Buried With Christ

Mr. Perryman, sort of admitted to a crime with chickens. It's funny because last night when I was preparing this, I started thinking about two crimes I've committed that I didn't know were crimes. I know I've shared this with you probably in the past, but I guess this is confession time. But it's because both of them involve something I'm talking about today. One was in San Antonio where a member had died and their last request was to be cremated and buried next to her husband. So the family and me and a bunch of friends – I mean, it was a cemetery way out in the middle of nowhere, almost looked like it was derelict.

We went out and there was her husband's grave and her headstone, and we dug a deep hole and put her little box with the ashes down in the hole and covered it up and had a ceremony.

Only later did we find out that's actually illegal. And then another time when a man had died and he didn't have much money and he had asked that we get him to Iowa. And his family was in Iowa. He lived in Illinois. And so we got this address for this cemetery, and one of the men in the church and I took his casket.

We put it in the back of a station wagon and we took off towards Iowa. And we drove all day. We had plenty of time. We'd set the time. And we're driving out through just flat fields of Iowa. And there's this big hill up ahead. And we got to the hill. And, you know, according to the information we had, sure enough, there was a sign. It was a cemetery. We drove up the hill. There was about 30 people waiting for us. We were right on time.

And unloaded the casket. Did a funeral. They buried him there. Only later did I find out it is illegal to transport bodies across state lines. I guess if I would have thought about it, so... Okay, there's two crimes I've committed. Did I still wail my cottages a little bit? But the reason that I thought of that was because... I'm going to talk about burial today. The concept of burial and how that actually ties in to concepts of the Passover.

Coming up on the Passover season. And we know that we participated in the Passover because we have become participants in the New Covenant. And that in ancient Israel, you could not be a participant in the Covenant without also saying, I wish to do the public sign of the Covenant. God made a Covenant with them. And the public sign of that Covenant was circumcision. Physical circumcision of all males. When a male was circumcised, his whole family was also all participant in the Covenant.

And how important that was. I mean, when Moses did not circumcise his two boys, God sent an angel and threatened to kill them. Because how can you be the leader of the Covenant people and you won't even make your children part of the Covenant? So circumcision was very important. That's why it seems ridiculous that they argued it in the New Testament.

But I understand why they did. If you were a Jew, you would say, wait a minute, you can't be part of this Covenant without circumcision. But we know Jesus came along and he said, I'm bringing the New Covenant, which was prophesied in Jeremiah, foretold clear back in Deuteronomy. So he says, I'm here to bring the New Covenant. And he gives the bread and the wine at a Passover service. He says this is the Passover.

And he does this and he institutes the New Covenant. So what is the sign that we are participating in the New Covenant? Well, let's go to Colossians 2. Colossians 2. And verse 9. He says, and just break it so we have a little context here to get to the verse I want to go to. For in him, Jesus Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily and you are complete in him who is the head of all principality and power.

So we have a completeness that comes from the work of Jesus Christ. He says, in him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. Now, they were told in the Old Testament that there would come a time when God said, I will not circumcise you in the flesh, I will circumcise you in the heart. And now we're told here by the Apostle Paul that in the New Covenant there is the circumcision of the heart. It's a spiritual thing that takes place.

But there is still an outward sign of that spiritual thing. Something that physically can be seen that people say, I am committing to this covenant. And in this context now, because this is all the same sentence, he says, putting off the body of sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead. So baptism is the outward sign that we have become participants in the New Covenant. The circumcision of the heart, it's all one sentence, is something that God does with us through Jesus Christ.

And the outward sign is you are buried with him in baptism. Now we talk about baptism as important as the sign of the covenant. We understand it symbolizes the washing away of your sins. I mean the water doesn't wash away our sins. It's God who is forgiving us of our sins. We understand the importance of baptism. I mean there's a baptismal pool right over here, right?

We understand why that after that, after someone goes through water baptism, we lay hands on them so that they receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which is also prophesied in the scripture. John the Baptist talked about it. Let's talk today about the concept of being buried. That baptism symbolizes a burial of you, a burial of who you are. And what does that mean? Because look here, it talks about ... let's read that one verse again, because this is very important. Let's go back here. I closed my Bible. He says, By the circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

Now we were raised. We came out of that burial, and he ties this in with how Jesus Christ was literally buried at death after he was crucified, after he had died. And then he was resurrected. He was revived. It's the central concept we see at the end of all four of the Gospels, his death and resurrection. In his death and resurrection, we somehow participate in that because we're buried with him, and then God works in us. And this is very important as we approach the Passover season.

