Things That Are Not

Good afternoon, everyone! Great to be here with everyone today. Welcome to all the people visiting. It's always nice to have extra people here. And you're always welcome to join us. Hope everyone had a good week. I know I got a little disoriented this morning. I had my alarm set to get up a little bit early to make sure I was all prepared for today. I was looking at the weather forecast, and I saw the Friday weather forecast, and I was thinking, why is the Friday weather forecast on here? It felt like the Sabbath. It took me longer than I'd like to admit to realize it wasn't actually Saturday.

So as humans, we're always intrigued by the future, aren't we? And it manifests itself in different ways. For people in religious circles, it often manifests itself in being interested in prophecy, trying to figure out what it is that's going to happen in the future.

For other people, maybe it's trying to figure out how to make some money. If you search the Internet, you can find endless people who are predicting the next big stock, the next big technology, the next big innovation that's going to earn people tons of money. And for those who are sports fans, you know that the NFL Draft started yesterday, and of course people are out there looking. They're telling the story of Tom Brady, who was chosen deep down in the draft and became the greatest ever, and wondering who's going to get chosen this year in the draft that's going to be better.

I had a friend I worked with for a while whose dad was actually pretty involved with golf. He was head of the PGA for a while. And this friend of mine used to play youth golf, and he would love to tell the story about seeing Tiger Woods when he was six or seven years old. And this friend of mine was a teenager, and he said one of the pros at the club they were at as he was playing junior golf said, that kid over there, keep an eye on him. He's going to be big. Now just think if you could see that ahead of time and really know that something that hadn't really happened yet was going to happen in the future, and how incredible that would be. Well, we know that God lives outside of time. Time is a physical construct that he created, so he sees human events very differently from us. And that's something I'd like to focus on for a little while in the message today. And let's start this message by looking at a passage that talks about this. It's in Romans 4.

So Mr. Thomas used this in his sermon last week, so this will be a memory test for those of you to see if you remember this scripture or not. It's a scripture I've always found intriguing since I was a kid, and it's an essential quality of God and how he deals with us. Romans 4 and verse 17. We'll just read one small section of this verse where it says, Now, some of the other translations of the Bible put it a little bit differently. The English Standard Version says that God calls into existence things that don't exist. The New American Standard Bible says God calls into being that which doesn't exist.

And the New English Translation says that God summons the things that do not yet exist as though they already do. I think in all these different translations we can see this essential quality that God lays out there about himself. He's able to see things. He sees things in us. He calls things as though they are, even though they don't, maybe physically, as we see things, actually exist at that point in time.

For those of you who like titles, I've titled this message simply, Things That Are Not. You can put three dots after that if you'd like, but things that are not. So considering this passage for a moment, there are Christian denominations out there that view this verse, and they sort of use it as a name-it-and-claim-it sort of adoption. They say, because of this verse, it means that if we, as Christians, go before God and say, that million dollars in my bank account is not, but I see it as it is, God, and it's going to be there. And people will put that kind of a spin on this verse, and that's absolutely not what it means. I think as we read through some of those alternate translations that were there, it's pretty clear that that's not the intention of this verse. This is talking about a quality of God. The way that God is able to view us, the way that God is able to view other physical things, and see it as something that, even though we might not see it as today, he sees it with assurance in terms of what it's going to be. And there's a very clear connection, in my mind, between this and the Holy Days that we're completing right now. In fact, the first part of the verse talked about Jesus Christ being raised from the dead, right? And when we think about these Holy Days, we don't celebrate a specific Holy Day that's related to the resurrection. But it's a very huge event that happened in the history of mankind. It has huge ramifications for us as Christians, and it's actually at the center of God being able to call things that are not as though they were. And we know from the chronology that we see of the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ that he was resurrected during these Holy Days. In fact, the wave-sheaf offering that was offered in the Old Testament also points towards that. So I'd like to use Romans 4, 17 as a springboard today just to consider in our lives some things that don't exist, and how God calls them as though they are, even though they don't exist, all directly tied in the Bible to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So let's stay in Romans 4 for a minute and just consider it briefly as a chapter in the Bible of what it's talking about. Romans 4 starts by talking about Abraham. And the chapter, as Paul is writing and going through this chapter, he's going through the fact that Abraham was called.

