In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes that the content of the gospel is Jesus Christ Himself. He explains that Jesus is the one who gave Himself for our redemption and the one who gives Himself to us for regeneration. The preacher shares a personal story about a promise made to him as a child, highlighting the importance of recognizing our needs and being convinced of them. He also discusses the nature of man, emphasizing that Jesus came as God incarnate to assume our humanity and be obedient to the Father. The preacher concludes by stating that all of humanity falls short of representing God's character due to sin.

Happy to add my word of welcome to that which has already been extended to you. Now we're going to turn away from our hymn books and to our Bible and continue to explore the real spiritual content of our faith, the Lord Jesus himself. We'll go to the third chapter, the Epistles to the Galatians, Galatians chapter 3, and remember as we were continuing to explore the three principles, the form of scripture is the word of God, the character of the word of God is gospel, and the content of that gospel is the Lord Jesus himself. And gospel, both redemptive and regenerative. God's provision, not only that we might become Christians, but God's provision that we might be the Christians that we have become. And remember crooked wolves hate plumb line, because where there's a plumb line around, the crooked wolf knows that somebody's going to start meddling and try to put crooked wolves straight. And this we saw to be the role of the law, for whatsoever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, to what end? That we might be congratulated by God on our performance in satisfying the demands of that law? No. Whatsoever the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, all the world become guilty before God, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. For a plumb line can never make a crooked wolf straight, all that a plumb line can do is make, is prove a crooked wolf crooked. And that's why we saw the better hope was brought in. God's redemptive and regenerative plan fashioned in his heart in the eternal ages of the past. And the law was added because of transgression. 430 years after, God pledged his name, his honor, and his glory, that salvation should come to you and to me exclusively through his son, the Lord Jesus, born of Mary, of the house of David, of the tribe of Judah, and of the seed of Abraham. Any doubt about that in the record? For what God said in mercy to Abraham, last verse of the seventh chapter of the book of Mike, has become the truth to a silent generation. There is none other name given among men under heaven whereby we may be saved. Jesus said, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life, no man cometh unto the Father but by me. So we see that the law is not the means whereby you and I may be justified before God, the law is our schoolmaster. You remember Galatians chapter 3 verse 24, the law is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. To expose our need that we may be convicted of our sin, recognize ourselves to be the sinners that we are, and embrace the Lord Jesus for the Savior that he is, and came to be. Who came? We believe it not because the Bible said he did, but we believe it because the Bible said he would. I remember as a poet school in northwest of London, I attended for several years a school that was called the William Ellis School after it was founded. It was at a place called Gospel Oaks, just a little district to that part of northwest London. And my class teacher was a man called Clark. Now I don't know what your custom is in this country, but in England anybody called Clark automatically earns the nickname of Nobby. It's always Nobby Clark, you see. So of course we called him Nobby. And I remember one morning while he was looking over my shoulder as I was working, he noticed that the pencil that I was using was about five-eighths of an inch long and very chewed, because I had chewed it. And for some strange reason he didn't consider that that was adequate. I was perfectly happy, but he said, Thomas you need a new pencil. Something which I was completely unconvinced, and point of fact I had a very deep sentimental attachment to that pencil. You don't chew a pencil for that long without developing a deperfection for the object of your endeavor. So he said, you need a new pencil. You come to me in the morning break, quarter of an hour, 20 minutes, when we normally would be out in the playground, I'll give you a new pencil. And that was the promise that he made to me, my need, that he recognized and I didn't. Well when the morning break came, I didn't give a thought to that pencil, because I wasn't adequately convicted or convinced of the need. So when I got out, of course I played some football, probably had a fight with one of my chums, went down to the tuck shop, bought an ice cream, and before I knew the bell was ringing and I was back in school. No new pencil. So I went to work again with my old stud. But at four o'clock, when it was time to go home, in order to get to the exit, we had to go down what we called the library, into which various classrooms, including mine, opened. And as I went down through the library, I passed the door of my particular classroom, where I hadn't been during the course of the afternoon, and standing in the doorway, there was Nobby. And the moment I saw Nobby, I remembered the pencil. And of course the moment I remembered the pencil, I pretended I hadn't seen Nobby. But the trouble was, he had seen me. He said, Comer, oh yes sir, with that innocent look that you only find on the face of a guilty boy. What about that pencil? Oh sir, I forgot. Oh you forgot, I see. Then you'd better just come in here. So I went in there and he shut the door. Then he opened the lid of his desk, and out of the desk he produced, not the promise, something a little longer, just about three feet. Not the promise, but the law. The law, which he very successfully added, after he'd given the promise. Why did he add the promise after making, why did he add the law after making the promise? Well, because of transgression. You