I can remember, I guess I was
probably eight, nine years old, I can remember walking through
the hayfields on the farm singing that song. That was one of the
songs that they always sang where I used to go. But I would sing
that song as a kid, just going out through the woods. I'd sing
it out loud. Of course, nobody was around.
I wouldn't sing it if somebody was around. But I would sing
that song and I loved it when I was just a kid. Now, around that same age, we
would come home from church and Dad would always have L.R. Shelton
on. And I would hear him every Sunday. I can remember him just
distinctly hearing that voice. And it's just amazing. You never know when God plants
that seed. That seed may be planted at a very young age. And he may
not water it for 20, 30, 40 years. But when God plants it, He'll
water it. He plants it, he'll water it,
he'll cause it to grow in his time, in his time. We just have to learn to wait
on him. This chapter is one of my, it's
just a favorite chapter to me. It's become one of my favorites
as I keep getting older. You know when you are a young
child You love to play with toys. We would get two toys a year
at Christmas. We would get two presents, and
that's the only time all year long we would get presents. Two
times a year, or one time a year at Christmas, we'd get two presents.
And me and James, my oldest brother, we got exactly the same thing.
That way Mom didn't have to worry about us fighting over it. So
she got us the same thing every year. And as I got older, When
I became a teenager, I became interested in cars. I wanted
to drive fast cars, sporty cars. I just became enamored with them. As I got into my twenties, or
about twenty, we were married and I became interested in buying
a house. We had a family. My interest
just kept changing as I grew up. It matured as I got older. And I find the same thing is
real in the spiritual realm. I find, as almost thirty years
have gone by, that I find myself more interested now in things
above than the things of this earth. I still have this earthly
interest in these things. I still have some interest in
these things, just as you do. But I find myself thinking More
and more of that heavenly home. Of what it's going to be like
to see the Lord Jesus Christ. Like I thought about Andy. What
it must have been like. What a day it will be when my
Jesus I shall see. What a day to see the Lord Jesus
Christ. The one who walked the seas of
Galilee. The one who was despised and
rejected of men. The One who walked around and
healed those who needed healing. The One who has made sin for
us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.
The One who rose from the grave and seated at the Father's right
hand. The One who rules and reigns over all things every day. What is it going to be like to
see Him when it becomes reality? When faith gives way to sight,
what's that going to be like? How amazed and awed we are going
to be when that day happens. And then to see, when I was younger,
I didn't know many believers until I believed the gospel and
came, moved to here. But now I'm going to start, I'm going
to see others now that I've known and got to know in this life
for years, got the fellowship with them, and see them again. Those kind of things now weigh
on my mind as much as anything. And Paul says this. Well, let
me go back in chapter 14 and verse 16. For which cause we
faint not, but though our outward man perishes, his decaying, getting
older, The body is getting weaker and it grows older. Yet the inward
man, he's not growing older. That inward man never grows old. He's renewed by the grace of
God day by day. It's just renewed day by day. And then Paul says, for our light
afflictions, Afflictions don't feel light.
It never felt light when my dad gave me afflictions at home with
a switch. That never felt light. But it
depends on what you compare these afflictions to. If we compare
them to one another, they don't feel so light. But Paul says,
for our light affliction, which is but for a moment, that's all
it's for, just for a moment, the longest trial that you and
I will ever have is but for a moment. That's all it's for. Just a moment.
And it worketh. It's at work. It is at work. It worketh continually for us
a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. God's preparing us. God's preparing
us for that glory that awaits us. We're being prepared for
it. We'll see this here in a minute. While we look not at the things
which are seen. We looked at that for a long
time when we were born and grow up. We look at things which are
seen, don't we? We're just enamored with what
we see until God gives us different eyes to see with. But now we look at the things
which are not seen. Things which are God. Things
which are of the Spirit. Things which are eternal. These
things which are seen are temporary. Boy, we put so much stock in
temporary things, don't we? We really do. We put so much
stock in things that are temporary. Our jobs are temporary. I lost
four of them. I can tell you. Four companies went out of business
that I worked for. And that wasn't all my fault. Not all of it. Some of it might have been. It
wasn't all my fault. The four of them went out of
business. One of them I went to and I thought for sure, this
is when I moved here to Ashland to hear the gospel, I thought
for sure I would retire from there. It lasted three years. And they went out of business.
