Gooding, David: 3 - Uncountable Wealth

It is a great pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, to see you here again. Your lecturer has asked me to say that, and to admit to the sad truth, that he has fallen far behind the advertised program. He asked me to say how profoundly sorry he is for this fact, and it comes because he spent all of our first session last night on only the first five verses of this letter. So your lecturer asked me to say that tomorrow he promises to do better, you see, and he'll make up the leeway tomorrow if you can come to the three sessions or to get the tapes. He will try to redeem his character. That's a difficult thing, but he will try to do that, you'll see. So that tonight, uh, we shall probably get round to thinking of the uncountable wealth that we mention, uh, for our second session. We should not get round tonight to dealing with the end of enmity and must reserve that for tomorrow. Now, when we began our study last night, we spent a lot of time considering what God has to say to us in this letter about his cosmic purposes. His purpose for creating this universe. His purpose in creating our world. And we studied what God has to say about his purpose in these things. Because his word assures us that we are involved in this matter. We woke up one day to find we were in this world. We've been conscious of it ever since. We are conscious, likewise, of the fact that our world, or at least our stay in it, is not permanent. And if we listen to the scientists, they will enforce this notion that our world, however long it exists, is temporary. The scientists debate, of course, among themselves as to whether the universe is expanding or contracting. In the nineteen fifties, the then professor of astronomy at Manchester, Professor Lovell, assured the public that they were on the point of proving that this world exists in a steady state. It's neither getting younger nor older. As it appears to decay, yet further supplies of energy and atoms are somehow added. But his promise could not, was never fulfilled, and now is dismissed by scientists. They still debate whether the world will, uh, uh, contract, the universe contract. If it does, of course, it will mean an enormous crunch. Will be the end of this little planet, certainly. Or whether it expands. It goes on forever expanding, the consequent heat loss will spell death for this planet anyway. Then there are other matter, uh, small matter to be considered, that our sun up in the sky is putting out millions upon millions and millions of tons of energy every moment. Astronomers reckon it is a middle-aged star, do you see? Which makes it possible for us to be a planet of that star. But if it's putting out energy like this, by definition, one day it'll run out of energy. Before that happens, the sun will cave in upon itself and then explode. And in that moment, little planet Earth will disappear. Our world is temporary. Added to all that, of course, observation tells us that our s- our personal stay on this world is temporary as well. It leads to the question, doesn't it? What is it all for? And so we spent a lot of time last night considering God's purpose in creating our world. And we learned that God made our world so that he could put on his human creatures, and then give them free choice, free will choice, and offer them the possibility of becoming more than simply a creature of God. The possibility of becoming a child of God. Growing up to become a son and daughter of God. And the way we c- become children of God is spelled out quite clearly in the Bible. To as many as received Christ. To them gave he the power and authority to become children of God. So that we found our passage in the early verses of Ephesians to underline that purpose of God before the foundation of the world. He chose us in Christ. That is to say, he provided Christ as the means by whom he could adopt us as sons and daughters to himself. Now we are tonight to come down to the details in the argument and the discourse that follows. We shall not be able to stop at every phrase, comma and full stop. But let me, if you will, guide you in our thinking tonight. You have, as I hear our chairman say, a copy of Ephesians in front of you. You might care from time to time to check where we are in our exposition. I have in front of me a very old translation, then I've got my Greek New Testament here, which is the original Greek, just to keep me on the lines, you'll see. We've got it then? The purpose God had in mind for creating this universe and putting us on it as his creatures, was to give us the opportunity to rise in the universe and become sons and daughters of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, God's dear son. That is the scheme. He's done it for what reason? Verse six of chapter one says, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he's freely bestowed on us in the beloved one. That is the praise of the glory of his grace that he bestowed on us through Jesus Christ our Lord. For it is Jesus Christ who is God's beloved one, his beloved son. And to put it in humble language, God loves his son so much. He determined to have an eternity full of human beings that have received his son, have become joined in spirit with his son, who by God have been placed in his son, that God might have multitudes of sons and daughters for all eternity. And he's done it for the praise of the glory of his grace. I feel that deep down in my insides. I don't know about you. A job to put it into words. God's grace would be wonderful. It is wonderful. We shall later come across the verse that says, by grace you have been