Heirs Appointed to Manage God’s Universe

We were starting at the beginning and recognizing the fact that to be a person is spirit, we're spirit, our inner self, the Bible calls spirit, that's my real self, that desires and knows and chooses, that's my real self, comes out in a form by which I manifest myself, an outer form, I manifest my inner self. And that takes us back to what the Bible says, that the whole universe is one self who is spirit. The whole universe is one person only, who is spirit.

And this living person manifests himself through his universe. So he's not outside the universe creating things down here, he's in and through everything. When your eyes are really open, you're a see-througher, not a see-atter.

Because when your eyes are really seeing him, everything's marvellous, because you're seeing through everything there is, this is a little form of him, everything. This is permanent worship, permanent wonder, permanent unity. Because spirit is unity, spirit is unity, the whole universe is one.

That's why it says that we shall see it in the last day, when we see it, it's gathered together into one, all things in Christ. And we're part of Christ if we're his body. Well, we fall into separation, that's our problem.

We fall into the illusion of separation down in the human level here, where things and people are apart. So we start with this one, and the whole universe, this one manifests himself. And then we saw that the great other necessary fact we need to know about him, what kind of person is he if the whole universe is he? The answer is he's love.

So he exists for his universe, his only being is he may bless and fulfil his universe, not his universe for him, not his universe for his convenience, he for his universe. Therefore it's called the love available. There's a love, love is others, for others.

Then we saw how a manifestation is always a trinity. A person, I think, only manifests if he's a trinity, so God is a trinity. As I say, he's a universal person, he comes out in a particular form, that's the birth of his own son.

And then from the son comes a spirit who reproduces. That's why we're a spirit, soul and body. Everything's a trinity because it's a form of him.

As I said yesterday, you can't have a tree which is a sap. A sap must have a trunk by which he can manifest himself, a trunk of branches. A trunk of branches must produce leaf and fruit and flower by which they reproduce.

So everything. You only act because you're thought, word, deed. You think things over.

You speak the word, I do this, I do that. Then it comes to pass, thought, word, deed, father, son, spirit. So this one in the universe is a trinity.

He's a father manifested in his begetting of his own son. That's how we know him, because he studies a particular form of the father. As I said yesterday, you can never know a universe except by a particular form.

You can't know electricity except it comes out as light and heat and power. You can't know the atom except it comes out as things. So a universe has a particular form by which it or he may be known.

In this case, he's the living one. And he's known as the living father, the living God, because we know the living son. And then so will sign other sons.

And so we saw that the purpose of the son is to be the means by which the father can come out in multitudes of manifested forms. Just as we said yesterday, a father of a big firm can't expand his firm. He begins it.

He's the genius of it. But he has another level of executives or sons who expand his form, bring it into manifestation here, here, here. So a son is the means by which the father comes into further, endless forms of manifestation.

And so we see the creation. And we see that the first word of faith ever spoken was, let there be, let there be. Because we've got so far away from God that we think we've got to try to get God to come down and do things.

When we discover God's everything, we discover God's here in the weaknesses. He's there, they're his weaknesses. The gaps are his too.

And he's there, the weakness is the means by which we can see his manifestation. Where there's a need, we can see a supply. Where there's a weakness, we can see a strength.

And so we learn that the attitude we come to is, Father, you're here, thank you for doing it. I can't see it, you're doing it. Here's this need, here's this problem, here's this difficulty.

Thank you, you're the answer, you're here. And so faith is just letting him be, the son letting the father through in manifestation. Now we go on to see that the most marvellous part of that letting be is that in the letting be he brought into being other sons.

Now that's tremendous. It's one thing through the son they came into being minerals and vegetables and animals, but persons like himself, that's a leap. So in the letting of the father coming through the son, he came into the creation, the beginning of the human family on his level.

So he's made the human family on his own level, sons. That's what we say, the basis of what we're talking about, now are we sons of God? So this is the amazing privilege and destiny and position of us the human family, sons, sons on a level. Now if we jump for a moment over the whole history of humanity, history of what it is to be a person, which we're going to talk about, and we go through what we come back through redemption into Christ, what do we find? We find if we come back through redemption into Christ as sons, we're levelled up with him.

And the Bible says not only is he our saviour, but he's our brother, his elder brother. So Jesus Christ is the elder brother of a vast family of sons. Now that brings us to another startling point.

Paul said this, if you're a co-son you're a co-heir. If you're a son you're a co-heir, heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ. What's Christ heir of? The Bible tells us in Hebrews 1 that the father gave the son to be heir of all things.

So the inheritance of the son is the whole universe. Now what do you do with the inheritance? Forget it? Sleep on it? Bury it? No, you get excited about it. It's something more you can use, if somebody leaves you something, oh here's some more money I can use or something, something I can develop.