Temple. If anything that God has taught
me, it's temple. Temple. But the things which
are not seen, Oh, these are eternal. These
things which we don't see right now, we see by faith, but we
don't see with these fleshly eyes. Eternal. Eternal. Then He speaks here
now of a new body. You know when Christ redeemed
His people, He redeemed a whole man. Body and soul. He redeemed the whole you. The
whole you He redeemed. So Paul says, for we know that
if our earthly house of this tabernacle, tent, that's how
he speaks of this body as a tent, were dissolved, if it happens tonight, If this body is laid down tonight,
and if Paul says it's dissolved, it's over with. Yet it's not
over with. We have a building. He says we
have a body. We're not going to be a soul
without a body. We have, he says, a body, a building,
and it's of God. God made this one. A house to
dwell in. My soul lives in this body. One day this body will be dissolved,
and my soul is going to have another body. It's of God, and
it's eternal. It's eternal, and it's in the
heavens. It's in the heavens. I'm not
going to be reincarnated here. No, this one's in the heavens.
We're not coming back. This is in the heavens. Paul
says, we know. The Scripture says, all thy children
shall be taught of God. And this is something God has
taught us. This is something we know. This is not speculation. This is real. This is going to
happen. We know by the teaching of God's
Word that when we lay this body down, this body of sin, This
body of clay? Clay pots. Speaking of myself, crack. Clay
pot. It's a clay pot. And it's dust. Dust. Just dig me up. Years from now. Dust. I thought you'd say dust. How
this body? Dust. And when we lay it down
in death, we are assured of this. We are assured of God of this.
We have a building. We have a body that is a heavenly
body, a glorified body, a body made by God and it's eternal
in the heavens. And that body that we shall receive
will not grow old. It will not grow old. I was taking
a shower. the other night and I looked
at this shampoo or body wash we used and it said age defying. I looked at that, age defying,
I just poured it all over you to see if it works. Not a wrinkle
went away. Age defying. What liars. What liars, you could sue them.
false advertisement. It has stopped a bit of aging.
But this body will not grow old. You don't really, and I'm not
old, but you don't really appreciate that until you start getting
older. Until you start seeing it. You start seeing it. Man, you
can appreciate that we won't do that again. It won't grow
old because there's no sin in it. The only reason we grow old
and this body dissolves and decays, the root of the problem is sin. Sin. I had a friend that I went
to high school with. He became a Church of God of
Holiness. And he told me he didn't sin
anymore. Well, I guess you stopped aging then. If you don't have
sin anymore, you ought to stop the aging process. It will not
grow old. Not that heavenly body. It will
not have sin. I can't imagine what it would
be like not to have a pure thought. Never to have sin. Never to have anything to break
it up. You sit down to read the Word of God, Five minutes goes
by and your mind is off on something else. You have to rest your mind
and bring it back, study a little more, rest your mind. I mean,
it's just a constant rest. Trying to bring your mind back
and concentrate on the Word of God. Well, that will be over with.
That will be over with. No sickness. It will be a sinless
immortal body like the Lord Jesus Christ has. What will it be like? We'll look like ourselves, but
it'll be a new body. And for in this we've grown,
or for this we've grown. I didn't grow for this when I
was 20. And I mean when I believed the gospel when I was 23, 24.
I didn't grow for this. I find it growing more now. I
find more of it there now than I did when I was in my twenties
or thirties. But for this we groan. We groan
inwardly. He didn't say for this we complain. No, we groan. We earnestly, we
earnestly desire it. We earnestly desire to be clothed
with that immortal body because it means you have immortal life.
We'll see this here in a minute. Grown earnestly desiring to be
clothed upon, dressed, dressed with this new body. It's like
putting on a new suit. Throw away that old tattered
suit that doesn't fit anymore. Putting on this new body with
our house which is from heaven. He keeps saying it, doesn't he?
This is from heaven. It means it's from God. And it
means it's perfect. For in this we've grown. We've
grown under the burden of this life. It is a burden, isn't it? It
is a burden. Heartache. What is that old country
song? Heartache by the numbers? That's
what they are. Heartache by the numbers. We've grown because of sin. Believers
truly hate sin. And they hate it in themselves.
