Gooding, David: 6 - The Magnitude of the Gospel

We read in the Epistle to the Romans once more, and tonight in chapter uh eight. Romans chapter eight. Beginning from verse one. There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. For the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace. Because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. They that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. But if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. For if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwelleth in you. So then, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh to live after the flesh, for if ye live after the flesh, ye must die, but if by the Spirit ye mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear, but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba Father. The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. If so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified with him. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us all. For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now, and to not only so, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption to wit the redemption of our body, for by hope were we saved. But hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopeth for that which he seeth? But if we hope for that which we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. And in like manner, the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity, for we know not how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that to them that love God, all things work together for good, even to them that are called according to his purpose, for whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. And whom he foreordained, them he also called, and whom he called, them he also justified, and whom he justified, them he also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that shall condemn? It is Christ Jesus that died, yea, rather that was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Even as it is written, for thy sake we are killed all the day long, we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. And may the Lord by his spirit teach us his word as we think about it. Last week in our study we found... that one of the keys to our developing practical holiness is our learning to yield wholehearted obedience to the Lord. And then towards the end of our study, we considered God's technique in getting us to obey. We found God himself saying that our obedience is not best brought about by law. In fact, even his own holy law has a curious way of, instead of making us obey him, of very often provoking our evil flesh to do the very opposite of what his law commands. And therefore, God announce- announces here in chapter seven of Romans his way of getting us to obey him, and that is to join us to the Lord Jesus Christ, as a wife is joined to her husband. So that our obeying God shall not be so much a matter of our trying to keep rules and regulations, driven thereto by some stern command, but rather it shall be that Christ shall be joined to us, and Christ shall live in us, and by his holy power and by his gracious love, he shall win and woo our hearts and wills to wish to do God's will, and at the same time supply the moral and spiritual strength for us to be able to do the thing that we would. Somebody will say, but then what's all this that you're saying about the law of God? Why do you hold such a poor view of the law of God? Isn't the law good? Why do you insist that Christians are not under law? Is there something wrong about law? Is the law sin? And I suppose because ideas like this were running through people's mind, Paul was led of the Holy Spirit to devote the second part of chapter seven to answering this kind of question. What then is wrong with the law? And in the process, he turns once more to give us another diagnosis of sin. We've already had two such diagnoses of sin in this book, each related to its context, and now tonight we start off with another diagnosis of sin. You may ask why? Why all this, uh, careful interest to describe and diagnose sin? The reason is that we shall never learn to live in holy fashion as we should. We shall never learn to lay hold of God's resources for us as we should, unless we allow God to show us the depth and the desperateness of our need. So very often, even as Christians, we are not really convinced of the corruption of our own hearts. We see it well that if ever we're going to be forgiven our sins, well, of course, we must get that through Christ. But once we've been forgiven and justified, there very often steals into our heart that somehow or other we can, if only we try hard enough, we can somehow improve ourselves by our own unaided effort. We wouldn't ever catch ourselves talking like that. We would bow down to the theory that only God's Holy Spirit can make us holy. But if you watch us at our behavior and the way we go about things, if you penetrate to the secret chambers of our hearts and the motives that rise there, you will very often find Christian folks relying on their own strength, relying on their own self-respect, relying on their own pride. You say, however, do you know that, young man? Do you ever find it difficult to own you've made a mistake? Have you ever found yourself going