He had faith in God, and God imputed righteousness to him. And then he goes on talking about the fact that this was an act of grace that God performed. It was something that God did out of his own mind, out of his own benevolence, wanting to call Abraham. And because Abraham reacted in faith, not because of anything that Abraham did, he was given the promises. And so that's what this entire chapter is about.

And the other thing that it talks a lot about is a topic called justification. And that's where I'd like to start as we build a chain of three different things that we'll talk about in this brief message. That first of all, we're justified. We are justified by God. Secondly, as a result of that justification, we stand sinless before him. And thirdly, that we are his children. These are all things that God sees and that he calls out, as we'll see in the Scriptures, as though they were, even though when we look at ourselves physically and humanly, we don't see that.

So, let's turn to Romans 4 and we'll read verses 23 through 25. Justification is probably not a word that we think about all that often. It gets thrown around a lot in theological circles and there's a lot written about it if you're interested in it. But if you'll turn to Romans 4, we'll read verses 23 through 25.

And here it's referring to Abraham, as I was talking about earlier in this chapter. It uses Abraham as an example. And Paul writes in verse 23, So in this Scripture, very clearly and distinctly pointing out the fact that our justification comes through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, just as our forgiveness for sins comes through his blood and through his death. And if we look earlier in the chapter in verse 3, we have the passage that probably all of us have heard at some point in time, and that is that Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. So again, tying together faith and something that God does out of his own grace for a person.

Now, let's pause and think about the word justification for a minute. Rather than trying to explain what it means in English, let's go back to the word that was used there when the Bible was written, when the New Testament was written in Greek. And the word used here for justification is a word pronounced dikaiosis. And according to the new American Greek standard lexicon, this word means the act of God declaring men free from guilt and acceptable to him. The act of God declaring men free from guilt and acceptable to him. Or, abjuring to be righteous. So in other words, calling something that's not necessarily righteous and declaring it to be righteous.

Vines goes on and says that this word denotes the act of pronouncing righteousness, justification, and acquittal. Its precise meaning is determined by that of the word dikaiō, to justify, which signifies the establishment of a person as just by acquittal from guilt. And that's what the related word refers to as a sentence of acquittal. So there's a depth here that goes beyond simply the forgiveness that we're given through the blood of Jesus Christ.

And when you think about it, we don't often stop to consider it, I don't think, but there are two different things that are happening here. So if you think of somebody that's wronged you and you forgive that person, you still know that the wrong is there, don't you? And as human beings, it's hard to expunge that from our minds. We remember it. And that's happened. Or if somebody in a court of law is convicted of something, and perhaps part of their sentence is forgiven for good behavior, the fact is they still committed the crime.

It's different than being acquitted. So the word justification takes a step beyond that and actually talks about the fact of removing completely the fact that anything happened. It has a legal connotation of being fully declared innocent. So if you think about going to court, going through a case, and a judge determines that you are not guilty, and you're declared at that point in time innocent, in a sense you're justified.

Vindicated might be a word we use nowadays instead. But it's that act of declaring to be innocent. Let's turn to Romans 3, and we'll see this used a little bit in context in passage in Romans 3. Romans 3, we'll read verses 21 through 26. You'll see a lot of words here as we read this that we always associate with Passover and with these days of Unleavened Bread. Romans 3, starting in verse 21.

