Receiving the Fullness (Part 3)

0:32 Thank you. A marvelous passage that has been printed, I think, hasn't it? It's been printed out for you in the bulletin. It's Ephesians 1, 13 and 14. And to prepare you to come to the altars where you can make a nest and find a home,

0:57 I'd just like to read it briefly and open it for you for a moment or two. And Paul says, and you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession, to the praise of his glory. This is God's word. But earlier this week, I guess a couple of you might have been there. Earlier this week, I had a chance to address a group of businessmen. And we talked a bit about the fact that modern men and women feel trapped by time. Recently, there was a survey done of what people's attitude was toward time and their schedule and time management. and when people were asked to choose among a list of nouns that describe time, a very large, significant minority chose the noun, my enemy.

2:04 One woman CEO said, every book she ever read on time management, and she's read a lot of them and they all cost $19.95, said, revolutionary new approach to time. However, every single book on time management basically says this, make a list, set your priorities, do the most important things first. Some of them, however, are inventive and they say, set your priorities, make a list, do the most important things first. She says, I've only got one problem. After I do that, and I get to my must, absolutely important, urgent, must, must, must list, I only get a throw it away through it. Through the musts. Now what do I do? There's an interesting product out on the market now. It's an exercise bicycle with a desk on the handlebars and a little Sony TV there so you can write out bills and write letters and watch the baseball game. We're in trouble.

3:11 The Bible says right here that if you're a Christian, you've got the resources to break out of the prison cell of time. It says right here, having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession to the praise of his glory. This tells us two wonderful things about the Holy Spirit, one of which we looked at last week, and one of which we have to look at now. First of all, the Holy Spirit is a seal. And to remind you and to review and in a sense to elaborate for us for a minute, what is a seal? It says the Holy Spirit is a seal. You were marked with a seal when you became a Christian. Well, a seal has got to be something that's palpable, something that's visible, something that can be seen. And we said last week that a seal was a signet on a ring that a king had, so that when he was writing a letter and he wanted to show that this was a decree, a real royal decree, not a forgery, he would take his signet ring and he would put it on soft wax, which had been softened by a flame, on the document or on the letter. And when anyone read the letter with his seal on it, they knew that this was the real thing. This was a way for the king to say, this is authentic.

4:33 the Bible says the Holy Spirit has come into your life so that you know that you belong to the King that you're the real thing that you're authentic therefore the Holy Spirit is not an abstraction but something that you either that must have an impact on and in your life or else you're not a Christian and we said last week and let me reiterate this there's really three things of the Holy Spirit, the Bible says, does as a seal. The one is, it's the Holy Spirit's job to make you know the Father loves you. It says in Romans 8, remember in the spring we spent a lot of time on this, it says in Romans 8, God sends the Spirit into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

5:19 It's the work of the Spirit to show you that God isn't just your boss or your supervisor, is not just your king, not just the person in charge, but someone who really is your father, someone who really loves you. We said, secondly, the Holy Spirit's job is to give you a vision of Christ. In John 16, Jesus says, I will send the Holy Spirit, and he will take of mine and glorify me. And we said the Holy Spirit's ministry is a floodlight ministry on Jesus. A floodlight, of course, shows you the building. It throws everything in relief. It puts all the emphasis on the building. You can't even see the floodlight. Now, that means here's the job of the Holy Spirit. if you are afraid of rejection, if you are afraid of physical harm, if you are afraid of failure, what's the Holy Spirit's job? If you're afraid of failure, it's the Holy Spirit's job to say, but if you're a Christian, Jesus is your crown. If you're a Christian, you don't have to be afraid of failure. If you're a Christian, when you're rejected, Jesus is your righteousness.

