Let's turn in our Bibles to Genesis
chapter 25. Genesis chapter 25. I don't intend to preach this text. I just want to use it as an illustration
for my message tonight. I want you to look here in Genesis
25 verse 21. Isaac entreated the Lord for
his wife because she was barren. And the Lord was entreated of
him, and Rebekah, his wife, conceived. The Lord made her to conceive. And the children struggled together
within her. And she said, If it be so, why
am I thus? And she went to inquire of the
Lord. And the Lord said unto her, Two
nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be
separated from thy bowels. And the one people shall be stronger
than the other people, and the elder shall serve the younger."
Believer, have you ever been so disturbed by your sins? We have our sins with us all
the time, they're ever present with us, but every now and then,
our sins will disturb us to the point that we ask this question,
why am I thus? You believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, you trust Christ as your all, you believe Christ is your
wisdom, He's your righteousness, He's your Sanctification? You believe He
is your redemption from the curse of the law and you have no confidence
in your flesh whatsoever. But you find that you live more
like a child of hell than you do a child of God. You think
more like a child of hell than a child of God. You fall into
these grievous sins which are more like a child of hell than
a child of God. And you think to yourself, why
am I thus? Well, God gives the answer right
here in this text. The reason that that is so is
because there's two manner of people in you. If you have a
believer, there's two manner of people in you. Wherever there's
a believer, there's an old man and there's a new man. Just like
Rebecca had these two boys in her womb and they struggled with
each other. That old man and that new man
struggles with each other. They struggle with each other.
They wrestle against each other. There's a warfare between them.
But thanks be to God, by His grace, God said, one of these
will be stronger than the other. He said, the elder shall serve
the younger. And by God's grace, he's going
to see to it that that old man, that elder man that's in you,
believer, is going to serve the new man. I want to look for our
divisions tonight at the two natures that are in the believer,
considering, number one, their birth. We've got to lay the groundwork
first. We've got to look at their birth.
And then we'll look at their struggles. The struggles of life
with these two natures within us. And then if we have time,
we'll look at the glory of these two natures. Turn with me to
John chapter 3. John chapter 3. First of all,
let's talk about the birth of these two natures. The birth
of these two men that are in the believer. John 3 verse 3. The Lord was speaking with Nicodemus,
And Jesus answered and said unto Nicodemus, Verily, verily, I
say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the
kingdom of God. Look down at verse 5. Jesus answered,
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water
and of the Spirit. He cannot enter into the kingdom
of God. Now look at this next word, verse
6. That which is born of the flesh
is flesh. And that which is born of the
Spirit, capital S, born of God, the Holy Spirit, that which is
born of the Spirit is Spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee,
You must be born again." Now, in order for any kind of life,
there's got to be birth. There's got to be birth. And
so it is with our first birth, and so it is with the believer's
second birth. The second birth. Now, the old
man and the new man, they have two different fathers. Two different
fathers. And those two fathers are very
opposite to one another. Now, the reason we have to be
born again is because the first time we were born, we were born
of Adam. Adam is our first father. If
we could all trace our lineage all the way back, you'd do well
just to take out everybody in between and just see our father's
Adam. That's who we came from. Now,
when Adam was in that garden, Adam was representing us, and
when he sinned in that garden, we sinned in him. And so we came
under the curse of the law. We broke the law in Adam. And
then, in time, when Adam causes us to be born, we're born, he
had a son, he had a son, all the way down to your father and
my father. And we were born, we were conceived, and that sinful
seed of Adam was passed all the way to us so that we were born
with a sinful nature. So here you have us born the
first time. And without us doing one thing,
because of Adam our head, we've broken the law and we're born
with a corrupt, defiled, polluted, unholy nature. Well, Christ the Lord is the
Father of the new man. He's the Father of that new man
that's in the believer, created in the believer. He's the Father
of that man. The Scripture says this. The
Scripture says that we're born of incorruptible seed. Seed that
can't be corrupted. And it's by the Word of God.
