Almighty God has performed many great miracles.  He created the entire universe.  You can see that among other places in Hebrews chapter 1.  Later, don't know how long, He created the angels.  And you can see by what is written in Ezekiel 28:13 where the One who became the God of the New Testament, was the God of the Old, said that Lucifer was created and he was an archangel.  So since he was created, we know all of the angels were created.  Great miracles.  How do you create an angel?  How would you go about doing that?  God also created the earth, this earth, with its perfectly balanced ecosystems although we, as human beings, try to unbalance them, but God has built it in such a way that it pretty well resets itself.  Finally, God created human beings from ordinary dirt, red clay.  Literally in the Hebrew, it does say 'red dirt' or clay.  Consider the miracle of the sun that ranks as a miracle of  the first magnitude - some ninety-three-million miles away, it is precisely big enough and the exact distance from the earth to provide the right amount of light, the right amount of heat and the power to sustain us.  Yet the sun, as amazing as it is, is not God's greatest miracle.  So if the universe, sun and earth are not God's greatest miracle, what is?  What would you rank as God's greatest miracle? 

I'm going to jump way ahead.  The answer is simple.  It's you.  God's greatest miracle is you.  You may argue that point and say, "Well, I've looked in the mirror.  I am not God's greatest miracle."  But because of the design that God has for human beings, by the greatness of God, by His holy wisdom and His great role and purpose, you then become His greatest miracle.  We're going to see why and how.  Very simple.  Why did God plan the greatest miracle which is you?  Let's take a look.  In 2 Timothy and chapter 1, and let's begin in verse 8. 

2 Timothy 1:8 – Be not you therefore ashamed of the witness of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner...  Why would he say that?  This is Timothy he is talking about, who is an evangelist.  Timothy was young.  Timothy was a little timid – no play on words here.  Timothy had a Gentile father and a Jewish mother and a Jewish grandmother.  Timothy was brought up by both in the truth by his grandmother and his mother.  So Timothy had a very good background, but not being around Paul, the apostle Paul who I would call one of the foremost trailblazers in all of the New Testament and who went through a lot of pain and anguish and angst and withstood a lot of evil out in the world in his day and still stuck faithfully to the truth all the way to the end.  He very likely was martyred in Rome.  So he says to Timothy, in a sense you could add this, "Since I'm not around you anymore, since I'm not with you all the time to encourage you and to support you and to tell you that God will take care of you and here's how, he said, 'Don't be ashamed of the witness of our Lord.  Don't be ashamed of me as a prisoner.'"  And he was.  He was under house arrest in Rome.  ...but be you partaker of the afflictions of the gospel...  and there are afflictions of the gospel  ...according to the power of God;   Just keeping the Word of God in this world, you and I are going to suffer persecution.  Most of it will probably be light persecution, but if you press the issue and there's enough at stake with someone else in relation to you, then the affliction can be a lot more troublesome, a lot more difficult.  This is what he means.  According to the power of God, that you be a partaker of afflictions of what the Gospel brings on you.  Jesus, did He not say, "If they persecute Me, they will persecute you.  If they kept my word, they will keep your word also." 

Now the word 'who' here refers back to God, Vs. 9 – God, who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling...  I think that merits a few seconds of thought about the fact that our calling is not just any calling, but a holy calling of Almighty God.  You can have people at a time of war who – young men and women nowadays – who are called to join the services.  And nowadays they are using advertisements and commercials to get people to join and they want the best they can possibly get, the most intelligence, best educated and so on, without any record of anything in the past that would have some kind of ill effect on their being trained and they want the very best.  Sometimes during war time or just before it if they know we are going into war, then they will draft people.  I don't know if any of you were ever drafted.  I volunteered so I was not drafted and I didn't do it because I was afraid I'd be drafted, I just thought that might be a good thing for me to do.  That was not a holy calling.  People out here assign you to different things, call you up on the phone, send you an email, see you in person and say, "There's this calling that I want to call you to.  I want you to do this for me."  Well, this one is a holy calling.  And it is the only calling that is holy on this earth.  The only one.  There is no other.  ...not according to our works...  so God did not call you because He said, "Ah, pick that person out of all the others because that person is righteous.  That person knows My truth, has been obeying my truth not just in the letter of the law, but in the spirit of the law in the heart and the mind where no one else can see.  So because of that, I am going to call him or her."