Because in his forbearance, God has passed over the sins that were previously committed to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. So here we see again this combination of faith and justification coming together and believing in Jesus Christ, not only in his death and his shed blood, but in his resurrection and the new life that he lived and that he lives within us because of his resurrection. We'll see shortly how that ties together. But as we're staying for a moment on this theme of justification as a starting point, I want to focus on this fact that we are declared through justification to be righteous. So if you think of legal cases again, sometimes people might commit a crime as a teenager. And there are laws in this country, if you're under the age of 18, with many crimes, if you're convicted as a teenager of a crime, those crimes are cleared out of your record so that when you're an adult, you don't live with that criminal record. Because if you did, that would impact you in terms of trying to find a job, function in society, and all of those things. And so in a sense, teenagers who commit certain crimes and qualify for that clause in the law are essentially justified. Though they've been committed of a crime, when they reach age 18, their records are expunged. And as far as society is considered, as they go through, apply for jobs, do whatever they have to do from a legal standpoint, they are not considered somebody who has a criminal conviction in their past. They've been justified. That record has been expunged. Similarly, you might have heard of the idea of double jeopardy. It's not a game show that's twice as good as regular jeopardy.

Double jeopardy is this idea that once you've been found innocent or guilty of a crime in a court of law, you cannot be tried again for that same crime. It's actually in our constitution that it's not allowed to happen. It goes all the way back to Roman law, and most Western law that's based on Roman law will have this same clause of double jeopardy in it. And it has in it this same idea, which is if you go to court and you have a legal case made against you for a criminal action and you're found innocent, you've been acquitted or justified, you remain in that justified state. You're not allowed to be taken back into court for the same crime and be tried again. So it's a strong concept that goes all the way through our system. So before we move on from this point, just to park there for a moment, the main point I want to make is to understand that God says in the Bible that through Jesus Christ, the fact that He was resurrected, we are justified. We are justified. He looks at us as though we have not committed sin differently than the way we look at ourselves, different than the way we look at one another. So let's move on to the second point that follows from this, and that is that as a result of our justification, God sees us as new and sinless beings. Again, something that is not, that He sees or declares to be so. So in legal terms, once you've been acquitted of a crime, you're not a criminal, right? By definition, you've been charged with something, you've been acquitted, you're not a criminal. It doesn't show up on your background check, you don't have to list it on a job application. And likewise, when God looks down on us, because we've been justified, He sees the reflection of Jesus Christ living in us and that righteousness, and doesn't see the human sinfulness that He's forgiven and justified. Let's turn to Romans 8, and we'll see this expressed in the Scriptures. Romans 8.

And as we begin to think about how God sees us, seeing things that are not and declaring them or making them to be, we have to think about how we view ourselves as well. And also how we view the other people sitting here with us in this room, who God has extended the same grace to. Romans 8, verse 1. Again, talking about the fact that God sees us as new sinless beings once we've been justified.

Romans 8, verse 1. Paul writes, there's therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Jesus Christ, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. No condemnation. It's like this idea of double jeopardy, right? We've been acquitted. We've been justified. The sins have been purged away, and God does not have any condemnation for us as we're walking in the Spirit, and we're walking according to that way. How often do we think about that? When we look in the mirror, when we look at ourselves, we consider the way that we act. When we look at other people in the room and look at the way they act, how often do we think of them as justified, acquitted, and having no condemnation attached to them? It's an important thing to think about in terms of our mentality towards ourselves and towards others. Let's turn to Colossians 3. Colossians 3. And we'll read verses 1 through 3 to see further how we are seen by God. And again, here we'll see the connection with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Something we don't always focus on, maybe, as much as we should. We rightly think about His death and His sacrifice. But again, the importance of His resurrection tied into this. Colossians 3, and we'll start in verse 1.

Now that's an interesting phrase at the end, isn't it? The fact that our life is hidden with Christ in God. And again, what it's pointing to is this idea that the old life that we live, the way that we were as human beings, is not how God sees us. He sees the righteousness of Jesus Christ that's in us. Clearly, as written in this passage, it doesn't mean we just sit around and do whatever we feel like, whether it's sinful or not. We're told, seek the things that are from above. As God lives in us through His Spirit, that Spirit has to be moving in us and should be changing the way that we think. But the way that God looks at us, our life is hidden with Christ in God. So the act of justification is what unlocks this new life. The fact that, just like being freed from bondage or being let off for a crime that we've been convicted of, we're able to live a completely new and different life because we've been let free of all that penalty and all of that guilt and all the things that come with it. And it happens through faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Let's turn to another verse that lays this out. And that's Galatians 2 and verse 20. Galatians 2 verse 20. For some people, this has probably been a memory verse in days gone by. Galatians 2 and verse 20.

