one. Some would go to holiness and say that holiness is the highest attribute of God. I think we have to be careful there and not parcel God up in that way. He is not like us. All the attributes of God, though we think of them as main characteristics, are part of who God is in essence, not just characteristics. All of these are vital to understanding Him. Some have looked to holiness as the key that unlocks all of them. If God is not holy, then we have a real problem with who God is. That does not mean holiness is the highest of all attributes, it is just part of His nature. It is who God is. Yet Scripture talks so often about His holiness. In Isaiah 6:3, remember Isaiah is in the temple of the Lord and the Lord gives him a vision of the essence of Himself, the greatness of Himself. The angels are there and are flying around the Lord's throne that Isaiah gets to witness, and the angels cry out, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.” It's the only place in the Old Testament when any of His attributes are spoken of three times back-to-back. The only place where the world “holy” is used like that, three times back-to-back. Then we come to the New Testament, and we have a worship scene in heaven with the angels. John is witnessing this one in Revelation 4:8, it says, “And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within; and day and night they do not cease to say, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come.'” One other time in Scripture here we have this worship of God as being holy. Once again, it is the angels saying three times, “holy, holy, holy.” This is such a vital part of who God is. It really nails down His holiness.

Something that comes up all the time in Scripture is the very fact that God is the sovereign God. Fifty-six times in the Scriptures, God is called the Almighty God. That is just one phrase. The evidence of His Almightiness, all-powerfulness, and His sovereignty permeates the Word of God. It is never absent. I think of the angels in heaven who are praising the Lord in Revelation 19:6, and they simply say, ”Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.” That is how the angelic beings see the Lord: the Almighty who reigns. In Ephesians 1:11 it says, “also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will.” We have the sovereignty of God, providence is another term, in which God is working all things in accordance with the counsel of His will. Nothing is outside of His control or beyond His purposes. Nothing happens that God doesn't design or control. He works all things according to the counsel of His will. That is a wonderful, wonderful thought, isn't it? Just think for a moment about the opposite of that. What would happen if God could be changeable? What would happen if something could actually thwart the will of God – whether it be people, Satan, or whatever? What would happen if God was not in control, and we had a universe that was out of control and could go any direction at any moment? The sovereignty of God is a wonderful biblical understanding of who God Himself really is. The Psalmist is talking and thinking about the sovereignty of God and breaks down in many different ways how he looks at the “omnis” of God. The “omnis” meaning the “alls.” We see in Psalm 139:1 the omnipresence, or all present. He is present everywhere. It says, “O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, And are intimately acquainted with all my ways.” The Psalmist here is admitting understanding that there is nothing that he does that God doesn't know. There is no way that he can get beyond the understanding of God. He knows all things. He understands all things. He scrutinizes all things. God's sovereignty goes to the Psalmists' very thoughts and his mind and God does that throughout the universe . . .

What is a biblical worldview of God? You cannot have a good biblical worldview if you do not have a good understanding of what Scripture says about who God is. We are looking at Romans 1:18 that says, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” Then he goes on to say this, “because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” We look at these verses here and we looked at them before. This is God revealing Himself in nature and certain things we can know about God even beyond the Scriptures. You do not have to have the Scriptures to know some of these things He says. So, to begin with, you know that there is a God, and God has revealed Himself in certain ways even through natural revelation of our conscience and nature around us. It says, “His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen in these ways.” So, God exists, and Scripture says you don't even need to believe in the Bible to know that He exists. Now, if you wanted to get rid of the idea that God existed, so therefore having an unbiblical worldview, what would you do? Historically in the Western world, including America, most people have had a belief in the God of Scripture. It doesn't mean they were Christians, so I wouldn't proclaim that America was ever a Christian nation, but it did have a biblical worldview founded on those many years of going back into the Scriptures and the foundation being laid. So, if you wanted to get rid of that kind of attitude, view, and idea that God truly exists and is needed, what would you do? Ideologically, you would come up with alternative ideas. Here are four different ideologies that try to undermine the view of God in Scripture: 1. Enlightenment. Late 1600-1700s. Replaced God with reason and science. This is the ideology that you don't need God, instead you can think it through. You can logically think it through. You can do scientific experiments and God is unnecessary. 2. Karl Marx Manifesto. 1848. Marx denied God totally because man would be the center of the universe. He believed that man, not God, is the supreme being, therefore we dismiss God and then man can figure it out. Of course, the enlightenment was part of this teaching as well. It thought that if man is smart enough to have reason as a center of their thinking and logic and so forth, and man doesn't need God, then man is at the center of the universe. 3. Charles Darwin Origins of Species. 1859. This would be the beginning of the popularization of evolution theory. Darwin got rid of God by saying we don't need a creator. Yes, in the Scriptures they looked up in the heavens and saw the mighty power of God and the divine nature of God, but Darwin looked at nature and didn't see God. Instead, banking off Karl Marx to a large degree, what he saw was not God, but evolution. He believed that by random chance and so forth that the survival of the fittest worked things out so that we are where we are at today in evolution. God is not needed. A creator is not needed. Evolution filled in that gap. 4. Sigmund Freud - views of Psychoanalysis. End of 1800s. Freud replaced the biblical worldview of humanity – what mankind was really like, in other words their inward nature – with a whole different system of the id, the ego, and the superego . . .