1 Corinthians 1, which I will not turn to, talks about our calling, and also chapter 2.  And it says  Not many mighty, not many noble... and others are called, ...but God calls the weak of the world so that He can confound... – that's kind of a troubling word, it means to overwhelm – ...the mighty.  That's why He calls you and me so we can't get all puffed up and proud of ourselves that we're of - #1, noble birth or that we had degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, MIT and any other place.  So God usually calls for the most part, there are exceptions, the ordinary people of the world so that it eventually over a period of time would overwhelm and cause people who do consider themselves to be something in this world to be impressed, to question themselves.  No human being ever changes his or her position in life unless you weigh what you do against what you hear someone else recommends.  And if what they recommend as a core value in your life then you walk out and you say, "Hey, you know what?  I'm going to think about that this week."  And on your own with the help of God you begin to change.  Can't force you to do anything.  I can't.  No one else can.  So it's not according to our works, but – last half of verse 9  ...but according to his own purpose...  so God has a purpose for calling us in this holy calling and it's according to His  ...grace...  unmerited pardon.  A state of grace.  It's an environment that you and I occupy.  It's called grace.  Unmerited pardon.  The world at large out here uses the word 'grace' liberally.  It has meaning.  You've got to know what that meaning of grace stands for.  It's not just simply, "Oh, okay, I love God and I love Jesus so, hey, I can live any way I want.  I'm saved because I say the name of Jesus and I've given my heart to the Lord and that's all that's required.  I will promptly go out and do everything I want to do just as I've always done it."  Brethren, that's not the grace that Jesus Christ gave to us – God, the Father, gave to us through Jesus Christ.  ...which was given us...  notice carefully  ...which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.  What a God we serve!  Wow!  That's incredible.  So now we know, when we saw 'remember your creator' you actually look that up in the Hebrew – I don't know if you are aware of this – and it's plural.  It has to do with creators.  Has to do with God the Father - the One that became God the Father - and God, the Son.  Don't want to shake you up, don't want to make you nervous, don't want you to go, "Ah, I'm running out of here."  But if you look it up, you will see that's what it means. 

And if you go back to Genesis 1:27.  Remember what it says.  Let Us make man in...  not My  ...Our image...   And we know in the New Testament that we suddenly have God, the Son.  And since you have the Son, you have a father – God, the Father.  Two Gods.  We've always had two Gods.  God, the Father – the One who became God the Father - gave God the Son, the responsibility of taking care of everything in the Old Testament, then the New Testament, too.  Absolutely phenomenal.  So all of this Holy calling was given us, this greatest miracle that has not just been performed, it is being performed right now.  It was being performed this morning.  It was being performed last night.  It was being performed yesterday, the day before, and the day before that.  It will continue to be performed tonight, tomorrow, Monday, Tuesday and the rest of the time that we're alive and that we remain faithful to God.  The great miracle is a great work in progress. 

I saw a bumper sticker some years back where it says, "I'm driving the best I can, don't honk at me.  I am a Christian and I'm a work in progress."  Well, their's probably a work in progress, but I don't know if they are a work in progress like you're a work in progress.  Big difference and you know that.  So God gave us all this in Christ Jesus before the world began so that tells me before time, before time – they, the One that became God the Father, and God the Son, drafted this and designed this great master plan to build human beings on this earth, wonderful earth that sustains us with the sun up there that keeps us warm when we need it, hopefully.  And enough light to be able to look around and see and to sustain us with life here on this earth – photosynthesis - and being able to grow gardens and so on and raise animals so we are able to be sustained.  God planned that all out for us long before time began, long before this world apparently was around and planned it out in such a way that He knew – I'm not going to quibble over this now, so don't try and pin me in a corner on it because I'm not God.  But somewhere they knew they had to have a plan of salvation in force for human beings to be able to be saved.  That's where the state of grace comes into play as you have to have a savior to put us in a state of grace - unmerited pardon which is justification.  Right?  You've got to be justified before God.  That puts you in that state of grace.  Reconciled to the Father, you're in a state of grace for that.  At one, or He is the atonement for us, He has made us at one with God, the Father and we have immediate presence before Almighty God, the Father, which all happened with the death of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of Him. 

