Well, it's good to be with you today. I'm thankful for the invitation to be here from the session and from Pastor Titus. And I appreciate Keith and Patty and their helping me to arrange being here. And I'd like for us to pray and then I'll tell you the text of scripture that I want us to turn to. And so let's pray together for a brief moment now, shall we? Gracious God, we are so thankful for the Lord's Day. And Lord, when it turns up every week, faithfully, we are reminded that it is good to worship you and it is a delight to rest. Father, as we fellowship one with another afterward, we pray that what we say, what we do would be a pleasing aroma to you. And Father, we're thankful for what we have seen and heard already today, and we pray now, as we turn to your word, that you will bless us in the study of it, in the hearing of the preaching and the proclamation of it. For we ask it in Jesus' precious and blessed name. Amen. Well, I have several passages I want you to turn with me and look at today. So let's start, I'm gonna add a couple. So let's start with Isaiah 43, and you can just hear some of these, and I'll turn to Romans 8 and Ephesians 1 in just a minute. But I want us to hear from Isaiah chapter 43. And just a few verses here, listen to God's word from Isaiah 43. Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs forth, but do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild beasts will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert. to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself, that they might declare my praise. And then 2 Corinthians 5, 17, just one verse there, says this, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, He is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. And now the texts that were listed in your bulletin. Let me turn to Romans chapter eight and just read a few verses there. I'll read 28 through 30. This is Romans eight, 28 through 30. And again, listen to the word of God. And we know that for those who love God Sorry, and we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. For those who are called according to his purpose, for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined, he also called, and those whom he called, he also justified, and those whom he justified, he also glorified. And then our final reading in Ephesians, and this will be chapter one and verses three through 14. Again, give your attention to the word of God. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his gracious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved. In him, we have redemption through his blood. the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory. In him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory. Well, I'm not going to preach on any one of those texts, but I'm going to preach topically today. I've been asked to address union with Christ, and I've been asked to talk to you about the practicality or the usefulness of union with Christ. In other words, what difference does it make to us? And so that's what we're going to think about as we think about these texts. I want you to, first of all, begin thinking about a story that may be well known to you. Maybe it's not. I don't know if it's on the canceled list or not. But it's Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper. I want you to just think about that story in terms of its general outlay for a minute. There's Tom Canty, and he's obviously the pauper. And he finds himself in a friendship with Edward the Prince. And they resemble one another quite strikingly. and you know the story, they decide they're going to switch places. And in switching places, Edward the Prince finds his way to the Canty home and he finds himself in an abusive situation. However, Tom finds himself in the palace. What's interesting is that the attendants, Edward's attendants, when they find that Tom is the prince and they think it's Edward, they find him to be incredibly forgetful or maybe even ill. He seems to have forgotten all the protocols. And as I think about this story, I think to myself that this sometimes fits the Christian life. Why? Because as Tom is in the palace, I can't help but wonder if he thought to himself, I don't belong here. I'm actually an imposter. I shouldn't be here. Maybe you know what I mean. The other night I was just about ready to sleep and I had a phone call. It was a woman new to the congregation. She called me up and she said, Pastor Jeff, and she was obviously distraught. She said, I have a question for you. I said, well, what is it? And she said to me, I don't know whether I'm a Christian or not. And she started talking to me about some of the things that she was engaged in, some of the things that she had done. And I quickly began to realize that this woman's plight is any woman's plight, any man's plight. You see, there's a gap between me and how I know myself. and other things, things like what Jesus says in the high priestly prayer. Let me rehearse one of them for you, verse 13. But now I am coming to you and these things I speak in the world that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. And if I can take a little license, this woman was saying, I know me and I know that I'm not experiencing the fullness of the joy that Jesus Christ said he brought to his disciples. In fact, it's not just that I'm not experiencing the fullness of joy, I actually feel like I'm living in the depths of the valley. And so the question I want us to address is the one I've been asked to address. If union with Christ is vital, if it's life changing, then why is it that so often we as Christians feel that we're missing out on something? Well, I want to