Phil Beach Jr. emphasizes the unselfishness of God, illustrating how God's love is the ultimate standard of selflessness that transforms our lives. He encourages believers to seek a deeper revelation of God's nature, which is characterized by sacrificial love, as demonstrated through Jesus Christ. The sermon calls for a shift from selfishness to a life that reflects God's unselfishness, leading to true freedom, joy, and peace. Beach Jr. highlights that understanding God's love is essential for personal transformation and for impacting our relationships and communities. Ultimately, he urges the congregation to pursue a passionate desire to know God and embody His love in their lives.

Amazing love, how can it be, that you, my king, will die for me? Amazing love, I know it's true, it's my choice to honor you. Amazing love, how can it be, that you, my king, will die for me? Amazing love, I know it's true, it's my choice to honor you. Father, thank you again for your presence, and thank you for your mercy and grace, and thank you for your love, and thank you, Lord, that it is so amazing to be in your presence, it's so amazing, Lord, to be called into your presence. How thankful we are, and how grateful we are, Lord, that you love us with an amazing love, that this love is so unselfish, and that it is so beyond human origin. It truly indeed is who you are as God. Father, as we continue to look at you, and see this amazing, unselfish love, may our lives be transformed and changed. May we be freed, O God, more and more, from the tyranny of selfishness, and discover that true freedom, true joy, true peace, true satisfaction comes, not by grasping and demanding our own life and our own way, but by letting go and receiving the fullness of your love, where our lives become an offering, a poured-out offering to you and others. Oh, how freeing that is, Lord. How freeing it is to live and be compelled by the love, the selfless love of God. And I pray today, Lord, that you'll grant us a greater revelation of the unselfishness of God as we ponder your word, and that we will not just collect information today, but that it will result in a radical change in our hearts that will affect our lives, in our homes, in our interactions one with another. It'll affect our speech. It'll affect our prayer. It'll affect the way we view everything, Lord. Grant it, I pray, in Jesus' name. The unselfishness of God. As we learned last week, we are unable to understand what love is unless we go to the source. God himself is love. God himself is the standard. God himself is the measuring rod. God himself is the sum total of all that is pleasing in his own eyes. He is the standard by which he measures all things. Throughout the Old Testament, beginning with Adam all the way through, beginning in the New Testament all the way through, the lives of men and women were changed in one and one way only. They were given by the Holy Spirit a particular aspect and revelation of who God is. God changes people and transforms lives by giving revelation of who he is. Moses was captured with a revelation of who God is so mightily and so powerfully that it became the pursuit of his life to know God. I want to know you, he said. I want to know your name. I want to know your ways. We are incapable of understanding God without a revelation of God. And so therefore it becomes imperative that the Holy Spirit together with the Word of God would continuously be opening up the eyes of our heart and shining light into the eyes of our heart enabling us to see more and more and more of who God is and what he is like. Thankfully, in the fullness of time, God captured all that he is, all that he was ever represented in the Old Testament, all the different compound names of God, Jehovah Jireh, Jehovah Shalom, Jehovah Nisa, Jehovah Sidcanu, all of these different names, the Lord my righteousness, the Lord my peace, the Lord my healer, the Lord whose banner over me is love, the Lord who is a jealous God, jealous of our love for him, all of these different aspects of God's revelation, of the self-revelation of God was finally and fully and forever captured in the person of his son Jesus Christ. So when we see Jesus in the New Testament through the scriptures by an unveiling of the Holy Spirit, we see in Jesus Christ all that God has ever revealed himself to be in different parts and in different pieces in the Old Testament captured and gathered in his beloved son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so therefore, to know Jesus in ever increasing manner is to know God, is to know who God is. The passion of our heart, the desire of our heart, the very pulse of our being ought to be to know him, to know him, to know him. Everything we go through, everything that we experience is intended by God through the Holy Spirit and the Word of God to better acquaint our hearts with the knowledge of him, of him, of him. And as we come to know him more and more and more, we will come to recognize this quality about God that is utterly amazing and that is the unselfishness of God. God in the makeup of who he is is the eternal picture and perfection of what it means to be unselfish. Brothers and sisters, please listen carefully. You