round from Land's End to John O'Groats to avoid admitting that you've made a mistake? Uh-huh. Why is that, I wonder? Everybody knows you're a sinner. Everybody knows you make mistakes. But I wonder if you've ever found yourself, like I found myself a hundred more times, ashamed to own I've made a mistake because owning it would prick the little bubble of my pride, that I'm a superior person, and that I'm very spiritually minded, and that really I've, uh, gone very far in the Christian life. And you know, if that's my reason for not being prepared to own the wretched state of my heart, it shows that I'm not really relying on God's Holy Spirit as I should to make me holy. I'm relying on the forces of my old pride to make me better than the next chap. I like to feel in my heart of hearts that I am really quite a superior person when it comes to this spiritual business. Along that road are the pitfalls of failure. And if we miss them on the one side of the road, it is all too likely we shall fall into the trap of Phariseeism. Like Saul before he got converted. Saul could honestly say that as far as he knew for years, he lived with a good conscience by tremendous self-discipline, by maintaining the stiff upper spiritual lip, by the grind of prayer and recitation of the word of God, by his own fierce spirit of ambition that took to religion like some people take to skating. Paul carved himself out a character that was exceedingly presentable, but it wasn't any good. It was hollow underneath. It was motivated and produced not by God's Holy Spirit. It was motivated and produced by sheer selfish pride. And there came a day when Paul found his weakness and his wretchedness. The man who once could claim that as far as things outward went, he lived in all good conscience, for his conscience had never s- really been enlightened by God's spirit, later wrote words that we have read to, uh, together in previous weeks. Oh, wretched man that I actually am. I know and have discovered that in me, that is in my flesh, there dwelleth no good thing. It is a mark of progress in grace that I become the more aware of the corruption of my own heart, and that I am the more ready to admit it and confess it, because I have faced the real truth about me as diagnosed by God. And I'm quite prepared to own that if I have any goodness at all, it is not by my merit, but altogether and solely due to the gracious working of God's Holy Spirit. So then bear with us for a moment while we look, uh, briefly at this final diagnosis of sin that the apostle gives us here in chapter seven. It is raised about this matter, uh, what shall we say then? Is the law sin? Why isn't the law, uh, good enough to, um, make us holy? Why can't it do it? Is it that there's something wrong, wrong with the law? Is the law sin? Oh, God forbid, says Paul. There's nothing wrong with the law. The law is holy, and the commandment holy and righteous and good. Nothing wrong with the law. But you see, how be it, says he, I had not known sin except through the law, for I had not known coveting except the law had said, thou shalt not covet. Interesting commandment that, because it is one of the commandments that puts its finger not on our external actions merely, but puts its finger right down deep inside our hearts, to our desires. I shall not only not do wrong things, I should not even desire to do wrong things. The law then was given to reveal my sin. It's going quite outside of its function to think that it was given to impart to me the power not to sin. Moreover, uh, uh, uh, says, uh, Paul, that sin found an occasion through the commandment and beguiled me and through it slew me. He likens sin to an army that wants to attack the enemy and finds a good place to act like a springboard from which to spring out all unexpectedly from an ambush and, uh, and cut the enemy to pieces. And for a long time I was living, said Paul, you know, thinking I was quite decent, doing pretty well. I hadn't realized that deep in me there was an enemy, hostile and utterly untamable. Till one day God's law came, thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not desire, and like an enemy springing out of ambush, sin took the occasion to seize me and kill me. Now, doubtless, if it is Paul's own experience he has given us, he told himself the first time he found himself coveting, co- uh, coveting and the arrow of God's law stinging his conscience. He told him it, well, it soon mastered this like it mastered the rest. But he found he couldn't master it. As much as he wanted to master it, he couldn't master it. But as we've many times seen, it's no good being ninety nine percent perfect if you're going to live under law. Unless you are a hundred percent perfect, law will condemn and damn you. When Paul found he couldn't master this sin of coveting, he knew God's law too well to think it didn't matter. He realized that in the sight of God's law, he was as good as a dead, condemned man. But then, says Paul, look at it another way. Was it then that that which is good became death unto me? The law was good, but was it, or could it possibly be that though it was good, it became death to me because it wasn't quite the right way of dealing with me? Let me try and illustrate what Paul is saying. There are some things in this life that are good in themselves, but they're