saved through faith, and not of yourselves, not of works, lest anybody should glory. It is the free gift of God. God's salvation is a free gift. God is not in the business of selling salvation. There's a story told, I can't tell you whether it's true or not, of a poor woman in a city in Europe, and her daughter was desperately ill, and she, she thought that perhaps if she could only get some grapes for her daughters, it would be a good thing. She walked down the city, and there were these big ornate gates, and they were open. And she could see in them a beautiful greenhouse with a lovely, fine, and luscious bunches of grapes. Oh, beautiful. And the poor woman stood there thinking, could she perhaps buy some of those grapes? And as she thought, there came a very elegant lady and said, my good woman, what do you want? She said, I hope I could buy some grapes. How much would I have to pay for a bunch of grapes? And the elegant lady replied, my father is not in the business of selling grapes. He is the king. Hold your apron out, she said, and cut and cut and cut and cut. Oh, stop, she said, I can't afford it. You don't have to pay anything, said the elegant lady, and cut and cut and cut, still she could scarce carry the grapes away. My father doesn't sell grapes, said the princess, and I'm glad to say in the name of my father in heaven, he doesn't sell salvation either. Salvation is by grace. It is the gift of God, and for all eternity, as heaven surveys the multitudinous hosts of the redeemed, it shall express not only his grace, but the glory of his grace. This is real salvation. This is the magnificent gift of God. But what about our sins? What happened? What was God's reaction when man rebelled, wanted to go his own way? So says the story in Genesis. And so have we all. Gone our own way. We've not all murdered our mothers-in-law, I know that. You see. Or shot policemen dead or something. Or robbed banks. But God's charge against us is that all we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. Our Lord Jesus told a parable at one stage, did he not? It's called in the old, uh, translations the parable of the wicked husbandman. Sounds very odd in modern English, but it was about a man who planted a vineyard, you see, and he let it out to tenants and himself went away to a far country. And at the time, uh, of the harvest of the grapes, he sent a servant to get the grapes, you see. But the tenants beat him around the head and sent him go- going with nothing. So the owner sent a few more servants, but they each got very roughly handled. Last of all, the owner said, I have only one son, but I'll send him. Surely they will respect my son. But when they saw him coming, they slunk behind the glass houses. They whispered to themselves, this is the heir. Come, they said, let's kill him and throw him out, and the vineyard will be ours. It was a parable, of course. Not difficult to see its application. Israel was God's nation. The world is God's world. He's let it out to us as creatures, but we're only tenants. We don't own the place. So many of us are like those tenants. They were not content to be tenants. They wanted to be owners. I go my own way. Want to be those that set the final purpose of our living. Care nothing for whether it coincides with God's purpose for creating the world and us on it. Our Lord finished that parable by asking them what did he think the owner would do to the men that murdered his son. And they suggested to the onlookers he will come and destroy their men. Yes, but the parable was obvious, wasn't it? God has sent his son, his only son, and the world took him and hung him on a cross, slung him out. And what would God do about that? Now here is the amazing story of it. Though the world meant it as a act of defiance, God turned it and used the occasion through the death of his beloved son. God then taking steps that that death should be for our benefit, that he would bear our sins and the penalty of of them upon him, so that we might be, in the verses of this chapter, redeemed and find forgiveness of our trespasses and our sins. That, ladies and gentlemen, I know you've heard it many times. But if you were hearing it for the first time, it would be almost incredible that the God of this universe should come in human form, send his dear son in human form into our world, and let the world crucify him, and turn that very death into the means by which we might be forgiven and justified and reconciled to God. That, says the Bible, is God's grace, the glory of God's grace. I don't know about you, but if a mosquito of a pleasant s- summer evening latches on my noble forehead and stings, I don't stand still and debate what shall I do. I swipe it forthwith. I expect you do the same. What do you suppose our God would do with this planet? But That mo- murdered his son. Do consider, behold, perceive the incalculable wealth of God's grace. So that the Bible can put it this way: if we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, how much more shall we be saved by his life? This is God. This is God. There's a story told of, uh, King Solomon. He was meant to be a very wise king. He was, in some respects. And one of the stories that is told about his proverbial wisdom is that, uh, one day in the Royal, uh, in the law courts, the Royal Bench Division, uh, you'll say two women were brought in. They were both, uh, prostitutes. And they, they slept in the same room. They both had a little babe, and in the middle of the night, one of the women, uh, rolled over on top of her braids a baby and smothered it and killed it. She woke up and realized what she'd done, and quietly