So inheritance means there's something available which you can develop. Now, do we get this tremendous fact? So the Bible tells us this, if we're co-sons, brothers with Christ, we're co-heirs. If we're co-heirs, we're inheritors of the universe, we're co-inheritors of the universe.

Our destiny, every one of us, to redeem people of God is to be owners, managers and developers of God's universe. Can you see the implication of that? You and I are to own, manage and develop God's universe. Now, if we're to manage God's universe, we have to be suitable and capable managers for God's universe.

You don't start a person off to manage a firm when they first join it, they start at the bottom and go up. So this is the meaning of the history of us humans, how we find ourselves to be efficient sons with a destiny of managing God's universe. Now there's one thing basically necessary.

God, as I said, is safe in this universe because his love is for his universe. He exists not for the fulfilment of himself, but for the fulfilment of his universe. If his universe is fulfilled, he's fulfilled.

Now, you and I aren't safe to be owners, managers and developers of God's universe unless we're the same kind of person as God is, unless we're for those we manage, not what we manage for us. So we're not safe sons to be inheritors of the universe unless our attitude is we exist for what we inherit. We exist to fulfil it, not for it to fulfil us.

We exist whatever the consequence to us is and the point so long as it may be the meaning for which it has what it should have. In other words, we're not safe sons unless we spontaneously are the same kind of person as the Father is. The Father is self-giving love.

He's the lamb that exists for his universe. He's the bread the universe can eat. He's the water the universe can drink.

He's other love. Now you and I aren't safe from eternal destiny unless the basis of our being are others. Unless the basic motivation of our being is we're for others.

What happens to us isn't the point so long as we may be the means by which other people are fulfilled and blessed. So this is the basis of our attitude to be a safe son. Of course the secret is, as we go down to the sea, as we said before, Spirit is unity, matter separation.

Now because we become matter-minded people, we see people separate. Here's this person, here's that person. We see a Father here, a Son there.

Now in the Spirit, the Father's in the Son. So in the Spirit, in the unity, a Son of God is a person who's in unity with the Father and is automatically an expression of the Father. He's a perfectly free person, he's a free-thinking, willing Son, yet actually he's automatically expressing what the Father is.

If the Father's self-giving love, the Son's self-giving love. Because that's precisely what Jesus said. Jesus said, if you see me, you see the Father, but Jesus was very common.

He walked about like a very common person. Hardly anyone saw who he was. Only perhaps one or two people saw he was God.

He said, if you see me, you see the Father. Not that he was the Father, but it's like this. He says, you are to learn a new relationship, a relationship of separation.

Here's a person, here's there. Spiritual relationship, one in the other. So he said to his disciples around the supper table, believe it or not, I'm in the Father, and the Father in me.

And then he says it's like this. He says, the words I speak unto you, I speak words unto you. The words I speak unto you, I speak unto myself.

But the Father dwelleth in me. He says, I have a permanent resident within me. And the words I speak are this person coming through in words and works.

So there's a basic, fixed, spontaneous, permanent relationship, which I'm not, he's not really. He was followed by him. We're not really, we're God expressed by us.

We're Christ expressed by us. And it's a relationship which is just perfectly basic and natural. Let it live.

But it isn't we living, it's he living by us. Then we have safe sons. Because if this relationship is he living by us, he's self-giving love and that's all he is.

He's the lamb for the world. If we're in this permanent relationship, we're self-giving love, we're lambs for the world. We're bread that other people can eat.

We're water that other people can drink. We're light by which other people can see. This is to be a true son.

So what I'm talking about is this. A tremendous destiny of the human family. Created to be sons of God through certain experiences, which we talk about, we had to become redeemed sons.

So we had to become redeemed sons through Christ's death and resurrection. Brought, therefore, into a level, a brotherhood level. In which he's our brother.

That's why there'd be no fear in heaven. Heaven would be fun, because you have fun with brothers. Heaven won't be frightened of God.

God longs for fellowship. God longs for friendship. God was proud to say, Abraham was my friend.

Moses was my friend. Abraham was God's friend. Moses was God's friend.

God wants friendship. It's sin and guilt which gives us an idea of an awful God somewhere out here. God's lover, God's fun, God's thrill, God's laughter, God's dance.

We had a thorough great time with God, with the Father and the Son, in a vast family. So heaven is gaiety, not seriousness. The Bible says, Jesus says, we're to be like little children.

What's the... What's the condition of a little child? What does a little child love? Fun, doesn't he? A child loves to have fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. So if we're like little children, we're for fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. And heaven's fun, fun, fun, fun, fun.

All this odd business of lying down frightens us. Go on, we're a vast happy family. That's heaven.