not always good for us. Take beef steaks, for instance. Beef steaks are wonderful things, and if you've been digging the garden like a dutiful husband, and you come in all hungry after the end of digging the garden, and your wife has a beef steak, well, it would do an enormous amount of good. But suppose you have been starving for six months and you were nothing but skin and bone, and you hadn't tasted any solid food for weeks. If somebody gave you a beef steak, so far from doing you any good, it would kill you. You just couldn't take it in that state of health. And you'd have to be nursed back by little drops of milk and sips of soup over weeks and weeks and weeks until you gradually got enough strength to take beef steaks. As I say, if they gave you beef steak too early, that which is good in itself would become death to you. And we've seen that kind of principle work in the moral sphere, haven't we? You've been ever in a house where a mother has a boy of eleven who can play the piano? I have on occasion. And in the time when mother is going to in- eh, to entertain some guests, to see, uh, to dinner. And it's all laid on, the boy's been practicing this last week or so, much to his annoyance. After the dinner is over, at some suitable time in the evening, the subject matter shall be turned round towards pianos, and hey presto, very soon Johnny will be asked to play his piece on the piano, to see. Good stuff. But the guests are late in arriving, like some irritating guests are. And then something goes wrong with the dinner, and a great and interesting conversation gets, uh, set up after dinner, and the time is going by, and it's half past nine and a quarter to ten, and Johnny is getting very sleepy and very excited and a little bit bad-tempered. At last comes the opportunity for Johnny to perform, but by this time, Johnny is at the end of his tether, and instead of getting meekly on the piano and playing it properly, he begins to protest and squiggle and squirm like unwilling schoolboys do. And he makes a horrible scene, much to his mother's disgust and embarrassment. And though he is prevailed upon to play, he plays wretchedly, and mother is disappointed, and the evening's a flop. Uh, and perhaps one of the guests sitting back has been thinking, you know, really, it would be nice to hear the boy play, but wouldn't it have been a bit more realistic for mother to have said, yes, well, it's a nice thing, and I've every right to ask Johnny to play, but, uh, wouldn't I to have considered that this wasn't the appropriate moment, and Johnny was at the end of his tether, and he was tired and miserable and irritable, and wasn't I really asking for trouble ever to think of asking him to play the piano at that hour of night? Could you say that about God's law? Are God's law a holy thing, but a little bit unreasonable, perhaps, to expect the likes of us to keep it? Some critic will say, but it wasn't God a little bit, isn't this being unreasonable to expect people to keep the law like that? Oh no, says Paul, God forbid, far be the thought. It is not that the law is good, but it was unreasonable to ask me to keep it because I want to keep it. I'm not complaining, he says, there's anything unreasonable in the law. If that what I would do, I don't do, and what I would not do, that I do. I consent unto the law that it is good. I don't want to covet, says Paul. I'm not complaining at the law. I don't want to covet. I agree the law is right. My misery is this, not that I think it's unreasonable for God to tell me, thou shalt not covet. My misery is this, that even when I, I really want to stop coveting, I can't stop coveting. I agree with the law, it's all right. I want to do it. Learn then, shall we, from the pain and experience of this great saint of God. Learn what is the depth of our trouble and misery. Says Paul, I sin in spite of my will, in spite of my heart, in spite of my mind. There are things I would do. I know them right. I want to do them. I would do them. I brace my will, and I say, look here, poor old fellow, you're going to do it. I don't do it. There are things I don't want to do, and I tell myself, now you're not going to do it again, old fellow. And I brace my will to stop myself doing it, but I go and do it. Learn, shall we, that the trouble we are beset with is stronger than our willpower. If you think that just by straining your willpower you're going to win, you haven't really diagnosed sin that's in you yet to its proper depth. It's not only my will, says Paul. I delight in the law of God after the inner man. Oh, so now his affections are aroused. It's not only some rather grim monkish figure, grimly forcing himself to do God's will. He loves to do God's will. He delights in the law of God in his inward heart. Learn, shall we, that even loving God's law, appreciating its beauty and its rightness, is not enough to keep us from sinning. So then he says, I find, uh, that with my mind, I serve the law of God. Oh, how very nice. Ah, yes, he says, but you see, the trouble is that it's just about where it stops. I serve the law of God in my mind, but with the flesh, I serve the law of sin. Learn, shall we, that our mind and intellect and moral judgment, these are not enough to keep us from sinning. Wouldn't you agree? Haven't you ever found yourself, I don't know whether you're