6:37 if you're a Christian and you're facing physical harm or death, Jesus is your resurrection in your life. Now, I just said something to you. Does that comfort you not a bit? You know, is that just an abstraction? If you face physical death, do you say, Jesus is my resurrection in my life, it means really nothing to me. It doesn't comfort me. I'm scared to death. Or when I get rejected, you know, for you to say that Jesus is my crown, Jesus is my success, that doesn't really comfort for me at all. That means the Holy Spirit is maybe not operating in your life at all. It's the Spirit's job to give you a vivid vision of Christ, and it's the Spirit's job to give you a sense that the Father is not just a boss, but He loves you because of what Christ did for you. Now, that is something that has to happen. That means that the Holy Spirit's job is to take the doctrines of justification by faith alone, the doctrines of the fact that God's adopted you, all these great truths of the Scripture that you read, and He makes them vivid realities to you. If you want, I've had a number of Christians say to me, I want the fullness of the Spirit. What do I do? It seems so mysterious. Do I have to open my hands like this to get it? Do I have to sit and wait? Do I have to empty my mind? Do I have to submit? What do I have to do? Do I have to confess all known sin? Now, none of those things might be wrong or even bad at all. But if you want to know, listen, if you want to have a great evening with somebody, get him or her on a subject that he likes. If you want to have a great evening, find a subject that this person has a passion for and has expertise in and get on that subject and you're off. You're going to have a great evening. You want the fullness of the Spirit? I know his favorite subjects. And so do you now. The things, the topics, the truths that he is obsessed with, if you can say that, is passionate about. You read about those things. You meditate on them.

8:41 You talk to other friends about them. The Father's love, the Son's work for you. And you say, Spirit, make these things real. Show me these things. Open my heart to them. Make them vivid realities. That's the job of the Spirit. That's how you seek the fullness of the Spirit. It's not an abstract thing. You take the things that the Spirit is obsessed and passionate about. He's here to send into your heart the Spirit of Sonship, crying Abba Father. He's here to give you a vision of the Son and glorify Him and so on. And when He does that, and as He does that, and as you are willing to talk about that, if you want to have a great conversation with the Spirit of God. You've got to turn to the topics that are His obsession. And as that happens, and as He works in your life like that, we said the three things He does as a seal is He shows you the Father's love, He gives you a vision of Christ, and thirdly, He actually changes your character so that it is like Christ. And you see, the more He tells you the Father loves you, and the more He shows you that Christ is your crown, your righteousness, your resurrection, your life, the bishop and head of your soul. You see the way, your truth, your life. The more he makes Christ everything to you, the more your character will change. People will see it. They have to see it. It has to happen because the Spirit is a seal. It's a palpable. It's got to have a visible impact.

10:07 And you can tell me you know God loves you, but if people and your friends don't see you becoming less defensive, becoming more compassionate, becoming more patient, becoming less anxious, becoming more wise, becoming more unflappable. If your friends don't see that happening, then you can tell me that the Spirit is showing you that the Father loves you, but He's not, or you're not listening, or you're not on the subject. How do you get the fullness of the Spirit? How do you have the Spirit be a seal. It's the disciplines of the Christian life. It is prayer. It is study of the Word. It is interaction and community with other Christians and fellowship. It is working out your obedience and fear and trembling. It is holding yourself accountable, being in covenant with other Christians to make changes and to practice what you've read. It is to learn the disciplines of meditation and of praise and confession and petition and intercession.

11:08 no shortcuts, fullness of the Spirit, and then he becomes a seal. Secondly, he's not just a seal, he's a deposit. He's a deposit. Now, this word, I think, is a bit of a problem. This is a wonderful and amazing claim. I'd like to show it to you. But in Manhattan, what's a deposit? it's something you get back, right? You make a deposit on your apartment, and, you know, when you leave the apartment, if your apartment's in good shape, you get your deposit back. That's not at all the meaning of this word. The word, the Greek word that's translated deposit it means first installment, down payment. It means an actual portion of the thing promised. It means the real thing, the very thing that God promised. And therefore, what is it saying?

12:10 A deposit on your inheritance. What's your inheritance? The redemption, the full redemption of you, the full redemption of the people of God. Now, here, what's this mean? First of all, it means several things. Let's got to run through them. First of all, this is saying, give up your small ambitions. What you have got is, it's only a slice, but a real slice. It's only a part, but a real part. It's only an installment, but a real installment of the very life and substance and power and glory of the heavenly future and the glorious future state and of the kingdom of God. It's here. It's in you if you're a Christian.

