Jim Styles - God's Wonderful Plan Of Redemption - Class 1 - Redemption is all of God.mp3

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:00

   Good afternoon everyone. We don’t waste any time getting started here at all. That’s sort of nice to see. Good on you mate. As they say over there, we just had a great time with some of the folks in your old local area here up at the VIBC over the last week or so and that was a lot of fun getting to know some of you.

2. 0:18

   So now at least when we come up here, we can look across the audience and at least see some familiar faces. That’s always fun. Actually, up at VIBC, they picked the subject of the angels, which is one of my favorite subjects to talk on. And then here you picked the subject of God’s plan of redemption, which is my other favorite subject to talk about. So up here, you guys must know what I’m thinking. These are great subjects and really they’re fun to talk about because I’ve actually found going back over my life and looking at different studies I’ve done in the Bible, that if I were to rank all the different Bible studies we’ve done over the years in terms of which ones had the greatest impact in changing my life, then certainly God’s redemptive plan would be on the top of the list.

3. 1:01

   And the angels would be second next to that. Those are two studies that I found personally that had a greater impact in my life than any other Bible subject I’ve looked at. And hopefully today we’ll get a chance to share, share some of that with you and finish that off tomorrow in the Sunday school class and then finally in the excitation tomorrow. But I can still remember one time where we had a, a Bible, We had a Bible series at the Hanover Bible School one year and we had Brother Mansfield there and Brother Tennant and I think Brother Victoria Stone was there from California. And all three of them spoke in the evening program on the atonement, atonement.

4. 1:35

   We were going to have a presentation. And Brother Harry Tennant was the last to go on the Wednesday night. And it was interesting, he got up and he talked about the atonement. And I can still remember the very first thing he said after two good talks on the atonement. He told us, he said, you know, brothers and sisters, he said any, any talk on the atonement that doesn’t begin and end with the love of God has missed a huge part of the atonement. And we had really missed that for two nights. And it was a very interesting observation. And I’ve remembered that all these years that it’s very easy to leave the love of God out of this subject. And in our community today, sometimes when you hear about the atonement or God’s redemptive plan, some of us sort of cringe and think, oh, no, this is going to be trouble in the community and we’re going to hear something that’s controversial and all that.

5. 2:21

   And, and really the subject was never supposed to be that way. This is supposed to be the most motivating subject of anything God could talk to us about that is supposed to change our life. This is supposed to be the most powerful thing we look at in our first principles. This is the first principle really of that all the others hang on is God’s reductive plan.

6. 2:43

   And he designed it in such a way that this would motivate us to join his son in living a life that would be so pleasing to God that he can invite us into his family forever. That’s what this subject is supposed to do. So hopefully we’ll look at that in the first class about the love of God and what he has designed for us.

7. 3:03

   And when you go back, a lot of this is basic first principles that we’ve grown up with. But it never hurts to be reminded about some of the things that we as Christadelphians hold and understand that not everybody on in, in terms of Christian churches really do understand today. When you go back and look at the mistake that Adam and Eve made when they sin, really God didn’t have to do what he did with them.

8. 3:25

   He didn’t have to go through the plan that that he had designed. There are other things he could have done. He could have killed Adam and Eve and started over. When you go back and look at it, he really had a number of choices that he could have done, but he didn’t. That isn’t what he chose to do. And really, when you look at it from God’s perspective, this was his creation, His creatures, and He loved them. He never really wanted to wipe them out and start over. He loved his creatures and he’s always wanted to save some of this creation.

9. 3:55

   And it’s not because it just brings him glory, which sometimes we emphasize as Christadelphians that God manifestation, not human salvation, is the grand purpose of the eternal Spirit, which which is true. But really, what when you, when you’re reading through your scriptures, you’ll notice that what comes across so clearly in our Bibles is the love that God has for us and how he designed our families with moms and dads as as a husband and a wife.

10. 4:23

    That you could learn and experience the love that he has for us. And that you could have children and experience through your children and your grandchildren, the love and the compassion and the kindness and the mercy that God has for us all. That was by design because he wanted us to experience that first hand.

11. 4:42

    So when you look at his redemptive plan, he set out to say Adam and Eve after their mistakes. And he didn’t really have to do that, but his plan had to be holy. It had to uphold his righteousness. He’s a just God and it had to take take that into account and it had to uphold his righteousness and at the same time express his love for his children. And so he came up with a plan that would really do both. You find some common Bible passages that you’ll know and you can probably a lot of you can rattle them off the top of your head in first John four and verse 7, you can see how right away this is given as motivation for us, that beloved, let us love one another.

12. 5:24

    And why do we love one another and our families and our cliches? What is the reason? Well, the reason is or love is of God. It all starts from God and works its way down to us. That’s the difference between our understanding of the Bible and a humanistic approach. Humanism would start for like what’s good for humans and work the way up to try to understand God. We don’t.

13. 5:47

    We start from the top and realize it’s all about God. He loved us and therefore we love one another. And everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. This was a key central theme for being part of his family. You want to be born into His family. You have to understand His love and then learn to show that love to other people who does not love, does not know God, for God is love. And in this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.

14. 6:22

    And then this is love. Not that we love God. Oh no, it’s not about us from the bottom up. It’s all about the fact that He loved us and He sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. And beloved, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another. Now that, in a nutshell, is really what God is all about.

15. 6:43

    He has revealed His character out of His love, His kindness, His compassion to us. And He’s hoping that when He shows us how He lives, that we in turn will, will show His character to one another and how we treat each other. And so when you start looking around is to, well, how do you raise your children? How do you treat your spouse?

