Hi All
Notes are below. Audio is here: Click to download it to your computer!
You can also access the whole load of Friday Night Bible Study audio files.
Blessings!
Chris
The New You
This requires imagination. Let’s take a journey together to picture a few things.
1. Made in God’s Image…Genesis 1:26a Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; (NKJV)
Do you think God looks like you?
I believe Jesus looked fairly ordinary. Already, His birth was lower than ordinary
Isaiah 53:2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him. (NKJV)
[Thanks Lois for highlighting this!]
2. It was a Spiritual Likeness.John 4:24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (NKJV)
God is Spirit. Our association with Him is in the Spirit realm. Those who have no spirit, who are not born again, cannot have any association with Him.
This flesh we have is dying, corrupted and corrupting.
Romans 8:13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. (NKJV)
When the sense that is the basis of judgment is changed, suddenly, the criteria of judgment are also changed.
Miss Universe judged by a panel of blind judges would result in VERY different winners.
Sometimes hard to tell my daughters apart on the phone!
Try to imagine what the person looks like by hearing a voice on the phone.
The dissociation between spirit and flesh discernment is even more extreme. Spirit and flesh have nothing to do with each other.
Galatians 3:3 Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? (NKJV)
3. This Spiritual likeness was LostBefore the fall, Adam and Eve were really in the likeness of God.
Genesis 2:16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (NKJV)
We know that he did not die when he ate the fruit. It was a spiritual death first, followed by a physical one eventually.
Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned— (NKJV)
4. This Spiritual Likeness was Restored by JesusJesus came to restore, to bring us back to our original state. In this state, God had a perfect relationship with Man.
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. (NKJV)
Colossians 1:13 He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, (NKJV)
1 Corinthians 15:54 So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” (NKJV)
5. He has put His Glory is in UsJohn 17:22 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: (NKJV)
Colossians 1:27 To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (NKJV)
This is a promise for the New Testament saint. His WILL is to make known the riches of His glory, which is in us, manifested by the presence of Christ.
Everything the world tries to change is in the realm of the 5 senses.
Galatians 3:3 Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? (NKJV)
Walk by faith not by sight
2 Corinthians 5:7 For we walk by faith, not by sight. (NKJV)
We need to do this
John 6:63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. (NKJV)
Only the words of the Bible are life. This is our sense into the reality of the Spirit world. We will be blind to the degree we don’t know the Word.
Romans 10:17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (NKJV)
This sense of faith gets increasingly sharp with our knowledge of the Word.
Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. (NKJV)
Ephesians 4: 17 This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, 18 having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; 19 who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. 20 But you have not so learned Christ, 21 if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: 22 that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, 23 and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, 24 and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness. (NKJV)
8. Observe the Mirror, Become Like the ImageYou are who the word says you are. You become what you believe in the Word.
2 Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. (NKJV)
What you see described about you in the Word is much more accurate than what you perceive with your five senses. What that says is the REAL you.
9. Don’t Trust What You SeeIncluding yourself – MUST see yourself in the spirit!
2 Corinthians 5:16a Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh.
Get familiar and used to who you really are in the spirit.
10. This is Who You AreIf you are born again, you are made in His image for real!
Colossians 1:21 And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled 22 in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight— (NKJV)
2 Corinthians 5:21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (NKJV)
We are righteous, holy and blameless! Ridiculous? It’s called love.
It’s called the Gospel, the Good news!
As we begin to take these in, renewing our minds with it, we will start to live more and more victorious Christian lives.
11. The Take Away- Our spirits were made in God’s Image the day we accepted Jesus and got saved.
- We cannot see this renewed image in our 5 senses as it is in the spiritual realm
- The spirit realm is more important than the physical realm
- We access this realm through the Word of God
- When we focus on the Word of God’s grace, we believe and we receive the victory
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