12:56 You know what this is like? This is like Ma and Pa Kent sitting down with little Clark. and saying, now Clark, honey, you don't know what's in you. You have no idea what you've got under the hood.

13:18 You haven't even begun to flap your wings, and I mean literally. You don't know what's going on. We've got to tell you your pedigree. We've got to tell you the power that's in you. That's exactly what Paul's doing here. He's sitting down and saying, you've got a deposit. The Holy Spirit is a deposit. You don't know what's under your hood. You have no idea the possibilities for you. Give up your small ambitions.

13:48 Abandon your low expectations. There is no limit from what we can tell to what you should be and expecting God to do through you and in you. It's an amazing statement. The Spirit is a deposit on heaven. It's a first installment. And then he goes on to say what that actually is. First of all, he says, it's a deposit of our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession. Now, again, here's another word. This word possession, it lays there on the page, and in English, it's not all that powerful a phrase, is it? But it's actually, if you have an older translation or another translation, it might actually say, you are God's portion. You know what a portion is? A portion was your wealth. Look, you grew up in a family, and depending on whether you were the oldest child or whatever you were, you would get a portion of your family's wealth. Now, you've got to remember, this is back in a time in which there wasn't a lot of upward mobility. You just didn't go off to Jerusalem U, get your MBA, and say, you know, all I got to do is come up with a really great idea, go into business for myself, and make a fortune. It just didn't work that way. What your portion was determined your status in life. It determined the amount of influence you would have. It was the entirety of your wealth.

15:19 it determined your lot in life. Therefore, your portion was, in a sense, everything you ever were or ever were going to be. Now, I know, having said that, that therefore, I mean, we can't literally apply this to God, but the fact is that this is the Word of God, this is the inspired Word of God, which means that He chose this Word, and it's a tremendously daring Word. He looks at us and He says, you are my portion. You are my wealth. Now, you have to imagine, because of the word that he's using, you have to imagine, let's just say, a young man in those days getting his portion from his father. Maybe his father's about to die. And what happens is he gets it. Maybe it's in a chest, and he sits it down. And there, you know, there's the money, there's the possessions, there's maybe a deed or something.

16:19 and right there in the chest is everything he's got and probably pretty much everything he ever will have almost. And how does he look at that wealth? He looks at it and says, this is my wealth. When he looks at it, he knows that this is his future. It's an amazing thing for God, but what he's basically saying is, when I look at you, I feel wealthy. You are my treasure. You are my special treasure. There's a place in the Old Testament where he says, though all the world is mine, you are my portion. I find nothing else valuable but you.

16:57 I really don't know what that means. I don't know why he, I don't know what would ever possess God to say such a thing. I can tell in a sense that I'm not expressing the astonishing nature of this claim when he says, you're my treasured possession. You know, it happens a number of places in Deuteronomy 32.9, it says the Lord's portion is his people. Or in Exodus 19.5, God says, if you keep my covenant out of all the nations, you will be my treasured possession, although the whole earth is mine. Now, hey, long before anybody talked about self-esteem, long before anybody talked about that. This was part of the Christian faith. What do people tell you when you feel bad about yourself, when you feel depressed, when you feel worthless?

17:51 What's the basic advice? Set some goals and reach them. Lose some weight. Spend some time with some people who appreciate you. Think about your talents. Do what you really enjoy doing. what's that compared to this?

18:12 Unless you get this, unless you get this down, you will spend all of your life looking for strokes. You will spend all of your life looking for someone who will look at you and say, you are my special treasure. I mean, who doesn't want that?

19:29 You can say, yeah, I need to lose some weight. Yeah, I need to spend some time with some other people who like me. I got to set some goals. I got to feel a little better about myself. What does that compare to this? This says that the king of the universe looks at you and his heart and his eyes well up and says, when I look at you, I feel wealthy. When I look at you, I feel like you are my special treasure. I feel like you are more valuable than anything else I have or I own. I'm committed to you. I'm committed with the whole of my being to treasuring and cherishing you. All right, look, I know, I know that many of you can't even begin to reach that. But don't you want to? Has anybody else, has any other religion, has any other philosophy, is there anything else out there that tells you this kind of self-appreciation is possible?