address that by looking at four points today. I want us to first of all think about presence and a sense of presence. Presence and a sense of presence. Secondly, I want us to look at Christ and all of his benefits. So first of all, a sense and a sense of presence. Secondly, Christ and all of his benefits. And thirdly, I want us to think about a necessary link to experience, a necessary link to experience. And then I want us to finish off by asking a simple question, but is it enough? But is it enough? Well, first of all, let's look at presence and a sense of presence. A major piece of what we're trying to wrestle with today is this very thing, a sense or a sense of his presence. It really gets to the heart of the question, what am I missing? And it has to do with this distinction. I think that we could go to any number of authors to find this kind of distinction laid out for us, but one of the places that I find most helpful is C.S. Lewis and a letter that he wrote to an American woman in a book called Letters to an American Lady. And in that letter, this is what he says. Now listen to Lewis. The presence of God is not the same as the sense of God's presence. It is the actual presence, not the sensation of the presence of the Holy Ghost which begets Christ in us. The sense of the presence is a super added gift for which we give thanks when it comes. I want you to think about that for a minute. Presence is objective, isn't it? But a sense of presence is subjective. I mean, in a sense, they're two radically different things. Let me put it another way. The actual presence of a person is different than the sense of having their presence. For instance, those of you who are college students, while you're away, your mom is walking around the house and she's finding the cap on the toothpaste and she's finding clothes in the laundry bin. Oh, wait a second, that's a sense of your absence. I thought it was funny, but anyway. No, seriously, there is a difference between a sense of a person's presence and a sense of their absence. Many of you may know that I lost my wife about seven months ago. And for the first few months, she used to wear how you get casual. And so you have these clothes that you wear around all the time. And my wife had a couple of sweatshirts that she wore all the time. And for several months after her passing, I would get those sweatshirts out and just smell them because they had her scent on them. And they gave me a sense of her presence. But a sense of her presence is not her presence. It's a strikingly different thing between an object, a person, an actual living, breathing human in front of you and something that bears their scent. Now I want you to know that distinction is built into our confessional documents. I want you to think with me about probably the least read of our documents, the larger catechism of Westminster. Listen to question 65, and it has both of these aspects in it. Listen to what it says. Question 65, what special benefits do the members of the invisible church enjoy by Christ? Now listen to the answer. The members of the invisible church by Christ enjoy union and communion with him in grace and glory. Union and communion. There's the objective and the subjective. Now those things are broken out for us to consider by the divines. And I want you to listen to the two questions that follow. First of all, question 66, it asks the question, what is that union which the elect have with Christ? And the answer is this. The union which the elect have with Christ is the work of God's grace, whereby they are spiritually and mystically yet really and inseparably joined to Christ as their head and husband, which is done in their effectual calling. And then two later, question 69, listen to this. What is the communion in grace which the members of the invisible church have with Christ? The answer? The communion in grace which the members of the Invisible Church have with Christ is their partaking of the virtue of his mediation in their justification, adoption, sanctification, and whatever else in this life manifests their union with him. Now, union is then objective. It's that point in time where the Spirit makes us alive and really and truly unites us inseparably to the person of Jesus Christ. The communion is the sharing or the partaking of his mediation and all of the benefits that show our union. Now it is true that the communion aspect, justification, adoption, sanctification, those things have an objective side to them, but they also have an experiential side to them, a subjective side to them. Now somebody's going to say, now wait a minute, think about justification for a second, Pastor. Justification is the declaration of God that we have been forgiven our sins, true enough. Let me ask this question, though. What's the subjective aspect of that communion? Well, I would submit that it's the cleansing of the conscience. That's part of justification by faith, and it's a part that I don't want to do without. and hopefully you don't either. So yes, there is a sense of an objectivity to the benefits that we talk about and yet there's a subjectivity to them as well. I want you to think about these in terms of a wedding, of a marriage. Think about this because in Ephesians chapter five, Paul basically equates union with Christ to marriage. Now think about the wedding day itself. The wedding day is very much like the union we just read about. There's a certain sense in which legally you come together, just in the same way there was a day when the Spirit made you alive in Christ Jesus. But after that wedding day comes the communion where you share in the gifts and graces of one another. You partake of the