Yeah, when you're here, it's time to start. Good afternoon, everybody, or good evening. It's good to see you all again. We are our last evening of our Robert Dean Bible Conference. I know a lot of people are enjoying it online, and I appreciate those who are coming and enjoying the face-to-face and the fellowship. Robbie will speak tonight, and then we will have a little fellowship afterwards. I think that there will be plenty to eat. I looked at the table, and maybe we're expecting another couple hundred people to come. But there is plenty of food to eat, and so we'll have a good time. Let's, I'm just going to let Robbie come up and get us started. And right now, he's waiting for a message from Benny Hinn. And so, something to teach. He's going to fall back and give it to us. Robbie, it's yours. Thank you, my man. I don't know if John told you, but last Sunday, in other states, Except for maybe Indiana, it was Benny Hinn Sunday. To fall back Sunday. That's right. But I didn't even set him up with that. Alright, well we're going to sort of wrap things up tonight, a little summary sort of thing, fit what we studied the last two nights. into a framework for understanding the spiritual life. So I only have 175 slides to go through, so make sure that your pens are ready to go and we'll make it. No, it's not quite 175. Okay, well let's get started. We'll have a few moments of silent prayer so we can make sure that we're ready to study the Word. Scripture says we are to be walking by the Spirit, and walking, as I'll be pointing out tonight, is really a metaphor for how we live our life, but it's not just external, it's internal. So it's how we think, how we talk, and how we live. And so it's all of those things that are part of what it means to walk worthy of the Lord. So, we'll begin with silent prayers. We'll make sure we're in right relationship with the Lord, walking by the Spirit, in right relationship abiding in Christ, walking in the light. All of these are synonymous metaphors. So, after a few moments of silent prayer, then I'll open in prayer. Okay, let's pray. Father, it's a great privilege we have to gather together with other believers to encourage one another by our presence, to focus upon Your Word, to have our minds renovated by Your Word and refreshed by Your Word. And as we go out into the world day in and day out, it's important to come together. And as we study the Word, just sort of have our minds washed by the cleansing waters of Your Word. So, Father, as we study tonight, help us to understand what Your Word teaches about our spiritual life and how we are to grow and how we are to mature and that that is the purpose for our spiritual life. And we pray that You would help us through God the Holy Spirit teaching us that we can understand the things of Scripture. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. All right, well, we're looking at the spiritual life in the church age. And one of the things that I have emphasized in the last two nights, as we started off on Tuesday night, Wednesday night, talking about baptism by the Holy Spirit, that this is an event that is non-experiential. It's not repeated. We don't lose its impact. It is distinctive to the church age. It never happened before the day of Pentecost in A.D. 33, and it will not happen again after the rapture. Now why is that? Because I know there's a few people who teach that we still have a relationship with the Holy Spirit that believers in the tribulation do, but it's not like the church age because the church is gone. All of this is distinctive, according to Ephesians, to this church, this new entity that God created that came into existence at that time, and that which distinguishes church-age believers from believers of all other generations and dispensations is this baptism by the Holy Spirit. It is the sign of the church age. And so what happens is that Jesus Christ, who is the subject of the baptism verb, And Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts is the one who performs the action of baptism. John the Baptist says, He who comes after me will baptize you by means of the Holy Spirit. That's Jesus. the Holy Spirit baptizing you by means of the Spirit. It is Jesus Christ and the baptism by the Holy Spirit. He uses the Holy Spirit to identify us with His death, burial, and resurrection just as John the Baptist used water as the instrument for identifying the repentant Jews with the message of the Kingdom. And the message, the gospel of the kingdom was the message at the beginning and through the middle of Jesus' ministry, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. They were offering the kingdom to the Jews, the Messianic kingdom, the Davidic kingdom. And yet, when they rejected the Messiah, they rejected the kingdom. So, God has, it's not really plan B because God always knew what was going to happen. He doesn't have to have backup plans in that sense, but He's going to bring into existence a distinct body of believers with unique with unique assets, because no one has been given all of the blessings, all the spiritual blessings and spiritual realities that are the possession of every church-age believer At the instant of salvation, there's no second, third, fourth, or one thousandth blessing. It all comes with salvation. When we're identified with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection, we are in Christ. And as I pointed out in our study in Ephesians 4, 17 to 24, is that the old man was put off in the past, past tense, infinitive, and it is And we also put on, in the past, this new man, which is a corporate description of our position in Christ. We are in Christ. We are in the church, the body of Christ. And so, what I want to do tonight is take a lot of what we have done, sort of take it and then put it within the framework of what Scripture teaches about the spiritual life. So in Ephesians 4.17, Paul challenges them by saying, this I say therefore and testify in the Lord that y'all... See, I put that in there because he uses a plural. He's not using a singular, and if you just say you, you don't know whether it's a singular or plural. In the Greek, it's a plural. So, he's talking corporately all the way through Ephesians, you have this you plural that he's talking about the group, that y'all, that is, All these believers, Jew and Gentile together in the body of Christ, should no longer walk is how it reads in the Greek, but walking is just a metaphor for our spiritual life, for how we live a life. So Gentiles walk one way, they think one way, they talk one way, and they act one way. And believers are to think, talk, and live a different way. There's a distinction. And when I mention talking here, because we don't have time to go into it, the talking really comes out in the next section, but the talking is according to truth. We are to speak the truth with our neighbor because, this is verse 25, because we are members of one another. So the neighbor there isn't talking about unbelievers that we run into, it's specifically talking about other believers because we are members of one another in the body of Christ. And there's about 15 different commands in the New Testament