Sunday June 6, 1993

	Romans 12:1-2 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
	Over the course of the past weeks, we have been concentrating on the necessity of our coming into a better understanding of what our relationship with God encompasses in His will in our lives. We have dealt with several misconceptions about the will of God in an effort to bring to the forefront the truth that God's Will is completely centered simply in the glorification of His Son throughout the universe. This is to be the focal point of our lives as He lives forth from us unto the rest of His creation. What we need to realize, in a living manner, is that we are fully in line with the will and purpose of God as we become more and more reliant solely upon Christ to be our life. As our trust in Him to live His life in us develops and grows, so too will our desire to please the Father.
	In line with this, as we considered last Sunday, we need to know God in terms of Jeremiah 9:24, specifically in relation to His judgment.  But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the Lord.
	It would be appropriate to spend just a few more moments this evening dealing with the truth of God's judgment as it relates to our lives now in Christ Jesus our Lord. So often, when we are presented with this wonderful reality of the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives as Christians, we have a misconception of what judgment means. It is seen as that final judgment, when all the earth will stand before God and be counted whether they have accepted Christ or denied Him. It is considered in dread for all of the anguish of those who have refused to acknowledge the rightful position of Jesus Christ as the Only Begotten Son of God, Savior and Lord.
	That is one aspect of judgment, but not the one before us in this verse in Jeremiah, which has an effect on us each and every moment of our lives. It is that revelation of the Holy Spirit as we are faced with situations and decisions which cause us to discern our deepest motives and thoughts.
	The judgment of Jesus Christ in our lives in a living relationship with God, will reach to the very depths of the recesses of our heart judging the very motives of our lives. Why did we choose to say this or that to someone? Was it out of the Love of Christ, or was it for an earthly desire or self-righteous motive? This judgment places our every thought, word, deed and decision before us, before they are made or spoken with the view to what would please Christ. Are we pleasing Him in our words, or are we seeking self-exultation?
	Take this truth to the Lord in the privacy of our prayers before Him and judge whether we are living for Christ or for ourselves. This is the judgment that we face daily, and this is the judgment which should bring us before God in glorious adoration of His name for His love in making us receptive to what He desires in our lives. Thank God that His Holy Spirit works so wonderfully in us to search our motives in order to reveal the pure motive of Christ in each situation. And thank Him that He gives us His Spirit and His Word by which we are enabled to obey and to desire His ways over our ways and thoughts and motives.
	So often we hear, and unfortunately many of us express the feeling that this is great to know in our heads, but how does God work to make it part of our lives? Sure, that is easy for you to say, Ted, but I always seem to have difficulty with my fleshly desires rather than with God's desire for my life. Just look at today's scripture in Romans. How am I supposed to present my body an acceptable sacrifice before God, which is my spiritual desire, when my earthly desire is anything but acceptable to God? There always seem to be obstacles in the way of my reasonable service unto God? What am I supposed to do?
	The aspect of the active judgment of Jesus Christ in our lives identifies certain obstacles which can hinder our deeper relationship with Christ, as well as the conditions which God has made part of our relationship to overcome these obstacles. The way to know God's Will in our lives, is to seek after an absorbed relationship with Him. As our focus is upon Him, so then He will create in us the hearts that will overcome the adversities which so easily detract from our service unto Him. We are called into a relationship with God, and in that relationship, God works to renew our minds and transform our hearts by His Holy Spirit. The key is in our willingness to give ourselves in utter dependence upon God!
	There are basically three manifestations of our natural beings which serve to obstruct a further developing relationship with our God. They are our natural hostility to God, our sin, and our fear of submission to God. We will, hopefully this week and next, deal with each one of these elements in order to see how God has already worked to make these obstructions no longer hindrances to our coming into a greater and ever increasing knowledge of our Loving God.
	  Initially, we need to recognize that there existed a natural hostility to God in our sinful flesh. This seems rather elementary, but as this world continues to delude itself in the idea that man is basically good and can make a difference on his or her own, we need to be reminded that we were at enmity with God, and the world is still ingrained in its enmity toward God. The more it tries to build man up with self-esteem and other corrupt aspects of man's basic make-up, the more we need to recognize the truth that we were separated from God by our own vile desires. Rom. 8:7-8 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. There is no desire for the things of God in those who are apart from Christ Jesus. They may seek after some kind of spiritual existence, but they would rather choose the darkness of the occult than the light of the face of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. 
	Such was the case with Adam and Eve when they listened to the serpent rather than the Lord. They wanted their own way, which they knew was not the way of the Lord. They chose the path of damnation rather than the path of truth, because they wanted to be as good as God in their own rights. This is the way that the world has always gone. There has always been the desire to be gods unto our selves, rather than being in right-standing with the Only God of Creation. Such opposition to God and His ways have lead to the most horrendous demonstrations of animosity to the God of Holiness, even to the crucifixion of His only begotten Son, sent to bring Life and Truth and Love in to this cesspool of humanity. This is but one example, the supreme example of the hatred that man has harbored toward God, his Creator. 