given to talking to yourself. Not a bad thing to do if you do it on the right occasions, to give yourself a real good homely lecture. Haven't you ever found yourself saying, you know, you were a fool tonight. Why did you do it? What a senseless thing to do. Yes, yes, sin generally is senseless. Well, why did you do it then? It's silly to do that. Well, that is the point. We can see it with our minds, and if our minds are renewed minds, renewed by God's Holy Spirit, it makes sin look doubly foolish and senseless and unintelligent. But learn, shall we, that our mind, our intellect, and moral judgment is not strong enough to keep us from sinning. You may read your Bible from dawn till dusk. You may find your mind thrilled with the glory and fascination of God's wisdom. You may determine that you're going to carry it out. Your heart may be set on it, but friend, if that is the sum total of your resources and you haven't any more, you will fail and fail constantly and miserably. You say, what a desperate plight. That is indeed a desperate plight. All its wretchedness can be summed up here. I know, says Paul, that in me, that is in my flesh, there dwelleth no good thing. I'm afraid if we disagree with that sentiment, it is simply because our consciences have not been enlightened as they might be by the light of God's Holy Spirit. We should do well to face it and believe the diagnosis. To know your enemy is at least to be forewarned. In not knowing, in forgetting, in failing to observe the presence and power of the enemy, there lie many a trap set by the devil himself to ruin the testimony and break the endurance of a believer. I never thought I was the type of person that would do that. Oh, oh. Yes, you feel what you've done is such a terrible thing, you didn't think you were the type of person that would do it. Why didn't you think you were the type of person that would do it? Why didn't you think you were the type of person that would do it? My dear brother, if only you had thought you were the type of person that would do it. Perhaps you might never have done it because the fear of doing what would led have led you to lay hold of God's power, precisely because you thought you weren't the type of person to do it. Could it be that you became careless and didn't learn in that particular to lay hold of the Lord's strength? What then is the answer? Oh, thank God he has an answer. If God is realistic in diagnosing our sin, he is realistic in providing a salvation, and that salvation can be spelled in one word: God's Spirit. God's Holy Spirit. The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, Paul calls it. That brings into us a new power and a new principle. Not now our mind and will and heart by themselves striving in an unequal battle against sin, but God's Holy Spirit with all his divine energy within us. That's the secret. The law of the spirit of life in Christ. So that God's Holy Spirit makes good to us the fact that Christ literally dwells in us. Let us see the facts stated. Lest we should think that this business of the Holy Spirit's working within us is some sort of super duper deluxe edition of Christianity, that only the gray beards and the really, you know, those that are sort of saintly by nature, if there are any sort. Some people find it more difficult to be saintly than others, and I'm one of them, I must confess. Uh, and some of us might be inclined to think that this business of the Holy Spirit actually in us and leading us, this is only for some Christians, the really advanced. Oh no. It is the fact, says Romans chapter eight and verse nine. Let me read it to you. It's a statement, not an exhortation. It says, but ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. Please notice that is not an exhortation. It doesn't say you ought to be in the fle- in the Spirit and not in the flesh. It says you are in the Spirit and not in the flesh. If so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. But if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of. That is, you are not a Christian at all if the Holy Spirit isn't in you and you are not in the Holy Spirit. You are not a Christian at all if Christ isn't in you. I want to stress this at the risk of being misunderstood. For generally, if you quote one verse of the Bible, someone can think up another verse that puts the other side of the story and imagine that, uh, uh, he's contradicting you or you are him. But allow me to emphasize it, this is a fact. You are not in the flesh, but in the spirit. If the Spirit of Christ dwell in you. You see, if this were not true of every believer from the very moment he believes, there wouldn't be a believer ever become holy under the face of the sun. Do you know why? Why, this way around. Suppose it were that you had to earn the power of the Holy Spirit. Tell me, please, when would you be saintly enough to earn it? Hm. Do you know, I've heard people tell me that the way to get the Holy Spirit's infilling is to empty yourself. Well, you have a go, my brother, and tell me when you're finished, will you? If I could empty myself of all that was evil and weak and vile and sinful, I nearly said I shouldn't need the Holy Spirit to do it, should I? That's just what I can't do. I wish I could do it. I wish I could empty myself of my spite and narrow-mindedness and lovelessness. I