she crept out of bed, went across the room, took the other woman's live child, put her dead child by that woman, went back to bed. And when they woke up in the morning, of course, the woman that saw her child was dead, heartbroken, of course, then looked at it and said, but that isn't my child. That's her child. And she woke the other woman up, and there began, uh, uh, began one of these contests of pulling of hair and scratching of faces and things. And, uh, you see, ha, they argued the case. One woman said it was her child, the other woman said, no, it wasn't, it's my child, and so on. And so they brought the case before the king. And the women told their story. And the king said, well, I will be fair. And calling one of his officers, he said, officer, take this living baby and with your sword cut it in two. I'll give half to this woman and half to that woman. One of the women said, yes, you do that. And the other woman said, no, no, let her have the child. That's the mother, said Solomon. She'd do anything rather than her child perish. Would we know who the true God is? Oh, sir, madam, the true God, I nearly said, would do anything rather than we perish, to the extent of giving his son for us as our substitute and savior. So we have forgiveness through him. The Bible tells us that even before the foundation of the world, God foresaw what man would do with his free will, and strive to get independence of God, and break God's law, and virtually tell God, go hang. And God made provision for it. The Lamb of God was foreordained, says Bible, before the foundation of the world. Forgiveness we get then. Through Christ and in him. Ah, but then the ve- verse goes on to say, which he made, you see, according to the, uh, riches of his grace, which he made to abound towards us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in him, to for the organization of the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth, in him. So we better stop over that, because that contains some majestic ideas. We're forgiven then. Well, you are if you've trusted Christ. For forgiveness is only in him and through him. But God doesn't just give us forgiveness, of course. God makes known to us what his plan is for the future. We considered last night why there is so much pain in the world, and found the biblical answer to be that as a result of man's rebellion against God of our first foreparent, God has subjected nature to frustration, so that all creation groans in travail unto now. And we too, who are believers, we also groan within ourselves, waiting for our complete adoption, the redemption of our bodies. But why we notice that as the source of the trouble and the disorder in our planet, we also notice that God has already started the process of restoration, what the Bible terms as the restitution of all things. And he did it when, upon the third day after the burial of Christ, he raised our Lord Jesus from the dead, a human being with a literal body, raised him from the dead. It was the beginning of the restoration of all things. And God here tells us what his plan is for the future development of the new heavens and the new earth. So that being forgiven, we may more and more conform ourselves and fit ourselves into the purpose that God has for our lives as his sons and daughters. It says here he has determined for the organization of the new heavens and new earth to sum up all things in Christ. Now, the word Paul uses here is an unusual word. It only occurs once in a one other place in the whole of the New Testament, you see. So what does it mean? Well, it's okay, uh, translate it, sum up. It's God's intention that when Christ comes again, he'll come to reign, and everything, the all things, shall be summed up under the headship of Christ. And And anything anything of which he's not head will be removed. Christ once hung upon a cross in our world. Not now. He's the heir of the Father, by whom the worlds were made, who made at Calvary purification and purgation of the guilt of our sin. Was buried, risen again, sits at the right hand of God, and is coming again. When he comes, he will restore all things, and he is going to be, says God, the head, everything and everyone under his headship, and they have who refused his headship shall be banished to the everlasting darkness. But the word means more than simply under his headship. Though we better start to apply it to ourselves at that level, do we not? You have received Christ as your savior. You say, yes, I rejoice and I have forgiveness of sins. Marvelous. Mm-hmm. So what is the purpose of that then? You say it makes me feel good. I'm delighted to hear that. Any further purpose in it? Says God, now I've forgiven your sins, I'd like to tell you what my purpose is. That you shall come under the headship of Christ. That he may be your Lord. You say, yes, when I get to heaven, he will be. A half a minute. You can't be serious. You're proposing that in heaven Christ shall be your Lord? Well, what about now? In everything in life? That's the purpose of salvation. But the word would purposely means more than that, this word to sum up is used in the Epistle to the Romans in chapter thirteen. In this fashion, Paul is commenting upon the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, and so forth. And he says all these separate promises can be summed up in one phrase, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Doesn't mean that they are eliminated, but if you want to explain the law as a whole, every bit of it now comes under this general statement of its purpose. I shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. It's summed