can never know what it is to be unselfish if your eyes are looking at an example in earth. You can never know the true meaning of unselfishness. God himself is the meaning of unselfishness. And as we learned last week in Genesis chapter 1, verse number 26, Genesis chapter 1, verse number 26, it was God's thought from the very beginning before time began, in eternity past, it was God's thought because it pleased him, because it was the pleasure of his good will to create man in his image and in his likeness. This is a very, very important point, brothers and sisters, and we must not miss it. God's intention in creating man was that man would be a revelation of what God was like. Essentially, it is a revelation of what God is like as the unselfish being. If we go, as Eric read a scripture this morning, as we were worshiping the Lord, if we go to the New Testament, we'll find that, let's turn there, Ephesians chapter 1, we'll find that there is a direct connection between revealing God in our lives individually and in our lives corporately as the body of Christ to the unselfishness of God seen in his love and the true nature of what God's love is like. Ephesians chapter 1, beginning in verse number 16, Paul says, After I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and the love unto all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. So, at the very core of God's heart, as seen through this prayer being uttered by Paul through the Holy Spirit, there is this deep longing and passion for the Father of glory to give unto us the spirit of revelation. The word revelation there means an unveiling. An unveiling. I hope we can see by the Holy Spirit that God is longing today, he's longing tomorrow, he's longing every moment of the day to give us a spirit of revelation in the knowledge, the word knowledge there is epinosis, it means, it doesn't mean a piecemeal knowledge, it means taking the lid off a full disclosure, a full knowledge, a seeing that is all comprehensive, that is inclusive, a seeing that enables the eyes of our heart to be amazed at this full disclosure of the knowledge of God. When we see the knowledge of God, when we see God for who he really is, the eyes of our heart are not going to be preoccupied with his power to throw lightning bolts, it is not going to be preoccupied with his power to heal the sick, it's not going to be preoccupied with his power that runs the universe, although all those things are true, brothers and sisters. But when our hearts get a vision and revelation of what the Holy Spirit is praying for, in Ephesians chapter 1, the eyes of our heart will begin to see the unselfishness of God as demonstrated in the Lamb of God, the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the passion of God's heart for his church, that is the passion of you and I today, that is the passion for God and our families, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, it is God's passion that we would grow in an unveiling of the unselfishness of God and be able to demonstrate that in our lives with one another. There is no greater revelation of God than as seen in the Lamb-like nature of laying your life down, being poured out, rather than grasping, rather than it's all about me, it's all about mine, it's all about I, it's all about me. God wants to emancipate us, liberate us. He wants to announce a proclamation of emancipation, not from the slavery of an unjust government, not from the slavery of an unjust boss, not from the slavery of an unjust circumstance, but from the slavery of being the front and center of your universe into the unselfishness of God as seen in the person of Jesus Christ. Love walked among us when Jesus came as a man. Thus, the unselfishness of God revealed that the eyes of your heart might receive the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. And so this connects back to Genesis 1.26. God has a purpose and it's all throughout the scripture. This is simply another window into the purpose of God which was revealed back in Genesis 1.26. God created man because God had a holy passion, a passion that is so amazing and so awesome and so we're going to be discovering the passion of God for all eternity. It will never get old. In eternity future, we're still going to be discovering the height, the width, the length, the depth of the love of God and the passion of God and we're going to be amazed when we see how utterly simple it really is. And so listen carefully. The passion of God is to make Himself known. Because He is the eternal being who alone is worthy to be made known. Because He is eternally God. God has never in all eternity nor shall He ever in eternity future harm a person. He will never do evil to a person. He will never mistreat a person. God, listen, God is incapable of injustice. He is incapable of hurting. He is incapable of being unkind. He is incapable of it. Why? Because God is love and by nature of who God is, He demonstrated who He really is when He clothed Himself in human flesh and blood and bone and came to satisfy the mission of His own heart which was to lay His life down to suffer and die for you and I. That's who God truly is. That's who He truly is. Verse 18, that