We are looking at different details at what a true biblical worldview would look like. We are not looking at the minimalist biblical worldview, but full detail of what it looks like to see life through the lens of Scripture. We looked at Scripture last time and moving straight from that is a biblical worldview of God. Obviously, at the heart and center of a biblical worldview is our understanding of God Himself. Many theologians, and others that read the Bible, note that the Bible begins by God not explaining Himself or trying to convince people that He exists, but simply, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” No explanation, and no long list of apologetics to prove God exists. He simply says, “I exist.” “In the beginning God,” lots of sermons have probably been preached on that one phrase alone. God did what? He created everything. The heavens, the earth, and the whole works. Many have pointed out the first eleven chapters of Genesis is really the bedrock of the Christian faith. If you dismiss the first eleven chapters, you call it myth or fables or anything else, and you end up without a biblical worldview because you in essence have misunderstood God. As we think about that, we find that God does exist in Scripture, and He is the creator of all things. The Westminster Catechism sums up a lot of what Scripture says in this short statement about God, it says, “God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.” That doesn't tell us everything about God, but it does tell us a lot of things about who God is. He is nothing like any of us. He is beyond us and unchangeable and infinite in all things. He is a spirit. He is not a physical being. He is a spirit . . .

As we have been talking about a biblical worldview, we realize we must see life through the lens of Scripture to have a biblical worldview. As we are thinking about what the components of a biblical worldview are, it is only logical that the first component is to believe that the Scriptures are the Word of God. We also must talk about God Himself, and we will do that soon. We are going to talk today about how He revealed Himself to us. Has God communicated to humanity? What form? What do we believe about that? I think a biblical worldview is to believe that the Scriptures, as we hold in our hands in the form of the Bible, is given to us by God. We have seen already that it is inspired by God. It is God-breathed. Therefore, it comes forth from the breath and communication of God. What does that mean to us as we think about a worldview that incorporates this kind of view of Scripture? 2 Peter 1:19-21 implies to us that the Word of God is inherent and infallible. Inherent and infallible means the Word of God is never wrong and cannot be wrong. It can never possibly be wrong because it is given to us by the very voice of God. It can never be wrong in the particulars for the same reason. So, it is never wrong, and it can never be wrong. 2 Peter 1:19 says this, “So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” This is a description of how God has given us His Word. The Scriptures do not come from the prophets themselves. It is not the ideas or the thinking or the prophecies of individuals. The prophets moved as the Holy Spirit moved them. It's kind of like putting a stick on the stream of water and that stream of water takes the stick down the stream. That is the picture we have here of the prophetic Word. The Word of the Holy Spirit moved these prophets so that they spoke the very Word of God. It wasn't their interpretation, it wasn't their ideas, it was God's Word to us! So, it is infallible. It is inherent. It is the inspired Word of God. Jesus spoke about this while He was in prayer in John 17:3, where He says, “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” You here speaking of the Father. In John 17:8, He says this, “for the words which You gave Me I have given to them,” so the very words that Jesus spoke come from the Father, “and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me.” Then in John 17:17, He says this, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.” The very words Jesus spoke, the very words found in Scripture are the truth of God and therefore a biblical worldview believes this is what is true about God's Word.