16. 7:03

    How do you treat brothers and sisters in a collegial life? All we got to do is look into our Bibles and find out, well, how does God treat us? How does he treat other characters, other Bible characters? And then our goal is to model our life after him. That’s what we should do. The amazing part about our God, brothers and sisters, is that He loved us when we weren’t worth loving. It’s one thing to love somebody who loves us back or already loved us in the 1st place.

17. 7:29

    And you, if you find like as a young person over there, you find some other young person who you find out really loves you and they’re willing to do things for you. And you think, wow, that’s really nice to me. And then we learn to love them. Imagine learning to love people who don’t love you. People who by the Bible calls ungodly, they’re sinners, they’re unjust.

18. 7:50

    Well, that’s what God did you find in Romans 5 after giving his exposition on the atonement and showing how nobody was really worth saving. All had sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That what God did at that point when we were still without strength in Romans 5 at verse 6, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.

19. 8:13

    That’s us, or scarcely. Well, for a righteous man, will one die? Oh yeah. Maybe for somebody who’s really just or righteous, or somebody who we think is good, we might do that for somebody who’s really good. Now for a righteous man, and yet perhaps for a good man, if there’s somebody who is really good, you, you might even dare to die.

20. 8:31

    You might like take a deep breath and I’ll do it for them and I’ll dare to die. But God, that’s not what he did. He demonstrates his own love towards us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us and God didn’t do it as a dare. God calculated this for 6000 years. I mean, I imagine Abraham walking up to Mount Moriah with his son Isaac, and he’s got to sit there for three days and in his mind he’s got to go through what it’s going to be like to kill his son.

21. 9:03

    God calculated for 6000 years what he was going to put his son through to save us. That’s the love that God has for us and the cooperation that Jesus Christ has. That’s the model that when you start looking at God’s redemptive plan and when you start to appreciate the atonement, it all comes from this perspective that God didn’t have to do this. He loves us like our parents loved us. He genuinely loves us and wants what’s best for us, and He’s willing to take the time to train us to become part of His family when we don’t deserve it.

22. 9:37

    We can never possibly earn it. It’s out of His kindness, His compassion, and His love. And if we understand that, brothers and sisters, and really come to realize that that it inevitably affects the way you treat each other because we realize none of us deserve it. And when other people make mistakes, we start realizing, well, wait a minute, so do I.

23. 10:00

    And yet look at God was still willing and His kindness to work with me through all of my mistakes. And this is what’s supposed to pass on to how we treat one another and how we learn to live in peace. This is the model that God sent his Son to die for the ungodly.

24. 10:17

    It’s fun to watch how the Apostle Paul really is probably one of our best expositors on the atonement subject. When you start going through the New Testament without Pauls letters, I think I would be in the dark on a lot of things. But what a wonderful thing that God let him write so much on this subject. And it’s fun to watch that when he went to 1st, when he went to the Corinthians, when he was going up through that area of Greece and he came down through Corinth and he and he got down to Corinth at that point and he writes to the Corinthians later on.

25. 10:43

    He says, look at that. Then this letter was written probably not too long after he had been there. But he reminds them in First Corinthians chapter 2, he reminded them, brethren, that when I came to you and what he had done is he’d been in Athens. He’d actually been up in Bria and Thessalonia before that. And remember, he took the boat ride down to Athens and he said, when I came to you, I didn’t come with excellence of speech or wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. Oh no, I didn’t come in like some great order and giving you some awesome human wisdom and talking to you about God. Oh, no, I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ in him crucified.

26. 11:20

    Paul had had it with all that human wisdom stuff. And if you recall, like back what Paul was doing, he had been up in the area where he had been up here in Thessalonica, and he’d been up up there, and then he’d go down to Bria. Remember how the Jews chased him out of Thessalonica and they took the ransom from Jason and you know, they were just following him along up there, causing him all kinds of trouble. So then he hops on a boat and he figures, all right, he’s going to get away from them.

27. 11:42

    He jumps on the boat over here at Bria, and he comes all the way down and he stops in here at Athens. Remember when he’s in Athens, that’s when he ran into the Epicurean and the Stoic philosophers, all their human reasoning. And Oh yeah, Paul, what good new thing have you got to tell us about?

28. 11:58

    And he’s dealing with all these people. They just want to talk about philosophy and human wisdom and, and all this kind of stuff. And so Paul leaves Athens and comes over to Corinth and he said, I’ve had it with that kind of stuff. That isn’t what the gospel is all about. The gospel is all about God, Jesus Christ and him crucified. This is what changes your life.

29. 12:18

    And you could see that that’s what was in Paul’s mind when he got there. So he realized that the atonement really is the first principle. This is what it’s all based on. It affects all the rest. Everything else comes back to this subject of God’s redemptive plan. And yes, we do need to have an academic knowledge about it. Brothers and sisters, it is it’s, it’s important to get out our Bibles to study the subject, come to an understanding of, of what God has done.

30. 12:43

    But the atonement is not just an academic study, but that’s all we’ve done, and we got all the Bible passages lined up and we can give a good talk on it, and it’s all this academic knowledge. We’ve missed the point of the atonement. It was supposed to have a moral impact in our lives. That’s why Paul would say when he got to the Corinthians, he didn’t want to know anything but Jesus Christ and him crucified, because that’s what changes your life. This is not just academics.