wish I could. That's just what I can't do. I can repent of it, I can judge it, I can say it's wrong, but to empty myself of it, oh, what an impossible task, as we have just read from Romans seven. It would be utterly u- useless for God to say, well, I'll give you my Holy Spirit to make you holy if first you make an effort and get a little bit more holy than you are already. Why, it would like, it would be like putting a dish of lovely food for me when I was desperately hungry and putting it on a wall, uh, a- a- a- at about eight foot. Well, I can't reach a wall of eight foot. So God comes down right where we are, right where we are, and gives us freely this gift of his Holy Spirit. I want you to go back and think about your baptism, if you will. You were buried, weren't you? We had that all out before. You weren't saying that sin didn't matter, you were saying that sin mattered so much that God had to condemn you. That's right. Nothing of what God is here saying in this chapter is meant to encourage you in sin. Certainly not. God sent his own son in the likeness of sin as an offering for sin, thereby he condemns sin. But there is no condemnation for you now. Why not? Not because sin doesn't matter, but because the condemnation has already been suffered in Christ. If you got yourself baptized, there was an end of the whole ugly business, condemned and dead and buried by your association with Christ. Somebody stood at the side of the baptismal place and said, now there, you get up, go on. And if you get up, then you might, uh, learn to live a life, uh, of holiness, and when you've lived it long enough, perhaps God will give you his Holy Spirit. No. No. The moment you began to come up out of that, uh, baptistry, you were saying in a figure that you already had a new life. That's why you were coming up again. You were symbolizing not merely your death with Christ and your burial with him, condemned under God's law. You were symbolizing that even when you were dead in sins, God quickened you again, gave you a new life. Free, gratis, and for nothing. It is true of every single believer, that by God's grace, they are not in the flesh, they are in the spirit. The roots of your real life, my brother, have been transferred. The roots of your life, the real you, have been transferred, and they are in God's spirit. They are no longer in the flesh. You are no longer in the flesh. There has come a transplant. And this by God's gracious and holy operation. You are in the spirit. Oh, what lovely music that is. What joy and gladness, what real gospel it is. The gospel doesn't begin and end when I've got my forgiveness. All this great gospel that makes provision for me on those same terms of gospel, to have the power to live a life pleasing to God. But being in the spirit doesn't mean that I've been turned into some automatic machine. Doesn't mean that I've been turned into some kind of robot and that the Holy Spirit just turns the switches inside of me and makes me do that and makes me do that and makes me do the other. You say, how nice it would be. Would it? Oh, I confess I feel that sometimes now. Oh, if some sort of overmastering power took hold of me that would make me be and behave as I ought to do. I'm asking for the moon, am I not? God has no intention, my good friend, to turn you into something less than human by reducing you to a machine. You are rooted in the Holy Spirit, yes, but every juncture it will be, have to be by your permission, by your personal faith, that you appropriate his power. To borrow a phrase from Ephesians, that Christ might dwell in your heart. How? By faith. Constant faith. All the way along believing that the resources are there and deliberately laying hold of them. And it is possible for me as a Christian to do that, and it is possible for me to forget to do it, and to become careless about it, so that while I am in the spirit, I can walk after the flesh. It's not automatic. What'll happen if I walk after the flesh? Well, the Bible tells us plainly that the mind of the flesh is death, because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God. It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then, if you live after the flesh, you must die. We talked about that last week, didn't we? We needn't go into it here again at length. The apostle is not saying that if as Christians we live after the flesh, we shall lose our eternal life or be shut out from heaven or anything like that. He's talking not about the penalty of sin, he's talking about the consequence of sin. If we walk after the flesh, we shall die. That is to say, we shall do all those kind of things that the flesh loves to do, and we shall find that the things that the flesh loves to do are corrupt things, and they tend to sorrow, and they tend to strife, and they tend to wrath. They break human relationships. They mar our fellowship with God. Sin continued in will pervert our spiritual palate. We shan't want the Bible. We shan't want to pray. And it will leave us weak. Whence come awful remorse and sad failure and corruption and heartbreak and death. We have a choice. The choice is constantly ours. All that we had the mind constantly to choose, weak as we are and bankrupt as we are, always the mind to turn our eyes towards Christ, the Spirit within us, that he might be allowed to provide