This is why the partaking of the Passover and what we do, we say, is only for those who've actually consciously made this covenant because you have been buried. You died and were buried, and something happened to you. So what does it mean to be buried with Christ? Paul talks about this quite a bit. What does it mean to be buried with Christ? Let's go to Romans 6. Because when you and I go through this physical ritual of baptism, something greater is happening than ever happened with ancient Israel.

And the reality of what's happening, it's much greater than the physical circumcision of ancient Israel, which marked them what? As the people of God in this physical sense.

There's something happening between us and God in this symbolism we're going through that is very, very real. And Paul, more than anybody really in the New Testament, understood this in a profound way. You know, every year sometime around the days of 11 bread, I'm always in some passage of Romans 6, 7, and 8. Well, today we're in a little passage of Romans 6. It's always a different passage, it seems like, but I'm always there at some point at this time of year. Verse 1. So we're in Romans 6, verse 1.

What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may be about? He's talking about grace here. And he says, now just because we receive grace from God, forgiveness from God, does that mean we should continue to sin? You know, some people will say, well, Paul did away with all sin. He can't do away with sin. Sin is sin. What he's saying is we can't use this, this loudness, grace that God has given to us and just say, well, that's okay. Now I can sin because he'll just give me more forgiveness. He says, God forbid that. He says, certainly not. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? We died to sin. When did you and I die to sin? What did we just read?

The circumcision in which the sins of the flesh die.

When is that? Is that baptism?

He says, or do you not know that as many of us that were baptized into Christ, Jesus, were baptized into his death. I see people all the time struggle this time of year because we know we are supposed to do a lot of self-reflection, right? Before the Passover, we're supposed to do a lot of self-reflection. We're supposed to look at ourselves and see, I'm not perfect.

I still have sin. And we're brought back into this repentant attitude, this humility before God. One of the greatest problems we have at this time in here really is our pride.

We don't have this absolute humility before God. And he says here, you died with him.

You know, we think about baptism. We're taken back to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is why it ties in to not only the symbol of the covenant. It is absolutely necessary, we understand this, to understand the Passover. You died. I died.

In a real way to God, we died with Christ because who paid the penalty for us? He did.

If Jesus Christ's death doesn't apply to you, then you are going to face eternal death at some point.

Understand that. There's no way that we can go to God to say, we can make this even, right?

I can make this even, God. Let me do enough good deeds and it'll make up for my bad deeds. No, because we are inside of us. We have become sin. Paul talks about that, too.

Our very nature is corrupted. So it's not just a matter of, here's my good deeds and my bad deeds and we'll add them up. It's who we are. And that part of us has to die. And understand you died because you were buried.

You were buried with Jesus Christ. When you went under that water, God said, good, the death of my son and his burial, you are participating in that.

You are participating in his death and burial. If we understand this, this isn't just a time to look at ourselves and go into the past when we're feeling bad. Because, which usually what we all do, self-reflection, and we don't measure up, right?

It is a time that we go into the Passover understanding, I died with Christ. I was buried with Christ. I entered into this covenant with God. And therefore, it is the power of God that I must submit to because it is the power of God that saves me.

We forget we died. Part of the problem we have is Christians because, well, the old person keeps like trying to crawl up out of the grave. That's the problem. It's like some zombie movie.

That part of us keeps trying to live.

But we were buried with him. That's what it says.

He goes on. Let's read that verse 3 again. Or do you not know that as many of us who were baptized into Christ were baptized into his death?

Therefore, we were buried with him through baptism. He repeats it, into death.

That just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

So this is a participation with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We participate with his death, not having to be tortured and died, but symbolically dying.

And our sins are gone, right? We understand that.

God forgives us. They're washed away.

We come up, it's like Jesus Christ being resurrected, because as Paul said in other place, if Jesus wasn't resurrected, we're the most pitiable people in the world.

We worship someone who's dead.

Right? So in his resurrection, when you come up out of there and the old man has died, you and I begin the process of being a new person.

