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East Ridge SDA Church

Incarnation

Steven Grabiner

Incarnation: The Reality

Incarnation: The Revealing

Incarnation: The Reunion

Incarnation: The Regeneration

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to go to Congo, which for those of you that might not know if you're an American, that's in Africa.

I was in a part of the Congo which is up here, it's Kisangani, it's in the northeastern section of the country.

But what's really important about the country is the city that's right around here someplace.

That's Lubumbashi, and that's where my son and his wife and our granddaughters live.

That's not why I went, well, that's not really why I went.

I went to visit a project that I work with in Kisangani.

And some of you might have heard a little bit about their experience.

Earlier this year, they lost their property.

They had purchased this property several years ago, thought everything was legal and organized, built the campus.

Now you can see what the campus looks like.

And then about last June or something like that, or maybe before that, we got a message that we had lost a law case, a civil case, and the police came onto the property and chased everybody off, and the property was taken back, quote, to the rightful owner, close quote.

Fortunately, we were able to get the property back again with a little negotiation and some greenbacks, but we repurchased the property.

But it's wonderful to be there and visit the ministry.

Over the past number of years, they have baptized, I think in 7 years, they've baptized around 6, 000 people.

There's not a lot of church, Seventh-day Adventist church activity there.

Very few pastors, very poor infrastructure in the church.

But in addition to the baptisms, they started a number of new churches, 1 day church structures, opened up a lot of areas, started some training programs.

So it was a real privilege to be with them.

It was very hot, by the way, when actually somebody sent me an email and said, how are you enjoying the snow?

Because I guess you had snow here or something like it a while back.

And I said, well, Chattanooga is probably enjoying it, but I'm in Kisangani and it's really hot.

But it was a great trip, a real blessing.

If you take your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to the book of Romans, Romans chapter 8.

And around Christmas time, probably like in mid December, we started looking at different aspects of the incarnation.

Those of you that come regularly remember some of these topics.

The incarnation, the fact that God became man in the person of Jesus Christ, the birth in Bethlehem is an inexhaustible theme.

In other words, we can keep mining this, thinking about it, coming back to it over and over and over again, and we're going to constantly get new vistas of God's love for us.

And so over the past several weeks, We looked at the risk that was involved in the incarnation.

That really, it's mind boggling, but all heaven was at risk in the incarnation.

That God risked everything in giving us his son.

The incarnation reveals to us who God is.

A lot of confusion in this world about the character of God and who God is and what God is like.

The incarnation reveals very clearly what God is like.

If you have any questions about Who God is, look at the life of Jesus Christ.

We looked at the reality that he really became a man and a few weeks back, 3 or 4 weeks back, we looked at the reunion that he is waiting to have with us.

That there was a reunion when Christ ascended to heaven between the Father and the Son, but that reunion only was a foreshadow of his reunion with you and with me, which is what he's really looking forward to.

This morning, I'd like to continue this thought maybe 1 more time and think of the regeneration, a little bit more of how the incarnation needs to impact your life and mine.

And I want to say here that as I've been reading through this this week, there are certain points of this sermon that really echoed in my life.

And there are other points that there was great dissonance with.

There are points in the sermon where I say, yeah, you know, that's really true in my experience.

And there were other points where it's like, that's not so true in my experience.

No condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

So the source, the location, The place in which there is no condemnation is where?

And the King James says, those who walk after, not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.

Verse 2, For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, notice again the location, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.

Verse 3, for what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, verse 4, so that the righteousness, says the King James, the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.

And the first word in verse 8, at least in the translation I'm reading from, the New American Standard, is therefore, which of course raises the question, therefore, therefore is a conclusion.

And if we think of the entire context of this whole section, starting back in chapter 5, and in Sabbath School we talked a little bit about chapter 5, but chapter 5, chapter 6, chapter 7 of Roman are really talking about 2 epics of human history.

And these 2 dimensions of human history can be best represented by 2 individuals who impacted the human race.

That is, in Romans 5, Adam and Jesus Christ.

And the big picture here really is the choice that each 1 of us have, the choice each 1 of us get the opportunity of making, the choice each 1 of us has is which 1 of those epics in human history are we going to relate to?

The 1 from Adam or the 1 from Jesus Christ?

We get sin, we get condemnation, we get death.

From Jesus Christ we get something very different.

We get justification, we get freedom, we get release from sin.

And so the choice before us is, which 1 will we identify in our life?

Now that therefore, that starts the Romans 8 verse 1, most directly refers back to chapter 7.

So let's just slide back there to chapter 7.

And this was the part of my study this week that really related to me in Romans chapter 7.

But before we go there, let me just share this thought.

And this is really what I want you to drive home with in your head, or as we're sitting around the fellowship dinner table, we'll be thinking about, in order to become Who we want to be in Christ, we need to understand who we are in Christ.

So let me say that again and let's think about that.

In order to become who we want to be in Christ, What kind of person, what kind of Christian do you want to be?

Kind, loving, cheerful, transparent, honest?

What kind of person do we want to become in Jesus Christ?

In order to get there, we need to understand something else first, and that is who we are in Christ.

Because what we become is based on who we are.

What does Paul, what am I trying to say here, and what does Paul mean?

Well, let's look back a little bit here in Romans chapter 7.

And this is the part of our, the preparation for this week's sermon that really resonated with my individual life.

So you know, Each 1 of us, well, I'm assuming, anybody on social media?

Yeah, okay, so pretty much everybody here, I'm assuming, has some kind of connection with social media.

And sometimes you can put your own picture on Facebook or your Twitter account or whatever it is.

You can sometimes have an avatar, which isn't really you.

If any of you are interested, my Facebook account has a lion, a picture of a lion that we took while we were in Africa.

And so, you know, that doesn't really represent me.

I'm not lion-like in any sense of the word.

And so in our social world, we're able to create a persona that may be very different than who we really are.

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Series

Incarnation

Incarnation: The Regeneration

Transcript

Parent Series

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