see, the law, three feet of it, was administered to remind me of the need of which I wasn't previously convinced. And after he had added the law to remind me of my need, that he could only satisfy by giving me the promise, he gave me a new pencil. Now I had both, the reminder and the pencil, and I went home with both. The one didn't last forever, in fact neither did, but one kept me standing. Now you see, this was God's plan. The promise was given to us in the very chapter in which there is recorded the fall of man into sin, of which we'd reminded ourselves yesterday, Genesis 3 15, when God addressing himself to Satan, that old serpent, the devil, said I'm going to put enmity between you and the woman, between your seat and her seat. Genesis 3 15, referring of course to the birth of the Lord Jesus, the seat of the woman, born at Bethlehem, miraculously conceived, fashioned in the borrowed womb of a virgin girl. And the seat of Satan, the Lord Jesus in the age of John, turning to the scribes and the Pharisees, those who engineered his death, the religious leaders of his day and generation, in all their pride and self-righteousness, said the Lord Jesus to them, you are of your father, the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, that's why you, his children, want to kill me, because your humanity is available to him so that he by character can be incarnate in what you do. He is a liar and the father of lies, that's why you reject me as the truth. And the seat of the serpent, the scribes and the Pharisees, engineered the death of the seat of the woman. They bruised his heels, but he through death destroyed him that had the power of death, even the devil, and delivered them who through all their lifetime had been subject to fear because of the fear of death, and set them free. And this pledge by God recorded for us in Genesis 3.15 was confirmed by God in Abraham. When choosing this Chaldean, whose name was Abraham, he said I'm going to change your name to Abraham, because I'm going to make you the father of many nations. He begat by divine intervention Isaac, who begat Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel, who begat the twelve tribes, one of which was Judah, and of the house of David, of the tribe of Judah, nearly 1900 years ago, that seat of the woman was born, in fulfillment of the promise. But in spite of all that, in spite of the fact, as we're told in the book of the Revelation, chapter 13, that the Lord Jesus was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, God had to add the law, because of transgression. That it might be our schoolmaster, and leaders to Christ, and talk us into an awareness of our deed, our guilt, our bankruptcy, that we're born dead in trespasses and sins, that that law might lead us to Christ. That we might then be justified, not by the law, or our performance in satisfying it, but through faith, through faith. Christ has redeemed from the curse of the law's condemnation. You glance at that third chapter, the Epistles of the Romans again. Romans chapter 3, verse 19, we know that what things, whoever the law saith, saith to them that are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, without exception, all the world, without exception, may become guilty before God, exposed, that is to say, and subject to his judgment. Therefore, verse 20, by the deeds of the law, by your or my performance in seeking to satisfy its demand, there shall no flesh be justified in God's sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. The righteousness of God, God's righteousness, without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophet. Even the righteousness of God, which is made available to you and to me, through faith in Jesus Christ. This righteousness, God's gift through faith in Christ, is unto all and upon all them that believe. For there is no difference. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified freely, not on the basis of merit, not as a reward, not because of our performance, but freely, God's unmerited gift, grace, g-r-a-c-e, God's riches at Christ's expense. All have sinned, come short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, on the basis of that redemptive transaction where he was made a curse for us. For cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. Verse 25, whom Christ, God, hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness, for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God. To declare, verse 26, I say at this time, his righteousness, not your righteousness, not my righteousness. Declare his righteousness, that he, God, might be just in that he has condemned sin in the person of another, and the justifier of those for whom he died in their place. The justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. So God is both just and justifier. He is just in that in the person of Jesus Christ, in whom our sin was sentenced, executed, his righteousness has been satisfied. Just. He doesn't just blink his eyes and pretend we haven't sinned. God isn't just a sentimental old daddy sitting on a damp cloud looking through thick glasses for his naughty children. Let's forget it. God is righteous. He's just. And the wages of sin is death. And it was executed in the person of the Lord Jesus, vicariously on your part and mine, exactly what happened to Adam when he fell into sin. It wasn't just a sentimental gesture, it wasn't the tragic end of a noble life, he wasn't a great idealist who drifted a disaster, it wasn't simply God showing how far he would condescend to try and woo us and win us back, nothing like that. Stern business was accomplished in the day that God executed in the person of his own beloved son in the sinlessness of his humanity, all his rightful wrath and judgment upon man's wickedness. He died that we might be forgiven. And now he lives to make us good. God is just. God can only remember our sins no more for his namesake, because his name is Jesus, who saves his people from their sins in the person of the one who incarnates, incurred deliberately and voluntarily his own person, that death that had already occurred, as we shall discover tonight in Adam. And now he's the justifier, the justifier of