related to one another. And that's what I'll be finishing up this coming Sunday morning when I'm back in the pulpit in Houston. So, what the Scripture is saying is that we are to talk the truth. We have put off the lie which is that this happens the same time we put off the old man, we've put off the lie, Satan is the father of lies, so we've put off the lie, and now we are to speak the truth. And the reason I add the, in English, the definite article, in the Greek it doesn't have an article, but there's about ten different nuances that can be the reason why they don't have an article, but one of the main ones is to emphasize the quality of the noun. And so, the lack of article emphasizes the quality of what he is talking about in terms of truth. So, in English, we emphasize that more by using a definite article. So, we speak the truth. Now, that has been identified several times in Chapter 4. as Scripture, as what is taught in Scripture, is what we would call the Judeo-Christian worldview, but it's a biblical worldview. And as verse 19 says, that the truth is in Jesus. Truth is in Jesus. So that's the truth that it's talking about. We are to speak truth with our neighbor. Later on it will say, let no corrupt word come out of your mouth. And I think that has to be understood in contrast to speaking the truth with your neighbor. that you are not going to be talking to them from a framework of human viewpoint and paganism. You're speaking from the framework of a biblical viewpoint. So, walking means how we think, how we talk, And how we walk and how we talk is not only what we say, but how we say it. People have trouble with that. That's getting into some deep stuff, so I'm not going to think too much about that tonight because we don't have time to go into all those details. But how we think, talk, and act, like we're not supposed to think, talk, and act like the rest of the Gentiles do. and which is in the futility of their thinking. In other words, it's an emptiness in their thinking. They can't bring anything to completion in terms of God's intent because they're operating on the lie. In 1 Peter 2, 2 tells us not only are we to walk in the previous verse in terms of how we think, how we talk, and how we act, But we are to desire, that's the command. And I've restructured this because in most translations it puts like newborn babies at the beginning and you sort of lose the thrust here. It is a command to desire the unadulterated milk of the word like a newborn baby. Anybody ever have a newborn baby? What do they do when they get hungry? They scream, they cry, they let you know that they're hungry. And a lot of baby believers are in a lot of churches and they don't scream and cry anymore because they have been starved and they're on a fast. If any of you have ever been on a long fast, I've been on a three-day fast, and after about the first 24 to 36 hours, your appetite goes away. And I've been told I've never gone that long, but if you can go 40 days and your appetite doesn't return until about the 40th day, and then it comes back with a vengeance because now you really do need to eat, but you can go without food for that long. And most Christians are like that. They're not getting any food, and they're in that period of time where they're just starving to death. and they're fasting, and they're not getting fed anything. We are commanded, therefore, to desire the unadulterated milk of the Word like a newborn baby. A lot of sheep need to be grabbing their pastures and saying, you need to teach me some stuff. You need to quit all this storytelling and everything else, and you need to teach the Word. Because it's the Word that enables growth. That's what this verse is saying. We grow by it. What is that? That's the milk of the Word. So if we're not being taught the milk of the Word, and here it's not a contrasting milk with meat. If we're not being taught the Word, then there's not going to be any spiritual growth. in James. James opens up with a, he just goes right to it at the very beginning. There's no opening prayer, there's no Thank you for all the things that you've done. He just goes right to the heart of the issue. And he says, consider it all joy when you encounter various trials. And the word there that's translated a trial is a word that has two different senses. One is the sense of a temptation. The other is the sense of a test. And they go together because if you're being, a temptation is a test to see if you're going to. follow what the Lord says and obey the Word, or you're going to follow your sin nature and not obey the Word. So, we encounter various trials. And a trial isn't something hard. It's not something like being told you just had cancer. It's not being told that your child just died or your child has an incurable disease. These are not what he's talking about. Every time you have a decision to make, where the options are either obeying the Word or not obeying the Word, that's the test. The test is, are you going to apply what you've been taught, or are you not going to apply what you've been taught? So, we encounter these various tests all day long, and he says you can count it all, Joy, because you know something. You know that the testing of your faith, and this word is a word that means the evaluation. It's an opportunity for you to show that you do what you believe. that you are applying what you've heard. There's a whole section that comes up in the first part of James where he talks about faith without works, and he talks about hearing without applying. And those are parallel concepts. So we say we believe it, but then we don't do it. So that's faith without works are just application in that context. So, we know that the evaluation of our faith, and here it isn't our ability to believe, but it's what we believe. We talk about people are from different faiths. Some are Islamic, some are Jewish, some are Buddhist. We use the word faith in the sense of what they believe, not the act of believing. So, that's what this is. This is a test of what we say we believe. You hear the word of God, you say, I believe it when you're sitting in the pew, that makes sense, but then you go home and you have your first test on the way home, and you don't apply what you just heard. Okay, are you able to apply what you've heard, what you say you believe? So, the testing or evaluation of our faith then produces endurance. It's like when you work out. When you work out, you're testing your muscles. And the more you're consistent with your workouts, the more your muscles are going to respond and build and develop endurance. But if you just are a couch potato and you never work out or exercise or stress your muscles, then there won't be any growth or development. And then in verse 4 he says, but let endurance have its maturing work. That's the idea in the Greek. So, there has to be tests in order for there to be a stretching and development of our spiritual growth, and that produces endurance, and then endurance in turn develops maturity, so that what the end result is that we may be mature and complete lacking nothing. So the point of these introductory verses is to show that the Bible assumes that we're going to grow, that we're going to desire to grow spiritually. 