You hate it. Paul said, when I would do good,
evil is always present with me. I can't get rid of it. He cries
out, O wretched man that I am. I want to be done with this. And we desire to be clothed upon
Oh, to be dressed with our house from heaven. We desire to be free from sin
and to be with our Lord and to be like our Lord. I'll be satisfied when I wake
with thy likeness. Now, Paul's not saying that we
just want to die so we can get out of these troubles. That's
not the reason. But we desire to enter into the
joy of the Lord and to pure holiness without sin. The believer desires
this. This is our desire. To behold Him who loved us and
gave Himself for us. That's what it's going to be
like. That's what it's going to be
like. To be with Christ is the grand
end of a believer's life. Isn't that our grand end? To
be with Him. It's not to miss hell. It's not
to miss a place of torment. It's to be with Him. It's to
be with our Husband. It's to be with our Lord, our
Master. That's what it is. That's the grand end. Having
a desire, Paul said, in one place having a desire to depart. He says, if so be that being
clothed will not be found naked. Our soul will not be without
a body. Our soul will not be without
a body. Seeing that the believer is clothed
in the righteousness of Christ, will be clothed in his righteousness.
What kind of dress is that? What kind of dress is that? To
be clothed in it, to be found pure and holy, standing right
there with our Lord. And not be put to shame. There's
a lot of things that I could be put to shame for. There are
things I could be put to shame for. But when this is finally
over with, Nothing. Nothing can put us to
shame. Nothing can raise its ugly head
and shame us. Nothing. Nothing. But, he says,
while we are in this tabernacle, while we're still here, we are
going to groan. We are going to groan because
it's a burden, being burdened. In this flesh, we're going to
groan being burdened. Burdened with Aches and pains
of this old body because of sin. Sin is the root of it. Sin is
the very root of every ache and pain and whatever else bad comes
my way. Sin. Sin. I heard someone say this one
time. I don't remember if it was Henry or who it was. I wrote
it down. If we live long enough, we will become a burden unto
ourselves and to everyone else. If we live long enough. You just
have to live long enough and you'll see it. Burdened with emotions of sin
in this body. Burdened with the guilt of sin
when it lies heavy on the soul. Burdened with it. Burdened with
it. Burdened with the temptations
of Satan. Burdened with blasphemous thoughts. Burdened with it. Oh,
it would be good to let it down. It'll be good to lay this down. But Paul said, but not that we
would be unclothed. Just lay this body down, just
to be doing that. That's not the point. That's
not the point. But here's the point. Paul said,
here's what we desire. Here's what we've grown for.
This is it. Here's what we want. To be clothed
upon. Here it is, that mortality. This mortal life that we have
in this flesh would be swallowed up. I like that word. I like
the word he used. Would be swallowed up. Of life. We have life in Christ. We have
life. We have the divine life of God
in us. We have spiritual life. But I'm telling you, When this
mortal life is finally swallowed up, it's going to be swallowed
up of life. Of life. And we're going to really
know what life is. Christ is not life more than
this. And we are going to know what
that life is. We don't want to just die and
leave this life. No, that's not the point. Death
is not something that we really look forward to. You know, it
is a principle of our nature to want to live. I want to live. If you want to live, I want to
live. It would be nice to be translated
like Enoch, wouldn't it? Wouldn't it be nice to do that,
for that to happen? But God has given us a principle
in our nature to want to live. What do you think keeps people
from committing suicide more than there is? It's that will
to live. That will to live. But here's
what the believer wants. That mortality would be swallowed
up of life. That this body of death that
we carry around might finally, finally come to an end. And be swallowed up of eternal
life. That's the believer's desire.
It's not just to die and get out of the problems, but that
we would have life. Christ said, I am the what? A
life. We would have Him. We would really
know and experience the Lord Jesus Christ as He really is. We can only experience so much
of that now in His flesh. We can only experience so much
of it because of this flesh, the weakness of it, the sin of
it. But one day we will experience
the very fullness of Christ, who is life. We will experience that. It's not to die, but it's to
live. It's to have the life of God. That we might have life,
that we might have it, more abundantly. Now, he that hath brought us,
and here's why he's saying, he that hath prepared us for the
selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest
or the witness of his Spirit. Now, Paul was telling us here,
he's giving us a double account of the believer's interest in
this future blessedness. He says, he that hath prepared
us. That's what he's saying. He that
hath prepared us is God. It is God who is preparing us
for this life. The life of God. Eternal life.
Eternal life is to know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.