It's by that Word that lives and abides forever. And that
One by whom we are born of the Word is the Word, that Living
Word, Christ the Word, Christ Himself is formed in us. Now
when Christ obeyed the Father as He walked this earth, the
Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled the law and all His people fulfilled
the law in Him. In fact, our old man was crucified
in Him. Then in time, and then after
we were crucified in Him, when He died, we died, but then when
He arose, we arose. And then in time, when we're
born of the Spirit, born again, born of God, Christ is formed
in us, now we have a new nature. A nature that didn't exist before.
A nature created of God. Now that's all the work of Christ. By Christ, we're made righteous.
And by Christ we're made holy. It's all the work of Christ that
He does in His people. Now, in order to enter this world
and to have life, to hear, to see, to think, to enjoy life,
you had to be born. And that's the case to enter
into the Kingdom of God. The Lord said here that the only
way to enter the Kingdom of God, the only way to enter into the
Church of God, the only way to be in the family of God is to
be born into it. You have to be born into it.
You have to be born of God, born of the Spirit of God. That's
the only way. Regeneration, that new birth, is totally out of
our control. We have nothing to do with it.
God shows us these illustrations by just our luck. Just like you
had to be born to enjoy life and to have life and to enjoy
all these things, you've got to be born again to enter the
Kingdom of God. And then you look at those two
boys in Rebecca's womb. Did they have anything to do
with being conceived? Nothing. Their father conceived
them. And it's the same with the new
birth. We don't have any choice in the matter. It's our father
who makes us to be born again. It's our father. Now, let me
ask you a question. Have you been born the first
time? I mean naturally. Were you born
naturally? Now, you can answer that question
and say, well, yeah, of course I was born naturally. Can't you
see me here? I don't have to go back and look
at a day when I was born. I don't have to go back and look
at a time when I was born. I know I was born. I'm alive. I'm alive. I see, I hear, I smell,
I rejoice. I know I'm born of God. Well,
are you born again? Are you born a second time? Just
like you don't have to go back in time and look at your first
birth, you don't have to go back in time to a day or something
you experienced or to something you changed and reformed about
yourself and some sin you put away and some religious activity
you started doing. You don't have to go back and
look at that. A dead man can do that stuff. A spiritually
dead man can do those things. How do I know I'm born again?
The way we know we're born again, brethren, is your confidence
is no longer you. Your confidence is Christ. Right
now. Right now. My rejoicing right
now is the Lord Jesus Christ. That's how I know I'm alive.
The way I know I'm alive is old things are passed away. All my
old confidence, all my old hope, all my old joy, it was all in
me and something about me. That's all passed away now. I
don't find any confidence in me. I don't find any trust in
me. All things are become new. And here's the key. Here's the
key. And all these new things, they
are of God. They are of God. The believer
born of God glories in God. And he only glories in God. There's
the key. That's how I know I'm born again. I know I'm born the first time
because I see, I hear, I smell, I rejoice, I have sorrow. Well,
I know I'm born again because I see Christ by faith. I hear
his gospel by faith. I rejoice in my heart with it. I mourn my sin because of Christ. That's how I know I'm born again.
Right now. I don't have to go back and look
at a birth certificate. You don't either. You don't either. Now,
this old man and this new man, they each have the nature of
their father. They have the nature of their father. That's why we
have this warfare. They have the nature of their
father. And these natures are in stark contrast from each other. Go to Ephesians 4 and look at
verse 22. Ephesians 4 and verse 22. We got this contrast here in
these two natures. Ephesians 4 verse 22 says, put
off concerning the former conduct the old man. The old man. Now this is that first man. This is that man we are all born
with by our first birth. Put him off, he is corrupt. He is corrupt according to the
deceitful lusts. Now that's all that's in you
and me by our first birth. The only thing we have by our
first birth is corrupt, deceitful lust. That's what our heart is.
That's what our nature is. That spiritually dead heart we're
born with the first time. Okay, now look at Ephesians 4.24.
Put on the new man. Now he's speaking to a believer.
An unregenerated man. A man that hasn't been born again,
he doesn't have this new man. He doesn't have it. But now this
is a believer. Put on the new man. Put on the
new man which after God. That first man was after Adam.