And when I say being a new person, this is a whole lot more, a whole lot more than just understanding the Ten Commandments. That's part of it. It's a whole lot more than just a whole lot more than just keeping the Sabbath. It's a whole lot more than just knowing that you don't have an immortal soul. It's a whole lot more on the things that we think are important. They are important. I'm not, I mean, I'm going through a whole series on basic doctrine, right?

That, in 1 Corinthians 13, I get two series going at the same time.

But this has to do with, I have to die to become somebody new. And according to this, when we come up out of that water, it's just like Jesus Christ being resurrected, we come up out of that water and we are to be new people.

That's the question we have to face during Passover. Have I really died with Jesus Christ?

And have I really becoming a new person? Or am I just the same old angry, bitter, judgmental person with all my hidden sins that has never truly humbled myself before God? Because that's what this is about. Have I really humbled myself before God?

He says, therefore we are buried with Him through baptism unto death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so also we should walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, we're united with Jesus Christ when we go under the water because we're we're symbolizing I'm dying. I'm dying here because you died so that I can come up out of this water and receive God's Spirit and be a brand new person. And because of that, because we've experienced a likeness, a symbol of His death, certainly we also should be in the likeness of His resurrection. Boy, He really makes a statement here that when you think about it, sort of blows your mind. Knowing this, that this old man, the person that died, was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin. We were crucified and buried with Christ. He was crucified for us. It's like, oh good, He's crucified for me. Yeah, you were crucified too. We participate in that every Passover as we see Him as that Lamb. And we realize, I can't get out of this. I can't save myself.

And He was crucified, and I'm united with Him, and I died, and I was buried, and I came up, and I'm a new person. And the only reason you and I are a new person is because God did something, not because of us. It's because God did something. And now we're a new person.

What I want you to do this Passover, instead of just sitting down and thinking about all your sins, spend time praying to God and studying the Scripture and saying, kill the old zombie and help me really be new.

Kill the old zombie and let me be new, because I've already died and resurrected with, you know, in that sense, to be a new person, not the resurrection of the dead. But you know what I mean? Symbolically, I came out of the grave. Symbolically, I died with Christ. And symbolically, I'm now a new person. No, not symbolically. In reality, we're a new person, because the Holy Spirit came into us, and Christ is living in His life through us. And because of that, He goes on and says, we slowly, it doesn't happen just like that, we become freed from sin. It becomes less and less part of who we are. We're more, we're less and less concentrating on sin, and we're concentrating on who I am. Who am I as a child of God? So why do we still struggle with this? I mean, we always struggle with unworthiness. I mean, every year at the Passover, I'm going to get a phone call, or someone's going to come by my house, or I'll go to their house, or I'll get an email from people all over the world. And they'll say, I don't feel I'm worthy to take the Passover. And you know what my answer is every time?

So of course you're not. Neither am I.

How can you be worthy of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ? We're not. We never could be.

He does something in us. He is the process of making us worthy.

And this amazing work that God is doing through Jesus Christ, and of course, the Spirit that comes from them that we have.

We've been buried. So what's the problem? Why do we struggle so much with being ...can't be this new person? Why do we keep struggling? Well, here's the thing.

When you were buried, that symbolism, something real is happening, but the old person doesn't really totally die, does it? You come up still with corrupted human nature.

1 Peter. 2 Peter chapter 2.

I'm sorry, 2 Peter chapter 1. No wonder last night I went to look this up in 1 Peter chapter 2, I couldn't find it. So I wrote it down because I had it wrong. He's talking here, Peter's talking to the church at large, and he's being very personal in the way he interacts with people. And I'm going to read this so I can just pick out this one statement he makes.

Grace and peace be multiplied to you, and the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power is given to us all things that pertains to life and godliness.

When you came up a new person, you still had elements of your old human nature. The old person is still there. You were buried, but like I said, it keeps trying to come up out of the grave.

God at that, when He gives you His Spirit, gives you everything you need. We look at the shortcomings because we're not looking at God. It's funny how we'll sometimes look at everybody else's shortcomings, and that's what makes us feel good. We can pick out everybody else's shortcomings and we'll see I'm better than that. So I'm better. At least I'm okay. Now the viewpoint has to be I was buried with Christ. I came up, the zombie's still there, and God has given me everything I need, and He's given everybody else everything they need. We're just all in this fight with an inner zombie. Understand that. It's already dead. I hate to use something out of a horror movie, but it keeps trying to claw back to life. That's what's happening to us.