And right now, Paul says, it is God who is preparing us for
that. All that we go through is preparing
us for life. The eternal life. And it's the
blood and the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ that's
the ground of our acceptance with God. It's the ground of
our being justified in Him. And when we are born again, that
is the experience, the beginning of the experience of this life. It's the beginning of this experience. And boy, what we have awaiting
us. We have a way in this, and it takes God to do this. It takes
God to give us life. It takes God to prepare us for
this life, this eternal life. And He's given us, He said here,
the earnest of His Spirit. He's given to us the Comforter
who witnesses to us that we are the sons of God. His Spirit beareth
witness with our spirit that we are the sons of God. Therefore,
he says in verse 6, and I'm not going to go through all of it,
we'll never get through it. Therefore, since God has wrought
us, since God has prepared us for glory, and He's given unto
us the earnestness of the Spirit, He's given these things to us,
we're confident. We are confident of the blessing
of this life that we are going to have it. Are you confident
that through and in Christ, you are going to have this life.
You are going to have this glory. You are going to enjoy eternal
life. Confident that God is able to do just as
He said He would. Confident. We know that while
we are in this body, we are absent from the Lord. We know that,
but we are confident of this. That we are going to enjoy this
blessedness even though we haven't tasted the fullness of it yet.
We're confident we're going to have it because Christ has purchased
it for us. For he hath made him to be sin
for us who knew no sin. That we might be made the righteousness
of God and we are going to enjoy it because of Christ who died in our place. As he
says here in verse 7, for we walk by faith, that God-given
faith. We walk by it. We live by it
every day. Not by sight. We do not ask God
to give us signs and evidences of this. We take Him at His Word. We just take Him at His Word.
And that's where we get our confidence from. We take Him at His Word
and His Spirit bears witness with our spirit through His Word
that we're the sons of God. And we're confident we're going
to enjoy this blessing. We're going to enjoy it. We are confident. We, Paul says,
who are born of God, are confident of our future happiness. That's
why Paul said, for our light affliction. If you weren't confident,
you wouldn't call it that. You would not call it a light
affliction if you were not confident of this future blessing that's
coming. Our light affliction, which is
but for a moment, works for us a far more exceeding and eternal
weight of glory. Oh, we're confident we're going
to have this future happiness, even though we go through these
hardships and trials and heartaches. We're going to have it. He purchased
it for us. And He's prepared us for it.
We're going to have it. The believer has an inward desire
and confidence That the Lord is going to give
him just what he said he was going to give him in Christ. Wherefore, Paul says, we labor.
We labor in his kingdom with this confidence of this future
happiness, this future blessedness, this being absent from the body,
being present with the Lord. We labor in his kingdom, preaching,
witnessing, serving. We labor actively. We labor. Listen, it's a labor of love.
Oh, that's the best kind of labor. Oh, the best. To work for someone
you love is no work at all, is it? It's not work at all. It's pleasure. Pleasure. You see these athletes. They
go out, whether it be basketball or football, they are doing something
they love. And they put their heart and
soul into it because they love what they are doing. The believer, one who knows God,
one who is born of God, he serves God out of love. It's not work.
It's not a job. This is not a job. I have a job in the machine shop.
This is not a job. This is a labor of love. This
is something I look forward to. Every now and then I sit down
and I have to think, I get to stand up tonight and brag on
the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm a nobody. Get outside this
circle, nobody knows me. And yet God takes a nobody and
lets him stand up and for 20-30 minutes brag on the Son of God. And he lets us support the ministry
and support his servants. What a blessing. What a blessing. It's a labor of love. We love
to do it. And our whole concern in this
whole thing is what Paul said in Philippians. To win Christ
and be found in Him when it's over. That's what we want. I
don't want a paycheck. I don't want a raise. It's to
be found in Him. To win Him. To have Him is what
Paul said. To have Him. To be found in Him. Not having my own righteousness,
my own merits, My old bragging rights, throw them out the door.
But that I have Him and His righteousness and be allowed to worship Him
and brag on Him forever and ever. I tell you what, I'm just going
to close right there. I've got five more pages. But I don't need to give five
more pages. That's my thoughts tonight. It's
just to be found in Him, to have Him, to have our minds and hearts
set on Him and look forward together. To look forward to going home
and receiving that new body and being without all that we have
here. and all this be over with. Because
God made him to be sent for us and we know sin. He is our substitute. He took
our place. And we get to go and have and
receive everything that belongs to him. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine that? And he's
not jealous. He's not jealous that you're going to get all
that he has. All that he has. We are going to have the same
presence that he has. Just like me and my brother,
we had the same things. We had the exact same things.
And we didn't, I tell you what, we weren't disappointed in him.
We were glad to have him. We would go out and enjoy the day
together playing with him. And we are going to enjoy, one
day we're going to enjoy our Lord and all that he has and
all he's given us. Okay, Mike.