the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, the eyes of your heart being enlightened, the eyes of your heart flooded with light, flooded with light. What for? What for? To see the unselfishness of God. To see the love of God. To see who God truly is. It concerns me so much when I see a preoccupation within the Christian community over the various different qualities of God but not a preoccupation with who God is. His power. His might. His gifts. His miraculous. The Bible to Israel's shame states that God revealed His works unto Israel but His ways unto Moses. There's a big difference. Israel was acquainted with God's ways. They understood the God of power who could strike the nation of Egypt with plagues. They understood the God of power who could lead them out of Egypt by a cloud and by fire. They understood the way of God that could take a sea of water and separate it and cause an entire nation of over a million people to travel across it on dry ground. And we can go on and on and on. The miraculous provision of manna in the wilderness. But they didn't know His ways. And Moses wanted to know His ways. Moses said, what is your name? Name indicates nature. Name indicates who are you? What are you like? I want to know your heart, God. I want to know your heart. I want to know who you are. I know you could do anything but I want to get to know you. Who are you, God? What makes you tick? Let me know this love. Let me know this heart of yours. Let me know this unselfishness that you were made of. Brothers and sisters, do you have a passion today? Do you have a drive today that wakes you up at night? That wakes you up early in the morning? That almost creates a restlessness in you? God, I've got to know you. I've got to know you. I've got to know this unselfishness that you are, that is seen in your Son, Jesus Christ. Is that something that you talk about night and day with your friends and your family? Even among your secular work. Even among the responsibilities that you have to do. You do it as unto the Lord. You do it heartily unto the Lord. But in the core of your being, you're searching for God. You're hungry for God. You want to know God. Brothers and sisters, this is the greatest goal and desire and passion that you can have to know God. This is what Paul prayed. The unselfishness of God. To know it. To experience it. To see it. To live it. With great confidence and boldness, I can say from the Word of God today that there is nothing in hell that is feared more than the unselfishness of God. Calvary love. There is nothing that is feared more in hell than the unselfishness of Calvary love. Because it's the unselfishness of Calvary's love that destroyed the devil, destroyed death, destroyed sin, and destroyed the kingdom of darkness. And it is that very identical Calvary love that is captured in the heart of Christ that he now brings to us through the Holy Spirit that will have the same effect in our lives if we will simply yield our hearts to it. Oh God, let me know this love. There is nothing, absolutely nothing that the enemy can bring into your life or into my life or into your family or into the church that can conquer and overcome love. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. What enemy can conquer love? Tell me. What enemy can conquer Calvary's love? Contrary wise, all the enemies were conquered by Calvary's love. The weakness of God is stronger than the strength of man. Because the weakness of God, if there is such a thing as weakness in God, weakness as the world views it, 1 Corinthians chapter 1, Paul uses that term. The weakness of God is stronger than the strength of man. Here's why. Because the weakness of God is the display of his unselfishness in his Son by love. Sacrificial love. Sacrificial love. Unconditional love. The weakness of God is stronger than the strength of man. Because the strength of man is not seen in manifesting the unselfishness of God. It is not seen as a revelation of what God is like. But the strength of man is the antithesis, the opposite of the revelation of what God is like. The strength of man is man making much of himself. Asserting himself. Seeking his glory. Living by his wisdom. Satisfying his own crooked desires. Gather all of that together, the strength of man and the weakness of God displayed in the Lamb of God is far greater and stronger. And anything that the devil can throw at us, either directly or indirectly, through circumstances or through people, if it meets this love, it can't conquer it. Even if it kills you or burns you, it can't conquer it. If it burns you while you're burning, love cries out, Father, forgive them. While it's beating you, love cries out, Father, forgive them. While it's crucifying you, love cries out, Father, forgive them. Revelation of God. The eyes of our heart would see what the hope of our calling is and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. This whole revelation of what the hope of our calling is and what his inheritance is in the saints is connected to Genesis 1.26 and the eternal purpose of God. God has a passion and the passion is to reveal the unselfishness of what he is like in man. So that man's inheritance is man inherits the image of God. Who is what? Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. And God's inheritance God's inheritance is a body. A bride. A temple made of living stones into which he is welcomed. Into which he is displayed. Into which a self-revelation of himself occurs. The bride is to be a revelation. The woman is the glory of who? The man. That which is natural comes first and that which is spiritual. So if the glory of the husband is to be the wife, then spiritually the glory of God, the likeness of God, the expression, the dignity, the revelation of God is seen in the bride. And so the son has a body, the Holy Spirit has a temple, has a bride, and the father has a family. And so therefore, God at the very end satisfies his passion and his desire by having a man, a corporate man, a many-membered man, who is the depository into which his son fully expresses the image and likeness of God himself. And that's God's thought. Verse 19 And what the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe. And so here God is asking us, here God is saying, I'm praying that you would receive a revelation, an unveiling of the unselfishness of God. The eyes of your heart would be flooded with light that you might see the unselfishness of God. Then, that you might know the hope of the calling, our calling, the inheritance, to inherit God, God's inheritance, to inherit a man that will reveal what he is like, all the qualities of love, sacrificial, unconditional, captured, all captured, in the person of Jesus. How wonderful to always be preoccupied with Jesus, isn't it? How wonderful for everything to come back to him. Everything comes back to him. And so, now this is a tall order, isn't it? This is like, wow! How is this possible? Well, that's why the Holy Spirit says, not only does God pray for all this, but then he says, that we might know what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in Christ. And so, after seeing this, we can be a bit overwhelmed, and we can say, how can this ever be? Well, God says, it's possible because the power that is available to you, not a power in order to use God to serve our own means, and this is what we find in Christendom today, but it was back in Paul's day, the seeds of what we see worldwide now were in the days of Paul, and that's why Paul wrote corrective epistles and rebuked a leaven that was entering into Christendom, corrupting the purity of Christ that had the seeds of self-interest and man's glory and man's desire to want to use God to serve his own ends. That's all throughout the New Testament. That's why there's corrective epistles and rebukes and dealing with certain false doctrines and false apostles and false gospels and another spirit and another Jesus. All of these things were in seed form that Paul saw and reacted against and exposed in the word of God, and now we see the full-blown display of these little leaven errors in our world today. We see that. So that's why God is telling us he gives us the Holy Spirit so we can see the power that is available to us in order to accomplish God's ends, God's purpose, God's passion, and that is to reveal himself through us. His mighty power which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set him at his own right hand in heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named not only in the world but also which is in the world to come, and put all things under his feet and made him to be head over all things to the church which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all and all. Now turn your Bibles to Ephesians 3. Verse 7 Wherefore I was made a minister according to the gift of grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power. Now see there is the same phrase again the effectual working of his power. Paul was apprehended and saved and called to serve God's purpose, to serve God's purpose. Unto me who am less than the least of all saints is this grace given that I should preach among the Gentiles the unspeakable riches of Christ and to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery which from the beginning of the world has been hid in God who created all things by Christ Jesus. Now again, we're talking about a mystery, we're talking about the fellowship of the mystery that was hid in God. What is he talking about? The mystery. What's he talking about? The fellowship, the stewardship of the mystery. What's he talking about? He's talking about the same thing. The mystery of God's eternal purpose that he would have a self-revelation of himself captured in the unselfishness of Christ, the unselfishness of Christ who lays his life down unconditionally in order to satisfy God's justice and provide a way back to the heart of God. The mystery that God wanted a people through whom a self-revelation of his glory would be seen. That's the mystery. And Paul gives a little glimpse into that in verse number 10. To the intent that now, now, not in the age to come, now, in this age, unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord. Do you see dearly beloved what God has before us and the prospect of what is before us? God is intending that now, what does it say? Unto principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God. God