any boy, any girl, any man, any woman who believes, who will come and say, Lord Jesus, I recognize now what happened to you when you died on the cross. There happened to you when you died on the cross everything that should have happened to me. Thank you. And the moment you do that, the Lord Jesus introduces you to the Father and says, Father, please accept this person. For my sake, I have paid their debt. Please reckon that they are totally and finally and eternally acquitted. They don't deserve it, Father. I know that. We agreed on this before ever I went into the world. But thank you that you're prepared, not for their sake, but for my sake, to accept. And remember that every boy, girl, man, or woman who is accepted in the Beloved by the Father is redeemed, not out of God's faithfulness to them, but out of God's faithfulness to his Son. For if you and I come to the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus, and he refuses to accept you as a forgiven sinner because he died in my place, he would be betraying his own Son, who lay down his life a ransom to men. That's why, of course, if the Father God in heaven sent his Son to die for you and for me, that our sins might be forgiven. There isn't a chance in all eternity that you will ever get into his presence any other way. If God considered that your lot and mine were such that it demanded the atoning sacrifice of his Son upon the cross, what chance is there in eternity that God will accept you and me on any other basis? There is none. Absolutely not. The cross and Christ's death there 2,000 years ago was God's final and timeless verdict upon your and my fitness for heaven in ourselves. Acts 13, Acts 13, verse 38. Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man, through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. What man? Well, that man, verse 28, in which the religious leaders of his then generation found no cause of death, yet desired Pilate that he should be slain. That man. And when they had fulfilled all that was written of him in the Old Testament, the volume of the book where his atoning death was foreshadowed, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a sepulchre. That's their part, the seed of the serpent. But, verse 30, God raised him from the dead. That man. We declare, he continues, Paul on this occasion, verse 32, we declare unto you glad tidings how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us, their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again, as it is also written in the second psalm. And this isn't a Christian message, this isn't a Christian verse, this isn't a Christmas text, this isn't a Christmas verse, this is a resurrection verse, this is an Easter verse. Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. Begotten where from? Not begotten this time in the womb of Mary, begotten from the dead. God hath fulfilled the same unto us, their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again, as it is also written in the second psalm. Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption, he said on this life, I will give you the sure mercies of David, wherefore he said also in another psalm, thou shalt not suffer thine holy one to see corruption. David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep and was laid unto his fathers and saw corruption, but he whom God raised again saw no corruption. It is this man, and be it known unto you therefore men and brethren, that through this man, who was crucified, whom God raised from the dead, who ascended to be with his father, who now shares that glory that had always been his, in the eternal ages of the past and will be his, for the eternal ages of the future, the word who was in the beginning with God, was God, and by whom all things were made, this word that was made flesh and dwelt among us, in whom John says we beheld the glory, as of the only begotten of the father, full of grace and full of truth. Be it known unto you that through this man, is preached unto you the forgiveness of sin. So Jesus Christ came to sin. That's why you'll never be a Christian if you're not a sinner. You can't be. But of course a Christian is a forgiven sinner, and if you're not a sinner you don't need forgiveness, and therefore Christ didn't come for you. So don't call yourself a Christian. By him, verse 39, by him all that believe are what? Justified. Just as if I never sinned. By him all that believe are justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses, for the law made nothing perfect. What the law could not do through the weakness of the flesh, because there's a principle in you and me that when the Lord says, the law says thou shalt, says I won't. When the law says thou shalt not, says I will. But the Lord Jesus, when he died upon the cross, there was able to justify you and me from all that the law could not justify. That's the role of the law. Christ, our Redeemer, whom we neglect and whose salvation we spurn, until the Holy Spirit graciously takes the law, the plumb line, and convicts us of our need, and shows us that we're the sinners that we are, and we need him for the saviour who came to be. Are you redeemed? Have you allowed God through his dear Son to justify you? Or are you still claiming to be under the law, demanding by your Creator to be judged on the basis of your performance and satisfying its demands? Then you're lost, because the issue has already been settled. God himself has settled it. By the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in his sight. For by the law is the knowledge of sin. It can only prove you guilty. Now, it's at this stage in particular we leave our hymn books and go to our Bibles. I'm always very sorry for a brother like this who has to choose hymns from your hymn books. They're pathetic. They're sweet, they have lovely melodies, they're sentimental, but they're tragically and diametrically opposed all too often in their content from the revelation that God has given us in his Word. Now, if we could stop here, that would be fine. Lots of our hymn book songs would be okay. But the gospel doesn't stop here. Turn back to Galatians chapter 3. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. For it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree, that, that we might get to heaven. Is that what it says? No. That we might not go to hell. No. That our sins might be forgiven. No. It is absolutely true that our sins can only be forgiven because he has redeemed us from the curse of the law, but that isn't why he died. It was that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles, all unbelievers, through Jesus Christ, on the grounds of the redemptive act that he accomplished. That, further to explain, we might receive the promise of the Holy Spirit through faith. The purpose for which Christ has redeemed us is that reconciled to God our sin forgiven, there might actually be restored to us what was forfeited in Adam, the Holy Spirit, the light of God. Now of course in the beautiful picture language of the Old Testament, this is exactly what the children of Israel meet when God redeemed them out of Egypt. How did he redeem them out of Egypt? By his strong hand through Moses. Beneath the shadow of the shed blood of an unblemished lamb, a bone of whose body was not under any circumstances to be broken. Exodus chapter 12. Because that unblemished lamb whose blood was shed and painted upon the doorpost and the lintel was the Passover lamb, and Christ, our Passover, 1 Corinthians 5-7, has been sacrificed for us. And when the soldiers came out because of a Sabbath day that was to follow, the Passover Sabbath, they smashed the legs of one thief and they smashed the legs of the other, but when they came to the Lord Jesus they found he was already dead. Why? Because he gave up the death. He laid down his life. So not a bone in his body was broken. That's why that Old Testament picture that foreshadowed the one whom John the Baptist described as the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world. Not one bone of the body of that little lamb was to be broken. And beneath the shadow of the shed blood of that little lamb, under the hand of Moses, they were led through the Red Sea, out of Egypt, a picture in the Old Testament always of the unregenerate, unconverted, unsaved, what in the New Testament sometimes called the Gentiles, out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, beautiful picture of our identity with Christ in death and resurrection, to be poised upon the threshold of a new life, an onward march that would take them through and in to heaven, to heaven? Uh uh, to Cain, which nowhere, anywhere, at any time, ever in the Bible, speaks of heaven. So you see we don't tread into Jordan's, you know, murky waves, suddenly to wake up the other side in heaven. Nor does he feed our hungry souls with manna, manna for the wilderness. Did they eat any manna in Canaan? No. That was the land flowing with milk and honey. There were the grapes and the pomegranates. He was the golden corn swaying in the breeze. Christ in all the fullness and power of his resurrection, that is the birthright of every redeemed sinner. Not just in heaven, but here on earth, on the way to heaven. That's Cain, the fullness of the Holy Ghost, the life of victory in Jesus Christ. I said, what did these people do for 40 years in the wilderness? Did they please God? No, he says, for 40 years you grieved me. You rebelled and rumbled and fought and disobeyed and were idolatrous. You worshipped Goldie Codd. You ridiculed my servant Moses. You ridiculed my servant Aaron. That's what they did in the wilderness. So you see Jordan is the way when we get off earth and into heaven, then the normality of the Christian life must be the kind of life, the quality of life, say in Jordan the wilderness. It means that we for 40 years can grieve God. That's what he expects on the way to heaven. But one day we'll go through Jordan. Would that be valid? Listen to this. In the book of Deuteronomy and chapter 1 and verse 1, these be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel on this side Jordan in the wilderness and the plain over against the Red Sea. And verse 2, there are 11 days journey from Horeb where the journey began by the way of Mount Seir and the Kadesh Barnea on the frontiers of Canaan. How long? 11 days. How long did it take them? 40 years. That's worse than British Railway. It took them 40 years to do an 11 day journey. Would God please? No. No. They simply had to relearn at Jordan what they forgot at the Red Sea. That's all. God command to Moses was this, bring them out that you might bring them in but he dumped them in the desert and died there with them for 40 years. Look at chapter 8 in the book of Deuteronomy. Chapter 8 and the third verse, God says through Moses, he humbled thee and he suffered thee to hunger. Where did he suffer them to hunger? In the wilderness. What was God doing in the wilderness when he suffered them to hunger? He fed them with manna. So while God was feeding them with manna in the wilderness, he was suffering them to hunger. Why? For the simple reason that God refuses to satisfy a people in the wilderness when he's laid the table in Canaan. Canaan is not heaven. We are to be partakers of Christ now. Hebrews chapter 3, we are to be partakers of Christ now as they should have been partakers of Canaan then. And says God, keep the place there in Deuteronomy but let me quote it to you from the third chapter of the epistles of the Hebrews. Exhort one another today, daily, verse 13 of Hebrews 3, while it is cold today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin, for we are no partakers of Christ. If we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end, take heed brethren, verse 12, lest there be in you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. Harden not your hearts, verse 8, as in the provocation in the day of temptation in the wilderness. When your fathers tempted me, proved me, saw my work, forty years, I was grieved with that generation. They said, thee do always err in thy heart. They have not known my way, so I swear in my wrath, they shall not enter into my wrath. Canaan. They'll never know the joy of that to which I brought them out of Egypt. They're a redeemed people, yes, they're saved out of Egypt, but they'll never taste the good things that I intended should be theirs in the day that by the