20:29 See, is there any more glorious framework to understanding yourself than that? Of course there isn't. You might reject Christianity saying it's too high, it's too lofty, it's too good to be true. It's too wonderful. It is, as the psalmist says, 139, this knowledge is too high, I cannot attain to it. I don't mind you rejecting Christianity for that reason. That's probably not why you are. People reject Christianity saying it's too narrow. You see, it's too confining. It makes you feel too bad about yourself. You don't know what you're saying. I'm your special, you are my special treasure. Though the whole earth is mine, you are my portion. That was there before we ever had a talk about self-esteem and stuff like that. But that's not all. This inheritance that we have coming to us, the power of which is already partially available to us, is what? The redemption. Now, we're going to stop with this, but I do want to draw it out a little bit. One of the things that has always puzzled people in interpreting the Bible is how sometimes there seem to be contradictions. For example,

21:51 in verse 7, it said, we already have redemption in his blood. We have it, past tense. It's already there. Here it says, our inheritance in the future is redemption. So in verse 7, it says, we've been redeemed. And in verse 14, it says, we're going to be redeemed. Now, you know, Now, if these were in two different parts of the Bible, somebody would throw this up in front of me and say, ah, see, a contradiction. This is the same sentence. It's the same author, same book, same chapter. It's the same sentence.

22:23 So how on that could it be? It's very simple. Redemption is multidimensional. Imagine you had a friend who had been locked in some horrible dungeon or prison in some, you know, despicable, tyrannical, totalitarian regime. And he'd been in there for years. And you go personally and you pay an enormous bribe, ransom to get him out. And you bring him home. Is he redeemed or isn't he? Yeah, yeah, no He's been brought out of bondage He's redeemed, that's what the word redeemed means You're brought out of bondage, legally he's free But he's not morally free yet Oh no, he's still a broken person He still wakes up at night screaming from nightmares He still doesn't trust anybody He still lies and steals Because he had to do that just to learn how to survive He's still a broken person in so many ways and it's going to take years for you to comfort him and exhort him and confront him and teach him how again to be a human being. He's been redeemed, but he's about to be redeemed, and he's going to be redeemed. And in the same way, the Bible says the word redemption means your liberation from all the effects of sin, all of them. When you become a Christian, your sins are pardoned, and that means your sins can't condemn you. You're out of prison. You're free. Yeah and no. It's sort of like the fire's out, but the wall's still completely black and charred. You got to clean it up. You got to repair it. You got to mend it. And that's what God does.

24:10 Someday, we're going to be totally mended. Someday, in every aspect and dimension of our being, we're going to be glorified. That means we're going to be solidified. It means we're going to be permanently fulfilled and become everything we ought to be. Well, what does it mean to be glorified? Well, in a sense, you've got to go around the Scripture, but we know at least this. Our inheritance means that someday we're going to get into this state. First of all, our bodies are going to be glorified. In Romans 8, 23, it says, we have the first fruits until the redemption of our bodies. See, we already have the Holy Spirit, but someday our bodies are going to be redeemed. I want you to know that redemption is not done when you die and go to heaven. Not done yet, because when you die and go to heaven, you're still a spirit. You don't have your new body yet until the last day, until the resurrection.

25:05 There is a Greek approach to the physical that has invaded Christianity and still, still clings to big sections of Christianity, especially the Catholic church and the evangelical and fundamentalist churches. The Greek notion is the body's bad, the spirit is good. And you see, you don't have that in the scripture at all. God made your soul and your body. He's going to redeem your soul and your body, and it's only in the integrity of body and soul that you are everything he created you to be. We have a tendency to see the body as bad. That's the reason why many evangelical churches, bodily sins like sexual immorality, you know, sins that have to do with the body are seen to be worse than things like pride, gossip, and racial prejudice. They're not any different. We don't look at the body or the soul, one as being better or worse than the other. Your body has been marred by sin, and therefore it's in decay, and your soul has been marred by sin, and therefore it's in decay. God is going to heal both. He's going to redeem both, he's going to give us perfect versions of both. What are those bodies going to be like?