And we have a little bit of it down here. But do you see, do you see the seriousness of it? You're not a happy, free son, unless something's happened to you, by which, fixed, without you being, you just are, the basis of your being, you're for others, you're for others. If you can be with me, there's not much other person to be saved.

Above all, to be brought to Jesus, needs fulfilled. That's, that's your thrill. God only has one thrill, to be for others.

That's his dance, joy completely, for others. Not what he is, what he is for them. Now that's opposite of what we are by our fallen nature, as we discussed.

So this is what we have to do, is change. But the change isn't the change in us. The change is the inner union.

We've caught up, as we'll see later on, in a false union with the false, with the spirit of self-centeredness. The redemption of Jesus Christ brings us into a change of union. And union is the goal of self-giving love, and the basis of our life, it's been said, to be real, free selves, and yet, behind our happiness, fulfillment, joyment, there's a purpose, the purpose is, I'm something for others.

I'm somebody for others. I'm a means by which other people may have their needs fulfilled, as my needs are being fulfilled in Christ. So that's the meaning of being a son, and the destiny of being a son.

And the meaning of being a son on earth, is to be an effective love son on earth, not loved son, love son, lover son, an effective lover son on earth. So you're an effective lover son in eternity. This is practicing ground, to fit us for being what we permanently are down here, we'll permanently be up there.

Now that means a pretty serious training course. And that training course is to discover what it is to be a person, and to be a person. To discover what it is to be a person, and then to be a person, and to be an effective person.

Nobody can function in life unless you discover you are a person, unless you have advertised faculties and abilities. And then you discover how you can function as a person in your calling. Then you're an effective person.

So the purpose of the human history is that we should discover ourselves, discover who we are, where we fit in, and how we function. Who we are, where we fit in, and how we function. This is the purpose of it.

So we have to start now at the beginning, and think a little about what a person is. To be a person, a human person, is to have consciousness. A consciousness between alternatives.

You see, life is chained between alternatives. You only know light because it isn't dark. You only know sweet because it isn't bitter.

You only know truth because it isn't a lie. You only know good because it isn't evil. Between alternatives.

And get the two alternatives fitted together rightly. So life is to be conscious, be a conscious person of alternatives, and then to be related to those alternatives. That's the difference between us, say, well the highest level in the creation of us, we say the ant family or the bee family.

They aren't conscious. Up to a certain level they're conscious, yet they don't improve. They're not conscious of alternatives, they're not improving themselves.

They reach a certain level, they live on that level. We're constantly improving. That's why ferment is great.

It's a greatness in a revolutionary world. Because we should be revolutionary all the time. Fermenting for something different, something better, something perfect.

To stand between alternatives, to be conscious of alternatives. Now the essence of being a person is what we call freedom. Freedom.

But freedom isn't what we think, or what we often think. Freedom isn't being anything. Freedom is the necessity all through life of making choices between alternatives.

Freedom is the necessity of making choice. That's why those who get out of making choices in life and run into an NSD or something, they get to nothingness. Because freedom isn't nothingness.

It's the capacity as a human to stand between infinite alternatives and to be making choices between them. That's what we call faith. Faith is committal to something.

Belief is just a general word. Faith is you're committal to something, making choices. So the whole life consists of making choices.

You have to do it. You came here by choice, you had to choose, shall I come, shall I not come? Every time you go into that cafeteria, Royal's good food, shall I take this dish or that dish? Going through, shall I sit in that chair, shall I sit in that one? Everything in life consists of the necessity and your freedom of making a choice. Now the significance of making a choice is what chooses you, what you take, takes you.

Choice is becoming a slave. Every person's a slave. You're a slave to what you choose.

Maybe temporary slavery or permanent slavery. You're a slave to what you choose. Because what you choose takes you over.

You choose food, uh-uh. Food chooses you, you're done for. Once it's inside, if it's poisonous, it poisons you.

If it's good, you're done for. What you take, takes you. So the law of freedom is freedom to make choices.

The thing you choose takes you over. Because you freely chose it, you enjoy being taken over. And then your development is the development that which takes you over.

You come here now, for instance, you choose, shall I come, shall I not come? Your freedom. You flow in, you're taken over by the way we live together for a week. You're like a slave to what's happening down here.

Because you freely chose, you enjoy being a slave. What happens? You get all you can out of it. And you develop, and out you come.

But you get spiritual material, you get out of it, and so you get some further development which is a contribution to life. So that's what life is. It's always making choices, and then you develop because you're using the food to develop a seeking force.

So on every level, you choose a profession. Of course, we humans can change things to a certain extent. You're meant to choose because you want to choose it.