wants to take a revelation. The manifold wisdom of God is nothing more than who? Christ. He is the wisdom of God. 1 Corinthians chapter 1. Christ is both the power of God and the wisdom of God. The power of God and the wisdom of God. So when God defines his power, he doesn't define it by showing us what he can do. He defines his power by showing us who he is as the Lamb. So the manifold wisdom of God is Christ and it's God's purpose that now unto principalities and powers in heavenly places that includes there is no statement to qualify this so that includes both heavenly principalities and powers those that are from God angels and principalities and powers in heavenly places those that occupy the heavens that Paul speaks of in Ephesians chapter 6. This is an incredible arena that God has now arranged. And the eyes are looking down upon us right now. They're looking down upon us. Heavenly beings both good and bad are looking and what is it that God is anticipating to show them? He is anticipating to show them himself through the church by our union with Christ who is the wisdom of God. And what chiefly is it about God that's going to amaze the heavenly principalities and powers that are on God's side and utterly distress and overthrow the principalities and powers that are wicked. What is it about the revelation of God? What revelation of God is going to do that? This! The Lamb! It's the Lamb! The unveiling of the Lamb! You know one way to drive the devil out of your home? Out of your life? Pray, Oh God let me die that through you and the unselfishness of who you are as Jesus Christ will live through me. You know how to put out hate? Throw the water of love on it. You know how to turn away wrath? With the gentleness of a soft answer. You know how to deal with strife and jealousy? Lay your life down. Truth. Washing the feet. Rivalry. Arguing. You know how to stop an argument? Don't demand your own way. Don't demand it. Who cares? Who cares? For the sake of peace. Let God defend the truth. Don't argue over silly things. Pride. Pride. Pride of heart. Loves to lay hold and demand. But the Lamb. The Lamb lays his life down. Ephesians 3. Verse 16. That he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man. That Christ may permanently dwell in your hearts by faith. That you being rooted and grounded in what? In love. Oh, brothers and sisters, let's get away from the idea like we talked about a couple weeks ago that love is this feeling that we get. Goosebumps. Romance. Oh yes, God gives the gift of romance in lawful situations. But that's not what love is. What happens to romance if I'm in a car accident and my body is marred beyond recognition and I live and I've got no eyes, hardly. No mouth. I'm black. I can't talk. There's just no... Is that you? My voice even changes because my voice box has been ruined. Where's romance? It's gone. But where's love? I know. But it's truth, isn't it? Of course it's truth. One of the most profound demonstrations of love was found when Jesus went and touched the leper. Do you understand the significance of Christ touching a leper? According to the Old Testament, lepers were barred from what? From community life. They had to do everything separate. But most devastatingly, most devastatingly, a leper was barred from human touch. Anyone that touched a leper was considered unclean. What does Jesus do? He goes up to the leper and he touches the leper. Do you know what that must have done to a person who had been denied human touch for so long? That's love. That's love. Getting dirty. Laying our life down. And when God says that we might be filled with love, that's what he's talking about. That's the love he's talking about. We need to wash our brains from society. Society uses the word love in such a cheap way. Oh, I love that car. Oh, please. Oh, I love this. We have become enamored with inanimate objects. As if you can love something that can't love you back. Or, oh, I'm in love with that person. Even Christians joke and play about Hollywood stars that they think are really, really cute. Really, really nice. It's not what love is. Love is Calvary. Love is Calvary. Love is God foresaw before the world began that sin would come, Lucifer would become his arch enemy and rebel against him, take one-third of the angels and corrupt all of mankind. Love is seeing it before it happened. Feeling the pain and the sorrow of it before it ever happened because God is God and he felt every single pain before it ever happened. Love is to see it all and to go forward with his plan in spite of it because he said, I am sufficient for the task. I know the horror of sin and pain and death is so unspeakable. I see it because I'm God. I feel it because I'm God. I'm suffering because I'm God. Before Calvary, he didn't in time atone until Calvary. But in eternity, he felt the pain of atonement. He felt the pain of suffering. He felt what it would do to his own heart. The mystery of why God allowed it to happen. Why did God go forward knowing, because he knew that the revelation of his unselfishness in the person of his son was more than sufficient to remedy the problem. It was more than sufficient to restore us back to God. How amazing is this love. Did