31. 13:12

    This is moral. This effects how you live. It effects how you treat your spouse, your kids, your parents. It affects how you treat your brothers and sisters, your friends and your neighbors in your neighborhood, the people at your work. This effects all the parts of your life and how you live. The the atonement.

32. 13:30

    That’s what it was supposed to do, God’s redemptive plan. And when we understand it and appreciate it, that’s what it will do to your life. Just to give you an example of how that comes across in our New Testament writers. And I love the New Testament because when we study the atonement in the Old Testament, there’s always that fear that I have at least. And I’ve seen with others that when you’re reading things in the Old Testament, you’re never really sure for sure when you’re looking at the shadows of the law. Did we really get what God had intended, or did we misunderstand the shadow?

33. 14:02

    But when you read New Testament exposition, when you go to our writers like James or Peter or Paul, and they tell us what it meant, then it’s not a debate anymore. It’s not like, well, I think it’s this and I think it’s that. We don’t get that. And it’s safest to stay in our New Testament expositors and then work our way back to the Old Testament and have a look at where it came from.

34. 14:24

    It’s just, it’s a safer way to study the subject. And what a privilege we have of having these New Testament expositions so that you can read them today and then look back. So Peter, when he’s talking to the his Jews of, of the suffering that they’re going to go through, how they’re going to be challenged, how they’re going to be put in situations where people are going to revile you. They’re going to say things about you that are nasty and not true.

35. 14:45

    And how are you going to respond? What are you going to do when that happens? What are you going to do when your neighbors treat you like that? Peter goes right back to Jesus Christ and him crucified just like Paul and he says for to this you were called in first Peter 2 at verse 21, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that you should follow in his steps. Who committed no sin, never made a mistake, right, committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth. Who when he was reviled, Oh yeah, on the cross and all through his life when people reviled him and they picked on him when he was reviled, He didn’t revile in return. No, never, not once.

36. 15:29

    And when he suffered, he didn’t threaten. He didn’t come back and say, oh, I’m going to get you and there’s no vengeance. I’m going to take vengeance on you and I’m going to get you for that. And he didn’t do those kind of things, but he committed himself to him who judges righteously. He put it in God’s hands.

37. 15:46

    He believed completely that God was in control of his life and all the circumstances of his life. This is where you get the peace of God that passes all understanding. And Peter goes on and says in verse 24, who himself bore our sins and his body on the tree, that this is the moral impact of the atonement.

38. 16:06

    Why did He do it? He did it for us. Not that you can just be forgiven of your sins, but that it will change the way you live. That we, having died to sins, there’s Romans 6 might live for righteousness. We have a new life. We come out of the waters and we live after the pattern of Jesus Christ resurrected from the dead. By his stripes you were healed.

39. 16:31

    That’s what this was all about. He went through all of that to change the way we live so that God can righteously forgive our sins. So the the moral impact of the atonement, when you start looking at it, is all about changing our life. It’s not some academic study that Christadelphian studies so that we can have all the right answers and we can do all these things.

40. 16:52

    It’s supposed to change how we live and treat people. And it’s very sad in our community that over the years sometimes this has become a real disruptive subject. And people have argued about it and they’ve written articles and letters and ecclesias at times have divided over this subject when it was designed to change how we live and how we treat other people. That’s what it was supposed to do. And you can see how our New Testament writers used it, you see in Second Corinthians chapter 5 and Paul’s second letter to them when he talks about the love of Christ compelling us that this is not academics, this is meaningful, this is life changing, that the love of Christ compels us because we judge thus that if one died for all, then all died. He didn’t die as our substitute.

41. 17:39

    And and we’ve got that right, brothers and sisters, and we’re right to to argue that case and fight that with the churches of this world. Oh no, that if one died, he died as an example that all of us would follow in his steps. If one died, then all died. We have all died to sin.

42. 17:58

    We’re going to put it behind us. We’re no longer slaves of sin, but we become slaves of God and he died for all in verse 15 that those who live see, see how they take this subject and they immediately go from just an academic understanding to where this is meaningful to how you live.

43. 18:17

    They died for us so that those who live should no longer live for themselves. You can’t live for yourself anymore. You, you’ve died. The old man is dead. He’s buried in baptism. We walked out thankful to God that we now can live a different life, no longer enslaved to sin. So they no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again.

44. 18:39

    We live for Christ. We’re not slaves of Christ. We’re no longer slaves of sin. So this subject, what it’s supposed to do is change how we treat our spouse, change how we treat our children, change how we treat our parents, how we treat our brethren and sisters in a collegial life and their families and their children and our neighbors at home and our employers and everybody the the governing authorities.

45. 19:01

    It’s, it’s all about how you change your perspective based on what God has done for us. And he’s hoping that it will change the way we live. You see, this is not just a New Testament subject. It really starts way back in the old, not just with Adam and Eve, but it comes up through the prophets as well. You can see, for example, when he was talking when in Isaiah 43, when when God was trying to compel the Jews and help them understand that there was no other God. There wasn’t some God of good and some God of evil. There wasn’t some God who brings good things to your life so that when something good happens to your life, you get a job promotion.

46. 19:34

    Or some of you young people, you finally decide that the girl you’ve been waiting for, she finally says yes. And you get to get married. Or somebody who’s looking for a job and you’re out there searching in an area. You just moved here to this area and looking for a job and all of a sudden an employer calls you and offers you a job and you think, yes, God help me on that one.