Or I could choose a profession and I'd take you over. You learn carpentry, you become a carpenter. You learn engineering, you become an engineer.

You become, you see, it takes you over. You voluntarily take something, it takes you over. Because you freely chose it, you're meant to enjoy it.

It doesn't always work out quite so well on the surface, you're meant to. And you develop it, and so the doctor practices medicine, the teacher teaches, and the mother runs the family, and so on and so forth. This is the meaning of life.

So choices are serious. You have to be more patient for choices. Now all life is making choices, choices, choices.

And I've got to learn how to make right choices. All eternity is making right choices. That's the word of faith, the committal.

Jesus chose, let there be light, let there be hope, so he chose. He chose to be a saviour. He became what he chose.

He became enslaved by the cross. He turned the cross into a reservation. It carries us all.

See, the whole of life consists of learning I am a person. Life consists of my royal ability to learn how to make the right choices, and then you're reproducing what's the consequence of the choices you make. Now the fundamental factor of making a choice, there's one ultimate choice, one ultimate choice, that motivates the whole business.

You make your choices by your basic motivation. There is one ultimate choice that every person stands between. And the choice is this, I'm a person, you're a person, therefore you're a loved person, you love yourself.

You appreciate yourself. You must satisfy yourself, you must be. You're a person, you must satisfy yourself, appreciate yourself, love yourself, fulfill yourself.

How? There are only two ways. I either am a self-getter or I'm a self-giver. I'm not a person for myself, but I can do whatever I like, no matter what anybody else, or I'm a self-giver, I'm for other people.

Now, this is the marvellous revelation of the living God. That's why there's a very strange technicality in the Bible, which shocked me when I first saw it. And that is, the Bible again and again is saying, of course, God's almighty.

Well, can't he do anything? From him comes all things. All things are forms of him. He's expressed himself through all.

Can't he reproduce himself in any way? The Bible suddenly says there's something God can't do. I think you should say can't, but I can't get it quite right. Can't do.

It's a strange thing to say or shouldn't do it, can't do it. The Bible says something almighty is God almighty, there's something he can't do. Those two don't seem to meet.

And that's just one thing. It says he can't lie, he can't lie. In Titus 1 and Hebrews 6, it says God cannot lie.

That's a tremendous significance there. Why? Because a liar is a self-lover. If I lie to you, I lie to gain my end at your expense.

I don't care if it helps you or not, I'm going to get what I want out of it. So if I lie to get what I want at your expense, God cannot be a self-getter, self-lover, self-gratifier. He cannot be.

God's the first person, a person must choose. A person's only a person because he's changing alternatives and he has to choose and then either temporarily or permanently you're fixed by your choice and you develop your choice. Now there are temporary choices, as I said, there's a permanent choice.

And the permanent choice is at the bottom. You can't erase that. As it were, God says, I'm not going to be for myself a self-getter, a self-gratifier, a self-seeker, I'm going to be a self-giver, I'll be a self-gratifier, and I cannot lie, I'm fixed.

So God cannot be a self-getter, a self-gratifier. Everything God does is love. That's a tremendous basis in your universe.

You always get a cloud in your soul where you say, what kind of God can you be to do that? You may say, God, perfect, self-giving, that's all he can be. Tremendous basis to our universe. He cannot be the other.

So you see, even God has become fixed, even God has become a slave to love. That's all he is. And his delight is to express self-giving love in all his forms, even to Calvary.

Now that's a person. We're persons. We're persons like God.

And so there's another person who came into action. One of God's people, God knew he would. In fact, as we'll see later on, it's necessary that he did do so, in a certain sense.

That's the first person revealed to us who said, I won't be part of God. You see, again I say, the universe is a unity, one person only. And this one person is expressed through all forms of all people.

Everything in the form of him. And they express what he is. But when he makes persons, he makes freedom.

A person, a tree is a form of God. Light is a form of God. You can't see God as a person through a tree or light.

You see God as a person through a person. So he has to have persons. And he develops through persons.

A tree doesn't develop except in a small way. Persons can look what this world achieves. It achieves everything through the universe.

So there's no question about what's going to be achieved by us. Because there's no end to the development of persons. But of course what's the basis is the motivation of the person.

We're he in a human form. And we're expressing him with self-loving love. That's what we come back to now in Christ.

We're just expressions like the son is the expression of the father. But because we're free, we're only persons by freedom. Now freedom means there's the alternative.

Freedom means instead of saying I'll be what I'm meant to be, a part of God and self-giving love, I'll become a self and go my own way. That's what happens. And so the Bible reveals that God's creatures, God created him, he's an angel of God, which says I'm a free person.