2 Peter 3.18 says, but grow by the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I remember some years ago now, it's probably close to 30 years ago, we had a pastor's conference in Phoenix, and Dr. Earl Rodmacher was the morning speaker. And one day, Dr. Rodmacher made one of the most astute observations I've ever heard, and I quote it over and over again. He said, the church, the body of Christ, is the world's largest nursery. Yeah. And the nursery workers don't know how to get the babies out of diapers. And the problem is we've got a lot of babies that are in diapers and they never grow up. But the Bible says we're supposed to grow. And so the question is to a pastor is, do you know how Christians grow? What does the Bible say about how we grow? What's the process? And do you as an individual have an understanding of the growth process? And so about 20, no, that was 30 years ago, so about 34 years ago, a pastor named Harry Leaf in Houston, who ordained me, invited me down to do a conference on spiritual life, and we were talking about different things, and we came up with a sort of a blueprint, a schema for spiritual life and spiritual growth. So that's what we're going to go through tonight. So that's what it looks like. You got 10 seconds to memorize it, then there'll be a test. Alright, so basically you start off at the cross with salvation. That's really, in terms of another diagram we use, that's phase one. Okay, that's justification. Then comes spiritual life, our spiritual growth. And so the center part deals with our ongoing spiritual life and spiritual growth. Based on James 1, 2 through 4, we have tests of faith or tests of doctrine. We test what we have been taught. And so, at that point, many, many times every day, we have a test. Are you going to apply what you know, or are you not going to apply what you know? Most of us, most of the time, don't apply what we know. I mean, that's the problem that we have because of our sin nature. So, we go through this. Now, we either take the upper path, which is the green light, that's where we're supposed to grow, but when we take the red path, We go in the wrong direction, and this is a path towards not spiritual death, but carnal death, where we destroy our spiritual life and enslave ourselves back to the sin nature. get back in fellowship, the confession of sin. We'll get into that, but let's look at this. So that's all phase two. And then on the right-hand side in purple, that's phase three, glorification. We're going to be evaluated. And the same word for evaluation that's used in James 1, 2 through 4 as the verb form is used in in 1 Corinthians 3, 12 to 17 at the judgment seat of Christ, where we'll be evaluated. And if we have nothing but wood, hay, and straw, then we're going to go south and we're going to lose. Scripture says there's a loss of rewards at that time. They enter into heaven, but with nothing. And John says we don't want to have shame at Christ's appearing. So there's temporary shame at the judgment seat of Christ. And if we have walked by the Spirit, then God will be gracious even if it's just a little bit. There'll be a little bit of a reward. If there's a lot, then there's going to be more. And so there's rewards and inheritance. So this lays out the basic scope of the spiritual life. So, we're going to start off talking about what happens at salvation. So, salvation is not based on work. Salvation is based on faith. Ephesians 2, 8, and 9 are a great passage. You should have that memorized. For by grace, you have been saved through faith. Now, there's a lot of discussion of what that word, that, refers to. You'll have some people come and say, well, the that refers back to the face. The problem is that you have a neuter relative pronoun, that, which, and face is a feminine noun. That doesn't work. A neuter is going to refer either to a neuter noun, Or if it's referring to a group of things, then it refers to that group of things. But if you take it that the that is as grace or faith, then you've got the wrong gender and you're gender confused and you're not making any sense. For by grace you have been saved through faith." Now that phrase, by grace you have been saved through faith, is stated earlier in about verse 5. So he's picking that up and explaining what that means. Now some people say that saving faith comes after regeneration. Now there's a problem with that here. Now across the hall we have a kitchen. And if you were to come up here and ask me, how do I get to the kitchen? I would say, well, you go through those doors back there and you go across the hall to the kitchen. You go through the doors and then the kitchen. So what comes first, going through the doors or the kitchen? Well, first you have to go through the doors and then you can get to the kitchen. So, what we have here by analogy is you go through faith and then what? Then salvation. We're saved through faith. So, faith is like the door. You've got to have the faith first. You've got to go through the door of faith and then on the other side is salvation. And that makes it very clear that faith does not come after regeneration. So, that's a serious exegetical problem with Calvinism. So, we are saved by grace. The whole process is grace. And when you have the that, it's a neuter and it refers to the whole phrase. And that, by grace through faith salvation, is not of yourselves. It, that is the by grace through faith salvation, is the gift of God. He has given us a salvation that is by grace through faith and it's not based on works. We don't have to impress God with anything and we can't. As a spiritually dead corrupt sinner, we can't impress God with anything. Any work that we do, any morality that we have is completely corrupted and tarnished by the fact that it's done by a spiritually dead rebel. And so there has to be a way of salvation that is not dependent in any way, shape, or form on anything that we do. This is supported by passages like Acts 4.12. Nor is there salvation in any other other than Christ. For there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved." This just drives the unbelievers nuts because it's exclusive. