======================================================================== HEIRS OF HIS ETERNAL KINGDOM by Michael Flowers ======================================================================== Summary: In 'Heirs of His Eternal Kingdom', Michael Flowers emphasizes our vast inheritance in Christ and the transformative power of living in the Spirit. Duration: 32:26 Topics: "Kingdom Of God" Scripture References: Matthew 4:4, John 8:32, Romans 7:25 - 8:1, Romans 3, 1 Corinthians 1:30, Colossians 3:16 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ DESCRIPTION ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of understanding our new identity in Christ and the inheritance we have received through Him. He compares this inheritance to a vast estate that we have inherited. The preacher highlights the significance of Jesus Christ's incarnation and His role in reconciling us to God. The sermon concludes with the powerful declaration that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, as the law of the spirit of life has set us free from the law of sin and death. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENT ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Father, thank you so much for the richness of the inheritance that you have lavished upon us in Jesus Christ, to be in Christ. It's the Father's doing, sending his only begotten Son to take on flesh and live and die as one of us, to reconcile us to you, the God and Father of all. Thank you for the ministry of reconciliation that you have given all of us, Lord. Thank you for the opening of your scriptures today and feed us and nurture us in those deep places where we need you to come and fill and heal and restore. In Jesus' name, amen. I want to read a quote to you by Ben Myers from his book, The Apostles' Creed, a guide to the ancient catechism. I felt like it's an excellent introduction into our passage today in Romans eight. We are not beggars hoping for scraps. We are like people who have inherited a vast estate. We have to study the documents and visit different locations because it's more than we can just take in in a single glance. In the same way, it takes considerable time and effort to begin to comprehend all that we have received in Christ. Theological thinking does not add a single thing to what we have received. The inheritance remains the same whether we grasp its magnitude or not, but the better we grasp it, the happier we are. Amen. Romans eight explodes with the magnitude of Abba's eternal plan to heal and renew the entire created order through the sending the incarnation of his son, Jesus Christ. In Christ, we've inherited a vast estate more than we can take in at a single glance. And as we contemplate the scripture in prayerful meditation, we better grasp our inheritance and become secure through this life where there are many storms, there's winds blowing and there's challenges. We're viewing this passage in light of our new identity in Christ. And in order to feel the impact of the glorious first line, we must identify with our former state of imprisonment. The bondage that Paul has been talking about in the realm, the domain of Adam, the domain of sin and death. If you've ever attended a federal court. Everyone rises when the judge comes in. The criminal charges are read and deliberations are heard. And in conclusion, the judge makes the final decision for that day. Will this person be condemned perhaps to life in prison? Or because of the heinous nature of the crime, perhaps the judgment could be the death penalty. Imagine you're awaiting that judgment. And you hear the judge say. There is now. No more condemnation. I do not condemn you. The federal court does not condemn you for those who are in Christ, for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. Can you imagine what that would feel like when you're expecting life imprisonment or the death penalty and you hear those words? This is the meaning that Paul is making by this word condemnation in our modern culture today. We we tend to use that word as a subjective thing, but it's a law court word. Those who have been condemned to death. We had all been condemned to death in Adam, right? And then that one new man, Jesus Christ, comes along, sent by the father and undoes everything that death wants to throw at us and does everything that the power of sin has accomplished and continues to accomplish throughout the world for those who are not in Christ. This is the great acquittal from Adam's sin release from the penalty of death. We are not merely let go to fend for ourselves and hopefully be received back into society with gainful employment. No, we are given everything by faith and grace as we walk out of that courtroom. It's not like I wonder what I'm going to do now. Nobody's going to hire me. I'm a criminal. I've got this on my record. No, no, no. It's all been cleared completely. And through faith and grace, we've been given everything that Christ is and has by nature. Through faith and grace, we share in everything he is and has by nature. That's good news. We're adopted children of incomprehensible riches out of which we've been given a deposit in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It's almost like, hang on, guys. I know that you're still living in this present evil age, but I'm going to I'm going to come and I'm going to dwell in you and I'm going to walk you through this so that you're no longer in Adam, but you're in Christ and you're going to be coming out of that mindset. You're going to be coming out of that way of thinking and we're going to call that conversion. Right. You're going to be converted as you're on your way to that Mount of Transfiguration in Jesus Christ, because the Mount of Transfiguration is a picture of our glorification in him, where the saints will radiate with the light and the glory of Jesus Christ, where one day God will be all in all. How did we get into this state of being in Christ? How did we get there in First Corinthians chapter one, verse 30, Paul says, and because of him, the father, you are in Christ Jesus, because of the father, because of Abba, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption. So when we ended up last week in Romans seven, we heard the cry of lament. Romans seven, twenty five, Paul ends Romans seven in order to get us ready to hear this acquittal. And he asked the question from the