I'm not going to be identified just in being, his name was to be Lucifer, which means he bears light, that was his original name. I'm not going to just be a person who expresses God's light and love. I've got myself, I've got my beauty, I've got my house, I'll be for myself, that's all.

I'll be my own God. And he turns his back on God and has to kick God out. So I'll be my own God, a self-loving, self-seeking, self-gratifying person instead of a self-giving person.

He's still God's person. That's why don't bother about the devil. The devil's God's convenient agent, that's all.

God uses him, that's all. He's still God's devil. Don't turn your mind around the devil, turn your mind around God who uses good or evil to his own ends.

But this is the devil. We call him the devil. So this was the first created being who said I don't, we're all part of God, he doesn't recognise he's part of God, he actually isn't part of God.

I'm myself, I've got my own way, one thing for my own ends. That's why he came into being. Now what did God do? God has a, the earth has had this tremendous purpose of a vast family of millions of sons who will inherit a universe and us millions will be other loving people who will be developing and managing God's universe for him and delighting to do so.

This is his purpose. I'm going to use you very conveniently, I'm going to use you very conveniently. I'm going to begin to bring into being a family of sons.

There are going to be millions of them. I'm going to begin, that's the creation of Adam and Eve. He says I know the way they'll come.

You can't fool God, he knows the human race from the beginning. The Bible says before ever he created the human race he already appointed his son to die for them. So he knew the way the human race, he meant the human race to go that way, the dead ones away temporarily.

He already provided the redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 1 says he foreordained his son to be a lamb before the foundation of the world. So it all filled up before we came into being at all.

So we come into being and here's Adam and Eve. Now there are some vital lessons that have to be learned. What I'm getting at, the purpose is you've got to be a real person.

You've got to be a thinking, willing, never going to lose your personality, your functions then. That's all about it. So you've got some real lessons that you may settle in to be a safe son.

A son of God's in the sense a son is meant to be for time and eternity. So the first step is you have to discover yourself. Now that had to come about in the Garden of Eden by a possibility of a contrast.

That's why there had to be two trees. You see we might say that's just one nice tree. We all eat the tree and all go in and know nothing.

God doesn't want a bunch of babies. Babies may be really nice but they can't manage the universe. A little child doesn't know what it takes.

He just gets the benefits. His parents doesn't know what it takes. He's sweet and beautiful.

He can't provide for other people. He's just himself. If there's only one tree and we'd moved in and taken the tree we shouldn't know a thing.

If you're a missionary, I'm a missionary. If you go to a country which has a difficult language, let's say Japan, and you take a young couple, you take a young family, two children out with you, you're pretty soon shamed. Within two or three weeks your little children are gabbling Japanese and you know about five words.

And about five years time you know about 500 words and they know the whole business. You can get things off the top of your head and they don't come here. But you pay the price for it.

You've worked hard to get your five years language and once you've got sticks and we've got to be people who've worked hard and got the right thing in Christ, that's the purpose. So there had to be two trees and the reason there had to be two trees is this. It's only by tempting, tempted to be myself, for myself, I find myself.

So you see, God was using Satan to tempt us, Satan was there before we were and God put us, a naughty God stuck us under the nose of the serpent, that's his fault, not ours. Satan was there, he put us there where Satan would tempt us because it's all part of the purpose. Satan was the symbol of the tempter.

I said, be yourself now, go your way. This is how we people found what we are. I've got appetite, I'd like that food.

Oh, I like things, tremendous. That's all you've got. That makes you a human being.

Everything is perfect, only its misuse is wrong, and God will handle that one. So don't run down any part of your personality. God means you to be all you are, spirit, soul, and body.

Appetite makes living people. I've got appetites. And then it's nice to look at.

I've just begun to see beauty. My God, I'd like that fruit. I'd like that fruit.

It's beautiful. I've got eyes. I can see beauty.

My, there are a million things I'm beginning to appreciate and gain and benefit by and develop as art and science. See an awakening person? And then Satan said to Eve, yes, and you don't even know. If you just go along my way, your mind will think, yes, a lot of things I'd like to know.

I've got a mind. An awakening mind. So you see, through temptation just to be an independent self, I find I've got a self.

That was necessary. I have appetites. I have faculties.

I have abilities. I have will. I have emotions.

I have desires. I'm tremendous. This is what God's purpose is, to have real people through eternity.

Now, there's a hidden secret here. You see, the only person in any one universe, only one person, only one God, He is self-giving love. You, we humans, can only be spontaneous expressions of self-giving love if we're part of Him.

If we're in unity, which we've created, like a branch is part of a vine, like a vine is part of a head. Then in that unity, we are expressions of self-giving love. You begin it when you get new birth.

You've got to go farther than that. But we only get that when we're rejoined to Him who is self-giving love. Now, pulling yourself out of Him, you can only be the opposite.