up in that phrase. And the significance of every redeemed human soul, summed up in Christ. Ultimately, it's the only meaning that life has, you know. I were to ask you, what, what does your life mean? What's the meaning of it? I wonder what you'd say. The thing that ultimately gives us meaning is one that we're creatures of God. That's what gives us meaning. And being redeemed by Christ, if we have received him as Savior, and we're in him, and part of his purpose for the universe, that's what gives us meaning. The word can mean a little bit more. It's a word that you'll find if you read the Greek orators. I don't especially recommend you read the Greek orators, uh, you'll see, but they liked oratory, you'll see. They enjoyed it, you'll see. And indeed, they didn't go to football matches. The, uh, the crowds, they went to other kind of things, and then they hold- held competitions for orators, you see, and the people would sit all day on hard stone seats listening to orators perform, and who could get the victory over the other one, you see. It was a strange pursuit, but they enjoyed it anyway. And of course, they developed the art of oratory in a very big way and wrote great books about it, you see. And among the books were this, you had to have a beginning phrase, uh, uh, phase of your speech that said the central purpose of it, you see. And then you dealt with the purpose on that way, and then this way, and then the other way. And when you'd done that, you had to have a final thing that summed up the whole and showed the meaning of every particular argument and how it fitted into the whole. They called it by this term, and in English we would use the word to recapitulate the meaning. That's an interesting idea, isn't it? Because our blessed Lord Jesus, the second member of the Holy Trinity, is called in the Bible the Word. He is the expression of God. We are told that this universe, the whole lot, was made through him who is the Word. This universe originally made is the expression of God. The universe is something that God was saying. And we're told that as each stage of creation came, it was introduced by a word of God, and God said, and God said, and God said. We understand that the worlds were made by the word of God. A great statement of God's intention. I've often, with my childish mind, thought, hmm, look at that. What did the angels say when they saw kangaroos for the first time? Oh, what on earth are these? Kangaroos? Is that what they're called? Hm. What on earth is God doing creating kangaroos? What's the meaning of kangaroos, of all things? Yes. Well, that's a point. I haven't got an answer yet, you'll see. But I could ask the question, what was God saying when he made you? Yes? What was God saying when he made the whole human race? What was he saying when he made you as the distinct individual you are? There's not been another exactly the same as you, nor will there ever be. You are unique. What was God saying when he made you? And when we consider that we all went astray, and we have all sinned. Sinned. Oh, then the wonder comes ten thousand times stronger. What was God saying about you when he gave his son for you? The periods of history gone by, man's free will expressing itself and often resulting in misery and slaughter. Some of it, however, resulting in brilliant progress and scientific discovery. Magnificent. The ages have gone by. What has been God, what has God been saying in those ages? One day, God is going to sum up the whole thing and show its meaning and show its purpose. As nature herself is delivered from her bondage to corruption into the glorious freedom of the children of God. And among that glorious orchestra of praise that shall break out constantly and incessantly before Almighty God. There will be the presence of redeemed sinners, like you and me, who through faith in Christ have been forgiven and joined to Christ and made heirs of God as his sons and daughters and joint heirs with Christ, redeemed at that immeasurable cost of the blood of Christ. To fit into God's eternal plans for the development of the universe and any other universes that he pleases to create. So let's move on, hastily move on. The end of it all, says verse twelve, you notice, is to the end that we should be to the praise of his glory, we who had before hoped in Christ. Paul is talking of the original Galileans and others who first trusted the Savior. Martha and Mary and Peter and Nathaniel. They were all Jews, and they trusted Christ. Now the gospel has gone to Gentiles, they too, you in whom also ye having heard the word of truth, you'll see, you have trusted the Savior as well. And the end is that we should be to the praise of the glory of God's grace. Do you see? Be marvelous, won't it? Don't get embarrassed, my dear friend. Because there's going to be infinite of possibilities for God to take you, if you are a believer. Are you a believer? Have you accepted Christ? Become a child of God? Well, if you are. For God to say, come here, my dear, and say to the angels, see this, good lady? See this, her story. And the angels shall admire, not you particularly, the glory of God's grace shown in your creation and in salvation, and his mercy to you, and his eternal purpose for you. And then, uh, Paul says, you'll see, in whom you also, this is verse thirteen. having heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom, having also believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is an earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of God's own possession to the praise of his glory. But that's a rather, uh, uh, tightly packed sentence, that is, isn't