This man is after God our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Put on
the new man which after God is created in righteousness and
true holiness. You see the difference? The first
father was Adam and the second father is Christ. The first man
is deceitful. According to the deceitful lust,
the new man is created in righteousness and true holiness, the righteousness
and holiness of Christ. Now that's the case. That's the
case with every man born again. Born again. Christ fulfilled
all righteousness for us and He entered in us and now we're
righteous and holy in Christ, by Christ. And there's an old
man and a new man. An old nature like Adam's nature
and a new nature like Christ's nature. You mean I have a new
nature like Christ's nature? This new man is like Christ's
nature? Christ said that which is born
of flesh is flesh. And He said that which is born
of capital S, the Holy Spirit, is spirit. Like begets like. That which is born of flesh is
flesh, and that which is born of spirit is spirit. Now listen
to the Scripture contrast these men again. Turn over Colossians
3, verse 9. Colossians 3, verse 9. He says there, verse 9, "...lie
not one to another, seeing that you have put off the old man
with his deeds." What's the old man with his deeds? What comes
from the old man? Look back up there at verse 5. He says there, this is what comes
of the old man. Fornication, uncleanness, affection,
evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry. That's what
comes from the old man. Then go on down here to verse
6. I'm sorry, go down here to verse
8. Put off all these two. This comes of the old man. This
is what the spirit of the old man is. Anger, and wrath, and
malice. and blasphemy and filthy communication
out of your mouth. That's coming from that old heart,
that old man. Now look down there again in
Colossians 3.10. He says to the believer, you've
put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge, born of the Word
of God, born of the incorruptible seed. That's what he's talking
about. Renewed, regenerated in knowledge, born of the Word of
God, that incorruptible seed after the image of Him that created
Him. After the image of God, image
of Christ that created Him, that created Him. Now look, here's
what's in the heart now of this new man. Look down there at Christ,
verse 11. He says, there's neither Greek
nor Jew. And our new men, we're not trying to exalt ourselves
by looking at what our race is, whether we're a Greek or a Jew
or a Gentile. There's neither circumcision
nor uncircumcision. We're not looking at whether
you got the law or you don't have the law. It's irrelevant
to us. There's men who build a whole
denomination over over ecclesiology, over how they govern the church
or what the church is. There are men who start whole
denominations over whether you baptize somebody under the water
or you sprinkle them. There are people who start whole
denominations over this difference and that difference and the other
difference and that difference. There are certain things that
we believe and hold to in the Scriptures, brethren. But whether
you're born under the law or you don't have the law, whether
you have circumcision or you don't have circumcision, that's
not what makes the difference. They're neither barbarian or
Scythian. It's not whether you're educated
or you're uneducated, whether you're civilized or uncivilized.
whether you're bond or you're free. Here's what's the heart
of the new man. Christ is all. Christ is all,
in and all. I get letters. People ask me,
are you this, are you that? Do you hold to this confession
or that confession? Do you hold to this or that?
Things I don't even know what they're talking about, to be
honest with you. And I'll reply to them with an email and say,
Christ is all. I've yet to hear from one of
them. That's not what they're interested
in. They're interested in, are you this or that? That's what
they're interested in. Christ is all, and He's in all
His people. And here's the heart of that
man. Look at verse 12. Put on as the elect of God, holy
and beloved vows of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind,
meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another, forgiving one another. If any man have a quarrel against
any, even as Christ forgave you, so also you do. And above all
these, put on charity. Put on love, which is the bond
of perfectness. This is the inward man, brethren. This is born of the Spirit of
God. This is what the fruit of the Spirit is. These things.