union that you've enjoyed on that particular day. It's physical, it's economic, it's societal, it's filial, it's all of those things. Now, what are we after today? We are after the subjective element of this. And the struggle is that that's a bit illusory. But let me ask this. Can we, in some sense, describe what it means? Can we get hold of at least a sense of what it means? And I wanna say, yes, we can. I wanna give you an illustration that may help you. My wife and I met when we were working at Dell Campers. And maybe some of you remember that store. It was a chain at one time. But they had a mascot. And the mascot was a bee. And they had an enormous costume that they could never get any of us to wear. But my wife was, if you knew my wife, she was the kind of woman who would wear this costume. and did a number of times. And she would stand out by the road and she would wave people into the store and she was this giant bee. And I just, I remember this because as I was looking through some pictures recently, I found a picture of her in this costume. But here's the thing that she would tell me after wearing the costume. She would say, you know, she would say, it's so freeing because I can do anything I want. And no one knows it's me. And I thought to myself, in a more positive way, this is what it's like to be in Christ. Our life is hidden in him. And there's a certain sense of freedom that comes along with being hidden in Christ. We're free. I want you to think about this in relation to what the scriptures tell us. The scriptures tell us that we are loved. I mean, when your life is hidden in the one who loves you, there's a certain freedom in that, isn't there? Or it says this, we are children. I mean, think about the little child who, in a busy section of the street, instinctively reaches out to their father or mother's hand. They want to be hidden, guarded, protected. And that's what union of Christ is like. Or think about the forgiveness of sins. Who doesn't want to be hidden in Christ? And how about that new creation? All of these things. All of these things are important for us when we think about this idea of presence and a sense of presence. There is a presence of God. There's a reality to our union. And yet the question is, how do we sense that? How do we come to grips with the freedom and the forgiveness and all of those other things that attend to it? Well, let me move to point number two. and that is Christ and all of his benefits. Before we ask about the pursuit of this subjective side of things, because that's really what we're after, how do we come to grips with and have a sense of and enjoy union with Jesus Christ, communion with Jesus Christ? Before we talk about the pursuit, Let's talk a little more about what it is we are to pursue or who we are to pursue. I want you to think about what kids are sometimes told when they're growing up. Sometimes they're told, young ladies or young men, they're told, make a list of all of the attributes that you want in your husband, in your future husband or in your future wife. Now, think about this. You make out your list. Who among us takes out that list, or who among us, if you're still single, takes out that list and acts as if the list is the actual person that will meet all of those attributes and tasks and criteria and all of those things? Think about that. No one does. No one at night, late at night, when they're lonely, takes out the list and says, ah, you finally arrive. No, it doesn't happen that way. Or think about the husband who talks about his wife. Think about how he tries to describe his wife to another person. He says this, he might say, well, she's beautiful. Or he might say, she's a wonderful mother. Or he might say, she is a fantastic baker. Or he might say any number of things, but probably what he'll do is say, just wait until you meet her. And the interesting thing is, when the man sees his wife coming, he says, here she is. And the person meeting his wife may not have any evidence in the meeting that she's a great mother, that she's a wonderful baker, and so on. But he meets her person. And that's what the husband wanted, even as he gave the list. Now this has bearing on our topic. We have to think about this when we think about Christ and all of his benefits. The trouble is, the trouble is that we try to understand the union by thinking about the list of the benefits that we have in Jesus Christ rather than thinking about Jesus Christ himself. And when we focus on the list, we can be left pretty cold. I want you to think about this. Romans 8 and Ephesians 1 both have lists. They have lists of benefits that we receive in Jesus Christ. Justification, adoption, election, all of these things are there in the list, but there's more in both lists. What is there in each list? Well, there's a facilitator. The Holy Spirit of God is in each list. For instance, in verses 13 to 14, we find that in him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory. In 2nd Corinthians and in 1st Peter we're told that this spirit is the spirit of Christ. Now why is that important? The spirit of Christ works Christ and all of his benefits into us. Now, I want you to think about this because this is an important distinction. It helps us with Christ and all of his benefits and what we're to pursue. Think about how we talk about adoption, for instance. We talk about adoption like this. We say, well, adoption is part of the order of salvation and it's a forensic gift And flip side of justification, as it were, it's legal in character. And think about it, it's a warm-hearted thing. The judge brings us home. And we talk about it like that. But that's not the way that