So I've taken a little bit more time because I think it's important for us to understand God's greatest miracle, as far as I know anyway, based on Genesis to Revelation, everything in between.  My understanding with the help of God through Christ and His Holy Spirit that this is the greatest miracle that God has ever done.  Now God created us in His image, I've already referred that and I will allude to that in Genesis 1:27, I won't turn there.  He built us from clay.  He built Adam from clay.  Genesis 2 and verse 7.  See if I can touch on that quickly.  Won't stay there long. 

Genesis 2:7 - And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground...  Well, check it out in a very good expositors Bible commentary, which I do, and check out the words, what they call an exegetical study on a word or two or a phrase or a verse, and you will find that even in Strong's Concordance that he is talking about ordinary dirt.  It also has a reference to red dirt and even has a reference to clay.  That's interesting.  Why, later on in Jeremiah – and I may just touch on that – He views Himself, God does, as a master potter.  Do you know what a potter does, a master potter does in order to make a vase or a fancy vase (vahz)?  Don't you work with clay?  And don't you put it on a wheel?  And don't you spin that wheel and your hands, if you were the master potter, would be forming and shaping this vase or 'vahz' and if there's a flaw in it, then the potter might say, "You know, I've tried to correct this.  I've put plenty of water on it" - it's like the Holy Spirit as He shapes us, right?  And He's shaping us as we go around this wheel, which is what we do in life in a sense, and he's shaping it.  And he says, "That's not going to work.  I'm going to stop and put a little bit more water on it and I'm going to work it a little bit more."  And he works and he works and he works and he works and he works and he works and finally he can't get the flaw out of it.  He says, "Gone."  So he tosses what would have been a vase, which I like to say is what we are – vessels of mercy.  It talks about the instruments of righteousness, which is the tough part, but then He wants us to be vessels filled up with the mercy of God.  So God made human beings from ordinary dirt.  We live in an earthly tabernacle.  Okay. 

Let's take a look at 2 Corinthians, chapter 5 and let's just take a look at verse 1.  Paul writing here:

2 Corinthians 5:1 - For we know that if our...  an interesting term here  ...earthly house of this tabernacle...  now he's relating that we are like a tabernacle – movable.  We go from one place to another and we are of the earth.  If it ...were dissolved...  oh, I love the rest of this  ...we have a building of God...  Really?  Did we know that?  You betcha.  I've been talking about it a lot.  Remember John 14:2?  I go and prepare a place for you.  And the end of Ephesians 2 that talks about how God is inhabiting us and how we are fitly framed together and Jesus Christ is the chief cornerstone?  That's what it's talking about here.  ...we have a building of God, an house not made with...  I'm adding here as a qualifier, physical  ...hands...  so it's made  ...eternal in the heavens.  Actually you could say eternal hands, not physical hands and we are made to last forever.  Vs. 2 - For in this we groan...  Why do we groan?  Because we are an earthly house and we have this tabernacle that runs into problems all the time.  ...earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven:   Vs. 3 - If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked.  'Naked' refers to unrighteousness, evil.  So if we're clothed with, as it says here with  ...our house which is from heaven...  then we find ourselves as spirit beings, immortal sons of God, divine – then, obviously we can't be found naked, we can't be found without spiritual clothes.  We will be those clothes.  We will be embodying, divine essence, immortality.   Vs. 4 - For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon...  so he's saying, let's not go the other way.  Let's not jump into the other ditch and say, "Okay, all I want to do is perish."  No, instead,  ...clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.   Vs. 5 - Now he that has wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also has given unto us the...  down payment   ...the earnest of the Spirit.   Vs. 6 - Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord:   It's true.  That's why you have what you have in Job 14.  Now I'm waiting for God, Job said, and when He speaks, I'm going to come out of the grave and I'm going to be changed.  That's when you're  ...clothed upon... entirely.  That process is taking place now, but we are an earthly tabernacle. 

I'm not going to go there because I don't think I have the time for it, but yeah, well, Jeremiah 18.  I just corrected myself because I think that it's important that we look at it, but I referred to it about the master potter and we as the clay. 