	We can see this very clearly, even as the people of God in this world. Christians, living for Christ face the hostility and the anger and the reproach of this world. There is a definite reason for this animosity. You see, we are dealing with two different realms. Those who have accepted Christ have been translated to the realm of the Spirit, wherein the principles and the truths and the presence of God is now our life. The world, however, is still forced to exist in the physical realm where there is nothing but decay, destruction and death in the fumes of its animosity toward God. As we sojourn in the midst of the world, the light of Christ shines forth and illumines the despair of their self-delusion. They can not tolerate the light, and therefore try to eliminate it. The world hates the light and the light-bearers and tries desperately to remove or extinguish the light in any possible manner.
	Having identified the natural hostility that we harbored toward God before we accepted Christ, let us now see what effect it can have on our relationship with Him.
	It is the residue of this self-deception which is the obstacle to some Christians coming into a more excellent relationship with God. We may tend to place our desires upon the things that were formerly part of our self-lives apart from God, in the feeling that we are missing something. Such situations need to be met with the fact that we are now a new creation in Christ Jesus, and that all those old things are now passed away, and we have a new and far more excellent life in Christ.
	God has made a way for those in Christ to overcome the obstacle of that old hostility which once reigned in our lives. In Acts 13:22, we have the preaching of the Apostle Paul concerning God's replacement of King Saul by David as King over Israel. And when he had removed him, he raised up unto them David to be their king; to whom also he gave testimony and said, I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfill all my will.   
	God has given us a heart after Himself in the giving of Jesus Christ our Lord. As we accept Christ to live His life in us, so also we accept the gift of a new heart that is after the glorification of God in all things. Many times, we may be faced with a situation that seeks after self-glorification, which would have delighted the old heart, but now serves only to grieve the new heart of the Spirit. The key becomes the fact of our willingness to serve God in following our new heart's desire. Do we give into those earthly desires, which we now realize were only garbage and lead only to heart-felt agony before our Lord, or do we seek to do His will in accordance with the new heart of Christ who indwells us?
	Again, we are lead to Psalms 46:10 in seeking an answer to this willingness to know the ways of God. Be still and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in all the earth. The Lord has made a way for us to answer the desires of his heart in our willingness to know Him. Be Still! This is impossible for natural man! The earthly realm is an ant's nest of activity searching this way and that for some path, any path, out of the dilemma of the rising fires of perdition which beset it on all fronts. Natural man is racing to and fro in any effort to find some type of security in this world of chaos and anarchy. 
	Be still and know that I am God. That is the answer to our need for order in this world's confusion. As we are still, we learn His ways, and His truths and His responses to the desires of our heart. We learn to know Him and to trust Him in all things, great and small. In quiet stillness, even in the midst of the most terrible of earthly circumstances, we learn to know joy and peace through the heart of Christ.	
	Hosea 6:3 Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth. Our desires after God will be met as surely as the sun rises and the rain falls to earth. He wants us to desire Him in the same manner as the earth is refreshed by the rain. The course of our lives is to be the daily renewal of our willingness to know God in the splendor of His excellence. As this desire to know Him develops more and more intimately in us, so also does our desire to seek after His guidance in all things.
	Psalms 25:4-5 Shew me thy ways, O Lord; teach me thy paths. Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day.
	Do we desire the Lord to show us His ways? Are we willing to wait for His guidance in a situation, or are we going to give vent to that residue of self which is at enmity with God and seeks to handle the situations in our own ways? We need the guidance of the Lord in such small matters as even to the words we say to our children and to our spouses. Do we wait for God to guide our tongues, or do we talk before we seek His words? The key is our waiting on the Lord and our willingness to wait on Him in all things, great and small. 
	The second obstruction that can block our ability to know God and His will for our lives is sin. I John 1:6 If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: Sin, if it is allowed to, serves to deter many a Christian from knowing God. It definitely prevents any of the unsaved from a knowledge of God until they willingly accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. They cannot know God because a sinful nature can not be in the presence of God's holiness. It will be utterly destroyed by the righteousness of God's essence of purity. The only manner of knowing the Father, as Christ has told us, is through Himself. As He indwells us, so then are we able to come into the presence of God, not by our merit of any kind, but in the covering of Christ's sanctification.  This is the only manner of dealing with our sinful nature before God, in its death to Christ, that His life is now our life.
	Presently, however, we are concentrating on Christians, who have already turned our lives over to Christ and who are hindered because of our acquiescence to the temptations of self. We are daily bombarded with the desires of the flesh, and the enticements to give into our residue of self. As that expression of self-will is evidenced, we need to have dealings before the Lord in order to have our hearts turned back to Him in His fullness and beauty. It is never a matter of God turning from us, but we turning from Him, and then needing to be cleansed and to have our desire after Him restored.