We are continuing our discussion today about biblical worldview. If you have your Bibles, you might turn to one of the great Scriptures on the Scriptures themselves, 2 Timothy 3:16-17. If we are going to have a worldview that we call biblical then we have already seen that we have to draw that from Scriptures itself. Biblical worldview is seeing life through the lens and teaching of Scripture. If we are going to do that, then we must believe that the Word of God is given to us by Himself as what we call in this passage, “inspired of Him.” I believe if you are going to have a biblical worldview it is essential that you have a view of the Scriptures that it is God-breathed. 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.” Now, the Legacy Bible from Master's Seminary in California has done a recent upgrade from the NASB Bible and instead of using the term “inspired” as the NASB does, it says “God breathed.” So, the word inspired means breathed out. It is the very breath of God. A biblical worldview would incorporate the understanding that the Scriptures are breathed out by God. He says, all Scripture – every aspect of Scripture, all 66 books of Scripture, or what we call the Canon of Scripture, is God-breathed. It comes from the very breath of God. It says the Word of God is profitable for four things: 1. Teaching – it tells us what is true. 2. Reproof – it tells us when we have gone astray and when we are wrong. 3. Correction – not only does it tell us when we have gone astray, but it tells us how to be corrected. 4. Training and Righteousness – when we put all of this together the Scripture takes us through a training process where the Word of God, when we meditate on it and study it, trains us to think like God and to live as God wants us to live. 2 Timothy 3:17 says, “so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” We have this person of God, the child of God, who believes this way and looks at Scripture from this angle. They are equipped, mended. This Word is used in the gospel to speak of mending of nets. It is the picture that a hole in a net for a fisherman won't help him catch many fish. So, the fishermen would bring their nets up on the shore and mend those nets and fix those holes and throw them back out and use them again as they were now equipped for what they were made to do. Here, it is speaking of, equipping, or mending us. Fixing those holes in our lives so that we are equipped for every good work. The adequacy and sufficiency of Scriptures equips us for every good work . . .

We continue discussing a biblical worldview today. Recall that a worldview is simply how we look at life and process life. Biblical worldview is to process life through the lens of Scripture. We saw yesterday that God reveals His truth through two different ways: 1. General or natural revelation in which He reveals certain aspects of truth through nature, creation, our conscience, and our moral nature. God has built those things in us. We find this in Psalm 19, which we will look to again today, as well as Romans 1 & 2. God does reveal certain aspects about Himself and the world in general. People can see those. The Lord's wrath, or judgment, comes against those who suppress that truth. 2. Specific revelation. The natural truth is not enough to truly give us a really solid handle on who God is, who we are, our salvation, and many other things. So, to see those things, we must turn to the written Word of God. We will look at that today. Our biblical worldview must come from the Scriptures itself. What does Scripture say about all of these things concerning our lives and living. We turn to Psalm 19:7 where David has just written about the natural, general revelation in Psalm 19:1-6. He now turns to the specific revelation of Scripture. He gives the Scripture various names. For instance, Psalm 19:7 says, “The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul.” The law then is one of the handles for the understanding of Scripture. He uses several of them here and so, that is what he is talking about here. I am using the Legacy Translation, and it translates the word Lord as “Yahweh,” so keep that in mind as we read through this section. Psalm 19:7 says, “restoring the soul.” He starts off by saying that the Word of God is perfect and there are no defects in it. You couldn't add anything to make it better. It is perfect and its job is to restore the soul. That is wonderful because we are all born into this world with broken souls. We are on the wrong track, we are corrupted by sin, and the Word of God is God's tool and means through His Holy Spirit of restoring the soul. Psalm 19:7 continues, “The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.” We have a sure Word of God so that even the simplest of people can become wise when they understand life from God's wisdom on how to live life God's way.

We began a series yesterday about biblical worldview. Worldview being simply the lens by which we look at life and process life and think through life. Everybody has one. A biblical worldview would be a worldview based upon what Scripture tells us is true and how we are to process life through the lens of Scripture. We looked at the surveys taken by Barna Association that says that only 19% of those that claim to be born-again, we will leave that confirmation to them and the Lord, have a biblical worldview by a very minimalistic definition. We are going to begin looking at that step-by-step and we willspend several weeks going through this because I think it is very interesting and very important. We are going to start with Scripture. If you are going to have a biblical worldview, you must have a right view of Scripture. If we are going to process life through the lens of Scripture, what is Scripture? What is revelation? As we think about that, I am going to look at Psalm 19 with you today, and as we think about that, we find in the Bible that God has revealed Himself and His truth through two means: general revelation and specific revelation. General revelation is found in Psalm 19 and other places that deal with the fact that the Lord reveals certain things about Himself through creation and nature and conscience. We will start with Psalm 19:1-3, it says: “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech, And night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; Their voice is not heard.”