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except by me. And so they just go crazy that it's exclusive, it's not inclusive. And today we have a real problem because everybody wants everything to be inclusive. And God isn't inclusive. The God of Christianity isn't inclusive, so they get rid of Him. Titus 3.5 says, It's not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us through the washing of regeneration that is, the renewing of the Holy Spirit. So that's talking about that regeneration that comes as a result of faith, and the result of that is God's salvation. So now we understand phase 1. Salvation. By grace through faith, salvation. After that, we're going to have to make decisions. Are we going to think, talk, and act like a believer Are we going to think, talk, and act like an unbelieving Gentile or an unbelieving Jew? And so what comes into play is our volition. We have to decide either to obey or to disobey. So this is what James is getting at in James 1, 2, and 3. Count it all joy, my brethren. My brethren tells you, and he repeats it about seven or eight times in the epistle, tells you everything he's writing is to believers and not to unbelievers. He's saying, count it all joy when you encounter various trials, because you know that the testing or evaluation of your faith, that is what you believe, produces endurance. So that's the test of faith. In Ephesians 4.17, which we just referenced, Paul says, This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you all should no longer walk, that is, think, think, talk, and act like the rest of the Gentiles think, talk, and act. In the emptiness, the fruitlessness of their thinking. And this goes back to Ephesians 2. When Paul, talking to the Gentile believers as they were before they were saved, he said, we were all dead in our trespasses and sins, in which You once walked, you thought, you talked, you acted according to the course of this world, of what I call the cosmic system, the world system, which is Satan's way of thinking. You thought the way the world thinks. You talked the way the world talks. You talked according to the lie. live your life according to the way everybody else does. That's the standard, how everybody else does it. So, he says, you all should no longer, excuse me, verse 2, you once walked according to the course of this world, and it's also according to the prince of the power of the air. That's Satan. So, the course of the world is the course of Satan, the thinking of Satan, the philosophies of Satan. And everybody either thinks according to God's way or Satan's way. No in-between. No neutrality. According to the Prince of the Power of the Air, the Spirit who is now working in the sons of disobedience. Those who are disobedient to the Scriptures. In 1 Corinthians 3.3, Paul is rebuking the Corinthians because they are filled with arrogance and all kinds of divisiveness is going on in the congregation. arguments, all kinds of difficulties. And he says, for you are still fleshly. And the word he uses is the word sarchikos, which is based on the noun sarx for flesh. Flesh is a metaphor for our sin nature. So he says you're still acting on the basis of your sin nature, according to your sin nature. There's no change taking place. You're still thinking and talking and acting like you're spiritually dead. For where there are," and he mentions three things, envy, strife, and divisions among you. So, if you look up those three words, envy, strife, and divisions among you, then they are Envy is eris, strife is zelos, and divisions is dichostasia. But they're not always consistent in the way these words are translated, which confuses an English reader. So, these three things that he mentions, envy, eris, strife, zelos, and divisions, dichostasia, are all used in Galatians 5.19 to 21. So Paul tells you, you want to know if you're living according to your sin nature? Well, if you have these things in your life, then you're operating on the sin nature. And among the many things he lists there, we'll see the whole verse in a minute, but among the many things that are listed there, Ares is there. It's translated envy in 1 Corinthians 3. But it's translated contentions in Galatians 5.20. Jealousy, zelos, it's translated as strife in 1 Corinthians 3.3, but it's translated as jealousy, which produces strife in Galatians 5.20. And then dissensions, which is translated divisions in 1 Corinthians 3.3, and dichastasia is translated as dissension. So, the three things he mentions in 1 Corinthians 3.3, he's consistent. Now if you look at it in English, you can't find the consistency. That's what I hate about translations. Because in English, if you're taught to write well in English, you don't use the same words over and over again. But the Holy Spirit uses the same words over and over again to make points. And when they're translated, my beef with translators is they don't consistently translate the same word the same way because, oh, it doesn't fit English style very well. But you miss the whole point. And English readers can't see how Paul is connecting the dots. What's happening is they're living according to the sin nature. They're dominated by the works of the sin nature. But Romans 6.4 says that the sin nature should no longer control us because of what we talked about on Wednesday night, which is the baptism by the Holy Spirit. We've been identified with the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. So the result of that should be that we live, we think, we talk, and we act in newness of life. There should be a contrast. Now, you don't get the contrast just because you're saved. You're only going to get the contrast if you learn the Word. So somebody who gets saved and all they're told is believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved, and they're never taught anything else, is never going to have any spiritual growth because he doesn't have anything to grow with. There's no milk of the Word there. He's just going to be a baby with no knowledge of anything. Colossians 1.10 says that you may walk worthy. Again, we just see how walk is used again. That you may think, talk, and act worthy of the Lord. You know, we don't think, talk, and act in a way so that we can be worthy of getting salvation, but because we're our new creature in Christ. Fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the feel-good experience of being a Christian. Is that what it says? But that's how postmodern Christians think, and we're surrounded by them. They go to all the megachurches that emphasize emotion and how you feel as a decision-making criteria, when the Bible says it's supposed to be based on what you know, what you've learned, how you think. The Christian life is about thinking. It's not about emoting. But we live in a culture that puts all the value on emoting, and we saw the results of that Tuesday in the election. Ephesians 5.2 says, and walk in love. So our thinking, our talking, talking in truth. That's what I mean by talking. We're talking to our neighbor, members of one another on the basis of the truth. Walk in love as Christ also loved us and gave Himself for us. So that's the pattern. Now, Christ was without sin. So can you do that on your own? Not at all. Love is a fruit of the Spirit. So there's a lot of ways in which people can show a certain level of love that can counterfeit Christ-like love. But unless they're walking by the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit isn't there, and they're just producing human-based love coming out of their sin nature, which is ultimately self-centered. So it's not really love. So we are to walk in that distinctive love that is the fruit of the Spirit. And it is exhibited by Christ at the cross as He loved us, gave Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. Five verses later, six verses later, you read, For you were once darkness, But now you are light in the Lord. So darkness was our position before salvation. Now that we've been baptized by means of the Spirit and we've been placed in Christ, we are in the light. That's our position. The new man is in the light. And we are to