hand of Moses I brought them through the Red Sea and poised them upon the threshold of that new journey that was to take them on and into the land of promise. Jesus, in the fullness and power of his indwelling Holy Spirit, who died for us, the unblemished land, that whether we wake or sleep, whether on earth or in heaven, whether in the body or out of it, we should live together with him in all the overwhelming unspeakable plenitude of his divine presence. That is Canaan. Are you still in Deuteronomy? Look at the 12th chapter. This is by way of parenthesis. These are the statutes, verse 1 of Deuteronomy 12, and judgments which you shall observe to do in the land which the Lord God of thy fathers giveth thee to possess it all the days that you live where? On the earth. The land is for now, not for then. But the tragedy you see is this, that the vast majority of truly converted men and women, boys and girls, who claim redemption through the death of Jesus Christ, are living between the Jesus that was and the Jesus that will be in heaven. But they don't know the Jesus that is. In all the fullness and power of his indwelling Holy Spirit, through whose presence alone we delive that medal of competence once more on earth, in the body, to discharge that office through which, having been created, we now have been redeemed. So living between the Jesus that was, the historical act of a redeemer who gets us out of hell and into heaven, and the Jesus who will be one day coming back in eschatological glory to take us to the place that he's gone to prepare for us, the average Christian looms in the meantime in a spiritual vacuum. Stop your recorder at this time and turn the cassette over for the remainder of this message. Sweating it out for God down here, doing your best for Jesus, trying to live for Jesus, until at last you crawl into heaven on your hands and knees covered with dust and blisters and wait for him to thump you on the back and say, well done my good and faithful servant, you made it. Now isn't that pathetic? Isn't that pathetic? Why did Christ redeem us? Why did God lead his people by the hand of Moses out of Egypt so that they could enjoy Canaan? When? On earth. On earth. Every step of the way. If Canaan is heaven, I'll tell you where Moses is. Where? In hell. Did he ever go through Jordan? No. He died with those whom he dumped. Christ redeemed us that we might receive the Holy Spirit. Christ redeemed us that the Lord Jesus and the power of his resurrection might come and reinvade our humanity. Christ redeemed us so that you and I might step out into every new day knowing that somebody lives within us who as God in us, Christ living in our heart, is never ever less than big enough for any situation that can ever arise at any time. So that we can reign in life through one Christ Jesus. So that we can be more than conquered. So that we can know a peace that passes understanding, staggers the neighbours. So that we can have a joy that passes knowledge. So that that joy can be unthinkable. No, unknown to man, adequate to describe it. A love that passes knowledge. Well not just to get by somehow, but triumphant. Every day is to be the sheer adventure of enjoying that quality of life that the Lord Jesus described as more abundant. It's life in a new dimension, it's superlative. So is it? The form of scriptures, the word of God, the character of the word of God is gospel and the content of that gospel is what? Christianity? No. The Beatitudes? No. The Sermon on the Mount? No. The beautiful example that he left behind 2,000 years ago? No. The content of the gospel is Jesus Christ himself. The one who gave himself for us, redemption, and the one who gives himself to us, regeneration. It may be that some of you will pick up the book called The Mystery of Godliness, which is the second of the books that I've written, and I think you'd find it quite helpful. But I use a diagram there, and sometimes folk at first glance think it's a little complicated and put it down and say, uh. Now, it isn't complicated to do. It does look like the nervous system or the blood system of a frog, I realize that, but it isn't. And I thought maybe it would be helpful in the context of what we have been saying morning and evening, if I just built that diagram, which in itself, in itself like all diagrams, is a little cold and impersonal, but could be helpful. That line there represents this planet, this earth that you and I live in, temperate. And God, our Creator, in the triunity of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. May be difficult for you to see that from way back. But some of us last night were discussing how God created us. And you remember, He gave us, in common with all forms of created life, a body. But not only a body that is characteristic of vegetable, animal, and man. He gave to man also a soul. Mind, emotion, and will. That's the human soul. Man, body, and soul. And soul, mind, emotion, and will. Our behavior mechanism. So that we exercise our wills under the influence of mind and emotion. Whoever controls your mind, whoever controls your emotions, controls your will, whoever controls your will, governs your behavior. So what you do, you arrive from whatever it may be that governs mind and emotion. Precipitate it into action through will, in terms of this body. Okay? But we saw that God made all animals that way. But He protected the animal kingdom in a very unique fashion that some of us explored last evening. With a mind, a calculator, just like yours and mine, a memory that can retain your shape, and sound, and size, and smell, so that the dog recognizes you when you come home, as you explained last night. When the door in the front is shut, the dog's got enough savvy to go around and see if the door in the back is open. And having been told not to sleep on the best furniture, it waits till you go out, before it dies. Haven't you got a dog like that? Mind, emotion, a dog can be angry, or friendly, it can be jealous, it can be amused, have you ever seen a dog grin? And it has a will. You take a dog for a walk, and let it off the leash, maybe if you're living somewhere in the country, and it strays, and you say, come here! It stops, but