The Mystery of Union

We have a guest speaker. He's part of his pastoral network. So I'm going to welcome Pastor Neil. He's a pastor, writer, and Bible teacher. And he serves as a teaching pastor at Radiant Central Church in Grover Beach, California. He was telling me about where he's from. He's from Northern California. I love that area. I love Morro Bay. They have a little bakery where I just sit down, have cafe. I've been there a few times with my family. And he also leads a few ministries. And one of the amazing things I was just seeing that he's been a missionary in Iraq, also at the same time. So why don't we welcome Pastor Neil? Amen. Amen. Thank you so much. Good morning, everyone. It is an honor to be here. This is my first time in Hong Kong. And Lord willing, not my last. I love it here. I've been traveling. I've been in Africa for two weeks. And let me tell you, Hong Kong is very different from the African bush. If you've ever been to Africa, you know what I'm talking about. We've been part of a part of what are the work that we're doing in Africa. We're planting churches in Kenya. And so where we are is it's a very remote part of Kenya. There's no power. There's no water. There's really not much there, including the gospel. And so one of our initiatives that we're doing in Africa is to raise up pastors, disciple them, train them in the ways of the Lord and the scriptures, and then send them out to plant churches. And so that's what me and a pastor, friend of mine, we were doing the past two weeks. So we landed in Hong Kong late yesterday afternoon. And I'm honored to be with you this morning. So if I say something that sounds a little off, can we just blame it on jet lag? Just kidding. We won't say anything that's off this morning. My main text is going to be in Ephesians 1. If you have your Bibles, you can go ahead and turn there. I want to talk about something that is extremely important for the church to understand. It's our union with Christ. The promise of the gospel, it's not just to save you from your sins as amazing as that is, as incredible as that is. The gospel promises so much more than that. It promises that we will become temples of the Holy Spirit. That God Himself will come and dwell inside of His people. This is a mystery that many of us can say amen to. We see it on the scriptures, but how many of us actually live with the reality that Jesus Christ Himself lives inside of us. I want to begin with a story. It's a story of a woman named Helen Keller. Is anyone familiar with Helen Keller in her story? Amazing, fascinating story. Helen, when she was two years old, she contracted an illness. And this illness caused her to be blind and deaf. Now think about that. You have no sensory input from the world around you. You can't see, nor can you hear. She was experiencing a world that was completely blank. And at the age of seven, her parents found a teacher, a woman named Anne, who said she could help Helen learn to read, learn to write, learn to communicate, sounds impossible. And so what Anne did is she would take Helen's hand and it's like a form of sign language. She would make shapes in Helen's hand that would symbolize words. Helen was seven years old. She was blind. She couldn't see. She didn't understand what was going on in her hand. One day, Anne took Helen outside to a water pump and she spelled out the word W-A-T-E-R in Helen's hand. Then with her other hand, she placed it underneath the water pump and Helen felt this cold wet substance on her hand. And a light bulb went off. She realized these shapes in my hand correspond with this feeling in my hand. Water. She understood the shapes in her hand corresponded with a reality. You see, until that moment, Helen had something in her hand, but it was not yet in her mind, it was not yet in her heart, it was disconnected. But in that moment, she realized what's in my hand is actually representative of something in the world around me. So many Christians have the truths of the gospel in their hands. Jesus Christ has saved me from my sins. Jesus Christ lives in me by His Spirit. I am righteous. I am holy. I am a daughter, a son of God. Those are truths in our hands, but they haven't yet made their way into our heart. We say amen to them. But do we actually live with the reality of being a son of God, a daughter of God filled with His Spirit? Well, my hope this morning is that you will leave this place fully convinced that God Himself lives inside of you. Amen? The gospel promises that anyone who believes that Jesus is who He says He is is in Christ. And being in Christ means that whatever happened to Jesus happened to you. As Galatians 2.20 says, I have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives where? In me. Roman 6.5 says, "For if we have been united together in His death, we shall also be united in His resurrection." Friend, when Jesus died, you died with Him. That's the promise of the gospel. When Jesus rose from the dead, you rose with Him. Whatever happened to Jesus has happened to you. God's design is that whoever believes in Jesus, that now their very life would be animated by the power of the Holy Spirit. The gospel of the kingdom isn't good news because it promises salvation from sin. The gospel of the kingdom is not good news