utter depths of his being, who shall deliver me, who shall liberate me from this bondage of sin and death? Thanks be to God, it's through Jesus Christ, our Lord. And then he takes us right in, there is therefore now no condemnation for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Jesus Christ from the law of sin and death. And who's done this? He tells us in verse three, for God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own son. That's inheritance language there. He's going to end up with in verse 17 by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh. And for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh. God condemns sin in the flesh so that we do not have to labor under that kind of judgment. There is now no condemnation because God, he condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. OK, now you see these juxtapositions of being in the flesh and in the spirit in these coming verses, I'm just going to read through it and we'll make some comments. For those who live according to the flesh. Set their minds. Just underscore that. Set their minds on the things of the flesh, that those who live according to the spirit. Set their minds on the things of the spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death. But to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. That's the result of living in the spirit, setting your mind on the things of the spirit. Life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is an enemy, it's hostile, it's hostile to God, he's talking to Christians now. Hostile to God coming out of that place of old Adamic flesh, for it does not submit to God's law. I can think of a lot of theology I've read that doesn't submit to God's law, it contends with God's word, it contends with scripture, it contends with the historic church. It's hostile for the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit. It's smarter than God, it's smarter than the scriptures. After all, we're modernists, this is pre-modern stuff, we got to update it. Got to update the nature of man, sexuality, faith. You got to put some mythology back into it, you know what? We need to re-mythologize the Bible in some ways because we've sucked the life out of it by reading it through a post-enlightenment lens. You know what I'm saying? And I use the word myth the way C.S. Lewis uses the word myth, which is truer than true. Let's re-mythologize our lives in this wondrous realm of God, heaven and earth touching each other and the glory of God is filling the earth. And we're in the midst of this invisible, unseen realm right now. We're before the throne of grace. As I'm preaching to you, we are before the throne of grace with archangels and angels. We have come to Zion. You see, this is all by faith and grace. Can you apprehend that? Let's apprehend that which we were apprehended for. So let's exercise our faith and look not at the things that are seen, but the things that are unseen. The things that are seen are temporal. The things that are unseen are eternal and they're not passing away. That's what it means to fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and effector of your faith. Coming out of Roman seven, we don't fix our eyes on our sin. We don't fix our eyes on our struggles. We fix our eyes on Jesus. We lay aside every weight and every sin, every besetting sin by fixing our eyes on Jesus. This is the constant. And it's such a beautiful thing because fixing our eyes on Jesus deals life and peace. For the mind that is sent on the flesh is hostile. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. OK, what's he talking about? We've we've talked a lot about what this thing flesh is. He's not talking about those who are in their bodies, right? He's talking about the old order of things where those who are not in Christ are stuck and living that Roman seven existence where it's I, but not I, but sin that dwells in me. And even folks who want to do good find themselves controlled by an alien power, a colonizing power, not the little sins that we commit, but the sin that fills the cosmic universe. It's a very powerful force and only Jesus Christ can put it to flight. And he has done that for those who are in Jesus Christ. And so we fix our eyes on that. And he tells the Romans, you, however, are not in that realm of flesh, of sin and death. You're not there. That's not where you're living. You've been translated into another kingdom, you're not in the flesh, but in the spirit. If there is that nasty little word, if if in fact the spirit of God dwells in you, anyone who does not have the spirit, notice his use of spirit in Christ here now together, anyone does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him. First in. But if Christ dwells in you, juxtaposing now Christ, the spirit of Christ who dwells in you, if he dwells in you. Christ in us, the hope of glory, although the body is dead because of sin. You feeling that one this morning when you tried to get up immediately, I felt that that fleshy body, that old thing that is passing away. I said, no, you can't pass away today. You have to get up and go worship. It's not time to pass away. Get up now. He is talking about the physical body. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness reminds me of that passage that Paul says outwardly, we're perishing away, but inwardly we're being renewed day by day. If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, resurrection, if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Jesus from the dead will future tense also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. And I believe there's a certain reality to the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, giving life to our mortal bodies now, but we will decay, we will die and we will be raised ultimately to be joined to new creation in Jesus Christ. So this is our hope. Is it easier to set your mind on the things of the spirit to have a set mind and to fix your eyes and fix your gaze on Jesus? Or do you feel this gravitational pull up against that and fixing your mind on the flesh that which is not of the spirit, that anxiety, that fear, that mourning, that getting angry at one another and then rehearsing that in your minds and all of this autonomic thought process that we don't even know where it comes from, much less how to identify. And last week we said, don't let that identify you. The