He's given us everything we need through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which we have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises. Do you believe that? Do you believe there's been great promises by the Almighty God made to you?

Because there have been.

And through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. You have, when we receive God's Holy Spirit, that means we have this, Paul calls it a down payment. We have this little bit of the nature of God in us, right?

The reason Christianity is so hard is because you have two natures. That's why.

You have corrupted human nature and literally some of the mind of God in you.

And we're always not listening to that. We're always not reacting to that the way we should.

But then we have to remember, wait a minute, we were buried. We died.

We died. That God's making us into something new. And we were buried. We were brought out of the water. God's Spirit is in us.

That is what gets you through. That's what gets you through.

Is that reality of what God is doing in us? At every Passover, we're brought back, as I say every year, we're brought back to ground zero. This is a starting point of everything.

That's why it's the first of the Holy Days.

Let's go to Ephesians 2. Look at how Paul explains this even more here.

Ephesians 2. These first few verses, we read a lot because it helps us understand Satan. It helps us understand our corrupt human nature. I'm going to go through that, and then I want to pick up the rest of this thought that Paul has. He says that he has made that you he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins. Isn't it interesting?

Paul says you were dead, and then you died. How can I be dead? The point is, until God forgives us, the death penalty of God is over our heads.

Every human being deserves death. So you were dead. You were a walking dead person. That's all you were.

But you were made alive. How were we made alive? Well, let's see. We were forgiven, and we were buried with Christ because the old person is being crucified.

Then we come up, and God's Spirit is in us. We were partakers of this new divine nature, and now we're a new person, all except for the zombie.

But we're continuing to grow as a new person. That's what happens when Christ comes back. We become totally new. There's scriptures, there's prophecies about that. We become totally new.

So he goes on. He talks about how we once were like everyone else because we were deceived by Satan. Everyone else because we were deceived by Satan. Then he says in verse 4, But God, who is rich in mercy because of his great love, which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive. Now it's interesting.

He said, you were already dead, and now you're alive. And wait a minute.

I don't know. I was alive before baptism, but spiritually here we were dead. But spiritually he's given us life. The Holy Spirit is a down payment on eternal life.

He's given us life if we will grasp it.

He says, and now you're alive.

He says, Together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Jesus Christ.

Well, we're not in heaven, are we? But it means we have a relationship. We have a relationship through Almighty God, the Father, through Jesus Christ.

He sits there. We have this relationship. Because notice the rest of the sentence.

That in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riches of his grace and his kindness toward us in Jesus Christ. So in the ages to come, the resurrection will really get to be a direct face-to-face interaction, a relationship with God.

But we're already in a relationship with God. We're already dead and have been made alive.

And that process was we had to die with Christ. And we had to be buried.

A type of resurrection, picturing a future resurrection when we will be like him.

He says, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. Now if you stop there, it's like, oh well, salvation is just belief in Jesus and you're okay. No, it's not.

If we are buried, we come up, we are to become a new person. And we are in this struggle with these two natures. And that's why he says here, For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared that we should walk in them beforehand. He prepared beforehand. In other words, before, before even you received God's Spirit, he had a plan for what he wanted you to do. Now, we all have free will. That's what messes this up. We all have free will.

The bottom line is, what we're looking at here is that in this remarkable love of God towards sinners, he calls us. We respond to that. We accept the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and then he says, okay, now I want you to go through a ceremony where you you basically are crucified with him, buried with him, and come up a new person.

And this is how we outwardly show this covenant. And then every Passover, what do we do?

We take symbols of his blood and his body because we're being renewed all the time.

This is a process of constant renewal as we struggle to have God develop in us the new nature. So we truly are new.

That's why, as we do this Passover, it can't be just some rituals we do.

And we feel sort of bad for things we've done in the past. I feel bad for some things I've done this over the last year. And so I feel it's good to take this bread and this wine and accept God's forgiveness again. No, no, no. This is all about renewal of a covenant in which you, by the power of God, become a new person. Now we struggle in it, yes, we do our part, but it's through God's power.

You and I can't do it. We can't. But God can.

And you were already buried. Man, we already died and we're buried.

And we're walking in newness of life.