because it promises that you'll go to heaven someday. The gospel of the kingdom is good news because it promises that you and God will be joined together as one. Amen, pastor. Look, salvation from sin is great news. Being with God in heaven is great news, but the gospel is so much better than that. It means that you are no longer an orphan. I loved what our sister was sharing about fostering children. What a beautiful picture of the gospel. She said, "I could feel the rejection on Lucky as I held him." That's what God sees in you before you're in Christ. You're rejected. You're an enemy of God. You were separated from Him, but that was not okay with Him. So He didn't just save you from your sin. He brought you to Himself and fills you with Himself. Friends, this gospel is incredible. I have four points that I want to make this morning. Point number one, union was God's design from the very beginning. Number two, sin separates us from God. Number three, Jesus restores what Adam lost. And finally, we now live from that place of union. So point number one, union was God's design from the very beginning. Let's go back to the very beginning of the story. Genesis chapter 1 verse 26, God says this, "Let us make man in our image according to our likeness." Now what does it mean to be made in the image of God? Does it mean that God looks like me? And everyone says, "Lord, I assure hope not." Does God look like you? No. That's not what it means to be made in the image of God. Jesus says in John 4 verse 24 that God is spirit. So when God says, "Let us make man in our image," that means that we are spiritual beings. We aren't bodies that have a spirit. We are spiritual beings that have a physical body. We have this treasure in earthen vessels. You know the scripture. Now spirit, it has no boundary to it. It's not confined by skin. Like spirits don't sit side beside each other like bricks. They come together like breath. When you exhale, you can't tell what's your breath and what's the air around you. It's permeated. It's come together. That's spirit. And God's designed one spirit can be joined with another without either spirit losing itself. God designed you to be one with him while preserving both of your identities. That is a very important statement. God designed you to be one with him while preserving your identity while preserving his identity while preserving your calling, your commissioning, your reason for existence. This is the mystery friends of the Trinity. The Father is in the Son, the Son is in the Spirit. They're all together as one, but yet they are mutually distinct. God is perfectly in union with himself and completely distinct in his identity as Father, Son, and Spirit. So when God said let us make man in our image and likeness, this means we were designed as spiritual beings to be one with God while having our own unique created purpose. Now that's the good news. The bad news is point number two. Sin has separated us from God. When Adam sinned, he removed himself from this union with God by acting according to his own will. That's what sin does. Sin separates us from God and it always leads to death. Adam sin caused him to become a man of the flesh even though God had created him to be a man of the Spirit. But it gets worse. Genesis chapter 1 tells us that everything in creation recreates itself according to its kind. So cows make more cows. Apple trees make more apple trees, etc. And as sons and daughters of Adam we've been recreated in the likeness of sinful Adam. The men of flesh who separated himself from God has recreated other men and women of the flesh who were also separated from God. We inherited Adam's separation. We inherited Adam's brokenness. We inherited Adam's delusion about who God is. You say what do you mean? The same Adam who fell low ship with God in the garden after he sinned thought he needed to hide from this God. Sin had recreated God in Adam's mind to be a God that he needed to be afraid of. A God he needed to hide from. We've inherited that same delusion about who God is. Romans 3.23 says we all sin and fall short of the glory of God. In Adam we're born with a gravitational pull away from God. And just like Adam when we sin there's nothing we can do to bridge that gap of separation. So that's the problem. Sin separates us from God. A God who loves us and created us to be with him. But the thing about sin is this. While it has the power to change us sin does not have the power to change God. Remember that when you sin who's the one doing a changing in that moment. You were God. Us we are. Sin does not have the power to change God. He is loving. He has designed you and created you to be with him. And when we sin that shame lies to us and says we need to put some distance between us and God. That is sin changing us, not God. So what is a loving God who created you to be with him to do? Because now there's a separation between us and him. That brings us to point number three. Jesus restores what Adam lost. God wraps himself in the form of sinful flesh. He's born into the family line of Adam. He becomes a son of Adam. He lives the life of Adam. He dies the death of Adam. But because he refused to sin the sin of Adam, death has no power over the son of Adam. You remember death is a consequence