scripture talks about it, even though those things are true. Do you know how scripture talks about it? In Romans 8, 14, and 16, it says this. It says, the spirit of adoption in you. encourages you to cry out in your hardest moments, Abba, Father. That's how it talks about the blessing and the benefit of adoption. And think about the way that Hebrews talks about justification. It talks about the cleansing of our conscience. Now, this will pose a problem for some people. People will say, OK, I get what you're saying. Scripture talks about these things, these benefits, in a very practical way, locates them in Christ, doesn't see so much of a difference between them as we do in terms of our study of them. But how often do I really cry out, Abba, Father? In fact, I feel more guilty than I do cleansed in my conscience. So I'm not sure that you're not just talking about pie in the sky. So let me talk about the necessary link here, the necessary link. I want you to imagine that you took a vacation and there was a lake and there were sailboat rentals. you decided that you were gonna be there a long time and the only thing to do at this rental was to sail. And so you thought to yourself, can't be that hard, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna rent a sailboat and we'll go out and we'll enjoy the day. The only problem is that words like trimming have more to do with scissors than sailing. Shortening is something that you use when you bake, and easing is something you do with a chair. You ease into the chair. But all of these things are sailing terms, and you have no idea what they mean or how to apply them. And so you rent the sailboat. you just can't seem to capture the wind. You're just kind of bobbing around off of shore. That is, until you learn some of the basics. And once you learn some of the basics, then you begin to catch the wind. Now, I want you to think about this with regard to what we're talking about today. Some people may say, well, what you're saying is just behavioral modification. No, that's not it. What I'm talking about is the spirit of God at work within us, but there's a necessary link in order for us to perceive and enjoy his working in us. In other words, how do we move from the objective aspects of justification adoption and so on to the subjective aspect of these things? Well, let me read to you. the Westminster Confession, again, in terms of the table of things that we saw in the larger catechism. In that latter question, we talked about how, well, in the former, we talked about how we were brought into union with Christ by effectual calling, but listen, when we learned about communion, there were things that were mentioned, justification, adoption, sanctification, and so on. In the Westminster Confession of Faith, if you look up at the table of contents, you'll find those same things. You'll find where it says, these are the benefits that we possess in Christ, effectual calling, justification, adoption, sanctification, and so on. What's missing? What's left out, even out of Romans chapter eight? And the answer is faith and repentance. In fact, those things are put after sanctification such that if you look at G.I. Williamson's commentary on the shorter catechism, or on the confession rather, He takes those two chapters on faith and repentance and moves them up and says we're going to deal with these right before justification and after effectual calling because that's where they are in the order of salvation. Now there's another reason why the Westminster Confession moves them, but my point to you is this. These things are the necessary link. Faith is a necessary link. Repentance, the necessary link for us to experience the subjective aspects of justification and so on. For example, faith is an instrument by which I embrace communion. I used to watch the Twilight Zone, and there was a Twilight Zone, I'll never forget this was a great one. This guy worked in a bank, and every lunch break he would go into the vault. And he came out of the vault one day to discover that a nuclear war had wiped out everyone and everything, but it was a weapon that didn't destroy any of the buildings. And he was in his glory. He was the only one left, and so he made his way to the library. And he started going through the stacks, and he thought, I'm going to read everything. But the only trouble was he broke his very thick glasses. They were the instrument that connected him to his books. And at the end of the story, he was lamenting. He was in tears. Faith is like that. Faith is the glasses that we connect with those subjective aspects of justification, sanctification, and so on. Sometimes our faith may be weak and sometimes it may be strong. And when my faith is weak, I have less of a sense of God's presence in my life. When my faith is strong, I have a sense of his presence in my life. But I want you to know something. God's presence is not moving. Your sense of that presence moves on the basis of the strength or the weakness of your faith. But God is not moving. Now, let me just, let's pause a minute. Because maybe you're thinking something like this. Maybe you're thinking, okay, I see what you're saying. Faith is that thing that I bring to the table, and if I bring that condition, then God does. And I want you to hear me, that's not what I'm saying. This is not conditionality. There are conditions, and God meets those conditions for us. For instance, he enables our faith. But I want you to see, B.B. Warfield catches this, and he wants to correct us in this. And so he says this, he says, it's not faith that saves. It's Christ who saves us through faith. In other words, the faith is enabled by Christ. And so