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Him 288 preserved thy flock most graciously within thy sheltering fold, Move them from every harm away, and in thy safeguard home, till thou shalt wholly have obtained in us the fruits of grace, and we enjoyed that never end shall see thee face to face.
288.
Two, maybe some brother can read from verse six to the end.
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Of the chapter.
Colossians, chapter 2.
Will begin at verse 6.
As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him.
Rooted and built up in him and established in the faith as he have been taught, abounding therein with Thanksgiving.
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and ye are complete in Him which is the head of all principality and power, in whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, and putting off the body of the sins of the flesh.
By the circumcision of Christ.
Buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead. And you being dead in your sins, and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all the all trespasses, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way.
Nailing it to his cross, and having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly in triumphing over them in it. Let no man, therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days, which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ.
Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility.
And worshiping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding the head from which all the body by joints and bands, having nourishment ministered and knit together, increase it with the increase of God. Wherefore if he be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why is the living in the world? Are you subject to ordinance?
Touch not, taste not, handle not, which are all to perish with the using after the commandments and doctrines of men.
Which things have indeed a show of wisdom and will, worship and humility and neglecting of the body, not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh.
Each one of us who have accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior.
At a point in time or a period of time in our life when we came to realize that we were sinners.
That it wasn't that we had a need.
We had our as we had last night in the gospel, our leprosy, our sin, and.
In some sense, in our souls, the realization that we needed a a Savior, and the Lord worked and we came to trust in the message of God, that he had provided that Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we put our trust in the Lord Jesus. And for most of us there came the joy, the happiness in our own hearts.
Of this person who had saved us.
The Saints and colossi likewise had gone through those similar experiences to what we have gone through, but the apostle, in writing to them, realized that while they started that way, if you will, they needed to make sure that they didn't get away from that simplicity of trust in that person.
That he was the source for them of their joy, and they were starting to listen to other voices.
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Other ideas?
Other claims to be truth, that we're taking them or in danger of taking them away from the simplicity as to the Christ and the completeness as to His person to meet their need.
And so he reminds them, as ye have received Christ.
Jesus the Lord, so walk in him. Don't go down a different path. Don't start listening to the voices of the world.
To say Oh yes, but that's all right but and start to the world would say be broad minded and so on.
It goes down many different directions, many different ways that man is has is appealed to as to his beliefs, but he says no, stay with the beginning, stay with the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then he in the verses here that follow, he starts to tell us how complete and important he is and sufficient he is for the need of the soul.
And it's life here on Earth.
Everything we have in Christianity comes to us through the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing do we have of our own selves. And the tactic here is little like Satan. When he spoke to Eve, he tempted her to to seek an alternate source of blessing.
Look within and to reason and here it's the reasoning of the philosophy that would look to another source besides Christ, the risen head and glory. It's a it's it's a doubting his provision to provide for us to look elsewhere for help and guidance in Christianity Today.
Rooted and built in him.
That would mean that we are acquainted with the Lord Jesus Himself.
And that we could be if we know him personally.
And that we can do by reading the four Gospels. That's where we find the Lord Jesus.
Very intimately.
We can know him there.
And know his heart.
His thoughts, his wishes for us.
We certainly know his work.
His sacrifice for us.
So if we have him like that in our heart, we ought to be established in the faith. We only have one faith, and that's the faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. There's no other gods in the world.
And he is the one who has acquainted us with God the Father, the Father who has made this world, we have been taught.
Be getting Todd and Sunday school already. We have Sunday school for the kids and that's where it all starts every week and that's a great privilege.
We ought to be thankful for that.
Will grow a crop I guess.
I'm not a farmer, but we all recognize some soil will grow a crop and some won't.
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Some are suited to it, some is not.
And each one of us is living a life, and there are certain sources of nourishment to that life.
That give the nutrients the soil does to its life, That provide through the soil the moisture that sometimes is needed and the world is full of.