think, talk, and live as children of the light. So we're not to act like darkness anymore. In 1 John 1.6, we read, if we say that we have fellowship, and the if is a third-class condition, meaning maybe you do this, maybe you don't, but if you say that you have fellowship with Him. Now, what is fellowship? Fellowship is not Christian social interaction. Fellowship is a word that means partnership with someone else in pursuing the same objective. What is the Holy Spirit's objective? It is to conform us to the image of Christ. Okay? So, fellowship is when we are walking by the Spirit. It's a great term. It is two people walking together in the same direction. So, if we say that we have fellowship with Him, that is God, and we walk in darkness, We, meaning believers, believers can walk in darkness. That's exactly what Paul is inferring in verse 8, is that you have to, he's commanding them to walk as children of light because they're walking often in darkness. So, if we walk in darkness, we lie and we're not practicing what? The truth. So you can have a couple that's married and they have a great deal of joy in life together, but when one of them is not in fellowship with God, not enjoying that partnership moving towards the divine objective, the other one is out of fellowship, no longer walking in that same direction, one is going towards Christlikeness, the other is going in the opposite direction, they don't have Christian fellowship when they're not both walking together in the same direction. 1 John 1.7 says, but if we walk in the light as He is in the light, in other words, when we have fellowship with God, then we can have fellowship with one another. But you can't have fellowship with one another if you're not both walking all in the same direction. And then he lays down the general principle that when we fail, the blood of Christ continually cleanses us. But if that meant that it was automatic, then he wouldn't need to say what he says in 1 John 1.9. The principle that makes 1 John 1-9 work is that the blood of Christ continually cleanses us. But the condition is stated in 1 John 1-9, if we confess or admit or acknowledge our sin, then God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And that's God's grace. He just does it over, over, over, over and over again. Because how many times in one day may you commit the same sin? Maybe you're angry, maybe you're grumpy, maybe you're impatient, maybe you are in a situation where you're just very, very upset, or you're lying, or whatever it may be, and then you confess it, and then you get back to it, and then you commit it again, and you think, And you tell God, oh, I'm sorry, I did that. Don't punish me for that. I'm never going to do it again. And God says, I'm omniscient. Don't try to pull the wool over My eyes. You're going to commit that same sin 3,578 more times this week. We're not even talking about the rest of your life, but My grace is so great that I'm going to forgive you without question every single time you do it and confess it. That's grace. So, we are to walk in the light. The point that I'm making is that the purpose of the believer is to walk with the Lord, to walk in the light, to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, to desire the milk of the Word so that they can grow to spiritual maturity. Hebrews 4.2 says that we can learn a lot, take a lot of notes, have notebooks that are filled with all kinds of notes from Bible classes and conferences and everything, but if we don't mix what we've learned with faith, then it doesn't do us any good. And here he's referring to the Old Testament event of the Israelites in the wilderness, that the word that they heard did not profit them not being mixed with faith. That's the faith arrest drill. Not being mixed with faith. So they knew a lot, but they didn't really believe it or rely upon it. 2 Peter 1.3 says that God's divine power has given to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through what? Through good feelings about Jesus. Through the knowledge of Him. See, so many people say, oh, I just love Jesus. Well, what do you know about Jesus? Well, not much. Well, how can you say you love Jesus if you don't know anything about Him? So it is through the knowledge of Him who called us by His glory and virtue by which, that is by his glory and virtue, which stands for all of his essence, by which, by who he is, by the essence of God, have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises that through these, that is by claiming the promises and walking by faith, mixing them with faith, you may be partakers of the divine nature." Now that phrase confuses some people. We don't become divine, but we are being conformed to the image of Christ. So that's talking about Christ-likeness. Having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. That's what happens when we're walking by our sin nature. So that's what the importance of mixing faith with the Word of God. 2 Timothy 2.15 says, be diligent to present yourself approved unto God. The King James translates it, study, because they pick that up from the context. It's being diligent in what? It's being diligent in being a laborer in dividing the word of truth. So that means that study picks up the nuance there of diligent in what? Diligent in rightly dividing the word of truth. So we have to be diligent students. And this is the truth. It's the word of truth. We are to speak truth with our neighbor. The truth is in Jesus. John 8.32, he says, you shall know the truth. This isn't. This is a motto at the University of Texas, but they've perverted it. The truth is the word of God, not the liberal, Marxist, social justice, critical race theory that is being crammed down the throats of every student at the University of Texas. I have a student in my congregation who is from Shanghai. And he had a roommate last year, his first year, who was coming to the church. And so this young man said, can I come to church with you? And one of the reasons he had requested a Christian roommate at Rice was so that he could go to church. And so brought him to church, and after about six or eight weeks, he believed that Christ died on the cross for his sins. And he is very conservative. He completely rejects all of the brainwashing he had growing up in communist China. And he is forced to go through social justice courses every semester at Rice. And he feeds me the stuff that is being crammed down his throat. Our students at our universities are being trained to be traitors to this nation. And they're being brainwashed in the classroom. Now, the good side is that a lot of the students know it's just garbage, and they do what he does, and they finish all their other assignments and all their other classes while they have to listen to these lessons. But the truth is the word of God. And then in John 17, 17, Jesus makes it clear. He says, sanctify them by truth. See, sanctifying here summarizes the spiritual life and spiritual growth. How does it happen? It's by the truth, which is Your Word. So, you can't get it any other way. And it's not done through singing. And that's what they do in a lot of churches. Singing is the primary thing of