So if a person tries to be a person apart from God, they can only be self-loving love. And that's what's happening to Adam and Eve. If they're going to be apart from God, I want, I want, I have this.

They can't be self-giving love because only God's self-giving love. Apart from God, they can only be self-loving love. Now, they couldn't avoid that except for one thing.

Adam and Eve couldn't have stopped taking that tree. Couldn't avoid it except for one thing. They could have said, Father, Father, I'm going after that tree.

I like it, I want it, I'm going for it. I can't stop. But you did say don't do it, didn't you? Could you help me? If they cry out to God, say, you silly person, next door is another tree.

You're only looking at one tree out of two. You only see in life what you want, you know. They didn't even see the next tree.

The Bible says there are two trees in the midst of the garden. There's another tree. Take that tree.

And if they'd listened to God and transferred their attention from the fallen tree to the tree of life, taken that tree, they'd receive the fruit. You see, it's eternal life. The fruits are simple in receiving Christ.

If you receive Christ, you love to be for others. You see, if you receive Satan, you love to be for yourself. And they got caught on by the false love and had to find another false love.

Self-love, self-seeking, self-gratification, and all of this falls out, sin, hate, so-and-so. They caught from the wrong tree, and so, you see, they became motivated by self-loving love. If, instead of that, they'd taken the right tree, received what was simple as Jesus Christ, they'd become naturally people who love others.

As you began to be reborn again, you began to love others. You began to find fun in loving others. The world finds fun in loving itself.

But when you get in with Jesus, you begin to find loving others. A new kind of person. So they misstepped.

The proof it could have been was Jesus didn't do it. Jesus had to find himself as a person. It took 30 years to find himself as a person, and he was finally consummated in the Mount of Temptation, where he said, be yourself! Now, I can't go now, that's a magnificent presentation of temptation in its highest form.

See, the devil was speaking to the coming-of-ruler of the universe. He didn't give an infinite level of temptation to us. Far higher level of temptation.

We can't go to that now. And he tempted this person, go your own way, do it your own way. Uh-oh, uh-oh.

How did Jesus answer? It is written. He transferred his attention from the wrong tree to the right tree. He didn't follow what naturally he could have done, naturally he might want to get the easy way.

No, I'm attached to what my father's doing. So he never took to the wrong tree, he kept to the right tree. So it could have been done, and the human race didn't do it.

Well, there's been a tremendous reason for that. A very important reason, and sometimes it's misbias. You see, in all life, you can never do a thing right until you first find the wrong ways of doing it.

You've got to find the wrong ways of doing a thing and drop that before you find the right ways. Now, we often miss that. In any person, any trade you're learning, any experience, you've got to find, I don't use my tools that way.

I don't have my hammer that way. I don't make my drawings that way. I don't have my machine that way.

I don't have my mathematics that way. You've got to find how not to do a thing. You don't hand your medicine this way.

So when you find how not to do a thing, oh, now you do it the right way. No cook is safe in the kitchen. Don't cook with that heat.

Don't mix it that way. Mix it this way. So in all life, you're never an experienced person until you first learn how not to do a thing before you learn how to do it.

When you've thoroughly learned how not to do a thing, you say, ah, that's not the way, then you're confident it's the right way, and you're safe, because you won't be fooled again. Now, that's the history of the human race. We had to learn what it is to be a wrong kind of person before we learned how to be the right kind of person.

So the healthiest foundation we've had is to be sinners. Because by being a wrong kind of person and then discovering why you're a wrong kind of person, ah, I'm finished with that. If you've been born again, that's what happened to you.

You've got disillusioned. You started off in the control of Satan, expressing self-certainty. So life is self-centered, self-seeking, self-satisfying, self, self, self.

I thank God when I was a young man at 18, I got a vision, I had a football accent. When I was in the hospital, am I wholly selfish? I got something. Life's wholly selfish for me.

Everything's for me. Something's wrong somewhere. I got a glimpse of the wrongness of self-certainty.

Of course, I had my sins too. So, if you're, I don't know, but thank God many of us here, if you're a saved person, you've been disillusioned about your life, your fallen life in Satan and in self. You've come to see it's a wrong kind of person.

That's the importance of the history of humanity. We have to learn what it is to be a wrong kind of person before we're a right kind of person. Because the only way to be a wrong kind of person and out of it, are we safe as a right one.

Because if you've been a wrong kind of person and you're disillusioned, and you don't want to maintain that any longer, you want to get out of it, and you've found there's a right way in Jesus Christ, and you come to Jesus and go, oh, I'm not going back there again. You may visit there but never look him. You don't want to live there any longer anyhow.