it's seen a cat. And so it, you know, sort of wobbles a bit. One ear up, one ear down, a mischievous look on its face, what am I going to do, obey, or chase the cat? Much more fun. Come here! Oh, I see, well I better forget the cat, and so it comes back with its tail between its legs. Now all that's going on in the dog, you see, mind, emotion, and will. But God has protected the animal kingdom, we don't have time now to pause upon this for long, because we've explored this thoroughly last evening, by an instinctive trust, with a rigid interlock between that instinctive trust and the animal soul, that protects it. Mating seasons, feeding habits, migratory paths, building skills, none of them have to be learned by the animal, or insect, or fish, or birds. They're built in a computerized program, repetitive, year after year, generation after generation, century after century. So there is a rigid interlock, a rigid interlock between the instinctive trust and the animal soul, so that the law that operates in the animal kingdom is a law of compulsion. A law of compulsion. It can't behave any other way than that which has been computerized by the Creator, and built into it in the person of an instinctive, impersonal trust. We call it instinct. And we saw that by virtue of this fact, the animal, when it behaves, is functionally satisfying to God, but not morally satisfying to God. Because by what it does, it's not saying anything to God, any more than your television is saying anything to you, when you switch it on, and it gives you the football match, or presents you with the news. You don't go up to it afterwards and say, well thank you very much, that was a beautifully clear picture today, I'd like to congratulate you, and I think it was very kind, in view of the fact it's so late. Is that the way you talk to your television? If you did, your family would get worried. You know perfectly well, that that's just a piece of transistorized machinery. It can't help behave the way it's behaving, it was made that way. That's the animal thing. So, functionally satisfying, yes. Morally satisfying, no. So God made man different. He gave to man a human spirit. That unique capacity, possessed only by man, exclusively, that allows God as creator to take up residence within man as creature. Beautiful illustration given of the human spirit, in the book of the Proverbs 20, verse 27, says this, the spirit of man, the human spirit, not to be confused with the Holy Spirit, the human spirit, the spirit of man is the candle or the lamp of the Lord, God's lamp. That's why throughout the Bible, Old Testament and New Testament, with relentless consistency, oil is a picture of the person, work and office of the Holy Spirit. The human spirit is God's lamp, but what does a lamp take to produce light? Of course in Bible times, oil. And what oil is to a lamp, what the electricity is to these, the Holy Spirit was to be to the human spirit. For in him was light and this light, it was in him was the what? The light of man. If man was to be alight with God's likeness, if man was to be alight with God's glory, if man was to glow with God's righteousness, what does it take to be a man alight? A man alive with the life of God. So when God first made man, he gave him a body, he gave him a soul, he gave him a human spirit, and God in the person of the Holy Spirit came to indwell the human spirit, so that man was not only physically alive like the animal kingdom, man was spiritually alive in that by the very presence of God himself through the Holy Spirit within the human spirit, who shared the life of the word's creator, Jesus. That the Holy Spirit might play the role in the human soul, that instinct plays in the animal soul. So man was created, mind, emotion, will, and the Holy Spirit to operate within the human soul as instinct operates within the animal soul. But not by virtue of a rigid interlock, but by virtue of a moral interlock. Threefold in character. Love for God, dependence on God, obedience to God. Love for, dependence on, obedience to. My obedience to the only valid way in which I can demonstrate my dependence on, and my dependence on the only valid way in which I can express my love for. Love for, dependence on, obedience to. I say, God, I want to be the kind of man you created me to be. Alive, and alive with your glory. I know, God, I don't have in myself what it takes to be like you. You're God and I'm just your creature. But thank you that as my creator, you're prepared to come and live in me, your creature, and by your Holy Spirit, teach my mind, control my emotions, direct my will, govern my behavior, so that everybody looking at me sees you, God in me, behaving. That's God-likeness. That's righteousness. Not by imitation, but by derivation. God in you, not only the object of the image, but the origin in you of the image of which he's the object. So that your humanity, fulfilling, discharging the office for which you were made, God-likeness, for that to function, God's presence is imperative. Take God out of the man, and he ceases to function as a lamp ceases to function when you take oil out of the bulb. So the Holy Spirit within the human spirit, teaching mind, emotion, and will, was to produce in human behavior, God-character. That's how we were made. The moral interlock, and not the law of compulsion, but the law of love. If you love me, keep my command. If you love me, out of your dependence on me, yield your obedience. Not just a rule of regulation, not just a list of things you do and don't do, no. Maintain that sensitivity within your human spirit to my Holy Spirit, that with unchallenged right, he might himself motivate your thinking, motivate your reactions, and motivate your decision. Satan came along and introduced a new principle. The principle within the Bible is called sin, singular, deriving from an Adamic attitude that was introduced when man fell into sin that is called the flair. For Satan said you can be a man without God, God said that if you lose him you'll die, suffer and suffer nonsense, said Satan. Forget it. You've got all that it takes to be a man in your own right. Just vindicate your own adequacy. Be a man, said the devil. What he really