We are going to start a new series discussing worldview. That might sound intimidating at first until you realize that everybody has a worldview. From the most sophisticated to the most unsophisticated of people. From the most educated to the most uneducated people. We all have a worldview. Worldview is simply the process by which we examine life. It is the lens by which we process everything, by which we determine what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is not true. Simply stated: It is how we view life. Everybody has a worldview. The issue we want to talk about though is a biblical worldview. As Christians we believe that the lens by which we look at life and process everything should be the Word of God. Therefore, the Word of God should determine our worldview as Christians. So, a biblical worldview is what we are going to talk about. What is a biblical worldview? I read about that all the time. I'm always running across something in Christian literature that says we ought to have a biblical worldview or Christians don't have a biblical worldview. Seldom are we ever told exactly what we are talking about when it comes to biblical worldviews. We will start today by looking at a survey by Barna. Barna is an organization, like the Gallup Polls, that probably does the most surveying among Christian organizations. They have been doing surveys for a very long time. About every five years going back to the 1990s, they have asked the same question of people concerning worldview and whether or not they believe in a biblical worldview. That has stayed, according to them, fairly constant over time.

Thanks for listening to Southern View Chapel's A Wonderful Day in the Lord podcast, featuring senior pastor Gary Gilley. Check out our website @ www.svchapel.org Check out Pastor Gilley's ministry Think on These Things @ www.tottministries.org Sign up for our annual women's conference Beautifully Rooted @ www.beautifullyrooted.org Sign up for our annual men's conference Truth for Every Man @ www.truth4men.org Subscribe to our YouTube channel @ www.youtube.com/c/SouthernViewChapel

Thanks for listening to Southern View Chapel's A Wonderful Day in the Lord podcast, featuring senior pastor Gary Gilley. Check out our website @ www.svchapel.org Check out Pastor Gilley's ministry Think on These Things @ www.tottministries.org Sign up for our annual women's conference Beautifully Rooted @ www.beautifullyrooted.org Sign up for our annual men's conference Truth for Every Man @ www.truth4men.org Subscribe to our YouTube channel @ www.youtube.com/c/SouthernViewChapel

Thanks for listening to Southern View Chapel's A Wonderful Day in the Lord podcast, featuring senior pastor Gary Gilley. Check out our website @ www.svchapel.org Check out Pastor Gilley's ministry Think on These Things @ www.tottministries.org Sign up for our annual women's conference Beautifully Rooted @ www.beautifullyrooted.org Sign up for our annual men's conference Truth for Every Man @ www.truth4men.org Subscribe to our YouTube channel @ www.youtube.com/c/SouthernViewChapel

Thanks for listening to Southern View Chapel's A Wonderful Day in the Lord podcast, featuring senior pastor Gary Gilley. Check out our website @ www.svchapel.org Check out Pastor Gilley's ministry Think on These Things @ www.tottministries.org Sign up for our annual women's conference Beautifully Rooted @ www.beautifullyrooted.org Sign up for our annual men's conference Truth for Every Man @ www.truth4men.org Subscribe to our YouTube channel @ www.youtube.com/c/SouthernViewChapel

Thanks for listening to Southern View Chapel's A Wonderful Day in the Lord podcast, featuring senior pastor Gary Gilley. Check out our website @ www.svchapel.org Check out Pastor Gilley's ministry Think on These Things @ www.tottministries.org Sign up for our annual women's conference Beautifully Rooted @ www.beautifullyrooted.org Sign up for our annual men's conference Truth for Every Man @ www.truth4men.org Subscribe to our YouTube channel @ www.youtube.com/c/SouthernViewChapel

Thanks for listening to Southern View Chapel's A Wonderful Day in the Lord podcast, featuring senior pastor Gary Gilley. Check out our website @ www.svchapel.org Check out Pastor Gilley's ministry Think on These Things @ www.tottministries.org Sign up for our annual women's conference Beautifully Rooted @ www.beautifullyrooted.org Sign up for our annual men's conference Truth for Every Man @ www.truth4men.org Subscribe to our YouTube channel @ www.youtube.com/c/SouthernViewChapel

Thanks for listening to Southern View Chapel's A Wonderful Day in the Lord podcast, featuring senior pastor Gary Gilley. Check out our website @ www.svchapel.org Check out Pastor Gilley's ministry Think on These Things @ www.tottministries.org Sign up for our annual women's conference Beautifully Rooted @ www.beautifullyrooted.org Sign up for our annual men's conference Truth for Every Man @ www.truth4men.org Subscribe to our YouTube channel @ www.youtube.com/c/SouthernViewChapel