his gracious strength, his light. Oh, in that moment when I feel myself swelling up inside and I could come out with that unkind cutting word. When I feel like penning that withering letter. When I'm tempted to do a deal that's shady. Oh, then if I had the mind to say, Lord, show the light of your spirit on this urge that I've got inside me. I feel I've every right to bash my brother a little bit and bring him to his senses, but Lord, show me. Would you by your spirit shine on this inward urge I've got? Is this urge from your spirit? Or is it part of my old flesh? And the very, uh, breath I give myself to stop and think. Might be one step taken along the road of breaking an automatic habit of revenge and spite, and allowing God's Holy Spirit an inroad to illumine my mind and my judgment, and to strengthen me and deliver me from what hitherto has been a lifetime habit. So easy to go on doing what we've always done, reacting as we've always reacted. So easy when we do it to excuse ourselves and say, that's the old flesh, and you know I haven't got a chance. You have a chance, my brother. Oh, I cannot get away with it by excuses like that, saying, oh, well, I was born that way, oh, well, that's me. Well, that may be me. There's no excuse, my brother. Because if you are Christ, you are in spirit. Oh, it may be a long drawn out warfare that you've got to fight before your Jerichos go down and you've seen the last of them. But that's no excuse for not learning to fight. If, on the other hand, I allow the Holy Spirit his way, and by the strength of the Holy Spirit, I learn to mortify and keep under control the deeds of the body. I shall live. It doesn't mean I earn eternal life that way, but I give the chance to my eternal life to develop its powers, with all the consequent enjoyment that there's in it. Live. Live. Oh, I can roll a little bit of spite around my tongue. I can get a good deal of glee about doing a shady deal and think, you know, life would be tame. That's how the world thinks, doesn't it? Life would be tame if you didn't do a bit of cheating here and there and didn't swear a bit here and, uh, indulge in this, that, and the other there. Ah, but God would call that kind of experience death, compared with what it is where his Holy Spirit reigns. If you get fun out of cheating people, you yet haven't learned what the Lord knew, that it is in fact more blessed, more happy, much more thrillingly happy to give rather than receive. So then, if we are led by the Spirit, we are sons of God, so it says. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. You'll notice the term, won't you? It doesn't say children of God, it says sons of God. That is true that a little boy of five minutes old is a son of his father. Very often when the Bible uses the term son, it is thinking of grown up son as distinct from a child. Whereas your little boy, when he was only two, didn't very well represent your ideas and ways of life, now he's a developed big fellow. We can see you in him, can't we? He's become a full grown son. It shows your character. And it is by being perpetually led by the Spirit that I grow into a son, a full grown son. I am a son of God. We shall observe the obvious, of course, that being led of the Spirit doesn't mean being led to give out a hymn a- at the breaking of bread, merely. It is, of course, a very blessed thing to be led of the Holy Spirit, to give out a hymn at the breaking of bread. I don't speak disrespectfully. But we shouldn't let it get into our heads that that's all it means. Being led of the Spirit is being led in my daily conduct, in my way of thinking, in my attitudes, in my reactions, all the week long. It isn't a habit I can switch on at five to eleven or twenty five minutes past of a Sunday morning. And it's not an experience I am meant to switch off when the breaking of bread is over. Led of God's spirit. Oh God, give me the mind to be willing to be led, lest I remain a child and a baby, a child of God, but not a full grown son. And with this, Paul turns once more to the subject that we were dealing with in chapter five, where this whole conversation began. This whole discussion began in chapter five, where Paul talked about being sure of attaining the glory of God, and gave us grounds then for believing and daring to hope confidently that we shall most certainly attain the glory of God. Since chapter five, he's been telling us God's methods of making us increasingly holy. The methods by which he will bring us at last to that glory. And now he returns to the subject. Wise man, obviously led by God's Holy Spirit. For it is a very healthy and a very helpful thing. If from time to time I can take my eyes off the immediate present of what I may ple- be pleased to call my spiritual progress, fasten them for a while on the go. For how often our progress in spiritual life seems to be slow. Well, I mustn't talk for you. I'm, this is a personal confession. Seems to be very slow. And sometimes, you know, we appear to be going backwards. It could be that we are going backwards. Always a possibility. But sometimes there is an illusion caused of going backwards. I don't know if you've ever suffered it. It comes about like this, that when I'm young, and I have very little sense, when I'm young, and I'm saved, I've got one or two outstanding faults, like when mum