47. 19:51

    But it’s not just for the good, it’s also in the bad. God’s in them both. As Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 9, don’t just say good things about God when good things happen, but remember he’s there in the good and he’s there in the bad because he’s in control of it all and he’s using those things. So in Isaiah 43, this is what God was dealing with with the Jews, is that this whole idea of a God of good, the God of evil had come into their community at that time back in the history. And he says to them, You are my witnesses, says the Lord. And my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. And before me there was no God formed, nor shall there be after me.

48. 20:32

    I even I am the Lord. And beside me there is no Savior. There is no other God, there’s no Savior, there’s nothing. I have declared and saved, I have proclaimed. And there was no foreign God among you. Therefore, you are my witnesses, says the Lord, that I am God. And you know, this is an interesting case because the these Jews at this point, they failed a lot of times in the Isaiah’s day and afterward in the moment Hezekiah rallied the troops and he got them to support Yahweh, their God. But then in years that came after that, there were some disasters and yet God still used them as His witnesses. They were the witnesses that He had picked this community. He had chosen Abraham and worked with him over all those years. And even though they failed, and even though they made mistake after mistake, and then king after king would arise who was terrible and leading the community astray, God still was willing to work with the remnant of this community because He had promised Abraham.

49. 21:29

    He loved Abraham and He loved his children and He promised that He would work with that remnant and He would help them understand and bring them into His family. So any study that we do, brothers and sisters of the atonement really does need to start and end with the love of God that that is. It’s sort of like the whole framework is all built around God initiated it.

50. 21:51

    He loved us and that’s what started it all. You’ll find again in first Corinthians in chapter 1 this time that I think it’s fun to look at the concept when Paul would would illustrate this idea and say, I, I was going to know nothing among you but Jesus Christ and him crucified. He illustrated to the Chris to the the Corinthians in chapter 1 when he pointed out to them about an ecclesial life, why you shouldn’t have factions, because remember, this was an ecclesia that was split up. You know, I love Paul, I’m of Apollo, so I follow Cephas over here and and they they were splitting up into little segmented groups.

51. 22:24

    And so Paul would remind them that the way you overcome, that the way you get rid of these factions and this kind of self-interest is to remember the atonement. Go back and look at your roots. What did God do for you? And he reminds them in verse 27 that God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, that God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are mighty and the base things of the world and the things which are despised. God has chosen and the things which are not to bring to nothing the things that are.

52. 23:02

    And why does he do that? Why does he pick the lowest things of this world? Why does he pick us? We’re not the best academic people out there in this world. We’re not the greatest usually at anything. We’re not the richest. We’re not the wisest. We’re not the smartest. We’re not the best Craftsman.

53. 23:18

    We’re not the best of anything. There’s all kinds of better people in this world today who are better than us at all those things. So why does he pick us? Well, because by his election he chose the low things of the world that no flesh should glory in his presence. And if that’s the case, we don’t ever want to get on our high horse and ex leisure life or in our families and put ourselves up there higher than we really should be.

54. 23:46

    Because God works with the low and the weak and the base, the ungodly, the sinners, those are the people he works with to bring into his family. Not the wise, not the mighty, not the great. Oh no, they’ve got their own game plan. But God can use the low and the base and the weak because they will give him the glory.

55. 24:08

    And that’s what he’s looking for. He wants people that love Him and who respond to his plan. That’s what the atonement is really all about, That there’s no, no possibility of any human ever boasting that look at what I did in my family or my ecclesia, or look what I accomplished. It’s not about me, it’s all about God. And so in Second Corinthians chapter 5, when Paul again is reflecting back on this and writing to them, he reminds them about the one who has prepared us for eternity. This is all by design what God is doing. He has a family.

56. 24:42

    He’s getting ready and he’s getting ready to join his family forever. That’s what he’s doing. And so he who has prepared us for this very thing Paul says is God who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. And in verse 18, now all things are of God who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself and not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation which the apostle Paul was committed to take around the Roman world and to preach to all those Gentiles.

57. 25:23

    But you see how he understood probably more than any of us, that it was all about what God had done in his life. And I think Paul probably got it so well because in his own efforts, he had studied at the feet of Gamaliel. He had done what he thought was right, and he was researching the Bible. He searched the Scriptures, like Jesus said, because in them you think you have eternal life.

58. 25:46

    And Paul went through that whole process of thinking he was going to look good in God’s eyes. I’m going to build myself into somebody that God will look at and say, wow, you’re really wonderful. I want to save you. And Paul went through this process, and if Christ hadn’t stopped them on the road to Damascus, he’d be dead with no hope of resurrection. That’s where he was headed.

59. 26:06

    And he realized that for all his human efforts, they were a waste. They hadn’t gotten them anywhere because he had failed to realize that it was really all about what God was doing and that none of us would ever be good in God’s eyes, but only righteousness could be imputed to us from our heavenly Father who loves us.

60. 26:25

    And he came to understand that probably better than any of our New Testament writers because of the low position he had come from in his own efforts. And he realized what God had done in his life. I, I look back at Paul, he’s amazed at the things that Christ had taught him. And he did he, he specifically taught him when he was out in Arabia. Jesus Christ taught him the truth and he’s that’s why it’s such an awesome exposition when you look at Paul’s letters. Now, when you go back and look at where we’ve all come from there and sisters, and you go back to study this subject and looking at it’s always good to note like, where did it all start?

61. 26:57

    And so we do, we start back in Genesis and look at what God did in the beginning when Genesis, in Genesis chapter 1, when God did the creation, when he made our world, he saw everything. At the end of chapter chapter one at verse 31, he looked over everything that he had made and indeed it was very good.