Barren soil. Soil that doesn't when the life is lived in that environment.
It's as far as God is concerned, it produces no fruit.
And so he has provided the Lord Jesus Christ as the root of life for us, the one that we have to be connected with.
Or there will be nothing in the end of our lives. That is what God would call fruit.
And so he's encouraging them to remember.
Their roots, if you will, or their root, which is the Lord Jesus, that they might grow as from Him. Because anything else is not gonna work. Spend your life. You can waste your life.
Repeat a comment that's been helpful to me in my life.
Was said by Mr. Darby. He said the will.
Engaged in evil, feeds on sinful desires and wastes itself without fruit.
Just repeat it. The will engaged in evil feeds on sinful desires and wastes itself without fruit, and there's many a life that is lived feeding on sinful desires, and the end of that life is fruitless as far as God is concerned, because only the Lord Jesus and feeding upon Him.
As the source of nourishment is that which will produce a fruit for God's pleasure, When we speak of fruit, Galatians chapter 6 describes it, It says and it's the work of God. It's the fruit of the Spirit is life, joy, peace, long-suffering, goodness, gentleness, faith, meekness.
Temperance. That's the fruit that God is looking for from our lives. He wants us to be that.
And we will be that.
Expression of those things as our character if we are rooted and built up in his son.
Let me read this this passage, we think.
About the sinful things that God might once we to avoid. But when we go through the the next verse, we see that he's talking about religion, he's talking about philosophies, he's talking about.
Angels. In verse 18, he's talking about the the a force trying to be better or to do something.
For God or to center our lives in ourselves to put ourselves in the center of our lives and that sounds very good and very beautiful for the world, but this is not the way of Christ. We can center ourselves. We we can put ourselves in the center of our lives and say, OK, I'm going to do this and do that and that and that. But this is not what he's talking about here is about.
Taking ourselves from ours from the center and being rooting Christ and being in him, not being deceived by by man thoughts. And like here he was talking verse verse.
17 About the shadow of things come, and then verse 18.
Voluntary humility and worshipping of angels and and also the rudiments verse twins ordinances. So he's not talking as much as about committing crimes or those open sins we always talk about but.
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Not but about religious, religious feelings and religious ways.
Of course, men's ways.
In Isaiah 53.
We read in verse 2, For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant and as a root out of a dry ground.
And it wasn't this earth that produced that blessed man. And if we're rooted and build up in him, he's our source. He's our life.
And man's religion always gives the 1St man some leg to stand on, doesn't it? Some idea, some form of thought, some way of approaching God, man making his own. I mean, look how much democracy has affected.
Christianity in this nation.
Man, that man can't approach God by decision. Well, we're going to bring the doctrine down to fit this idea.
The first man has no leg to stand on and the blessed man who is God has given us as the very source of life and object of our hearts grew up out of a dry ground. There was nothing in this world. He what what a manifestation to our hearts and to think of this to be rooted and build up in him and established in the faith as you've been taught Paul's laborers.
Apostles, laborers, to bring that man before man. You would look at the history and find out how those apostles suffered to bring that message to the world, and then when it says abounding therein with Thanksgiving.
We can rejoice to just leave the world where it is.
And bask in the infinite favor of being in the sun. Ye are completed him. You don't need that philosophy. You don't need that voluntary humility.
You know, the closer we are to him, the more humility there will be. We meditate on his.
Cost he has paid for us.
We just.
Scarce can lift our heads, but we can rejoice in Him.
The world that we're Speaking of here is the religious world. It's the good side of the Broad Rd. if we might say it that way. And I'm thinking of how how Paul.
Is knew what he was speaking about as one who was more religious than anybody else and he had gone a long ways and exceeded many others and and being religious and and his own ideas of what was appropriate.
Pursuing that to to great extent until God smote him down and the Lord revealed himself to him on the road to Damascus. And he came to the realization that the ones that very ones he was persecuting were intimately connected with Christ in one body and that he was persecuting the very members of of his God Jesus Christ on earth. And so when he left all that he realized.