worship. And it's not. That's not what Scripture is saying. And they sing all of these little praise choruses and everything, which are about as shallow as you get from a one one-hundredth of an inch of rain. And there's no truth to it. In Colossians 3, Christians are to teach and admonish one another with their hymns and songs and spiritual songs. Well, you can't teach people anything with contentless lyrics. that just repeat Jesus, Jesus, Jesus over and over again. In John 15, 7, Jesus said, if you abide in Me, which is a term for fellowship, if you abide in Me and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire. But that asking what you desire is coming out of a framework of that close walk in the same direction with God, what we call fellowship. And so when you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. But it's from the framework of being filled with the Word of God, by the Spirit of God, and then that which you pray for is in accord with God's character. Psalm 119.11 says, "...your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against you." The Word of God is to protect us and give us a tool to avoid the temptation of our sin nature. John 6.68 comes at the end of a long chapter when Jesus has taught the crowds who are called His disciples. But at the end of the day, they all leave. They all go somewhere. And Jesus turns around and looks at his 12 disciples. He says, why don't you guys leave also? And Peter says, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. It's the words of Scripture that will give us life. Romans 12 says that we're not to be conformed or pressed into the mold of the thinking of the world around us, that is the rest of the Gentiles, but we're to be transformed by the renewing of our thinking. We have to go through a complete overhaul of not only the content of our thinking, but the methodology of our thinking. You know, how we think is also wrong. And that gets into a whole different area, but different cultures think different ways, and different languages will shape how you think in different ways. Chinese think differently than Indians, India Indians. They think differently from somebody who's Slavic from Belarus. They think differently from somebody who is in Italy, languages. are deeply tied to the thinking of each individual culture. So we have to change how we think and what we think. And Ephesians 4.23, the present infinitive says we are to be renewed by the spirit of our mind. In Colossians 3, it says just renewed by our thinking. So we're to read the Word, we're to study the Word, We are to memorize the Word, to hide God's Word in our heart that we may not sin against Him. We are to internalize the Word, and we are to apply the Word. That's how we grow. It's all about the Word of God, and it's a long, slow growth process. And if you have a poor education, background, when you are a child growing up in whatever education system, then that's going to limit you and you have more hurdles to go over. But God's grace is going to take care of that. He will provide. I've seen people who come in, dropped out of high school, they've lived on welfare for years, they have Hardly any knowledge, background knowledge on history or grammar or anything else. And at the end of four or five years, they understand the gospel and other things better than anybody else. Because the Holy Spirit is the one who is the teacher, but they have to be there. And if they'll come, and I've seen this happen with people, they come week in, week out, come every time the doors are open, and the growth is just amazing. So we have salvation. We go to our tests of faith, and we have to choose which way we're going to go. Are we going to apply what we've learned or not? If we don't, make the right decision, then we're going to have problems. So on what basis do we make the right decision? Well, one of the bases is that we have to identify or know who we are. We are in the new man. We are in the body of Christ. We've been adopted into God's royal family. We have been blessed with every spiritual blessing. No believer in all of history has been given all of the assets and privileges that we have been given. And so we need to learn to think like that and live like that. And so because God has created in Himself one new man from the two, and that's the new man, so that we've been reconciled to God. Ephesians 4.22, the command is, y'all took off in the past concerning your former conduct. Former conduct relates to everything you think, say, and act. The old man which is going corrupt according to the deceitful lust, that's the sin nature. In Ephesians 4.24 it says, and y'all put on the new man, which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness. So we used this diagram last night that before we were saved we were either on team Gentile or team Jew. but both were in Adam and spiritually dead, separated from the life of God. Then when we trust in Christ, we are placed on a new team, we have a new identification, we are now in team church, we are in Christ. And so that's our whole new identity. And so our responsibility is to be renewed Ephesians 4.22 says be renewed in the spirit of your thinking. Romans 12.2 says to renovate your thinking. So that's all saying the same thing as is Colossians chapter 3. We put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him, that is man. where, that is, the hymn refers back to the new man, where there's neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, etc., that's all related to what happens instantly with our baptism by the Holy Spirit. So Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5.17, therefore, if any man be in Christ, that is, in the new man, he is a what? New creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things are new. So this is where we're going. Now, if we make the wrong decisions and we are disobedient, then we're going to be in the bottom cycle. We can break out of it through confession of sin. But what this points out is if we don't apply the Word, then we're operating on our sin nature. We're either going to sin or we're going to produce human good, and that leads to a temporal death. We're living like a spiritually dead person. That leads to spiritual weakness and instability. James 1.5 calls it a two-souled or unstable person because instead of believing the truth, we're believing the lie. And if we stay there and continue in this cycle, then we end up with spiritual regression and hardness of heart. So, we see passages like Galatians 5.17 that talks about the war between the sin nature and the Spirit, the antagonism between the Spirit and the flesh, and the flesh and the Spirit. But the contrast is being led by the Spirit, but you're led by the Spirit through the Word of God. So, you identify if you're living according to the sin nature by whether or not you manifest these different sins. James 1.14 and 15 says that each one is tempted when he's drawn away. And the idea here is a trap is baited. And if we go for the bait, then we're drawn away by our own desires and we're enticed, but it's not sin until we take the bait. So, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin. And sin, when