Jeremiah 18:1 - The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying:   Vs. 2 - "Arise and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause you to hear My words."   I will cause you to hear what I have in mind and I'll want you to get the message.  Vs. 3 - Then I went down to the potter's house...  so this is saying to the young Jeremiah, I've got a lesson for you here.  ...I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he...  the potter  ...wrought a work on the wheels.  What does my margin call this?  Yeah.  Anyway, Vs. 4 - the wheel that it spins and...the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.  In essence what we're saying here is, on the one hand you have the Old Testament nation, on the other hand when he says make it again into another vessel, that's the New Testament church, New Testament Israel as the Church.  So He makes us over.  This time He wants us to be less marred up because we'll have the Holy Spirit of God and where we fail, where we have blemishes – spiritual blemishes – we confess, God forgives us, we repent, God forgives us and He covers our sins with the blood of Christ, Jesus Christ, and He applies the life – who is very much alive now – of Christ Jesus to us.  That's what you find here.  ...another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.   That's what He is doing. 

So we are traveling from – I love this little phrase – dirt to divinity.  Both 'd's'.  That is a – I can't remember what it is, but it is that where you have a couple of d's or 3 or 4 or whatever letters that they are.  Dirt to divinity.  We are God's Holy work.  Romans14.  I've said this before, I'm going to repeat it again because when I was working at Ambassador College as it was in the '60's at our headquarters in Pasadena, we talked about doing the work of God and we were scurrying around and filling orders of people who were asking for booklets and reprints and all kinds of things as we put out the Correspondence Course, which went up to 58 lessons in those days, put out the Good News Magazine, at one point a little later we put out Tomorrow's World, we put out the Plain Truth Magazine to the tune, it got up to over 8 million.  And there were times when I had to read all of those, not all 8 million, but I sure did a size of it, because we had no one else.  They said, "Well, Jerry Aust, that's your job.  Get on it."  So I cranked the thing up, I'd load it in the hopper, those magazines, and go through and you'd have this roll of address labels and then they would go through the glue and you were supposed to be able to get 10 or 12 thousand tops – I made that thing work at 20,000.  How it ever survived, I don't know.  And bzzz, bzzz, bzzz bzzz and it would shoot them through.  It would go through the machine and then down the belt and then I'd have to run down there because you can't let them fall off, and then you tie them up with a string machine – whatever they call it, a twine machine – and then I would load those, because I'd have it all prepared in bags for the post office.  Then I'd tag them, pull them off, throw them in the truck, run back to the hopper.  It kept me busy.  Good thing I was young.  And there were times I could not keep up with it, so we had to have two or three people to help.  But those were dire straits when things had to be done and there's no one else around.  And the students were the ones who were helpers.  I bring that up so that you get the imagery here, when I say to you, we talked about 'we're doing the work of God', if someone just destroyed it for us one day and said, "So, what do you think the work of God is?"  And we'd say, "We're doing it.  What are you talking about?"  And they said, "Have you ever read Romans 14, verse 20?"  And I thought, "Get this guy out of here.  Who does he think he is?  What if he's going to say something that destroys the image of what I'm doing?" 

So Romans 14:20.  God inspired the apostle Paul to write to the Jews and others that they should not force what they knew to be true and what was legal on someone else who was brand new coming to the church and wind up leaving the church just because it's legal.  So he says, For meat do not destroy the work of God...  And if you go through the context of Romans 14, the work of God are human beings.  I hope I'm saying that right.  All human beings translate into the work of God.  God is working a great work in you and me.  It is the greatest miracle, as far as I know, that has ever been performed.  Now, the reason I say that, is Deuteronomy chapter 5 and verse 29.  I want to turn there.  In the Old Testament, I think that we probably all know this, but if you don't know this, I'm going mention it and if you do, I'm going to remind you of it, that if Jesus Christ had not been born of Mary and of God Almighty, God the Father, so that He could find out what it was like to live as a human being on this earth and what human beings go through.  They had no one on the job, as it were, to see that and to do that besides the great responsibility, the great need – we need a savior.  We need life and we need His death and we need His life.  But in the Old Testament there was no one, who are you going to go to?  "Well, I know We made Adam and I know We made Eve out of Adam's rib.  I understand that and through procreation We've had hundreds and thousands and millions of people, I know all of that and I've seen how they conduct themselves, I've seen how they act and so on.  They need help."  They need help.  Deuteronomy 5:29, it's as if God is lamenting here. 

Deuteronomy 5:29 - O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me...  I would add 'automatically'.  ...that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always...  Here's why.  So  ...that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!