	In Dan. 9:20, we have the example of one of the most devout of Old Testament patriarchs, Daniel, who found the need to go before the Lord and confess his sins. And while I was speaking, and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the Lord my God for the holy mountain of my God;...
	What is meant by confession of sins? It is simply our hearts being in agreement with the Lord that we need to have His cleansing done in our lives. It is agreement that our actions do not please Him and need to be brought under His control and not our own. This is a major aspect of coming into the will of God as we can agree that we were wrong in a given situation in the manner in which we reacted or behaved or even just expressed less than Christ's Love in our thoughts. 
	Until we can agree with God about the filth of our selfishness, we will find that we are hindered in our relationship with Him. This is where the world has, unfortunately, made manifold inroads in the indoctrination of the inhabitants of this earth. There is now such an extreme emphasis on the value of self, and self-esteem, as never before in the history of humanity. To preach the depravity of the human being apart from God is simply not tolerated. In our schools, to state that young people mis-behave because that is their human nature is met with hostility and harsh reprimands and demands for retraining in the sociological aspects of human development which is the lie of this generation.
	The truth, however, is that man is a sinful being apart from God and Christians will give into their sinful former nature of self-seeking as long as they refuse to agree with God that their lives need to be cleansed in completeness by the working of the Holy Spirit. 
	The Apostle Paul had to deal with this truth with the Church at Corinth, and all of the sinfulness that they had allowed to take place within their church. Yet, in spite of all the various elements of sin that beset the Church, we are given the reality of what God has done for us in Christ Jesus, to make certain our calling unto Him. I Cor. 10:13 There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. 
	God knows our beings, our hearts, our innermost thoughts and weaknesses. That is why He desired to indwell us with Himself in all fullness. Not because of anything that we had done, but simply because He loved us and wanted to fellowship with us. He works in us to the point of the complete glory of Christ being manifested in our lives unto all those about us. This means that there has to be a complete cleansing done within us. In Christ, we are now spiritually perfect, because we are one with Christ. Now, He has blessed us with the working of His Holy Spirit to make our physical expression of Christ as perfect as our Spiritual essence of Christ. As sin is present, it needs to be exposed and our beings need to become so desirous after God, that we are repulsed by anything that does not express Christ in our beings. Such is the working of the Lord in us.
	Notice that we are not tempted beyond that which is borne by Christ. God does not play games with us, to see how far He can push us until we break. With every testing that comes our way, there is a way of escape which He provides for our use. That way of escape is Christ Jesus. Notice that it is not something which we are able to handle apart from Him. That becomes evident in those times when we give into self and self-desires, and find only utter chaos and hopelessness. Rather, we find our desire after God met fully as we seek Him in every situation.
	I John 2:5 But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him. The key to our desire after the will of God is not only in our willingness to know Him, but to obey Him in all things. This is what is being perfected as the Lord works in our lives. He is giving us every opportunity to learn to obey him in every detail of our lives. As one commentator states, "Obedience isn't optional; it is the proof that we are actually living in Christ."
	Psalms 119:9-16 deal quite necessarily with our complete obedience to the Word of God. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word. With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments. Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee. Blessed art thou, O Lord: teach me thy statutes. With my lips have I declared all the judgments of thy mouth. I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies, as much as in all riches. I will meditate in thy precepts, and have respect unto thy ways, I will delight myself in thy statutes: I will not forget thy word.
	Obedience to the Word of God is the basis of our relationship with Him. How can we learn more and more of God, if we fail to learn and respect and cherish more and more of His Word given to us to reveal Christ Jesus? The work of the Holy Spirit is to open the scriptures to reveal Christ glorified. As the truth of our Most wonderful Savior and Lord is opened in our heart through the Word of God, so ought that Word be more and more cherished in our hearts, in our thoughts and in our actions.
	This takes place as we listen to God. John 1:14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. 
	Do our lives reflect our desire to know and to obey God? This will mean that sin is no obstacle to the knowledge of the will of God in our lives. It doesn't mean that we will not be beset by sin, but that we will recognize it for the filth that it is and agree with God that it has no place in our lives. It will mean that there are no little secret sins that we try to hide away from the light of God's perfect work in our beings. It will also mean that we are truly learning to obey the Word of God, revealed by the Holy Spirit as we are led daily on this earth.
	Well, we have considered the first two obstacles to our relationship of knowing and obeying God's will, and we have also considered how God has made every arrangement to overcome those adversities through Jesus Christ. Lord willing, next time, we will deal with the third aspect, that of fear, and how God works to conquer that barrier in our knowledge of Him. 
	(Romans 12:1-2) I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God