We didn't create these things. We didn't have these things by
our first birth. But that's who the new man is. That's the essence
of the new man. These are the things he delights
in. This is because he's been born of God and he's like his
father. These are the things the Father
delights in. And he's like his father because he's born of God. He's born of God. And look over
at 2 Peter verse 1. I want you to see this too. This
is why we have that nature in us now that we didn't have before. 2 Peter 1 and look at verse 4. He's given unto us exceeding
great and precious promises. When we were born of the incorruptible
seed, by the Word of God, by the Gospel that's preached unto
you, when we were renewed in the knowledge, the doctrine of
God, by His Word, He gave these exceeding great and precious
promises that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature,
of the divine nature, of Christ's nature. Christ, who's God of
the divine nature, having escaped the corruption. Where'd that
come from? My old man. That's in the world
through what? Through lust. Through lust of
what? The lust of that old heart. You see, this is... So now you've
got this old man and you've got a new man. And God illustrates
this in our life too. You see this every day. Twelve
years ago today, Willie Boy was born. Came out nose laid over
to the side of his face all crooked and I thought well at least he's
got a nose. In a little while it straightened
up and I could see right where he got it from. In a little while
I could see a hole that fruit didn't fall far from the tree
at all. There was a whole lot of things he got for me that
I wish he didn't get for me. Just like I got them from my
daddy all the way back to Adam. You see, we're born the first
time and there's all kinds of characteristics and there's all
kinds of passions and there's all kinds of qualities about
you that you get from your father. They came from your father. In
a little while, you're going to see them. They're going to
come out. You're going to see them. And that's how it is. When
we're born of Adam, it doesn't take long to realize that's a
child of Adam. as a child of Adam. And when
you're born of God, born of the Holy Spirit, there's a new man
there that was not there. A man that delights in mercy,
because his father delights in mercy. A man who delights in
love, because his father delights in love. A man who delights to
forgive, because his father delights to forgive. He sees how much
he's been forgiven. Light begets light. See what
I'm saying? See what I'm saying? And our
Heavenly Father is holy and therefore that new nature is holy. Christ
cannot do otherwise than believe God the Father and love His brethren. And so the new man born of God
can't do otherwise than believe God the Father and love our brethren.
That's of Christ. That's of Christ. Listen to John.
Whosoever is born of God, now that's the new man. Whosoever
is born of God, That new man does not commit sin. For his
seed remaineth in him. Christ's seed remains in him.
And he cannot sin because he's born of God. Can God sin? Can our Heavenly Father sin?
God forbid. And the new man can't sin. The
new man can't sin. Why am I thus? Why am I thus? It's because there's There's
two manner of people in you. That's why. That's why. The old
man of Adam and the new man of Christ. In the first, we're born
to sin. And in the new, we're born to
holiness. By the first, we're partakers of the corrupt lust.
And by the second, we're partakers of Christ's holiness. Well, then,
you must be saying then that we're to look within ourselves
and look at this new man that's in us. Oh, no. No, no. Paul makes that abundantly clear. We are the circumcision. When
a man is born of this spirit and given this spirit, we are
the circumcision which worship God in spirit. and rejoice in
Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. But you didn't
do that until you had this new man created within you. And I
didn't either. We did just the opposite. We
worshipped ourselves. When that new man is put in you,
now you look to Christ and Him only. Now that's why we're thus. We've got these two natures.
Now, we've laid the foundation. We've laid the groundwork. Now
let's talk about life with these two natures. Look over at Romans
chapter 7. What's life like with these two
natures? Poor Rebecca, I saw my sister
when she had twins. Poor Rebecca, I guarantee you
her belly was as big as about to pop. She had Jacob and Esau. And they're in her womb and they
are wrestling against each other. They're trying to, one's trying
to wrestle the other one and they're fighting and punching
and doing everything in her womb. And she's just miserable. She's
just miserable. Well, believe her, that's just
how it is with me and you, with this old man and this new man
in us. They fight each one trying to take the dominance, and it's
just misery all the time. It's a warfare. It's misery.
It's misery. And yet, we don't look to our
inward man. And here's why. If we've left
to the strength of our inward man, even though we're born of
God, we're left to the strength of our inward man, we don't have
strength. We don't have any strength. You
know, that's not... The world teaches this. If they
teach anything close to this doctrine, once they talk about
you being born of God and having a new man, now they put it all
in your hands. Now you've got power. Now you've
got strength. Now you can do this and that.