Let's go to Ephesians 3 and we'll finish it up here. I know I have a little time. Tell you what, Philippians 1.6, let's go there. I'm going to read one verse, then we'll go to Ephesians. Philippians 1.6.

Remember this. We already read where Paul said God has given us, or Peter said, God has given us everything we need.

Everything we need has been given to us. We just struggle.

So, Philippians 1 verse 6, breaking into the middle of a thought here.

Being confident, Paul says, of this very thing that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ, until the day he returns, which when the actual physical, I say physical, the resurrection of the body takes place, the spiritual resurrection, the resurrection to eternal life. But isn't it amazing? He actually calls coming up out of that watery grave. He calls it a type of resurrection, a type of resurrection. A new person has come up.

Let's remember that. And remember, once again, he's giving us everything we have to have. If we're failing, we need to go get help. If we're failing, we have to go get help and receive from God what we need.

I actually read that sometimes when I do a funeral with someone with Alzheimer's.

Because I've had people say, well, this person got Alzheimer's, God couldn't finish his work.

So I guess, you know, they don't receive salvation. No, God finished his work. The body wears out.

I mean, God's going to say, you know what? If that person hadn't got Alzheimer's, they'd have been in the resurrection when Jesus Christ comes back. But boy, that got messed up, didn't it? No. When someone loses their ability to actually reason and know the difference between right and wrong, they're judged. They're already completed. The brain's just deteriorating. That's all. That's all it is. He's going to finish it if we hang on. That's basically what we do. We hang on. And he'll finish it. And we submit, and we learn, and we fall down, and he gets us up again.

And that Passover's supposed to remind us of that. So Ephesians now, 3, verse 14. Of course, we just read what he wrote earlier in this letter. And these same thoughts keep going through this letter. He says, For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened through the might of his Spirit and the inner man. Ah, the inner man, the new man! Where does the new person get its strength? We can't do this on our own.

It comes from the Spirit of God. That's where we get it. We have to go ask for it. We have to go on our knees at times and say, God, I can't. Oh, I can't do that. But you better.

We better at times be on our knees before God and say, I can't. I'm not able. Because if we think we're able, we're in trouble. If I think I'm worthy, I'm in trouble. Only God makes me worthy. If I think I can do this just by my willpower, I will fail because Satan's greater than me. And my own rotten human nature's greater. The zombie just can't be beat by my willpower.

And so we have to go to God and say, I can't. And you know what? Some amazing things can happen in your life when you say, I can't. You will have to do this or it can't be done. And God says, I know that. I've just been waiting for you to figure it out. Of course you can't.

So he says, the Spirit and the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and the length and depth and height, to know the law of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. The Holy Spirit comes into us. And what we want is that new nature to be developed to the point where God says, I'm done. You are what I want you to be. And the fullness of God is in us for eternity. We will actually be united to God for eternity. And the fullness of God. What, God takes His Spirit away when we're changed? Of course not. Now we are united to Him in His Spirit forever.

And He says, by faith, sometimes we don't understand what we think is, we can live this sort of self-centered Christianity. You know, we have sort of opposites, you know, this I have power because of my willpower and eventually you won't. Whatever we think we have the power to do, eventually we won't. Something will come along. Saying to say, well, they think they can do this, let me have them. That scares me, right? That's what he did with Job. He thinks he can do this.

No. The faith is in God. We can't have faith in ourselves because it's not our righteousness or our knowledge or our faith. It's God.

We respond to Him. He does it. Our faith is in Him and in Christ and what they do.

It is about being filled with the fullness of God. That's what the inner person, that's what the new man is becoming. And that doesn't happen in a second. That's a lifetime. That's a lifetime.

We can spend our lives in minutia of physical things, thinking that that's being spiritual.

The minutia of little things. Or we can literally be becoming a new person in the inner person, which has to do with our thoughts, our emotions, our motivations. It has to do with love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, mercy, faith. It has to do with 1 Corinthians 13, right? Which is a cliché, unfortunately. 1 Corinthians 13 is a cliché. According to the Apostle Paul, if we don't have that, we have nothing.

The inner person is being developed to be like God. We're literally becoming the children of God.

What price was paid for us for that to happen?

And then we get to participate in it. Oh, guess what we're doing at this Passover?

We're commemorating the fact that Christ was crucified for man.