Here Paul, writing to the Galatians, says, So again, pointing out the fact of a new life. As a result of the justification that happened, that we're able to live a new life. And not only the fact that we have a chance to live a new life, but God looks at us in a completely different way. After we've accepted the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we put our faith in the resurrected Jesus Christ and the fact that He is now living in us. And that the reflection of His righteousness is what comes out as we're walking with God. So we can walk in confidence with Him because He looks at us in a different way. I don't know how many of you have dealt with things like this at work or at school and in other places, but I've always seen a big difference in the way that people react when they're fearful of something that's going to happen. So people, for example, who are always afraid of losing their jobs. Have you ever worked with someone who was afraid they were going to get fired the next day? Maybe we've been in that situation ourselves sometimes. And you compare that to a person who is going to work and sees opportunity in everything that's happening. I can do this. I can learn this. I can stretch and try that. And so often, the difference between those mentalities is how the boss treats that person. And I know discussions that I have at work, as we're talking about people that might report up through different structures and managers that I work with. It's a big discussion we have, which is, how can we motivate people to look at opportunity and to see the things happening that they're doing every day as opportunities to grow and develop and to learn new skills and to advance versus the people who look at what they have and what they're doing and kind of look at it like this. They want to hoard it. They want to pull it inside. They want to protect it. And they don't want to let anyone near it because they're operating out of fear every day. And so I can tell you, as someone who supervises other people from time to time, to me it makes a huge difference in the way people perform, what they do, how they react to criticism, how they react to opportunities that are put in front of them. It's completely different when they're looking at the world and saying, I've got opportunities, someone has confidence in me, and I can move to the next step and I can grow and develop versus the person that says, I can't let anybody touch these things because if they do, I might lose my job. That's why it's important to think about how God looks at us.

And the fact that God does not look at us as somebody who sinned and might be one sin away from getting tossed into the lake of fire.

Do we see that listed in any of these scriptures that we read?

We read about the confidence that God has in us when He's justified in us and He sees Jesus Christ living in us. He sees that potential of not what we can be, but what He intends us to be as children in His kingdom. How that should change the way that we view our lives, the things that come at us, the things that we deal with, and how we move forward in faith in Him and try to build our spiritual lives, continuing to learn and to grow. And that takes us to the last third section that I wanted to talk briefly about, which is that God sees us as His children and as children who will share His nature.

So just like a boss or a coach who sees that potential and continues to push a person to stretch and push, not because He's looking for them to fail, but because He's looking for them to develop and grow into the potential that they know that they have, that's the way God works with us. Let's look at Romans 8. We'll read a couple different passages in Romans 8 that lays this out. So as we've been justified, as God looks at us and looks at us as His children, seeing the reflection of His Son Jesus Christ in us, not our sinful human selves, He then sees us as children who will share His nature.

Romans 8, we'll start in verse 9.

Romans 8, verse 9.

You're not in the flesh but in the spirit, indeed, if indeed the spirit of God dwells in you. Again, this same concept. We know we're human, but Paul's writing here that, look, the way God sees you, if God's spirit is dwelling in you, He doesn't see you as a fleshly person. He sees you as someone in whom His spirit is dwelling and that you're living in the spirit. Now, if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he's not His. Verse 10.

If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, again, a reference to the resurrection, then He who raised up Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His spirit that dwells in you. Skipping down to verse 16.