Brethren, you can't do a thing. Christ is our strength and you
can't do a thing without Him. That's just how it is. Now look
here what Paul said. Romans 7, 18. I know that in
me that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. For to will is
present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not.
Now in my old man, in Adam, There's nothing good in him. There's
nothing good in this old man of flesh at all. Nothing good. But in that new man, I've been
made willing by the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. I have
a will in my new man now to please God, to obey God, to look to
God, and to worship God. But how to perform it, I don't
know. I don't know. Why not? Verse
19. For the good that I would, I
do not. but the evil which I would not,
that I do. Now if I do that I would not,
it's no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. It's
not the new man born of Christ that's doing the sinning. No
sir. It's the old sinful man of Adam
that's doing the sinning. Now look at verse 21. I find
then a law, there's a principle, That is, when I would do good,
evil is present with me. Now that's a principle brethren
that's going to be with every believer to the day we lay down
this body of death. When we do good, when we will
to do good, and we would do good, there's going to be evil present
with you all the time. There's going to be sin mixed
with everything you do from here on out. That's just how it's
going to be. Now look, Verse 22, For because I delight in
the law of God after the inward man, I really do. But I see another
law in my members. There's a ruling principle of
sinfulness in my members, in my old man of sin. And he's warring
against the law of my mind. He's warring against this new
will God's put in me, this new holy will God's put in me. That
old man's warring against that new man. And look at what he's
doing. This is what he does every time. brings me into captivity
to the law of sin which is in my members. The sinful will of our old man
wars against the new will of our inward man and he brings
us into captivity to sin which is in our members. Let me give
you an example. Let's say in our old man we do
something which we have no desire, no will to do in our new man.
We don't want to do this, but we do. We get angry, we say something,
we do something that we don't want to do, that in our new man
we have no delight in, we hate it with everything about us,
with a righteous godly hatred. But we've done it. And then soon
after this happens, we hear this voice saying, how could you possibly
be a child of God? And you know what the next thing
we do is? We start looking over our lives. and saying, well,
how could I be a child of God? Let me see, where's something
about my life that I've done that I can find some assurance
in? Let me just find something in my life that I've done that
I can find some assurance in. That's the same old man. The
same old man brings you into captivity to sin, and the same
old man then turns around and says, and exalts you in self-righteousness,
saying, now you find something in yourself, you can find some
assurance in. That's still the old man. That's
not the new man. That's the old man. He brings
you to sin, and then he says, now fix it. Do something to fix
it. Find some assurance in you. Now
get this, in our inward man, we have no desire to do either
one. We don't have a desire to sin, we don't have a desire to
exalt ourselves in self-righteousness. But our inward man doesn't have
the ability in itself to stop our old man from exalting us
in self-righteousness, much less from stopping us from sinning.
Now some self-righteous man will say, well, I beg your pardon,
I can. You just let somebody pull out in front of you out
here and you'll find out you don't. Before you even know it,
your temper is like that, or some other thing that's some
weakness in you, and you've sinned in a heartbeat. And next thing
you know, you think, I've got to clean that up. And then once
you get it cleaned up, you think, now I'm so righteous. Same old
man making you sin, then making you think you're righteous. Same
old man. How am I going to be saved from
that then? How am I going to be saved from that? Verse 24
says, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the
body of this death? If my inward man has no power
to do this, if my inward man that God has put in me can't
do this, how am I going to be delivered from this body of death?
How am I going to be brought out of this captivity? How am
I going to be made to turn from looking at me and looking at
Christ and resting in Christ and finding my assurance and
my peace in Christ? How is that going to happen?
Verse 25, I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. That's how it's going to happen.
Now hold your place right here and go with me to Galatians 5. Now in Romans 7, Paul is showing
us how because of our old man, we cannot do what our new man
wills to do. Because of that old man of sin,
we can't do what our new man wills to do. But now look what
he says here. What he says here in Galatians.
Now listen very carefully. And our inward man, he said,
we delight in the law of God. Now here's the law of God, right
here. God says through Paul, Galatians
5.16, this I say then, walk in the Spirit and you shall not
fulfill the lust of the flesh. Walk in God the Holy Spirit,
and you won't fulfill the lust of that old man of flesh anymore.