I vicariously lived that crucifixion through him, and I vicariously was buried into him. That's what it says. And I was vicariously resurrected to a new man, so I could look forward to a literal resurrection. We just read all those scriptures about baptism that say that.

It's quite obvious what Paul's saying. And that's what we're looking at at this Passover. And we're sitting down now, and in this communion with God and with Christ and with each other, because we wash each other's feet, we're all saying we've gone through the same process, and we're all involved in this.

So you can look at the person next to you and say, but you wrestled with your zombie this week, didn't you? And they can say, sure did.

Yeah, but we're new. We're becoming new people.

Verse 20. Now to him who was able to do exceedingly abundantly, is these throwing these adjectives together exceedingly, abundantly. Maybe those are adverbs. I don't know what they are in the Greek, so I'm just going to go on.

Now to him who was able to exceedingly, abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us. Now stop and think a minute.

Paul says what God can do in us. See, we look at ourselves and say, I can't do it, and you can't. That's part of the process. When we look at God, and he says, we can't even think what God can do in us. Can't even think it. It's beyond our capability.

He says, think of that. Try to wrap your mind around that. But I can't. I'm little. I'm nothing. Of course we are. God says, well, of course you're little or nothing. I'm the creator. I have to do this. Stop fighting me. Stop fighting me and let me do this in you.

That humility before God. He says, according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the church by Jesus Christ to all generations forever and ever. Amen. Amen.

More than we can even think, and we're trapped in physical minutia.

Paul's words seem so... He's very practical at times. Other times people look at him, and they're like, this is not very practical. No, well, it is if you understand this big picture that he understood. It's huge. He understood what God was doing so much so. He even said, you know what? Personally, I'd rather die and be in the resurrection than keep going on in his life, but I can't. Why? What was his reason? His reason was because God wants me to teach others still.

And that drove him. That purpose drove him.

And he was happy to do it, to be beaten, shipwrecked, starved, stoned, and it kept being driven. Why?

Well, I was buried with Christ. That's why.

He received God's Spirit, and he knew what he had to do. We were entering a time, a Passover time, of self-examination.

Humble self-examination is never easy, but it can't be just sitting down and, oh, how bad was I since the last Passover? That's not what this is about.

It is about looking at ourselves through prayer, and scripture reading, and even fasting.

And going to God, and asking him to please in the covenant that we've made, that he will complete his part of the covenant, what he promises us, and that he will make us into new people. That we're not in despair. Instead, we're humbly before God saying, I can't.

And knowing he's doing. That's what it is. I can't, but he can.

Or we can just make a list of sins and come to the Passover in despair.

We're to look at our sins. We sure are. We had self-examination. But what's the solution to it? The Passover brings us back to the solution. When God called you into the new covenant, Christ took upon himself her death penalty. When you participated in the site of that covenant, which is baptism, the old sinful person was crucified with him. You were buried with him, and you were brought up out of the water as a symbol of a resurrection to be a new person. And that's the process here and now. The end game is the resurrection, the change, when Christ comes back. That's the purpose. That's where it happens. That's when the reality becomes we meet God face to face, and we meet Jesus Christ face to face, and we are with them forever. Oh, and then we have a job to do, by the way, but now we're going to talk about the millennium.

And remember this, and sometimes you have to go to God and say, you know, how many times my kids or my crayons and kids have said to me, but you promised.

Now, God's not limited. You know, I can't do it. I'm sorry. I know you had promised, but something else happened and I can't do it. God never says, sorry, I'm busy and India right now. I don't have time to fulfill the promise I made to you. That never happens.

And we can go and say, Father, like a little child, but you promised. And what's the promise?

The promise isn't that you're going to have lots of money, although most of us have more money than... I mean, we have more things than most anybody has throughout history. I mean, we're incredibly blessed. I'm glad God gives us physical blessings, right?

But physical blessings isn't the end goal that God has for us. It's not the end goal.

What is the promise? The promise is that Jesus Christ will return, that your old man will die, the new man will be developed beyond anything you can think, and that at that time you will be changed into his child forever. That promise. Go ask him for it. Go say, Father, I need that promise. I need that change. I need to be reminded. I've been buried. I've died. And you are with me. You are in me. I have your spirit. Jesus Christ is guiding me. Take me where you can go, where I can go, because I can't.