it? Paul was given to writing things like that, you see. We shall have to stop a moment to elucidate the various phrases, you see. On hearing the gospel, which is the truth, and you believed in Christ, what happened next? Says Paul of every believer in Christ, the moment they believe, on believing, upon believing, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. What does that mean? Sealed. Well, it's a metaphor taken from the ancient world. If they had a document that was an important legal document, it would be tied up and sealed with sealing wax and stamped with the owner of name, whoever the owner was. And if the owner was the emperor, sealed with his seal. That defied anybody to break that seal. This made that, that, uh, roll the emperor's possession. Mark of his possession. His seal was on it. And when someone trusts the Savior, God gives them forthwith his spirit. And that Holy Spirit is God's seal upon that life. It says to all and sundry, this is my property. Defies all hell and earth combined to steal that property from God. Sealed. And next, this Holy Spirit is the spirit of promise, because he's given to us to make real to us and get us to think about the great promises of God that lie for us in the future. And then it is said, you see, he is the earnest of our inheritance. That's old-fashioned language, that is. Well, I'm old-fashioned, that's why I use an old-fashioned translation. Earnest, what does earnest mean? Nothing to do with being serious. It's earnest in the sense of guarantee, if you like, or a down payment. I seem to be aware that many shops, you don't even have to give a down payment these days. They wanted to get you into debt anyway, but uh uh uh it used to be that they sold you something, you could secure it by paying so such a lump sum down, you see. That was the earnest. And then you promised by giving that earnest, that guarantee, that one day you would pay the rest. Yes? And God uses the term here, when we trust the Savior, he gives us the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is God's seal saying, this person is mine now and for eternity. And then the Holy Spirit is God's down payment to us. And the guarantee of what he shall give us when he pays us the full payment. Marvelous, isn't it? So that the Holy Spirit, already within us, is able to give us a, a confidence, guarantee, and to some extent the enjoyment of the great inheritance that one day shall be ours. So the worldly man that says it's all pie in the sky, of course, well, what else would he say? He doesn't just know the facts, you see. The believer says, well, there's a lot of pie up in the sky. I'm going to enjoy it one day, you see, but I've got some pie already, you see. Yes. The earnest of his spirit in our hearts. His spirit, we're told elsewhere, witnesses with the spirit of a believer that we are children of God. And that same spirit in the believer as he reads scripture, and the Holy Spirit makes it real to him and her. I'm an heir of, I'm a child of God. And if a child, an heir of God, and a joint heir along with Christ, even now your heir. Did I talk to you about Prince Charles the other night? You'll have to forgive me if I did, but I'm an Englishman hard up for illustrations, you see. And uh, this, this Prince Charles, you see. Ever since he's born, he's been an heir to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, you see. Right the moment he was born. So he is an heir. Whether he will ever inherit the throne is another story. But God has given us the Holy Spirit, and he witnesses with our spirits that we are the children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ. Then the Holy Spirit argues with us. I don't know if you found him arguing with you, but if you're a believer, you should do. Do you see, in Romans chapter five, Paul says, the hope that we Christians have will not let us down. Because, why won't it let us down? Because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom he has given us. It's the Holy Spirit's delightful task to take the love of God and pour it out in the hearts of God's believing people. Not their love for God, God's love for them. And the way the Holy Spirit does it is not by fancy feelings, but by a logical argument concerning the character of God. And he reasons like this. What is the biggest thing that ever God will do for you? You're a believer in Christ. You have received Christ. Yes, you're a child of God. Good stuff. Well, now, what is the biggest thing that God will ever do for you? Would you care to ponder that a moment? Realistically? Think big. Because I hope when I get home to glory, God will think I'm worthy enough and give me a whole galaxy of stars to govern. That would be something big, wouldn't it? You sure you're up to it? Well, anyway, perhaps so. Who knows what he'll give you. That isn't big enough, sir. The biggest thing God will ever do for his people, he has already done. He has given us his son to die for us. Us. The The cre- creator of all the galaxies that are or ever will be. God gave him for us. That's how the Holy Spirit argues. Do you get the point? But now the question arises, when did he do it? Was it so, madam, that God came to you one day and said, now look here, madam, um, you're, you're not, you're moderately okay, but you could do with a lot of improvement. Now, if you were to manage to improve yourself somewhat, I might consider giving my son for you, but only if you improve considerably. Nonsense. Amounts almost to blasphemy, doesn't it? No, indeed not. God commends his love to us then, while we were yet sinners. Christ died for us. It's open to us, of course. Whether