autonomic thought stream of consciousness that comes through like arrows coming at you. It's a mystery, but I know it's not my real self. I know it's not my true self in Christ. That's oppressing me and feeding me lies. And we said Jesus in the wilderness experienced this as God said, you know, if you are the son of God, yada, yada, yada, challenging his identity in the wilderness. And he overcame that for not only himself, but for us. It's a substitution victory in the wilderness, even when Jesus overcame and bound Satan at that time, challenging his own identity. Your identity is challenged every day, brothers and sisters, through the stream of consciousness, through spiritual warfare, through the, you know, the secular culture. You know, the more and more and more we're going to have to live in this truth of being in Christ and being secure, experiencing the life and peace of having a set mind on the spirit. I want to live in life and peace, how about you? And it's yours in Christ now, life and peace is now. And peace is not one of those one of those subjective feelings, right? We all like subjective peace. I love that where inside my soul is at rest and I don't feel the inner tugs in the conflict that so often beset me. That's subjective peace, but we can we can know we can know that kind of peace because the shalom of God has been won on the cross in the great and new humanity of Jesus Christ. He is our peace. You see, Jesus is our peace. It's not a feeling and it's not a state of being. It's a person. It's the person that's not only up there, but if Christ dwells in you, he's right here. And we need to live like that, he's no longer the man upstairs. That two story universe where God is, you know, there's really like the clockmaker has been thrown up there and he's this deistic deity that has nothing to do with our lives. No, he's he's come down from heaven by the power of the Holy Spirit and he's been made one of us. He moved into our neighborhood. Right. He's living right here. You're not in the flesh if, in fact, the spirit dwells in you, anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him. Let's go to verse 12. So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors not to that flesh realm, that domain of sin and death. We're not debtors to that, to live according to that rule of life, under that incarcerating power, colonizing power. No, that's over with. Verse 13, for if you live according to the flesh, you will die. Not physically here, spiritually. Spiritual death, this is what the Lord told Adam in the garden. If you go to that tree, you will surely die. They didn't die physically. Eventually they did. They died spiritually. You can be a Christian walking around in spiritual death. You can be a Christian going to church every Sunday and go into all the prayer meetings and living in spiritual death. If you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the spirit, here we go, here's the way to do it, if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, the flesh. The old Adam that wants to come back to us, if you do that, you will live. Tie in verse 13 with verse 14. Back up, if you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live. That's living that co-crucifixion in Jesus. And that happened in our baptism. And then we have to walk out of the baptismal waters on a daily basis, denying ourselves. Jesus said, if you want to follow me, take up your cross and follow me daily. Take up your cross daily. Deny yourself. And follow me. Luke 9, that's that daily co-crucifixion of psuche self. The word is psuche there, mind, will and emotion. You could understand that to be. It's a very psychological. That's where we get psychology of psuche. That's the self. That's the psychological self that Christ is indwelling now and bringing to glorification as we grow in sanctification, as we grow in life, as we grow in submitting our hostile minds to him. And it's through the absorption, the immersion in the scriptures that your mind becomes converted. When you prayerfully and worshipfully read the word with reverence and you meditate on it and you let it go down deep. How can a young man keep his way pure by keeping it according to thy word? You see, it's the only thing that saved me as a young Christian when I was 16. God gave me an insatiable hunger for the scriptures. It's nothing that I did in and of myself. I didn't like reading before I came to Christ. So I'm trying to catch up with it. Right. Yeah. See, our library is for sure. But that's the renewal of the mind, you guys, it's the way of transformation and it's the way the Holy Spirit interacts with the passages of scripture so that we think through the grid of scriptures. Now, we think through the grid of truth in the spirit, right, because the scriptures are God breathed, God breathed, God breathed on these passages and brought them to be. Therefore, when we read God breathed text in a spirit of worship, oh, allow the word of Christ to dwell in you richly as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to one another. That's how we make it through a secularized world, you guys, and be the light because we know the truth and the truth will set you free. The truth is not only scripture, the truth is the person, Jesus Christ. But in his weakest moments in the wilderness, he quoted the scriptures, the author is quoting himself, Deuteronomy. So if Jesus needs it, we need it. Right. We need to just eat. And if you don't have that hunger, ask God for that hunger. There's nothing worse than trying to read in the hunger's not there. Have you ever tried to eat this awesome food and you're just not hungry because you just you just left and had dessert somewhere? Yeah, it's hard to enjoy something if you're not hungry. And so if you're not hungry, ask the Lord to give you a hunger. I ask this all the time because sometimes I am not hungry. I'm not hungry. Lord, that needs to be a red light. Indicator. The oil is low. The oil is low. The oil is low. You get on your knees and you say, feel me, Lord, I feel too autonomous right now. I feel like maybe I can make it by myself. What a delusion. If you're living a independent life, you are brothers and sisters in the flesh without even knowing it. Sometimes we need the scriptures and we need one another. We need community. It's not like me on an island with my Bible and everything's going to be