of sin. And Jesus never sinned. But he willingly laid down his life so that all sons and daughters of Adam could believe in him and receive his life. And not only receive his life, receive his very spirit. Jesus allowed himself to die our death so that we can live his life. His death, it restores us back to union with God. Friend, if you believe that Jesus is who he says he is, you're not just with God. You are in Christ. You are in him. He lives inside of you. The mystery is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Now listen, with and in are two very different things. I'll explain what I mean. On the cross, there were two thieves that were with Jesus, right? One on either side of him. But there was only one thief who was in Christ on that day. Do you see the difference? They were with, but only one was in. The promise of the gospel is that we now live and move and have our being in Christ. Most Christians, they believe that Jesus died for their sins. And that may be one very important part of what his death accomplished. Amen. But Jesus didn't die just to save you from your sins. He died so you could be joined with him forever. Salvation is a starting point. But it's not the goal. Union is the goal. It's like saying that God rescued Israel from Egypt just to save them from being slaves. He didn't just save them from slavery. He brought them out so he could bring them in to a promised land where he himself would dwell with them. To only believe that Jesus died to set us free from sin is like saying, I got married to save my wife from being single. Was she single? When I met her, praise God, she was single when I met her. But that's not why I married my wife. Her identity was single. But I didn't marry her for that identity. I married her because I love her. And the covenant that we made changed her identity. It changed her name. See, I didn't marry her because she was just by herself. And now that we are married, she's no longer by herself. We are one. She's undergone a complete transformation of identity. This is the gospel, friends. Jesus didn't die because you were a sinner. He died because he loves you. Those are two very different things. Were you a sinner? Absolutely. That's part of the gospel. But that's not what motivated Jesus when he went to the cross. It wasn't his hatred of our sin that compelled him to Calvary. It was his unending love for you that compelled him to that moment of self-sacrifice. Those are two very different things, friends. Now, was the salvation from sin the accomplishment of his death? Absolutely. But if I focus on that as the basis of my relationship with God, then I only know how to relate to him through forgiveness. I won't relate to him through the act of intimacy and love and enjoying his presence. I'm still going to keep him at a distance because I only know how to relate to him through forgiveness. But when I realized that he gave everything because he loves me, this changes my dynamic with God forever. Jesus died because sin had separated you from the Father and that was not okay with him. We were created to be one with God and Jesus died to bring us back into that union with him, which brings us to point number four. We now live from that place of union. I want to look at finally our main text, Ephesians chapter one. I'm going to read verse seven through ten. In him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace, which he made to abound towards us in all wisdom and understanding. Having made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of time, listen to this, he would gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth in him. If you were to study this passage of scripture in Ephesians chapter one, you'd notice the phrase in him or in Christ nine times. Now, if you read the whole book of Ephesians, you see this phrase 25 times. This phrase in Christ is so central to Paul's theology. It's the way that Paul saw the entire framework of the gospel was through union with Christ. The mystery of God's will is that all things would be gathered together in Christ, and nothing of eternal value is ever found outside of Christ. Has anyone ever wondered what God's will is for their life? Am I the only one? As a pastor, that's actually the number one question that someone comes and asks you, pastor, how do I know what God's will is for my life? The mystery of God's will for your life is that you would be gathered out of the world, out of your sin, out of your separation from God, out of the wrong ideas that you have about God and about yourself. You would be gathered out of your trauma, out of your shame, out of your addiction, that you would be gathered out of everything you inherited from Adam. You would be gathered out of all of those things and be gathered in with Christ. And not just you. You would realize that there's other sons and daughters of Adam have also been gathered out of their situations and are now in Christ with you. This is what it means to be part of the body of Christ. To put it simply, you were born to be filled with God. How's that for God's will for your life? You were created to be one with God, to be joined in union with the God who loves you so much that nothing was going to keep you separated from him, not even the death of his own