we b- will believe it or we will throw back God's love in his face, I don't need it. The Holy Spirit pours out the love of God in our hearts. He's the spirit of promise. And Paul the Apostle writing in h- his second letter to the Corinthians. And now, though he was only in his late fifties, maybe battered and beaten. As a missionary, he'd been stoned, he'd been left to dead, he'd nearly drowned twice in the Mediterranean, beaten with rods and I don't know what. And he says, to be frank, you know, I prefer to go home to be with Christ. That is far better. For we can be absolutely sure that while we're in this body, we're absent from the Lord. But when we are absent from the body at death, at physical death, we shall be immediately present with the Lord. I like that, said Paul. But it's not, it's not me, he says, uh, running away from life, being r- rather melancholy. No, no, he says. You see, what's brought this about is God has given me his Holy Spirit as the earnest in my heart. A touch of heaven already there. And if this is the down payment, well, I'd love to get home and get the whole lot, says Paul. Understandable, isn't it? And then the verse adds an- another exceedingly wonderful thing. You will see, he's the earnest of our inheritance until God steps in and redeems his own possession to the praise of his glory. Until the redemption of God's possession. What does that mean? Well, God has paid his down payment for you, uh, giving you his Holy Spirit, so to speak, as a guarantee of what shall be. God has bought you. You are a believer, body, soul, and spirit. There's not a hair on your head that he hasn't bought. And you're not your own, says Paul, writing to the Christians at Corinth and in Rome. You're not your own. You've been bought with a price. For the moment, we're still left here. But one day, God is going to come and redeem, take to himself his possession. He owns us, if we are Christ's. And until he comes, the Holy Spirit is our guarantee, and he's going to take us for himself, will God, to the praise of his glory. You say, that's okay for you, Mr. Lecturer. Fine sounding words, difficult to grasp. Um, difficult to feel it's real. How do you know it isn't just words? Do you ever get that feeling? Well, that's a feeling that a lot of Christians get, and I do from time, sometimes. And for that reason now, Paul breaks off what he's going to say and tells them what he constantly prays for them. And he prays three things for these people in Ephesus. They were pagans, they've now heard the gospel, they have received Christ, they've been born as children of God. They're on their way to growing up as sons and daughters of God. They have the Holy Spirit. They're sure of eternal security and eternal glory. But now Paul prays for them, that God would give them a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God, that they might perceive and understand certain things. One, what is the hope of God's calling? Two, what is the riches of God's inheritance in the saints? And three, what is the almighty power of God available to them for daily living, even now? I mustn't yield to temptation. I frequently do in life, yield to temptation, but in certain circles, when I should be stopped preaching, I yield to the temptation to go on preaching, you see, and that's a naughty thing to do, so I won't do it tonight. I mentioned this as we close, and we shan't get round to talking about the end of all enmity. But this I do mention because it is practical after a study like this. We have thought of magnificently glorious things, true of God and his dear Son, and the magnificent salvation God offers us. You could not exaggerate its wonder and its glory. But it is so glorious. We may yet, you may feel difficult to grasp it, to sense it as real. What is to be done then? Well, Paul prays, and we can pray after. Not that God would give us his Holy Spirit, for God has already done that if we have trusted Christ. But we need the ongoing working of the Spirit in our hearts, in our minds, in our perceptions. It is the Holy Spirit's task to take these glorious things and make them real to us. You see, that is a very necessary thing. There is a bi- part of the Bible that says, who knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of a man that's in him? That's perfectly true, isn't it? I use the illustration of people's dog. Do you have a dog? Fido perhaps, or Bruno or something, or Nero Caesar or whatever you call him. Um, and he knows a lot about you. If he sees you eating a beef steak, ha, he knows exactly all the lovely feelings that are filling you as the beef steak descends into the lower parts of the earth, you'll see. And, uh, he comes round if you let him, and he wants some of it, he understands it. Good old Fido. And then you take him into your drawing room or your study, and you show him this painting. You say, Fido, have a look at that. That's by Rembrandt, old boy, you see. What do you think of that now? And Fido has a go of thinking of it, doesn't get very far. And uses what faculties it has. Goes and sniffs it. Doesn't, doesn't yield a lot. Tries to lick it. Be careful, it will do something outrageous if you're not careful. Uh, uh, you'll see. None of the tests applied do anything for the dog. And you might save your breath, it's no good trying to explain to it what you see in that picture. But it hasn't got your human spirit. The things of God are like that. Who knoweth the things of God save the Holy Spirit of God? The marvelous thing is, to the humblest believer, God gives his Holy Spirit that they might begin to understand the lovely things that are given them by God.