The world at large does not know how to have happiness.  They do not know how to be joyful.  They do not know how to be at peace.  And the reason they don't know is because God hasn't revealed it to them yet.  You do.  You know that God's peace, happiness comes from obeying His laws.  But people don't want to obey laws, do they?  Remember what it says in Romans, chapter 8 and verse 7?  That without God's Spirit, you cannot keep the law of God.  It doesn't say you don't want to, it says you can't do it.  It works against the grain of human nature.  And to follow that through, human nature comes from this world at large and the way we have been taught.  But who taught mankind the wrong way?  You have a guess on that?  I'll give you a hundred guesses, 99 don't count.  That would be like the god of this world, Satan, the devil.  That's why human beings, apart from God, not only cannot obey the law of God, they don't want to.  In a sense God is saying through Paul it's impossible because you have no help.  We need the Comforter.  We need the Helper and that's the power of God, the Holy Spirit, the down payment of eternal life.  So here God says if they just had a heart in them. 

Let's turn all the way over to 2 Corinthians, chapter 3 and verse 3. 

2 Corinthians 3:3 - Forasmuch as you are manifestly declared...  which is to say the declaration of the way you live  ...to be the epistle...  or letter  ...of Christ ministered...  or administered to  ...by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.

That reminds me of a pop song, you may remember it, in the late '40's or early '50's – maybe the mid '50's – called 'Hearts Made of Stone'.  Ah.  I just struck a note with some of you because you remember that.  Hearts made of stone.  I thought, that's interesting.  I wonder where they picked this up at.  Here it is.  Whether they did or not, but God does not want us to have hearts of stone, but soft, pliable teachable tables of the heart.  Do you remember when you didn't have the Holy Spirit and somebody stepped on your toes or got in your way or you disagreed with and you just told them off in no uncertain terms and take it or leave it.  "Get out of here, you're bugging me.  I don't have time for you."  "What's on your mind?  Tell me all you know in ten seconds."  You know, something like that.  So we used to be very short with people and we didn't have time for them.  Now, with the Holy Spirit of God, He's training us.  Now, if you do everything perfectly and you never, ever have any difficulty with other human beings, I want to shake your hand.  I'd like to shake a lot of people's hands because I want to say that I have found the person that never runs into that difficulty, that everyone you meet, everyone you think about, everyone you talk with everyone you write to or get a letter from, everyone in your life you treat perfectly, beautifully well.  Sweet – as we used to say, I'm sorry about the cliché – sweet as pie and, wow, we're just perfect in it.  I'm looking for that person.  It may be you.  I'm going to use a little Will Rogers here to identify with the world at large, "It ain't me."  I am not it, him.  I want to be.  You want to be.  But it doesn't come easy, does it?  But God is so merciful and patient with you and me.  By the grace of God we are able to let Him teach us to be soft, humble.  I didn't say soft-headed.  Soft-hearted.  You can be soft-headed if you want, but everybody will take you to the cleaners.  I say you can't be a leader, but you can be softhearted, humble and have a teachable heart and that all comes through the Holy Spirit of God as you apply the will of God.  That's where it comes from. 

That's the process of the greatest miracle God has ever done and is doing and will do, as far as I know.  If there's something greater than that later, hey I'm all for it.  I don't what it'll be.  But to turn a hardheaded, stubborn, stiff-necked, self-absorbed, vain, arrogant, proud person into a humble, soft, tender, one that wants to listen, to help, to serve, to share – do you know of a miracle that is greater than that?  That's not easy because we're not easy to deal with.  Now, maybe you are.  But most human beings are – okay, all – human beings are not easy to work with.  So it takes our cooperation. 

Now that's where that greatest miracle brings us, to our ultimate destiny which is found in 1 John, chapter 3, verse 1.