it's full grown, brings forth death. Not spiritual death, but carnal death. You're living like a spiritually dead person. Romans 6, 21-23 is talking about this. Remember what I said? the first night. In Romans 3-5, we're talking about phase 1 justification and reconciliation. Starting in Romans 6, you're no longer talking about how to be saved. You're talking about how a saved person is to live. The problem is saved people live like unsaved people. And so, Paul reminds them, he says, what fruit did you have in the things in which you are now ashamed, in the things you did out of fellowship when you were living by the sin nature. He says, for the end result of those things is death, not spiritual death. But carnal death, you're living like an unsaved person, and it produces a dead life in the sense that you're not experiencing the abundant life and all the blessings of the life God gave you. But now, he says, you have been set free from sin. and have become slaves of God. You have your fruit to holiness and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death." We often use this as a salvation verse. He's talking to believers about what happens when they sin. The wages of your sin as a believer is carnal death. You're living like a spiritually dead person. But the gift of God, in contrast, is eternal life in Christ Jesus. Jesus said, I came not like the thief to steal and destroy, I came to give life and to give it abundantly. And so, we're living like the thief rather than taking advantage of this life that we've been given. So, when we face these tests, James says, as he goes on from those verses I talked about earlier, he said, if you lack wisdom, let it be you ask in faith, but with no doubting. For the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. You're unstable. Your life is chaotic. Your thinking is chaotic. Your soul is in chaos. And if you get about 200 million people whose souls are in chaos, you get the problem that we have in this country. And then he says in verse 7, For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord, for he is a double-minded man. And the Greek is di soukos. Soukos is soul. Di is two. He's two-souled. Okay? He's split. He's unstable. He's going back and forth, and he's not focused on the Word. Proverbs 14, 14, the backslider in heart will be filled with his own ways. So that's what happens when you're in the cycle of carnality. But if you are walking by the Spirit, which is the upper cycle, You produce divine good, you have increasing capacity for life and enjoyment of life, the abundant life, and it produces evidence that the will of God is good and perfect. That leads to steadfast endurance, a growth process of maturity to the adult spiritual life. Paul says in Galatians 3.3, Are you so foolish that having begun by the Spirit, you are now being made complete or matured by the flesh? See, most Christians are trying to do the right thing by the flesh, and they're not growing by the Spirit. There are several key words in this verse. There's the Spirit. There's the word perfect, or being made mature, and the word flesh. The next time you have those three words appear together in a passage is in Galatians 5.16. And it takes from 3.4 to 5.15 to set people up so they can understand 5.16 which says, walk by means of the Spirit And you will not bring to completion, that is, you will not perfect, you will not bring to completion the works of the flesh. How do you do it? By walking by the Spirit. That's the key. So, Galatians 5.17 tells us that the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. That's the war that we feel all the time, the struggle. And they're contrary to one another. so that you don't do the things you wish. And I'm not going to ask for a show of hands, because it would be unanimous. Every day we don't do what we know we ought to do. We don't react the way we think we know we should. We don't have the emotions. We don't control them with the Word of God. And that's part of the growth process. A lot of Christians aren't even aware that that's part of the problem. And just the fact that you're aware that I'm just not handling these tests, tells you you've grown a lot. Most Christians aren't even aware of that. So, this goes back to Galatians 5.16, walk by means of the Spirit and you will not bring to completion the lust of the flesh. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This is more than just self-discipline, and against such there's no law. Romans 8.5 says, those who live according to the flesh, according to the same nature, set their minds on the things of the flesh. But those who live according to the Spirit, that's the same thing Paul means when he says walk by means of the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death. He's talking about believers. If you're still thinking like an unbeliever, you're having a death-like existence. There's no sense of purpose and meaning and abundance of life. So to be spiritually minded is life and peace. That's the fruit of the Spirit. So as a believer, we face three enemies. The flesh, which is our sin nature, the inner traitor. We have the world, which is the outside system of thinking, and then Satan. And we know what 1 Peter says, that we're to be sober, vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, and it's not just that he's not omnipresent, but he has millions and millions and millions of demons. So just like we refer to Putin fighting Ukraine, Putin isn't in Ukraine, all of his soldiers are. So we often think about the head of the organization, and all of the organization is present in that. So it's not just the devil, it's all of his demons. Go about like a roaring lion, seeking whom they may devour. What's the solution? Cast that demon out. Stomp on that demon. No. It says resist him. It doesn't mean attack him or cast him out or get aggressive. It's to be steadfast, stand in the faith. That is doctrine because you know that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. So we recover from sin because we realize that if we regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear. John 13, 6-10 is one of the greatest passages on the importance of spiritual cleansing. It's at the upper room. Jesus, after the disciples come in, He functions as the head of the house for the Passover meal, and the first thing He does is He's going to wash their feet. But it's not about being a servant. I've heard some people say that. He's teaching something more profound. He starts to wash their feet, and He comes to Peter, and Peter says, Lord, are you washing my feet? You're not going to do that. I'm not going to let you do that. And Jesus looks at him and he says, what I'm doing you don't understand now. In other words, he's making the point that this is something, I'm teaching a, this is a lesson, okay? And so this is an object lesson about confession and cleansing. You don't understand it now, but you will after this." So, Peter said, okay. He says, you'll never wash my feet. It's interesting, the Greek has two different words that are used here. Nipto is the word for washing a body part. So, you're washing your feet, you're washing your hands, you wash