The reality what he's saying here about how Satan deceives through religious.
Tactics like philosophy and and and.
Worshipping angels, these kind of things that have a pretension of making man better by himself.
All of that is to the denial of what Christ has really brought us into.
And takes away from our real source of blessing. And so it's a, it's a, it's a tremendous.
Deception to turn to philosophy and these kind of religious things as a source of blessing.
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It's turning and not holding.
To our relationship that we have with the Lord Jesus, the risen head. He's the one that takes care of the body, the church, and so if we look elsewhere, then to him we're looking in the wrong direction.
Philosophy and vain deceit. That's what's being taught in the colleges today.
And most of our kids, they go through college.
So before if we send them there, some of them don't even want to go there anymore.
They say well, yes, through high school we are well established, we learn a trade and we are going to do well. That is true.
But those who do go through college, they ought to make up their curriculum themselves, not have it made-up by some professor because they don't know what they're talking about. They might have a very authoritative.
Personality and a way of persuasion, which is that rain deceit and from that we want to stay away.
Philosophy and biology.
There should be dropping out of that when they go to college. I don't know if they can, but I would, if I had to go to college today, drop out of that because they don't know what they're talking about. They're coming up with something like a Big Bang with this nothing but nonsense. Stay out of it if we can. We have children that we want to send to college or maybe they want to go there.
Make up a definite curriculum what they're going to take up. Don't take up the range stuff that is being taught. There's so much rain, things that are being taught and for us older ones, we got to watch for them to come to the doors of our houses.
They are trying to get us interested in somewhat we would call religion, but it is also nothing but vain deceit. Just stay away. If we talk to them at all, tell them immediately about the Lord Jesus.
And there we will find out where they stand.
The way of man is not in himself.
It is not in man that walketh to erect his steps.
Man is not capable by his own imagination or by his own thoughts, to walk in a way that.
Is intelligent really before God?
God alone can provide to us the way no amount of personal reflection or thought will ever.
Come to a way to walk through life that is wise or intelligent with respect to God. Proverbs that takes up a wise way to live begins in the very first chapter by saying the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Because if you don't start with the right relationship in your thoughts to your Creator.
Everything else will go wrong and that's the very beginning. That's the root of all is to have a proper respect and relationship to the one who has created you. But man has introduced all kinds of ideas as to his own imagination, as to even what God is. And the consequence is he walks in darkness. He walks in a path that leads him to death.
And there's that danger for us to accept the ways of man, or adopt the thoughts of men into our religious beings or into our way of thinking about spiritual things.
God is given what we need, but the moment we let man's mind and man's ideas to as sadly in the Christian profession.
Very often people who will say have been a successful businessman say to themselves, you know, I could make the church run better if we just adopted some of these good business practices into the way we run things. Or we have found out in our work that certain types of people interactions done a certain way is going to foster a more successful.
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Missionary activity and so on.
And so he starts to allow his mind to do that which we will say is successful in a self oriented world and that type of life, and then tries to adapt it to the Christian walk. And the result is.
Nothing for God and a spoiling of the joy and the purity and the fellowship that the Lord wants to have with us. So again, we would just say, pay attention to where your ideas and your thoughts and your life come from. Sometimes it's well to stop and ask yourself and myself, where did that thought come from? Did it come from God?
Or did it come from man? Is the thought I might receive it from another human being? But does their thought come from God? Or does it come from man and the danger of it? You see it in Matthew 16 with respect to the Lord Jesus and Peter.
In Matthew 16.
The Lord asks his disciples. He says, whose do men say that I, the Son of Man am? Well, some say you're this and some say you're that, and some say you're the other. Well, who do you say that I am? And Peter says, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And the Lord Jesus immediately responds to him. And he said flesh and blood didn't tell you that man didn't tell you that. That came from myself.