1 John 3:1 - Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us...  Brethren, if all I did was speak on this, just those words, that's enough for about two, three, four sermons - four or five Bible studies.  To go from Genesis to Revelation to find out what manner of love, how the love of God has been designed and expressed and exhibited and tendered toward you and me – specifically toward you and me.  What He  ...has bestowed upon us...  and not just that, but what it does for us.  We're going to become Gods.  Is that worth it?  ...that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world does not know us, because it does not know him.  Now don't stand up with a hundred people and try to prove to them that they don't know God.  You'd better have a hundred behind you to protect you because they're going to beat you between pillar and post or they're going to throw you down, kick you on the second bounce – try to get some humor out of something that's not so funny – they're not going to be happy with you if you were to tell them that.  So, don't tell them.  All you and I have to do is set a good example.  Let them see it and they'll say, "You know what, you're little wiener, but I like you.  A little strange, a little different, but hey, looks like you're enjoying life.  Why are you happy?  What's going on here?  Can you tell me?"  Now, you don't back up your whole wagon of bales of hay because you've got one cow that you are going to feed and you dump that whole nine yards or the whole wagon load of hay on that one cow that's hungry.  I'm not saying that person's a cow, but I'm trying to mix my metaphors and my analogies so you understand.  When they ask you a specific question, answer just that question.  You might say, "Well, that's kind of stingy."  Well, if you get beyond that, then you might be offending that person, they the leave and later on when God really opens their mind and they say, "No, no, no.  I was there.  I know what that person said.  I'm not going there."  Ah.  You don't want to be responsible for that.  Gotta be really careful about how we conduct ourselves toward people who are new.  So we've got to be careful of that. 

Vs. 2 - Beloved, now are we the sons of God...  Boy, I love old John to be that way.  This man who was easy going, laid back, relaxed, comfortable with Jesus, Jesus was comfortable with John, everyone else could see it and it just had a natural inclination of being by one another.  They're like soul-mates, as it were – not as the world says – but like Jonathan and David.  I mean, they could say whatever they wanted to say to one another and they weren't judging one another.  They could do that.  This man says, calls us ...sons of God...  that is a powerful statement.  ...and it doth not yet appear what we shall be...  of course not, we're made of physical flesh.  We are made out of the red clay, the dust, the dirt of the ground.  We are in an earthly tabernacle.  ...but we know that, when he...  that would be Jesus Christ, our Savior  ...shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.

So, if you go to Revelation, chapter 1, which I will not, in a couple of verses – 14 through 16 – three verses, you will see what Jesus Christ looks like.  That's what you're gonna look like because you're going to look like Him.  You're going to see Him as He is, He's going to see you as the son of God, a younger brother.  It's incredible. 

So why has God planned the greatest miracle in the world?  Because ultimately we are going to become sons of God.  That's important to God.  He's not going to do it just for anyone.  Somebody says, "Well, I professed it and I did this and I did that."  And He says, "Naw, you didn't.  You didn't do it to the least of these people out here, so you didn't do it to Me." 

How is the greatest miracle accomplished?  Well, you know this, I'll go through it quickly.  First step is that God calls you.  You know this.  John 6:44.  You can also find it repeated in verse 65.  You may not have gone there.  But he repeats it in verse 65 of John, chapter 6, the gospel.  So God has to call us.  You can't find God – I've had people say, "Oh, but I've found God, Mr. Aust, um, five years ago."  "Oh, okay."  Now, maybe it's just a phrase that that person is using to say that God called them.  But actually, literally, God calls you, God finds you, God calls you and me, we don't find Him.  We may want to.  We may groan and complain and wonder how our life can be better than what it is and is there a God up there and if He is, why does He allow wars, who does He let people die and so on and so forth.  We can say that, we can feel that, but it is God who calls us and opens our minds. 

And then we respond to His calling – Acts 2:38.   First thing that Peter said was 'repent'.  That's been carried as far away as you can get.  In the '50's there were some that I would call 'iron lung evangelists' on television who were screaming and yelling and raising their voices and saying, "You repent or you're lost forever and you do it now or you're dead."  Ah, scared a lot of people and they did what we call 'walked the sawdust trail' because they'd have sawdust in the middle aisle and you walk that sawdust trail all the way up and you give your heart to the Lord as you kneel up before a stage and I don't know if people walked behind, put their hands on them or whatever.  But you had that thing going on – tent revivals and so on.  So the word 'repent' got a real bad reputation.  It just means change.  It's all it means.  He could have said, "Change."  Well, probably in the Greek he did say 'change'.  Change from the way you are now.  Change from the way you think.  Change from the way you act and, as he says, have faith toward God – so you're changing from your old dead works in the past – and you have faith toward God.  You repent from and you have faith toward – from / toward – remember those opposites – toward God. 