Several weeks ago we began a short series of looking at the words of scripture and looking at different ones and how they impact our Christian life and the meaning behind them. That morphed into looking at some statements in the New Testament. Principally, the seven I am statements found in the gospel of John spoken by our Lord. He says, “I am,” seven different times. We looked at that already together. I am going to overview that and review that today as we conclude this short series. The I am as you recall is a link, at least, to the fact that Christ is deity. It was spoken in the Old Testament. Remember when Moses wanted to know who he should say sent him to the people in Egypt, God responded to tell them, “I am sent you.” That is a statement concerning the deity of Christ, the title of Christ. It is a reference to the self-existent one or Yahweh or Jehovah. When Jesus makes these statements, I am the ears perked up on all His listeners. They knew He was speaking beyond simply saying that this is I am as a person. He was making claims that He was deity . . .

This is the seventh I am statement found in John 15. Jesus says in John 15:1, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit, You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” There is a lot here. This is a very intense section and goes all the way through John 15:11. There is so much, so we will just have to hit some highlights of this passage. We find that Jesus is the source of life here. He gives the analogy of a vine, and most of us don't know a lot about growing grapes today, but we know the concept. There is a vine, and you cannot grow fruit unless you are connected to the vine. So, He is saying that He is the vine. The Father is the dresser, so to speak, He takes care of the vineyard, but we are the branches within that vine and unless we are connected to the vine, we cannot have life and we cannot draw life from Christ, and we cannot bear fruit.

We are coming to the end of the I am statements in the book of John. We are in John 14 where Jesus is going to make a wonderful statement. A little context here: Jesus is in the upper room with His disciples on the night that He was betrayed just before the crucifixion. He is now revealing to them that He is going away. They are troubled by that. So much so, that in John 14:1 He says, “Do not let your heart be troubled, believe in God, believe also in Me.” Jesus wants to comfort them at this time. Wonderful things are going to happen, but before those things happen there is going to be the awfulness of the crucifixion, and the disciples don't know what to do about that, and they are just now learning certain things even in this last night with Jesus. He does say to them in John 14:2-4, “In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.” Part of the comfort that Jesus is giving them is that He is going to go away, but He is going to prepare a place for them so that they would have a place in the “Father's house,” together with the Father, with Christ, and Jesus says I am going to prepare such a place for you. Then I am going to come back for you and take you to be with myself. What a wonderful comfort that should be. He says, “you know the way that I am going.” Thomas, I think, probably spoke for all of them when he said in John 14:5, “Thomas said to Him, ‘Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?'” I think that is a good statement. Jesus is kind of hitting them blind here. He is going to go away, prepare a place for them, come again, and take them to Himself and all of that is great, but Thomas is kind of out there in left field here saying what are we to do with this? We don't even know where you are going how could we possibly know the way? . . .

We have been looking at the great seven I am statements made by Jesus concerning Himself. We are in John 11 today where Jesus makes a startling statement to Martha of the Mary and Martha sister duo. In John 11:25 it says, “Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies.” Jesus claims here to be the resurrection and the life. Death is one of our great enemies. It is the last enemy that will be conquered according to 1 Corinthians 15, but it will ultimately go down, because Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life. In the meanwhile, we sorrow over death. There are very few things, if anything, in life that is more sorrowful than the loss of a loved one, and we grieve over that loss. This story has always intrigued people. Jesus knew that Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, was sick and that his sickness was going to be fatal. Jesus knew that, yet He delayed coming. He could have healed him and been there on the spot, and healed him as He did many others, but He didn't. So, finally, after Lazarus has already died and been buried and is in the grave for four days, Jesus and His men show up. At that point, a dialogue takes place between Martha and Jesus. Mary stays in her house at this point. Maybe she is mad at Jesus. Maybe she is just so grief stricken she doesn't want to come out. Martha shows up and she believes in the resurrection as she says in John 11:24, “Martha said to Him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.'” The Old Testament doesn't talk a lot about the resurrection at the end of time, but it does in a few places. Job mentions it, Psalm 16, and especially Daniel 12 which gives a more detailed account of the resurrection at the end times. Mary and Martha believed that. They knew a resurrection was coming and they fully believed that their brother, Lazarus, would resurrect at that time. He was a man who trusted God and Martha had no doubt about his eternal destiny . . .