I delight in that, Lord. Do you? I do. I delight in it. That's the law of God. I delight
in it. That's His Word. I delight in it. And that old man of sin will
keep me from doing it. He'll keep me from doing it. How then
am I going to do that? How am I going to do that? The good that I would, I don't
do. I'll say it in the evil, I wouldn't, I don't, I do. So
how am I going to do this? Verse 17. The flesh lusteth. That old man lusts against, capital
S, against the Holy Spirit of God. It's in you. And the spirit
against the flesh. Now here's what he's saying.
And these are contrary the one to the other, so that by God
the Holy Spirit, your old man cannot do the things that you
would. In Romans 7, he showed us that
your new man can't do the things your new man would do because
the old man is too powerful. Here he's showing you with that
old man, can't do everything He'd do because the Holy Spirit's
too powerful. Do you see what he's saying?
Do you see what he's saying? Now back to Romans 7. Back to
Romans 7. Verse 18. He says, So then... Romans 7... I'm sorry, verse 25. Romans 7,
25. So then, by God the Father, through Christ Jesus my Lord,
through God the Holy Spirit, with the mind, with that inward
man, I myself serve the law of God. I'm going to be brought
by the Holy Spirit to turn from me, turn from myself, turn from
looking to me and trying to either fall in away in sin or either
falling away in self-righteousness. He's going to keep me from that
because He's going to turn me in my inward man to behold my
Savior and look to Him only and believe Him and continue trusting
Him for all my righteousness and all upon my holiness. But
as for this body, With it, I'm going to always, my flesh is
going to serve the law of sin. He's saying that principle is
going to always be with me. Anytime I do anything, sin is
going to be present with me. Evil is going to be present with
me. So what am I going to do? Are you going to look to your
flesh? Are you going to look to your new man? Are you going to
look to anything about you? No. By the Spirit of God, we're
going to look to Christ. By the Spirit of God. It's Him,
it's God that's going to deliver me. It's God that's going to
make me look there. And only God. Only God. Now that's what
it takes, what it's like to live with these two natures brethren. The believer is totally dependent
all the time for Christ to save us from this body of death. We're
totally dependent on Him all the time to save us from it.
And when we sin, it's all of our old man. It's all of our
old man of sin. But whenever we do that which
God would bring us to do, to look to Christ, trust Him, love
our brethren, that's always by God. That's always through the
Lord Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit, so that we don't
have any room to glory in ourselves whatsoever. And every now and
then, in case we get to feeling like we can stand and we have
some strength about us, God will let us see what we can do. and
we fall flat on our face, flat on our face. And then we start
looking at ourselves again, trying to find something good in us
to trust in. And He has to just come and turn you completely
from you. And in that inward man, He makes
you look out of yourself to Him alone, to Him alone. Now, lastly,
you know why He does that? Because He said the elder is
going to serve the younger. That old man is going to serve
that new man. He's going to serve that new
man by God's grace, by God's power. We're never going to stop
believing and we're never going to stop loving our brethren because
God and the Holy Spirit is not going to let it happen. The old
man would love for that to stop, but he's not going to let it
stop. All right now, lastly, very briefly, the glory of these
two natures. What's the glory of these two
natures? Look at 1 Peter 1.24. 1 Peter 1.24. I'll be brief, but I want you
to see this now. This sums everything up. 1 Peter 1.24, here's the glory
of our old man. All flesh is as grass and all
the glory of man, all the glory of man is as the flower of grass. That flower that blooms, the
grass withers and the flower thereof falls away. You look
at that train wreck this week. It's such a sad thing that happened.
But you see those people were on that train, and they all had
their lives, and they all had their careers, and they all had
everything they were doing, and it was so busy that they were
speeding from Washington to get to New York to do their thing.
Like that, God took the lives of some of them. Just like that.