son. If you believe that Jesus is who He says He is, friend, you are the dwelling place of God in the earth. You are the temple not created with human hands and His will for where you live, what you do with your life, how you spend your time, how you spend your money, the people that you're in relationship with, and every other micro thing that we spend so much time worrying about, His will is that all of those things would flow from the greater reality that you are in Him. And when that's settled, when you know where you are and who lives in you, I promise you every other thing that you worry about, it will come into alignment, it will be ordered according to His will. Jesus is now living His life through you. The mystery of the gospel is that anyone who puts their faith in Jesus has died to their old life. That's what it means to be born again. And by way of that death, they bury everything they inherited from the first Adam. You're now reborn in the image and likeness of Christ, which means that our spirit, which was dead because of sin, it's now come alive with the life of God. We've been restored back to union with God. Friend, this is incredible news. This is actually scandalous that a holy, uncreated God of flaming fire would take up residence inside of somebody like me, somebody like you. It's an incredible gospel that we've been given, friends. Why do so few of us actually live as if God lived inside of us? How is it that like Helen Keller, we walk around with the truth in our hands, but we don't understand the connection between our reality. It's here, but it's not in here. It's not in our guts. How is that? I have three reasons. Reason number one, for why we don't live with the reality of God living inside of us. Reason number one is we just don't believe it. We don't believe it's actually true. We don't believe that an uncreated, infinite God could dwell in somebody like me. I know what I'm like. I know who I am. There's no way God could live inside of me. It's okay. Paul calls it a mystery, but the thing about God's mysteries is you don't study your way into them. They're revealed to you by his spirit. So if this reason applies to you, you just don't believe it. Ask God to reveal this mystery to you. He longs for you to have this revelation. There's a story of a man named John G. Lake. Anyone ever heard of John G. Lake used powerfully in signs, ones, and miracles, powerful ministry. Someone asked him, "Mr. Lake, what is the secret to the power that you have when you pray?" People are healed, dead come alive. It's unbelievable. John G. Lake responded, "I believe that Jesus lives in me." Simple as that. I believe that the healer lives in me. I believe that the dead razor lives in me. I believe the one who has overcome the grave lives in me. And so now he's living his life through me. Reason number one, most of us don't believe this. We just don't believe it, man. If that's you, make it your aim this week to pray. God, if what this American says is true, then reveal it to me. I promise you will. Reason number two, many of us don't live with the reality that God lives in us. We once believed the mystery, but that initial moment of faith wasn't strengthened with testimony and encounter. Our God is alive. He is a living God who wants to continually encounter you with Himself. And that doesn't happen either because of distraction or unbelief or things that have happened to you. When we don't have ongoing encounter with the living God, our hearts can grow cold. Scripture teaches us that we are to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit. This is Ephesians 5 verse 18. Don't be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. Now the thing about that language that that we miss in English is the original tense that's used in the Greek for be filled is a continuous ongoing action. It's not a one-time event. So a better translation of that would be keep on being filled with the Holy Spirit, keep on pursuing God. There's no end to him. We never exhaust the realms of encounter with God. So keep on pursuing, keep on being filled with the Holy Spirit. Some believers think, "Well, man, I have the Holy Spirit. Why would I need to be filled with something when I'm already full?" I'll give an example to explain my point. Tomorrow morning, when you wake up, I want you to fill a cup with water. Fill it all the way to the top. Carry that cup with you all through the day. And then I want you to look and see how much of that water you have left in the cup. What's happened? You've bumped into life over the course of the day, and that water spills out. In the same way, we bump into life, and we need to be refreshed with God. We need to be filled again and again with His Spirit. Someone asked a minister named D.L. Moody, "Why do you say we need to continually be filled with the Holy Spirit?" D.L. Moody said, "Because I leak." There's nothing wrong with the capacity of the Holy Spirit. The problem is in you and I. We're disappointed. We sin. We get upset. We experience moments of unbelief, and we need to come back to God and say, "Lord, fill me fresh. Touch me again, soften my heart." I'll give you another example to prove this point, because some of you look skeptical. Acts chapter 2. What happened in Acts chapter 