says do the dishes, I run out of the back door or something like that, and I stand to have my own way and rather childish things. I'm young, then I get saved, and of course these things begin to go. I do the dishes when I'm told, mostly, and I don't stamp my feet anymore and put on my parts and things right home. And then, if you please, with the disappearances of those, um, uh, matters, I begin to think I'm really making a grade. And I am making a grade. Of course, I'm advancing like a child in the kindergarten school. I'm learning ABC, and by the time I finished it, I think I've nearly learned all there is to be learned. Oh, but let me get to forty. And at forty, life will have experiences that I never met before and responsibilities I never met before. And it will begin to probe into deeper depths of my personality than ever have been probed before. And I shall discover, to my horror, that there are things down there that I never dreamed of. And I shall think I'm going backwards, when actually I am going forwards. It is ever a step forward to discover something more about my wickedness. And the things I discover in middle life are apt to be far more troublesome than those little peccadilloes I was guilty of at eighteen and nineteen. m And then I shall need every ounce of encouragement I can get that the fight is worth fighting against my old evil self. Though the battle be long, it shall end, by God's grace, in victory. How better than to look after the future? For we were saved by hope, the Bible says. Hope. Oh, how, how important to let that hope burn brightly in our hearts of what shall be. God's determined shall be. That I might lay hold of it and find strength and courage in, in it to continue in the pathway and not be like Ephraim, who, being armed, turned back in the middle of the fight. Hope? What hope? Why the hope that we're going to be glorified with Christ one day? That the glory that shall be revealed, did I read it right? Shall be revealed to us, Lord. Shall far outweigh these present sufferings. Not only we, but we have hope that creation also shall be delivered from its bondage of corruption into the liberty, the glory of the children of God. Creation was made subject to bondage, subject to corruption. It groans. Not an animal, but there's a disease to kill it. Not a plant, but there are several blights to destroy it. Oh, creation groans. But God's word, even when it describes these grim things, disease and pain and strife and death, these are grim things, they are pains. Ah, but says God, with God's eternal hopefulness, they're birth pains. It travails, and it shall bring forth a new thing and a better. It shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty. Why is it waiting then? Why not do it now, God? Says God, I'm waiting, and creation's waiting for the manifestation of these aforesaid sons of God. My brother, would you like to, from tomorrow onwards, to find yourself in charge of ten s- perfect cities? Or would you sort of shake in your shoes and feel a bit unprepared? Say, Lord, I can't master my own temper yet, I'm not going to master ten cities. We'd all love a perfect world, wouldn't we? But God is wiser than we. He's not going to put a perfect world into our hand before we've learned our lessons. He put a world into Adam's hand, and the world was very good. Adam ruined it. Even such a thing as keeping a garden, you know, isn't the easiest thing that a man ever attempted to do. And if you had a garden the size of Adam's, you would have found it wasn't very easy. The problems of running our world are largely economic. Sin has bitten some men so they're too lazy to work, and it's bitten other men that they're prepared to bo- work, but they want all the profits. And the old question of how much I should have and how much the next fellow should have and what we should all do with it, oh, how it plays on my selfishness and greed and spite and revenge. One day, God is going to have an array of sons who think like he thinks, who live by the same motive power as he lives. His own very life in them, his character worked into them. Not baby boys. The men and women who have learned their moral and spiritual lessons. Not merely learned the Bible, because you can sometimes learn a terrific lot about this Bible and be as ungodly as you like. But learned how to live in a Christ-like fashion. And when God has got them ready, ready to take over along with Christ, he's going to release creation from its bondage of corruption and hand it over to his redeemed people to run it. Oh, what a glorious thing. I hope you find this life somewhat exciting. Stained and ruined by sin as this world is, is a fascinating place, isn't it? What ho? What makes a toadstool grow? It's a fascinating thing, isn't it? And what makes that star twinkle? Look at the marvelous animals. All the thousand and one marvelous things in this world. Do you think the next world's going to be any, any worse? Fancy being in charge of bits of it, running it for God, exploring it for God, developing it for God. Oh, what a hope there is before us. My good Christian friend, that's what this life is about. That's what this business of holiness is about. If I may dare say it, God doesn't make people holy just for the sake of making them holy, you know. That might begin to be a little bit dull. Have you ever