meant was be an animal, without even the capacity to behave like one. And Adam believed the devil's lies, traded his attitude of dependence on God for one of arrogant, conceited, self-sufficient, independent of God. He'd become a humanist, carving his own destiny, king in his own kingdom, master of his own future, probing into space, riding in Jeeps around the moon. I've got what it takes. What happened? Exactly what God said. In the day that you eat, none of you will die. Not physically, spiritually. The animal part of you will survive. You'll still have a body and you'll still have a soul. And the mind that you've got will be as clever as the mind I gave you to be governed by God. So clever that you can produce hydrogen bombs. And while you're building with one hand, with the other you can build all the means for destroying overnight, what you've created. That's why your country alone at this very moment has top powered enough energies to destroy the world 50 times over. That's how smart man is without God. That's why we're trying to put space platforms up in the sky. Everybody knows why. If you can bring an astronaut down with absolute precision, precisely where you want him, exactly when you want it, what else can you bring down? All you need is a little team of three or four or five men on a space platform with 100 hydrogen bombs and you govern the world. Everybody does exactly what you say or else, right? That's how smart man is without God. Clever, yes. He's still got the mind that God gave to a man to be governed by God. But you see in the day that he believed the devil's land became a man without God, he still had a body, he still had a soul, he still had a will, but he was neither protected by instinct nor governed by God. So he couldn't behave like an animal and he didn't know how to behave like a man. He could only behave like a maniac, living for himself, ego, ego senses, every man for himself. And I'm on your side only so long as you're on my side. And it's everybody's fault but mine. That's fallen man, physically alive, soulishly active, but spiritually dead. And the wages of sin is death. Physically alive, still on the earth, soulishly active, but ego, self, the flesh, dominating, prostituting, abusing, misusing, dishumanity, spiritually destitute, bankrupt, dead in such business and sin. Now only two things can happen as I've reminded you and we'll talk about this a bit more tonight. Only two things can happen to a person who's dead. What are they? Stay dead or come alive. You either stay dead or you're raised from the dead. And let us, let us not be deceived in this area. The Bible tells us emphatically again and again and again, verified again and again and again by the Lord Jesus Christ himself that you and I as the fallen seed of a fallen Adam, heirs of his fallen condition, are born spiritually dead. And we either stay that way or come alive, come alive. And why the Lord Jesus Christ came to this world and died upon the cross was that guilty, sinful men, dead in sins might come alive. The Lord Jesus, I'm come that you might have life. What kind of people need life? Those who don't have it. What kind of people are they who don't have life? Dead people. That's why in writing in his second epistle to Timothy, the first chapter, Paul says when the Lord Jesus was manifest, he was manifest to abolish what? Death. Not just physical death, spiritual death. He came to abolish death and bring life and immortality to life. He came to raise the dead. But if sin coming in drove the life of God out, under what circumstances do you think it will be possible for God to put life in? The restoration of the Holy Spirit, the coming back of the Holy Spirit of the living God, God the Holy Spirit, in equality with God the Father and God the Son, under what conditions do you think God by the Holy Spirit will come back into the human spirit which the Holy Spirit vacated when Adam fell into sin, leaving man dead? Under what conditions? If sin came in drove him out, under what conditions will he come back? Only when sin has been forgiven. So when the Lord Jesus Christ came to this world, he deliberately chose of his own pre-volition to accept from the Father a body just like yours and mine, a soul just like yours and mine, a spirit just like yours and mine. And having received this, our humanity in totality, exactly and precisely as he as God created you and me, he presented that body to the Father through what? The eternal spirit. Hebrews 9 verse 14. He allowed the Father by the Holy Spirit to indwell his human spirit, invade his soul, capture his mind, his will, his emotions, so that by everything the Lord Jesus ever did or ever said or ever was, he could say, he that has seen me has seen him that sent me. I'm sent. I'm sent. I've come as God incarnate to assume your humanity as one sent, and I'm utterly dependent out of my love for and therefore obedient to the one who sent me. So everything I do, my Father does. Everything I say, my Father says. Everything I am, my Father is. He that has seen me in action 24 hours a day has seen him in action 24 hours a day. And Jesus Christ wasn't being Superman. He wasn't being superstar. Do you know what he was being? Man. Period. Just man. Man as you and I were created to be. Man as you and I are not because of sin. And this is God's controversy. There is no difference. All have sin and come short of what? Heaven? No. His glory. Man created in God's image is no longer giving a valid representation of God's character. And by what we do and say in our 24 hours a day, we're telling lies about God. And that's what God calls, there was only one person who ever walked this earth, to the Father's holy and complete and total satisfaction, in whom there was no sin. And who was that? The incarnate worst. And then he said, Father, you know why I've come? In the perfection of my humanity, demonstrating man as we, Father, intended man to be, that you might take their sin and laid on me. The coming are cursed for them. For cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. He laid down his life, a ransom for men. He suffered the just for the unjust. He was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, and