Our life is like grass. It just withers away. And whatever
glory you have, your very best righteousness, your very best
holiness, whenever your life withers and it's gone, that bloom
that you were trusting in is going to perish with it. It's
going to perish with it. You see, for righteousness to
be true righteousness, it has to be eternal righteousness.
And for holiness to be valuable, everlasting, true holiness, it's
got to be everlasting holiness. Now, don't put any confidence
in your flesh, brethren. If you found anything to assure
yourself of, it's going to perish. It's going to perish. But when
you're born again, look there at verse 23. When you're born
again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, you're
born by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. Forever. Look down there at verse
25. The Word of the Lord endureth
forever. Christ is the Bible, brethren.
Christ is the Scriptures. Christ is the Word. Christ lives
and Christ survives forever. And when Christ is in you and
joined with you, that means you're going to live forever. Aren't
we so foolish? Aren't we so foolish? Think about
it. We sin. We're the source of sin. And
then we turn around and look to the source of sin to find
some assurance. Isn't that crazy? Isn't that
just utterly crazy? If you want to find assurance,
you need to leave your cracked water pot and you need to go
to the mercy seat. Christ the mercy seat. Now listen
to the Scriptures. The eternal God is thy refuge. The eternal God. And underneath
are the everlasting arms. Listen, I give unto them eternal
life and they shall never perish. He said, Christ is the author
of eternal salvation with eternal glory. He said, by His own blood
He entered in once into the holy place having obtained eternal
redemption for us. He says, they which are called
receive the promise of eternal inheritance. He says, He made
with us an everlasting covenant He gave us an everlasting righteousness. In Him is, in His everlasting
kingdom. And it's founded on a everlasting
foundation, the Scripture says. In the Lord Jehovah is everlasting
strength. And therefore the Lord shall
be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy glory shall be thy God. So the glory of the new man that's
made new by Christ, is everlasting. That grass, that flesh is withering
and the very best bloom it's going to ever produce is going
to fall away just like a bloom on a flower. But I'm telling
you this, the Word of the Lord endures forever. And this is
the Word by which we're born so that we live and abide forever.
Turn to 1 Corinthians 15. I'll show you one more scripture. What's going to come of this
new man? God's going to keep us believing
on Christ only, and this is what's going to become of Him in the
end. When that old man of sin perishes, falls away, all his
goodness falls away, this is what's going to remain. Watch
this. 1 Corinthians 15.45 says this. So it's written, the first man
Adam was made a living soul. The last Adam was made a quickening
spirit. Look down now at verse 47. The first man is of the earth.
He is earthy. The second man is the Lord from
heaven. Look at verse 49. And as we have
borne the image of the earthy, and that old man, we shall also
bear the image of the heavenly. He is going to make us entirely
new inside and outside. He's done it inside. He's going
to do it outside. We're going to have a new body
just like Him, conformed to His image perfectly, brethren, and
there won't be any sin. Jesus said, I am the resurrection
and I am the life. And he that believes on Me, though
he were dead, yet shall he live. He said, Whosoever liveth in
Me and believeth in Me, He said, shall never die. Do you believe
that? He said, do you believe this?
See, what I'm saying to you is you're going to always have those
times when your old man's going to get the upper hand. And he's
going to have the predominance over you. And God's going to
do that to show you you don't have any strength in you or any
reason to trust in you. And then He's going to turn you
to Christ. and make you to rejoice in Christ, that He keeps you
believing, that He has made you righteous and holy and redeemed
you, and that He keeps you. And He's going to show you the
glory of your flesh is just a withering grass and just a blooming flower. But the Spirit of God lives there
forever. The Word of God lives forever.
And His people will live forever. Trust Christ. Don't trust yourself.
Trust Christ only. Only. Amen. Let's stand together, brethren. Father, we thank You for Your
Word. We pray now that You'd use it to strengthen the inward
man, to turn us to look to Christ, that You'd set our affection
on things above, not on things below. Set our affection on Christ.
Show us that our real life is hid with Christ at God's right
hand. And when He comes, we're going
to appear with Him in glory. Make us to put no confidence
in His flesh whatsoever. Lord, we pray this for Your glory
and Your honor. In Christ's name, Amen.