been in a home? Oh, I don't suppose you have. I have occasionally been in homes. Can't think of one over here. Where you go into this home, and you know what a lovely home this is. Ooh, beautiful furniture, those carpets, those lovely chairs. Oh, but presently you find the chairs aren't there to be sat in, they're there to be polished. And that table isn't there to put your cup on. Oh my, what you were doing, you thought that was there to put your cup on. No, it isn't. Of course it isn't. It's there to look beautifully polished. And what you don't say, oh so dear me, that carpet wasn't there to be walked on. Dear me. No, i- i- it's there just to be clean and nice and oh yes. Well, it's nice to have a place clean and nice, isn't it? I warrant it is. But there's something even beyond having a carpet to look clean and nice, you know, and that's to enjoy the thing and use it. And God is making us holy because without our being holy and made like him, we'd ruin the next world, and he doesn't want it ruined, but he's making us holy so we can use the life to come. Sometimes I think that eternity will be here too quick, and by the time it comes, I shall still be a toddler spiritually. There'll be room for toddlers, spiritual toddlers. I hope I'm a bit more grown up when it comes, don't you? I would like to enjoy eternity to the maximum possible for someone starting off like I started off. What hope have I? My hope, and I with this I finish, is founded in three things, or rather I should say in three persons. It is founded in God and the determination of his purpose. Those he foreknew, he called. Those he called, he justified, and those he justified, some of them, no, thank God, no. No, all of them! Those he justified, he glorified, so certain is God he's put it in the past tense. So I may rely on the determination of his purpose. But his purposes don't work themselves out automatically, they rely on the energies of his Holy Spirit. How shall that purpose be fulfilled? Partly by my praying. But you said I don't know what to pray for. What is the next thing I ought to have in life? What would you say, my good brother? A better car? A better job? Well, you know, it might just be that a better car? A better job? Well, you know, it might just be that a better car and a better job is exactly the next lesson that would suit you. Give you a chance to be a little bit, uh, unselfish and use the car for somebody else's benefit. Just the right kind of test that's necessary, a nice new big car and a better job. What's the next thing for me? What would you pray for if you were me? Would you really know? It might even be a bereavement, mightn't it? It might be to be allowed some fierce temptation that would test how much of what I've said is mere talk, as far as I'm concerned. Who could know what's the next necessary step along the path? We don't know what to pray for as we ought along this path. Oh, but thank God his purposes don't depend merely on my little praying and knowing. There is one who knows, knows the mind of God, knows what the next step is, and coming alongside my weakness, he doesn't obliterate me and my choice and my personality, but he prays alongside of me and helps alongside of my weakness. And God, who plumbs the depth of my heart, listens to the intercessions of his spirit, interprets my longings, I haven't got them right the way round yet properly, but interprets them at that deeper sense that what his Holy Spirit is trying to say through me and to get me to say. God's purpose shall be fulfilled because of his gracious activity. In fact, God will turn all things, rub all things together for good. Oh, I like that word. Not merely the successes, my brother, I dare to believe the failure. You feel you've wasted some years, locusts have eaten them, you've had a big fall, you feel miserable, you feel you've wasted a lot. You may have, and it doesn't excuse you for wasting it, but I can tell you something, brother, that if you bring those wasted years to God, he can do something with them. He can use them to teach you something for which you'll be grateful for the whole of eternity. For this is the Savior that could turn even Peter's denial and that grim experience that was followed by repentance and painful restoration. Before it started, he had seen the possibilities in that, and he said, Peter, when you're strengthened, when you're turned again, strengthen your brethren. It doesn't excuse us in our sinning, but it gives us tremendous hope. He will make all things work together for good, if only we bring them to him. And finally, I may trust not merely in his purpose and in his spirit, I may trust in his workings through his son. Oh, if God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own son, how shall he not? Think of a reason, if you can. Think of a reason why God wouldn't do it. He that spared not his own son, how shall he not with him freely give us all things? For he died for us to answer our accusers. He's risen, and now he intercedes for us to minister all that sustenance that we need until at last we are conformed to the image of that blessed son. Let the hope of it burn bright in your breast, my brother. You'll need every bit of encouragement you can get on the pathway home, as it burns bright in your heart, that glorious hope. It will veritably help to save you.