You're safe. If we hadn't first been sinners before we were saved, you might go and play it up again. If once you've been a lost sinner and discovered you're lost, going to hell and then going to eternity, and you find your way out in Christ, thank you, I've had enough of that one.

And you can begin to be a safe son because you began to be a wrong son before you were a right son. So it's purpose is all God does. So this is the history of human race.

God used the devil to take us the wrong way to make us healthy, right people. So thank God for the devil. He's always a good convenience, just a good agent, that's all.

So, there it is. We're so deceived, we're so deceived that very few of us humans know that every human contains a God. Because the human is the negative that contains the positive through which the positive expresses itself.

The human is the vessel through whom the liquid can be available. The human is the bounce through whom the bounce can express itself. The human race is a negative to God's positive.

Or you're the negative that will turn around God. And so what's happened to the human race? The Bible says there's a spirit of truth in the redeemed there's a spirit of error in the unredeemed. And it's got so deep that most of us don't recognize it.

We think in our foreign countries it's just ourselves living our own life. We don't recognize we're being motivated by the spirit of Satan all the time. That's why the Bible says all humans are vessels in Romans 9. It says you are the vessel of wrath or vessel of mercy.

If you're a vessel of wrath you contain the God through whom wrath comes. If you're a vessel of mercy you contain the Lord Jesus Christ through whom mercy comes. So all the Gospel is a change of Gods.

It isn't a change of vessels it's a change of Gods. The human doesn't change but the one who who who is motivated by human changes. Now you see we've been under a basically false motivation.

And so all our choices underneath have been motivated by self-interest. So you see what ultimately matters to the human is that fundamental choice that is settled. We slipped in through the fall into this false choice by which we became related to Satan and became vessels that contained him.

He was the God of self-centeredness and he was he was manifesting from the self-centeredness. So all our life before we were saved had been geared to self-centeredness self-seeking, self-gratification and so on. The supreme moment in our life is when that choice had been changed from being under the control of Satan to coming under the control of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And that's that's what the Gospel is. That's why there had to be a Christ with a death and resurrection. There had to be a Christ with a death and resurrection because the whole human race had become a vast family of slaves to Satan.

We're never called sons of Satan for good reason. We're called children of Satan which belongs to his family. A son's a mature person.

We become children of God then we become sons of God. They were mature persons. Now you can become a son of the devil a son's a person who comes up to a level with his father child's just the beginning.

We're called children of Satan thank God we didn't sin as Satan sins as Satan fell. You see Satan's fell from his very center of the spirit himself. I'll be God he said.

I'll get God out I'll be my own God I'll run my own life to my own ends. From his very center he turned God out and became the opposite. Now thank God we humans didn't go as far as that.

Satan sinned from the spirit we humans sinned from the flesh. And Adam and Eve sinned they didn't kick God out they just wanted something else and they hoped God wasn't looking that's all. So they just hoped to turn their back on God when they did the sin.

So it wasn't so much a kicking of God out as slipping into this fallen condition. So that's why the human race can be savable we can be savable because there's that in us which still can respond to God there's nothing in us which can respond to God. So we became children of Satan belonged to Satan slaves of Satan but hadn't yet become finally members of his family devils devils can go to hell so it's possible for humans to go to hell by going right the way and becoming on the level with devil.