62. 27:15

    And so the evening and the morning were the 6th day. So the the whole creation, all the things that he had created at that point were very good. But then we know that what happens is Adam and Eve’s sin. Things take place. And now you look at this creation and you find in Genesis chapter 6, after thousands of years have gone by, this case you have Noah in the flood. And now we’re looking at in Genesis 6, verse five, that this time the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

63. 27:53

    Something’s changed. This isn’t what God saw when he first looked and saw that it was all good. Now he looks across the world at all the thousands of people, millions maybe that were alive at the time of the flood. And he realizes that now he sees a lot of wickedness, evil, it’s not so good anymore. And that the, the imagination of their their thoughts of his heart, the intent of the thoughts of the heart of man is only evil continually.

64. 28:19

    That’s different than it was before. When Solomon talks about that in Ecclesiastes 7 at verse 29, he mentions the fact that truly this only have I found that God made man upright. His brother Harry Tennett drew him on time with his stick drawings. He said this is the way God made Adam and Eve originally.

65. 28:37

    And then what happened is they became like that, but as Solomon says here, that God made man upright. But they have sought out many schemes and something changed from Genesis 1 until Genesis chapter 6. And that’s what we want to look at for a moment. So in Genesis chapter 3, when the serpent came to the woman, he said to the woman things that we know we’ve looked at before, that you will not surely die. So he says a lie.

66. 29:05

    He was the originator of the lies. For God knows it in the day that you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God knowing good and evil. And it was to him was like, you’ll be like the angels. The angels know good and evil. You’ll be like them.

67. 29:17

    You’ll be like the Elohim that were walking around in the garden at the time. And so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and was pleasant to the eyes, and the tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she gave to her husband with her, and he ate also.

68. 29:30

    And then the eyes of both of them were open. So Serpent was right about that. Their eyes would be open. They had eaten of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. Now we all know back in this case that we don’t know how long Adam and Eve lived, how long they survived before they sinned, but it took at this point in their life, an outside tempter to make the suggestion. There’s something about the way they were created when God looked across and saw that all was good, that Adam and Eve didn’t have those natural tendencies to the extent that we do of wanting to choose evil.

69. 30:08

    They were more a case. It was, you know, a day could go by. Maybe they want a whole day with no sin. Maybe they went a week with no sin. Maybe they want a month or a year. We really don’t know exactly how long that was, but it took an outside tempter to bring about the idea and suggest that they would give in and and commit sin. And so the apostle Paul looks back at this. So here we go again with New Testament commentary on Old Testament stories.

70. 30:33

    It’s always good to look at what he says in Second Corinthians Chapter 11 and verse three. He points out to the Corinthians that I fear lest somehow as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. So here’s a case now where Paul is worried that what Eve went through, Eve was fooled, she was deceived. And Paul is concerned that the whole ecclesia at this point is going to be deceived and fooled by things that were happening in their ecclesial world and that they would be be fooled like the serpent had to see Eve in this case. But when he writes about this to Timothy and talking about again this same incident in First Timothy chapter 2, his argument about having sisters in ecclesial life learn in silence with all submission comes from the fact in verse 13 that Adam was formed 1st and then Eve.

71. 31:28

    It’s not about cultural things. It’s about the creation and the way the angels made the creation. And he goes on and says that Adam was not deceived. See, we wouldn’t necessarily know that back in Genesis. We could have a debate about it and we could talk about whether it was true or not. But we now know that Paul says that Adam wasn’t fooled. Adam’s sin was different than Eve. He knew what he was doing.

72. 31:52

    And we could have a great discussion this afternoon about whose sin was worse. And that really isn’t our goal right now because they both committed sins. But the thing it was different. Eve was deceived and Adam was not deceived. And they both fell into the transgression in the end. And Paul goes on to say that nevertheless she will be saved and bearing children and child bearing if they continue in faith and love and holiness with self-control. So Adam made a conscious choice to join his wife in her life that she had chosen now and all the consequences of sin, whereas Eve had been deceived in that case. And that’s part of Paul’s reasoning as to why in a collegial life that the woman should keep silence. So when you go back and look at them in terms of the changes that took place at that time, is that Adam and Eve’s desires were different before they had sinned. Not just different between themselves, but they’re different than they were after they had sinned because back in the beginning the woman saw that the tree was good for food. Well, that sure looks like what we would find in John. You know whether you have the the idea of things that are desirable and then you have pleasant to the eyes. You know the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and then desired to make one wise the pride of life. But these were just desires back then. These were like there were feelings that were there, but he doesn’t call them the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life at this

73. 33:15

    point in this is 3, but I think John does later on. So there was something different about this to where they were able to go on for quite a while sometime at least before they gave in to the outside tempter. Whereas when John brings this up and in first John chapter 2 at verse 15, he says do not love the world of the things of the world.

74. 33:34

    For if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, these things, they’re not of the Father, but they are of the world. And so he says, look at God didn’t make this. This isn’t what God had intended. This is now a choice that Adam and Eve had made. And now they had these lusts.

75. 33:54

    But as Paul calls them, these deceitful lusts are now in them as part of them. So before the before this had happened. Originally this temptation came from the outside for Adam and Eve, and it took an outside tempter to change them because God had made them very good. But now things have changed. Paul says now that what we are dealing with today, we are not like Adam and Eve before they sinned. We’re not like that.

76. 34:19

    We don’t grow up with that. You know, when we’re born, we are now born already with a nature that is prone to sin. So Paul would say in Ephesians 4 that what God is trying to do with us today is to convince us to change how we live so that we put off concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts.