your face, you'd use nipto. The other word is luo, which refers to taking a head-to-toe bath. Okay? And that's really important here. So, Peter says, you shall never wash Nipto, my feet. Jesus says, if I don't wash you, Nipto, not the whole body, You have no share with me. The Greek word there for share means an inheritance, a part of your inheritance. He's not talking about eternal life. He's talking about at the judgment seat of Christ. Because if I don't wash your feet, which is symbolic for confession and cleansing of sin, then you're going to live your life out of fellowship and there's not going to be anything rewardable at the judgment seat of Christ. Peter gets it and he says, Lord, don't just wash only my feet. Luo, give me a bath. Wash my whole body. And Jesus said to him, he who is bathed, that is Luo, it refers to what happens at salvation. We're fully cleansed at salvation. but he only needs to wash his feet, niptoe, partial. Now this goes back to the imagery of the high priest. When the high priest was anointed and began his ministry, he would be completely washed from head to toe. And that's his new position as the high priest. But every time he goes into the temple, he had to wash his hands and wash his feet. That was symbolic of confession of sin for partial cleansing every time there is going. Because whatever he did, he did things that were wrong and went places that he shouldn't have. And so He needs to just wash His hands and wash His feet, or confess His sins, and He will be restored to full cleansing. So Jesus says, He who is bathed, and He's referring to all of the disciples, because later He says, all of you are fully cleansed except one. And that was Judas Iscariot. He said, He who is bathed that salvation needs only to wash His feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not all of you. 1 Corinthians 11.28 says, Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. So this is another way of talking about confession. Examine yourself to make sure you are walking by the Spirit. You're in right relationship with the Lord. 1 John 1.9. Confess means to admit or acknowledge. You go to confessional psalms in the Old Testament. Those are the words that are used in synonymous parallelism with confession. It means to admit your sin. Lord, I did this. I did that. It doesn't mean you're apologizing. It doesn't mean you're making a deal with God you'll never do it again because you can't pull the wool over God's eyes. Just admit it and God is faithful and just to forgive you of your sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So the person who spends time in the upper cycle is going to have a different outcome than the Christian who spends all of his time in the bottom cycle. Because after we die in phase three, we're at the judgment seat of Christ, where either we're going to have works that are gold, silver, and precious stones and are rewardable, or we're going to have a loss of rewards and shame at the judgment seat of Christ. So 2 Corinthians 5.10 says, we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad, whether he's done it in the power of the Spirit or whether he's done it according to his sin nature. Romans 12.21 says, don't be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. 1 John 2.13 says, I write to you fathers because you have known Him who is from the beginning. I write to you young men because you have overcome the wicked one. See, overcoming is used in Romans 12.21 to refer to the believers who overcome evil in their life. Overcoming is something that is in addition to being saved. It's someone who is living the spiritual life and overcoming sin in their life. And so in 1 John 2.13, he talks about fathers as mature ones, that they have overcome, the fathers and the young men have overcome the wicked one. I write to you little children, that is baby believers, because you've known the Father. Again He says, I've written to you fathers because you've known Him who is from the beginning. I've written to you young men because you are strong and the Word of God abides in you and you have overcome the wicked one. Only the fathers and the young men have overcome. The babies have not overcome yet. Revelation 2.7 says, He who has an ear, let him hear and respond. When the Bible says, listen, it means listen and do what I say. It doesn't mean just be able to repeat what I said. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give to eat from the tree of life. That isn't salvation. This is an additional blessing of greater capacity for enjoying where we are in heaven. The way I've seen this explained is everybody's going to have a full cup. Some people have a 2-ounce cup, some people have a 100-ounce cup, but everybody's cup is full and so everybody's going to have happiness and have joy. And just like some people have an IQ that is 80 and they're perfectly happy, some people have an IQ that's 170 and they're perfectly happy. Usually not, but you know what I'm illustrating. So, yeah. So there are additional blessings promised, and these are the rewards. So that outlines it for you. We go through phase one salvation by grace through faith. We have tests of doctrine where we have to learn the Word and apply the Word. And then we're going to be evaluated at the judgment seat of Christ as to how well we did that. And so that takes us through our study for tonight, and that brings us to an end. And all of this is related to an understanding that we as believers in Christ have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies. We have put off the old man. We have put on the new man a totally new identity with a new code of conduct. And that we will eventually be evaluated at the judgment seat of Christ. So we have to keep our eye on where we're going and what God's plan for us is. And the most important thing is for us to conform to God's plan and go forward than not conform, because God's, the Holy Spirit's role is to get us to conform. So we don't want to be on the wrong side of that, where the Holy Spirit's constantly working to get us pointed in the right direction. So we need to conform, and that means walking by the Spirit in fellowship, partnership, aimed for the same goal that God has for us, which is conforming us to Christ, to the character of Christ. So let's bow our heads and close in prayer. Father, thank You for this opportunity to be challenged by these things, to understand the whole scope of Your plan for us. That many, many times we fail. Many, many, many times we fail every day. We're sinners and You take into account the fact that we are of flesh. But in Your grace, You provide for us. You forgive us. You encourage us. You strengthen us. You lift us up again and again and again and again. and what we need to constantly be reminded of, not to beat ourselves up, not to self-flagellate, not to go into guilt overdrive, but we are to be thankful for your goodness and your grace and to keep turning around and pointing ourselves in the same direction that you're taking us so that we can glorify you in the angelic revolt and that this will bring honor and glory to you at the judgment seat of Christ. And we pray this in Christ's name, Amen.