And you have sufficient faith where you study and you ask for baptism and you're baptized.  You come out of that watery grave and the minister lays his hands on you.  I have sometimes in times past said to them only in passing when I was baptizing them, "Now I wouldn't even think about it, but if a minister held you down, you die.  So actually the old person is dying under that watery grave.  I'm not going to do that.  I would be in trouble.  You would be in trouble.  We'd both be in trouble.  But that's not going to happen.  The point is that this is like a grave and you're going under it.  The water also represents the blood of Jesus Christ.  So when you go under and come back up, that water – a cleansing agent – now is analogous to the blood of Jesus Christ that washes away – cleansing agent – your past sins."  Now, suddenly you're clean as you come out of that watery grave.  You come up and the first thing I say to them for the most part, "Now you're clean.  All of your past sins are washed away in the blood of Jesus Christ.  Now, when I lay hands on you, God," – alone – who is Holy – "will put His Holy Spirit,"  not just any spirit, "His Holy Spirit into a clean temple."  You think maybe God works that way?  Would God want to put His Holy Spirit in a dirty temple?  Does that make sense?  No.  It doesn't make any sense.  It is so basic, so fundamental.  People out here try to complicate it because that's the god of this world, complicating things for people in the modern day religions. 

We have our part to do.  Philippians, chapter 2.  Philippians 2:12-13.

Philippians 2:12 - Wherefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed... this is Paul.  Loved the Philippians.  He says, "I'm going to be right up front with you.  I know you've always obeyed.  I'm going to tell you," I'm leading into this ...not as in my presence only... when I'm around but even more so when I'm not around, you still obey.  Notice what he now says  ...work out your own salvation with fear...  which is the fear of disobeying God  ...and trembling...  which is a matter of having a certain type of humility and you're not proud and arrogant.  That's the contrast.  Vs. 13 - For it is God... I love verse 13 ...it is God which works in you...  wow, does He really?  Remember, I said we're a work in progress that God created us in His image?  Well, He created us first as physical human beings, but now He is recreating His spiritual character in you and me because that's all that's going to last forever.  Your body, my body are not going to make it.  Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.  Not going to make it.  What does last is all the character you and I build.  That's what's going to last – forever.  ...which God works in you both... notice these two words here  ...to will and to do of his good pleasure.   I circled both of those little phrases where it says 'to will' and 'to do'.  I circled them, colored them.  Could be because, remember that scripture that said when – I think Jesus said that Peter and the disciples while He was training them – the Spirit – you've got to be way ahead of me – is willing – do you remember what the rest of it was?  But the flesh is weak.  The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.  No wonder Paul said, "Oh, it just destroys me that the things I want to do, I don't always do, and the things I shouldn't do, I do."  I've heard of people who say that Paul must have been sinning greatly.  Well, join the crowd.  We all sin.  And it wasn't some great sin, he was just simply telling about how our flesh is filled up with this law of sin we call human nature.  Not all human nature is wrong because Jesus said to the disciples with the Holy Spirit you know how to give good gifts, being evil you know how to give good gifts.  So human beings can do good so you have got to be careful, don't get tripped up when you're trying to tell people the difference about human nature and about what God gives us with His Holy Spirit.  So God gives us the will to do of His good pleasure, so I ask God, "I have the desire to do it, give me the will to act on it and to actually follow through with the act – the action."  Both.  The conviction, and I actually do it.  Now, you might say, well, if I do it, I'm just a mechanical robot.  Well, if you want to go that far with it, then be a mechanical robot.  Just do it because there are great teaching moments in actually acting out something.  It says in Romans 12:21 that we overcome evil  - what, anyone know the answer to that?  - with good, which is to say, what is good?  God is good.  Good is a variation of God, so we overcome evil with Godly things, Godly thoughts, Godly laws, Godly rules, Godly principles, God's way of doing things, God's examples of doing good.  So, overcome evil with good – Godly way of thinking and acting. 

So we have our part to do in this greatest miracle that is now being accomplished.  We are being transformed in mind and heart.  Romans 12:2 says that you should be not conformed to the world – I'm not going to go there, I'm going to allude to it – do not be conformed to this world.  So yYou see on television, you say, oh, buy this, buy that, look skinny here, a ton of muscles there, dress GQ dude, your hair's got to be this way, your eyes have got to be this way, cosmetic lips and changes and the whole bit about the body, I've got to look va, va, va, va, va.  And yet, God says don't be conformed to this world, but be what?  Transformed.  Now, that's from the inside out.  So what's the most beautiful thing to God?  Our outside appearance?  You get only one choice on this one.  Or, the other choice is – you get two choices – or what is inside of you.  What do you think is the most pleasant, wonderful looking to God?  The outside person or the inside person?  Well, I think you know that.  Right.  It's the inside person that counts, that's the beauty no matter what the outside looks like. 