That's where the source of that knowledge, that revelation that you have, Peter, came from, It didn't come from flesh and blood. Two or three or four verses later, what is the Lord Jesus saying to Peter? The same person in the same passage of Scripture, He has to say to him, get thee behind me, Satan. Why? Because what Peter was saying, the source of it, the source of the thought was Satan.
And so we're all that have to be careful about it because we can one moment, as it were, enjoy a wonderful revelation from God. And so easily within the same moment or two or five, we can allow that which really has its source in Satan to be that which is controlling our thought processes. So these verses are very important.
For that which is of or not of, as it says here, not after Christ.
Peter said the Christ, the Son of the living God, it was his faith uttering the faith and make a comment on that in our chapter in verse five. We have your faith in Christ in verse seven. It's the faith rooted and built up and established in the faith. Jude makes the same comment in Jude verse 3YE should earnestly contend for the faith.
Which was once delivered to the Saints in verse 20 of Jude. But ye beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith. And that would include praying verse 20, keeping verse 21 looking.
In verse 21 and so on. And so the faith in our chapter and also in Jude, probably in other places.
Is objective.
And it is absolute and it is there whether I believe it or not. It doesn't change if I contend with it, oppose it, discredit it, it is still the same. It is the faith and it is once delivered to the Saints. The faith is what we hold in our hand here. It's the scriptures. It's the revelation that God has given man for his blessing. Our faith is laying hold of it. And so sometimes the Lord Jesus would say your faith.
Has made you whole or I have not seen such faith as in all Israel.
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Comments like that, that was your faith, embracing the faith once delivered to the Saints and the things that would come in to drive a wedge.
In our souls are a few of them mentioned, as we've been discussing there in verse 8.
That's one great danger also is stay out of politics.
I talked to a young man one time. He was.
Studying political science, you want to have nothing to do with God.
Political science and things like that, they lead to dictatorship.
I grew up when I was smaller.
Kids in a system that had a dictator Hitler.
And it was amazing how people would believe in a man like that. And they fight to the end for that system. That's why Germany never capitulated, he insisted. They fight to the end and they did.
And the same in Japan. Japan had.
A dictator.
He was.
They reverenced him as their God.
And that was he was the same like Hitler. Let's fight Japan and Germany got to be so great allies.
And they last, they had that same philosophy, fight to the end. And they did. If it wasn't for the atomic bomb, they would have fought, maybe still fighting today if they could. That's what a dictatorship is. But it's of man. And that's what the world is striving at today, to get that one strongman that would get them all out of their troubles.
And that's where they're going to lose out.
We only have one person, the Lord Jesus Christ, and to die for Him is worthwhile.
To die for his cause is worthwhile. That's the only death that's really worthwhile if we have to die for a man, and that is the Son of God.
The next two verses, 9 and 10.
Are wonderful.
They're wonderful.
Verses that ought to lift our souls and our spirits as we consider them.
When we turn aside from man and his thoughts, and we listen to what God says.
In verse nine he says in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead, bodily, that is.
All that God is to us.
He is to us in that person, Jesus Christ.
All that's in the heart of God, all the power of God for our good and our blessing is brought down to where we are, down into the place of our need and our condition in a man. In him the man Christ Jesus dwells all the fullness.
Of the Godhead, and it dwells there for us. That's the purpose for which the fullness of the Godhead has come down, to reside in a person, a person who participated, and in flesh and blood to come among us to bring all that God is into that place into which we are.
In him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
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The 10th verse just introduce it by contrast, it says and ye are complete in him. That is everything we need to be.
And are before God.
Is found in that person.
Everything that is necessary for us in our relationship with God is found in Him. We are complete as towards God in Him.
We sometimes stop in our thoughts.
With the thought that yeah, I'm a Sinner, I've done lots of bad things.
Jesus Christ came, he went, and he died on a cross for me and.