2? Pentecost. The believers were filled with the Holy Spirit. Those same believers, two chapters later in Acts chapter 4, were afraid, because Peter and John had just been persecuted for their faith. So what did they do? They go back to the upper room. They pray for boldness, and the end of Acts chapter 4 says they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they went out proclaiming boldly the Word of Christ. Same believers, two different opportunities for the Holy Spirit to fill them afresh. Reason number 2, most of us don't live as if God lives in us, as we are not continually going to the well of the Holy Spirit. So God, fill me fresh. I need you today. Friend, you can't live off of yesterday's bread. This is why God gives us daily bread. Think of it this way. Remember we said the Spirit is like breath. How many of you are surviving right now off of the first breath you took this morning? Not one of us. God has designed our natural bodies to function in a particular way, to point to a spiritual reality. I need God, like I need my next breath ongoing every moment. God, if I don't have you in this moment, I'm going to mess something up very badly. Friend, live with a desperation for God, and then the faith and assurance that He will meet you and fill you continually. Amen? Reason number 3, that many of us don't live with the reality that God lives in us. And I believe this is the biggest reason we've never been told. Now, I don't believe this reason applies to anyone in this church because this is a healthy, Bible-believing, spirit-filled church. But just for the sake of argument, would you let me unpack reason number 3? Many of us have never been told these things. We've been told that Jesus can forgive our sins. We've never been told we're no longer sons of Adam. We're no longer in Adam. We've been told believe this gospel and you'll be saved from your sins and you'll go to heaven when you die. And then, we go on fighting the same temptations and the same battles that we fought before we were saved. And we're like, "Man, I guess this is just the way it is, fighting my way through life until I die and go to heaven someday." Question, if death is what finally sets you free and joins you to God, then what saves you? Death or Jesus? Because my Bible tells me that Jesus is the Savior, that Jesus has overcome sin and the grave. Amen? So that means I need to stop waiting for death to send me to heaven and start living like Jesus brought heaven to earth and has now gathered all things together in Him. Can anyone believe that this morning? That Jesus has actually overcome sin and gathered you together in Himself? Please hear me this morning. If you are in Christ, the Spirit of God lives inside of you. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is what? Freedom, freedom today, now in this life. Freedom from what? Freedom from every temptation that tries to re-identify you. Freedom from everything you inherited as a son or a daughter from Adam. Freedom from everything you look back through your family line and see the anger, the addiction, the shame, the betrayal, fill in the blank, all of those things that came down through your family line from Adam. You are now free of. That's what it means to be in Christ. You've been adopted. You've been given a new name on a new birth certificate. Your DNA has been recoded. You're no longer in Adam. You're in Christ. You've been given a blood transfusion. You are born again. Believe it. Live like it. You now bear the image of God in the earth. You've never been told this. If you're hearing this for the first time, then maybe you've never actually heard the full gospel. A lot of Christians, they're raised in a brand of Christianity. It's tame. It doesn't know what to do with the mystery. So it just puts the mystery off for the next life. But this is a gospel that doesn't shy away from the mystery. This is a gospel where bread is flesh and wine is blood, where shadows heal the sick, where the least are the greatest, where kings carry crosses and where resurrection power now fills anyone who believes. This gospel is not afraid of the mystery. Today, you can choose to believe the message that Jesus died to give you. That in him is life. And living the rest of your life in him is what this life was always intended to be. To many of us, this was my story. I stopped at the starting line of salvation from sin. Salvation, man, it's a great place to start, but it's a terrible place to stop. You aren't born to be saved. You are born to be one with God. God created you to be with him, to represent him in creation, to show the world around you what God looks like, so that you could boldly say, "Just as Jesus did, I and the father are one." Jesus could be so bold as to say, "If you've seen me, then you've seen the father." And you say, "Well, hold on a second, man, that's the Son of God." I can't say that. First John 4/17 gives you permission to say that. Listen to this. As he is, so are you when you die and go to heaven someday. That's not what first John 4/17 says. As he is, So are you in this world? That's scandalous. If that wasn't in the Bible, that would be heresy. But there it is. It's actually the gospel. It's what God created Adam in his image so that Adam could go to all the places in