The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs of Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together. There aren't a lot of conditions put on here in terms of how God looks at us. Suffering with Him, interestingly, is the one condition that's put in there. And we read in other passages of the Bible that Jesus Christ Himself was perfected by the things that He suffered. And so we know, as difficult as it is, and as much as we try to escape it as human beings, that suffering is part of that refining process. And I find it interesting that that's the one condition in this passage, as God talks about how He looks at us, of suffering that is added in there, that we can be glorified together. What I want to focus on here is what He talks about. He says, we are the children of God. We are the heirs of God through Jesus Christ. He doesn't say, well, you know, for the next two or three decades, you're good, you can qualify yourself, then maybe I'll go ahead and give you that reward. He says, I look at you as someone I called out and have justified. I see the reflection of my son Jesus Christ in you, and you are my child. You do have that destiny. Very clearly, Satan said. Let's go to 1 Corinthians 15. We'll read this concept one more time. 1 Corinthians 15, verse 57. 1 Corinthians 15, 57. We'll just read this short part of the verse that says, Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. So through the fact that Christ not only died and gave his life for us and shed his blood, but the fact that he was resurrected, we can and do have victory. What a great example this is, as it brings around all of the things that we think about and focus on through the Days of Unleavened Bread, isn't it? In fact, over the Passover, Jesus Christ gave his life. In fact, that we know a few days later, three days and three nights after he was crucified, he was raised from the grave. And because of the fact that he was raised from death, he can live within us through his Holy Spirit. We read those passages after the Passover ceremony, don't we? We read through the book of John and some of the last words that Jesus Christ spoke that were recorded by John. He talks about abiding in him. And what does he say after that? He says, abide in me and I will abide in you. He talks about bringing the comforter and the fact that he will dwell with us through his Holy Spirit. He will dwell inside of us. And it's those things that we need to think about as we consider this part of the year and we move on forward from the days of Unleavened Bread. So as we conclude this message, God calls things that are not as though they were. I think that's one of the most incredible things about God in terms of the difference in how he views things from how we do. Because no matter how hard we try, we might be encouraging to our kids, but we always encourage them and think of the back of them as, well, I hope they can really do that. I'm not really entirely sure they can, but I'm encouraged in many ways. Or we see other people and we hope that they'll succeed, but we're not really sure that that's going to happen. God's not talked about in these things as though he's not sure. He says he sees the things that are not as though they were. He declares them to be so and he has that power. And is closely bound in the message of these days.

So these spring holy days, among their many lessons, remind us of the newness of our lives. The fact that everything has changed, and they're very stark analogies that are used for it. We're dead in Christ. We're buried in baptism. He uses that very permanent human idea of death to show us just how different the new life is that happens afterwards for us as Christians. Let's turn to Romans 6 as our last passage to read for this message. Romans 6, and we'll read verses 1 through 4. Romans 6, verses 1 through 4.

Romans 6, verse 1, Paul writes, We're baptized into Christ Jesus, we're baptized into his death.

Walking in newness of life because of that. Now it's no accident that the spring holy days happen in the spring time. That's why we call them the spring holy days.

But all of these things that we're talking about, we're also reminded of them when we look outside and we look around us, aren't we? Because this is the time of year, at least in the western or the northern hemisphere, that the trees are budding. The birds are singing. They're building nests. New life is sprouting up. Plants, trees that you thought are dead or might look dead if you don't know what you're looking at suddenly sprout to life again. And so even in the things happening around us in nature, God is trying to send this message, newness of life. The fact that where we think there's death, things can live again. I'm amazed sometimes when people come in a gardener, if you've ever seen a gardener that really knows what he or she is doing, and the way they'll cut back some of these shrubs and plants and grasses that you have in your yard. And I'll look at them sometimes, and something that was full and blooming where I might have snipped off two or three inches off the ends, they'll take it all the way down to the branches where in the fall it's just sticky branches sticking out. And I look at that and I say, how can anything ever come of that again? And what happens in the springtime? Because it was cut back, new life comes in, the gardener knew what he was doing, and it just blooms like crazy and comes back to life. That's the kind of newness of life that we're talking about. That's happening out there in nature at the time of these holy days for a reason. It's for us to think about it, to realize within our own lives as well, the same God that created this creation, that does all these incredible things, is also creating in us. He's creating himself in us through the life of Jesus Christ through His Spirit. So let's use these holy days as a reminder of how God calls things that are not as though they were. We are justified before Him. He sees us as sinless standing before Him, and He sees us as His children. Let's rededicate ourselves as we come out of these holy days to walking in newness of life through Jesus Christ.