He paid for those sins, so now I'm a forgiven Sinner.
All that I believe I said is true statement.
Although God I don't think would particularly wanted me to say simply forgiven Sinner.
Because God didn't stop there.
God has taken the person of the Lord Jesus.
And put me in him before God. When God looks at me this morning, he looks at me and all the perfection of his Son.
That's his view of me. I am seen in all that. Christ is in his person to God.
I'm righteous before the eye of God because I'm in Christ.
I am totally acceptable in his presence.
Because I'm in Christ.
And the position and even the condition into which he brings us is all that which results from.
Ye are complete in him and.
When we get to heaven.
And our sin is gone. We aren't going to be more perfect in the than we are in Christ.
And so he says, what else do you need? Don't go somewhere else. Don't go to the paltry, poverty stricken thoughts of man.
But enjoy and live rooted and grounded in that which I have done.
It's These verses are a tremendous expression of what we mean when we say the grace of God.
This is all originates in the heart of God. It has nothing to do with what we are naturally or ever could be by anything that we could do or merit or be. No, it's it's all the heart of God who has acted and said, I'm going to come down.
In this person and I'm going to lift you up and I'm going to bring you in before me.
Accepted in the beloved, that's our place.
And that is God's view of us as well. He doesn't.
So I say the scripture doesn't exactly talk about particularly forgiven Sinner.
He says safe. You're a St. That's the place I put you into. You don't live before me simply as a forgiving Sinner. You're my child.
Sometimes we have to be careful that we.
Look at ourselves from the perspective of what our Father sees us to be.
To go to what Doug said yesterday.
Without attitude.
I want to use an illustration that.
Many of you know my wife's father and her father and one time when her dad was a young man.
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He said to his father. He said, well dad, what difference does it make what I wear or how I act or anything else if God looks at the what we are inside?
He said man looks on the outward appearance but.
Man, God looks at the heart. So if God sees my heart and he sees what I am, what does it matter how I dress or how I look? And so on?
And his father's answer to him was, Son, if you walk down the street with the conscious dignity that you are a child of God, you will dress appropriately.
Is that self centeredness? No, but it is a sense of the dignity of the position that you hold or are brought into by God in Christ. And it will make such a sense of relationship will govern the character of dress and every other aspect of behavior.
So we need to have a good understanding of what our relationship with God is through the Lord Jesus Christ. And the more we lay hold of that relationship, that we are members of his body united together with the Lord Jesus, the more we lay hold of that, that will produce in us that corresponding action in our walk and our dress and so on. It's not the other way around. We don't dress, so we become that.
We dress an act because we are that, but if we lose the sense of it in our appreciation of our relationship with the Lord Jesus as we walk, then that's when we can start listening to other voices and other sources of of how we behave and and then we are going to be misguided. The secret is to get back to seeing our relationship with the Lord Jesus what he is to us.
And that he.
The wonder of it is that this is only true of human beings and the chosen ones among the human race that he has.
He has called to be identified with him as his body, the Church.
Angels sit as spectators of what we're talking about. When the Lord Jesus was born, he passed by angels and became man so man could be united together in relationship with Him in a way that has never been before.
We need to realize the privileged people that we are.
We know the heart of God as an Angel does not.
We think of angels and their power.
But the angels do not have a relationship with God as we do. They aren't redeemed creatures. They haven't been brought into that relationship, and consequently they do not have the heart knowledge of their God as we do. They're not seen in they're seen as servants of God.
And they are, and they have great power, and they far exceed us as a power of creation in their.
There, but our place far exceeds an Angel.
The heart of God that has been made known to us and made real to us in the life that has been given to us, they don't have they don't have the life of Christ. They don't have that life which.
Expresses itself in divine love. It's not part of their being.
And yet in Christ as a new creation, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. He's a new creation. 2nd Corinthians 5 It brings us into that completeness with himself that no other creature.
As ever known or ever will know.