he sit on his throne and delegate this responsibility to a created being? When he saw the terror of your sin and my sin, the rebellion of Lucifer and all that sin would ever mean in the world, all that would ever do to his own heart. Did he delegate someone to take care of it? No. This is the love that we're not understanding. He said, no, I'm going to go forward well knowing it's going to cost me everything. It doesn't make sense, does it? It doesn't make sense to the human mind. But it makes perfect sense to the divine mind because that's what the unselfishness of God does in light of its enemies, in light of sin, in light of terror, in light of darkness. It says, I am up to the task. God says, all I have to be is who I am. And who I am is able to destroy all that is opposite of me. If we got a hold of this love through the Holy Spirit and we were emptied so utterly of the other love, revolution would begin. Revival would break out. Devils would be put to flight. Families would be restored. Alright, brothers and sisters. Verse 18, chapter 3, that we may be able to comprehend. That word comprehend means to lay hold of. That means to lay hold of. That means to grasp. That means to take and make apart. Of ourselves. That we might comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, the length, the depth, and height. And to know the love of God, the love of Christ, which passes knowledge that we might be filled with all the fullness of God. And so what is the fullness of God connected to in that passage? The love of Christ. The fullness of God is captured in the unselfishness of Christ. Ephesians 4, verse 13. Ephesians 4, 13. We're just going through and showing you that the New Testament is nothing more than the final unveiling of God's eternal purpose, which He had in the beginning. Genesis 1.26 Man revealing what God is like in His unselfish nature seen in Calvary love. Calvary love. Ephesians 4, verse 11. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers for the perfecting, the full growth of the church, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge. There's that same word that Paul used in Ephesians 1. The spirit of revelation in what? The knowledge of Him. Same thing here. You say, well, don't we already know the Lord? Of course we do. But see, there is a full knowledge that God wants us to come into. And it's not a head knowledge. It is a knowledge that enables us to participate in the unselfishness of God here and now. That's the goal. Partakers of the divine nature. Add to your faith. Add, add, add, add, add. See, it's a growing capacity to house Calvary's love. The knowledge of the Son of God to a perfect man, a mature corporate man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ that we're not children anymore tossed to and fro, carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the cunningness of men whereby they wane late to deceive. But listen, speaking the truth in love may grow up in all things, from whom the whole body, fitly joined and compacted by that which every joint supplies, according to the effectual working and the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love. See that? In love. Ephesians chapter 5, verse 1. Be ye therefore followers of God as dear children, watch this, and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and what? And hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor. And you see the connection again there? Be followers of God by walking in his love, and then he defines the kind of love that we're to walk in as Christ's sacrificial love. Right there. Laying our life down. 1 John 3.16. In this way we know what God's love is. Jesus laid his life down for us. And so ought we to lay our lives down for the brethren. Ephesians 5, verse 25. Husbands, love your wives. How? We can't escape from it, beloved. It's there. It's there because it's God's eternal purpose. The whole Christian life is summed up in Calvary. Calvary's love. Redeems us, forgives us, unites us to the eternal God for the purpose of what? That God might give a self-revelation of himself to all the universe. Go to Romans. What time is it? Romans. We'll close with this. Romans, beginning in verse number 11. Oh, Romans 8. I'm sorry. Romans 8. Is that what I said? Romans 8, beginning in verse number 11. We're closing with this. This is the consummating thought of Paul's heart when he begins to unveil in Romans chapter 3, 4, 5, 6 the significance of the work of Jesus Christ and what it means to God. This is it. And it connects us to what we just read in Ephesians and more importantly it connects us to what God's heart was in the very beginning when he created man which reflects only what was in the heart of God before time began in eternity. So, everything that God's doing was something that was in his thought before time. It's not an afterthought. It's something that was with him as long as God was God and we know God has no beginning. And I tell you, this is the kind of stuff that can really help you not stumble over things that don't matter. Why do we make such an issue over things that don't matter? It's because we make much of what we see with these eyes and what we hear with these ears and what we feel