We continue looking at the I am statements in the book of John. The I am as you will recall is a reference at least partially back to the idea that Jesus Himself is God. He is deity, that is drawn from the Old Testament. The I am. The Jehovah God. Then He makes seven definitive statements concerning Himself as the I am. The last one we looked at in John 10 is that He was the door of the sheep. Then He immediately moves right into not only being the door of the sheep, but the good Shepherd. That's where we pick up today! John 10:11 says, “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.” Jesus is saying that He is that good shepherd. I want to come back to shepherds in a moment, but I want you to note the contrast He makes here between Himself and others who have pretended to be the shepherds of the people. Probably referencing the spiritual leaders of Israel, the pharisees and Sadducees and so forth. John 10:12 continues, “He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me.” Jesus contrasts Himself with those who pretend to be the shepherd and have actually led the people astray. He is the good shepherd. It is a normal, very common metaphor back in the Old Testament. The people of Israel, many of the people, were shepherds and they all knew about sheep and understood the life of the sheep . . .

We have been looking at the seven I am statements found the book of John by Jesus. We have looked so far that Jesus says I am: the Light of the world and bread of life. Today we are looking at Jesus saying I am the door. Looking at John 10:7 it says, “So Jesus said to them again, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.'” The Jews were very familiar with the life of the shepherd. Most of us might see a sheep in the pasture somewhere, but most of us know very little about them. That was a way of life for the Jewish people, although they were not all shepherds. Sheep were very common. It was part of the economy and part of their lifestyle. Many of them worked as shepherds at one point or perhaps continuously, so they understood these things. The sheep were often out looking for grazing. They had to find pasture and so they were often taken wherever that grass might be. It was the job of the shepherds to guide them and to protect them and to take them to places where they could get sustenance, water, food and so forth. Out in the wilderness there were a lot of predators. As a result of that, one of the ways to protect the sheep was known as the sheepfold. If you left the sheep to wander around at night, almost certainly a predator would get one or more of them or they would get lost and not find their way back. So, the only way to keep from losing your flock at night was to keep them together. In the wilderness, there were these small containers, they were short walls that the sheep could be driven into at night for protection, but they did not have a gate in the front of them. So, the shepherd would lay out in front of that opening so that the sheep could not get out . . .

We looked last time at the fact the Jesus is the Light of the world. Today we are looking at His statement in John 6:35 that He is the bread of life. John 6:35 says, “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.'” Let's get some context here. So far, Jesus has been well received, by the masses at least, and He has been doing some great signs and wonders that shows who He is. One of those has been to feed a multitude of people. Just prior to this, He had fed five thousand men. That apparently didn't include the women and children, so it could have been much more than five thousand. We have five thousand people or more fed and they are excited about that. They want to actually make Him King. You can see why. Most of us have never actually experienced true hunger. We get hungry sometimes, but to have the idea of true hunger with the possibility of not finding food is something pretty foreign to most of us. In the first century times when Jesus lived, hunger was a real deal at times. Someone who could come along and actually feed the people and meet their most basic need for food without cost was something very special. So, when they found a person in Jesus, who now they are recognizing is a great prophet if nothing else, and He feeds them in this way, on top of the other signs that He has performed, some of them are now saying and thinking, “Let's make Him King, maybe He is the Messiah! Let's force Him to be our King and to take care of us and to feed us and satisfy our hunger.” Jesus of course rejects that because their motivation is to be fed, not to follow Him in righteousness. Jesus does, based on this account, say that He is the bread of life and if you come to Him you will never hunger. He wasn't talking about physical food here. He is talking about spiritual food . . .

Last time we looked at Jesus' proclamation that He is the great I AM. He is God. He is Jehovah. Then we find, in the gospel of John, seven different times that Jesus came out very clearly and said, I am… These are pictures or metaphors that describe the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. They are very enriching and valuable for us to think about and meditate on. As I go through them briefly these next seven times, I hope you will take some time and go back and look at the context of these statements and spend some time meditating on them and praying about them and thanking the Lord for who He is and that He has come for us. These are wonderful statements that Jesus Himself made. The first one is in John 8:12 which says, “Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.'” As Jesus spoke this way, again He is talking to a Jewish audience, and the Jews have a background in the understanding of the ways and things of God. They know the Old Testament and they know what God did for the people of Israel in the Old Testament. One of the things that the Lord did in the Old Testament was to guide His people in a very physical way through the use of His own presence of what we call the Shekinah Glory. When He wanted the people to move, His cloud by day would guide them. At night, if He wanted them to travel, He would do so in a pillar of fire. At night, He would be the illumination for them to see the way of where they are going and know the direction that God wanted them. This is a picture linking back to that time in the wilderness as God led them. So, Jesus is saying here that He is the Light of the world. I am the illumination of the world. You can't see where to go without illumination. You can't see what is right without illumination and I AM that illumination and Light of the world . . .