77. 34:43

    So now this isn’t just desire to make one wise. This isn’t just a desire. These are now deceitful lusts that we have in US. They’re deceitful. They fool us like the serpent fooled Eve, and it’s in us as part of our nature. This is what the Bible would refer to as the devil. This is the devil that’s in us, that we’re fighting these deceitful lusts and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind that God will help you overcome this because his morality is going to change how you live. And you put on a new man which was created after God, according to God and true righteousness and holiness. So we now are born into a race that has deceitful lusts. And that’s how Paul would refer to that. That’s a little different than Adam and Eve, the way they were created or what the Bible would call. We now have a law of sin, as Paul refers to it in Romans, a law of sin that’s in our body.

78. 35:35

    So that even in Genesis 8 at verse 21, even when there’s only Noah and his family alive after the flood and all those evil people had been wiped out. And God starts over with Noah’s family. He still looks at them in Genesis 8 and says, you know, the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. And this is now the righteous people. The imagination of a man’s heart is evil from his youth. Or as Jeremiah would say in Jeremiah 17, the heart’s deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Or what James would cover in James chapter one that don’t blame God for your problems.

79. 36:10

    Oh, no, don’t get sucked into that. When bad things happen in your life and you have a tendency to think, God, this shouldn’t happen to me, this isn’t fair. Don’t fall into that. That’s the seat of our lust. That’s our mind that’s trying to take us down a track, which is no good. And James would say, Oh no, that we’re not tempted by God. No, everyone is tempted when we are drawn away by our own desires and enticed doesn’t even take an external tempter anymore.

80. 36:36

    We just think about it in our head, or what Paul would call in Romans 7 at verse 20, CI see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind. With my mind now in Christ, I want to do the right thing. But Paul says I’ve got this other mind, this other law that’s up in here, and it’s always fighting with the mind of the Spirit. It’s this nasty mind of the flesh that’s there, and it’s bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members.

81. 37:02

    Or John’s reference in first John 2 and 16 about the lust of the flesh of the eyes and the pride of life. Or what Paul calls in Galatians 5 when he writes to them after dealing with the fruit of the Spirit, he reminds them that the flesh is lusting against the Spirit and the spirit against the flesh. They’re contrary to one another so that you do not do the things that you wish.

82. 37:23

    And this is the battle, this is the war that goes on in each one of us now today, because of the results of the sins of Adam and Eve. So what happened with Adam and Eve then when they sin, We all know that as a result of sin, that in the day that you eat of it dying, you will die.

83. 37:37

    They became mortal, and to dust they shall return. But they also inherit with that mortality now this tendency to sin. So we find out that Paul would say in Romans chapter 5 and verse 12 that not not only did Adam and Eve become mortal, but they passed on mortality to all of their children, just as through one man centered and send entered into the world and death through sin.

84. 38:01

    Thus death spread to all men because all sin. And so they passed on a mortal nature. But they didn’t just pass on mortality, they passed on their bias now to sin, that God had changed them as a result of that sin. And now you could again debate whether it was the eating of the fruit, which some people in our community think, or whether it was the angels specifically changed them at that point. But something happened now to where they don’t need an external tempter.

85. 38:28

    Now they have deceitful lusts in their bodies. And I don’t really think God did this with evil intent at all. It’s not like he, I mean, Harry 10, at one point said it was like God. God froze into their bodies what they had chosen this this way of life. And many of our brethren had picked up on the fact and understood that this was how God was going to save them.

86. 38:49

    If, if you had Adam and Eve’s nature before they sinned, imagine if you had that today and you woke up this morning, didn’t commit any sins before you came here, went through the whole day, never sinned. Tomorrow you don’t sin either. The next day you don’t sin either. And you’ve got this very good nature of Adam and Eve.

87. 39:03

    Would you think you needed a Redeemer? See what would happen? We’d end up thinking I’m pretty good. I mean, the Jews thought they were pretty good even though they had a law and the law was supposed to show them that they were exceeding sinners, and they still turned it into something where they thought they were pretty good. We’d be thinking we were really good if that’s how we were. And So what God has done in his kindness is given us a nature now, which is prone to sin, has a bias to sin. He’s he’s given us this devil within us so that we realize we need him.

88. 39:35

    We we need the work in his work in our life or we will never make it. That’s his kindness, really. So he saw in Genesis 6 at verse 5 that the imagination of man’s heart was only evil continually. And it was true of Noah. Jesus said in Mark 7 that it’s from within.

89. 39:50

    It’s it’s not about the foods that we eat. It’s from in here, not what we put in our mouth. Out of the heart of man come all these nasty things and he lists them all off or Paul says in Romans 7 that when the commandment cave sin revived and I died, you know, and he refers to our bodies as being this body of sin or the sinful body, the body of death. Who will deliver me from this body of death? He says thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So we don’t need an outside tempter anymore. We’ve now got it inside or what the Bible refers to as the devil or what we’ve got this mind in us this this mind that has deceitful lust.

90. 40:25

    We’re thinking about and and dwelling on things that we could do which are not really what God. Wants us to do, and he’s made that very aware in us so that we realize our need for redemption. It’s all part of his kindness really, that he’s done this. Sometimes Olympic athletes or athletes, when they’re training in school, if you want to run really fast, a lot of times what they teach athletes to do is wear weights. They put 8 weights around their ankles and they walk around all the time wearing weights.

91. 40:50

    And then when they get into the final race, they lay aside every weight and they run that race, as Paul says, as fast as they can. And in a sense, God’s done that in us. He’s given us something to weigh us down so that we realize where we’re at. And then hopefully the day will come when he can take those things away and he will give us a body which is free from this.