God wants us to be renewed in Him daily, 2 Corinthians 4:16.  Literally what it says, be renewed in your mind and heart day by day – daily.  It is a microcosm of your entire life.  This day or tomorrow or the next day – a day, a singular day – is a microcosm of the macrocosm of your entire life.  So we need to be renewed in this day.  And that's why God tells us to do this. 

We are renewed through the two great commandments, love toward God above everything else, because if you do not have, if you don't love God whom you do not see, how can you love your brother and sister whom you do see?  So you can't profess to say you love God - I can't, you can't – unless you actually are loving your brother and sister.  So what's happening here is, you can prove that you love God by loving your brother and sister.  And you can prove that you love God by loving your brother and sister – unless I said that again.  I'm saying it works both ways, vice versa.  I'm going to let you fill that one in.  Either way, if you keep that first commandment properly, you will keep the second one.  If you're keeping that second commandment properly, you are already keeping the first one because that's what God says to do.  Beautiful.  That's how that greatest miracle is being accomplished. 

Over time we acquire the mind of Jesus Christ.  I wrestled with that in 1963 trying to figure it out.  You find it in 1 Corinthians 2:16, Paul says and we have the mind of Christ.  Pretty bold of old Paul to say, "Tell you what.  You've got to have the mind of Christ to be able to discern, but no human beings can properly judge us if they don't know the truth of God and the will of God and the way of God, but we can because we have" – are you ready? - "the mind of Christ."  Wasn't that pretty brazen?  What he means by that is he understood what God was all about and what Christ was all about.  Then he practiced that in his life.  That's what he means by having the mind of Christ.  So over time, we increasingly – incrementally increasingly – acquire, as it were, with the help of God the mind of Jesus Christ.  And Christ lives His life in us and He is our life.  Now, I know I've mentioned this before.  All of these are little points, but Christ lives His life in us, again, through His truth and through the Holy Spirit that helps us to honor and obey that truth and to apply that truth.  Christ relives His life in us.  Not done.  The other part is that Christ is our life.  Without splitting hairs, and I've mentioned this, God, the Father, looks through Christ Jesus who is at His right hand, He looks at you and He looks at me and we've done our part and He says Christ is your life.  It literally says that in Colossians chapter 3 and verse 4.  It says, ...when Christ, who is our life...  That's a little insertion in there separated by commas, it could be a parenthetical insert and it's so important.  He is our life.  You and I can never ever brag and say to God, "I was so good that I could have made it without your help."  Nobody's going to make that without God's and Christ's help.  You know that. 

We are quite literally the very work of God - we've already seen that in Romans 14:20 – an ongoing work in progress recreated in God's spiritual image.  So, when you and I read that sample prayer in Matthew, chapter 6, it says, Thy will be done... remember the rest of it?  ...on earth as it is being done in heaven.  What do you think the will of God is on this earth?  The will of God on this earth is to establish peace.  Do you need peace if all you have is animals?  What difference would it make?  God is not working with animals.  He's working with human beings who are going to be future Gods.  So, thy will be done, which is peace, prosperity, it has got to be done through human beings. 

I love Philippians 1:6.  I think I will end with that since we are so close.  Love this scripture.  Very encouraging to me.  In French that would be 'moi', I guess, and I'm not French.  But to me this is a beautiful, wonderful, highly encouraging scripture. 

Philippians 1:6 - Being confident of this very thing...  think about the greatest miracle that God has performed and is performing and will perform  ...that he which has begun a good work in you will...  finish it.  The words 'perform it' in my old King James translation, the margin renders it 'will finish it'.  Thank God for that!  ...until the day of Jesus Christ.  So God, the Father, has begun this work in us in Jesus Christ and He's going to finish it with Christ Jesus who comes to this earth and will change us, will resurrect us and will change us to eternal life.  What is God's greatest miracle?  It's you and me being changed into sons of God.  Let's take advantage of it and be grateful for it and help one another with that great miracle.