Today we are going to look at two words that go together, I AM. In John 8:58, Jesus made a startling announcement about Himself in these verses. It was an announcement that really rocked some of the Jewish leadership. John 8:58 says, “Jesus said to them, “‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.'” It is very instructive to note here that He didn't say that before Abraham was born, I was born, or I was around or whatever. He says, I am. That was a very important terminology for the Jewish people because they understood that was a reference to God Himself. As a matter of fact, the Jews were upset and we see their reaction in John 8:59, “Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple.” They knew exactly what Jesus was referring to and it very much upset them. So much so, that they tried to kill Jesus. I want to go to Exodus 3 and look at the passage of scripture that the Jews knew very well, and they knew exactly what Jesus was trying to say. Jesus was not claiming to be only pre-existent saying He existed before Abraham. That was true, but there is more to it than that. Jesus is claiming to be God and the Jews knew what He was talking about. In Exodus 3, Moses is at the burning bush and God is commissioning him to go into the land of Egypt and virtually pull of the Exodus. Moses would be God's representative. He would be going from where he was living in the wilderness into Egypt and confront Pharoah and the Egyptian army and nation. As Moses would go into Egypt, he had to have a message. He was deeply concerned that as he went into Egypt and presented the message God wanted him to present to the Jews that they would reject it. So, he wants to know who he should say is sending him . . .

We continue to study important words, concepts, and phrases found in the New Testament especially that help us understand how to live, understand God Himself, and who we are in Christ. We are looking at a lot of different words and it's appropriate that we would look at the word, Word! John 1 uses the Greek word logos here. It is used only by the apostle John in the gospel of John, and it is not found anywhere else. John had an agenda and idea in mind here that he was trying to communicate to us concerning the logos, or as translated in our Bibles, the Word. It says in John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” What does the word, Word mean? Part of our problem is that it is not found in other parts of our New Testament, nor does John take the time to explain what he means. It seems very poetic and metaphorical, and it is a beautiful picture of Christ is, but why did he use the word logos or Word to describe Jesus Christ? . . .

We have been looking at the meaning of specific words found in the scriptures to help us understand the Christian life and God. The word we are looking at today is especially related to God Himself. It is the word glorify. It is a wonderful word that speaks of radiance, majesty, and honor. Originally it had the idea of weight. Describing something weighty or heavy, and therefore of great importance. Although that definition is seldom used in the Old or New Testaments. It is the idea of manifesting or demonstrating the glory of God. Whether God demonstrates His own glory or whether He speaks of His own glory. At the incarnation in Acts 2, there was glory all around the angels and that was the reflection of the glory of God. We have in various occasions the glory and majesty of God being demonstrated. In Hebrews 1, I want to look at a few verses that speak on this idea. One of my favorite scripture passages is Hebrews 1:1 it says, “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.” We are looking at the communication of God. God has communicated in two central times and ways in the Old Testament and in many portions and in many ways through the prophets and in the final days in this final dispensation, He has spoken to us through His Son. He has appointed Him heir of all things. Now we go on to talk about that Son and what He is going to do. Hebrews 1:3 says, “And He is the radiance of His glory,” Jesus Christ is the radiance or reflection of the glory of God Himself. He is the exact representation of His nature. When we see Jesus and look intently into the life of Jesus, we are looking intently into the glory and majesty and radiance of God Himself. “And the exact representation of His nature and upholds all things by the word of His power.” Here we have the creative power of Christ Himself . . .

Our word for today is the word repent. This is a word that is often misunderstood, and it is a vital piece of the Christian life. The word itself simply means to change your mind about something, but it is used in a biblical and spiritual sense as changing our minds about something that results in a change in the way we live. So, it's kind of like walking in one direction and then turning around and walking in another direction. It is a turnabout. It starts with the mind. It starts with our thinking. We have changed our mind about Christ and how we used to live and the lifestyle we used to have. We have changed our mind about sin, and we no longer want to be under the dominion of sin. We want to be under the mastery of Christ. We are turning from our idols and turning to Christ to worship Him. All of these things are involved in this word. So, the biblical terminology then is the change of your mind that results in a change of behavior. John the Baptist came preaching repentance in the opening words of the gospels. He called for the pharisees and others to change their behavior and bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance. Later, when Jesus stepped up, He preached the exact same message, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” in Matthew 3:2. Repentance was an important word in the opening words of the gospel concerning Jesus' public ministry . . .