As privilege, as much privilege that they were of being with the Lord Jesus in their their walking here in this world.
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They did not have half we have now.
When we when we look in the Gospels, they were kind of servants.
Of the Lord in John's Gospel, chapter 15.
Verse 14.
Verse 13 first.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if you do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his his Lord does. But I have called your friends for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.
When the Lord visited.
Abraham.
He decided to tell him things that he did not tell anybody else about Sodom and what he was going to do. And kind of he, he asked himself, Will I not tell Abraham?
He was telling a friend things that were were secret, and here he is, kind of.
Upgrading his his disciples from servants to friends because he would give his life to them.
And if we go further in John chapter 20.
Verse 17.
We see what happens after resurrection.
Is a step forward, Jesus said unto her, unto her, Touch me not, for for I am not yet ascended to my Father, but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend them to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God.
Go to my present now He calls them. Brethren, we don't see anywhere in the Bible we should call the Lord Jesus our brother, but we can see him calling.
His disciples, his brethren, and he says, my Father and your father. He does not set our father, of course, because he still has a kind of relationship.
His Father that I don't think we could enter into the plenitude of it, but still we are, we have now a father we can call God our Father, and we are called by the Lord Jesus, not only His servants, not only His friends, but now His brethren.
In verse 11 we have circumcision mentioned here.
And that is interesting.
Because.
That kind of explains what we are in him.
The Jews had to be circumcised.
And that was under the law. That didn't do him any good.
But what is circumcision?
We know it is cutting away some of the flesh and that's what we have to do. We have to subdue the things in the flesh that we are in.
Maybe somebody can explain it a little better. It says here with the circumcision made without hands. Of course that would be our heart.
We we read in Ephesians one, I think it says.
The circumcision of the heart.
Says something about it there and then, in putting off the body of sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. And what is the circumcision of Christ here? What is actually meant by that?
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There won't be time to.
Develop, but I'm going to make a few remarks for personal meditation with respect to the verses that follow. At least introduce some thoughts for I believe are very helpful if studied out.
If you notice a little bit beyond where we are and you go down to verse 20, it says if you be dead with Christ.
And then go to chapter 3 and verse one it says if then you be risen with Christ.
If you go down beyond that, you will find the pudding to death in verse five. Therefore put to death.
In verse 12 it says put on there.
What is being presented in the end of chapter 2 and in chapter 3 as is a really an explanation of the Old Testament?
Picture of passing through the Jordan.
By the Israelites.
When they pass through the Red Sea, it's a picture of all that work of the Lord Jesus Christ for them, for us. When they were in Egypt, they were sheltered from God's judgment by the Lamb.
When they cross through the Red Sea, their enemies were destroyed by trying to follow them as they were delivered from Egypt the world.
But when they came to the Jordan River.
It was the end of them.
It was the end of their history.
In form as to what was preached in the gospel last night as men and Adam.
And so it says in Adam all die. God isn't looking for anything from Adam's race anymore.
It has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be fruitless and actually an enemy of the purposes of God.
So as children of Adam, there's no future but death.
When they pass through the Red Sea with the ark with Joshua, it is a picture of their going into our going into death. When the Lord Jesus died, we are identified in Romans five and six and so on. We are identified with Him in his death.
He said Christ died. You died with him. How are you going to keep going in those things in which you died?
But Christ isn't dead.
We're complete in Him.
He rises from the dead and God says, well, he is all in Christ, what he is you're going to be. And so as he comes up, if you will, out of the waters of death and crosses into the Jordan, crosses the Jordan River.
In the Old Testament picture, you then see the person as a new creation in Christ. That's part of what this these chapters are about is bringing us into a new creation in Christ Jesus before God. If you be dead with Christ, he says. If you be risen with Christ, he says. If you be risen with Christ, then you have the life of Christ.