92. 41:12

    So you see that there are two aspects of sin in the Bible. There are personal transgressions that are sins that when we sin against God. And then there’s these other things. That’s this human nature, this bias that we have towards sin. And there really are two aspects, as Brother Thomas had picked up about the use of sin in the Bible. There are personal transgressions that we make where we make mistakes, we we commit error and we sin against God.

93. 41:38

    And those are some of the ways that sin is used. But our nature itself, because it now has these deceitful lusts, is included in part of the problem. The nature that we bear it, it wants to it, it tempts us that it has desires that are deceitful, and it fools us. Sometimes you go in there to see all those snacks and you just think, oh, boy. And we start thinking about what we could have, and we start piling up our little plates and piling them on. And we think, I want some of this and I want some of this. And before we know it, we have so much you almost can’t eat it all.

94. 42:11

    But this is what happens in our brain. Everybody knows it. We have these deceitful lusts and we think, Oh yeah, I can handle that. And then we find out what you can. Well, it does that with all kinds of sin. This is the nature that we bear. One of them really is like in Bible terminology, one of them is the root and the other one are the fruits. So you have a nature now that’s prone to sin that God had to put in us so that we would see our need for redemption. But then at the same time, we have the personal transgressions that this nature actually causes us to commit, that flow from this nature in the end, and that then we end up with God dealing with both.

95. 42:47

    That’s the good thing. When you go back and look at our community as So what we’ve done as a group, sometimes some folks in our community, when you watch how the pendulum can swing about human nature, some people see human nature as basically good. You’ll see that a lot in in the Christian community today.

96. 43:03

    You’ll see it a lot in the humanistic approaches and rebel and, and religion that we basically have a good nature. And the problem is the environment. If you just all grew up in good families and if we all had good governments and if we all had all this good stuff and then people sometimes think, well, then we would just our good nature would just then have a wonderful place to flourish.

97. 43:26

    And for people who believe that, I mean, just to remind them that look at the Kingdom aged in the thousand year Kingdom that Christ sets on earth. And Jesus Christ will be the ruler and all this world, all the corruption that you see in this world will be replaced. And we finally had this experiment about what are humans going to do?

98. 43:42

    And they’re given this wonderful opportunity. You find a rebellion at the end of the thousand year Kingdom and that’s what it will produce. So the problem really is in the nature. We by nature have something which is prone to sin that really isn’t basically good because it’s been changed from where Adam and Eve had originally started. We then find that sometimes in our community people swing to the other side and they say, well, human nature is terribly wicked and bad.

99. 44:08

    It’s so bad that you’re guilty for it. God holds you guilty for your nature. You’ll find like, you know, the Catholics came up with the inherited sin concept and you have to have an atonement for that sin. Or you’ll sometimes find within our community that people won’t go that far, but they’ll say that our nature is so bad, you need an atonement for the nature. And so now we’re like starting to like talk about terminology that you just don’t find in the Bible that human nature is so bad that we’re going to require an offering for the nature. And it’s, it’s an interesting concept that they have somehow that I want to know what people are thinking there, that like somehow God is going to save our nature, that he’s going to make an atonement for it and redeem it. When the nature itself, the way it’s being used in the Bible, in Bible terminology, it’s really, it’s the devil and you don’t redeem the devil.

100. 44:56

     This is something that we are being taught to fight. This is King’s sin. And our goal in the end is to put sin to death. And so it’s just fun to look at in our community this idea of watching the pendulum swing back and forth and you have to find where the truth is.

101. 45:11

     And I, I really believe it’s somewhere in the middle there that human nature is bad. It, it has bad desires in it. It is prone to sin, but God doesn’t hold you guilty for it and he doesn’t intend to redeem it. You’re not going to redeem the devil. That’s in our nature. And instead he’s going to kick the devil out. He’s going to remove the devil from us and turn us into beings that are going to be like the angels. That’s the goal of God.

102. 45:36

     So when John Thomas was referring to this in Elpis Israel, and he makes mention of it, a lot of people, you look at his, his section in Elpis Israel about the, the use of the word sin in the Bible. And he says that the word sin is used in two principal acceptations in the Scripture.

103. 45:51

     It signifies in the 1st place, the transgressions of the law. Those are our personal sins. And then the next it represents that physical principle of the animal nature. See, this is something that’s physically in us. It’s this devil that we’re fighting, this principle in the animal nature which is the cause of all its diseases and its death and its resolution in the dust, and it is that in the flesh which has the power of death.

104. 46:17

     There’s that phrase right out of Hebrews 2. That is, the devil has the power of death, and it is called sin because the development or fixation of this evil in the flesh was the result of transgression. This was a change that took place as the result of Adam and Eve’s sin. And as much as the evil principle pervades every part of the flesh, the animal nature is styled sinful flesh by Paul, or that is flesh full of sin.

105. 46:45

     So that sin in the Bible in the sacred style came to stand for the substance called man. And a lot of people have looked at that section and Alpha is Israel and been amazed at how John Thomas had picked that out and understood. And that is one of the areas that in our Christadelphian community, we we’ve inherited, which is a, a wonderful concept about the, the total use of the word sin in the Bible.