We are continuing to work through biblical words and terms, and we are looking at some of the great teachings of scripture found in the words of scripture. It is important that we do these kinds of word studies and see them in context and see how they are used so we understand how God wants us to live. Today we are going to look at the word baptism or baptize. You will find the word baptize many times in the New Testament. That is really not a translation. The translations from the Greek and the Hebrew is different. This is a transliteration. Simply taking the Greek words letter by letter into the English text. I think the reason why that happened is because by the time the English bibles were being translated, there had been several confusing ideas about baptism floating around the Christian church. As a result of that, or in order to have their translations accepted by the various groups, it was just wiser not to translate the word and simply transliterate it over and let everybody else fight for the rest of time over what it meant. The word itself means to immerse or dip. That is where the problem came in because early in church history, not long after the apostles passed away, we find one of the very earliest of heresies had to do with baptism. Very quickly, people began to baptize children with the idea that by baptizing those children, they would be saved, and an unbaptized child would not be saved. Of course, that teaching is not found in scripture anywhere. Then that bled over later to baptizing adults for salvation. So, there was the heresy of baptismal regeneration that began to pop up very early in church history. Then there were others that would come along, especially at the time of the Reformation, and they would continue to baptize infants, but not for salvation. They said they are bringing the children into the covenant, but not for salvation itself . . .

I'm sure you have heard it said that there are three great enemies of the Christian: the world, the flesh, and the devil. The devil is a personal being who controls the world system, and he desires for us to be sinners. Therefore, he draws us toward the things of the world and the things of the flesh. Last time we looked at the word world, or the Greek word cosmos, which often means the world system in opposition to the system of God and the life He has for us. This time, we are going to look at the word flesh. Flesh really overlaps with the others. We really do have three great enemies. The devil is our enemy. He seeks to destroy us. The world draws us to its ways, thinking and values. The primary enemy found in the New Testament, the one that is repeated as our enemy far more than the other two, is the word flesh. So, what does the word mean to us? Like the word world, it is used in more than one way in the New Testament . . .

It is important and helpful to understand the meaning of words found in the Bible and their meaning in the context of the scriptures. This is important for understanding the meaning in the Christian life. Today's word is world, which is the Greek word cosmos. It is found 188 times in the New Testament. The problem with the word cosmos is that it can be used more than one way which can cause confusion and misunderstanding. There are at least three different ways in which the word cosmos is used: 1. People John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” So, we know that the Lord loves whom? He doesn't love the world system as we will look at in a moment. He doesn't necessarily love the planet, but He does love people. He loves people so much that He sent His Son to die for us that we might be saved. The word, world, or cosmos is used in this way. 2. Planets We find that the Lord talks about the planet itself, the sphere of which we live upon, in Matthew 4:8, “Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.” 3. System or philosophy The primary way that it is found in the New Testament that really impacts us, is that it is used as a world system. A philosophy of life. A system that permeates everything around us and often within us. It colors the way we think. The things that we value, and the life that we live. Probably the most important passage on that subject is in 1 John 2:15 . . .

Our final word this week we are looking at two words that overlap. The words trespass and sin. In Ephesians 2:1, it puts these two words in the same sentence and says, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.” I think we often just couple those two words together and think of them as being synonymous terms. They are not quite synonymous. They give us a full picture of our sinfulness. Let's start with the fact that we are dead in our trespasses and sins. There is a spiritual death that we are born into. We are born sinners. We are born guilty. We are born in a situation in which we have no spiritual life or relationship with God and that is our original state. That is what we are born into. That is what he is speaking about in Ephesians 2 as he is talking about how we can get out of that situation through what Jesus Christ has done for us as we receive His grace by faith alone. He said we are dead in trespasses and sins. What is the difference between trespasses and sins? When you understand the meaning of the words you will see how they complement each other. Trespass is the idea of a deliberate act of deviated from the law or will of God. Again, we are born that way automatically deviating from the will of God. That is our stated personhood. We are those that deviate from the will of God and the Word of God and the law of God. We do not want to be what God wants us to be by nature. That is who we are by nature. It helps us to understand the word trespass when we walk around somewhere, and we see a sign that says no trespassing. Recently, I was in a location in the countryside, and there was a number of places that I wanted to go trekking back into the woods and check it out and see what it was like, and I kept running into these signs that said no trespassing . . .