But even so who can redeem us? We can't redeem ourselves where have I one slave can't redeem us slaves who can do it only one person and this is now the ultimate revelation of the love of God. See love's a strange word other love which is you if you've been born again is you see you're forever a debtor you're forever a debtor now you're not being debtor we prefer to get out of debt if you're a redeemed person you're forever a debtor why? Because need's a creditor and love's a debtor and love belongs to need and wherever there's need which it calls on it claims you to meet it so our whole life is spent being claimed to meet need and the wonderful thing is we love to do it we love to be debtors that's why I was so surprised initially when I read that statement about Paul going to the mission fields in Romans he said I'm a debtor to the Greeks and the barbarians and the wives and the other wives I said debtor's a tough word I said if he'd said it was his privilege to take gospel to him all right or if he'd said well I'm a debtor to Jesus Christ he bought me this precious blood so I paid my debt to the non-Christian he didn't say that he said I'm a debtor why? Because need's a creditor and love's a debtor love belongs to need Paul had to go to bring the gospel to those within his reach and God had to come and save us now there you've got the ultimate limit of love God had to save us love belongs to need love's a debtor need's a creditor we're in need go to hell God's love he had to come and meet us he had to come and die for his enemies now that's what love is that's what love is in us regardless of what the person is we belong to those in need anywhere in which we meet that need that's what we are that's what the new person is of Christ in them and that's what God is and so Jesus Christ came I'm going to be stopping in a moment and pick it up again next time I wanted just to say this no one else could redeem us why? who could redeem a vast human family who got enslaved only one only the author of them the author of the race can do it the originator of the race can do it Jesus Christ authored our race therefore the author could often represent the whole race so the only person who could redeem us was God's own son who authored us that's why the basis of our gospel is the incarnation that's why the bible says the test of your faith is do you believe that Jesus Christ came in the flesh as God's son because our redemption depends on this person only could represent the whole human race and he did so he came in the miracle of being a child among us a little boy among us and he lived a life the devil couldn't get I've told you that the devil couldn't touch him so he never was blessed to contain Satan we're blessed to contain Satan he was blessed to contain God his father so he never did die because death belongs to sin now the tremendous act that Jesus Christ he devoured took death on him he shed his blood and gave his body the two things both necessary for salvation body and blood now the blood of Jesus Christ meant this we have broken we have broken God's law there's a penalty of broken law and there's a penalty on us which means we're shut out shut out from God God is heaven they use the bible term everlasting separation destruction from the presence of the Lord and glory of his power we're shut out and as we die in Satan our destiny is a judgment a wrath sin, hell and guilt we're out we're finished we can't do a thing about it now the wonder of Jesus Christ is he took that death on us that's the shedding of his blood which proved he really died he took that death he went where we'd go if we died it says he went three days of speech in prison he went there he took upon himself all that would come to us broken law guilt judgment wrath hell sin guilt the whole business but because he was God's son because he'd never been in the power of the devil and because God could raise him from the dead he was raised from the dead now the raising him from the dead means all that he involved there that was involved for our sins had gone forever that's the amazing part of when you receive Jesus Christ it's in God's hands as if he'd never sinned it isn't just forgiveness forgiveness isn't good enough if I hurt you you may forgive me but you don't forget and I don't forget this isn't forgiveness it's justification means in God's sight as if it never happened in Jesus Christ's resurrection all that sin guilt it's not there any longer so it never was to take upon us any concern about the past it's disappeared in God's sight if you believe in Jesus Christ it's as if you'd never sinned your sin your guilt it's not there it's disappeared it's outside it's not there I remember them no more that's the glory of this new place we are given in Jesus Christ to receive all that past has gone that's his precious blood but his body had to die too that's something very significant that's why the whole communion has blood and body in it because the body is we the blood was his blood his own life that's why he went there alone on our behalf but there's something bigger problem with that my problem isn't the product it's the producer my problem isn't the effect it's the cause the producer in me is the spirit of self-certainty which causes me to lie and hate and thieve and do these things the sins are the products sin is the label of the producer the spirit of self-certainty is all humanity that's the problem I've got the producer in me who causes me to live for myself and the sins come out so there's no full salvation if it hasn't removed the producer as well as the products now that's the body of Jesus the blood of Jesus was the products out sin wrath, death all that business the body of Jesus the Bible says we're that body oh that blood was just he we're that body we're crucified with him we're buried with him we're risen so we're that body we're called the one bread one body in the whole community we're the body now what's that mean something tremendous it means that when the Lord Jesus Christ hung on Calvary as I say his blood had taken away the sins when he hung on Calvary we human race our vast human race were in full spiritiness the spirit of error and motivating us we're blessed to look to the spirit of error causing us to be self-centred and so on when Jesus Christ hung on Calvary in God's sight he was a vast humanity his body was like a vast humanity which had the spirit of error in it so it says he was made sin it says he bore our sins that's taken away the wrath and judgement made sin means in God's sight he was a human race motivated by spirit of self-certainty that's our problem the producer is the problem not the products the cause of the problem not the effects now when a body dies a body dies to a spirit when a body dies spirit goes so the Bible says when he died that body represented us he died to sin not that he bore our sins remember 6 verse 10 he died to sin means he died a body dies to spirit containing it tremendous moment and he lay buried there without anything in we were buried there it says we were buried with him so we know that was what we were we were buried with him there and that buried body had no spirit in now there's room for a new spirit and so the Bible in the resurrection came the Holy Spirit came in place of the wrong spirit spirit of truth came in place of spirit of error so all the gospel was a change of God's and if you're born again as a change as you come to I will stop now as you came to Jesus Christ this change took place in you a change from being motivated by spirit of self-certainty which ends us in sin and death and hell and replaced by spirit of Christ which begin to be expressions of what Christ is in love now as Maltz said about that I'm leaving that now I'll pick it up when the next time I meet I want to talk to you next time I meet what the real new birth is so you may understand what's happened to you and then how you go on beyond through new birth because there are three stages there's justification unification and then saviourhood saviour father we've got to go through three stages we have to begin looking at the first stage next time the new birth moving on from there thank you