26:18 First of all, they're going to be, well, there's a couple of ways to look at it. The body you have then will be continuous with the body you have now. Just like the seed is continuous with the flower, everything in the flower was in the seed, they don't look very much alike, do they? The seed, the flower. And yet they're continuous. They're not two different entities. One came out of the other. In the same way, you will still be yourself. You're a seed. That's all you are. You don't look much at all. You say, thank God, like what you're going to look like there. But you'll still be you, and we'll recognize each other. Not only will that body be continuous, but it will be capable of unlimited growth. We're going to be learning forever in heaven. We're not going to ever be all-knowing like God, which means we're going to spend all of our life learning, all of our life working. There'll be skills. See, our job and the thing that most turns every human being on is to find out all the hidden immensities and infinities and potentialities of the universe.

27:24 when you cut the grass, when you create a great piece of art, when you compose or play a piece of music, you're creating. Not exactly. You're not creating out of nothing. Only God can do that. But you're recreating. You're cultivating. You're taking and beautifying. And we're told that in heaven we're going to be doing that. Our bodies will be capable of unlimited growth, unlimited power, unlimited skill, unlimited knowledge, on and on and on and on, growing and growing and growing. Right now, you've only got five senses. How many are you going to have then? Maybe 500. What? You're a vegetable now compared to what you're going to be like. You're a dandelion now compared to what you're going to be like. Vegetables, tomatoes, dandelions, they have sensitivity. They're organic. They're living things. But of course, compared to the five senses you've got, it's got one sense, touch, that's it. He has no idea what it's like to see, no idea what it's like to hear. And right now, compared to what you're going to be like, you're vegetables. Our bodies will be glorified. Nature and the universe will be glorified.

28:33 We don't know what that means. But we know that as beautiful and as gorgeous as that place is out there, the mountains and the seas and the canyons and the airs, it's nothing compared to the way it's going to be. And then God has the audacity to say, you are my portion, though the whole world is mine. Which means as gorgeous as that nature is out there, it's nothing compared to the way it's going to be in a new heavens and new earth, and that's nothing, he says, compared to what you are. I'm going to crown you with all of the glories and beauties that I am capable of. You're the crown of my creation, the apex. but most of all, our vision will be glorified. We will see him. The Bible tells us so much about that. It's called the visio dei, the beatific vision, the vision of God. 1 Corinthians 13, 12 says, now we see in a glass darkly, but then we will see him face to face.

29:33 We know when he appears, 1 John 3, 2, we know when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. This is such an incredible experience that in verse 3 it says, everyone who hopes in this, who hopes to see him face to face, purifies himself as he is pure, to even want it, to even yearn for it. Do you feel yourself yearning for that tonight, right now? Is there any description I know? I'm just being, this is ridiculous. I'm so inarticulate about such things. And fortunately, anybody would be. But even as I'm stumbling through it and trying to say, this is what you're built for, this is what you're in for, do you want to see Him? To even want to see Him is going to change your life and make you more like Him and purify it. Psalm 1715 says, when I awake, I will behold thy face in righteousness. I will be satisfied with seeing your form. Psalm 1611 says, in thy face is fullness of joy.

30:35 At thy right hand are pleasures forevermore. To see God in his face is something that we're incapable of right now. Moses tried to see him. God says, I can't show you my face. Nobody's ever seen his face because our bodies and our souls are not glorified and we crack under the strain of the weight of it. But we're told eventually, remember what Job says? We sing about it in Handel's Messiah. I know that my Redeemer liveth, and on the last day, though my body is eaten away with worms now, on the last day in my flesh I will see God. One of the old writers says this, the understanding can know no more. The will can will no more. The emotions, the joy, the delight, and love are at perfect rest in their proper center in the vision of God. For all good is in this chief good seeing his face, as all the rivers of the world come from and are in the ocean. That which the understanding, will, and emotions, what makes them restless and unsatisfied in all other discoveries and enjoyments here on earth, is the limited and imperfect nature of those things.

31:52 But as you bring a great ship into a narrow channel, she can't swim or sail but runs aground, but then give that ship sea room and depth and she can turn and sail before the wind, so it is here. All that delights you in earthly things but can never satisfy you is in God. God shall be all in all. The comforts you have here are only drops, inflaming, not satisfying, the appetites of your soul. But on that day, when you'll see his face, the Lamb will lead you to fountains of living water.