OK. We need God's holy church, we need community, we need one another. It's called interdependence. We live in a very, very independent, autonomous culture that seeks to tell you you can name yourself and you can identify yourself because existentialism says existence precedes essence. That's a lie. Essence precedes existence. And so how does the Supreme Court define a person after it jumps out of the womb? Christians believe in prenatal identity, right? See, that's hostile to God, that kind of thinking. But our identity begins in the womb. I am fearfully and wonderfully made, not when I pop out and somebody can decide that I'm a person. The church must stand for that personhood exist prenatally. We were known before we were in our mother's womb, Jeremiah says. How do you put to death the deeds of the body? Mind, will and emotions, I think, emotions I feel and will I want. So think about that instead of mind, will and emotions. Think, how am I responding to I want, I think, I feel? Because you're going to have to really discern through those impulses in your life to walk in the spirit. Right. You just can't let that happen. Impulses will take you away. Thoughts will take you away. Some of those thoughts are not even your own thoughts. It comes out of the cesspool of stream of consciousness. I want, I think, I feel. That's selfishness right there. And we have thrown selfishness many times in our lives. That is the sukkah that Jesus says you have to lay down in order to follow him. That's how we put to death the deeds of the body. And what is that called? See, I come from a charismatic background where we talked a lot about being led by the spirit. We get it out of this passage, but we don't contextualize it. Paul is saying being led by the spirit is living a cruciform life and putting to death the deeds of the body. It's the next verse. Let me read it in context. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if you live by the spirit, you put to death the deeds of the body. You will live for, there it is, GAR, the connector, for all who are led by the spirit of God, our sons of God. See, it's not about, man, I can just flow in my sort of independent, like I feel this, I feel that I'm being led here. That's not what Paul is talking about, even though that can be a good quality to have intuition and all of that spontaneity and all of that. That's not what Paul's talking about here. That's a different thing, right? For all who are led by the spirit of God, our sons of God goes back to God sending the son. Now that son's plural is being shared with the son, right? Jesus Christ, our life is in the son and our life is in him who has overcome sin and death for us. For all who are led by the spirit of God, our sons of God, for you did not receive the spirit of slavery, incarceration to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry of a father. Boy, there's some politically incorrect stuff right here. Because we don't read the Bible theologically, we read it sociologically, why do we have to be sons? I could ask the same question, why do I have to be a bride? We're the bride of Christ, right? It's a theological thing, right? How do you like being a bride, Bill? It's glorious, isn't it? Because Paul says we're his glorious church, right? The bride of Christ. This theological stuff, my guys, don't get sidetracked by people saying, oh, the Bible's sexist and all this stuff that is not they don't know how to read it theologically. They have a mind hostile to God, theologians in the flesh pumping out books. I've got tons of them. The more conservative theological education you get, the more liberalism you read. You won't get conservative theology in a liberal seminary. Oh, no, but we had to read Bultmann and Schleiermacher and all the stuff from, you know, that's age old stuff right up until today. Our archbishop, Foley Beach, was saying in an interview, I sent it out to you and he was in seminary in the 80s and he went to Swanee. That's where I would have been sent, the gulag, you know, right there. And I would have been sent to Swanee because my bishop was not conservative theologically. He wanted he wanted to send you in and destroy your faith so that you come out a whipped up priest, you know. Our archbishop, Foley Beach, is in Swanee and he's going to foundations and theology class. That's what it was called. And he said when he wrote papers, if he called God Father, he would also have to call God Mother at the same time. And this is back in the 80s, just totally missing the point, right? It's totally missing the point of what Abba is. You see, our fatherhood and our motherhood and our image is not projected onto God. No, he existed first. God, every fatherhood from whom every fatherhood is named comes down from the father. Fatherhood is his thing. And we've adopted that. We've been adopted into that cosmic fatherhood. It's not a sociological thing. So we've received this adoption as sons. You see, Exodus 4, 22 and following, Moses is getting ready to bring Israel out of Egypt. And he says this, Israel is my first born son. You get that? It's inheritance language. Israel is my first born son. Typologically, Christ now is the fulfillment of that, the new Israel. Jesus is his first born son. Why son? Because the sons, the first born sons, got the inheritance. That's why we can be heirs with God and co-heirs with Jesus Christ now. Because we own nothing apart from him. Right? We wouldn't exist apart from him. In him, we live and move and have our being. The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. Provided that we suffer with him in order that we may be glorified with him. We'll take that up in a couple of weeks. Father, thank you so much for the immensity, the vastness of your inheritance. The eternal life that you give us, which is a quality and a reality of life even now in Jesus Christ. We're in eternal life in the son. Thank you so much, Lord, raise us up to be heirs of the father and co-heirs with Jesus Christ. And let us walk uprightly in that place, being united with you in the name of the father and the son. ======================================================================== Audio: https://sermonindex1.b-cdn.net/28/SID28650.mp3 Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/michael-flowers/heirs-of-his-eternal-kingdom/ ========================================================================