106. 47:07

     So you can see that when God condemned sin in the body of Jesus Christ, he condemned it all. He didn’t just condemn personal transgressions. He condemned the devil that bore those things in nature that, that, that, that was the root of those problems. So in Romans 8, you’ll, you’ll see that when Paul’s dealing with this and he’s really not talking about legalistic stuff here in Romans 8 at all. He’s talking about real conquering of sin. This was a real work that God accomplished in Jesus Christ for what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh.

107. 47:42

     God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. You know, He had our nature, He never gave in to sin, but He had our nature. And on account of sin, it’s because of sin that He did this. He condemned sin in the flesh. He condemned it all. He condemned the root in the nature, and He condemned the personal transgressions because Jesus Christ nailed the body of sin to the tree like the serpent in the wilderness, and He never gave in.

108. 48:13

     When He was reviled, He didn’t revile in return. When He suffered, He didn’t threaten that, he committed himself to his father. And for those who live, sorry, as Paul goes on there in verse 4, then that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in US. Isn’t that interesting that God did that in Jesus Christ?

109. 48:36

     And here we go again. So that something is going to change your life, the righteous requirement of the law. What was the aim of the law? What was the law really aiming at all along but to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength and all your mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself?

110. 48:58

     Paul says over and over again on those two things hang all the law and the prophets. Paul says that was the aim of the law or some of our versions had the end of the law ending. The end in the sense of this is the end of the law, he says this was the end result. This is what the law was aiming at all along, that we would learn to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. That was a righteous requirement of the law. And God did this in His Son so that this would now take place in us, that now we will love Him and we will love our neighbor as ourselves.

111. 49:32

     So Paul would go on there and say that it’s the righteous requirement of the law will be filled in US. Who? What? This is not just legalistic, this is not academic. This is way of life that he’s talking about. Who walk, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh have set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit say, again, this is not a chapter that’s about legal standing. This is not about legal stuff that Paul’s talking. He’s talking about how you live.

112. 50:08

     This is a way of life. That’s why they call it the way that this is how we live, that God is after he’s out to change our life and the life of Christ was designed to do that. The in our clause in our statement of faith. You’ll notice that when we wrote our statement of faith and they put out the Birmingham amended statement of faith or even in the Birmingham statement of faith.

113. 50:28

     That referred to that in clause 5. When he referred to the idea that Adam broke the law that God had established and was a judge unworthy of immortality and sentenced to return to the ground from whence he was taken, a sentence which defiled and became a physical law of his being. So it defiled him.

114. 50:49

     So now he is morally defiled and it’s also a physical law of his being. And this is this part now that we have built into US mortality and this proneness to sin, and it was transmitted to all his posterity. So in a very simple clause right there, it actually covered a lot of those things that we just looked at before about what happened as a result of Adam and Eve’s sin.

115. 51:12

     And that’s right there in clause five of our statement of faith, which is good. So Paul would go on to say in Romans 8 then that to be carnally minded is death. So, you know, if that’s what we do, if we set our mind on the flesh and the things of the flesh, we end up serving sin.

116. 51:27

     We serve the devil and all. And if you do that, if we’re carnally minded, it’s death. But to be spiritually minded is life and peace because the carnal mind is enmity with God, for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

117. 51:45

     And, and you can see how Paul uses that phrase in the flesh. In the flesh doesn’t mean that you’re just mortal and you’re alive today and you’re living life right now. In the flesh to him means that you’re living a way of life in which you satisfy the will of the flesh. This is your will versus God’s will, and his goal is to win your will over to his. So God condemned sin in the body of Jesus Christ. Put him up on the pole like the serpent in the wilderness to have a moral impact on our life.

118. 52:14

     It’s supposed to change how we live. It’s, it’s sort of sad in our community that because of the, the use of the cross by the Catholic Church, so often we’re afraid to even look at pictures of the cross or Jesus on the cross. When God intended that to be a motivating factor in your life, the most powerful motivating factor to change how you live, that we really should be looking at Christ on the cross. We should have that as an icon in in our minds to realize every day we’ve been asked to pick up our cross and follow him as we are baptized.

119. 52:47

     We put the old man to death. We commit ourselves to put sin, sin, not just personal sins, but the whole thing to death so that we might live for God and do the will of our Father. This is what He had intended. This is what the Christadelphians understand that the other churches don’t.

120. 53:05

     This is the part of our community that is the core of our belief system as to why our doctrines matter in what we believe. This is what God will use to motivate you to develop the faith of Hebrews 11 to change the way you live, and yet you’ll keep this faith unto the end.

121. 53:21

     This is really what it’s all about. So when Adam and Eve left the garden, in the end, when they walk out of the garden, they’ve now got 2 problems. They walk out of the garden now as mortals and they walk out of the garden now with a nature that’s biased to sin. It’s prone to sin. Or his brother Harry Tennant, when he grew, when he drew the pictures of what they were like before and then he drew them. Now he just said they’re sort of leaning over now. They’re now of the earth and now they’re leaning towards satisfying the flesh.

122. 53:48

     And so God’s redempt, the plan dealt with both. And I, I say that because sometimes all we do is emphasize 1 and we miss the other. And really what God intended to do was go after sin, all of it in its root and in its cause. And that’s what you’ll see in the life of Jesus Christ.

123. 54:07

     And what we’ll do in the second class is have a look, hopefully, God willing, at the at how God deals with both of those in US and specifically in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we’ll have a look at how God set out to redeem us from this and his plan of atonement. And his plan doesn’t just deal with our personal transgressions, it deals with those and it deals with our nature.

124. 54:30

     God set out to work on our nature and help us to find ways to fight it. And that’s what his redemptive plan will do. And we’ll have a look at that in class to God willing. Thanks.