32:29 What does that mean? You're no longer trapped by time. One of the things that Kathy likes to say to me is, she says, you know, the great thing about glory, the great thing about being a Christian is you don't have to take any pictures. You know what she means? You don't live with regrets. You don't say, gosh, I never got to China. Gosh, I never got to Switzerland. Gosh, I don't have any pictures of such and such. No regrets. You know, in the end of Narnia, at the end of the Christian chronicles of Narnia, those fairy tales, all the kids are killed in a train crash. That's a happy ending, you know, see, for Christians. They're all killed in a train crash. And they show up at heaven, and everything they ever loved about earth was there in spades. They said, oh my gosh, there's the house that we loved. And there's this that we loved and that that we loved. That's why Augustine, St. Augustine said, what do I love when I love you? Is it an embrace? Is it a delicious smell? A wonderful taste? A beautiful melody? A gorgeous sight? Yes. A kind of gorgeous sight, a kind of music, a kind of embrace, a kind of taste. It's an embrace and a taste and a melody of the depths of my soul. That is the vision of God. That is the inheritance.

33:48 To see the God of the universe look at you with his eyes welling up saying, you are my special treasure, will inflict on you a joy that will make all of the potentialities of your soul erupt, and you will become as rich and as valuable as he sees you are. You know what the Holy Spirit, why it's a deposit? Because if you make Christ your Lord and Savior, in your personal prayer life and in your personal walk with Him, you can sense that now. You don't get a direct sight of Him now. You can only have a faith sight. But surely some of you know about it. Surely some of you have felt His love shed abroad into your heart. That's what the Holy Spirit does. Surely as you've sung His praises, as you've prayed, as you've repented especially, and thought about how much he loves you, you get an incredible taste of his love. And you feel valuable and you become more valuable.

34:46 And there's a place here where C.S. Lewis says, and if these lower reaches of the stream of God's glory are so intoxicating, what will it be like to drink from the fountainhead? You don't have to take pictures. You don't have to live with regrets You don't have to worry about how you deal with your troubles, huh? How do you deal with your troubles? I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed to us That's how you deal with your troubles If you don't know whether there's a God If you have no idea whether you're going to be with him when you're done Then you are trapped here on earth for 70 or 80 or 90 years And all of your wealth and all of your joy and all of the melody you'll ever hear is here So if your hearing goes, that's the end. All of the wealth you'll ever have is here, and so if you lose your money, it's the end.

35:43 All of your joy, you have to find it here, and if it goes, you're destroyed. But not if you know you've got an inheritance coming. You don't have to take pictures, you don't have to be afraid of anything, and you'll enjoy splendor in the ordinary. New green after the winter, a lady birthing her baby, Hmm?

36:06 Every joy, everything that you see is an outline of the glory that will be revealed. You can change a baby's diaper, you can mow the lawn. you can sweep your apartment and know that you're not just sweeping the apartment because you just have an electrochemical brain need for order in your life, because you're just, you know, you just evolved out of the slime, but instead, you are in the image of God, you are created in the image of the one who brought order out of chaos, and you're going to spend all of your life recreating and cultivating and working and ruling and reigning over this universe with Christ. That's why you like it when you clean your apartment up. You enjoy splendor in the ordinary. You don't have to take pictures. You can face anything because you are his special treasure and you have a deposit on the glory and a seal, his own seal of the king, on your heart.

37:09 Let's pray. Our Father, as we go to the Lord's Supper, what we really ask is that you would just remind us of these things. We're sitting at your table, so this is a time in which we need your Holy Spirit to remind us that you love us as the Father. And Father, we ask you for something else. We know, I know, that there are people here who are trapped in time. They don't know about their inheritance, they have no idea whether it's there, they're stuck. They have to take pictures.

37:45 They have to see their joys eroded by time and realize they're gone forever. Would you show them what it means to believe the gospel of their salvation so they can receive the Holy Spirit, the seal and deposit of your glory and your favor? So, Father, we pray this in your son's