with these emotions which 95% of the time are connected to our selfish part of our being because they rage when things aren't about us and they're so happy when things are about us. We need to see the bigness of God's picture and not only do we need to see it on Sundays we need to see it throughout the week. We need to meditate on these things. We need to speak to them one to another. Husbands and wives, children, brothers and sisters on the phone, text. I know this is the text message age. Boy, I tell you some kids can smoke that text message. The way they can do it. Now you can get unlimited text messages for certain carriers. Unlimited. Boy, that must make a lot of kids happy. That's alright though because technology is not evil. It's just what are you texting? I suggest you kids have a contest. Who can text the most scriptures in 10 minutes? Oh yeah. Huh? Who? Eric? Oh, I know. I know you guys do. I know. You little kids, you remember this. When mom and dad let you get a cell phone, the first thing you ought to text to your mom and dad is John 3.16. For God so loved the world. That's me, mom. Isn't that amazing? Come on. Here it is, brothers and sisters. Romans 8.11 But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwells in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh to live after the flesh for if you live after the flesh you're going to die. You're going to die. Let me ask a question real quick. Isn't it true every time you act in the flesh you taste death, you feel death? Doesn't it hurt your spirit? Doesn't it grieve you? You know, brothers and sisters, death before it's a physical act is a spiritual thing. Did you know that? Did you know the physical act of death is the process? It's the finished product of sin? And sin is that which misses the mark. What's the mark? Christ. He's the mark. He's the bullseye. He's exactly what God is in Revelation. And so, our goal... This is a whole other message. But listen just for a minute. I promise in less than five minutes we're going to be closing. Listen, so many Christians are anticipating the coming of the Lord. And that's valid. They're anticipating it as an event. That's valid. But here's where everything breaks down. They're not associating that event when the Lord comes with the completion of a process. The completion of a process. How is it that we can expect the coming of the Lord to be an event unrelated to the process of our transformation? How is it? How can we say, Oh Lord, I want you to come when His coming represents the final work of God's supernatural power to transform us to bear the image of Christ. Brothers and sisters, the reason why the passion for the coming of the Lord is really not present in many, many Christians today is because it is no longer seen as the consummating event of a passionate love relationship with God. But rather just some eschatological event somewhere in the future. That is never what the coming of the Lord was intended to be. The early church was groaning for the coming of the Lord because they were ready to put off everything that was earthly in order to be in perfect union with the heavenly man, Jesus Christ. The coming of the Lord ought to be that which we long for because we say, God, I am so hungry for you. I so want you. I so want to be free from anything that is not like you. And I realize that the only way that can fully happen is if you come again. The early church had a passion for His coming because it wasn't disconnected. Verse 14, For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption or the placement of sons, whereby we cry, Daddy Father, Daddy God. The Spirit bears witness with our own spirit. We are children of God. And if children, heirs of God, and join heirs with Christ, if we suffer with Him, we also shall be glorified together. And now here's where we're closing. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared, listen closely, with the glory that shall be revealed, where? In us. For the earnest expectation or the deep desire of the creature waits for the manifestation, the unveiling of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who has subjected the same in hope. Because, listen, the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know the whole creation groans and travails and is waiting until now, and not only the creation but ourselves also. What are we waiting for? What are we groaning for? The adoption, the placement of sons. Do you know that God's final revelation of the unselfishness of God in the church is going to be consummated at the unveiling, the manifestation of the sons of God, when God catches up those who are looking for Him. It is going to be such a powerful revelation. Creation itself is going to be delivered from bondage and decay. Death and hell and luciferance is going to be cast into the lake of fire. And what is the strength of this revelation? Is it Christians throwing lightning bolts? No! It's Christians revealing the Lamb of God in His awesome moral purity and beauty. Let's start now. Let's pray now. Oh God, please do it in our lives. I'm going to just now close in prayer and anyone can pray however long and let's just pray and ask the Lord to take His Word and make it real.