what we need to do is take the thing enabled in us, that is faith, and we need to use it to up-build our faith and our, well, let me put it like this. What we need to do is we need to take what we're enabled to do and trim and shorten and ease our spiritual sails with the things that God has appointed. What are those things? Well, things like worship. Things like sermons and sacraments and means of grace and Lord's Day and Bible reading and prayer, all of these things are things that are going to work in us that which is pleasing in his sight. But here's the thing I want you to catch. I want you to, again, think about marriage. If I talk with my wife, if I help my wife around the house, if I bring her flowers, if I make time for her, In other words, if I trim and shorten and ease in my marriage, what's going to happen? I am going to enjoy the list of attributes. No, I'm going to enjoy my wife. I'm going to enjoy my wife and all that she is, all of the gifts and graces that are her, but I'm gonna enjoy my wife. Now, if I spiritually trim and shorten and ease, what will happen? I'm going to enjoy justification, adoption, sanctification. No, I'm going to enjoy Christ and all of his benefits. That's the idea. I'll enjoy Christ, the person of Christ. If you wanna learn about union with Christ, if you wanna learn about union with Christ, a great way to do it is to get John Murray or any of those books that take you through the Ordo, but I would say this to you first. If you wanna learn about union with Christ, get yourself a great little book or a great series that tells you about Jesus Christ, that talks to you about him. because that puts you in proximity to his presence, who he is, and then you'll be in the proper position to understand all of the benefits that he brings to you by virtue of that union. Well, let me finish with this. There are those who are going to probably still say this is unsatisfying because there is a hurting world out there. and I'm just not sure telling them about Jesus is going to be all that helpful. So is it enough? Is Christ enough? This past week I was at the seminary and there was a student who was preaching on Acts chapter eight and he is actually the one that caused me to think about this passage as it relates to this subject. I want you to think about this. I want you to think about the eunuch that Philip encountered. You don't, by choice, become a eunuch. This is usually something that's forced upon you. This is something that your parents are so poor that they sell you into. This is something that you're forced to take on yourself. Now, think about this. This eunuch has all kinds of wonderful privileges. He has the freedom to go to Jerusalem and worship. He has books at his disposal. He has Candace's cart, her vehicle. He's driving a limo. And it says in the text that he was in charge of all of her treasure. I mean, according to worldly pleasures, he had it all. But he had been robbed of his ability to have a wife and children. He had been robbed of something that treasure could never replace, that carts could never replace. Now, do you remember what Philip does? Philip goes up to him and says, hey, I see you're reading Isaiah. Look, I've got, I have something I wanna tell you. Now, I know you're a eunuch, but I've got a consolation prize for you that's not too awful bad. Is that what he says? No, that's not what he says. The text says this. The text says that he told him the good news about Jesus, 835. Now the crazy thing about it was he told him that as if that were enough. He told him that as if it would make a difference in his life. Where did he go to seminary? Listen to me. Sigmund Freud has our world and a sleeper hold. He has taught us all that the eunuch is the most disappointed person among us because he can't satisfy his deepest, most primitive urges. And this is what he said. This is what Freud says. Freud says that religion is an illusion. It's a neurosis. And it would be better that religion were replaced by science. That's where we are today. And so Philip is a fool. Because he just goes up and offers the eunuch an illusion. But I want to know. Is that the case? You know, in one sense, we can only speak experientially at this point, and I can tell you this. As I said to you seven months ago, I lost my wife. And I have tried to trim and shorten and ease according to the means of God's grace. And as I have done that, I want you to know that Christ appears to me today, seven months later, more glorious than he did even though seven months ago. I want you to know that our world is going to try to do anything to suppress the truth and righteousness, but the fact of the matter is that God's presence in Jesus Christ by the power of his spirit is very real. And our sense of his presence may fluctuate because of the strength or the weakness of our faith. But I'll tell you this. He's given us means. And we access those means by faith that he's enabled. And when we do, when we do, he grows ever larger in our eyes and ever more glorious. And he is absolutely satisfying. And that's how practical the doctrine of union with Christ is. Gracious God, we thank you and certainly praise you for who you are and for how you've manifested yourself to us in the Lord and how you bear witness to that presence by your power in the Holy Spirit. Father, we ask that you will strengthen us and encourage us and bless us. And we pray that you would enable us to turn a deaf ear to the world around us so that we might hear you as you speak in your word, for indeed it is your word. And we ask, Lord, that you would satisfy us with Christ, who is our all. For we ask it in Jesus' precious and blessed name. Amen.