the cost of our peace with God was laid upon him. Man of sorrows, what a name for the Son of God who came. Ruined sinners to reclaim. That's why if you're not prepared to admit yourself to be one of the ruined sinners, you'll never know Jesus as your Savior, and you'll never see God. Ruined sinners to reclaim. Hallelujah. What a Savior. Rock of ages. Cleft for me. Let me hide myself in thee. Let the water and the blood from thy ribbons side which flowed, be of sin the double cure. Cleanse me from its guilt and power. That's gospel. As it redeems a guilty sinner and reconciles that guilty sinner to a holy God. To what end? That as we turn to Christ and say, thank you, I'm one of the sinners you died to save, we might be redeemed. And that decision to turn to Christ and receive them as redeemed is called in the Bible, conversion. That's why Jesus said, accept a man that comes humbly like a little child and be converted to honor, to freedom, into the kingdom of heaven. But the moment you convert and turn to God and plead the name of Jesus, God for Jesus' sake receives you, redeems that redemption. But the moment you're redeemed, what happens? How alone can God demonstrate to you and to me that sin that drove the Holy Spirit out has been blotted out like a thick cloud, remembered no more for his dear name's sake, cast away as far as the east is from there west, and buried in the depths of the sea. How can God demonstrate that that sin has been forgiven that forfeited the Holy Spirit? Only by reusing, restoring the Holy Spirit. So here's the redemptive act, but this is the regenerated pattern, that the Holy Spirit might be restored to the human spirit, that Jesus Christ might come back into your heart and mine, Christ in the Christian, who by his Holy Spirit put God back into the man. Oil in the lamp, gas in the car, God in the man, Christ in your heart, your only hope. As you allow him now from the human spirit once more to reinvade your human souls, capture your wills, govern your behavior, and reproduce the likeness of your Creator. And that salvation, consummated in the day that Jesus comes and we see him, and seeing him we are likened. Back in Genesis 1, perfect man again, cleansed in his blood, indwelt by his Spirit, sharing his life. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a cursed forest, not that we might grieve God for the 40 years we have left on earth, eating manna, never, never, ever satisfied, always hungry. No, that as we got out by his death, so we might get in to all the fullness of God in the power of his resurrection. Sharing day by day the glorious fact that the Lord Jesus is alive, not just there in heaven, but here in me, so that he ceases to be the object of my activity, he becomes the origin of his activity. I had a letter from a medical doctor when I was in California, just after I'd spoken at a series of meetings in Phoenix, Arizona. He said, thank you for the three addresses that I was able to attend. He said, I have been a redeemed sinner, active in my church for 20 years, but you're the first man that ever told me that Jesus Christ actually has a role to play in the Christian life. Do you get that? Redeemed, converted, born again, yes. His name in the Lamb's book of life, yes. Serving, teaching a Bible class, yes. Serving on this committee and that within his evangelical constituency, yes. But Jesus Christ, so far as he was concerned then for 20 years, had done his thing 2,000 years ago, when he died upon the cross, went to heaven, and was now dismissed. Until he finally got to heaven, then Jesus Christ comes into action again. But in the meantime, for 20 years, Christ up there had simply been the object of his activity down here, on his up there behalf. And he never realized that the only purpose which the Lord Jesus actually died for him, was to come and give himself to him, live his life in him, share that life with him, and communicate that life to him. Not the object up there of his activity down here, but the origin down here of his activity down here, or up there. For whether we wait, or whether we sleep, in the body or out of it, we're to live together with him. That's payment. So I hope you're not going to settle for the with manna for breakfast, and manna for lunch, and manna for dinner, and manna for supper, seven days a week, all the days of your life, going round and round in the wilderness, sitting on every cactus bush that you can find, until finally at last, you plunge into the murky waters of Jordan, and hope to wake up in heaven. No, having got out on the basis of his redemptive death, let go in, in all the fullness and power of his indwelling resurrection life. For to me, to live, to be alive, not one day when I'm dead, but right here and now on earth in this body, to me, to be alive, is crying, crying, himself. He doesn't give me strength, he is my strength. He doesn't give me victory, he is my victory. He doesn't give me wisdom, he is my wisdom. He doesn't give me joy, I share his joy. And the sky is the limit, every horizon beckons me, heavy with blessings, golden with prosper. All I've got to do in every attitude that I adopt, in every situation which every new ship takes me, is to admit, I can! God never said I could, but he can, and he will, if I let him. And that, something, from that moment on, there is no possible explanation for your life as a Christian, but Jesus Christ himself, and you have discovered the secret of living, Naraka. Now let's pray. Thank you dear Lord again, for such a wonderful, so great salvation. Thank you we are not just doing a patched up repair job, but that's cleansing us from our sin, allowing us, though we never deserved it, to taste the sweetness of forgiveness. You've come to take up residence within this common clay of our humanity, only that you might take over, and be in us, that moral competence that we never ever had, in your actions. Thank you for the Holy Spirit, through whom we gladly now offer our humanity to you, as once through that same Holy Spirit, once then, you offered your humanity to the Father, that as he sent you, so now you may send us, in all the power, power, dynamity, what a life, God's life, your life, to time and to place. Amen.