In chapter 3, verse four, if Christ, who is our life? And so when they cross through the Jordan, they come up on the other side. They're seen now as a new creation in Christ Jesus, a new race from a new source. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit. John chapter three, he says to Nicodemus, you must be born again. You have to come from a new source.
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You have to have a new life from a new source if there's going to be anything for God.
The circumcision that's here is that in that Old Testament picture is when they came through the red, the the Jordan River on the other side, they went to Gilgal and they were circumcised. And in fact it says it was the removal.
Of that which connected them to Egypt.
And I'll just say again, there's not time to really develop the thoughts here, but you never get free of the world in your heart and your life. You'll never get free of the world.
Until you enjoy and live in the truth of being risen with Christ or quickened with Christ from the dead to live a life that the world has nothing to do with.
Until that all the way through the wilderness, they, they were redeemed. They were saved, as we would say. But their hearts were still in Egypt. And they kept going back in one form or another, wanting what Egypt had to deliver. Oh, why did you bring us out here to kill us? Why can't we? At least we had. We remember the food of Egypt. And so easily can the life be lived. I'm saved. I'm going to heaven. But the heart still wants what Egypt provides.
But the soul that comes into the enjoyment of their complete in Him. They're a new creation in Him.
Then there is that cutting off.
By him Christ, morally all that connects us with Egypt, and one gets to live in practice in the enjoyment of the land, which is heaven or heavenly things.
This year, putting off the body of the sins of the flesh when I talked to neighbors.
And I grew up in a system.
Before the Lord's Supper, the sins had to be forgiven every time. Over and over again. And still I talked to neighbors today that are Catholic.
They said, well, we are, we can still sin. We can still sin. How do we get over that?
I said, well, once you are saved, your sins are forgiven once and for all. Just confess them once. Yeah, forgive. You don't have to do it over and over again. They can't get over that. Yeah, but I've still seen. I've still seen.
But it's the blood of Jesus Christ. They don't understand that.
That's how the body of sin here, the body of the sins of the flesh.
They're put away.
Helpful to just remark that with respect to that, the new translation is a more helpful way to read that verse.
I'll read it in a new translation, it says.
Verse 11.
In whom also ye have been circumcised, with the circumcision not done with hand.
In the putting off of the body of the flesh leaves out the words of the sins, because the point here is not the actual sins themselves. It's not individual sins, but it is connected with sin, the root principle that is in US. And in Romans 7, in Romans 8, it's connected with what we have here. In this way, we still live in a body which has sin in it.
But when we have the life of Christ in US and the Holy Spirit in us, we no longer have to live under the control of that sin which is in the flesh, but we have now to live in the Spirit and in the life, the spirit of the life which is in Christ Jesus. Romans 8 verse one has set us free.
01:05:02
From that dominion of that sin which is in the flesh. And the circumcision here is explaining or giving us a picture of that which separates us from, because we are set free from the power of that which is in us, because we have a new life, and because we have the Spirit of God in US which has the power to direct our lives.
And not keep us under the control of that which is in US.
And so it's in his death and in his resurrection we have the picture of circumcision, the cutting off of that which previously controlled us.
James Version. Then I should cross off that word sing, right?
This end on a positive note.
Notice it's as it were in verse fifth verse 15.
Showing of them openly, leading them, triumphing over them in it. Let's just remember, brethren, our Lord Jesus as triumph.
Is triumph. He's come down to where we are. He's met our need.
He leads us triumphantly.
Into the blessing which is ours for eternity.
And He has taken care of everything that would hinder us from entering into the full enjoyment. We may struggle now, we may not understand things that we've had before us this morning and so on, and some might be confusing to us and all of the rest of it, but.
We can go a fourth in the perfect confident sense that his work.
Leads in triumph to the end result, which is our eternal happiness and blessing for His pleasure.
For God's glory.
Great, great thing to know you're on the winning side.
Exactly.
Who is seeing 156?
Stand fast in Christ, I added gas. He just all the band. The human efforts are invaded in Christ it is.
Someone stuck with that?