creation that were not yet garden, and he could transform those places into garden. Why? Because he's born in the image of the creator. He could go around saying, "Hey, let me tell you about God. Let me show you what God is like. Just follow me around for a little bit and you'll see what God is like." Friends, that's the mission of the church to show the world what God looks like. This is the language of those who have been gathered out of Adam and into Christ, telling the lost, "If you want to know what he's like, just follow me around for a little bit. I'm not perfect, but he lives in me, and I promise you'll see a glimpse of him. Can you be so bold as to say that? That's what the Holy Spirit in you wants to accomplish." So in closing, that's always my kid's favorite part of the sermon. In conclusion, think about a light bulb. I want to leave you with one last illustration. Why was a light bulb created to be filled with light? Why were you created to be filled with God? First Corinthians 6, 17 says, "He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him." It's gracious. What a verse. "He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him." When you look at a light bulb, do you see the light bulb? Oh, you see light. That's all you see. Your eyes are blinded by the light coming from the light bulb. When can you actually see the light bulb? When the light is off, friend, the world doesn't need to see more light bulbs. The world needs to see more light. God has filled you with His marvelous light so that you can shine His light to the world, showing Hong Kong what Jesus looks like. I promise you, if you ask the Holy Spirit to give you this revelation that Christ actually lives in you, your relationship with God will be transformed. Your witness and your impact on those around you will be completely transformed. The way that you raise your children will be different. The way that you go about your work during the week will be completely different. The way that you serve in your church will be different. Everything in your life will change. I want to pray for you that God would give us all this revelation this morning. Father, thank you so much for this great gospel. Lord, if salvation from sin was all you ever gave us, it would be more than we deserve but God, you give us your Holy Spirit. You fill us with yourself. Lord, I ask that you would help every one of us understand this incredible reality that we are now temples of the Holy Spirit and that Christ now lives His life in us. Holy Spirit, would you baptize your people of fresh in the revelation of union or that we would go forward from this place today, confidence that we are not alone in this world that you live inside of us. Give us this grace I pray in Jesus name, amen. Thank you for that message and as we go into the time of worship to meditate on today's message, I want to invite you to stand up and just remind you of that passage in Romans 8, 11 of the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal body through his spirit who dwells in you. And so as we go into this time of worship, I like how pastor Niel said, pray for the Holy Spirit to give you the revelation that Christ lives in you. So as we worship, let that be a prayer as Holy Spirit, give me the revelation that Christ lives in me. Let's worship. Christ be met in front as we worship our creation suddenly or together. Our creation suddenly are together with a thousand times to live on ground and from north to south and east to west when your hearts be run by. For the whole of echo is a limit. His name will be a specific God. From heaven to the mountains and tops when here Christ be magnified. Christ be magnified let his days arise Christ be magnified let me in the low Christ be magnified. From the altar of the light Christ be magnified let me in. Every creature finds a tickle smelly and every human heart is painted bright. When a man in red shirt he might be magnified. Be magnified. When a man in red shirt he might be magnified let his days arise Christ be magnified let his days arise Christ be magnified. Before my feelings I hold fast to what is true with the cross-break transformation. When a man in red shirt he might be magnified let his days arise Christ be magnified let his days arise Christ be magnified let his days arise Christ be magnified let's her all night. Christ be back in Christ, gave you a Christ be back in Christ, oh Christ be back in Christ. Oh Christ be back in Christ, oh Christ be back in Christ, oh Christ be back in Christ, oh Christ be back in Christ. Let's sing, let's sing, let's sing, let's sing, let's sing, let's sing, let's sing, let's sing, let's sing, let's sing, let's sing, let's sing, let's sing, let's sing Holy Spirit, we need you, we need the revelation that Christ is in me, we need that daily in our lives, in our homes and in our workplace, that you've called us to be light, and to show Hong Kong who God is, but we can't do that by our own strength, but only by your Holy Spirit, as soon as we say "Holy Spirit, we need you." Now the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you, the Lord turn His face towards you and give you peace, shallong from this day forward. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen, God bless and have a great Sunday.